radio aporee presents flickering wastelands IV: another round of the 48-Stunden-(Berlin-)Neukölln Kunst und Kulturfestival at Udo’s place, so I prep this 30-minute video piece of flickering wastelands from the Wendover residency, et al. Ambient sounds included.

Transit of Utah. From west to east, along a winding trajectory from desert to forest to desert, oil drilling, wind power, gas stations, Mormon farms, gold mines, high-security military bases, municipal alarm towers scattered across the landscape — for warning the population surrounding the bases where testing of bio- and chemical-warfare devices is ongoing — warning them of impending disaster. Continuing on the isolated Pony Express Trail, then descending into populated areas. Calling ahead to Dinosaur to see about road conditions. Plenty of snow on the Uintahs, plenty! At the last minute after checking out the Green River campground on the Utah side, I get word that the Echo Park road is open. So, gas up, including the extra tank, and head in from Jensen. Excellent weather, and finally arriving, no one else around, very good. Get the pick of the few camp spaces, #5, 7, and 9 are the best for shade, seclusion, and access to firewood — though shade is not the issue at this time of year, more important would be the access to morning sunshine to warm up — but since there’s no one else around, I can use the #6 picnic table in full sun in the morning for breakfast. So, I take #7 and offload/set-up quickly: already charged at being here once again…

A KC-135 Stratotanker spends the morning and evening making touch-and-go-landings. In between I suppose he’s busy re-fueling the F/A-18′s that are prowling the air all day. Immediately prior to spotting him on the first round, a series of very large concussive explosions shake everything — either very close sonic booms or bombing on the range.

An early evening cycle ride to the east, around the industrial area, then south along the perimeter of the airport runways and the speed track, all the way to the distant bunker and taxiway where the loading pit for the Enola Gay’s special cargo stands. The bomb was so heavy and large, they had to make a eight-foot-deep rectangular pit with a hydraulic lifting mechanism to drop the bomb into, roll the plane over it, then lift the bomb into the plane’s bomb bay.

Pick this night to sleep in the CLUI southbase unit as I had to return some equipment down there. It’s the first night possible to do it after the occupying troops retreat to where-ever they came from. The wind is howling all night long, threatening to take the whole Quonset to … Kansas. Bad nights sleep, still blowing in the morning, and most the day, gusting up to 50+ mph, ach. Dust, and noise. Would have been nice to hang around here for some days and enjoy the further isolation (and distance towards darkness, away from the casino glare!).

Re-construction is continuing on the Enola Gay Hangar almost constantly. All the new windows are finally in, the wing areas seem to be in order with their new galvanized sheeting. A couple days ago, the last gaps in the sheeting on this end and the far roof have been put in place. So, what of the ravens and their constant efforts to build a nest (and hatch chicks perhaps?) somewhere inside? They are now gone. I felt a little ill when I saw that the construction crew was going at the remaining gaps in the sheeting, knowing it would cause a huge disturbance in the lives of the ravens. Okay, to be sure, they would likely not have been nesting here in the flats if the building had not been constructed here to begin with — humans had already caused a significant distortion in the flows of this place — life does that, always. I noticed for a couple days the ravens sitting on the roof, but no more of the flying back and forth by the window of the residency. This is a huge loss, and I wonder if anyone else has thought about this as an affect of the restoration process?

The platoon practices having their fixed machine-gun and observation emplacement attacked from a line of tamarisk bushes about 100 meters north towards the rail line and the interstate. Overhead, fighters prowl and engage. The heavy machine gun shakes the windows. The assault rifles sound like small fire-crackers in comparison.

More fire-exercises from the platoons who have taken up residence across the street. They have set up two camouflaged observation/guard posts and are firing from these positions towards the rail-road tracks, their comrades playing insurgents, firing pretend mortars from 200 meters away. The mis-en-scene is completed with colored smoke screens and a sniper who sets up in the tumbleweed.

In the evening I end up at the Wendover Night Club, what could be called a seedy joint in the corner of The Plaza strip mall that includes, what else, a stripper club complete with an Italian-looking bouncer sitting on a stool at the door, cigarette hanging from his mouth; there’s a Chinese restaurant, a smoke shop, and a computer gaming store.

I end up going to the Night Club because last week, one evening, I could hear some loud what I would term proto-Mariachi music playing within earshot of the residency. I put off going to check it out, but finally out of curiosity I drove in the direction of the music. End up four blocks away in one of the old airbase buildings. I pull up to see a group of swarthy-looking Latino guys hanging out. The music has stopped. I don’t know what they were thinking when I came up, gringo in shorts with white Crocs on, at any rate, turns out they are a band, Caxcanes Musical, most of the members are from the Mexican state of Zacatecas (the Caxcan are an indigenous group: Los caxcanes, lidereados por Tenamaxtle, peleaban bajo el lema ¡Ashcanquema tehual nehual! ‘¡Hasta tu muerte o la mía!’. Y el lema se cumplió, tanto en el triunfo como en la derrota. Ante la desproporcionada respuesta de los invasores, los guerreros prefirieron morir lanzándose al vacío.) I chat with them for a bit and though I’m sure they are thinking el gringo loco, they seem pleased at my enthusiasm and invite me to catch them at the Club in the Plaza.

I’m clearly the only gringo at the Club — at least I can order in Spanish! And I get there on time, as I don’t want to miss the show. On time from the time the guy gave me when I get to the empty Club at nine pm. He says the music starts at ten pm. He didn’t tell me there are three warm-up bands — or groups, not to be confused with bands. I hang out nursing a Coors. At any rate, I survived the first group, Tambura los Primos — audio is extant, then my memory card filled up on the H4 and I couldn’t figure out how to properly erase files to clear up space for the other groups. The whole scene was quite cool — clearly a rural audience, the guys with their really pointy shit-kickers and Stetsons, dancing with their gals in a stilted waltz move with the arms and hands never quite intertwined. Reminded me of country-folk in Finnish Lapland doing the tango on Midsummer’s night parties. Anyway, a fun evening, and I think they will play again on Cinco de Mayo which actually be on the second of May before I split for nether regions.

Back down to Blue Lake for another definitive workout doing the full length of the lake twice. The far end is shallow and covered with a fine mud with nodules of organic material, almost like crypto-biotic soil, and extending the hand into the mud, it’s warm, though I can’t tell whether that is an affect of the heat-flow driving the upwelling action that has generated the spring, or merely sun-warmed sediment. The water temperature is perfect, right around 82F, with the air temp at 50F, a great combination for working out.

There is a shallow play of fear when getting into the water — snakes? big fish? underwater dangers? Loch Ness monsters? It’s deep and not absolutely clear as it normally is because of the heavy wind and dust. The depth is indicated, though, through the deepness of the blue. In the middle it feelsdeep: gravitational fluctuation operating on the body. While overhead, the F/A-18′s fight gravity and each other.

Then a short photo trip to do a portrait of Wendover Will and some images of the casino landscaping. Plenty of material there! But somehow I am tired of simply illustrating western society in wasteful and dis-connected abandon. I’ve seen too much of it, and there simply is too much out there!

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

Today, upon waking, there are two buses parked to the west of the hangar, a bit later, numerous SUV’s begin to pull up along with several official SWAT command vehicles and their teams from Winnemucca, Elko, and Wendover. It’s SWAT play. How to deal with a bus-load of terrorists/hostages or so. Several squads are lectured and engage in practice drills for the morning. I had originally been told by the airport management folks that there were going to be live-fire exercises at South Base, so we were surprised when this began to unfold in the back yard.

There is the fascination of playing Army, recalled from early days in the Maryland woods beyond the pond, beyond the corn fields, into unknown territories of abandoned farmhouses and hunting camps. Learning to make the sound of a gun and of explosions. And here, older boys, men, with very fancy toys, playing for their lives and the lives of their charges. Learning to stay alive, to save life. Learning to kill, or be killed. Learning to protect the innocent and kill the profane.

A long cycle ride south from South Base, the (doh!) southern part of the airbase. Into the region down-range of the heavy machine-gun target range and where fragments of mock-up Little Boy bombs (prepped with high explosives, not nukes) may be found along with tens of thousands of rounds of oxidized-green-sheathed bullets scattered everywhere on the surface of the playa. The cycling is a bit surreal when surrounded by mountains floating on silver lakes. Lots of effort into the wind, but otherwise, it’s a flat out ride. Slight differences in the surface texture, and then the human altered areas — the dikes and drainage berms of the saline concentrating solar evaporation ponds.

Then there are the bunkers and V-1 test area. Matt said the casinos use a couple bunkers for records storage, as does the city of Wendover. The Simparch-designed CLUI South Base Clean Livin’ center is a cool space — completely self-contained with a PV electricity system, gray water recycling system, and a composting toilet. Along with the refurbished Quonset hut it makes for a homey post-nuclear space for quiet meditation.

Finally a wander over and around the east side of town, to the potash and salt mining facilities, and on to the Bonneville Salt Flats, with marvelous flat Lighting today. Everywhere, what man hath wrought. Images combined with sounds.

viam munire. Stretching my Latin. The Road for Munitions? Or, Road of Fortification or Road of Security. Homeland Security? Interstate Defense Highway System. Autobahn. All roads lead to Rome.

As long as man’s wants and his desires for military conquest were confined to petty hostilities between individuals or tribes, the necessity for roads other than mere pathways or trails was not felt. With the beginnings of land commerce and the spirit of conquest between nations, there arose the necessity of ways better adapted to the changed needs and conditions, and with the growth of trade and military operations successive improvements in the character of the ways and the means of transportation were made only to give way to others with new conditions made a change imperative. — Charles Whittle in “Ancient and Modern Highways”

We were not a wealthy Nation when we began improving our highways… but the roads themselves helped us create a new wealth, in business and industry and land values… So it was not our wealth that made our highways possible. Rather, it was our highways that made our wealth possible. — Thomas H. MacDonald, Chief, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads

the creation of pathways onto which energy flow is restrictively directed/sanctioned is primarily for the benefit of those who occupy the nexus of power within any particular system. all roads lead to Rome.

Are not engineers merely ingenious engines of war? all roads lead to Rome.

from Kevin Hamilton on the iDC list: Thanks for sharing this tantalizing bit from your project Chris, I’m sure eager to see more of the outcomes. You rightfully remind us that framing the discussion in terms of ideologies or worldviews, even economically-influenced ones, leaves out the fact that there are bodies moving around (or not moving), generating these stories.

Much of the flow of human resources (beings) as a primary energy source, was facilitated (forced along) by the formative pathways of the Military-Industrial complex (Interstate highway system, for example, the car culture in general, etc, ad nauseum). It was the prescribed protocollary forces of that M-I system that facilitated (required!) mobility of the bodies as a dispensable resource. And that enforced mobility had a cost — the essential alienation of the displaced Self. This displaced Self would have been a major social problem in regards to social stability, but that problem was muted by universal consumerism (chain retailing) which imposed a sameness on most major (Cartesian) points under the domain of the M-I complex. The pathways remain the same, but the strictness of their applied impression on each individual gives rise to a plethora of different stories: variations on a theme.

These energy flows are not arbitrary, but are complex interactions between evolutionary expressions of life on the planet (humans as perhaps a non-unique expression of that life, in principle) and how techno-social systems re-form and impress pathways on those energies…

On Durkheim’s exploration of Rousseau and Montesquieu: the immediate impression is that Rousseau, when stripped of the colloquialisms of the time, has a greater precision in circumscribing the social order than Montesquieu. More on that later. But given the situation that Obama is currently mulling over, Afghanistan, a bit of Rousseau would probably have eliminated the entire issue in the years earlier, had the enormous hubris not entirely blinded those in power at the time:

Just as an architect, before putting up a tall building, studies and tests the ground to see whether it can bear the weight, so the wise organizer does not begin by drafting laws which are good in themselves, but first tries to determine whether the people for whom they are intended are able to submit to them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1987c[1762]) On The Social Contract in The Basic Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Donald A. Cress (trans. and ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett

What a lesson to learn! Completely counter to the previous US regime’s goal of bringing Democracy (with a Big Dee) to those places that they think need it, with no awareness of the actual suitability of that particular (theoretical no less!) social framework for that localized human situation. One needs to consider all prior flows extant in a social system in order to ascertain whether the system can stand a modification of those flows that are likely to be imposed by external forces. Oracle, prophesy, the I Ching, mixed with Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. And recognizing that variability is a human trait.

With a close-to-infinite availability of energy, an external power can accomplish finite changes in an arbitrarily limited system in a finite time. Imagine a squad of high-tech equipped Special Forces for every household in Afghanistan, staying for two or three generations. That would do. It would cast iron-order on the country, and re-educate any young people to the Amurikan way. Of course, you would need one Amurikan teacher for every five children for that entire time as well.

Durkheim, Emile (1960[1893]) Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology, Georges Davy (trans.), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1960

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).

In its most simplified form, a military organization is a numeric subset of the larger population of individuals making up a particular TSS — these individuals are its base energy source and generally consist of a selection of the most optimized body-systems. Outside of that social system, a military organization appears as an amplified and coherent signal (noting that the Latin root of the word “coherent” is “cohort,” a Roman military unit). Coherency of the signal in this case is the quality of how effectively and efficiently this sub-system expresses the desires of the TSS. It accomplishes this primarily through operations that secure energy sources and that stabilize the pathways of utilization.

The selection process for participants in the military system is crucial. Individuals are chosen for their generally optimized body condition or because of specially amplified characteristics which are necessary to the ultimate expression of the system. Because coherency is an important value to the output energy, individual participants in a military system are subject to a rigidly defined set of pathways for all impression and expression and so, need to be highly socialized individuals. This means that they are comfortable with having their position within larger flow pathways determined not by individual preference, but by the hierarchic expressions of the system. Protocol rules: eccentricity is not rewarded. As always, optimization of the process is essential to the execution of coherent expression.

The primary outward expression of all military systems are via weapons. Weapons are themselves amplified energy sources: weapons are the output of amplified and directed pathways of energy flow. Weapon systems require the complex concentration of sometimes quite diverse matter/energy flows. When in the hands of optimized individuals, weapons then amplify the energy expressions of that individual. Weapon systems can range from the body itself to intensely complex concentrations of energy requiring the direct participation of millions of individuals to procure. Weapons are tools, are defined by technology, and are the amplified expressions of the TSS.

Consider a sword. A sword comes into being through the energy-intensive combination of iron, carbon, perhaps some leather and bone, along with traces of manganese, chromium, and vanadium. This combining process is obviously dependent on the availability of the resources which exist only in certain local concentrations. The locus of concentration must be secured over a long period of human-scaled time as it takes a long-term commitment of human resources to actually extract iron ore. The ore must be removed from the surrounding matrix material using the life-energy of individuals along with other energy amplification processes. A significant amount of heat energy is required to render the iron ore into the necessary basic form of raw iron. The source of this heat energy has to be secured by assembling a quantity of materials which can be burned at a specific location where specific types of fires are necessary to get the ore hot enough to transform into raw iron. The raw iron is subsequently forged via the life-energy of an individual also in concert with other pre-existing technological pathways. The forging process requires a skill-set that is not usually possible for an individual to directly assemble from scratch in a single life-time. The process therefore requires the presence of a stable enough TSS that allows for the transmission of information across generations along with the ensuing innovation/optimization that inevitably occur. Depending on the complexity, it may require the existence of externalized memory systems which consequently require special protocols. The complexity of the pathway is such that making one sword would not represent an optimal outcome, suggesting instead that many swords should be produced. This requires that a system of standards is developed. The entire process demands an ordered, coherent, and harmonized set of energy flows from many individuals such that the particular amplified signal be actualized.

When all these steps are completed in an optimized manner, the sword, the weapon, is placed in the hands of the optimized individual. In the hands of the soldier, the sword increases the efficiency of the individual in their ability to secure the pathways of their Regime of Amplification, their TSS. It increases their viability as an individual and consequently the viability of the collective. This increase however comes only after they are trained to use it. To teach the optimized use, the experience of other humans, stored in living or external memory, needs to be available. Learning, the soldier forms both his body and his embodied behavior in relation to the sword in order to optimize the combined body-weapon potential. The potential energy of the combined system that creates the sword and makes it available to the soldier plus the life-time submitted to learning to use it is the source of this increased efficiency. Without the complete set of refined pathways for concentrating energy, the soldier would not be a pathway for optimized expression. This is the fundamental process of arming a military through particular weapon systems.

Each weapon system is the product of an extremely specialized process flow which is more or less complex. The more complex the flow, the more energy that the TSS has to expend on maintaining the pathway and the structural elements of that flow. This increasing complexity must be offset by a resultant increase in the efficacy of the body-weapon combination. The weapon system must deliver a saturating energy flow, a lethal expression, into the enemy.

The example of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 is the sword amplified by many orders of magnitude. The techno-social infrastructure required to produce the physically rather small device was colossal. It was historically the largest weapon production system in areal distribution, in numbers of people involved, and in energy consumption. It included substantial sub-systems for the prospecting and mining of the uranium, for the construction of the uranium processing system which included the largest single-purpose electrical grid sub-system ever constructed, and for the construction and operation of sophisticated facilities for research and testing in remote and extreme environments. All of these had to operate at high degrees of precision and with an ordered, coherent, and highly secure system of command and control down to individual lives. Altogether, an enormously energy-intensive pathway to construct and maintain. It is no coincidence that its ultimate expression was the most massively concentrated and rapid release of energy that the world had experienced before. It securely guaranteed for some years the viability of the Regime of Amplification which deployed it.

Feedback is critical to a military system. A rigidly defined set of pathways for the concentration and expression of energy is constantly at threat from changing external and internal conditions. The history of the TSS is littered with body-systems sacrificed by the rigid clinging to a specific set of pathways of expression. This slaughter came about when changing conditions de-stabilized those pathways, reduced the optimal efficiency of the military system below some threshold, and consequently ended its viability. Feedback is dependent on complex communications systems which report on the affect of the projected body-weapon engagement systems. These command and control systems are vital to the optimization process. A military structure that is blinded by the loss of its communication system is in immediately crisis.

In the end, the Regime of Amplification has its weapons systems which are deployed via its most optimized individuals against any real or perceived threat. A threat is fundamentally defined as a condition which obstructs access to external energy sources or that distorts the requisite pathways of power within the system. The weapon systems have to provide a saturating expression of energy to the enemy system. There are many nuanced examples scattered throughout human history where the specific dynamics are more or less complex, but at base, the vast majority of events which take place among and between social systems are driven by a focused desire to sustain viability. This desire drives the preparation and deployment of military pathways for expressive energies to flow. The Regime of Amplification is constructed on the broadest of such pathways.