Victoria (Co-ordinator of the Hackademia Festival) invites some of us bricoleurs to jump into an IRC discussion on technoshamanism connected to the technomagias festival in Maua in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. That was a nice language riffing challenge talking about the basics of reality (and juggling with google translate made it even more interesting!). I get more and more feeling that the Brazilians are doing very interesting things, and have been doing them since way before Freire started his radical practices in social encounter and bringing back energy from instead of going straight into the ‘State’ to being sourced in community. All the Brazilians I have had the pleasure to work with, teach, or otherwise cross paths with are fantastic thinkers, doers, and lovers of life!

People treat modern communication media as if they were human, so established principles of interpersonal communication also predict human responses to computers and television. The media equation (media = real life) is an unconscious, automatic response that occurs because our slow-to-evolve brains don’t distinguish between mediated and real life experience. — E. M. Griffin

But we are up against a curious paradox. Something of immense importance to all of us does not find expression in the literary arts. The rational side of man, with its scientific and technological expressions, gets little literary space. It is curious that science and technology have always occupied so small a place in literature. What important literary figure, except Diderot, seriously occupied himself with the problems of technology? This is all the more extraordinary when one considers that literature is supposed to hold the mirror up to life. In life people spend a great deal of time involved in the technology of the period in which they live. They work, and their jobs are connected with technology and the organizations technology engenders. Yet one sees little evidence of this in literature. — Aldous Huxley

I have a little hope to somehow tap into a solution, or, an attack on this issue. The issue did come into my awareness this past spring, in Melbourne, following some conversations with different ‘humanists’ where I realized how poorly they understand the operational paradigms of technology. And, how they look at the world through a literal or metaphoric lens which effects an almost-complete disjunction between the ‘realities’ of the (techno-)social system that they are fully embedded within, and how they imagine that social system operates.

So, today I have to forge a short footnote on the ideas behind “systems theory” for a general and likely unwitting audience. Not easy.

But did turn in a final draft a couple days ago. One hurdle, now 120 days of writerly hell ahead.

The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject — but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit — the habit of inferiority to our full self — that is bad. — William James

Is this a condition merely of imperfect incarnate be-ing? The insensibility towards full experience and peripheral awareness? We are not what we could be? How does this fit with the image that Life is in a constant evolutionary optimizing process. Is our potential only an artifact of our too-rapid increase in intelligence — where apparent possibility far outpaces the actual possibilities — we count more than we think, we think more than we know, and know more than we can find any wisdom within. To accede to our potential, we need to test the limits of our viability, but more than that, we must change our energy state. (or simply let our ordered existence sink to a less complex state!)

“If the profession of an engineer were not based upon exact science,” he said, “I might tremble for the result, in view of the immensely of the interests dependent on my success. But every atom that moves onward in the river, from the moment it leaves its home among the crystal springs or mountain snows, throughout the fifteen hundred leagues of its devious pathway, until it is finally lost in the vast waters of the Gulf, is controlled by laws as fixed and certain as those which direct the majestic march of the heavenly spheres. Every phenomenon and apparent eccentricity of the river — its scouring and depositing action, its caving banks, the formation of the bars at its mouth, the effect of the waves and tides of the sea upon its currents and deposits — is controlled by law as immutable as the Creator, and the engineer need only to be insured that he does not ignore the existence of any of these laws, to feel positively certain of the results he aims at.” James B. Eads, engineer, quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee

versus

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver — not aloud but to himself — that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.” — Mark Twain in “Life on the Mississippi” quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee

from The Control of Nature: Atchafalaya — John McPhee, 23 February 1987 in The New Yorker.

and this from Bill Gammage in a precursor of his recent book “The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia” (Allen & Unwin, 2011)

I suggest that people turned to crops, herds and stores to protect them from other people. The reason farmers stepped onto the road to civilisation was military.

Aborigines ensured that usually they had plenty of food by controlling their population and by maximizing their resources. But their truly great achievement lay in how they protected their resources — not by military force, but by religious sanction. Even under extreme duress Aborigines rarely took food that was not theirs. That may have been so in early Europe and elsewhere too — most societies attempt to sanctify property. If so, it broke down. Farmers were led to protect their food, thus lost the predictability and security that widely dispersed resources gave hunter-gatherers, and thus had to work hard and make hard work a virtue. Work, sedentism and storing generate individual and collective strivings for surplus, for wealth. That is the road Europeans took, and Aborigines avoided. In August 1770 James Cook could not have known whether Aborigines were ‘far more happier’ than Europeans, but he was right to see that they were content in ‘all the necessarys of Life’, which we Europeans, ever restless for more, can never be. — Bill Gammage, 2005

THE DEVIL: And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man’s wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady’s bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man’s industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvelous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating ME. What is his law? An excuse for hanging YOU. What is his morality? Gentility! an excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting. I spent an evening lately in a certain celebrated legislature, and heard the pot lecturing the kettle for its blackness, and ministers answering questions. When I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery saying –”Ask no questions and you will be told no lies.” — George Bernard Shaw, The Devil speaking in “Don Juan in Hell,” Act III of “Man and Superman,” 1902

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy. — Vaclav Havel

Movement brings encounter. It is as we find our way through life that we meet the people who change us. The character of these encounters forms an armature upon which we build our internal and external social lives. Shared life-time is a profound experience which will never happen again the way it IS happening, so that every second becomes a crux, filled with intention and awareness, or not.

… snip …

Six years on from the 4th of July accident. Realized earlier this year that I will never be able to afford any private health insurance again because of ‘pre-existing conditions’ of which spinal anything is absolutely the biggest red flag for the insurance companies. gah. I hadn’t considered this situation until I was reading my OSHC (Overseas Student Health Coverage) contract in Oz where it said complications arising from any prior spinal or neuro-surgery would not be covered. So, while I have some kind of health care as long as I am a student, if anything happens to my spine, oh well. And thats in a ‘socialist’ country with universal health coverage. In Amurika, well, no chance whatsoever, especially if the ultra-right somehow once again gains control of the system, people like me are simply out of luck, if there is such a thing as being politically out of luck, more like, out of power!

Matter is not what it appears to be. Its most obvious property — variously called resistance to motion, inertia, or mass — can be understood more deeply in completely different terms. The mass of ordinary matter is the embodied energy of more basic building blocks, themselves lacking mass. Nor is space what it appears to be. What appears to our eyes as empty space is revealed to our minds as a complex medium full of spontaneous activity. — Frank Wilczek

Sometimes I get the feeling that I don’t recognize even my own life. Among the array of phenomena which present themselves for the sensual body-system every … second … recognition shouldn’t be necessary for any one of them, given that change is the governing principle, or so. All should be new every time, all the time(s), and thus recognizable whether or not there are any observable and (relatively) invariant* features. It could be that this lack of recognition is itself merely the reliance on external models or comprehensions of ‘what’s out there’ as opposed to a deeper reliance on what is experienced by the Self as being (relatively) invariant.

Chris tells me that he went to a lecture by Wilczek at CU recently, so, on the basis of that recommendation I track down his book “The Lightness of Being,” which happens not to be at the LTU library, so I’ll have to wait to get it delivered. Suddenly doing a lot more reading again. Going through something of a reset in the thesis process, seeing in mind the order that has to be imposed on the writing, like the orders imposed on external situations. Back to the Confucian sorting into organic categories idea somehow. Reviewing a couple theses that Norie loaned me, both photographers, so that is a good start. Practicing sentences and paragraphs, in a process of stylistic imitation, to see where they go. This because 1) I can usually imitate styles pretty easily, and 2) my basic style is completely different than what would be considered a ‘normal’ academic style. This used to trouble me a lot, but I see that it goes back to the idea of ‘packaging’ of expressions being crucial. At least in terms of the social interfacing of work. I still don’t care much for altering the character of a work merely to fit some marketer’s dream, as this has deep connotations for the authenticity of the expression. However, by re-packaging an expression in a form that itself resonates of a certain integrity, perhaps on the advice of a trusted Other, there is a potential for expansive dissemination of those expressions.

More importantly to this issue now, I am looking more closely at the main internal and external sources. The internal sources are basically in place, and have been as a taut line drawn along my creative practice over the last couple decades-plus. The external sources are identified by a resonance with that tensioned line. Sketching along with ordering the patterns that the resonance takes is the primary task now

*a basic definition of invariance is ‘a function, quantity, or property that remains unchanged when a specified transformation is applied.’ It is an active term, arising through the action of transformation, and where transformation is framed as (a) limited and changeable situation. That’s the mathematical definition, but another could be the characteristic of the phenomena we experience which our minds see as repeating (at least a bit) out of the vast field of change that we are fully immersed within — and transformation is simply a ground condition in the full flux of being.

whatever.

With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. — Thorstein Veblen

A man gets shot once in the face, and a second time to the head to ensure his demise. Other men are shot. A woman is shot. Why celebrate except in the instance of savagery, with an up-turned face, contorted with suppressed rage, making a vengeful grimace, and declaring the nation-state’s supremacy. An eye for an eye, the context lost on those who do not even know the content of the holy book coming from their own god. Instead, kill and be killed and kill and be killed. (more …)

Groggy. Rolling over historical entries, slowly whittling down the 1900-plus entries from the original travelog. This is the fourth incarnation of some of the earliest posts. The original form of the travelog was single long html pages, added incrementally over time. The second form was using frames for navigation. The third form was (is) the hybrid html/php blog platform that was implemented in 2004. Now, finally (!?!) this migration to this WordPress platform. Maybe this will be the last, eh? The site here is due for a more or less continuous expansion of content, following the completion of scans of 30 years of negatives, and other archival threads of audio, video, text, and image content. How life gets tied into this process is something of a mystery. So it goes.

Niina has been researching art and technology for some years now. We met when I was teaching my old netculture class at the Media Lab in the University of Art and Design Helsinki back in 2000. I participated in her research for her PhD then, and … now

> 1.What changes have happened in your work and practices as an artist during the
> last ten years? Do you think your relationship with technology / or the way you
> use technology /has changed during this time?

> 2.What kind of different phases in your life have you experienced as an artist?
> Do you work as a full-time or part-time artist? Or do you, for instance, only
> occasionally engage in artistic activities or organize exhibitions?

> 3.How do you finance your work, career as an artist?

> 4.What do new technologies or digital technologies mean to you as an artist? How
> would you depict the role of technology in your artistic work – and in the art
> world in general?

> 5.You are an artist and work in the field of the arts, but do you also work or
> associate with other (closely related) fields? Do have difficulties in combining
> or reconciling these fields or areas with your work as an artist?

> 6.What does networking mean to you as an artist? Are you networking
> “electronically”? What kind of networks or forums are you involved in?

> 7.During the past ten years, have you noticed changes in those instances that
> you work and collaborate with (associates, partners)?

> 8.How much do you know about author’s/copy rights? Are you familiar with the
> contract practices relating to copy rights? How do you see the question of
> authorship in the context of new art forms and digital technologies? Are
> copyrights supporting and/or limiting artistic expression?

> 9.Do new technologies increase, extend or in some way limit the possibilities
> for aesthetic or artistic expression? From the artist’s point of view, what new
> or different do they bring to artistic work and practice?

> 10.How and what do you communicate or interact with the audience? What is the
> role of communication in artists’ work today? What does interactivity mean to you?

> 11.Are there other, even more relevant or topical, issues that should be asked
> about art and technology now in the year 2011? What are these?

> Any comments and criticism towards these questions are also welcome!

Aside from a fraction of a kilo-ton of human-re-configured matter that has been more-or-less permanently jettisoned from the immediate gravitational field of the Terran system, all human activities are and always have been fully immersed in what, for the purposes of modeling, may be seen as a limited (eco-)system with limited energy resources. L-I-M-I-T-E-D. Followers of the develop-and-consume-at-any-cost economic philosophy appear to think that there is an un- at the beginning of limited. But are these limits germane regarding the scalar possibilities of alteration that 6.9 billion humans applies to the ‘closed’ system? Can this plague-species actually cause significant change? It’s maybe only a question of where on a sliding scale the alteration sits, and what range on that scale indicates ‘significant’ change.

It is not difficult to observe that all expressions of life have an affect on the immediate vicinity. The bed of dead leaves beneath the cottonwood, layered by age: age showing as a returning dissolution, collenchyma structures in the veins remain longer, the epidermis stripped away by insects, solar radiation, weather, and time. The altered rhizosphere full of exudates nourishing symbiotic microbial life which, in turn, alter the chemistry of the surrounding soil. The altered atmosphere, being distantly distributed by the wind, the absorption of Light. Animals consuming leaves, wandering away. Reverberatory. What does a tree do to the rest of the cosmos? It does. Clearly any form of life has this effect. It’s just a question of how much. Quantitative, with the qualitative in the affirmative, but still open to how.

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.

Humans approach the ‘criticality’ of the global situation from a very species-centric view. (of course). If one looks at the flow of the continuance of life throughout its entire trajectory (back to we-know-not-where and we-know-not-when (and we-know-not-how)) — it is quickly noted that all species are transitory to one degree or another. Is there anything special about humans in this regard? So far nothing that humans have succeeded in doing has transcended the flow of life. There is the material/scalar aptitude with which we have accelerated the production of entropy within the limited planetary system. But this, in itself, is insignificant on any transcendent cosmological scale. If this is the only difference, then it might be said that we are only a more efficient life-form in that we cause this entropic acceleration. But even this aspect is relative. Each life-form will fully engage its energy sources and utilize them. To the degree there are readily available sources, life will expand its scale to take advantage of that abundance of energy, rapidly transforming it to waste. A pride of lions will not arrest its hunting of abundant prey unless satiated (and engaged in optimized procreation). Again, nothing new. It seems that the only disturbing characteristic that we sense somewhere in our perspective is the question of scale with our waste-production. Through windows of tele-media we have an (apparently) expanded perspective on the global picture. We see images of ourselves everywhere, engaged in the process of living. But this itself is suspect. A global perspective is a virtual artifice. Our awareness of our problem arises from an artifice of our own creation. What does this say about the problem? The perceived planetary scale is perhaps a distorted and very much reductive artifact embedded in our vision of life. But would the (limited) set of localized sensory perceptions lead to any different conclusions or ways-of-going?

No wonder people crave hyper-Terran (Celestial) visitation — what a perspective shift that would be. That we are not unique in a wider cosmos. That we are merely life. Only then might we be able to get on with it reasonably!

In the contemporary framework of human encounter — dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence — life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange. Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a much-less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?

death strewn on the highway. roadkill. carnivore, herbivore, amphibian, insect: getting to the other side of the road is just part of the inexorable (natural) systemic flow. Roadkill represents one intersection of human-defined flows and naturally-existing flows. The result of this fundamental intersection is near-death or absolute annihilation, a rapid reduction to component complex molecules. from the thathunk of meatier species to the simple fluttering splat of the butterfly. Leathery carcasses that persist for days despite the brutal pounding of truck tires and hard-to-remove stains on the windshield that resist even the most vigorous squeegee scrubbing whilst filling-up the tank.

Insects with a low weight-to-surface-area ratio can sometimes avoid liquidation by the slipstream effect which will carry them up and over the vehicle. But trajectory is all, and the meatier bugs, the swarming locusts and grasshoppers, have too much mass in their sagging torsos to experience this sanctified reprieve and thus become one with their maker in a soul-wrenching milli-second that can be a marvel of colorful abstraction a-la Pollack.

Along one stretch of the UFO Highway in Nevada, red locusts were on the march northward along a specific pathway that they were intent on following without regard to individual survival. At 60 MPH, the dynamic was such that their flight reaction to the approaching truck got them only a couple feet off the ground, not over the height of the hood, so, the lower grill was a mass of dessicated carcasses by the time we got to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, a hundred miles away. Many more were simply crushed by the wheels, leaving greasy red-greenish stains on the road and in the wheel-wells: their natural trajectory on the ground was clearly discernible where it intersected with roads. I noticed in the gas station parking lot in Ely there was a small flock of birds who were picking over the the resulting detritus on the ground, and when they could manage, actually hanging onto the grills and directly harvesting the carnage, ‘burp!’ What would the evolutionary outcomes be? Birds that can smell idling cars? Locusts who tunnel for 40 feet underground when they encounter traces of heavy hydrocarbons, with luck, getting to the other side.

Larger animals, the mammals are the worst, though, when encountered at any speed. Moose and elk torsos will behave something like the old paper-straw-through-the-raw-potato trick — inertial physics at its most fundamental. The front bumper of the car will take out the long spindly legs whilst the massive quarter-ton of body-meat, at just the right height to clear the hood, will simply stay where it is. But where it is relative to the speeding windshield means that it will simply obliterate anything in the front seats of the vehicle. At low speeds, this can mean a struggling, injured animal in the laps of struggling, injured humans, gah.

Do humans (life-forms) exert control over environments by modifying flows to help them re-member and stabilize their forms? To form them in a way that resonates within their energized neural storage regime (life-form)? Probably not, as from a bio-thermodynamic point of view, life exerts control (simply) in order to deplete energy gradients (according to the authors of Into the Cool, an exploration of NET (non-equilibrium thermodynamics) and its relation to life/living systems).

Or can this even be considered a control process, this interaction of modifying flows? Or is it merely part of the cumulative (dynamic) process of life as an engagement of the entropic/negentropic fundamentals of the universe?

I realized that in Regime of Amplification I got the terminology a bit wrong — focusing on the anisotropic concentration and rarefaction of energized matter as the fundamental condition (as driven by gravitational forces). When it is the gradient between the two situations which is of primary interest and importance. — a bit similar to seeing only the elemental yin and yang instead of the overarching dynamic unity, the taijitu. So, a rewrite is in order — to look at the transitional state rather than (theoretical and limited) end-states.

remember:

Flow in reading
Flow in writing
There is no beginning
There is no ending

All else is abstracted, and becomes manifest from the unstable, unknowable, vague, vast, rich, unending flux.

Any abstraction is a sub-system of a whole and can be considered in its own right.

Fundament(al)
assumption
:implicat(ions)

Life does not end and is implicate in the whole.

Underlying assumptions (assumed and unarticulated) are always there (in academic studies) and this is an explicit revealing of one that predicates or prescripts this work.

Golden High School graduation at Brooks Field on the School of Mines campus on what starts off as a dreary and chilly morning with uncharacteristic clouds sticking to the foothills. Holly is the Valedictorian. the weather clears up by the end when Montse and I head back to the house for final party preparations. I take the opportunity to get the whole Williamson Clan together for a group portrait.

fourteen hours later, celebrations finally end with a round of toasts for the graduate.

Dear Holly. What a pleasure to be here to celebrate this time with you! The teacher who spoke at graduation is precisely right that whenever two humans cross pathways they are both changed in ways that are not (always) immediately apparent. This is a powerful principle of life: when we realize and take to heart that this occurs, we may intensify the outcomes of these encounters through open, honest, and unfettered engagement. This engagement should be attentive, concentrated, and focused. Through this, any other human encountered becomes a collaborative partner in a dynamic creative process that is the essence of life. As is taught, the next person you encounter may be the Buddha, and thus, how you engage governs the potential for enLightenment. I wish you all the best in your near and far future; that the pathways you walk will be full of those transformative encounters; and that the transformations bring the breath-taking inspiration that makes life joyous. Life is a phenomena! You are phenomenal! At any point you have questions, answers, observations, or discoveries to share, I am happy to give you my attention. Thank you for being you! oxoxox jh

sleep dissolves along with the darkness. full moon is covered with high clouds most of the night. but morning brings full sun breaking over the eastern horizon. in the bed of the truck, it finally finds my eyelids. and brings first a reddening haze, then, with squinted opening, shafts of eyelash-broken brilliance. the five percent humidity has scraped the throat and nose raw. water is the first thing: imbibio. reaching up to unlatch the rear gate which slams open with a thud and lets in the sound and sun of morning desert. impact on body by place is subtle and brutally immediate at the same time. already leaving this particular place, only four days. leaving precisely when there is that draw, that pull to go deeper, longer, to simply become there or at least to completely resonate to its frequency. resonate to rattlers, springs, green stone, slickensides, smaller and larger bursts of psychedelic colors every few centimeters, the dead cow, the lone cottonwood, the humming, the air, the water, the Light; thoughts of other places, other people, and other lives bring mostly a deepening melancholy and turbid state to clear thinking. ants. mosquitoes. snakes, thistles. what did I kill by walking, by being there? there are indeed thousands of tiny flowers scattered on the ground everywhere. the cattle have already destroyed the vast majority of the cryptobiotic soil spanning between the other, larger vegetation. they represent the most damaging influence on the desert environment. specifically they cause the widespread compression of the upper surface which cryptobiotic soil cannot recover from in any short-term way. so, every step taken… life destroys to create. only problem now is the plague species, humans, and how the system will deal with them.

start off with hydrocarbon tanking. Woody’s Flying-Vee gas station. I ask the Latina cashier if she knows anything about the architecture of the station, she is completely puzzled by my question. memory of glory days in the West. road trip. this one very short, down from the mountains to the desert 1000 meters below.

back in the Arrastra Mountain Wilderness, this occasion in from the Peoples Canyon access — a very bad jeep trail which I only risk a bit more than one mile of the five possible. after a scout of a section up Cottonwood Canyon and finding several sections that would possibly doom my truck, I retreat (not without several stressful moments where a ten-point turn in deep pea-gravel in the wash almost fails). find a suitable spot back up on a scarp above the canyon to park the truck and aLight. no clock-ticking time passes here, only Light time. a treat, treating, retreating. self energy reflecting against the place. reflecting against imbricate order and connectedness and shimmering stars. air temperatures only in the low 70sF, but sun already hinting at the brutal intensity of summer to come. everything is green. air drone humming with winged insects, prepping or engaged in the initial stages of pollination. only a few cacti flowering yet. many of the wildflowers already peaking. the few cacti blossoms are infinitely small spatters of paint dropped onto the muted greens of the land surface. magenta scarlet purple of the beavertail and the strawberry hedgehog. other buds swelling and ready to burst in the next days. owls, rock doves, red tail, peregrine falcons, circling vultures; evidence of javelina and coyote; lizards and pack-rats, kangaroo rats.

another chapter. starting to finish the commission for Rick and Sally. nice to have the opportunity to do large prints — 36×48 in. — from scanned 35mm negs. multiple panel work. maybe the start of a new set of possibilities, combined with all the scanning I’ve been doing. still have at least 10,000 negatives to scan, at least as many chromes, and then there are the images from the family archive. but what to do with it all. a bonfire before relocating half-way ’round the world? possibly. but not probable. despite the limited term of life left to be spent scanning and such.

Bodenlos and Heaven. and the ascent of be-ing as the ground turns to vapor and dissipates beneath the standing feet. how will these thoughts images intertwine? the German, rolling off tongue, with a dropping and slowing lilt. the English, heavy, gravitational in its religious orbit.

walking out of the building where people work at maintaining a certain form beyond hypostasis, Venus is low on the horizon in the irradiated semi-darkness. the semi- arising through the human re-concentration of energies. Licht. Light. Life. das Leben. I look upwards, taking care to stop walking. is this, what I see, is this heaven? it is called the collective signifier: the heavens. what is there to see but the anisotropy of matter revealing its presence? we are coalesced ejecta of novae. Ich fühle mich wie im siebten Himmel. or is it in us? the Empyrean, lifting us, vapors, to the brightness that fills the sky in the days, at the same time as burning in our chests.

and that, though known, is not brought into the path, the way. in ascendant modes, the heart intuits direction.

The foreigner (and foreign) is the one who acknowledges his own being-in-the-world that surrounds him. Thus, he gives sense to the world, and in a certain way he dominates the world. But he dominates it tragically: he does not integrate into the world. The cedar tree is foreign in my park. I am foreign in France. Humankind is foreign in the world. — Vilém Flusser

passing through lives and lives and lives. rowing a small boat across endlessly ending time. with days that finalize in the hands of the clock still hanging on every wall, somewhere. days stop when lidded eye shuts: as with child, seen, becomes imagined invisible to others when the eyes close on the self. but days do not end, even as life does not end. yet. life that runs a long and flowing line, continuous, almost everlasting in duration. each creature giving rise to the next in a long flow of be-ing, the continuous expression of life on this planet.

to be the last of of your kind is nothing when held to be the last living thing. but since we have no expansive image of what is life — we cannot measure where it began, nor where, when, it might end — we stumble onward, every day, into every night. later waking in darkness, seeing points of Light shimmering among human-spilled energies, falling back asleep reassured that something else is still there.

morning brings the same difference. and what is it that we have begun?

meet Karla briefly at a rather banal art event: Kunstinvasion im Blumengroßmarkt, Berlin-Kreuzberg.

idiosyncratic living is, by nature, an expression of a way of going. art (or the art world), as an accepted social function or framework in the techno-social system, puts specific limits on what protocols are acceptable and what not, it is important that the individual 1) realize this, and 2) that they do not allow those frameworks to dominate their expressive possibilities. a life-pathway is the primary expressive tool. the minute and daily form of life is the most indicative expression of an individuals presence and the possibilities of their expressive engagement.

It is sobering to think that we might be almost totally ignorant of the vast if dispersed sources of free energy which underlie our very existence. We may have more in common than we think with the medieval peasants, who could see the stars whirling in the sky but could not begin to figure out the connection between those stars and the physics of their everyday life. Like them, we may be doomed to essential ignorance in our lifetimes. (Many medieval people tried to imagine connections between the stars and their lives, but the results were quite embarrassing.) But if we develop the mathematical prerequisites and work hard and patiently and boldly to extend our real understanding, then perhaps someday our descendants will be able to attain a level of life that we peasants can hardly imagine. Alternatively, of course, the option of stagnation, fragmentation and extinction is also available to all species in the greater biosphere. — Paul J. Werbos

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes.
– Fritjof Capra

yes, spring does arrive. the chestnut tree outside the back windows rather suddenly bursts into a leafy presence that only the chestnut can express. added advantage is that it blocks the view into and out of the windows, replacing too-near humanity with … green.

We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature’s ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. — Fritjof Capra

catching up with the kids to see how they grow. and plenty of chances to participate in the raptor hunting/feeding events despite the icy snow and such weather that I’m not so used to.

prepping to leap? or to merely stand still, justly, or, perhaps, verily. I do say unto you. all these texts and images. 2007 will be the peak year for the neoscenes travelog. it can’t become a more time-consumptive project, or, god-help-me, it’ll end up nah’ good for da body in this in-car-nation. counting the hours? counting the ROI (return-on-investment)? the social benefits that arise from this work? practically infinite for the first question, practically zero for the last two. and with significant chunks of life-time going in to this, and nothing coming out from it. why-oh-why do I persist? bulldog jaw spasms onto the carotid.

The act of seeing (active) gradually changing in the act of looking (passive) is exactly what modern global capitalism is doing with human mankind. By replacing the means to create a life (rurality, agriculture, self-protecting, autocratic societies) with the means to earn a life (industries, labour, rent, mortgage, salary, funeral insurance), the emphasis slowly drifts from the active sense to the passive sense. This is exemplified by the way the internet developed from a research instrument to an entertainment device. In this process which lasted a surprisingly short time of about ten years, the presence of the web turned from a small interesting peer-to-peer group to a huge beast of millenarian proportions. The monster as the natural companion of a gigantic destroyer. The spider’s web is eyeing the world , the eye lost its vision and is multiplied inwardly on a enormous scale , blinded by its own image like the drowning men filming their own drowning in a drowning world. — A. Andreas (cited from nettime)

amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues — which are essentially electromagnetic energy impinging on sensory receptors)), but requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. often the amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. an organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. but why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism’s existence? — to simply continue life — or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?

It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic… What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive. — Erwin Schrödinger in What Is Life?

interview passes smoothly, no need for the pre-tension of notes. great pressure to articulate in brief the complex topics of life-practices. the results will be known in a week already. fast and efficient compared to the debacle of the other recent US university interaction. it will be a tough choice if there is an affirmative. there is a deeply-felt distance from everything I know in the world, being here. settling into yet another life here. finding a place. Sydney is urban, though with a slick easiness of calm inner relaxation. huh? words can’t circumscribe it yet. at all. haven’t made any photographs yet either. a few audio samples, but nothing definitive. walking home after sunset, the skyline of downtown is silhouetted against a singularly sharp sky.

Life is impossible at high temperatures. That’s why I have reached the conclusion that anguished people, whose inner dynamism is so intense that it reaches paroxysm, and who cannot accept normal temperatures, are doomed to fall. The destruction of those who live unusual lives is an aspect of life’s demonism, but it is also an aspect of its insufficiency, which explains why life is the privilege of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life’s normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life. — E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

unfortunately I have to miss the christening of my little friend, Fritz, there in Kiel, Germany. what a fine child he is. holding him over the days there at his home, began to recall the wonder of children when they are so young. life is essential, irreducible, refined, intense, and open. such luxury to be in such a state. it requires only that there are loving Others (in this case, Steffi & Zorak) around to allow this free life to be sustainable. the dialectic blessing and the burden of parenthood.

Freue dich und sei fröhlich!
Denn siehe, ich komme und
will bei Dir wohnen.
So spricht der Herr.
– Sacharja 2,14

a nice network crossing late with Fernanda, in Berlin now, formerly from ISNM. in crisis mode, figuring out some steps to take next in life. she had written me a couple days back, after returning from a five-week holiday in Brazil visiting family, back to a deadening job in Berlin, in the angst of being alive, but having that vitality being drained by pointless and un-inspiring work. half the battle is not to fall asleep to the liveliness that surges up from life. not to allow the pressures of social production to compress dreams unless it is to press carbon into diamond. to make dreams fly with Lightness and certain brilliance. no matter what, though, is to not let life be weakened so much that each moment is lost to the dull and stultifying grind of labor. finding a labor that brings joy is a rare pleasure, but finding a life labor that brings some social recognition as well as that priceless joy is ever more unusual. surrounded and obscured in a matrix of dark matter, searching for a life that does not lack Light, what do we become?

so, we talk about these things, not quite strangers, but desiring to know the Other’s life and the path it takes, has taken, to bring us here.

Lunar Moon day 5
Year of the Red Overtone Moon

kin 141: Red Spectral Dragon
I Dissolve in order to Nurture
Releasing Being
I seal the Input of Birth
With the Spectral tone of Liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled
– from the Lunar Calendar site

the usual Light night’s sleep before travel. because of early rising and tight schedules. fog persists into the morning, the remains of the clouds which obscured the lunar eclipse last night.

in the days preceding the material frenzy that so characterizes the holiday in the consuming world, I ponder my own relation to the holiday. what could be nicer than receiving a gift? something usable in the course of survival or something completely use-less except for the aesthetic energy it slow-releases to the eye or ear over time. or something that touches on the architecture of the relationship of giver to receiver.

for me the highest gift in the sped-up road-warrior world of 21st century amurika would be the gift of attention. now, I’m not talking about the obsessively sought attention of media-to-star, the ego-centric attraction of appearances, of shiny and slick surfaces, of painted-over cardboard facades, of glimmering particles that exert the false-attraction of material desires. nor the gloming and needy self-centered-ness that requires vampiric sustenance.

but more the binary and reciprocated exchange of attentive presence where the floating self might turn full-faced to the other and in Light and in Gravity — making Light, making Gravity — the two beings take up temporary residence in each others field-of-attraction and field-of-reflection. this is the gift of life, lived life-time shared. attentively shared, focused, concentrated. a gift without value, except for the value of life-time passed. a commodity in limited supply for each, such as the Moirae decree. no higher value of gift except for the giving of life to save a life.

but what is the essence of this gift of attention? in the exchange, sharing of life-time, the self is open, and in that open-ness, adsorbs the be-ing of the other. in this, the self is changed, evolves, realizes the absolute character of other-ness, and what a precious gift it is — to provide the opportunity of change. and between this change, and the apprehension of difference, occurring in an unstable space of the not-knowing, creative spark flashes. and we become more than we previously were.

plowing through connections that will be inductive to progressive evolution. so that fluid state-of-being constructed today is different than that of yesterday. attitude to be adopted is that of the vital. means is not thought but embodied action. although it is correct to say that we are never the same from moment-to-moment, this is at the finest level of be-ing. the more gross and dominant levels, change is incremental and often subducted by the inertia of comfort.

soaking away in the Valley View Hot Springs for some hours with Sage tagging along.

If we set ourselves down on the bank of the moments so as to observe them as they flow by, all we are able to recognize in them in the end is a meaningless succession, time which has lost its substance, abstract time, a transformation of our inner void. One step further, and from abstraction to abstraction it becomes more and more threadbare through our fault, it dissolves into temporality, it become a shadow of itself. Our task now is to give it back life, and to adopt a clear and unambiguous attitude towards it. — E. M. Cioran

self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. in a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius

happen to correspond with Claudia, Italian artist-friend from the Avantiere days in Aachen. I want to connect her up with Valgerdur and Niels who are down in Rome at the Scandic artist studio for a couple months. anyway, Claudia attached a couple snaps that Kaisu made when the three of us met in Helsinki a few years ago. don’t remember why we were at the train station — who was leaving for where. I had originally connected Claudia and Kaisu — and they went on to have some nice art collaborations in Italy and Finland. bridging, I call it. finding souls of certain energy, nothing more rewarding than connecting the dots of life and seeing the results.

three months out from accident/surgery and all reports are positive from Dr. Papadopoulos. he was busier than last appointment, but he gave the essential prognosis that I can wean myself from the brace and swim, hike, and so on. good deal. it comes off as much as possible. which may be a slow process, it has grown to fit, muscles succumbing to laze and sprawl in the molded plastic casing.

retro-fitting the travelog — now back to December 2000. about half-way, though the first half is probably twice the volume of text than the latter half. doubt I will get the whole thing done. it is a legacy project.

pondering how it is that I have not brought more relevant experiences into this travelog. the last decade of my trajectory is relatively singular, and has crossed the paths of a great many of those who are greater in the eyes of the mass pay-per-view. nothing rubbed off. or only a little.

it could be that, as with the subject of my inquiry — the continuum of human relation — I tend to take a relationist rather than a reductionist approach. that is, allowing a text (better yet, speaking!) to generate from the complex and dynamic space of the human connection rather than making a series of overarching reductions of that Other, through the encounter. hmmm. it is this pathway which almost requires an abandonment of social relevance, except as a chance by-product. there will be unprecedented outcomes.

it is exactly this reductionist approach which brings massive social rewards: the compressing/re-stating/re-creation of lived presence as completely embedded in the social system. indeed, this IS the essence of fame. the generation of parallel (yet seemingly convergent) pathways which appear known, or previously experienced (social structure is predicated on shared experience). when there is an encounter with an Other who, on examination, does not share any of the abstracted pathways of life-experience, we feel uncomfortable, distanced, and afraid. through the “getting-to-know” process — a process of trying to locate within the Self and the Other common pathways and patterns of being — if we are not successful in finding any shared pathways, then the social dimension of the relation is doomed. we are forced to simply be in the moment, in a fearful and unknowable sequence of moments that have no predictable outcome. “breaking-the-ice” — looking for the flow of shared life by breaking through the stasis and reification of socialization (judging on looks, on possessions). looking at life passing on around through the (distorted) socialized eye. seeing only the known, blocking out any confrontation of the unknown.

a couple Latino guys come to deliver the firewood. my ears are wooden. hard to understand them. not able to dredge up some English, and not used to hearing the Spanish, though I can understand when one of them translates to the other.

Francis Bacon doesn’t seem to be so interesting — highly over-rated. though he did recognize that

Knowledge is power — Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est

but anyway, he doesn’t provide any liberate witticisms on recovery. recovery is a slow process. obviously. to regain a state of order after a chaotic intervention into the body-system assumes a significant input of energy back into the system. seeking order. recovery is seeking order. but the pathway never seems so clear. there are many possible ways. the ingestion of certain substances is necessary, but which ones in which order and what quantity when. rest mandatory, but when does rest and horizontality begin to hinder regaining the activity of life which is primarily vertical? exercise, the operation of the physical meat space is key, though it too can take legion permutations depending on life-philosophy. body-awareness is heightened, to the excruciating boredom of those folks who have to listen to mumbled ruminations about body processes and deviations that are often, as they say, “more information than I needed to know.” the grail of order, bringing perfect form back to the meat-space is always set to fail merely by the intervention of the same time factor that is necessary for recovery to begin with. time brings decay and aging. so, recovery will always be an accession to a lesser goal or state than one would care to accept. diminished capacity. the question becomes, what to let go of and what to fight for…

now concerns have all shifted to simple things like how to manage post-surgical edema in my left leg, as it migrates slowly towards the figurative ground of foot-dwellers. this seems to be the most intensive source for problems (pain and discomfort). unless there is an underlying neurological pathology, which I hope not.

still have a yet-uncounted 12-inch string of surgical staples decorating my left abdomen. my surgeon is on summer vacation, so, won’t meet with him until next week to find out what is going on with the surgery, recovery, and probable causes of the bone density problem. almost two weeks out of surgery. should I feel better or worse. having no baseline makes life frustrating. although my base health was excellent going into the whole thing, it’s not clear where I would be or even how the original injury actually happened to begin.

still processing the whole paradigm-shift of plan-changes, and possible life-changes. hmmmm.

meaning in/at the car wash. finding meaning from employment or perceived fiscal worth. bad direction to go in. moving around town,

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. — Viktor Frankl

on the phone, Bill suggests Frankl’s logotherapy concept of finding meaning in life. at any rate, Jeb and Dave of Deep Canyon, the painters, have created meaning by protecting houses with thick layers of vinyl acrylic latex stuff. took them five days total to do the house. whilst not disturbing the nest with 4 pinky-sized hatchlings in the house finch’s nest in a wreath next to the front entry.

of course, it’s just a full moon, but the estimation of Light pollution is … depressing — what is pollution other than the direct re-formation of natural energy forms by the active intervention of human beings? a (theoretical) natural system without humans (very theoretical!) will be in dynamic balance with all elements, so when there is a concentration that is mortal to the local system, it will seek a balance. question is, when the system is skewed to the extreme of unbalance, what will the re-balancing be like? gradual, as history has gone, or, like the tsunami, sudden and catastrophic. and, I wonder, who cares? in the face of daily life, is it really possible to pretend a care for a macro-scaled system, what does it mean to care for the world? is it perhaps merely an annoyance combined with the leisure to contemplate the abstracted concept of the world?

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree… As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications. — Charles Darwin

Neils, Valgerdur and I head to Selatangar for a short hike in heavy rain and thick misty airs. the sea roils against the smashed and solid black stone. lichen splash some rocks with colored and white spraying splotches of paint. a visit to the Blue Lagoon is … different … from when it was a rough dredged pond in the lava, and a small wooden shack for changing. now it is business.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form–no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space–ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold–the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn. — Walt Whitman

so sister Janet gets online with her Fallen Leaf webspace after some earlier attempts. good job! here’s a pic of her newest puppy, BonChance Bella Mia @ Fireskye, or “Bella” for short. judge Denise Dean gave her Best Puppy in a recent show!

This life is all checkered with pleasures and woes,
That chase one another like waves of the deep,
Each brightly or darkly, as on wave it flows,
Reflecting our eyes, as they sparkle or weep.
– Sir Thomas More

back at 66 degrees north again. mind ribboned by proximity to laser life. sheer optical precision. short wavelengths. high-energy.

sweating in a hot bath. memories of Finnish sauna experiences. on the island, Selkä-Sarvi or so. back in October 1998.

Man who is born of woman — how few and harsh are his days!
Like a flower he blooms and withers; like a shadow he fades in the dark
He falls apart like a wine-skin, like a garment chewed by moths.
And must you take notice of him? Must your call him to account?
Since all his days are determined and the sum of his years is set —
look away; leave him alone; grant him peace, for one moment.
Even if it is cut down, a tree can return to life.
…
But man is cut down forever; he dies, and where is he then?
The lake is drained of its water, the river becomes a ditch,
and man will not rise again while the sky is above the earth.

– Job, as translated by Stephen Mitchell