so it goes. last night out with Mukul, Manu, Sophea and some of the other artists. feeling resistant of scheduled being somewhere sometime. searching for the optimal pathway. oracle on the island, socialite, hard(ly)-working artist, attacking learning curves. answering email, teacher, project developer, and still contemplating documentation of tens of projects melting into invisible history, re-tooling the website, adding new material, filming, enjoying the isolation of the island, planning dinners, meetings, lunches, path-crossings, next teaching steps, summer airline tickets, how to get funding to go to ISEA here in August? ain’t gonna happen.?

dinner with Timo and Catherine.

teaching with technology conference. concepts swimming at the popular surface of the sea. little diving to the basal bentholithic ground. why the ascendancy of the text? (and David Abram’s critique of written language as the initial wedge driven between lived/immersive experience in the sensual world and the new rational sentient be-ing.) hearing things from the keynote speaker, intelligent, that I have dealt with and modeled in my teaching already. hmmmm. stating the obvious. and keeping to the center. not comatose.

deep in production states, the initial 2-hour DVD burned for the installation coming up in a couple weeks. first time in artifact production for public show since the installation at Deiglan in Akureyri in 2000. tested the plasma screen today, some sizing glitches, but otherwise, it seems to look/sound good. second iteration will happen this week, perhaps a third after that.

so little writing done here, reflections seem to be submerged by influx, hinted knowings (tongue on 9-volt battery, citrus), secretions of saliva. pressure of hearing, adsorbing.

open source, middleware, centralization, privacy, (the idea of standards, or the principle behind, actually directly decreases possibilities of innovation!) so, when standards come from open source communities of use, vs a central corporate monolith, you get different results. mandated innovation … hah.

technology, arts, media. ‘talk the talk,’ but where’s ‘walk the walk.’ the focus on a particular level of technology to implement in a teaching situation. there is no correlation between deployment of technology and the quality of the learning experience (period).

paragraphs. delineating breaks of time. illustrating the discontinuous nature of re-creating, re-production.

lost the life of language, the usage that does not spark, no internal voice. where the internal voice spends breathless hours; questions itself.

In planning a session, the first question to be decided is “what is the goal?” Classic Hinduism suggest four possibilities:

1. For increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth.
2. For duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow men.
3. For fun, sensuous enjoyment, aesthetic pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure experience.
4. For transcendence, liberation from ego and space-time limits; attainment of mystical union.

…snip…

Instructions for Vision 4: The Wave-Vibration Structure of External Forms (Eyes open, rapt involvement with the external visual stimuli, intellectual aspects)

O nobly born, listen carefully:
At this point you can become aware of the wave structure of the world around you.
Everything you see dissolves into energy vibrations.
Look closely and you will tune in on the electric dance of energy.
There are no longer things and persons but only the direct flow of particles.
Consciousness will now leave your body and flow into the stream of wave rhythm.
There is no need for talk or action.
Let your brain become a receiving set for the radiance.
All interpretations are the products of your own mind.
Dispel them. Have no fear.
Exult in the natural power of your own brain,
The wisdom of your own electricity.
Abide in the state of quietude.
As the three-dimensional world fragments, you may feel panic;
You may beget a fondness for the heavy dull world of objects you are leaving.
At this time, fear not the transparent, radiant, dazzling wave energy.
Allow your intellect to rest.
Fear not the hook-rays of the light of life,
The basic structure of matter,
The basic form of wave communication.
Watch quietly and receive the message.
You will now experience directly the revelation of primal forms.

– Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., & Richard Alpert, Ph.D. The Psychedelic Experience

oh well, stumbled on that, following a thread from Aldous Huxley. as for the effort to shift awareness from a dominantly materialist point-of-view to one that has a central locus on an energized movement. I just had the realization that I probably will not ever produce a text-based representation circumscribing the territory of my own worldview. and unless in a situation where there can be an unfolding of the thoughts, in concert with an Other, there will be no revelation, no representation. only action, doing, facilitating, and teaching. the 2126 class moves fast and with gusto. a deep difference with the spring class. where people seemed tight, fearful, and distracted. just war? or, hmmmm, does it confirm or refute my theory that much education is about saturating individual, forming humans in a certain fear of non-conforming, while in-validating divergent behaviors and thoughts. how come I resist letting my child be wild?

long since I have had time and concentration to write anything here — the flip-side of travel — immobility, and parenting. realizing that the daily chore list with about 20 items, from taking out the garbage to watering the little cactus plant he has, needs not to be rewarded with cash: the almighty allowance needs a total rebuild as a concept. the rewards need to be time with Loki. focused time playing with him — and not homework time, either. putting the full attention of love on him. he’s in need of that. I see the diffidence that he is learning, and it’s not good. and when doing activities, focus on his situation, rather than a focus on the activity (frisbee as a good example) … while the focused sessions have made him a very good frisbee player, he doesn’t enjoy it as much as he could … he often tries to make it more fun, but I’m just too serious. Lighten up! what can I say, initiating lectures at the university about Light, life, energy, and creativity. bring it on home!

considering that 12 December came and went, not note-worthy. one year since I’ve been on a plane, following the previous year where I was on around 100 separate plane flights. strange immobility, yet with a T1 line running into the living room, I am more active internationally than ever. projecting presence at variety of people. scattered across the globe.

At least 15 people have been injured in a bomb blast at a hotel in the Colombian capital, Bogota. The blast occurred in a restaurant on the 30th floor of Hotel Tequendama, which is owned by the Colombian military, officials said. — BBC World Service

brings to deep mind the inscrutable events that were wrapped around me in that very hotel, 18 years ago. less inscrutable with this brief news report. makes total sense. working for UnoCal, of course we would have to stay in a hotel run by the Colombian military. strange things happened to me in that place. not to mention out in the Llanos, the plains to the east of the Sierra uplift. Fuera Yanquis!!

for the record, as the university (of Colorado) no longer publishes nor maintains the archive of this magazine, this is the text of an article done by a CU J-School graduate student, Nicole Gordon.

Visiting artist John Hopkins explores relationship between art and technology

After twelve years of living and lecturing in Europe, digital artist John Hopkins is back in the United States. He’s no stranger to the University of Colorado at Boulder; in fact, he earned his master of fine arts degree from CU-Boulder in 1989. These days, however, Hopkins has returned to campus as a visiting artist rather than a student.

“I’ve always had a deep connection to the physical landscape of the West, and intellectually I find Europe stimulating,” Hopkins said. “I’ve attempted to have both, though in the end, physical location is not always important. What is of primary importance is surrounding oneself with humane and positive people — then anything is possible.”

Hopkins’ interest lies at the intersection of art and technology. He describes his work as “art that is not artifact-oriented, but delves into the unique communicative aspects of global networks.”

“John Hopkins has a long-standing commitment to the art network,” said Jim Johnson, interim chair of the Fine Arts Department. “He brings to the department a dedication to art as an ephemeral human process and his work in the digital community has been a natural outgrowth of that dedication. He has inspired numerous art students to pursue art in the real context of one-to-one communication as opposed to the conventional and isolated production of precious objects.”

Hopkins has been a professional artist since 1985. His career has taken him to Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and Austria as a visiting artist or guest lecturer. His art has been recognized at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria and he has works in numerous private and public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City.

At CU-Boulder, Hopkins is teaching introductory and advanced digital art classes, as well as working on individual projects with students and doing international performances.

One of his most recent projects at CU-Boulder, in collaboration with students, is a live, online open-platform happening for creative expression and action called di>fusion. The project, which can be experienced at http://neoscenes.net/projects/difusion1/, simultaneously occupies global network spaces and local physical space with collaborative performance, sonic, music, disc- and video-jockeys, text, poetry-slam, and video events.

“I have done similar projects with students across Europe,” Hopkins said. “And indeed, projects like di>fusion are only partially geographically grounded. Much of the project happens in the space of networks, so there are participants and audiences in many locations.”

Hopkins studied geophysical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines as an undergraduate and worked as a geophysicist before pursuing his art career. He says that art and science aren’t so far apart.

“I worked with electromagnetic fields in geophysics, and I’m basically doing the same in art,” he said.

After receiving his art degree, Hopkins found that the European cultural scene suited his ambitions.

“During the decade of the 90s, while the United States was heavily involved in the dot.com bubble inflation and bursting, there were others in other locations who were looking more critically at technological innovation and the rise of global networks,” he said. “These critical views were often coming out of creative cultural research in Europe.”

Hopkins also noted that funding for arts and culture in Europe is much greater than in the United States.

“There have been many opportunities to get funding for creative projects that could never be realized in the U.S.,” he said. “Scandinavia is generally more advanced than the U.S. in terms of technological implementations society-wide, so naturally there were many interesting things happening on the cultural side related to technology.”

An experienced teacher, Hopkins says that he is committed to the dynamics of the learning environment as a critical and important facet of his work.

“I seek to create vital learning spaces — conceptual and physical zones where the exercise of free expression and spontaneous dialogue take place,” he said.

Examples of Hopkins’ work and more information about him can be accessed on his personal Web site at http://neoscenes.net.

choosing pathways. a teachers way is a constant risk of sketching a path of collective character. Greg said something about herding cats in another context. seems appropriate, kinda. nah, teaching is much too serious to joke about. any human contact must be considered attentively.

but I am nervous internally about the execution of the learning situations here. they are socially much less robust than the previous teaching. a complex array of students. all coming on complex pathways. and the time does seem like simmering crisis perhaps.

tomorrow’s teaching will explore some terms, that the exchange of possibilities are not limited, and I express the meta position (explaining the phenomena of creating a protocol, a shared means for connecting). how that works. looking deeply at a practice of dialogue.

moving along. with a short stop/lunch with folks at the Computer Science / Media Department of the University of Lübeck who will be involved in the establishment of the International School of New Media that Hubertus has been working on in the last couple years. they will move into a nice new location, the Media Docks, immediately adjacent from the old town. more of the old Hanseatic traditions. so it goes.

heading for Copenhagen via the boat at Puttgarten.

there is no voice that can speak life. but to get into a dance with the Void. I have not changed. at all. no evolution, no learning. only going. parsing input data, but it is routed to the same boxes. as ever. no cross-over networks, re-routed neurons. learning systems. knee-jerking. hard-wired. why no escape?

smoke rising from farm fires in the Danish countryside. and in my gaze there is a reach into the terrain’s history. looking for mounds, barrows, and the “holm gards”: reading the “Heimskringla” epic of the Age of Vikings on my PalmPilot. simulation.

have to write to Marcel to see if he remembers what I said about networks in Zurich — at some point I made a short statement, and in the moment, thought it was very apropos, especially when I observed that everyone in the entire room paused to write it down. but I have since forgotten what it was! “a network is…” or “a network isn’t…” gees.

Akeno leads the last day of her Butoh lessons in Mika’s class. and serves home-made sushi and green tea. and then does a ten-minute performance. about the lotus and a small Buddha-child statue. about what is happening in the energized soul of the statue as the elemental powers of presence flow through it. the dreams of the world. amazing. I take a stone that Loki and I found in Colorado, one with a textured color that reminded me of anagama-fired ceramics. I give it to her after her performance. there was the stone that I gave to Simon Stockhausen that he made a composition from, and all the other stones that have found me for a time, and then found an Other to join for a time. and all those stones will be around long after we are all dead. this is an undocumented part of the sacrifice project

tipsy, riding home (a relative term) from Mari and Esko’s place, after a sauna and dinner and some wine (Chilean and Spanish), it is a white night. midnight, the sun only just below the horizon, no wind, the clouds and rain of the day gone, but it is cold, only 6C. piss behind the oil-fired power plant, must be a 10 megawatt station. overtake a body doing a drunken side-step on the bike path. and children standing in a playground, standing looking mute, expecting a parley with the drunk, but that is some minutes and eons off into a future that is made certain by the lack of wind and in the moment of the Green Hour. L’heure verte, Green Hour, it came and here it is, jumping into a loose narrative that leaves being and presence far behind and instead wobbles into an uncertain future in a nowhere locus. silent, except for the drunks, furtive night-day children who are learning to be drunken and hidden at the same time. running in packs, or desperate pairs, no, at least threesomes. the river as high as it has been in 30 years. at the one meter mark on the bridge pylon. I theorize what the construction standards are for those same structures. deep seated– all the way to the glacial bedrock?

La fée verte, at L’heure verte, from the times in France when the consumption of the brilliant green and bitter drink Absinthe made from wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). but also when the air stills, in the northlands, and the color of day wanes, sun dropping into the red of humid sunset. a state of being.

at the airport in Akureyri, after a long workshop. short in time, long on energy and things that transpired. learning how to teach, how to let go of the situation and let it develop on its own. injecting certain things, with-holding others. and just learning. it rolls on its own through humor, especially humor. despite my condition of the last two days. Soffia locates a physical therapist who cooks my lower back and then works it over with a heavy massage. I accept the most intense reworking of the tissues, despite the pain. it helps, mostly not by the physicality of the manipulations but by reminding me of the structures there, on location, structures that are reflecting the tensions of the mind. re-minds me to forget recollection and mind. period. just release it. like in the workshop. letting go. and not holding on. not fighting, but relinquishing territories, and the Other will advance to meet the Self. good night.

encroaching. departures AGAIN. pictures of what I want to have and to be and how I want to live are converging, but in a ass-backwards way. looking out this eighth-floor window for one of the last mornings, becoming homeless, encore. a yellow tinge floating low over the chilled city, frosted nitrogen-laden air. the Ferris-wheel of the Tivoli has been lit for the season (of darkness). and I can’t stop thinking about her. sham, chamois morning meeting with Timo, covering some interesting possibilities about the graduate program. actually specifics of co-constructing a set of possibilities leading to the idea of the concept of publication of hypertext mappings of the intersection of logical/Western and fluxus/Eastern pathways. yowzah! I’m into it! while he waits for a phone call from his wife who is imminently expecting their child. whew. nothing like phone calls with that reality jolt. but I greatly enjoy these mappings, and see that I am in need of mental exercises that go beyond teaching young potential artists. need to sharpen and challenge my faculties. like at the ~/Connected meeting two weeks ago, I realized I was slacking. although it was not difficult to rise to the challenge of consequent intellectuality, it was a stretch to project those kinds of energies which contain an entire different set of constraints. (for example, my penchant for exaggeration — a good dramatic tool in the classroom, where I can project it and draw it back, and in the process, draw students along into the details of an argument — in a more challenging setting, it can be a serious handicap that drains creditability from an argument. my only excuse is passion. I am a passionate person. or a person of passions. for others, in all manifestations. hmmmm.

massive busy-ness over the weekend with the ~/Connected conference at the Lasipalatsi. Tapio had asked me earlier if I could help out with activities on the ground, and although I was pretty busy anyway, I was around to help, then ended up being quite involved in the discussions, and even made a short public presentation at the end in Bio Rex, dealing with best-practice scenarios for education/learning situations. Polar Circuit was held up as that model in learning situations, along with the idea of open-platform, socially balanced situations.

/~Connected press releases for local and translocal use

Cultural industries and independent media cultural production are of primary importance for Finnish policy development, as a new program, “Content Finland” is being drafted during next year. In each European country, goals of both national and transnational media culture have been met with different strategies. Through /~Connected knowledge and shared experience, it is possible to form models of best practice – and principles for both national and European policy.

The driving force behind this event and series of other meetings prior to it is the ECB, European Cultural Backbone (http://ecb.t0.or.at/, http://www.e-c-b.net/). It is a network of media cultural organizations, centers, and active individuals throughout Europe, not only European Union member countries. To quote Dr. Peter Wittmann, Austrian State Secretary for the Arts, “The European Cultural Backbone is the logical extension of this ongoing dialog between cultural practitioners and policy makers regarding strategies of “practice to policy” on both national and European levels.”

The Main organizer of /~Connected, the Lasipalatsi Media Center, also seeks to discuss how European media centers could increasingly collaborate. How to best connect venues of presenting media culture and sites that produce it? Support of networks, bandwidth, mobility, distribution and production are key factors for policy discussion.

Traditionally, in a European democracy, public space has been defined through access to public institutions, freedom to move in city spaces and through the existence of certain democratic instruments such as public libraries and publicly supported broadcast media. New media, Internet in particular, has made it possible to more actively shift content production to smaller units or groups. Creation of public space can mean support for content production and communication that does not focus on a single mass audience, but particular communities (or consumers) and layers within the larger society and the networked world. Major issue for debate is thus to consider, how to best connect various models of best practice and policy that enable cultural production in a networked, changing Europe.

The seminar takes place in the very center of Helsinki, in Lasipalatsi Media Center (http://www.lasipalatsi.fi). Meals during the conference program are provided for by the organizers and there is no attendance fee. We are providing air fare and accommodation for a group of participants that comes from smaller media centers and organizations. We are happy to assist your travel arrangements by providing information on accommodation and flights.

/~CONNECTED brings together practitioners, producers and policy makers within contemporary media culture in Europe. Its attempts to create exchanges of experience and information between organizations and individuals from different fields: media cultural organizations, media centers, policy makers on a local, national and European level, media art organizations, corporate research labs and university researchers.

Following events such as P2P conference in Netherlands and Networking Centers of Innovation in Austria, it explores the ways in which local experiences can be compared, exchanged and rewritten to form models of best practice.

The event will officially launch the ECB, European Cultural Backbone, a network based on trust and a shared interest to promote a rich media cultural practice, which already flourishes in Europe. The network proposes that an Internet Backbone or a set wide bandwidth would be subsidized by the EU in order to enable transnational media production, broadcast transmission of events and inexpensive communications. The ECB acts as an advisory body for the policy makers nationally and within the EU.

/~CONNECTED is very much about the goals of the ECB:

1) Bandwidth for media culture
2) Support for models of best practice
3) Active investigation of what European media culture consists of
4) Enhanced networking between media cultural organizations, individual hubs” and policy makers.

/~CONNECTED refers to the ways in which media cultural local practices and organizations create collaboration, projects, discourse and policy across and partly independent of national borders. Emerging networks, projects and content are no longer international, but translocal by nature, already connected.

into the NextFiveMinutes conference. I have been burned out for much of the time for some reason, almost catching a cold yesterday evening, then this morning, spraining my back with the most minimal movement zipping up my suitcase, I wasn’t even bending over. scared the shit outta me. my panel presence (Tactical Education/Media Competence) was shortly after, and that went quite well, but by mid-afternoon I hobble back the the hotel, barely able to walk because of the sciatic pain. missed an appointment with Nan which I was quite looking forward to, not to mention several dialogues with new contacts. really don’t believe it, that I have done something serious. been stretching all afternoon and evening between bouts resting in bed. nothing else to do! Faugh! miss a dinner with an interesting artist. following are notes for the Tactical Education presentation (on the neoscenes occupation project):

and so on. the week already almost over. dinner with Lode and Robert. speaking about the issues at hand. politics of education, politics of learning. and all the time I puzzle on how to best present the subject material, this fundamental concept of a communicative environment within which students might pursue their research and creative activity. it seems to be so new and novel for people. the skin or overlay of technical complexity is also a challenge. one week is really not enough at all.

a few days off. before starting another workshop at the Academy of Fine Art. it has been a couple years since I taught there with Terhi. and did that performance. whenever it was. sleeper car. two-person cabin, another body gets on around midnight at Oulainen. I will not be asleep, I never sleep well on these rides. how many times? a couple times with Sanna but. so. solo this time. ranting and raving. to meself. so warm this evening that no gloves are needed, no hat either. imaginations of Amsterdam begin to form, after a ten-year hiatus. traveled there with MB from Köln, down, downstream on the Rhine. there is a photo of her sitting in the train cabin, knitting. anyway. will Sanna contact me? something she has hardly ever does, made a move towards me, showed any real interest in reaching out. this week will be my last in Helsinki for many months, who knows, ever maybe, depending. of course, there will be pass-throughs, but unless something happens with the Helsinki 2000 projects, there is a good chance that Helsinki will not be on my agenda at all. a pity. that things had to go this way. learning lessons, sharing energy when possible. no solutions. and just pushing along. some minutes later I am engaged by mobile, lying there in the rolling stock, southbound. breaking up. all kinds of rewinds play. fast, slow, voices saying things that make no sense except to the two hearing, but both are confused by the world, and what it is to be IN the world, and so it goes. done, over, fini? nah, tea at Fazer later in the evening. and then the cold ferry ride to the island.

>> > E M B E D D E D i m a g e s
>> > G A P I N G s h a d o w s
>> > S W O L L E N w o u n d s
>> > S A L T E D s u n
>> > F O R L O R N p a t t e r n s
>> > E N T A N G L E D t h o u g h t s
>> > S C O R C H E D s e a
>> > S E E K I N G s o l a c e
>> > F O R L O R N t h o u g h t s
>> > E N T A N G L E D p a t t e r n s
>> > S W O L L E N s u n
>> > S A L T E D w o u n d s
>> > G A P I N G i m a g e s
>> > E M B E D D E D s h a d o w s
>> > S C O R C H E D s o l a c e
>> > S E A s e e k i n g

– Varsha Nair

logging into the past. first I drop Loki off at school for a greatly shortened day that seems to be only a special pageant for the entire student body. 90 minutes. I go back home to read several weeks of nettime email. which gets me to this stage of needing to write here. photometry. grammetics. and new media is nothing more than more of the same. networked things – smeckworked things. learning in cyberspace, doing in cyberspace, personal technology begins/continues the inexorable involuted backfire on itself. but only personal technology. something to shoot back with. Corpo-tech, or mili-tech won’t cease. because selling and killing will have a greater field of action in the future. the mistake of all the applied technology hype is that it forgets the original interface — soul/body. where the ether jacks into the meat. all mediated things root in and then fly from this electro-colloidal fertilization-zone. all reason and form and metaphor and absolute can be searched, can be hunted in this zone. can then be copied, pasted into relevant organic categories. that’s it, the Confucian Analects that sends us through a process of searching the perimeter of the soul/body interface.

The men of old, wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that Light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts (the tones given off by the heart) ; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost.

This completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories
– Confucius, from The Great Digest or The Unwobbling Pivot, translated by Ezra Pound

it is possible to consider all things to be simple. complexity is a result of over-thought. over-processing of even the most simple data-set creates sampling artifacts, noise, and confusion. borders fabricate, delta-functions shoot to zero or infinity (the paralysis of alienated polarization), surfaces distort. convolution with questionable concepts creates complete areas of synthetic fabrication replete with discontinuities and false event horizons. forget metaphors, jam poetry, and all cultural production machinery paradigms, swallow language, stop writing. stop beating flesh against time and space barriers that make it hurt. no sex for entertainment: no time-slot filler, no wet commerce. body looks soft for a reason. that reason is coddling. ways of going that treat body/soul interface as a bother, not the crux (what is crux — old ancient forgotten word — is there a new word to fill the spot where this was forgotten and once lodged? maybe the word that fills it is catalytic converter or simm or talk-show). there are so many substitution fonts that language can be forgotten anyway. because people are knowing less and less exactly or even generally what each other is saying. no hearing, no talking. only dumb silence while fingernails grow to stab palms. while genetic receptors are mapped (where’s life?). and while questions are asked that raise a cryogenic boiling fog that dissipates to nothing after awhile. hip. cool. and ripped-off.

the neoscenes occupation project for Ars Electronica (which approaches in days) begins to take some form, at least as an idea:

so it goes. now to make it happen!

Classes begin tomorrow at this Institution of Higher Learning. What drives it? The desire to learn, the quest for knowledge, or simply the will to accede to the power base that stands ascendant in this Nation-state. Recalling the skies here is a pleasure of deep memory and mindfulness that brings my eyes some great energy, although I still am in the state of feeling that the outdoors is hostile. A left-over from life in Iceland. Yet, as though far away, my skin luxuriates in the sensations, drawing me, a topological being, forwards into the landscape. Driving is a safe of passing through it all, but I see many things to be imaged.

I have only fragments of moments to write anything. I am so busy with painting the interior of the house here, compiling a body of work for an exhibition sponsored by the Ultimate Akademie Köln and the Goethe Institute in Thailand. The project is called One Day of My Life in a Box and, well, I was a bit stumped on what to do for it. As well, I was invited to contribute an edition of work for the next BLAST edition. Here I am on the millionth kilometer of travel in the last 18 months, a small suitcase to live from, and no real studio to work in, not the greatest conditions to have unfettered creativity. Actually, it is all I can do to survive. So I decide to use the 1000 Buddhas database, somehow. Making small photocopies with 25 on each page, and then cutting them down, making stacks of 50 sheets, a Buddha on each side, drilling a hole through the top edge of the stack and tying them together — a Book of 100 Buddhas. Or so. Kinda lame. And the people at Kinkos (the local copy store) totally screwed up cutting the second set of 300 pages of photocopies which took me three hours to produce. They won’t let me run the paper cutting machine myself, either, for insurance reasons … Really irritating. And the manager obviously is not interested in having this “weird” kind of work that is bothersome and particular to do. It is too bad — I have produced a lot of work at different Kinkos before, and mostly have gotten great service from other managers. One in particular, in Boulder, Colorado, invited me to come run their big machines myself to produce exactly what I wanted in the off-hours, and gave me a huge discount to boot! But, this seems to be yet another example of the paranoia that seems to be so, what, popular, these days. Afraid of anything that does not fit the proscribed formula. Maybe this is a result of too many people learning their behavioral morality system from TV — they can bear no deviation from the slick and packaged norm. Or something. I dunno. I wish it were elsewise. That there is a more open attitude, a bit of embracing of fresh new things, new insights. (Bloody foolish idealist I am, eh?) But still worried as hell about what is happening to me.

I finally arrive, by train, bus, and foot, at Björn’s place around ten in the morning. Completely exhausted, especially as his flat is a fifth-floor walk-up, but a good breakfast and good conversation revived me. Björn has just gotten an arts grant from his home country, Sweden, to continue work on a multimedia opera in collaboration with a number of colleagues. We spent the morning catching up on things and looking at his new computer equipment (enough toys to keep Bach busy). Finally, as the weather was a truly stunning sunny 25°C (75°F), we were compelled to go out and walk around the city. The Danes, being typical Scandinavians, were in various states of undress, and enjoying themselves in the summery weather — it is as though there had been no spring, rather a direct transition from winter to summer. On the City Hall Plaza we stopped in the sun for a beer, joining a delightful elderly woman, probably in her mid-eighties, Elly Justesen, a stranger to us, at a table. She told us how happy she was that spring had arrived, as she could get out and work on her golf handicap (which stood at an impressive 36 at the moment)!

And so it goes. Björn has an extensive music collection (similar in size but not subject to Günter’s in Aachen), so I ask him to play some of his favorite music for me. As a result, I am treated to Schumann, Schubert, Strauss, Sibelius, Puccini, Stravinsky, and Purcel, mostly classic leider and operatic works as sung by Gérard Souzay, Fritz Wunderlich, Birgit Nilsson, and Jessye Norman among others. I am not such a fan of opera, but it is pleasant to hear these powerful works as selected by a singer and an aficionado of the genre.

The beautiful and tragic liede turn my thoughts to my little boy Loki now living in the north of Iceland. I miss you sweet one!

The evening was spent online looking at some sites, discussing both work and the major difficulties in coping with working in the Cyber domain. I would say that the primary obstacles that seem to plague almost all the artists (audiences, too!) and users of digital tools:

• 1) machines/hardware not working properly,
• 2) the steep and continuous learning curve for ever more complicated software (also known as “upgrade fever”),
• 3) sustaining the power of original thinking through an often intellectually tortuous knowledge-based process…

Well, that is a quick take on issues that are in my face often, although there are more and others to be defined and discussed in detail elsewhere. Anyway. By late evening I was totally exhausted and my body was rather ecstatic about becoming horizontal and static. One of the heavier nights’ sleep I have had in awhile.

I telephoned Julia at Artpool, and it looks like they won’t be around on Friday, so I decide not to spend the extra cash to go to Budapest. I’ve been overly worried about money, although I make sure I eat enough food, but the absurdity of the situation makes me cringe at every shilling/03k/pound/penny/kronur that goes out. Especially when none are coming in. Today I go early to the terminals at the University of Technology library to do some research on the Web. And the day washes over me in a series of visual impressions. From Heironymous Bosch (at the Gemäldegalerie), to works by Asger Jorn (both at the Akademie der bildenden Künste) to various Web sites (essay by Joseph Squier, new entries by Robbin Murphy at artnetweb, uh, drinking coffee and writing this mind-state-wave into the afternoon. Sun, brilliant and warm, finally, spring. No doubt. For what it is worth, I noticed how the work of Bosch was painted from three pigments that corresponded to the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) channels of a color television tube. Hmmm. The students at the Kunst Akademie were marching last night, and the strike involving teachers in some areas of higher education is approaching a critical point. It is unclear to me what exactly the issues are, but they relate to economics and layoffs and lowering of student loan subsidies. I break for a moment to record the birds out the window, they sing at the twiLight at both ends of the Day. Tomorrow I will make an audio snapshot of Vienna. Walking and listening. Today I made some images, but seemingly in a more retrospective mood from times in the past when I would wander aimlessly around whatever city I happened to be in. I was thinking of the two most powerful energy sources for me, sources that input direct into my life-energy, sources of regeneration. Light and Silence. How to source and reference both in work?

Here we go. And so on. In the west of London, not far from Shepherds Bush and Ravenscourt Park on the District Line Tube. Hanging out with Joanna Buick, a friend from ISEA94 days — we met at the Symposium in Helsinki. She’s presently a tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art which is part of the University College of London as well as a tutor-counselor at the Open University, the largest open learning institution in the UK. She is running a class called “Living with Technology” which encompasses an innovative scheme to familiarize students with the impact of technology on daily life. The class is run using the internet, audio and video tapes and hard copy materials, as well as occasional tutorial sessions for students who live in the area. The Open University has tens of thousands of students studying around the world. Pursuing her own work, Joanna been doing developmental work on Virtual Reality systems.

I did get by The Photographers Gallery yesterday after lunch with Katrine and Juan, but was not impressed by the work of German photographer, Michael Schmidt. Not that there was anything wrong with the work, on the contrary, I personally find it difficult to engage with dead objects and words these days. Recently I have been going through a kind of opening awareness about my own work, that this travel ritual and emphasis on the action of Dialogue is becoming core to my thinking. It has always been important — the sustaining of focused Dialogue with both new and old friends — but I never considered it either a product of working, a goal to work towards, or a means/medium of work. It just was. As I was describing to Juan and Katrine in the noisy Chinese restaurant Wong Ki just off Shaftsbury Avenue, I am realizing it IS a means and a highly effective unmediated means at that. I am rather tired of objectified mediation and thrive on the most unmediated contact with others that seems to occur while engaged in attentive and genuine Dialogue. Gallery and Museum exhibitions — while, to be sure, they do occasionally contain inspiring (inspired?) objects and such — seem to be locked in a struggle with entangled and intertwined corpses from which they are unable to escape. The public discussion here in the UK these days centers on the calamity visited upon the Beef Industry for better or for worse. Not to delve into it deeply, I would only make the observation that it seems it might be a foreshadowing of more global crises in the coming years as we approach the millennium and the further crowding of the planet. I am reminded of the British science-fiction writer John Brunner’s book “Stand of Zanzibar”, which portrays the microscopic turmoil of a world culture gone mad through the pressures of the Global Market and overcrowding.

There’s a belief still current among British school children that you could stand the entire human race on the 147-square-mile Isle of Wight, elbow to elbow and face to face.

Well, that may have been true around the time of World War I although nobody was keeping records accurate enough for us to be certain. However, right now in the 1960′s you’d have a tough job packing us on the 221-square-mile Isle of Man.

And by 2010 — the time this book takes place, you’d need an altogether larger island — something like the 640-square-mile surface of Zanzibar! — John Brunner

back to Mad Cows — it is hard not to be pessimistic when cows are being forced to become cannibal/carnivores because of the greed of humans. No wonder the disaster.

Well. Dan

“Lethargy is simply frozen violence”

What else? I sit in the middle of the Arctic Night (The middle always remains the same, no matter how long the night is). Waiting for sleep to fill my head, looking at a CRT screen. Eyes are getting crippled by the stress of focusing. Goodnight.

The next day late morning. All is gray. When I develop film here I notice the lack of contrast, especially after Colorado. The Light is different. I have taken to capitalizing the first letter of Light, and I have also quit using the Lord’s name in vain you know? Two changes from my previous life. You can look forward to wonderful things like this happening when you finish graduate school.

The work you sent arrived a bit worse for wear, and surely to the perplexity of the customs/postal people. They keep a close monitor on my post here, almost all packages are checked… A bit disturbing, but also amusing…
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