tag: images

artist’s desktops

05::January::2012 22:39 → permalink

Rod sent an invite along from Nate Larson for another one of these evolved digital projects — screen shots of artist’s computer desktops.

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bed

17::December::2011 19:01 → permalink

bed, Arvada, Colorado, December 2011

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portrait, The Force (victorious)

29::October::2011 17:21 → permalink

The Force (victorious), Pueblo, Colorado, October 2011

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some time in a later era

11::September::2011 09:59 → permalink

WTC, from Jersey City, October 1986

badly developed negative fourteen years before the demise of these monuments.

on a day spent at altitude (zenith at 14,270 feet (4350 m.) up Grays Peak); with hypersonic overflights of military aircraft, some close enough to distinguish under-wing weapon arrays. are they joy-flying on regular deployments, or is this some memorial act?

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self-portrait on the Continental Divide

07::September::2011 13:33 → permalink

self-portrait, Continental Divide at Cottonwood Pass, Colorado, September 2011

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bed, near Mirror Lake

06::September::2011 17:21 → permalink

bed, near Mirror Lake in the Collegiates, Colorado, September 2011

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cyber-break

06::September::2011 11:54 → permalink

group portrait, Mill Creek, Colorado, September 2011

a couple hours online between bouts of wild(er)ness solo and with old friends. have a long conversation with a solo hiker up in Mill Creek this morning. Steve lives out of his modest Toyota RV, a retired engineer, spends 5 months a year hiking in the Colorado high country.

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bed, Mill Creek

05::September::2011 16:56 → permalink

bed, Mill Creek, West Elk Wilderness, Colorado, September 2011

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portrait, Beth, [?], and Karen

02::September::2011 13:40 → permalink

Beth, (??), and Karen, Victor, Colorado, September 2011

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self-portrait at the Center of the Universe

24::August::2011 15:52 → permalink

self-portrait, Center of the Universe, San Luis Valley, Colorado, August 2011

Thirty years plus a few weeks since the original visit to the Center of the Universe. What does it reveal?

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sacrifice

24::August::2011 13:20 → permalink

sacrifice, Continental Divide at Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado, August 2011

I decide to initiate a new series for the sacrifice project — this time, using the large bag of .50 caliber machine gun bullets collected out on the gunnery range on the expansive salt flat south of Wendover last year. The brass sheathings on the “balls” are weathered green from time and brine. These evidences of the military-industrial complex need to be re-distributed back around the west.

Cartridge, Caliber .50, Ball, M2

Cartridge, Caliber .50, Ball, M2. Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The cartridge is intended for use against personnel or unarmored targets. The cartridge is identified by a plain bullet (“ball”). Type Classification: STD – OTCM 36841

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sacrifice with fly

24::August::2011 10:04 → permalink

sacrifice with fly, near Wolf Creek, Colorado, August 2011

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one image of many, more later…

23::August::2011 17:55 → permalink

roadside memorial, near Shiprock, Arizona, August 2011

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along the road’s verge

14::August::2011 17:08 → permalink

roadside memorial, Chino Valley, Arizona, August 2011

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Nora lands at the Center

30::July::2011 21:18 → permalink

Nora and friend, Center of the Universe, Colorado, July 2011 (EJ Meade)

EJ sends this along of his youngest daughter Nora (on the right) and a friend making the summer’s pilgrimage to the Center on the way to the Great Sand Dunes. the graffiti that was sprayed on the structure back in 2009 has been painted over (flip through the pop-up photos here to get to the Center, and you’ll see the juvenile work!) it did give me the idea of proposing a temporary exhibition of graffiti, say, Berlin-style (go through the pop-up photos to some classic Mauer-style stuff), on the three sides facing the road, wouldn’t that be awesome!

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self-portrait on the Summer Solstice

20::June::2011 12:00 → permalink

self-portrait at Selatangar on the Summer Solstice, Árnessýsla, Iceland, June 1995

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Clarence Anicholas Clemons, Jr. 1942 – 2011

18::June::2011 22:55 → permalink

death Clarence Clemons, McNicols Arena, Denver, Colorado, 1980

A rare Clarence without his sax at a gig with Bruce and the E-Street Band at McNichols Arena in Denver, Colorado sometime in 1980.

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portrait, year 10 students, Flinders Station

27::May::2011 13:22 → permalink

year 10 students from Berwick Secondary College, Flinders Station, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, May 2011

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office, Centre for Creative Arts, LTU

14::May::2011 17:20 → permalink

CCA office, LTU, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia, May 2011

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argh, done

09::April::2011 15:10 → permalink

finished the rolling-over process from the travelog to this blog. pain in the arse! 2850 entries at this point, now the hard work of adding several thousand images along with much more audio, and other miscellaneous content in the next months. as acquisitions slack off, I can finally catch up.

in the same moment, I realize that personal communications with Others has dropped off precipitiously in the last, say, two years — hmmm, a direct affect of thesis-mongering? or merely life in this instance? unfortunately, few keep up with this blog, otherwise they would have some inkling of what has gone down in the last 24 months or so.

the other thing I realized was that I’ve been making far more images of roadside memorials (Roadside Memorials?) than of live humans. that’s a bit of a shock to the system to consider. when I’ve been encountering quite a number of new people in life. plenty of opportunities. it seems that it’s too intense to drag out the Nikon — it’s too much. either that, or the recent diving into archive has made the further acquisition of images — the continual expansion of the archive — to be a hopelessly perverse exercise. when so much of it has hardly been surfaced to any of the many represented in it. what to be done? there’s only so much time in a rapidly-passing life!

not to mention the greatest down-side of archive is the life-time/life-energy necessary to committed to maintaining it. an archive is all about order, and a carefully constellated archive — one where things may be found! — tends to dis-order the moment that energy ceases to flow into maintenance of that order.

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memory, it occurs

23::March::2011 11:25 → permalink

the biggest problem with externalized memory is that when memory is disembodied from the Self, we may no longer feel its effects – in recall, in re-living. we may only simulate the feeling of it, or, at most, resonate with the symbolic values represented in its reproduction. individual embodied memory is directly experienced as a changed body state. externalizing memory is a particular and collective phenomena which arises when the pain of actual experience and its associated memory is too much to bear. externalizing is available from the same technologies (tele) which cause the pain to begin with — dislocation and the pain of separation. perhaps technological development may not proceed fully until the relevant memories are externalized to begin with, then the pain of alienation is transferred to a painless place.

this is illustrated through the wide-spread propagation of pictorial documentation and the subsequent sharing of those images. the originary documentation occurs to enhance or prove the fact that the individual was fully living; at the same time of documentation, the very documentary process dislocates the self from being fully in the life flowing around, causing a pain of loss.

it’s like looking at a stranger’s snapshots from their youth. they contain only generic and shared cultural triggers, nothing more (or less). beyond that, there are resonant memories in the viewer, based in the configuration of their own experiences, and while these can be quite strong at times, the difference between lived experiential memory and those resonances is significant.

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self-portrait in Mint Wash

11::March::2011 14:02 → permalink

self-portrait, Mint Wash, Williamson Valley, Arizona, March 2011

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sacrifice

11::March::2011 12:30 → permalink

sacrifice, Mint Wash, Yavapai County, Arizona, March 2011

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heading back northeast: desert to mountain

25::February::2011 12:08 → permalink

industrial agriculture, east of Yuma, Arizona, February 2011

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Ian Hunter

05::February::2011 22:00 → permalink

portrait, Ian Hunter, Rainbow Theater, Denver, 1980

portrait, Ian Hunter, Rainbow Theater, Denver, 1980

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Bruce Springsteen

01::February::2011 22:58 → permalink

portrait, Bruce Springsteen, McNichols Arena, Denver, 1980

portrait, Bruce Springsteen, McNichols Arena, Denver, 1980

digging deep into the 35mm archive, from 30 years ago now. 18,000 images. back from the time I covered around 150 concerts in two years, as well as being the photo editor for the yearbook, special editor for the newspaper, and doing some advertising photography — at the same time as slogging through one of the toughest engineering schools in the country, argh. hard days … but much fun: our motto was work hard, play hard. doing all that with good friends, what more can one ask?

this archive will surface in some form in this thesis project, possibly, and if not within that framework, it will simply surface as possible. the (life)-time required to do this is significant. and perhaps that time is short.

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quick transit

26::December::2010 22:26 → permalink

near Lucerne Valley, California, December 2010

with a truckload of stuff, it’s too complicated to camp extensively. and, in retrospect, not much to say anyway. got to get back in Prescott to get organized for the ensuing departure.

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Christmas fault

25::December::2010 23:01 → permalink

morning fog retreats north, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California, December 2010

dislocated, and wind-blown to another place (in the night). retrospecting from a great distance. not a travelog, but a long narrative story in pieces. a different kind of writing, but not too different: carrying some mapping of the movements imposed by life as it is/was. question: would all the fragments, displayed, end up having a meaning? or would they remain fragmented, and infinitely far from the lived life? can the flow that one feels while passing through this immediate temporal region be truly experienced by an Other, or not.

the San Andreas Fault dominates the feel of this place, though it is only a scarp of low hills cut by displaced drainage washes. I didn’t get to a focal point of the flat valley floor, a complicated outcrop with a sizable pictograph/petroglyph wall up near the entrance to the Monument. it has restricted access, and was closed when I came into the valley. but today, head further south to the southern exit from the valley, where the dirt track parallels the fault scarp a hundred meters to the east. the displaced gullies cannot be immediately decoded by their odd shapes — where the topography is shifting north/south 33-to-37 mm per year. ya’ gotta run to keep up!

Follow the fault scarp east-south-east across the Grapevine and down into the Mojave near Victorville, and end up in a very isolated area of the near Mojave — up at altitude, so it’s very cold and very windy, though that’s nothing new in the High Mojave in December. Simply unload the back of the truck enough to curl up and sleep.

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change

24::December::2010 23:07 → permalink

view south from KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California, December 2010

The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — as deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.

The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam.

So: two major mechanisms and the second is responsible for the construction of the first. It takes an energy (depletion) to create these barriers which subsequently carry and direct energy flows as prescribed by their particular socially-mandated configurations.

[This all goes back to the hypothesis about virtuality -- where virtuality is (merely) the presence of a situation of attenuation of 'natural' flows (and here, tool-making is a key component). The question of what is 'natural' may be approached from a couple way, but more on that elsewhere.]

And all the way, Coyote laughs.

The day spent in leisurely absorbing the energy of place. The campground is built under the only trees for miles, (eucalyptus, from Australia!) so there is raptor and other bird activity all the time. The owls at night contribute a fantastic dialogue to the silence.

A short hike west to some low hills, down a wash, ends up, with the recent extreme rains, at a cattle pond full to overflowing. As per usual, I do not do a ‘before’ image (note to self — do a before image next time!). The downstream side of the small embankment dam has been undercut to within a meter of the main body of water which is substantial. With a small stick, I scratch a small line across the top of the dam, gradually increasing its size, using the initial slight flow of water to clear the waste from the cut. After twenty minutes of play, there is a sizable gap in the dam along with a flood of water rushing through, further eroding the dam body. Monkey-wrenching? Nah, this is merely a slight acceleration of what is happening ‘naturally’ — the breaching of the dam will occur eventually unless there is maintenance energy applied into the system. It would have likely occurred with the next substantial rains.

I do take an after image, and then head back to camp circuitously. It is after I see Coyote’s paw-print in the rain-damp soil, walking on a trail, that I cross the wash on which the dam is built. I am surprised that the huge rush of water from the breach is just reaching this spot. It is first a trickle which then ramps up to a full-on rushing creek. Fascinating to see the water fill the bed of the wash, pooling in hollows, flowing over small water-falls. I see immediately this is a perfect audio situation to continue documentation of the ‘changing the course of nature’ or ‘changing the course of history’ project that I have undertaken in the last few years. I lope back to camp, grab the recorder, and race back, downstream, to the wash. The flood is proceeding slow enough that I can run further downstream several times to record the ambient audio and make some images of the process.

Then it’s back to camp for dinner.

Sky-worms bugger the clarity of the atmosphere, attenuation the flux of Light reaching the surface. Obviously this is under a major north-south air-route — the only good thing is that the planes are at 10 km altitude, so the sonic disturbance is minimal. The affect on high-altitude haze, however, is profound. Long vision (at the sky and at the landscape) refocuses eyes through these worn diffracting glass into another focal point. Eyesight goes bad with all the reading and writing. The next year will make all that has gone before (go pale in comparison, argh!) as the PhD takes shape. No life, no sight left.

I have not seen another human the entire day with the exception of a well-armed ranger cruising through the campground. A droll chap, probably 30 or so, from the East Coast, a Federal employee, dislocated.

Around sunset, a car pulls in, first they park in the next slot, but then pull out and park across the campground, 50 meters away. There is a couple, they mill around, looking like they are setting up camp, it’s cold, getting colder, sunset. I’m sleeping on the ground. They turn on a radio playing pop mariachi music. It gets louder and louder as time goes by, getting later and later. They are sitting in the front of the car probably drinking, smoking, whatever. At one point well after 2300 I yell over to TURN IT DOWN. That has no effect. I honk my horn, also to no effect. I contemplate going over, but also realize the odds are that the occupants are armed. I instead pack the car up, fuming, and drive to a side-road further south in the valley and find a spot there. Faugh, why would somebody drive all this way — it’s at least 50 miles from the nearest town — to sit in their car and play loud music? Sorry, I don’t get it. [expletives deleted!]

Later, Orion drags his belt and sword from the sludge of Light pollution that sits to the south: Los Angeles, more than 150 km away or so. To the east, light from Taft and Bakersfield. A strong wind arises late in the night, there are no trees where I have moved to. Uncomfortable night after the luxury last night.

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setting out

23::December::2010 22:47 → permalink

heading south-by-south-east on Tesla Road, California, December 2010

If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are.
– Tung-Shan

Loss, and the new. Preparing for the forward-fall to engage the conditions that hydrocarbon burning precipitate: back on the road, hydrocarbon flaring, with a slow drive down to Carizzo Plains via the “Petroleum Highway.” Along which are the still-operational fields of California’s early oil boom. Drive by the Kettleman Dome area, a structure that I examined as my first exploration review at Unocal back in 1982. I had to gather all alternative methods data, produce some maps and structural interpretations, and an exploration strategy that correlated seismic and well-log data sets.

Tracking the San Andreas Fault. The knife-through-birthday-cake-icing scar that runs from the here to the there of California. Rupture zone riding. Making images and writing. The usual. Or the unusual. Beginning or Ending.

This after the Solstice lunar eclipse last deep night which hung in a cleared sky slowly transforming eye-socket receivers into Light-cups, catching a burnt sienna flux from every sun-rise-and-set on the limb of the planet, at the moment. Very fine. And gone for this life’s time. On Earth as it is in Heaven.

On this movement, at this time, cars fill Interstate-5 everywhere, all the time. The pavement is uneven and shattered in some places from the heaviness of the truck traffic as well as the bankrupt state of the state of the Union. wads of toilet paper fill the grass at the scenic overlook like albino poppies. Later, I leave the interstate for less travelled roads, much less travelled, I see very few cars at all. But then there are oil pumps and pipes.

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one house in the ‘burbs

18::December::2010 23:29 → permalink

Dalene and Dana, Livermore, California, December 2010

gurls, dogs, and Christmas lights on display. somewhere in California.

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endings – Day 11 – eNZed

12::December::2010 22:10 → permalink

Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

I join the panel Social Energy with Zita Joyce, Caro McCaw, and Sally McIntyre along with a Skype from Eric (Kluitenberg) from late nite NL, half-way around the globe. It’s funny to cross paths with him here, but appropriate in the sense of the networking practice.

There was one point in his presentation that I had a serious disagreement with — when he posited that the remote half of a connection (in this case, a tele-presence ‘wall’ in a working environment), was ‘fantasy’ in the sense that it wasn’t ‘real.’ If I understood this correctly, I would totally disagree. It is rather a situation of sensory attenuation — the ‘presence’ of the remote Other is real, but attenuated (by the communications protocols between here and there). And it is in this attenuation where the loss and alienation from remoteness (and ultimately the frequent dysfunction of online events like ElectroSmog) arises. We didn’t get into it too far as there were other issues to talk about in the panel, but this one really was problematic. When assigning a ‘fantastical’ label to a real techno-social deployment we remove any (human) agency from it and push it into a phenomenal realm where it does not rightly fit. What is implemented is an expression of a human techno-social system — manifestations of this system are never fantasy.

Many good presentations, especially the comments from Mike Poa, the founder of the One River project with the waka on the Whanganui River. It’s hard to hear of yet another river suffering from the typical exploitation/development which ends up wasting the life of the entire watershed and its people. But then the efforts to revive the river culture seem to be pretty successful. The Maori are by no means quitters, and their cultural strength is significant. A couple days ago I spent part of an afternoon talking with a group of Maori women who were reviving/continuing the tradition of weaving baskets, they said that there was a very positive engagement from the young people.

It’s over, so, cleaning up the space and trucking everything back to the Green Bench or the house at the end of the afternoon.

The day closes with another delicious barbie at Don and Ana’s place, with the slow and mild twiLight falling.

Can’t wait to get another dose of NZ!

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fire – Day 7 – eNZed

08::December::2010 22:32 → permalink

Victoria Bridge, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Cycling down the river to first the boat house, then downtown and The Green Bench for more work, stopping to photograph the river in the brilliant sunshine and I see a huge cloud rising from the direction of Taranaki. could it be an eruption? I ask a woman walking down the bike trail, but she looks and seems completely indifferent, seemingly not recognizing that it is a smoke, not weather cloud. Weird. Turns out that it is likely just an agricultural burn.

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waka – Day 6 – eNZed

07::December::2010 22:06 → permalink

learning Maori numbers, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Up early again, before all the girls are off to school, the morning routines are quite entertaining to witness. Compared to similarly-aged kids in other places (the US!), all the kids I’ve met here seem quite relaxed. Is it the culture here, or? There is a laid-back quality, but I haven’t been here long enough to see how it suffuses through the society. There have to be substantial social issues, with colonialism having left such an influence on things. The stack of histories of NZ that Kerry loaned me before traveling told of savage open conflict until around the time of the US Civil War which is quite recent. Though no longer in direct living memory, it is still quite close. It’s is obvious, from the clear-cut timbering alone, seen from the air, that there is an ongoing and deep conflict over land-use, with powerful development and/or exploitation forces. On the other hand, there are definitely strong voices for nurturing the environment (and human lives on the island) back to something more sustainable.

We take a visit to the waka (canoe) boathouse to check on things — there is a crew of young gals who are practicing waka racing for the national championship. A group of absolutely charming young women.

Mike, our main Maori host comes by, what a expansive and powerful spirit he has! Julian has really cultivated some amazing connections with people here. Everyone met so far has been friendly, open, welcoming, relaxed, ready with a smile, along with some challenging/enLightening conversations.

Hardly time to make any entries now that the road has come up to meet my feet, so to say. Prepping mentally for the symposium coming up in a few days. But there is still so much indeterminacy that I will really have to improvise, and simply go with the available and auspicious energies of the moment. Many stories are already told about energy and informatics.

Towards sunset, an impromptu picnic on river turns out to be a neighborhood gathering, yet another example of a relaxed bunch of folks. Such a (WELCOME!) contrast to Sydney!

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anarchic food – Day 5 – eNZed

06::December::2010 23:18 → permalink

near the art museum, on the anciant dunes, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

There’s quite some stress around the catering for the symposium as the person who was to do it had a terrible family trauma arise in England. There will be around 50-75 people coming from around New Zealand along with a few foreign presenters, and the food requirements are vegetarian, vegan, lacto-ovo, etc, etc … complex on limited resources …

Turns out that Gregers though, was the cook and manager of that anarchist vegetarian dining room near Bjorn’s house in North Copenhagen — I’d even eaten there a couple times when visiting Bjorn — so between Gregers and Jonah from the local community, along with volunteers, things will come together. It’s a challenge!

Oh yeah, and it’s Gregers’ birthday dinner in the evening. I work on a big fruit salad, and get the opportunity to introduce Freya to pomegranate seeds.

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landed – Day 1 – eNZed

02::December::2010 23:20 → permalink

Auckand Airport, Auckland, New Zealand, December 2010

Up at 0400 to make the hugely early flight to eNZed. Had to be totally packed for the US as well, as I’ll have only another 20 hours back in Sydney, in transit between Auckland – Sydney – San Francisco.

A new country, a new place to visit. The national memorial service is happening when we land, so I manage to record a minute’s silence in the baggage claim. Some people were oblivious. People are watching the ubiquitous flat-screen teevees rather intently. The cost of extractives, but only the most obvious one.

The jump flight from Auckland down to Whanganui reveals both sides of possible landscapes. Massive clear-cut forestry in the highlands, and intensive farming in the more level areas — both with the attendant geomorphology of erosion features marring the terrain. Much has changed since colonization, surely. Then there are the remaining highland forests which are not yet decodable, having not met them on the ground.

Finally get into Whanganui, Julian picks me up at the airport in their 1988(?) Honda named Buzzy Bee (?) — a vehicle with a history, too bad I’m writing this in far distant retrospect, or elsewise I could relate the story. It was funny. Great to finally meet Julian, and we immediately start up a substantial dialogue as I am dropped into the whirlwind of family life surrounding the community effort aimed at the Greenbench (Gallery space) and the ADA Symposium. I tell him that I am at his service, and that, officially, my workshop starts now. It’s all about energy, presence, be-ing, and raising these topics in whatever contexts that arise in the next ten days.

The evening starts with a rousing performance of Aladdin by the children of the Brunswick School located in the countryside near Whanganui. Julian and Sophie’s three daughters recently started attending the school. This was followed by some photo-ops — meeting more of Julian’s family and other folks in the community — in the playground, as the soft, mild summer twiLight closed in.

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drenched

29::November::2010 23:24 → permalink

overlook panorama, Blue Mountains National Park, New South Wales, Australia, November 2010

brutal day, too late to change it: deciding to go out to the closest bush access — the Blue Mountains National Park up at Katoomba to check it out — bad weather, but this is the only opportunity to go before leaving for New Zealand on Friday. I suppose it is the rough equivalent of hitting Yosemite or so (not near the grandeur of Yosemite, but the proximity and intensity of being a tourist attraction, they get three million folks up here every year). a 90-minute train ride from Sydney Central up the hill to Katoomba Station. decide to fuel-up at a cafe in town first, do some writing, pick up on the vibe. then head south from town on foot to the edge of the main escarpment of resistant Triassic Hawkesbury sandstone that Katoomba sits on. pouring rain by the time I get an hour out. thankfully I have full Goretex on which is useless. so, drenched to the point that it makes no difference.

along the escarpment picking up the energy, not seeing a soul. clouds lower before I leave town, so visibility contracts to 1-200 meters or so. dense, rich, empty, wet. a bit taken aback at the emptiness so close to town, but not in a negative way. I decide to make about an 8-mile loop hike, down the Golden Staircase, and along the base of the escarpment through the muck and rain. hang out in a small cave-overhang for a time, meditating on the dripping sounds, and why I hadn’t been up here before now. I had always been reading adverts about travel to the Blue Mountains with tour companies and the prices were prohibitive (for my budget), more than AUD 100 for a day trip, so I simply eliminated it from my list of possible things to do. now I discover that it costs a AUD 5.50 train ticket, and a mile walk to get into the park boundaries. another 5 miles and I’m in pretty rugged country. dang.

wet. continue the long loop, crossing a landslide area which was quite a chore to get across, especially exposed to the now constant pouring rain. unfortunately no decent photos, though the clouds wreathing the escarpment were dramatic. still no sight of any other humans. but absolutely not used to this wetness, since the long climb in the West Elk Wilderness in 2009. continue along, a bit unsure if I’ve taken on too much of a walk after being rather out of practice. eventually get around to the re-ascent point, meeting a couple just off the funicular rail that descends to a touristic overlook — they are in dress shoes and no rain gear. hmmmm. won’t get far in that! finally slog up the long sets of stairs back up to the top, boots sloshing, and with any luck, no damage to my electronic gear. long, tiring walk back into town where I stop for a glacially-served burger, fortunately it doesn’t impact getting to the train. in exchange for lame service, I leave a substantial wet region at one of their tables. back on the city-bound train, I look down after a time to see a leech writhing on the floor. I then discover two bleeding holes in one ankle. hmmmm. wonder if those critters are dangerous, or are just plain old leeches. I leave a sizable wet spot on the train as well. finally make it home after a 14-hour day, finding my boot and sock soaked in blood. so much for the first (and perhaps last) foray into the Blue Mountains, into the Oz bush.

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ethernet orchestra

14::November::2010 23:31 → permalink

Marrickville, Australia, November 2010

meander down to Roger and Neil’s place in Marrickville to observe the live Ethernet Orchestra network music collab that Roger is doing as a part of his thesis research. Neil whips up a delicious meal beforehand.

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hallowed visage(s)

30::October::2010 23:56 → permalink

Halloween portrait, George Street, CBD, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, October 2010

started down George Street on my way home late tonight, intent on doing some Halloween portraits, but got overwhelmed by the social noise only shortly after doing this first group portrait of these young Chinese gals. what more can I say?

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The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming

07::October::2010 13:52 → permalink

roadside memorial, near Bitter Springs, Arizona, USA, March 2010

ed: This short note is the epilogue for the Migrating:Art:Academies: book. Otherwise because the heavy duty editorial tasks, I didn’t have time to write something more comprehensive on the ideas surrounding movement and learning, maybe next time!

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even secret pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

This volume Migrating:Art:Academies: represents yet another step on the (linguistic) migration from nation to nation, academy to academy, culture to culture, friend to friend, order to order, life through life. As with the first volume, Migrating Realities, any impossible contortions of English are this editor’s responsibility, and given the time constraints for this latest MigAA tome, there are sure to be some short-comings. But then, of all the movements within the social, language migrates the most of all. It is never static. Nor should it be, especially as it accompanies the learning process — a process which is essentially about encountering and naming that which is not (yet) known.

And so, now, one road comes to an end. The RV runs out of gas, the engine shudders to a halt. Or the asphalt gives way to gravel which peters out to a dead end, no further hydrocarbon-fired advance possible. You open the door, leaving behind the glass encased virtual reality of the drivers compartment. You set your foot down on the rough ground. You look around, feeling the hot wind on your face, the dust making you eyes tear up. You pick a direction. That ridge over there, the view should be good. You set out. Watching the ground, the terrain, the prickly pear, the manzanita, the saguaro, the cholla, noting potential sources of danger, listen for the tell-tale spine-shivering sound of the rattle snake. Each foot is placed with exaggerated care. You keep walking until exhaustion creeps into your joints and you lay down in the undisturbed soil. Everything looks different from here. You have changed you point of view through the motion that the body has provided over the years. You are different. The path you have forged and the pathways that you have followed have changed you. You have evolved. And now, you come to the end of the road. You have extended you life-energy as far as it goes. You close your eyes to the over-arching sky, breathing the smell of rain-touched sage and desert sand. And gradually you fall asleep to the smooth warmth of an up-slope southern wind. You are a transitory nomad on the face of the planet. But this is your home: eyes to the stars and sky, back to the earth, sinking into dreams of the stillness of constant motion and what wonders will be uncovered in the next revolution. In the dream there are no defined pathways on which to travel, all directions are possible, creativity exists everywhere, all the time, there is only the present, the now.

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triage

12::September::2010 23:26 → permalink

CMAI office, Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia, September 2010

back in the CMAI office a few weeks ago thanks to Meghan — UTS Ultimo, the place hadn’t been touched (not even the white board) since I was here last December. the organization is in deep hibernation or simply decline. such organizational configurations are generally, here as elsewhere, armatures for funding projects.

the sense of departmental decline extends to the plants on the window sill: somebody’s plants, were dead or almost dead. so, begin triage by re-potting the living ones and continue watering them daily. they flourish with the attention.

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Finns!

07::August::2010 12:00 → permalink

Mauri, myself, and Phillip, Berkeley, California, August 2010
Meet Mauri and Pia in Berkeley for a hike and lunch along with one of their colleagues, Phillip, at the Minerva Foundation. We head out to the Mount Tilden Park and climb through the invasive Sycamore (and poison oak!) to a view of the entire Bay area.

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fire

27::July::2010 22:09 → permalink

en route, I-40, between Kingman and the Colorado River, Arizona, July 2010
head towards Livermore via Amboy and Tehachapi. somehow over-conscious about this being a road-trip as I follow former pathways, familiar, horizons both distant and near are recognized at many various moments, rocketing down the defense inter-state. and the emblem of Route 66 stenciled on that pathway between Needles and Ludlow. the once-abandoned Roy’s gas station and motel in Amboy now a neo-post-modern stop-over, huh? and seeing a few monuments to the patriotic dead along the way. and finally, closing in on Tehachapi near sunset, a major fire happening in heavy wond immediately south of town in rugged hills not two miles from where I camp for the night in Tehachapi Mountain Park. hardly anyone around, surprisingly enough. the road in is steep as are the individual campsite slots. I set out a bed on a tarp on the powdered and dusty ground. nose is aware of fire all night, it Lights dreams, though the wind is carrying the force of the blaze to the north away, away, towards Death Valley. houses burn.

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the straw-bale place

23::July::2010 22:56 → permalink

Todd and Amy's straw-bale house, in-progress, Prescott, July 2010

run by Todd and Amy’s place in the ponderosa: a full-on straw-bale home he’s been working on for the last year or so. a monsoon thunder-boomer rips through and drops enough catchment water from the roof to completely flush out the raw granite cistern — a fortuitous inch of rain in a few minutes. the house will be a great place, the straw-bale walls give it an incredible interior ambiance. I’m curious to see the final result … someday!

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south-by-southwest

01::July::2010 23:05 → permalink

en route, near Cortez, Colorado, July 2010

south-by-southwest, west-south-west, up-wind, hot, dry, shade-less land in a black truck. being passed, and passing those who have passed away, probably passing when to pass was a high risk. stopping to meditate on those scenarios, kept calm with the constant hydrocarbon susseration nearby.

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south-by-southwest

29::June::2010 23:31 → permalink

coming off the Glade into the Colorado National Monument, Grand Junction, Colorado, June 2010
the yurt raised, a futon installed, some clean-up work left, remediation, a stove for winter, in this glorious location. the month almost gone, and now heading south. coming down from Glade Park, Rock Ridge Lane. and doing the Western Slope: en route Glade Park – Durango and Richard and Holly’s place there, via Ouray and Silverton. classic Colorado drive. hard to leave this place.

and my Self wandering away from everything again, to Oz. this does not seem to be auspicious, ever, for whatever reasons. I do not know what to think of this anymore. the desire to live in Colorado truncated by the inabilities to re-frame the self and the skills possessed in order to work / to live. or is it merely a change of perspective that is necessary? I would suspect the latter as there are more than five million people living in Colorado right now. Most of them manage to live. Given, of course, that 11.2% of them are below the poverty level, that leaves 88.8% that keep at least one nostril above the water line. Of course, I could survive there, without any other degrees or knowledge-bases: it’s all in the (internal) perspective.

whilst the travelog shudders along, firing on less than four cylinders, knocking on too much ethanol, and not going fast enough. (I post this more than six month into the future from the now in the images, damn.)

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final tour

28::June::2010 22:49 → permalink

a final view of the yurt showing the support platform structure, Glade Park, Colorado, June 2010
Collin and Marisa are up and off early to Grand Junction, so I make a circuit of their land, stopping to wallow in some sincere jealousy regarding the yurt and how well they have managed to bring such a situation into being. it takes a real and dedicated long-term focus to gather the resources to make such ordered and rejuvenating configurations rise, Mongolian yurt-like, out of the chaos of the world.

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heading west

25::June::2010 21:15 → permalink

I-70, Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, June 2010
and suddenly time is up on the Front Range. head west on I-70 to participate in the raising the yurt. along Glenwood Canyon under stormy skies, then once out of that, on to the Grand Junction Airport to meet Collin and Marisa at their offices.

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Lynne’s

17::June::2010 22:55 → permalink

on the Platte, Denver, Colorado, June 2010
drop by Lynne’s and end up picnicking for the whole afternoon down at the Platte in downtown Denver. watching the constant stream of human drama passing by.

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