Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.

Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these areas which will stimulate the thesis.

The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”

So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear albeit self-relative experience (impression) and consequent expressions regarding that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview which touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.

Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.

And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers!

We’ll be providing a pdf file of the book at some future date, after the final symposium and exhibition in Berlin (coming up this week! see info below), and when any sales of the existing print run are over and done with.

Presented by The European School of Visual Arts (EESI), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA)

Migrating:Art:Academies:

Conference – 15-16 October 2010, 13:00 – 18:00
Exhibition opening – 14 October 2010, 19:00
Exhibition – 14-16 October 2010
Opening times – daily between 10:00 – 19:00

Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstrasse 12, Berlin

The two-year project Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) comes to a close with its Laboratory V Migrating:Art:Academies:. This exhibition and conference, organized in cooperation with Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, will map the territory around an ensemble of new and innovative forms of creative practice. During MigAA students from the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE), and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT) traveled in Media RVs (recreational camping vehicles) throughout Europe, engaging the local cultural and environmental milieu, and creating art works “on the road.”

“The wealth of Migrating Art Academies was unanimously proclaimed by both the participants and by those who they encountered in the course of the project. This creative experiment was also an excellent educational laboratory and such laboratories undoubtedly play a critical role in a time of European-wide reforms in art education.” says Sabrina Grassi-Fossier, the MigAA coordinator and director of European School of Visual Arts, Angouleme/Poitiers.

The combined MigAA exhibition and conference does not claim to be a full picture but rather a presentation of life-sketches, fragmentary practices, and evolving processes. These active threads together chart a new territory for learning that turns away from most traditional academic strategies. This open event is meant to critically address this new approach and to open it up for public dialogue.

On Thursday, 14 October, Migrating:Art:Academies: will open with an exhibition of works by more than thirty students from the three European art academies at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. The selected projects, developed during the four consecutive MigAA laboratories in Berlin, Vilnius, Linz, and Royan, range from drawings and maps to installations and interactive works.

The laboratory will also present a 300+ page reader as a summary of the two years of distributed and mobile research. The book, divided into three essential parts – Migrating:, Art:, and Academies: – serves as a navigation supplement for the exhibition and the conference as well as the overall project.

The conference will take place on Friday and Saturday, 15 – 16 October and is divided into four panels: Migration, Education, Technology, and a final Round Table session with the participating students.

Friday, 15 October
13.00 : Migration panel
16.00 : Education panel

Saturday, 16 October
13.00 : Technology panel
16.00 : Final Round Table

About Migrating Art Academies

Migrating Art Academies is an ongoing joint educational project of three European higher education institutions: the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT). Its primary purpose was to research and develop a progressive model of education that combines new and innovative forms of creative practice, collaboration, cooperation, and production. For the duration of the project, students had the possibility to work in an autonomous zone situated between virtual and real worlds, as well as between their normal home environment and new, unfamiliar places. The students investigated and engaged the local environment at the same time as developing creative projects in response to their experiences. The MigAA project is financed by the European Commission Culture Program 2007-2013. For more detailed information, please visit: http://www.migaa.eu/.

The conference language is English. Admission is free.

Migrating Art Academies team:

Mindaugas Gapsevicius (top e.V.), Sabrina Grassi-Fossier (Coordinator, EESI), Jonas Hansen (KHM), Zilvinas Lilas (KHM), Alvydas Lukys (VDA), Sylvie Marchand (EESI), Vaclovas Nevcesauskas (VDA), Martin Rumori (KHM).

Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed watching of rotating the stellar field.

This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy — it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
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Before this chunk of the later afternoon I went down to Blue Lake Wildlife Area to check out the swimming possibilities. The water is around 80°F year-round and the lake itself formed through the effects of a geothermal percolation spring. It’s frequently used by open-water scuba divers for certification, and the area shows the signs of heavy human abuse (the BLM doesn’t really ‘manage’ it much).

The psychical framing of intention within the making/creating of a reductive tracing of the phenomenal world would seem to be critical. What is the intention of an image, for example? Is it as fundamental as the intention of God in the creation of the world? Or can it be explained away as merely an artifactual process of the techno-social system that one happens to be embedded within? Clearly one intention is to use the artifact to say “Look what I saw!” And, so, the process should never be undertaken when there are others around, as they are already experiencing the phenomenal world, albeit from another point of view. Although this suggests that the artifact is used in the presentation and validation of one point of view with an other. (This presentation process and its outcome may also fast-forward root into the resonances arising from the juxtaposition of those two differing POV’s). Is this the sole, core reason? Or is there something else? Is there more to it? This juxtaposition (though more complex and intertwined than that word suggests) is a form of dialogue in that extended sense of the energized interaction of the Self and the Other. hmmm.

Men’s opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason — at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. . . . Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics. — John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”

Yes, definitely, opinion is affected by the directions of the wind. And add to the multifarious causes the role that contemporary media plays in opinion-forming. Counter-pointed by the influence that the controlling figures in those social media structures have — all as a result of the face-time, the attention spent by individuals on those channels of ‘information.’ It is precisely this passivity, or servility, as Mill calls it that forms the kernel of power in every regime or social organization.

How to transcend the rigidity of extant and defined protocol? Opposition is no cure. Poetry is emetic (of protocol); or poetic stretching, morphing of the protocol. Or simply turning away to create a new protocol. This is a critical issue as protocol underlies all techno-social deployments. All. And the affect of protocol, its genesis, its makers, its purview, all contribute to the formation of a (dominant) worldview that it imposes a(n arbitrary) frame of reference upon the participant in the particular techno-social system. On the other hand, life without protocols: an impossible situation for social animals (or any animal, for that matter — a protocol may be thought of as a way of going, whether self-directed or directed by innate sense and following the line of maximized entropy production).

This conundrum applies to all (socially) evolved protocols, no matter the genesis. It means that this pervades and saturates, all experiences of being (except perhaps for the pre-human, or over-human). On The Poetics of Protocol, a working title moving towards a core thematic. Using the metaphor of a sliding scale, at one end, chaotic ways of going, at the other, completely prescribed ways of going, life falls somewhere in between.

Having to jump between several points-of-view — the tremendous volume of applicable writing on the range of subjects; a strong, principled, and unifying overview tied to idiosyncratic personal experiences; and, finally, the mental focus required to tie all this jetsam together — the jump has to be transformed into a creatively complied micro-narrative. But looking around at the plethora of source materials is always discouraging — in form and content. The inability to structure my own content into a form consistent with the material that I consume is disturbing, though idiosyncratic expression is one of the goals for DCA research. (Inconsistency has potential to uncover innovative spaces and may be used as a strategic tool or approach.) So this can be viewed as a strategic advantage in the creative interpretation and packaging of the material. Content-wise, I am confident of the presence of something to say, as well as a subsequent pathway-of-action reflecting what is said. Daunting task none-the-less, from any vantage.

Seeing from more than one point-of-view requires motion or at least movement between points of stasis. Does the establishment of a point-of-view require a cessation of movement? (motion of course is completely relative regarding point-of-view: life is never static so point-of-view never absolutely static)

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered.

Silence, or the absence of human-created noise, relates to presence of other humans as well as other beasts. While walking in bear country complete silence is not a safe option, so encounters with other humans in bear country usually begin at a distance, either with bells or simply boisterous activity. Encounters with bears are sometimes at a distance, but sometimes not. I have found that the presence radiated by large hairy carnivores with big teeth usually precedes any sight.

Bush-whacking is a situation where encounter with an Other becomes so rare as to evoke a certain fear if only from the statistical improbability of encounter whilst specifically not on a trail. Sadly, it is a probability that rises as the global population increases. Too many folks out there! And one has to be aware of the timing of the off-trail experience: hunting season is not a good time to bush-whack!

Enroute, one suspends the closed-ness of daily routine. The sameness of daily regimen is upset and in its place is the jarring uncertainty of arrival in unknown, medial, places. In between here and there. Starting point, ending point. Suspended animation is an apt term. Animate, moving, but somehow suspended by the vagaries of being someplace in particular, some nameable place, some identifiable locus.

It is in this liminal space, on the thresh keld, thresh hold, the border between the space of known nutrition and the potentialities of the unknown, where all learning and change takes place. As a setting for the encounter with the Other, partaking food, sharing nutrition with a stranger is an exceptionally powerful meeting of ritual.

Of course, there is the argument that says movement can be only in mind, and such mental travel is as efficacious in bringing transcendence as any physical movement. But the movement I write of here is not a simple Cartesian transposition of body, of point-of-view, it is the processural space of encountering the unknown Other. This will precipitate something of a shift in point-of-view, no matter how small in that Cartesian sense — it is the principle of change that matters — and in an open encounter, change occurs. This demands embodied motion. Turning to face the Other.

Over the years, I observe that I take very few photographs in the place where I live. With a few exceptions of concentrated exercise to see the unknown within the known, it is on the road where sight opens and newness brings that rushing tension of encounter. That tension, when unchecked, concentrates in the shoulders and subsequently crawls up the gall-bladder channel to root behind the eyes, migraine. Gotta deal with that. Opening the shoulders, the channel, to allow the movement of difference, the tension of change to simply transit the body without leaving damage in its wake. This will be a theme of movement. To pass through and allow a passing through of the energies of encounter.

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

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blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:

blurb for SNO gallery wall, December 2009, NSW, Australia:

I was telling someone the other day that I am a good participant. I know how to jump into a situation and contribute in a way that is sensitive to the ambient flows that are happening at the same time as clearly manifesting a unique set of contributing flows. Perhaps a bit too conservative in respecting the paths of those ambient flows, but it’s probably better to be slightly more conservative than liberal. Uhh, such loaded terms. Useless words after they are so distorted by socio-politics of certain cultural configurations. Although it is ironic to note that here in Australia their political meaning is in (antipodal) opposition. Which simply emphasizes the idiocy of politics (as Peter Tosh observed once: Politics, “poli” means people, “ticks” are parasites, politics, parasites on the people). Words, language, always tends to go through this reification process. Followed by a morphing process when the reified language becomes overwhelmed when attempting to explicate new situations or when circumscribing known situations with a different point-of-view. The reified structures will be bolstered and protected until usage simply makes them redundant.
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Latour’s network(s) of relations (in ANT) are complexifying descriptors for a multiplicity of flows where each actor in the network are the origin and recipient of various flows. Or, they are merely the nodal locales of concentrated flow (as conscripted by the social structures). Again, back to the observation that the structure of the social is the prescription that forces flows into rarefied and concentrated zones or pathways. Each attenuation (measured in relief to a ‘natural’ background flow) becomes an actor in full, constant, and distributed relation to at least some other points in the field. The theory, the image of a multiplicity of flows, taken to a near-infinite limit, a beyond-multiplicity, an infinity of nodes would then approximate “reality.” If the network is functioning properly — that is, constructing a plausible account of real social systems — the network will be “an expression to check how much energy, movement and specificity our own reports are able to capture.” (Latour) Those reports, though, are always reductive and incomplete. A map locating the nodes and noting the flows across each one is not the lived territory in time, nor does it accurately express the character of the flows, which in the end are more important than the nodal points.

Is this blog a report? If so, the question becomes how it might more accurately invoke the territory of inquiry. [indeterminacy, trans-disciplinary (discipline being "mortification by scourging oneself", yikes!), without genesis or terminus, and sampling as many strands of lived-impression (not just screen-mediated living) as possible.]

If network is an accurate description of a situation then a consideration of the order that the network imposes on the situation is called for. Network and order, (including Latour’s actor-network) is about the application of a decodable order applied to a diversity of actors within the object of study. It implies reduction, though hints at an ever-expanding point-of-view. It is couched in language (report, correspondance, academic paper, speech, communications) which is problematic, but this limit is applied to practically anything social. Order is rooted in the negentropic tendencies of life in opposition to the entropic character of all non-life. (Depends — is an accretionary disk of stellar matter, through gravity, rising as anisotropic presence of order as the star forms negentropic, or not — is there any fundamental (ordered) difference between varying (relative and Cartesian) densities of energized matter?) The biggest problem with most current usages of network is that very often the nodes are well-defined (to a fault), as are the geometries of connection, but not so much the qualities of the flows between. I’ll have to pay attention to that lack as I troll the literature. There is the (network) engineering efficiency approach which examines the issues around signal transmission and reception including power usage and signal/noise ratios — which are inextricably linked to amplification issues.. But the efficiency is determined after the fact of the signal being strictly defined by existing protocols.

ack! my usage plunges into a cesspool. the Jekyll and Hyde of free-style and efficient. faggeddabouddit!

Yes, there was an event; yes, an event began, barely, when she began to say something. But this event did not come to fruition, for nothing, nothing really, happened — except a sudden defamiliarization of my world, an unforeseen estrangement brought about by the least violent of all acts — the mere emitting of sounds — that topple the sense-structure of my world. After she breached my silent existence, silence returned, devouring both of us again by expropriating my ability to respond. So nothing, nothing really, happened. But this nothing, compared to “idle chatter” and the “forgetfulness” of an ordinary conversation, was much more dramatic. It produced in me an effect like no other. Considering what happened, or rather, what failed to take place, I must confess that I was profoundly affected by it. In fact, I am still living that event through the unique nothingness brought home to me by the incident, suffering from it, agonizing over it as an event that keeps returning as a non-event. In any case, the undeniable fact is that there was an event, there took place a situation that, although nothing, nothing really happened in it, is still happening now. It was like a traumatic “primal scene,” forever gone but constantly coming back. — Briankle Chang, (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p 224)

Reflecting on the abstracted essence of the gap between the self and the other: it suggests the reality that we cannot share the same point of view. There exists an infinitely deep irruption, separation, or gap, between the Self and the Other. This is defined partly by the presence of the energized matter that makes up our bodies and by the fact that this particular embodied form of matter cannot be collocated or commingled with another body. There is the warm and wet topology of sensual engagement, but this is not collocation, though some would like to believe that it is. The Self will never share the same point-of-view as the Other. My eyes cannot be collocated with yours. I may exchange places with you, but when all is change along the arrow of time, what you experienced there and then, I cannot experience there and now. The interstitial chasm exists within constant change and flow and it exists as long as life is embodied. Some models of transcendence suggest a unification, an omniscient one-ness, after embodiment ends, but here and now we all face the challenge of hypostasis, that puzzling duality of existing in a transitory body now and yet connected with an apparently detachable spirit before and after.

Communication cannot not take place. — ibid, p. 227

Technology and the internet have allowed citizens to connect and mobilize like never before. The rise of a new model of internet-driven, people-powered politics is changing countries from Australia to the Philippines to the United States. Avaaz takes this model global, connecting people across borders to bring people powered politics to international decision-making.

that from the site avaaz.org sent to me by a friend on account of the petition for stopping yet another wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence.

but I say oh, really?? to the first line: it would seem that technology and the internet has plunked many fat asses down on chairs and completely de-mobilized potential good citizens in an effective reign of (p)assivity where only the fingers move, and the perspectival point-of-view is locked within a few centimeters of the face.

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. (more …)

Concerning Particular Methodologies

Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.

Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
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I spaced-out posting the netarts 2008 selections last November. here’s my brief jury comments:

in response to this question posed by Annick Bureaud on the [new media curating] list (in a discussion about access to digital information:

The question might be : how much do you (really) pay to get access to a document, how much the people who have worked to provide the access to this document are paid, who (ultimately) pays for this service?

when describing what I observe in the world, I can choose which pre-existing configurations (of an existing language) to use. this will determine the audience. pictures on a wall. objects in a room. speeches, houses, meals. presence. and absence.

movement, nomadism. the restless need for an alternate point-of-view. could this have erupted in that caged feeling of family? being the hamster in the cage and being poked with sticks through the bars. looking for a safe corner somewhere in the bar-delimited space. but never finding it. never safe from those tortuous energies raging around the enclosed space of relation. no escape. with the ultimate result being to curl up in a ball, fetal, and accept the brutality that life brought along. insecurity, fear, and above all, a deep lack of trust in those Others.

now, to trust? how to trust when the early lessons were all about how never to trust. sad eff-ing state of affairs. broken trust. that was the chief operating principle in the meta-structure of family. a self-fulfilling distortion of human relation. breaking the cycle by re-discovering what it is to trust. recalling the trust expressed by friends through their open welcomes and open doors.

tmp.deluxe. call for interest. huh? a large empty space inside a renovated neoclassic building with high ceilings and big windows. controlled on the U1 line by two smiling-but-thuggish youngsters merely flashing their KVB identity cards. as a performance or so. fortuitous to have the right ticket. €2.10 normal tariff. not so cheap. I’m committed to a single round-trip maximum per day. how to do this when a typical day might require getting to four destinations or so. anyway, make it to the tmp.space. they are asking for proposals. slowly the space fills. black clothes, I’m no exception other than wearing faded jeans. there are two of us sitting at a raw chip-board table. call for interest. two large stacks of bluish-white A4 paper, two glass ash trays, one with a few pens cradled in it, one empty. the ubiquitous stench of cigarettes. why is that smell the quintessence of stale? somebody changes the music — electronica for death-metal or so. conversations trip along and don’t seem to get through the aesthetic miasma that is anchored in the stacks of paper and the ashtrays. following the reasoning, following the line. and attempting to insert energy into the situation. having seen and been seen. and a child in a pink t-shirt wanders around. Papa! Papa! making space-testing sounds. to locate herself in the space. doing this, she locates all other receivers in themselves. placing them in the stiff reserve of their aesthetic opinions which they trade in measures, lubricated by wine. locative media while Rome Burns. or is this an exaggeration?

most guests are older than I. a few others are younger. one younger fellow sits at the table and opens a PowerBook and puts headphones on. with his Bionade by his side (the aesthetic anti-Coke backlash). with the stack of empty papers setting a slow gravitational pace at the center of the table. so far, I have not spoken. how long will this take? the little girl in pink finds a lime-green tennis ball that she carries around showing people from her grounded point-of-view. no one else has sat down. the pile of papers does not change. while this pen runs down. I’ll have to get another. older women come in. or are they younger? I can’t tell.

the blank papers keep the slackers away from the table. anti-gravity. good. occasionally searching for meaning or searching for the ultimately meaningful creative statement. finally one lady takes a sheet of the bluish-white bleached paper and sits down.

the little girl in pink is making the best performance: while the kultur-crowd chats loudly over beers and wine (or Bionade), she sings Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa!

some seriously hacked people. deeply en-culturated. and dressed in … black.

nobody else can cope with the stacks of paper — too white, too clean, too sterile. the electronica starts up again in the background. the little girl in pink now yowls Paaaaaaaaaaaapaaaaaaaaaaa! in response, she is perfectly in tune with the ambient zeitgeist.

Miga doesn’t show up yet. I’ll not wait too much longer as more and more people start to smoke. scheisser! I thought the new smoking law came into effect at the beginning of the year that banned smoking in places like this. it stinks.

so, eventually the artist/curator comes up and introduces himself to to me, Mathieu, originally from Marseilles, the Papa of the girl, Eloïse, in pink, and explains the situation, inviting me to make a proposal for the space. this is the kind of facilitation that I have been doing for 20 years. does it get old? possibly, when limited to socially selective instances. pure happenstance (indeterminacy) gives some impetus to try it again and again. it is a-historical. how is that? any human encounter has a potential that is defined at least partially by the moment in which it occurs. change is constant, so that two humans meeting at one moment are not the same a moment later. the potential energy of encounter is not bounded.

first night out in loud Berlin. ambient sound mix. and so it goes. (make an ambient stream from home. and go from there.) keeping to particular centers, comatose. while this feeding of thought goes on here (there, everywhere) where here this kind of creative action is valued: the artist who prescribes it gets paid at least a small amount. or makes some social currency. along much of my pathway, I practice in a void, without any cultural support. have to make the situations happen in socio-cultural situations that are aggravated by the presence of the autonomous zone. so it goes.

the day spent in busy multi-tasking. feeling how it is to make the first bowl of muesli for breakfast in this place; the first shit; after the first night of transient sleep; the first cut apple, omelet, fried garlic; teeth-brushing and shower; incense burned, video conference, ftp upload (check speed); the first walk around the block; shopping trip to the banal Kaiser grocery, the first peek of sunLight into the kitchen window.

and next, I have to make my budget to see how much I have to scrimp around. how much I can do in the social sphere. how much I need to slack at home and WRITE. well, slack is hardly the word.

so, back to the USA. for a short while. media hyped for Christmas selling. a section of the NY Times titled Circuits, about electronic gadgets as holiday gifts, is aimed to keep the techno-social system plodding forwards. one article starts out:

The Global Positioning System is all about self-reliance and helping people find their own way.

wow, where to start with that small bit of promotional utopianism. I mean, c’mon, self-reliance??? when one is in fact relying on a huge military technology system. I equate the words autonomy and self-reliance. though these are not strictly, from an etymological point-of-view, the same, they infer the same independence from outside influence or outside allocation of resources, for example. how can a battery-driven device, manufactured through an intricate global web of resource-consumption that reads data from military satellites, increase self-reliance? the web of dependencies is both wide and deep. can the consumer repair one of these devices if they malfunction? can the consumer easily determine if there is some systemic failure in accuracy (or in ground-truth for that matter)? or modify it productively to fulfill idiosyncratic individual needs? Garmin can’t answer these questions because, as a company, they are already so deep in the web that the edges of and more importantly, the creator of the web remains all but invisible. there is no base-line measure of human autonomy existing on the horizon. that baseline has long since sunk beyond the limits of the knowable world. beyond the purview of the entire spectrum of techno-fetish seekers and Luddites all together. even from the intoxicating heights that the early adopters seek to attain, nothing is to be seen except the endless techno-social plains littered with the detritus of war, consumption, and excess.

the dependencies are also about substituting direct individual sensory input from the natural environment (i.e., terrain, atmospheric, infrastructural evidences) for inputs from this selective (exclusive, limited, biased) infrastructure/system. a dominant system says that its information is superior to any other. it consequently devalues other observational information and its sources.

how can one be autonomous when the dependencies are so deep? it is a relative issue. clearly anyone existing in a social system becomes more-or-less subject to that system. it is a sliding scale, however, and individuals can choose to which degrees that they participate in the system and to what extent they reject involvement. social pressures to adapt the idiosyncratic self to the (monolithic) system exist in a tremendous range of forms. from covert to overt, from soft to hard, from suggestive to compelling, from punishment to reward. it is a sliding scale, though, so that there is a responsive range of choices that one might make which places the Self in relation to the system.

in the case of GPS, yes, it is true that a paper map is simply another form of social construct likely created by a subset of military technologies. but trace back, for a moment, to the originary situation. this is where the Self engages the Other face-to-face, listening to a verbal report of what’s out there. trust is a determining factor in this relation, knowledge of the Other critical in the measure of reliability and range of interpretation of their observations of the world. sliding back up the technological scale gradually removes the immediacy of this relation and the pathway which trust must follow to be realized. what is it to trust ones life with the output of a thousand anonymous Others. what does autonomy mean when any minute mistake by one of those thousands may create a glitch which kills?

every time I board a plane, do I think of this? nah, the baseline is gone. I place my faith and trust in Boeing. besides, I don’t know where I’m going anyway.

more on this in future rants…

waking up before any sunrise, local or remote. no western peaks aglow, just purple sky. no alarm necessary. no people seen, heard, until back onto the strip of asphalt that bisects that section of the desert. dry washes elaborately choreographed through culverts and under bridges. twenty miles of the Interstate is under construction because the washes have washed out the bridge pilings. that must have come with the Pacific storms from early 2005. same time as when the only gas line feeding Arizona from California refineries was washed out. seems that everywhere one drives in the US these days, roads are in pretty poor condition, infrastructure failing. then follows the numbing drive from Barstow, over Tehachapi, then a side-road to Arvin, across the valley to Interstate 5, and on to another side road that goes through the Kettleman Hills. following the San Andreas fault. ages ago, I did a re-analysis of the Kettleman Dome structure from an integrated gravity/seismic point-of-view for UnoCal — a beginners project just to see what kind of skills I had with integrating surveys and data interpretation in general. some areas there have small rocker pumps (praying mantises) every 100 yards or so. the classic post-wildcat scenario without the wooden derricks.

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 …)

a long day starting with a pancake breakfast. Mount Carbon looms over the cabin, 1000 meters vertical and about 3 km. away, a near-conical peak, at least viewed from the cabin. determining the right approach aside from a direct frontal attack was an exercise in reading topology and collaborative human map-reading, but we eventually got to the right starting point, on an old Denver South Park and Pacific railroad grade from mining times, herding the kids was relatively easy, but after a protracted obstacle-course through and around fallen trees on the forest floor of the main approach, a drainage couloir, combined with the mosquitoes, and word from returning hikers that we were just half-way with the steepest ascent ahead, we gave up and returned to the cabin. missing the peak is always a let-down for us strivers, but missing the view was the biggest disappointment for me — just to see the surrounding terrain, from that 360 point-of-view.

after dinner came the Gunnison fireworks, rumored to be quite elaborate. instead of attending the formal spectacle within the Western State College (small) stadium, we decided to just join the rabble situated in the empty lots, and other random locations in the surrounding neighborhood, staking out a stretch of grass near a playground. clearly there was a complex nationalistic happening in the stadium, given the pregnant pauses, cheers, and apparent choreography to the ground-level and aerial fireworks, but it was worth the wait for the big boomers that cut loose directly over us.

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

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

…snip…

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

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

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

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

it is midsummer. moon waxing, not full yet, but there is not so much that touches the eye with length of day, brightness, or even the memory of winter still etched in body. wintering in Colorado was easy. brilliant, and I repeat to many souls that “you will never hear me complain about the weather here.” how is it that I survived Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and especially, Lapland? it is all memory. now. some written here, some not.

shuffling through boxes of books and other things, I think: what’s all the energy focused on the reproduction of art? what is the obsession of getting all art configurations onto paper accompanied by words? paper is an easily preserved object, (the archival word), this is a related factor — to avoid the death of the material object, immortality of the material (the thousand year Reich). seems also related to democratic socialism. that the production of culture should be spread to all, equally. though it is, in the end, not egalitarian propagation by any means. the absolution of “you had to be there.” that an individual’s experience should not be singular, it should be reflected from the collective. rooted and growing only from the collective. not the individualized interpretation of unique seeing (as the reproduction applies a stasis to point-of-view (who’s point of view IS it?), it denies a multiplicity of points of view (portals into the realm of the spirit regarding see-ing and be-ing).

you can relive the voyages of the great explorers — advertisement

flows of energy cannot be categorized, only experienced. it is clear, though when you see them, feel them running the wrong way. like some minuscule route becomes a high-voltage river that rearranges all physical forms in its way. the energy sparking and running last night. my hand ached far into the night, having gripped hers so tightly for the duration of one of the most heart-clenching conversations I have ever had. on the verge, and it is killing me. if I do not slay the dragon that is running me into the nothingness of insensibility, St. George’s dragon, like Loki’s favorite CD cover — “Confrontation” with a stylized and dread-barefoot Bob Marley astride a white horse (that’s Night-Shining-White, I tell him, the name of an obscure Chinese minister’s horse in a fabulous painting in the Met). there Bob sits, Night-Shining-White rearing up, and the Dragon already impaled on the spear that the Rasta Mon wields. killing the dragon. I stopped this travelog somehow partly because the manic energy which has driven my erratic and hectic movement during the last 5 or 20 years is dying. but not dying graciously or painlessly. it dies like a snake, no smart dog to whip it from the tail to zero being. just slow removal, slow in time, but time is moving fast, an inverse relativity. it has shed its skin a hundred times, and shape-shifted a million times, once for every moment that it was to be handled, grabbed, or even examined from a distance. another million times as it entered each other place, each of them, each millisecond, each micrometer of difference in viewpoint recreated it again. but it HAS to die, I HAVE to kill it, quickly. retrospect comes (with age?) or just with point of view? and retrospect says that I have made mistakes that now dog me. sinner paying. nah, like, it just has to be re-routed. re-formed, redistributed. (fat half-moon rising over the city horizon). eighth floor, with a view over the “Swamp Park,” a rather wild chunk of land that apparently stretches north out of the city center to meet something of real Finnish forest — if there is such a thing in a place where all revel in endless rows of copy machines making copies of all things copyable and even some of those holy things that are not. endless trees turning into sheets of toilet paper and laser copy feedstock to take the words of one million and turn them into the collated and stapled tomes of twenty, a hundred million. nah.