former student Sarah lets me reprint this article she wrote recently about her creative practice:

Sarah H. Chung :: http://www.myspace.com/sarahhdot

I am an experimental multimedia artist, a student, and a teacher based in Denver, Colorado, USA. My latest artistic pursuits are a combination of various mediums including still image, video, sound, sculpture, light, and performance. Most recently I have been collaborating with another female artist, Heidi Higginbottom, to choreograph audio/visual performances using found objects, homemade instruments, contact microphones, and film loops. We make homemade contact microphones out of easily attainable and affordable materials and use them to amplify the sound of the movement of objects. We have used objects ranging from dishware, tile, typewriters, music boxes, sewing machines, thumb pianos, toys, water, or any curious object we can get our hands on. Our intentions are not to make melodic pieces of “music,” but to isolate and arrange pure commonplace sounds that would normally be easily lost in the proceedings of everyday life. While these objects may be ordinary, they refer to a vast web of associations and marked memories. By arranging them, we create a new resonance in the relationships the objects and symbols have with one another. These relationships are meant to be memory cues that can be triggered by sensory experience. We are in the process of experimenting with different technologies and digital software to incorporating projections, audio delay, editing and looping.

As a studio art major I was largely focused on traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and photography. It was about six years ago that I began to pay more attention to the intricate and beguiling aspects of the digital art culture. I was introduced to it from digital art courses being taught by visiting professor, John Hopkins, who is a working artist and has taught and traveled internationally. Projects included collecting and arranging self-generated media and media filtered from outside sources. These included field recordings, videos, still images, and lines of text. I had not dealt with this kind of medium prior to this, so I approached it the same as I would painting and 35mm photography. While the navigation of new software in a limited time span was challenging, the results of the projects left me very intrigued and curious about digital culture. I believe that the success of these projects were due to the non-linear process of collecting media without a finished product as motivation. Filtering media (books, internet, video, music, sound clips, etc.) provides an intuitive process for choosing content. It becomes a dialogue that interacts with an individuals sensibilities and social views. Whether I am drawn to content or pure aesthetic, some aspect of the media strikes me, and I collect it.

With human interaction, technology can be used as a tool to express emotion and the individualized perspectives of human experience. Technology brings with it an efficiency that adds new time-lines within our culture. Ubiquitous media screens flash loaded images and sounds that are intended to influence feelings and opinions about products, services, and perspectives in government. These messages compete with each other and have conditioned us to receive information at an exponentially increasing rate. In a society saturated with advertising, I feel a responsibility to express and tap into more emotive, internalized feelings and memories, and to offer a situation for slowing down. This desire is what caused me to seek out the tools and skills that could connect me with the vast and accessible network I was experiencing.

I believe it is of utmost importance for individuals to be informed about technologies so that they may exercise basic democratic principles. I had been intimidated by technology before, but I felt that placing myself outside of the existence of it is like surrendering my own rights. Technology is propelled by human curiosity, but is often used as a system of control. History is constantly redefined based on documentation. Dominant historical theories are based on those with the power to document and expose others to their material. It is crucial to actively participate in the documentation process of our own history in process.

Links: (check them out!!)
http://www.neoscenes.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/contactmic.html
http://www.pierrebastien.com/
http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/
http://www.mutek.org/
http://www.haamu.com/launau
http://www.colleenplays.org/
http://www.skoltzkolgen.com/

Inane story on NPR, dancing around the hype of ubiquitous computing (still?) — With the installation of a network of sensors on house plants that will send wifi info to their owner about their condition.

Who sets up this network? Who maintains it? Who interacts with it? When and why is it interacted with? Under what conditions is it necessary to interact with it? Or is it ever necessary to interact with it? Those people who are so interested in spreading digital networks somehow forget the necessity of manufacturing, deployment, installation, configuration, and, especially, maintenance. Not to mention the actual (life-)time necessary to interact with the data being gathered, tweaking it if necessary (or even possible) into a form that is understandable and usable to the idiosyncratic self, NOT the generic Everyman (who is the Grail of the data collectors).

These questions point back to the cultural (d)evolution which mandates a rolling over of systems from localized individual control to a centralized social command-and-control. Now, a big argument used by the ubicomp community is that the existence of these networks liberates the localized Everyman from the drudgery of some localized chore or another. Watering house plants, in this case. But there is a hidden factor — the subsequent reliance of the individual on the centralized system of production and (standardized control) — which creates and deploys these devices. It costs money to have these devices. And the greater the deployment, the larger the social infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy these devices and systems. Think, for example, of the mining and basic industry that provides the raw materials that go into the construction of the machines used to make and deliver the devices. The individual consequently must be participating in this larger system in order to receive the device. To participate in that system requires a payment of (life-)time (converted in the grind of social production to cash). So the (life-)time freed-up by the device is more than consumed by the (life-)time drawn from the individual in this general participatory process. Think of working at a long-term job so that you have the long-term income to pay for the apartment where you have the house plants. Stability is a core value here to consider here as well — without long-term stability (a stable environment), exotic house plants are imperiled. To have house plants assumes this long-term stability (which the social system relies on!). So not only is this further reliance on the deployed ubicomp system NOT about liberation — it is the opposite — it is about a subtle enslavement to a greater social system for which instability is anathema. The drawing-off of the lifetime (and life energy) of the individual into that social system is the primary source of power for the centralized social system.

All of this is on a sliding scale. But assuming that condition, there likely is a certain tipping point where one might go too far and not have the possibility of retrieving individual autonomy. Where is this point? Have we reached it? Clearly it is different in different social systems, despite the healthy state of global systems which draw their energy from widely-dispersed humans. Tolerance for autonomy is different in different socio-cultural systems. Intolerance for instability is generally higher in more organized systems (which came first, the need for organization or the intolerance for instability and dis-order?)

Break down and have (huh?) to buy Loki a copy of the Harry Potter book (uff, even writing the name here is annoying). Why? Because each summer for the past however many that have been a target for the marketing of Rowling’s tale, some one, me on several occasions, has gotten him the latest installment for an early birthday present for the first of his usual two or three birthday parties. He always has one party in Amurika, sometimes with cousin Lexie, though she’s not here now, used to be that Amma Lillian would make him a nice cake, too. Then, when he gets back to Iceland there is one party for his friends and then another one for the adults in his family. But what is so annoying is the feeding of Rowling’s billion-dollar fortune. At the expense of the local, the personal, gradually but inexorably being stripped from culture. I realized this too late in my child’s upbringing (and my own consciousness) to alter the trajectory to any significant degree. But the idea that parents (elders!) spend time telling stories to the young. Those stories, and that process of telling, spending time (not money!), is a core value itself. The sharing of life-time. Where nowadays, parents are kept too busy to tell stories, and the kids are too jaded to listen anyway if the personal story doesn’t have murder and mayhem with 5.1 Dolby sound effects and less-than two seconds between cuts. One point of realization came gradually when a 90-minute story that I made up and taped while driving alone across the US from New York to Arizona seemed to have made a heavy impact on my child a third a world away in northern Iceland. It is still mentioned long into teenager-hood as something memorable despite the tragic distance of mediation.

I still remember the stories that my mother told me at bed time, sometimes featuring the exploits of my “Teddy” — always full of adventure and to my recollection, completely spontaneous.

But here we are, standardized stories translated into 75 languages, the forcefully marketed imaginations of one English house-wife-cum-writer. Not that I think her stories are bad in that polarized way of thinking about the world (if you’re not with us you’re against us). The content is not the issue. Not that I object to the effect on reading enthusiasm among media-headed tots, that’s not the point either. It’s the hole that they fill in contemporary culture. It is a hole of our own passive making. And we are falling into it, blindly. And it represents yet another fundamental body-blow to idiosyncrasy. Imagine when every bedtime story from Denver to Chaing Mai, Trondheim to Auckland is the same? What then do we have left?

I read at least three of the books cover-to-cover aloud for Loki, readable, adventurous, yup. And I did manage to read aloud the Lord of the Rings trilogy to him as well, just before the movies were deployed. What I just can’t stand anymore is the hyped marketing hysteria that practically every media outlet participates in trying to sell us something or another. One nasty effect is the complete and utter exclusion of the unfortunately shrinking percentage of children who don’t participate in mass culture. To be accepted at all, you HAVE to buy a copy and read it. This is the tyranny of the intellectually impoverished masses as instigated by the greed of the phenomenally wealthy few and compounded by the synchronized choreography of Media sycophants. Try being the parent who doesn’t buy their kid a copy. Unless you really have a hot song and dance, you stand no chance, and even if you do, someone else will buy it for them because it’s necessary. We have been effectively taught that our own freakish or dull ideas should be subject to those of the placid group, that sameness, the same bland rules.

Storytellers are indispensable agents of socialization. They picture the world for the child and thus give both form and limits to his memory and imagination. — David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Here’s to telling stories to kids — any stories, risque stories, challenging stories, flamboyant, outrageous, ridiculous, complicated, intelligent stories — they need to hear local voices, local stories. Stories of the like of the News from Lake Wobegon but not from Garrison Keillor or American Public Radio, instead from Aunt Mary or Uncle Al, grandly embellished with innuendo, gossip, faulty memory, and outrageously defective objectivity. Here’s to the propagation of rumor, tall tales, and exaggerated experience. Here’s to speaking with one’s own voice. And connecting that process of inspiration and expiration, deeply, humanely, with the next generation through the stories of the ancestors.

as the share-nomad node, participate remotely at the conference at MIT MiT5: creativity, ownership, and collaboration in the digital age in Boston with share people, as share.nomad node. Martin was there from Bremen along with quite a few other nodes being represented.

finally getting around to a good look at Oog, a curatorial project by Dutch artist Nanette Hoogslags curates at Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily newspaper. I happened to meet her for the first time when I was in Amsterdam last March when I had dinner with she and her husband, network activist David Garcia, an acquaintance of mine. Nanette comments on the current state of the project:

Oog is a commentary and opinion platform for the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily national newspaper. It began in September 2004 as a platform where every week a different artist working in sound and image is asked to respond to news and current affairs. The selection of artists participating has grown into a varied group of national and international artists working with very different forms of expertise and approaches. In this way, artists are using their skills to become commentators on events in a news environment. After each week, the work is placed in the archives, making the Oog collection accessible as a whole.
(more …)

over to STEIM to meet with Taku to catch the scene there. quiet, and possible.

the inaugural KillerTV broadcast from the Pakhuis de Zwijger building with André Gringas goes really well. online participation was the highest ever, and the local scene was fantastic! ookoi does a live/online SL sound performance, Sher and Janine interview André and I. no extant archival stream footage is around yet (ex post facto), but I made some audio samples which are here remixed with other sounds from my visit to Amsterdam.

crossing another path with sharedj people — Martin and Jürgen of the Bremen crew. turns out Jürgen participated in difusion 2002 using iVisit — he was doing some crazy things with the video image he was sending, and I remember that the students were really intrigued with his mysterious presence…

but the first time in a smoky German bar is too much for me. horrible environment. the Germans are on the verge of passing a law to cut off smoking in public places as have other European states have already passed — Norway, Ireland, Italy, France. it’s about time. head back to Frieder & Susi’s place.

wow, and I made all of $0.69 on Amazon referrals last month from my reading list of books and other media that has crossed my radar lately. I can retire now.

earlier, breakfast at Kuku, and a stop by the Kunsthalle, Frieder gets me in free (as Icelandic/Finnish artist union member) to look at the work of Annamaria and Marzio Sala. interesting, but not compelling. one video installation is absolutely juvenile and would not stand in a bachelors-level class. strange. hanging out in the permanent John Cage sonic installation work Essay.

Call for Workshop Applicants:

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

Presented by John Hopkins as part of the pixelache 2007 Architectures of Participation Festival and in collaboration with Artists’ Association MUU

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, L?nnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007

http://www.neoscenes.net/teach/pixel/index.php

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, finishing with the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

The workshop is open to anyone from any discipline with an interest in collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new collaborative level are also welcome.

On Saturday, 31 March, the final day of the workshop will be a live & online event. Workshop participants will not only develop digital content for the event, but will also help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambience, and the remote coordination.

For detailed information visit:

http://www.neoscenes.net/teach/pixel/index.php

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from local and international applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

THE WORKSHOP IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Those interested will need to send:

NAME:

LOCATION:

EMAIL:

Along with your reasons for interest in workshop and a brief background (studies, creative work, and activities) to:

neopixel@pixelache.ac

DEADLINE for Applications 5 March 2007.

beds empty and so the party slowly ends, folks departing reluctantly from orbit around the Manor and each other. remarkable to participate in such a once-in-a-lifetime event. something bittersweet, not to return to the same time and place, ever, again. and while each Cartesian moment is never repeated, ever, there are some that more charged than others with the enlivened energy of life movement. the last three days were such times. an amazing constellation of people of all ages and sorts. and the constellation assembled by the Light and gravity of this one person. how that is. how that kind of dynamic evolves through a life lived in some completeness and open-heartedness. I make a long sonic redux of the four days…

made a series of group portraits as people departed the temporary manor-home. not catagoric, but it included a fair number of folks. still getting used to the Nikon, and becoming handicapped without bifocals. and cannot rely on the auto-focus device. but the eye enjoys the process.

food? leftovers did not include the main courses and deserts, all of which were delicious, thanks to Tanya (for directing the kitchen for dinner (for 45) on Friday — a fantastic chicken curry), and Duncan (dinner (for 75!) on Saturday — venison, mushroom gravy, gratin Dauphinoix, red cabbage, various green things, and truffle torte with raspberry sauce).

my network friend, Varsha Nair, invited me to join this project, you can see my contribution either on my site or with the rest of the official exhibition site.

The project, No Man’s Land invited 65 participants from diverse locations and backgrounds to utilize cyber-space as the primary platform to present works addressing the territorially imagined line of the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. Borders also define our sense of nationalism, giving rise to a sense of belonging or not-belonging and informing historical and current cultural practices that influence our senses of nation-hood and ownership.

Participating artists: Yoshiko Shimada, Barbara Lattanzi, Renata Poljak, Tejal Shah, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Terry Berkowitz, Kai Kaljo, Dragana Zarevac, Roland Bergere, Manit Sriwanichpom, Susanne Ahner, Pisithpong Siraphisut, Patricia Reed, Mella Jaarsma, Mideo Cruz, Mona Burr, Manu Luksch/Ambient TV, Karla Sachse, Martin Zet, Wen Yau, Traci Tullius, Tintin Cooper, Jerome Ming, Estelle Cohenny-Vallier, Katherine Olston, Pinaree Sanpitak, Sutee Kunavichayananda, Lawan Jirasuradej, Sara Haq, Karen Demavivas, Nigel Helyer, Nilofar Akmut, Andrew Burrell, Pamela Lofts, Beatriz Albuquerque, Kirsten Justesen, Maryrose Mendoza, Hsu Su-Chen, Michael Bielicky, thingsmatter, Arahmaiani, Kate Stannard, Judy Freya Sibayan, Chaw Ei Thein, John Hopkins, Farida Batool, Baiju Parthan, Liliane Zumkemi, Noor Effendy Ibrahim, Tamara Moyzes, Ana Bilankov, Chakkrit Chimnok, Suzann Victor, Marketa Bankova, Sue Hajdu, Jim Previtt, Keiko Sei, Suvita Charanwong, Noraset Vaisayakul, Konrad, Reiko Kammer, Silvia Pastore, Felipe, Chitra Ganesh, Varsha Nair.

mes amis laboiteblanche and Carl.Y at (no)music are running their 10th 24-hour collaborative online sonic streaming project. I decided not to participate this time around for lack of technical infrastructure, but see there are some old faces like androvirus, Jon Eriksen, Bernhard Loibner, & Jerome Joy among 48 others — sure to be a long, interesting day! check it out!

(((NOMUSIC))) wishes to generate improbable duals and gatherings between pairs of participants during one hour at a time in a web audio performance. We make no storage because we think that Internet is a huge database which conveys already a great amount of dead information and we don?t want to pollute it further. We are thus in favor of instant access to a selective event. The mechanism of the programming is not automated; it is relayed manually for 24 hours without any interruption by laboiteblanche and Carl.Y., two real human routers who are at the service of continuous audio stream and who endure technical difficulties and give rapid formation on the technologies of streaming to all the participants.

Darko Fritz announces his participation in spokendays. I reflect on this intriguing project, tracking the sonic resonances:

time passing. this project touches on that inexorable passing. where inspirated and aspirated breath divides life into periods. periodic demarcations like the seasons, like the sun risings and settings. months are social demarcations that frame our social existence. not shared everywhere on the globe, they represent one system of social order. how else could one sing and chant time passing? by facing the sun each morning and saying to it, upon appearance above the rim of self-seen earth, welcome! from the rested and warm-skinned body.

Twelve international artists were each invited to choose a month in 2007, and to record an audio file of themselves speaking all the days of that month, ie: Monday, January 1st, Tuesday, January 2nd, etc. Those audio files were forwarded to me where I added additional sounds or musical elements in response to what they had submitted. Each artist spoke their days in their native language. The result is a conceptual experiment to achieve a ‘verbal’ calendar. Each month’s audio file (MP3) is available for online listening without charge or registration. A good quality computer sound system or headset is highly recommended. Future ‘spoken Days’ years will feature speakers from various commonly-held occupations, beliefs or interests, ie: actors, politicians, blue collar workers, and so on. This project was not motivated by politics, religion, or financial goal. It was independently funded by only the time spent in the process and by the generosity of the various international participants. — Jerry King Musser

Annie Abrahams sends out an open invitation to participate in her project FearingS which is a part of:

“Oppera Internettikka – Protection et Sécurité” explores the poetics of a contemporary sound form — live opera as a sound event for the audience in the form of a live internet audio broadcasting. In that way it combines the notion of the world wide web communication protocols and classical artspace — an opera house. Opera is a very strictly coded form of art with a lot of passion, and internet is a lonely place of solitude and intimate communication which is becoming more and more fragile, dangerous and suspicious.

finally starting to gather work for no man’s land, a collaborative online project organized by Varsha Nair and Katherine Olston of womanifesto international art exchange based in Bangkok, Thailand. (photo by Manit Sriwanichpoom)

Consider this territorially imagined line — the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. Borders also contain/define/give rise to our sense of nationalism, and related historical and current cultural practices and narratives that are perpetuated in a variety of ways help to define ones sense of nation-hood and ownership.

Consider, also, the ‘no man’s land’ itself; it is at once, the in-between space of the border, the border-less scape of cyber space, and the place within us that cannot so easily be explained by the nationality on our passport. The no man’s land, in all its diversity is a relevant space that is the reality of many in the globalized world of today.

long day in the city. starting in the United Nations Plaza which is, definitely a coagulation of spirits. first scenario visiting the eye on regaining ground-level from the Civic Center BART station is that of a seagull in the process of eviscerating a live pigeon. by the time I film, the pigeon is dead. the second scenario: to kill time, I drop in at the Asian Art Museum where the guards start to check everything in my backpack and begin to recite a mantra of all the things that cannot be brought in or used or done (or thought!) in the Museum. I stop them, and say that I am not interested in participating in their particular little corner of the social system, pack my bag and walk out. and head back along streets brimming with urine-reek, the displaced homeless, flophouse hotels, and so on. at a stop Light, a woman standing next to me asks the world in general how can I restart my career? I look at her and say I was going to ask you the same thing! it is clear that social empowerment is at an extreme low here in the center of San Francisco.

lunch with Casey, and on to a rendezvous with Sophea and Amanda. a double espresso puts an edge on the afternoon. on the way, evidence of a TAZ is spotted: a good omen! although the juxtaposition with other street scenes previously experienced in the day raises many questions about the way a TAZ might be expressed in this time, in this socio-political system.

on to Whole Foods for breakfast provisions, Casey goes home to study, we head back to Amanda’s place to prep for the trans-national breakfast with the Sydney

and Adelaide crews at 1630 local time. the breakfast — French Toast, fruit compote, pashed (!) potatoes, and champagne is streamed and rebroadcast on free103point9 in Brooklyn, NY as part of the live_feed: Breakfast Radio streaming project. the overall performance was initiated by Andrew Burrell and the Hybrid Radio Research Group as part of the Aural Degustation: Tasty Bites to Feed the Ears exhibition at the SCA Galleries at the SCA in Sydney, Australia. participants included: (in Adelaide): Mimi Kelly, Sasha Grbich, Jen Brazier, Heidi Angove, and Tamara Baille ; (in San Francisco): Amanda Hendricks, Sophea Lerner, and John Hopkins; (in San Diego – special telematic drop in): Amanda MacDonald-Crowley; (in Sydney): Lia Smith, Amber Moloney, Clara Chow, Bjel Bakker, Belle Brooks, Heidi Abraham, Sach Catts, Alli Barnard, and last-but-not-least, Andrew Burrell.

Back to the iDC list — consistently marvel how the topics on the list draw me out, especially when I am so overwhelmed with the local in-ma-face reality. The following in response to Josh Levy’s comment (which one in a series of comments under the subject — undermining open source: iTunesU):

> i think Apple has been let off the hook for a long time especially by cultural
> activists. Bill Gates and Microsoft have been an easy bugbear, but Apple are
> monopolists too and have been since they first started making an OS that works
> only with their own hardware.

Outi, a former student sends this link http://www.liveherring.org, a project she’s been working on.

and more iDC mailing list commentary

We Have Never Been Modular…

Thanks to everybody who commented on my text “Remix and Remixability” (November 16, 2005). It was provoked by reading about web 2.0 and all the excitement and hype (as always) around it, so indeed I am “following the mainstream view” in certain ways. But I would like to make it clear that ultimately we are talking about something which does not just apply to RSS, social bookmarking, or Web Services. We are talking about the logic of modularity which extends beyond the Web and digital culture…

Modularity has been the key principle of modern mass production. Mass production is possible because of the standarisation of parts and how they fit with each other – i.e. modularity. Although there are historical precedents for…

Maintaining consistency in this huge, constantly changing network is the work of standards. Standards are socially constructed tools: They embody the outcomes of negotiations that are simultaneously technical, social, and political in character. Like algorithms, they serve to specify exactly how something will be done. Ideally, standardized processes and devices always work in the same way, no matter where, what, or who applies them. Consequently, some elements of standards can be embedded in machines or systems. When they work, standards lubricate the construction of technological systems and make possible widely shared knowledge. — Paul N. Edwards

Edwards, P.N., 2004. A Vast Machine: Standards as Social Technology. Science, 304(7 May 2004), pp.827-828.

Measurement is a comparison process in which the value of a quantity is expressed as the product of a value and a unit; that is, Quantity = {a numerical value} x {unit} where the unit is an agreed-upon value of a quantity of the same type. The concept of a quantity such as length is independent of the associated unit; the length is the same whether it is measured in feet or meters. A standard is a physical realization of the definition, with an agreed-upon value to be used as a reference. — Jeff Flowers

Flowers, J., 2004. The Route to Atomic and Quantum Standards. Science, 306(19 November 2004), pp.1324-1330.

logfile

tuning in to Lev Manovich‘s lecture/discussion at V2. last time I saw Lev was at my flat in Helsinki in 2000, I made dinner for him, Tapio, and Susanna. His topic is “scale effects.” Stephen Kovats, a curator at V2, sent an email invitation to myself and a handful of other folks who frequently participate in such live/online events. it is a non-standard way to participate, for sure, watching and hearing the event via an audio/video stream, and reacting to that via an IRC channel that is projected into the lecture space. there is much more that one could do to push this format for live interaction, but it usually ends up being rather mundane and polite.

the irc discussion parallel leaves much space for wondering at Lev’s success. there seems a close linkage between text production and influence, something I have mentioned many times in other places. he made careful note that he is working on two new books and is proceeding at a rate of 2500 words a day. seems linear, quantitative, and retro. hmmmm.

to the IDC list

Starting off the month with reading more from and about David Bohm, the quantum physicist and researcher into the nature of human relation (in the form of his defined term, dialogue). He maintained a suspicion about language, that it formed a mechanism which reified that-which-was-being-talked-about as it was (being) manifest in language. The idea that thought tends to impress a static order on the world outside. (And meanwhile, accepting the premise that all reality is a dynamic procession, thought included.) However, there is an inexorable process — as thought creates knowledge from reality (experience) — that seeks to lock in a fragmentary (incomplete) view excised from reality. This is one general characteristic of linguistic representation of dynamic reality. In a similar vein, Walter Ong (2002) maintained that the transition from aural to written to printed language defined deep shifts in the relation of the Self to the Other and to reality. He compiled a set of characteristics of expressed/expressive thought (=spoken word) that supports the necessary salience of aurally transmitted information (as there were no other ways to catch / statify information in aural cultures):

expression is additive rather than subordinate;
it is aggregate rather than analytic;
it tends to be redundant or “copious;”
the process tends to be conservative;
out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close references to lived reality;
expression is agonistically toned;
it is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced;
it is homeostatic;
it is situational rather than abstract

The key to most of these characteristics is that they directly relate to embodied presence versus the absence (and abstractedness!) of a (printed) text. So that here, in this blog, there is a long sequence of absences, separations — which together accumulate as disembodied virtuality. Ong elsewhere hints about the cumulative effect of this movement from embodied connection with language to the abstractions of mediation introduced by printed texts. And on into the further mediation in telephony (all ‘tele’ or attenuated/virtual realities I would suggest). Socialization is that process of abstraction and reification of what were once active and dynamic processes happening at a granular level of human-to-human. The process moving from dialogue to incontrovertible law (protocol) is a mapping of the ‘advance’ of a social system. Yet, social order is dependent on that dynamic of that granular ground state of the system — at least if a society wishes to retain a vital edge on evolutionary survival. It is precisely this reification process that spells the doom of a social system — though often not before that system has attained a temporary advantage over other systems (by being more efficient in a materialist way), and caused great suffering and alienation.

back to the thesis application preparation. the following is, in a way, a Utopian case that forgets the holistic and distributed system that communication and its impulses arises in:

We have thus established the basis in man for the simplest element in his communication: namely, the communication of man with man by the immediate use of language, when two men are face to face with one another… this capacity is not intrinsically restricted to the immediate presence of the individual, for we have many means to carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth. — Norbert Weiner

while the premise is intrinsically true, Weiner neglects (for example) the reality of the infrastructure assembly process to undertake the real movement of language across those vast distances. those infrastructures do not materialize themselves. they are specific and real social constructs. assemblages that social systems expend liberally on to assemble and maintain: they are the fabric of the social system — the techno-social system. therefore, while the mediation of abstracted language can be shuffled around, the human participating in the system of shuffling does, somehow use some real energy in order to participate. while this energy, considered on a limited scale may seem minor or non-existent — i.e., someone hands me a phone to make a trans-continental call, which I undertake with an expenditure of a marginal amount of embodied energy — someone, somewhere, as part of the larger social system, collected vast amounts of energy from the distributed individuals that make up the system and assembled the entire electrical/physical infrastructure of the telecom system.

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor's note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 which set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. (more …)

the speed of religious innovation. words to wake up with from a sleep of a thousand dreams and groping around for the pathway. these two thoughts come to me: the despair I face is of my own making; and fearlessness is paramount. it is always this internal relation to the world, where change is framed as something accomplished by introspection, not in relation with the surrounding presence of spirit. although there should be no distinction between the internal spirit and the external spirit. they are One. but connection to that dynamic flow remains elusive and transitory in the confusing rush of noise that the social brings. (how this sounds an anti-social position, but this is not the case, merely to recognize the effect of social structures (as they enhance material survivability) on the individual.)

interstitial awareness, and Brakhage’s rise to the surface of my consciousness through meeting certain Others. the sheer animated viscerality of his expressions that so activated my fascination. the further individual creative expressions/projections can be stripped of the restrictions of abstracted and impressed social channeling, the closer the impulse comes to pure energy.

The light of power is waning. The eyes of individual subjectivity cannot adapt to mere holes in a mask, which are the eyes of those fog-bound in shared illusion. The individual’s point of view must prevail over false collective participation. In total self-possession, reach society with the tentacles of subjectivity and remake everything, starting with yourself. The reversal of perspective is what is positive in negativity, the fruit which will burst out of the old world’s bud. — Raoul Vaneigem

The netart 2004 exhibition is opening tomorrow, well, today, as Tokyo is ahead of Arizona. Here’s the blurb posted as my curatorial commentary:

back on routes, a grueling week from Iceland to Denmark, to New York to Maryland to San Francisco. all in seven days. after the early morning departure from Ice Land in a chill dark snowy wind. nothing else but. so it goes. leave-taking, the usual heart pain.

dash away for a lunch and meeting with Søren in the Digital Aesthetics Research Center at the Åarhus UNiversity. then a brief stop at the Art Academy of Jutland, home of splab, to meet Tanja and take a tour of the place to satisfy my always-keen curiosity to see schools and organizations on the ground. run into mr. noisejihad himself, Mikko, who participated in both di-fusion events and was a co-curator of the Overgaden festival as well. connections, connected, but the total brevity of the visit makes it almost useless. feeling antsy about getting somewhere, and the in between sensation gets overpowering when stops are too short. needing like a week to chill and engage anymore. and I didn’t even visit folks in Iceland hardly. nomad leaves for the steppes where stars are hard and cold, and many. check out. rocketing through the night by train, in the hvileplads car (the quite-place). phones and talking are banned. I lucked out getting a seat in this car, the train seems pretty full. yeah, just noticed that I haven’t heard anyone speak except for the conductor going through asking for tickets. even the guy selling food didn’t really say anything, but is suddenly smiling in my face.

(no)music arena started in the night and goes all day today. got a small streaming situation set up at the Academy and was testing and irc-ing with some of the other participants — Jerome, Steve, laboite, and others. I’ll do a set mid-day. then matchmaking cranks into gear in the evening. meanwhile meet with Per Erik, another workshop participant for a focused dialogue on an even-morphing range of subjects.

since the workshop unraveled in this strange dynamic at the Academy, I spent the whole afternoon with Professor Jaccheri — one of the two workshop participants — from the IT department of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. trading ideas about university existence and the facilitation trans-disciplinary art:science studies. late in the evening, the walk home over the — bridge, and to the north, faintly, the Aurora Borealis shimmers.

We use narratives to impose order on our circumstances, and that will to impose order on reality (instead of discovering order in experience and attempting to conform oneself to that order) is characteristic of modernity. — Bruce Elder

narrative as a form (well, form itself has the explicit ‘meaning’ as an ‘outcome of a human re-configuration of energies,’ an intervention). so, although there are a plethora of po-mo critiques of narrative, and a certain level of critical art-making around/against narrative. even e-narrative and the hyper-text — that free and utopian post-narrative writing environment is fundamentally mired in the same ‘problem’ of having this applied form. it’s the same! Elder’s name comes up, synonymous in my pantheon with Brakhage, partly through formal connections, but also in the energized lived experience of his film work. only frustrating that nothing substantial of his writings are online. so, not available to me here. found a paper copy for sale of a short monograph that he wrote for the epic 42-hour “The Book of All The Dead” film on the occasion of it’s screening at the Anthology Archive in 1988 (a show that I was at and subsequently had coffee with Bruce later at his hotel). would not have missed that, as it was the last installment of the work, the first 19 hours of which he premiered at Boulder one weekend back in 1987. reel after reel, sitting in a small classroom with about 8 other people. transformative experience. a primal inspiration for subsequent duration-related works undertaken. pushing mind and body through many limits. buried in my archive is a copy of that document, it was required reading in one class in 1997 at CU, and I would like to make it available online if Bruce agrees. but that’s another time issue, when there are more pressing things to deal with. like logistics, as usual. most plane tickets are purchased to get me through the summer, but there is still the extant question about teaching in Tallinn before I leave this region; sending out emails about scheduling gigs for the next academic year; participating in an online conference at V2, and in several online events as well; presenting at RAM5 in Riga in a week, and so on.

massaging the database. updating all contact information. what else for the archivist to do? something that has been wanting for years. re-contacting folks, mostly making open distribution channels for current energy.

sun up early. real early, comes in exactly to strike the eyes as it rises over the roof of the quarters opposite ours on the courtyard. that Lightening buzz begins to stir somewhere in the troposphere.

spent much of yesterday online, remote. talking with the http://archive.reboot.fm crew during their collaborative re-streaming project from Berlin. Thomax from the old orang.orang radiostadt project was there as irc host, and many net-amigos dropped in during the course of the 12-hour stream. by day’s end. though, I was wondering about the effect of a full day online, again. ‘the price you pay’s a very general and deep issue regarding technological implementations, technological consumptions, technological deployments anywhere, anytime, anyhow. the cost that is extracted from the individual and collective psyche is always there, this is a principle. as soon as one begins to make a re-configuring of the natural conditions of flow, that re-configuration itself, because at least part of it is contrary to the flow, costs in that the self has to expend internal energies, or, to get Others to do the same. huge discussion to try to launch into here, now. part of that greater schema that I have been promoting on a granular lever in teaching.

it may be that the schema never gets to a formal representational package beyond the actuality of a stand-up/taught lecture/discussion. the process of re-presenting it at a higher level of social order may require too much energy, more than I have. though Frieder is really inspiring me with his questions and reflections on the new thesis proposal, it is incredibly difficult to get much done about it.
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now have to run to catch a boat. not the ferry to town, but I am making a new short video work, another simple ambient work called action at a distance which is a single shot somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge on the island over a smallish inlet. when the large cruise ships go by about 100 meters away, through the very narrow channel that guards the main harbor, there is an intense though subtle oscillation of the water levels that slowly moves the remaining chunks of rotting ice back and forth. an example that human perturbations in the world are not only felt in the immediate vicinity. but that they reverberate and extend themselves in subtle forms, perhaps infinitely. and that is the question. is it possible to devise a work that tests/illustrates the idea of simultaneity. where quantum suggests that any change in the universal energy continuum anywhere is simultaneously ‘experienced by all points in the continuum. seems only an accession to Buddha-hood would contain the ‘ proof.’ and just this morning before I started writing, I had this strange impression that my need to ‘prove’ my model is a total caving-in to the scientific method, that dominant driving model. sheesh. how to avoid that and remain socially viable? might not be possible.

in conversation with Sophea last night, I realized that, yup, I do have a streak of anti-sociability. it does not affect individual relationships, per se, but it affects abilities to interface with the socially mandated pathways of institutions, and the positions that individuals carve out for themselves as a result of participating in such structures. hmmmm.

almost a month later. in the middle of a conference. mapping transitions. academic discourse. so. stream notes. what do pictues want? god is an artist. reductions (models, models, models, built on each other, intertwined. biocybernetics. science/technology making bio-sciences possible. cloning and computers. extended sense. political economy that runs the world. world of computer station, tangled wires. cybernetics: the steersman. kybernaut. writing as control system. not law, but the actual technologic/semiotic (phonetic) tools. (code writers). conflict of visual orgy and at the time of triumph of the digital (logos). analogical arguments. (dominant). terminator of liquid metal. ultimate simulator. academicians desperately searching for a label. an interpretive system to decode what the hell is going on. building a new model with old embedded pieces which have no inherent difference in structural predicate. sa-mo, sa-mo. formative paradigms are old. 1) copy original 2) artist and work (subject:object) 3) temporality (remember Virilio, huh?) 4) time of gain. uniqueness. copy has more aura than original.

enhancements of amplification (reproduction): are they qualitative improvements? reproductive cloning — an improvement?

actual and mediated. (electronic media is given a certain status of unprecedented power.) “new media.” participates in “massaged” production. mechanistic view. the aesthetics of digital media? (what about defining what the hell “digital media” is? (instead of defining it’s “fit” into the hegemonic/dominant worldview). hybrid aesthetics? why not just toss it out…? simulation. materialistic presence. current, seeking closure in the circuit. remix, unlocking input and output authenticity. (digital images and digital culture and rituals of new media). new vs traditional: imitations. virtuality. ontological status. proper character. procedural, conceptual (don’t fit…). anti-materialist. (medium is not the point). thesis-antithesis. we’re not allowed to make progress? hierarchies of form. perfection of expression. useful ways to talk about objects. (and subject experience). taste. rational cultivation. descriptive systems assume static forms of … aesthetics of change. mechanistic production. potential literature. procedural methods. with certain sensibilities. floods of wards. static bodies in space. reading texts. monolithic and reified forms of presentation. (any tweaking of of meta shakes the whole tree, gimme a chain saw). key forms of reference — generative: Pannini, Turing, Babbage, procedural, Stockhausen, and so on. iterative. new objects. rethink premises of knowledge production. aesthetics is about awareness. (iterative), step beyond — in flux. two feet in the mechanistic…

swarming

taking quantum to its conclusion — points to a movement from product to process to practice — (Saskia Sassen — the “meaning” of the activities in the digital sphere is the total accumulation of all practices that take place in that space … MAKE THE LEAP…

anthropological centrism. mapping transitions. (remembering the new world order is a limited access, top of a hierarchical high). indigenous technology. Inuit Broadcast Corporation. media-maintenance. next5minutes comes up, tactical media. good topic.

reproduction (gathering and redistribution of original energized event creates a pseudo-powerful illusion, but this is purely illusion based on the hegemonic (and static) position of the “reproducer” within an implied “global” order … the photograph in the world order (re-radiated Light from the self.) … some forms of hypertext with image are nice, but. just ’cause it’s horizontal?

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. — Plato’s Cave

caves, CAVES, and caves. technocracy. aristocracy of technology. networks of expensive, institution-oriented situations, (isolated from the Light, Light re-amplified, reflected, refracted, energized). “gotta have content.” flippant sycophant, mouthpiece of the complex. access. high-end polarity. slick-packaged technological. famous last words. manipulation and collaborative interaction. glib passing over any moral embeddedness of the power structure. fair use. attitudes of use.

day blows with a half-Chinook wind. with half-lenticular clouds. always with the breakthrough around 3:30 in the afternoon, the sun coming to the westward leading edge of those clouds, giving another one or two hours of strong western sunLight, unless you are right up at the Flatirons, like my place happens to be, sunset by 4:00 at the latest. or so. sun, mountain, cloud, sky. remember again, when looking at the sky, it’s best to stop walking ahead. a maxim? perhaps. but so busy talking to people that, well, nothing got done. half-way through the afternoon, Kari showed a couple to my office door, a quiet knock, and I meet a Turkish fellow, and his American partner. she was working in New York, but got offered a position in Fort Collins, they were visiting the area to check out what might be happening that was interesting. he is an artist, but I didn’t have time to check his site out. and so on. afternoon happening at the blurr_lab. meeting people, talking. end up looking in on and helping some of the students testing equipment for <di>fusion. and stumbling home after another 14-hour day at school.

the 20.02.2002 project (pdf) from zonezero catches an inconsequential Gregorian time-slice the other day. I fill the bathtub in earnest desire to get to warm and wet states.

musings. a chaotic class session. people displeased. people struggling to have autocratic decisions made for them. rather than making the decisions themselves. from fear. this devolution process that I undertake in class is always traumatic for participants who expect and want only the kind of education that has kept them powerless and loving it. taking control without an agenda leads to anarchy. but a movement through different relations of power in “the classroom” is a transformative process. almost without fail (unless the student has already been through it consciously and is ready to move to a more daring state of interaction. like the relational dialogue which is friendship!

finishing touches to the research plan part of the application to the doctoral program at UIAH (University of Art and Design Helsinki) Media Lab. an applied program which I hope might allow me some breathing space to recenter my activities in education and networking. and do things like coagulate bleeding wounds of sensibility:

Me:
>> I mean, can we really afford to ignore the conceptual/spiritual
>> philosophies underpinning the (monolithic) Chinese culture? As well as
>> MANY other basic cultures (including many local manifestations of
>> Christianity in the past 2000 years)? Typical blind-sided-ness of Western
>> Thought patterns! The dematerialization of life is essential, followed by
>> the transformation to the paradigm that all is energy! I love throwing
>> E=mc2 on the board! Energy is the body/mass convolved by the velocity of
>> Light acting upon itself! Conversly, the Body is Light to itself
>> subdivided by its energy…

Mark:
>> write it up dood! hypertextualize it in bodily chunks of light and then
>> link it to other destinations — the writer as networked energy…

glad that somebody thinks this is important. but this has always been a real problem with my work — that each time I have gotten something into a formal, materialized presence, I see how imperfect it is, and indeed, I have never been satisfied with any form of working this stuff out EXCEPT with a smallish intimate and interactive set of participants. everywhere from the slide-show parties back in the late 70′s and 80′s to the camping trips and dinners. why should an artist’s context be something ELSE if one is really intent on opening a dialogue with the Other. otherwise, the chances of opening any kind of connection through the overtly formalized and sterile ploys of the Art World is close to zero. slept with yer gallerist lately? Sanna calls, mmmmm. and have a rolling talk with Loki while he is multi-tasking between me and Saturday morning Tom and Jerry cartoons in Iceland. “Pabby, he just threw a paper airplane out the window … and look now, he opened the front door and the airplane just flew back in, how did that happen?”

Volker tells me stories from the Valley of the Queens, where he participated in some archaeological restorations on friezes in The Temple of Hatshepsut with Justina last December. and so, the following fragment. tossed into the morphological stew that forms this longer story.

O you who cut off heads and sever necks and who put folly into the mouths of the spirits because of the magic which is in their bodies, you shall not see me with those eyes of yours with which you see, you shall kneel on your knees, you shall go about with your face behind you, you shall look on the tormentors belonging to the God of Air who follow after you to cut off your head and to sever your neck at the behest of Him who saved his lord, because of this which you have said you would do to me, namely the putting of folly into my mouth with intent to cut off my head, sever my neck, and to close my mouth because of the magic which is in my body, just as you did to the spirits because of the magic which was in their bodies. may your face be downcast at seeing this face of mine! may the flame of the Eye of the Creator God go forth against you within the Eye of the Sun God, which was injured on that night when it swallowed you. — Egyptian Book of the Dead, Spell 90, for removing foolish speech from the mouth

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):

nine more days in the north for now. quickly the darkening comes. and days are filled with the radiation of monitors. partly Tornio becomes synonymous with staring into screens. the extreme of virtuality. when I take a slow walk to the store for food this afternoon, thoughts crowd my head: IS there a way to use media, mediation that is FOR life? IS it possible to use these things without leaving life, losing life, or missing life? what of the people in this time now who have no use for these image machines? they are tough, hard, and will have little trouble dispatching those soft ones of us who couch in front of screens. I have little use for discussions of this and that aspect and detail of the mechanics of culture. the Utopians, the distopians, the doomsayers, the academics who end up saying nothing after long-winded forays into the depths of their particular tribal language. I can hardly bring myself to participate in these exchanges unless.

early this morning Adrianne ran the Sayonara Diorama performance in New York; with a few students here, I connect up via CUSeeMe and we participate for the duration, maintaining a conversation with Tapio, Steve, Susanna, Ariel, and others connecting up from other locations around Europe and the US. until 0530 here when the performance finishes in NYC in the early evening there.