John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.

“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”

The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…

I can’t get you out of my mind…

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)

Further, deeper, wider, (more iconoclastic), what is research? Merely to search again? The broadening of a socially-sanctioned knowledge-base? A connecting-of-threads to historic tradition? A discovery of what’s been before? A following of a pre-existing trajectory (but with more fuel for a higher, further flight)? What about re-sensing instead of re-searching? Immersing senses in a situation again (related to German entgegen ‘opposite’). Sensually immersive: sensing difference again (from another situation), and reflecting on that. Or, better yet, riding the gradient of that difference, and using that potential, that power, that source, to express from.

Re-search — to circle again, more intensively — but to remain detached. Neither academic detachment nor technological objectivity are the way that is needed now. We need immersive, connected, aware, and sensual be-ing. In order to apprehend what the world needs of us. An empathetic engagement with all expressions of life-energy.

Creative action — as a descriptor of the wide field of human endeavor — sets up instances of resonance by configuring energies in novel ways. What does it mean to configure energies in novel ways? Assuming the universe is infinite, there are an infinite number of configurations of energy. Bringing energies in juxtaposition, resulting in the creation of difference: it is at the edge where resonant flows arise, along an expressive energy gradient. This juxtaposition of energy requires the Self to take on, generate, new pathways of flow. But how to initiate, how to self-start this process of potentially resonant expression?

One who speaks is such a path-maker. Gathering embodied energy, using the applied protocols of individual body merged with adopted social forms, we speak. Energy flows from one idiosyncratic body to the next. As energy flows, a gradient arises. From where there was undisturbed silence, an arrhythmic disturbance occurs. Within the modulations of energy applied by the body, within this applied difference and at the point where this intersects the presence of the Other, this is where change originates.

Change and difference? Dropping Cartesian temporal and spatial frameworks, what then is change? Can it be reduced to simple difference? Both can be traced back to the (apparently) anisotropic distribution of energy in the universe. This is a primary condition of life. Creation legends depend on the differentiation of energized matter from that-which-is-not, they depend on the creation of levels of being which exhibit difference. And it is along and within those differences, fundamental boundary conditions, where the creative, the unexpected, arises.

Morning reading, sparking off Jacques Ellul’s classic, The Technological Society, where he attempts the first comprehensive definition and discussion of technology as something that pervades and underlies social formation(s). He also discusses a distinct relationship between the machine and technology, where the machine is the most important and obvious aspect of technology; where mechanization “transforms everything it touches into a machine;” but where technology is a cumulative way (perhaps expression?) of integration of the machinic into the social fabric, it is represented by a continuous re-formation of the (human) life-form(s) to the techno-social system. Without this impelling force, humans, as simply another evolutionary life-form expression, would not have arrived at where they are in this moment.

The distinction of human and machinic was a product of materialist thinking which detached the human being from the system of applied flows that the machinic imposes on the world. It is thus easier, mentally, for humans to imagine that there was a master/slave relationship between themselves and that ‘other’ world of technology: that they controlled the technology. This is clearly demonstrated to be a fallacious historical and contemporary view of that relation. Instead the relation is immersive, affective, and it is especially distortive of human-to-human relation. By distortive, going back to basic assumptions about technology, I mean that each expression of technology (which can more-or-less easily be seen as separate for the purposes of analysis of this affect), is seen to apply a set of conditioned flows of power (energy) in its genesis, operation, action, existence, and dissolution. These conditioned flows are formative of ‘natural’ energy flows which occur any/everywhere including between humans.

Right off, Ellul attacks the commonly held belief that there is a particular boundary between technology and science which, though historically indistinct and presently contentious is a fabrication. He contends that the domain of science, beyond “hypothesis and theory” cannot exist without technology. This is at least one small step in realizing that human presences and actions should not divided into arbitrary categories, but considered holistically and in concert with all other fields/flows that are present.

Neither science nor technology can exist without an originary research which is the process of experiencing and re-membering the flows that exist around us. That is, science and technology both rely on the basic functions of the human experiencing of the world, the reception of sensual energies that supply a psychical representation of that world. Science looks for the initial repetition of pattern, relying on memory (in some form) to overlay repeated patterns of flow. When there is a correspondence of flow re-membered, this is duly noted in resonant neural energy patterns in mind. Technology relies on this same re-membering of the flows that surround the social species, but, critically, moves one step ahead (affecting fundamental structures to the social): it applies the (collective) memory of those flows to alter those flows in congruence or consequence to those observed patterns. This is a critical difference, and one that easily circumscribes the relationship of the two ‘fields’ which are framed as distinct but inter-related, rendering them as simply two terms distinguishing similar patterns of human activity. Ellul calls them an “ensemble of means.”

This application of alteration and affectation, along with its resultant refined patterns of energy flow, become, as an cumulative expression of the presence of the human, the fabric of sociality itself.

My approach to technology is not about a return to Nature in that romantic or even Luddite sensibility, but instead, it is a wider understanding or impression of first what the cost is of the totality of altered flows that we as a life-form have imposed on the world, and then, more deeply, what does it mean that we, as simply another expression of life on the earth, have come to where we are as that life-form. Consequent decisions may then be made — to participate or not in certain of these defined energy flows. (more on that later!)

Discussion of the technological cannot exist simply in the realm of the technical or scientific, as the applied alterations to flows of energy as well as their affectations on the wider milieu cannot be completely (or accurately) circumscribed through numeracy.

Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.

The language is based on joining and dis-joining, you see. That is, it’s a perfectly good language if we could use it properly. It has to be used as an artistic form and not as a rigid tool which is supposed to reflect reality exactly — reflect what is exactly. It’s like the notes in music. They look quite separate, but when they’re played, they’re not separate. — David Bohm, dialogue with E.Nada

A necessary feature of the thesis project is inconsistency. For it to be a rich learning experience, it should be variable or stochastic. How to achieve a creative inconsistency, then? Where changing perspectives and voices and models and worn pathways exists in profusion that is at the same time, not overwhelming. A sequence of statements (each a consistent sound-bite), with threads of difference demarcating their extent, applicability, and style.

I would prefer that this whole thesis stay out of the regime imposed by semiotics, that approach to social inquiry being an expression of how the dominant world-view is itself dominated by abstracted elements rather than focusing on the flows of energy themselves. The abstracted systems do, of course, have a heavy bearing on the regime of flows within the social, and largely govern the pathways along which energy flows. However, in order to understand the dynamics of the flows which underlie the abstractions, one has to clear away the abstraction. I hope to frame the issue of language and protocol only to the degree that makes it possible to subtract it from the picture.

Consider the difference as framed following: when two people are speaking to each other, one can make a fundamental structural observation that breaks down the process into the movement of sonic energy and the presence of language. What is the sonic element? It is the movement of embodied energy, energy arising from the embodied presence of one person, arising from the complex negentropic life-form of one. This energy arises through the precise evolutionary configuration of body which allows for that expression, the lungs, the throat, the voice box, the mouth. It is projected through the ‘medium of substances’ between the two, into the embodied presence of the second. Into the ear canal to energize the neural system that is hearing. This is a fundamental. This phenomena exists independent of the language being used, and regardless whether that language is shared by the two people.

Proxemics then becomes a question of potentialities and possibilities of flow or not-flow as proffered by the arrangement of energized bodies (at all scales!) — not simply a systematic coding of the arrangements and orientations of bodies in a Cartesian space. Hall does include body-heat (thermal code) in his list of proxemic behavior along with other sensory “codes,” but stays away from the actuality and implications of energetics (as illustrated by the previous paragraph. (A System for the Notation of Proxemic Behavior, Edward T. Hall, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 65, No. 5, Selected Papers in Method and Technique (Oct., 1963), pp. 1003-1026)

The presence of language, then, is a formulator of meaning. Language does not carry energy itself. What one says is different than how one says it. The use of language (merely) imposes a modulation (amplitude, frequency, in time) of the energy movement. This modulation is a learned social function. And of that imposed modulation, when examined closely, it loses some of its monumental qualities (semiotics-as-deterministic-abstraction-of-abstraction):

There is no language in itself, nor any universality of language, but a concourse of dialectics, patois, slangs, special languages. There exists no ideal “competent” speaker-hearer of language, any more that there exists a homogeneous linguistic community … there is no mother tongue, but a seizure of power by a dominant tongue within a political multiplicity. — Deleuze and Guattari (Rhizome)

Human dialogue, therefore, although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture (the letters of language have their place in this only in special instances, as when, between friends in a meeting, notes describing the atmosphere skim back and forth across the table), can exist without the sign, but admittedly not in an objectively comprehensible form. On the other hand an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover it is completed not in some “mystical” event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time-sequence. — Martin Buber; Gregor-Smith, Ronald (Translator); Friedman, Maurice (Introduction by). Between Man and Man. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 1947. p 5.

It is that essence that is what passes in the continuum of relation that all human encounter actualizes itself. It is the same essence, that something that Schrödinger posits as negentropy, the tendency towards which is a unique characteristic of life. This is the essence which is not objectively comprehensible. It is recognized when the engagement which is the genuine dialogic instance is explored in all its intricacies (after the fact), or simply observing other humans engage. People-watching without pretension or preconception will bring a profound understanding of encounter. On the surface, dialogue is judged by its linguistic content; even more abstract engagement is measured to the metric of knowledge or even base information transferred.

The tendency of life towards negentropy is sourced in the human-to-human encounter. For without this encounter, life would, literally, cease, in the case of the reproductive encounter. But isn’t it such that any human-to-human encounter affects change on both the Self and the Other? Change that may not immediately be recognized as creative, but none-the-less is essentially creative in that it is the site of change, evolution, growth, transformation.

What then is that precious something that contained in our food which keeps us from death? That is easily answered. Every process, event, happening – call it what you will; in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy – or, as you may say, produces positive entropy – and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e. alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy – which is something very positive as we shall immediately see. What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help produce while alive. — Erwin Schrödinger

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

Economic efficiency is not correlated to the material efficiency within a limited system. (as example, the Icelandic Hydrogen Economy scam — where the production of the consumed goods necessary for running the infrastructure is remote: off the island and not at all within local system. None of the materials in the infrastructure are available locally on the island, none, except for the human consumers and the human bodies for local construction labor. That simple fact takes economic advantage of cheaper remote industrial labor, ecological damage, etc, and removes those factors from the costing of the local system. Local politico-economic policies are calculated and framed without considering the material re-sourcing.) This approach could be the biggest factor driving the lack of material efficiency of the global system where the feedback mechanisms are more localized and limited and driven by abstracted profit frameworks (which are locally influenced by taxation/government, shareholders, boards, consumers). And very often there is a complete ignorance of the physical reality of the (remote) resource extractives industries which prop up the whole system. If one travels to the location where large-scale (and generally un-sustainable) resource extraction is occurring, it is inevitable that there are social and environmental issues, it’s just a matter of whether they are discoverable under present knowledge-bases, or whether they are recognized by contemporaneous social milieus. Life is a transitory phenomena at all scales. When available energy sources (concentrations of matter) are exhausted, life cannot proceed.

A few minor references to energy and socio-cultural systems.

This view is simple, but outlines the fundamental situation. Research in thermodynamics (Prigogine, etc) has looked at the actual counter-intuitive problem of living systems countering thermodynamics. It may come back to the mystical view of Simone Weil:

Two forces rule the universe, light and gravity.

with gravity driving the coalescing of matter, the concentration of energy, or fluctuating densities (or simply fluctuation) of the cosmos. And Light, well, what may or may not be said about Light.

Hunting in the communications area of social research, doing a basic review of various theories of communications to focus in on what might be a useful jumping-off point. I’ll need one that is anchored, but also with some degrees of freedom to map the important new characteristics of my broader definition of dialogue. Craig and Muller’s survey of the field of communication theories (seven by their count) is a helpful text, allowing me to zoom into the phenomenological area of inquiry (anchored by Buber and people influenced by his committed I-Thou dialogical approach). More on that shortly. I’ve got 15 books out from the library already, and have made more than 200 entries in Zotero… yikes, how to cope with all that material! Still generating a internal process methodology that brings at least some impression of progress on a daily basis.

Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions, Robert T. Craig (Editor), Heidi L. Muller (Editor), Sage Publications, Inc; 1 edition (April 5, 2007) ISBN-10 1412952379

It’s a pity that I didn’t previously know this book and that the editors were at CU-Boulder in the Communications Department. That would have been a nice coincidence, and perhaps if I get up there sometime in the long-term, I’ll drop them a line.

The most daunting challenge is the difficulty of mind-mapping all the disparate sources. I’m thinking a big wall with sticky notes might be good. That technique has served me well in workshops situations. Howard has been using some mind-map software (think Minority Report data-space interface), but I find them too clunky. In theory that would be an excellent way to map and interface with the substantial data-cloud that will eventually accrete. But on this old G4 PB running Firefox, the Java scripting seems to dog the whole machine, consuming the CPU and rendering the machine worth-less.

If film can do this:

Film serves to train human beings in the practice of those apperceptions and reactions required by the frequentation of an apparatus whose role in their daily life ever increases. To make this whole enormous technological apparatus of our time into the object of human interiorization and appropriation [innervation] — that is the historic task in whose service film has its true meaning. — Walter Benjamin

Then is there any reason to doubt a connection between the declining power and influence of the (technocratic mediocracy of the) United States and the implementation of the Internet as-it-is today? Is there any connection between the tendencies of its population to spend their (limited) life-time in tele-communication (and tele-consumption!) and the demise of civil society? People seemingly now avoid confronting the (unknown) Other and rather cluster as mirrored-Selves, with a cumulative effect of breakdown of a (diverse) cultural fabric into a checker-board of self-interest groupings which spend time defending the borders of their squares from the surrounding Evil unknown.

this conclusion proposed in the sense that if film can have that profundity of affectation on human nervous systems (the primary interface with the world-as-mediated-by-body; or the primary EM antenna-structures), then what of all the wide press of technological development seeping into all parts and orifices of perception and reaction?

Buber’s story illustrating that Silence is communication opens a certain mediatory path. especially that of listening, a critical reciprocal of expression, the act of open impression. a kind of inversion equivalent with Simon Weil’s framing of human obligations versus the traditional (and often violent) struggle for human rights. this inversion also maps into the qualities of presence and absence implicit in the mediated technological space. that scripted and centered Silence is necessary for balanced expression. (both the silence of meditation and the silence of listening).

Kittler, in Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter: plowing through his expansive, eclectic interwoven threads examining the development of technology and the ensuing affectations on social systems, on people, perhaps haven’t given him credit previously that he deserves, although I always found his presentations to be too dense to follow (simultaneous translation probably didn’t help — native speakers surely had to focus to follow his thinking). and this book didn’t come out in English until 1999, so wasn’t available when I was crossing his path. he makes clear points on the connection between technological development and war, the contingencies of warfare which don’t merely draw technological systems into a problem-solving process, but actually arise purely out of the need to more effectively, efficiently kill the Other. optimization of defense, primacy of offense, protection of home-lands. via reducing the potential for the Other to accomplish the same. natural selection. is this what drives the techno-social system?

Kittler holds a fascination for these mechanisms, a boyish focus on the tool and on the technological ground of war without once making any moral approbation or moral critique of the way it goes. has he given up? does he care? is he a techno-determinist? does the intellectual fascination not accept moral argument? or is the disinterested contemporary academic not allowed to take a moral stance?

it seems that a script with multi-modal inclusions, or extrusions could be the most profitable direction to move into. (a (tran)scripted dialogue, the optimal). with permutations, expansions, digressions, voice changes, multiple (modal) versions of the same content.

I want to tell a story, my story. not just my story, but I want to bring a world into being by naming it, one fragment at a time until it fills out like a balloon, until it feels suggestive, full, expansive, textured, and real. not that this world is any more special or force-full than that inhabited by the Other humans out there, but it is in this coming-to-be process of a world(view) as seen by the Self, it is deep in this process, that value comes to life. the intersection of that world-coming-to-be and the world that is out there, the construct that is the social system, the human-influenced world: as the Self is a cross product of the idiosyncratic individual (coming-to-be) and that social world.

so, scripting in the widest sense, circumscribing via once-removed reduction, yet pointing at that-which-cannot-be-named from as many vantages as possible.

exploring modalities of communication. of connection, of be-ing. Kittler shows up on the radar immediately (hmmm, recalling that extremely uncomfortable evening with him in that bar in Linz before the Intertwinedness happening. he needed the table to circulate around him. and it did because of the language (protocol) gap. I was not fluent in German enough to access the discussion that inevitably circulated, hovered, around him. strange situation. instead I talked with his assistant (and translator whose name I have now forgotten), a young American who came to worship Kittler in Berlin for a time. I left early as I had to catch a train to Copenhagen early the next morning.)

how to bind energy in to the text [as the particular creative output]. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver.

that from an earlier travelogue entry. it clearly has been on mind for a long time. actually the transition from print-making to performance/happening was a mapping of that need. finding that the silver print was just too rigid a platform when compared to presence. although the print is, as with anything, in retrospect, a resonance of presence and be-ing as is any trace left in the wake of life.

this issue along with structuring days and weeks in order to be the most productive and concentrated. the chill of the room makes morning writing a bit uncomfortable up there, so, perhaps writing through the morning in the kitchen as long as there are no real interruptions to focus. the desk in the room is good though, with a decent chair. back to the Berlin writing experience. the tea pot is a crucial question. wondering whether I should have Christian send me the excellent pot that I found in Kreuzberg. insulated to keep the tea hot, enough for three or four cups, and a slide-in screen for the tea. it was perfect for a three-hour writing fest. otherwise, brewed in a regular ceramic pot, it goes cold way too fast (at the rate I drink it), that and the problem of steeping too long when doing it the British way. but so far, I haven’t found the same kind of pot here. went into one cheap Made-in-China shop in Marrickville and was so overcome by the fumes of cheapness that I had to leave with watering eyes. made me nauseous. something akin to the smell of Walmart, but with no air circulation, add dust, and knock the cheapness factor down by a couple orders of magnitude — this not in cost, but in the absolute shoddiness of the manufacturing process which may mean anything from sloppy execution, and under-optimized production standards, to dangerous or even lethal ingredients. I didn’t find what I Was looking for, and haven’t yet.

back to modalities. where this frames the issues raised in the Ways of Listening course as well. how expressive pathways are never absolute (are entropic) and depend on the continual input of energy (from the social energy bank) to maintain their hegemonic order and control over interpersonal impression and expression. there are a class of individuals in every time and system who seek to renew, evolve, change, destroy the old modalities. Cage, Fluxus-folks, Bauhaus, anyone who seeks this process at whatever scalar effect.

(i.e., Norie is at the forefront of this process — a faculty-member advising in the fuzzy space of the DCA (Doctorate of Creative Arts) concept — they are, in general, functioning in a space of indeterminate protocols as are the candidates. making choices on what to accept or reject as possible (modal outputs) protocols within the social system (in the form of the educational institution as one specific modal expression of the wider social system). a formative space, the choices made in that space will determine the level of vitality or corruption in the unfolding/evolving social system.

modalities are independent of scale — that is, they cross many levels of a social system, of be-ing. (and, at this point, can I consider the intersection of the words modality and protocol?) modality seems to circumscribe a more material space (also discounting the phenomena of energy-transfer although it relates to sensory perception). modality, modal, mode, mood, modus (related to mete, mediate, mediation, meditation, measure, meet (met), (and in the Greek medesthai to care for, to be mindful of) — how some thing (quelque chose or process) is done, executed, performed, expressed. to take care for the expression of active be-ing. be here now. to care for being here, now. and it comes, translates to us within the social system as a measuring, circumscribing of ways of going. this seems a good example of the social system imposing its inevitable evolutionary impact on individual be-ing. from a qualitative, caring, contemplation of presence, here, now, to the quantifiable, conscripted, defined, the modal.

so the question comes back, how to circumscribe the theoretical of the work ahead? the immediate answer: with care. the only way to proceed!

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics …

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.

Our total sensual world is in part comprised of this dynamic and complex social system — an emergent system that embodies the expansion of the human population and the intensification of the global technological infrastructure. This contemporary social milieu may be described as a techno-social system which, among other affects it exhibits, more or less precisely prescribes the pathways of interaction between participating humans. This system may be modeled as a complex and multi-layered conflation of energized flows or signals which compete for both our attention as well as for the sources of energy which ultimately drive their expression. Sonic energy, given our evolutionary attributes, is a critical form for our energized presence and participation. The techno-social system that we have collectively constructed generates a tremendous variety of devices which impinge sonically on our lives and claim to offer practically everything including reproductive/evolutionary dominance and psycho-spiritual transcendence. But what of these devices, how do they form us and our relation with the world? How do they form the paths of impression and expression through which we establish and maintain our communities and our Selves? How do they arise within the techno-social system? How are our lives intertwined and affected by these pathways? How may we create sustainable systems of energy movement that augment the possibilities of human connection?

Amplification, as a fundamental process applied to different forms of energy, presents a model that is applicable across a tremendous range of systems from the basic biological to the complex technical. Amplification presumes the alteration of existing systems of energy movement from an ambient state to an altered one. This process of alteration has the effect of changing fundamental relationships of power within the entire localized (and distributed!) techno-social system through a process of energy density redistribution. All amplification systems rely on the existence of an energy source by which they accomplish their signal enhancement, and thus, their affects relate deeply to the contingencies of those sources among other factors. Amplification also introduces spurious flows of ‘waste’ energy into the situation. These flows often have destructive affects.

Amplification systems includes the entire range of electricity-based telepresence devices which are becoming ever more ubiquitous in our techno-social system. As a direct consequence, this system becomes more dependent on the structural and operational necessities that amplification requires. It is these requirements which apply deep formative forces on participants in the system as well as the system itself. When we use these devices, we are participating in a complex system that is characterized by fundamental and wholesale re-directions of energy. This re-direction is not a passive process nor does it affect trivial changes in the wider system. It forms an embedded matrix of alteration in the continuum of human relations — between individuals, collectives, and between human social systems and ‘natural’ systems. It affects all the fundamentals of human presence including those of place, memory, and be-ing.

A primary focus of this research is to extend and situate this model of amplification within the widest context, especially examining the effects of applied and ambient amplification on sustainable and creative cultural systems. As I note following in a basic outline of possible sources, this requires a wide exploration of whole fields of research (as the bibliography also indicates).

Specifically, though, I will explore the effects of amplification on creative action both from the point-of-view of the user as well as the entire system that the user is embedded within. For example, distributed creative action, as promoted by the availability of network systems such as “Web 2.0,” are completely dependent on complex systems of directed amplification. How do these dependencies affect the distributed creative processes taking place within? How do human networks interact with the formations of power and energy which are applied by amplification systems? How do the systems of amplification re-arrange relations of power in the social and the ‘natural’ system?

Personal Research Background

My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years centers around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of digital networks as the locus for creative presence and action. As access to bandwidth has gradually increased, opportunities for collaborative performance utilizing digital networks as the primary form mediation have expanded greatly while changing character significantly. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, music, and other expressive arts in collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence. Human presence is directly and indirectly affected by the digital network technologies that amplify and attenuate presence. I have a wide and deep experience base in expressing human presence across networked techno-social systems while exploring how that presence is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.

Tactical media, a term coined during the rise of network culture, includes the use of media — especially those operating through distributed network technologies — that specifically supports idiosyncratic expressions of small-scale social systems. My research and facilitation work explores the (often troubled) relationship between the large-scale deployments of standardized global network technologies and the need for local expression. The question arises: is it possible to utilize one of these standardized technologies without that very process of standardization flattening out idiosyncratic expression? One conclusion that I have come to is that despite even a high degree of mediation applied by a technological system, it is still possible to have a meaningful exchange if participants are aware of the actual affects and mechanisms of the mediation. This would include a good understanding of the actual movement of energy across the network system — a movement without which, human relation fails.

Relevant Literature

(please note that references here are all contained in the online bibliography located at http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/biblio.html)

The ubiquitous use of digital devices arising from the rapid decrease in the relative cost of computing power has transformed information technology from an isolated domain for computer programming research into an integral part of a pervasive extended social research domain. And although the success of a contemporary social milieu is now often measured by the efficiency of integration of two broad distributed systems — the human (social) and the machinic (technological) — for the purposes of this proposal only, I will discuss previous research from this bifurcated point-of-view. It is important to note that there is significant cross-over and currently this particular dialectic is decidedly less productive.

In the specific topic of network theory, for example, advances spurred by research in previously unrelated fields such as genetics are creating totally new areas of research: bio-informatics. In this same light, existing research from a wide span of fields from cognitive science to consciousness studies to Quantum physics to genetics are also considered to be relevant to the production of the thesis. I will follow the technical and social sections by a few brief examples of possible research leads from other fields. As with any transdisciplinary undertaking this will be a core challenge: to be open to diverse threads of research, at the same time as not stretching too far. With this in mind, the primary hermeneutic goal is identifying fundamental principles from broad textual explorations.

Technical Research

Technical network research generally concentrates on the efficiency of power consumption, security, data transmission, software/hardware interface, and general materials constraints and usage — engineering issues of system structure and optimization.

For example, with the widespread deployment of wireless networks as communications signal amplifiers — where a majority of nodes are powered by batteries — there is great interest in techniques for optimizing fundamental energy usage and management (Papadimitriou, 2004, p.567; Kumar, 2005, p.415). Technological failure — the loss of system coherency and its subsequent inability to carry messages — is also an area of critical network research (Koroma, 2003, p. 47). In both these areas there is a direct correlation between the survivability and efficacy of network hardware systems as and the availability and efficient use of energy to construct, maintain, and operate such amplified communications system.

Research in network analysis proceeds either through sampling or capturing real network traffic (aggregate protocol and communications data) for generating metrics that determine the communicative topology and state of the network (Barabasi, 2001, p. 52), or through computer simulations of complex network systems. Simulation work subsists on the development of algorithmic solutions (often ultimately based in graph theory) which model relations between elements (objects and links) in the network occasionally combined with absolute energy optimization considerations. This range of research is characterized by projects like the Applied Network Research (ANR) Measurement and Network Analysis group (McGregor, 2001, et al). In considering the Internet as a whole, because of the sheer unregulated extent, mathematical simulations are less effective tools because they rarely capture emergent properties nor do they always reflect the actualities of such a complex system.

For example, a brief survey of commercial network diagnostic solutions shows existing metrics of which a primary one is the utilization of bandwidth. The bandwidth parameter has a direct correlation to the transmissive and receptive capabilities of a communications network (Danchak, 2001, p. 2). It is generally accepted that higher-bandwidth equates with better communications. Indeed, perceived progress in network technology is often predicated on availability of and access to greater bandwidth combined with less error-prone data transmission. Interestingly, higher-bandwidth systems (as signal amplifiers with access to more power) are also systems that have a greater amount of social capital energy invested in them, suggesting a correlation between the amount of total energy coming into a system and the level of order — where order in this case is measured by a favorable ratio of signal to noise (which can be seen as two types of energy being transferred by the system) — and where order is a direct expression of a non-equilibrium systems ability to controvert entropy.

Social Research

Social network research, also called simply network theory, is most often related to sociology, anthropology, social psychology, or organizational studies. It is generally concerned with the characteristics of emergent macro-level relationships between nodes (actors) within real or prototypical/simulated network systems.

There are, as well, areas of research such as HCI (human-computer interaction), CSCW (computer supported cooperative work), HCC (human-centered computing), that peripherally impact my research in their exploration of the ergonomic (functional-material), the semiotic (linguistic), and the broader social parameters of human interaction with others and interaction with computer-based digital systems. The process of knowledge-building, as one collective social goal of cooperative work, is an activity that has been modeled extensively and will provide input.

However, these areas of study rarely consider the combined scalar qualities of the dynamics of human relation that are mapped out between the (individual) Self and the Other — what I would call the granular level of a network. There is no general social network theory that specifically frames the nodes in a social network as the embodied Self and the Other as primary constituents. However, Alter (1999, p. 8) proposes a general theory of Information Systems in which he defines a “work system” as a “system in which human participants and/or machines perform a business process using information technology, and other resources…” Aside from the business reference, the equating of work with energy makes this an interesting approach that alludes to the fundamental relationship between energy (transfer) and granular/nodal systems comprised of interconnected humans — as they exist in the continuum of relation.

As a outgrowth of sociometry, Social Network Theory (SNT) (Barabasi, 2003, et.al.) grew out of quantitative analyses of social relation, and is currently a very active field of inquiry. Social network analysis applies algorithms from graph theory to identify both patterns and variables in the structural relationships of these networks (Wasserman, 1994, Kadushin, 2004). As with other threads of network analysis, SNT tends to weigh the collective over individual attributes, and the relation of the theory and its algorithms to the actual mediative network technology is not always explicit. It is, however, a useful direction of approach to the question of mediation and the architecture of relation which it obliquely includes.

Another approach is the social construction of technology (SCOT) which “distinguishes in its presuppositions and its metaphysical roots, between people and societies on the one hand, and the world of artifacts (and the natural world too) on the other.” (Law, 2003, p. 3) This approach provides an initial synergy, although the absolute division between things and people is a problematic relic of materialism which informs, but at some level is the anti-thesis of the model I am developing.

Actor Network Theory (ANT) is an approach of interest to “understand the mechanics of power and organization” (Law, 1992, p. 2) and because one of its base tenets is a form of scale-independent heterogeneity, a principle which is more inclusive of disparate elements (both abstract and material) and factors in modeling the dynamic of a social system. Law also posits that knowledge “always takes material forms,” and in doing this, he makes a clear connection to what we think of as the material world — though I will take this several steps further and describe the connection between material manifestations and energy relations. Although I do not see a precise application of ANT to my model, Law sees it as a means to a more holistic analysis of combined social-technological systems which are fundamentally dynamic processes, not objects — it is a promising starting point for connecting to current research.

Overall, the analysis of real networks is facing a complex challenge to be able to cope with large, adaptive, multi-agent systems. Computational tools are limited by incomplete data sets and the basic complexity of real — and consequently dynamic — networks (Carley, 2001, p.12). It is precisely the weakness of detailed computational (algorithmic) solutions that suggests that more holistic models, ones that contain fundamental principles “combining the methodologies of social networks and computer science” (Ibid) along with other innovative world views are necessary.

Other Areas of Research

Significant lateral input will come from areas of inquiry outside the general sphere of applied telecommunications, electrical engineering, computer science, and sociology. Areas of research in hard science (especially cosmology, Quantum physics, thermodynamics, and biology), social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, media and culture studies, and philosophy), cognitive science, management and organizational studies, consciousness studies, bio-informatics, and bio-genetics among other alternative model systems provide fundamental inputs — further interrogating the efficacy and robustness of the model.

For example, recent trends in network-based sonic collaboration also touch on the real dynamics of perceptive and energized human relation as well as the specific contingencies of amplified telecommunications networks (Barbosa, 2003, p.53). This trans-disciplinary technical research and artistic production dates back to the mid-1970′s and the California-based League of Automatic Music Composers in Local Area Networks (Bischoff, 1978, p. 26).

Relevant areas of cognitive science research examines abstracted social (linguistic) levels of interaction as mapped over systems of knowledge acquisition and propagation in the process of creating models for the mind, consciousness, or intelligence. This field of research presents several interesting paradigms which inform the relationship between individual presence and collective/social existence.

Although there are some who reject the metaphor of genes holding and transferring ‘information’ as a causal source for evolutionary impulses (Griffiths, 2001, p. 6), recent developments in gene regulatory networks (GRN) modeling, a branch of systems biology (or bio-informatics) also provide some interesting insights into cellular systems which are not modeled simply as information-processing devices, but as distributed metabolic signal amplification systems that appear to function as emergent scale-free networks (Jeong, et al, 2000, p. 652). By examining the specific links in a metabolic network, it is possible to map biochemical reactions which may also be characterized by absolute energy (state) transfers which are, essentially, amplifiers. As this area of interest matures, it is likely that research into metabolic network systems will produce insights that can be productively carried back to social and technological network theory.

Quantum computation, as it relates both to real energy state analysis of nano systems and algorithmic computational models also explores relevant issues that consider real energy state relations as (digital) computational systems. These nano-systems exhibit parameters governing energy flows that are quite different from normal macro-scaled high- and low-voltage circuitry and may provide fundamental insight into energy dynamics.

General Quantum, as a fundamental energy-based model, portrays the universe as a space-time continuum in which energy fields are the phenomena underlying all observed reality. Quantum provides a provocative point-of-view that supersedes the limits of traditional mechanistic thinking. In this sense alone it serves as an important guide for moving the model beyond dominant mechanistic perceptions of reality.

Conclusion

There are many possible threads to examine in contemporary research around the concepts of amplified (tele)communications, networks, and human relation. Many of the traditional disciplinary boundaries as well as socio-cultural frames-of-reference are being re-formed by the rapid pace of research, development, and deployment of telecom solutions.

The dialectic of human vs machine is a bit dated, though, and represents a conservative conceptual space that has to be transcended — initially it is a convenient conceptual tool — but a more holistic consideration of that hybrid system, the techno-social system, as it exists within the continuum of relation, is necessary.

Transdisciplinarity is a popular expression for the need for thinking (and expressing!) outside the cubic space defined by any limited social system or sub-system. Innovative solutions are often found by combining many possible strands of thought from disparate disciplines and points of view. Critical engagement of a plurality of voices is essential when moving in transdisciplinary spaces, and this will constantly be kept in mind to the degree possible. The use of language in a transdisciplinary space is a particular challenge which, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge disciplinary spaces. Indeed, disciplinarity is often defined by the cumulative social use of a specific linguistic system that is exclusive to the discipline. As a former engineer, and now as an educator and artist for the past two decades, I have significant experience in coherently bridging the somewhat isolated linguistic spaces that define those different ‘worlds.’

It is clear that there is a solid need for this kind of inquiry in the transdisciplinary space of techno-social systems given the intensity of technological development and the complexity of globalized human presence. It is my desire to contribute to the search for sustainable principles and systems that honor first the need for a healthy continuum of human relation instead of placing technological solutions at the forefront. This, at the same time as acknowledging the fundamentally symbiotic inter-relationship of the two concepts.

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.

Fabrication of Objects — Exploring the model of amplification suggests a material (electro-mechanical) fabrication practice which is something I did many years ago under the influence of my father, an engineer who was involved with, among other things, the development of radar at MIT during WWII. As an artist, though, I have developed a tentative relationship with the materialized art object over the last twenty years, a relationship which seeks to transcend the materiality through performative, ad hoc, and spontaneous actions, activities, and thus, practices. I have a substantial record of creating visual-sonic manifestations and happenings which will persists in various forms. Somewhere between these two impulses is where I would like to place part of my research.

Exploring and Establishing a Self-Reflexive Praxis — With the goal of establishing a sustainable framework for a critically-aware practice-based action, I prefer to focus my attentions on establishing a suite of relevant lived practices rather than generating products or even processes. As a methodology this requires an immersion in the way-of-going. Much of my sustained practice to date is about distributed connection, remote presence, and collaborative action which will form the armature of my research activities.

Basic Research — This will include, as noted previously, a trans-disciplinary examination of as many different systems for amplification both from a social as well as technical point-of-view. This will involve substantial reading and subsequent collation of precursor ideas and trends. As this has already been a research interest of mine, the ground-work is in place, and I simply need regular access to a library and the time and guidance to tie things together in a more formal and coherent way. I anticipate fundamental background research/exploration in computer science, circuit design; electronic, electric, and electrical systems, communications and network theory, bio-engineering, and other subjects as suggested above.

I very much would like to spend time at least some time (re)learning to write. Although I am an efficient and skilled copy-editor in English, and have extensive experience in putting words together in a variety of mediums, I feel that I could benefit from critical input into that process in relation to my total creative output.

Relations to UTS Research Contexts

Ongoing workshops and collaborative projects, well-established from my existing network, will enhance the international application of my research results as well as the integration of my research into existing UTS contexts. Without an insider’s knowledge of precise research tracks, following I reflect on possible overlaps in my existing experience base and current UTS possibilities. I am in direct contact with Prof. Norie Neumark who originally encouraged me to apply to the program and who would be my principal advisor. I know several CMAI associates and other UTS faculty already for some years. I look forward to the potential for energized dialogues on the ground should I undertake my research at UTS.

Transforming Cultures (TfC) / Centre for Media Arts Innovation

The opportunity of working with Prof. Norie Neumark and Prof. John Dale within the framework of the Centre for Media Arts Innovation is confirmed. I know several of the other researchers in CMAI personally which will open up potential cross-correlations of research.

Cultural transformation and innovation relies on the motivation to and capacity for change which is, in turn governed by how the techno-social system is structured to distribute and utilize energy (in the service of signal amplification among other needs). I believe the research goals that I have outlined here integrate well with several existing research projects.

Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS)

Prior communication with Prof. Andrew Jakubowicz confirmed his interest in possible co-supervision (across CCS and CMAI) based on specific shared areas of interest within the CCS Research Center and my research at the intersection of techno-social systems and individual autonomy. I share a deep and critical interest in a number of themes that are core to the CCS program: those of integration, learning, and education, the facilitation of a sustainable civil society, the problematics of socio-cultural dislocation and change, and the impositional architecture of technological power structures.

For example, the project “Migrating Realities” (described below) explores many of the same questions of cultural participation and identity in our rapidly changing social milieu that are being examined in the “Information and Cultural Exchange” project. As a long-time ‘networker,’ I have a deep interest in establishing a creative practice that critically and from a socially active point of view engages contemporary technological implementation and explores its affects on daily life.

Timeline

Year 1 — Fundamental research and framing of the space of inquiry, ‘reverse engineering’ my ideas and connecting them to a wider field of existing ideas and concepts; conceptually framing potential creative activities, actions, or events.

Year 2 — Critically testing the resulting broad framework of ideas and actions in actual performative situations: application of ideas in the context of distributed sonic collaboration

Year 3 — Refining the performative ideas and presenting them in a culminating situation — a workshop or series of workshops.

Year 4 — Collation of results, and, to paraphrase Rilke, “Writing, writing, writing, through the day, through the night, through the day, writing, writing.”

Pertinent Ongoing Contexts

neoscenes — As a site for both documentation and creative output, I have updated and expanded the neoscenes site continuously since first deploying it in 1994. Many of the collaborative network projects that I either initiated or participated in are documented on the site. In support of this application is the page http://neoscenes.net/info/doc_proposal/app-suppport.php. (see http://neoscenes.net)

Migrating Realities / Migrating Academies — A collaborative project I am working on presently with Lithuanian, German, and French colleagues, dealing with the socio-cultural contingencies of identity/migration and creative action within the evolving and highly fragmented regime of emigration and immigration. I would like very much to explore this further in the Australian context, perhaps bringing some of the activities of our collaboration into the UTS scene. We had a conference, exhibition, and series of performances in Berlin in April 2008, a Lithuanian-German-English webzine, and a hard-copy book (ISBN 978-9955-834-01-4) which I co-edited. A part of this project is a collaboration “Migrating Academies” which just received significant EU funding — this November I will be facilitating part of a workshop with a group of students from the Vilnius Academy of Art, the Media Academy of Cologne, and the École European de l’Image on the subject of identity, dislocation, creative action, collaboration, and networks. (see http://www.migrating-reality.com/blog/)

aporee maps — A sonic/located-media project with a colleague, Udo Noll, an artist and programmer in Berlin. It is a flexible development platform for deployable located media and performance possibilities which I will be continuing work with. (see http://aporee.org/maps/)

Transmediale — as a participant in several distributed network events at prior Transmediale Festivals (’08 and ’07) in Berlin, and with an established working relationship with the production team, I have been invited to facilitate the online portion of the Festival in ’09. This is an ideal context for deploying a future project arising from my UTS research.

share.dj — as the ‘nomadic’ share.nomad node of this network of new media artists, I participate in a variety of projects that are both live and/or online. As a loose collective, we have run very successful live/online projects at numerous local and international venues including The Kitchen (NYC) and Transmediale (07), and are in the process of organizing a major event for Ars Electronica Culture Capitals next summer, pending the outcome of finalists jury. (see http://share.dj/)

NewForms ’09 — I have been invited to run the only workshop/happening at this major media festival in Vancouver in September where I will be deploying the amplification concept for the first time in a full workshop/event form.

Writing — I have several existing writing projects going on, the primary is an evolving book “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which is an idiosyncratic and creative examination of an alternative world-view. I have two chapters completed. One of them, “Regime of Amplification :: A Primer” is a speculative essay which covers the core ideas of the research I wish to pursue at UTS. (see http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/energy_of_being/regime.html)

Blogging — Online documentation of the research process will be maintained within the context of the “neoscenes travelog” blog – a 13-year-long process of visual-textual-sonic reflection on my practice: where I am, who I am with, and what I am doing. This public resource will continue to include a wide range of speculative expressions of process, subjective observations, autonomous manifestos, textual references, external resources, and suggestions for practices all in an accessible format. I have a sustained readership with hit-counts around 2000-3000/day and growing (see http://neoscenes.net/travelog/)

Teaching — As an experienced and innovative university educator positioned at the intersection of art and technology, I do hope to find opportunities for engaging the student population of UTS. I have an excellent network of personal/professional contacts around Australia as well as New Zealand and the Pacific Rim within higher education and the culture/new media sector which I will activate whenever possible for workshops, seminars, and collaborative projects. In a typical year (during the last 15 of them, at least), I run workshops or seminars at between ten and twenty cultural/educational research institutions, an activity that I will continue to promote. These dynamic practice-oriented events deeply explore aspects of techno-social systems that are positioned somewhere between technology and creative action. I will of course include the results of my UTS research in this context. (Given the global economic and energy situation, perhaps more in a Pacific Rim vs Euro-centric context, however!)

Having said that, I will certainly continue research and collaborative activities with my existing global network of collaborators and contacts. This includes ongoing textual dialogues within several online community networks on the topics of education, distributed systems (esp. educational and creative/collaborative), technology, and creativity (see resources below).

Pertinent Resources

Personal/Professional Network

As an integral part of my long-term creative praxis, I have established a substantial transdisciplinary network of individuals that cuts across many social and cultural borders. As both a source of and a destination for my creative energies, I draw this network into all aspects of my praxis.

Bibliography

I have accumulated a wide-ranging bibliography which informs my research during the last decade, and, as a resource, I will of course continue to refine and expand it. All references in this text refer to that bibliography. (see http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/biblio.html)

Online communities / mailing lists / resources

I am a frequent poster on a number of mailing lists which explore the critical contexts of digital practices and the social consequences. Along with the lists, I am an active node in a number of distributed creative communities including:

bricolabs — as a participant in this global network of open-source social activists, I contribute regularly to discussions around sustainable new media practices.

Howard Rheingold’s brainstorms community — postings center around the use of technology in education and on techniques for developing distributed learning systems.

share.dj – a distributed network of more than 20 global urban nodes of community-based visual-sonic artists.

microsound – an active sonic arts community built up around common explorations of a wide variety of sound from field recording through granular synthesis.

OTiS/SiTO – a long-standing (and still vital!) visual-arts collective established online in 1993.

neoscenes travelog – this is a documentary and creative resource, a scratch-pad, musing-table, notebook with a regular global audience.

neoscenes projects (including a sustained network of former students) form a substantial resource base for distributed performance.

Other lists which I maintain a long-term presence include nettime, fibrecult, xchange, empyre, iDC, NICE, and ixi.