By pure happenstance, (I was on the CSM alumni page for something), I saw the announcement for a three-day conference on Art in Science and Technology (ArtiST) connected with the High Grade literary magazine at Mines. As I was involved in the ancient High Grade (back in 1977-1982), I thought it would be fun to jump in on this event. It was funny to be introduced as an alumni who had worked on the High Grade 30 years ago (!) (actually 35 years ago!): Ancien Régime.

It was an experience! The reading by Jake Adam York was stimulating (albeit somewhat dark).

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Hmmm.

Clear – cold

After some difficulty, I was able to get the Plymouth radio into the Willys; all I need now is an antenna. I’ll wait until the next paycheck for it.

Took LCH over to the Science Fair at the High School. DCH won 1st Place in Chemistry for his project on stannous fluoride in toothpaste.

This article/essay by Michael Pollan is an extremely well-framed case-in-point about how a techno-social system (TSS) will — with science leading the way — reconfigure the energy flows (FOOD!) that we are immersed within. And how evolved sub-systems with a Machiavellian stake in the distribution of power in the TSS will fall all over themselves to retain the power they already have, or will develop new ways to siphon the power away from individuals participating in the system. Individual participants, aggregated as “the population” are still the main source of accumulated hierarchic power in the system. Anyone hoping to accumulate a power-base has to, at some level, attract the attention (life-energy/life-time) of that base. The food industry (and its constituent sub-industries) is no exception, nor is the ‘big science’ sector (which has to justify its existence through churning out ‘sensible’ information (nutrition research: always filtered, dumbed-down, by intercessory media voices)) — and neither of these ‘players’ are willing to be ‘regulated’ by the government which subsidizes their existence. Remember all those “drink milk” ads some years back? All the subsidies have gone underground, so is mostly invisible to the undiscerning eye. The consumer only sees the contents of the grocery-store shelves.
(more …)

We are thus facing the following strange situation. While all building stones for the [modern scientific] world-picture are furnished by the senses qua organs of the mind, while the world-picture itself is and remains for everyone a construct of his mind and apart from it has no demonstrable existence, the mind itself remains a stranger in this picture, it has no place in it, it can nowhere be found in it. — Schrödinger

Schrodinger, E., 1956. What is Life: & other Scientific Essays, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Anchor Book. p.216. (pdf copy)

I sit in a room in a one hundred year old storefront property on High Street. I am 12,422 kilometers south-south-west of the point where I entered the world. That’s less than a third of the way around the globe. It’s the furthest as I’ve been, I think, unless North Africa, the Mauritanian coast is further, or perhaps Hong Kong, but I don’t think so. I have the tools to calculate whether it is or not, but I don’t have the time. Too busy trying to write or to work up the courage to continue writing. Or to decide upon the language to use whilst writing. Or to read instead, or to just stare at the wall, or sky.
(more …)

A techno-social system is predicated and constructed on a system of control exerted on the flows of energy which are antithetical to its existence or that simply exist ‘out there.’ Within a techno-social system, at all scales, levels, and between all actors, there exists a constant, dynamic re-balancing of these energies (energy flows). With an input of external energy as the source, the overall techno-social system will exert varying levels of control over different spatio-temporal regions. Control is essentially the existence of prescribed pathways of flow which insure the desired persistence of stasis in a sea of chaotic flows. The degree that a techno-social system can proscribe controlled pathways is the degree of coherence that techno-social system will have. (more …)

Einstein’s relativity and Heisenberg’s uncertainty have become our own. Even if we do not
understand the science, we experience the reality. — Steve Dietz, Dreams of an (Un)Certain Future, in the “Sarai Reader 03,” p. 202

Part of the reminder that the map is not the territory, and the model is not the thing itself. We have the territory, we hold the thing itself, and it is a matter of finding our voice to describe both to those who are most immediately around us.

Thanks for that positive, pragmatic, and ultimately true statement of current affairs. Fifty years later. We can only hope.

What could better illustrate the instability of protocol-driven social control systems than the phenomenon of a leak? Springing a leak is an irruption through a human-constructed wall (hull) holding back the chaotic flows of the sea. Wikileaks is a reversal of that, where the leak is from the inside of the ship-of-State to the outside. Where inside there are protocol-defined pathways of State-driven communication flow filling a space of partially-stabilized human endeavor. Every so often, one of the nodes of State communication goes rogue, mad, AWOL, counter, and defies the standing protocols by whatever means possible. Opening the mouth and speaking, telling the secrets of State, a yawning vomit of bilge over the sides: merely seasick.

The hull of the ship of State exists across a multi-dimensional space of refined/defined energy flow. Defined energy flow resists change and promotes continuance. Regarding the State, protocol controls individual behavior through internalized patterns of embodied thought. The State seeks any possible way to apply these internal protocols, and is successful if those ways promote the existence of the necessary flow pathways that insure the continuance of the structure of the State. The more rigid the expectations of the State, the more necessary the adherence to prescribed protocols (and vice versa). The State also applies controls to patterns of energy flow external to the body. These two (internal and external) sets of controls are not separate but rather are united in the space of flow to effect more-or-less total control on the participant and the crew of the ship of State. (more …)

Life on Earth is driven by energy. Autotrophs take it from solar radiation and heterotrophs take it from autotrophs. Energy captured slowly by photosynthesis is stored up, and as denser reservoirs of energy have come into being over the course of Earth’s history, heterotrophs that could use more energy evolved to exploit them. Homo sapiens is such a heterotroph; indeed, the ability to use energy extrasomatically (outside the body) enables human beings to use far more energy than any other heterotroph that has ever evolved. The control of fire and the exploitation of fossil fuels have made it possible for Homo sapiens to release, in a short time, vast amounts of energy that accumulated long before the species appeared. — David Price

Perhaps this is a clear-eyed look at where we are in the moment, or perhaps a less-than-optimistic view of the future, or perhaps it is completely blind to the possibilities that catastrophic change will be for the overall good of the planet. Who knows what the future brings? Whatever the case, if thermodynamics has anything to do with it (It’s The Law!), then some of Price’s talking-points have full validity. It’s not a question of optimism or pessimism, but merely the dynamic evolution of this place that we inhabit called Terra and the qualities of all life of which we are merely another expression of. In addition to the small number of other unique characteristics, our species is the only one which causes massive extrasomatic energy (resource) usage at a rate far exceeding the accumulation rate of those same energy sources. On a localized scale, this situation could be faced by any life form, and actually is on a regular basis, the problem with humans is that there is no mobility condition that will mitigate the localized ‘soiling of the nest.’ There’s nowhere else to go.

At this point it is more about numbers than anything else, numbers which are not ultimately knowable: like the quantities of energy reserves available.

Or then there is:

It takes the technical, social, infrastructural, and economic resources of an optimized globalized economy at its peak to extract and use our current energy flows, and even then oil production cannot be maintained. There may indeed be plenty of fossil fuels left in the ground, but following a major systemic collapse, most may remain there as that capacity dies away. — David Korowicz in Energy constraints will collapse global economic recovery

Strangely enough, those who deny all these doomsday scenarios are the same people who, with their stocked arsenals, will be best set to gun for food, water, and whatever Mad Max theater plays itself out on the wide scale of developed-world implosion.

Does any of this matter? Psycho-spiritually, I think not. The flows of energy in the cosmological system will remain the same as they have always been, changeable, changing, yes, and because of a general anisotropy, there are variations in intensity of flows. But we are not separate from all this, and nothing we do will change the trajectory of entropy. eh?

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. the presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. (more …)

drop by Jim and Dona’s place, head to the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art for a quick tour of Jim Sanborn’s Terrestrial Physics installation. it is only to look at. suggestive of something, lots of work, like the set of a 1960s sci-fi flick. kind of functions, but isn’t. balancing on the art-science barrier/boundary/frontier. otherwise, no jolt available to be received from the installation.

An Outward Bound group rafts in, and are lectured to in the Trex seating arranged for “camp fire talks” here in the campground. I find it really bizarre, when there a thousand ‘natural’ places to sit for a dialogue, they make a bee-line to the plastic composite seats. I guess they got lectured on the tamarisk mitigation work around Echo Park, I didn’t ask, as I was too busy prepping for the day. They later went into the woods between the campground and the river and were doing something. Wonder if they saw the carnage I wrought on the tamarisk behind site #7! (more …)

CLUI residency looms on a completely other tectonic regime. Travel to that point will traverse no zenith, instead will follow flat-lying salt-pans after The Canyon and other intense impingements on the eyeballs. While the volcano simmers on Fimmvörthuháls, Ice Land.

“When stars form, they form from the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. And in the process of the gas and dust falling in, it doesn’t fall directly in — it sort of spirals in slowly,” Fazio says.

He adds understanding a star’s formation may someday help astronomers understand the formation of our galaxy. “How did we get here, and where are we going? That’s what we are trying to understand.”

Seems to be a basic couple questions. Both which eliminate religion from view when religion posits irrefutable answers to both, without exception. And which suggests the social role of science (what else is there?) approaching the same role as religion. The feigned disentangled observer in science is immersed in such wide pursuit while playing with little bits of material: traces of answer to those questions. Or merely caught in the race that dominates this time — that between religion and science. One proceeding from apparent Truth, the other converging on it.

The condition of virtuality arises when humans create a situation which attenuates the flows that are impinging on their sensual and embodied presence. When technology is defined as a way to alter the paths of energy flow: virtuality is a subset condition of the altered flows such that the flows that are obviously (or not!) entering the body system are attenuated. The obvious (materialist!) subset of the widest set is that grouping which attenuates the classical sensory-input spectra. These may be ‘scientifically’ framed based on typical wave-based mechanical and electro-magnetic physics: the EM frequency band of visible Light, the pressure-induced electricity of touch, and so on. In a holistic approach to presence, the affectations of flow are continuous, complete, and substantive.

Alluding to yet a further subset is the use of glass as a specific form of energized matter which is placed between the eye and the ‘world out there.’ This is a fundamental form of virtuality, where silicon dioxide is introduced as an attenuating filter of flows between embodied presence and the cosmos. (this is a short intro to a longer text on the history of glass that’s cooking on the back burner.)

The road novel: a tracing of the displacement of the embodies Self across the Greater (or Lesser) Unknown. The road journal. The road. What is it about the road. It’s not merely a metaphoric interpretation of life, it is life. blah-blah-blah.

(in clipped phraseology)

Writing the fluid movement, framing encounter, hopeless task except as is comes closer and closer to the asymptotic point of writing-while-be-ing. It’s not a wall to break through, it is a separate reality. Talk about parallel universes! Writing and be-ing. Writing-in-be-ing.

Writing is the pen/cursor traveling across the page/screen. A locked dialectic of eye-to-2D-surface. Smoldering neuronal fire slogging between.

Writing what is(was) is always the case.

Back to the idea of the performative expression. That of telling the stories from the road. I did this in an annotated form in the performance at the Ultimate Akademie in Köln, Al Hansen’s old haunt. But how to do that in a way that is meaning-full in the context of this thesis project?

Obviously, there are many domains where verbal language is not useful or sufficient for description, and the many alternate systems used by humans, like mathematics, music, chemical symbolisms, graphics, maps, etc., show that this has been addressed since a long time. But some aspects are not covered yet. The main missing factor is dynamics. All notation systems are static and don’t cover the essentially dynamic character of life. This is a possible problem for a civilization that commits by far the largest part of its cultural memory to a system of static representations. In many non-western cultures, there is (or was) a strong tradition of non-verbal, dynamic cultural transmissions and it needs to be noticed that western civilizations have lost “the science of ritual” to a large extent (Staal 1982). There is the large field of cultural movement patterns that are not amenable in principle to static representations, since movement, when frozen in a static form, simply vanishes. Dynamis is incontrovertible with Stasis. This essential lack of all the static CMM that are so widespread in western civilizations alerts us to the possibility that perhaps there may be some very essential factor that civilizations are losing when they commit the bulk of their cultural transmission to written, static representations. — Andreas Goppold, Criticism and defects of writing and language

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.

Georgescu-Roegen critiques the mechanistic basis for much economic theory (which predominantly focuses on the movement of goods — a state which, thermodynamically, appears as a reversible process — and one which leads, at least conceptually if not in fact to the infinite cycle from production to consumption). It would appear that our current situation is the result of that infinite cycle occurring in a locally finite system.

This book leads to:

and ends up at this reflection from Borges:

It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws — I translate: inhuman laws — which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.

In the introduction Mirowski inspires as he details his struggle to build a conceptual and actual bridge between physics and economics. Understanding that economics is an important dimensional descriptor of the techno-social system is a nice advance. Although the number of economists who have made this connection are few, and the bulk of the discipline are still mired in juggling abstractions. It’s important to realize that the abstracted metrices of economy are abstracted from something and that something is energized matter. He extends the argument, marking the parallel between the terms value in economics and energy in physics. And later, he develops the concept of energy as one critical to understanding economics, period. This is a good find indeed! And it might end up, by studying the principles of the conservation of energy too much and I will end up a conservative. (No chance of that, as no one ends up as anything but energy anyway…) Actually, bringing thermodynamics into the picture would radically change the nature and theories of market economics both on the right and on the left.

On pages 56-57 there is a symmetric coffee-colored ring, a primitive of a Rorschach test, and on 58-59, some bits of roll-your-own tobacco. The last record of being checked out was 1998. More than a decade ago. Not too much interest in these approaches within the traditional canon.

And later, on to the indeterminacy of human tendencies towards abstracted (but sometimes brilliant) reason, in describing his ideas on electromagnetic fields:

The substance here treated must not be assumed to possess any of the properties of ordinary fluids except those of freedom of movement and resistance to compression. It is not even a hypothetical fluid which is introduced to explain actual phenomena. It is merely a collection of imaginary properties which may be employed for establishing certain theorems in pure mathematics in a way more intelligible for many minds … I wish merely to direct the mind of the reader to mechanical phenomena which will assist him in understanding the electrical ones. All such phrases in the present paper are to be considered as illustrative, not explanatory. In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. — James Clerk Maxwell

go to bed reading of Qi in Ted J. Kaptchuk’s treatise on Chinese medicine and wake up early from a deep dream where I was working with a group of boisterous and engaged young people who are somehow brought together by the impulse of Barack Obama. my immediate thought upon waking is why does a political figure enter my dreams? social action is important, sure, along with an interest in community dynamics, but a politician (community organizer none-the-less)? somewhat disturbing, though that thought is outweighed by the energy of the scenario. I suppose I am missing teaching. there will be opportunities for that in Oz, although I will keep it highly restricted to workshops rather than term courses. nothing should get in the way of the appointed task.

the Qi discussion illustrates the absolute difficulty in framing a concept in the language — the specific social protocol — within which the concept did not arise. the fundamental problem of translation. and in this case, translation of a term that is so formative to any worldview built on it that if one adopts that specific term, it will map, literally, where one stands in the world. and the ensuing conclusion that the adoption of another social protocol, language, precipitates a shift in worldview. no surprise there.

one global ‘solution’ to this issue especially in regard to fundamentals like Qi or energy (noting that even here I am making no one-to-one correspondence between the two!), when ‘comparing’ fundamentals, is to consider that each human individually is observing the world, and, at the same time, the social collective that they are participating in exerts an impressive synergy on all these points-of-view, and generates a collectively determined world view. this is the dominant social protocol, their language. Both the individual and collective world view are reductive apprehensions of essentially the same phenomena — that of be-ing in the world — seen from the particular point of view of that individual or collective. Of course, there are the instances where the worldview of the collective is impressed on the individual when the individual is forced to sacrifice personal autonomy to the collective — often through violence or threat of violence. it becomes a deep issue of personal autonomy or idiosyncrasy versus the power of the collective and where to set the line.

… the unusual difficulty in making Qi intelligible in modern Western philosophy suggests that the underlying Chinese metaphysical assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and matter…. (Furthermore) the continuous presence in Chinese philosophy of the idea of Qi as a way of conceptualizing the base structure and function of the cosmos, despite the availability of symbolic resources to make an analytical distinction between spirit and matter, signifies a conscious refusal to abandon a mode of thought that synthesizes spirit and matter as an undifferentiated whole. The loss of analytical clarity is compensated by the reward of imaginative richness. The fruitful ambiguity of Qi allows philosophers to explore realms of being which are inconceivable to people constricted by Cartesian dichotomy …. Qi, in short, seems inadequate to provide a philosophical background for the development of empirical science as understood in a positivistic sense. What it does provide, however, is a metaphorical mode of knowing, an epistemological attempt to address the multidimensional nature of reality by comparison, allusion, and suggestion. — Tu Wei-ming in Confucian Though

furthermore, the adoption of another linguistic naming system or protocol represents the potential of seeing the world anew. at the same time as it represents a separation from the dominant or previous system. this is an essential feature of the process of immigration, this identity shift that comes through a (linguistic) re-naming the world. but it is also inherent in the process of adoption of any protocol or technology that is produced and imposed on the individual.

attend a screening last night of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. he was in attendance. and again this morning, he gave a presentation for science academics at the university as a part of their Darwin Days (where the Chair of the Life Sciences Department pointed out they were not allowed to say “celebration” but rather “commemoration”). the film’s premise was to map out the way both sides of the evolution/creationist divide are communicating and presenting their POV to the public. scientists are shown to be poor communicators, creationists shown to be poor communicators except for some who know the value of style and appearance (the Discovery Institute being the chief antagonists posing as a non-partisan think-tank). they are the ones leading the issues. in the same way Republicans have been successful in constructing the narratives guiding the story-following population to the conservative Nirvana. Olson, a former Harvard PhD biologist transitioned to Hollywood via a degree at USC’s film school. he now tells stories that bridge the divide between science and the general public. but the leap from stories to action — stories that form a context for action — well, there is generally a passivity that is a condition of listening/watching a story recitation. listening to stories has to stop at some point. so, the story has to have a transitional mechanism leading to action. how does that work? telling a story and have action arise out of the exchange of energies. the attentive focus of absorbing a story transforming into world-changing action. in the evening Nick and I catch the screening of Sizzle also by Olson. overheard today:

mass media is directed at the pelvic floor but what about having Kegels for Consciousness…

a repaired drum appears, as does a Tibetan singing bowl, and a basket full of instruments. resonant sound-making ensues.

John passes this one along, charting yet another step in the march of the Military-Industrial machine that began during WWII. and with the Christian Right quite comfortable with the prognostications of their arm-chair prophets about the impending Armageddon in the Middle East, no problem, Amurika will get the job DONE! along with lots of warm and fuzzies…

Martin MGM-1 Matador :: General Dynamics (Convair) RIM-2 Terrier :: Western Electric MIM-3 Nike Ajax :: Hughes AIM-4 Falcon :: JPL/Firestone MGM-5 Corporal :: Vought RGM-6 Regulus :: Raytheon AIM/RIM-7 Sparrow :: Bendix RIM-8 Talos :: Raytheon (Philco/G.E.) AIM-9 Sidewinder :: Boeing CIM-10 Bomarc :: Chrysler PGM-11 Redstone :: Martin AGM-12 Bullpup :: Martin MGM/CGM-13 Mace :: Western Electric MIM-14 Nike Hercules :: Vought RGM-15 Regulus II :: General Dynamics (Convair) CGM/HGM-16 Atlas :: Douglas PGM-17 Thor :: Martin MGM-18 Lacrosse :: Chrysler PGM-19 Jupiter :: McDonnell ADM-20 Quail :: Nord MGM-21 :: Aérospatiale (Nord) AGM-22 :: Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk :: General Dynamics (Convair) RIM-24 Tartar :: Martin HGM/LGM-25 Titan :: Hughes AIM-26 Falcon :: Lockheed UGM-27 Polaris :: North American AGM-28 Hound Dog :: JPL/Sperry MGM-29 Sergeant :: Boeing LGM-30 Minuteman :: Martin Marietta MGM-31 Pershing :: Aérospatiale (Nord) MGM-32 Entac :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-33 :: Teledyne Ryan AQM/BQM/MQM/BGM-34 Firebee :: Northrop (Radioplane) AQM-35 :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-36 Shelduck :: Beech AQM-37 :: Northrop (Radioplane) AQM-38 :: Beech MQM-39 :: Globe MQM-40 Firefly :: Fairchild AQM-41 Petrel :: North American MQM-42 Redhead/Roadrunner :: General Dynamics FIM-43 Redeye :: Goodyear UUM-44 Subroc :: Texas Instruments AGM-45 Shrike :: General Dynamics MIM-46 Mauler :: Hughes AIM-47 Falcon :: Douglas AGM-48 Skybolt :: Western Electric/McDonnell Douglas LIM-49 Nike Zeus/Spartan :: Bendix RIM-50 Typhon LR :: Ford MGM-51 Shillelagh :: LTV MGM-52 Lance :: Rockwell AGM-53 Condor :: Raytheon (Hughes) AIM-54 Phoenix :: Bendix RIM-55 Typhon MR :: Nord/Bell PQM-56 :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-57 Falconer :: Aerojet General MQM-58 Overseer :: APL RGM-59 Taurus :: Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher :: Beech MQM-61 Cardinal :: Martin Marietta AGM-62 Walleye :: AGM-63 :: Rockwell (North American) AGM-64 Hornet :: Raytheon (Hughes) AGM-65 Maverick :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-66 Standard MR :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-67 Standard ER :: Air Force Weapons Lab AIM-68 Big Q :: Boeing AGM-69 SRAM :: Boeing LEM-70 Minuteman ERCS :: Raytheon (Hughes) BGM-71 TOW :: Ford MIM-72 Chaparral :: Lockheed UGM-73 Poseidon :: Northrop MQM/BQM-74 Chukar :: BGM-75 AICBM :: Hughes AGM-76 Falcon :: McDonnell Douglas FGM-77 Dragon :: General Dynamics AGM-78 Standard ARM :: Martin Marietta AGM-79 Blue Eye :: Chrysler AGM-80 Viper :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-81 Firebolt :: AIM-82 :: Texas Instruments AGM-83 Bulldog :: Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) AGM/RGM/UGM-84 Harpoon :: RIM-85 :: Boeing AGM-86 ALCM :: General Electric AGM-87 Focus :: Raytheon (Texas Instruments) AGM-88 HARM :: UGM-89 Perseus / STAM :: BQM-90 :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-91 Firefly :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) FIM-92 Stinger :: E-Systems GQM-93 :: Boeing GQM-94 B-Gull :: Hughes AIM-95 Agile :: Lockheed UGM-96 Trident I :: General Dynamics AIM-97 Seekbat :: Teledyne Ryan GQM-98 R-Tern :: LIM-99 :: LIM-100 :: RIM-101 :: General Dynamics/Sperry PQM-102 Delta Dagger :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-103 :: Raytheon MIM-104 Patriot :: Lockheed MQM-105 Aquila :: USAF FDL BQM-106 Teleplane :: Raytheon (Beech) MQM-107 Streaker :: NWC BQM-108 :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) BGM/RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk :: LTV BGM-110 :: Teledyne Ryan BQM-111 Firebrand :: Rockwell AGM-112 :: RIM-113 :: Boeing/Lockheed Martin (Rockwell/Martin Marietta) AGM-114 Hellfire :: Euromissile/Hughes/Boeing MIM-115 Roland :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-116 RAM :: RS Systems FQM-117 RCMAT :: Martin Marietta LGM-118 Peacekeeper :: Kongsberg AGM-119 Penguin :: Raytheon (Hughes) AIM-120 AMRAAM :: Boeing CQM/CGM-121 Pave Tiger/Seek Spinner :: Motorola AGM-122 Sidearm :: Emerson Electric AGM-123 Skipper II :: Hughes AGM-124 Wasp :: Boeing RUM/UUM-125 Sea Lance :: Beech BQM-126 :: Martin Marietta AQM-127 SLAT :: AQM-128 :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) AGM-129 ACM :: Boeing (Rockwell) AGM-130 :: Boeing AGM-131 SRAM II :: MBDA (BAe Dynamics/Matra) AIM-132 ASRAAM :: Lockheed Martin UGM-133 Trident II :: Martin Marietta MGM-134 Midgetman :: Vought ASM-135 ASAT :: Northrop AGM/BGM-136 Tacit Rainbow :: Northrop AGM/MGM-137 TSSAM :: Boeing CEM-138 Pave Cricket :: Lockheed Martin (Loral) RUM-139 VL-Asroc :: Lockheed Martin (LTV) MGM-140 ATACMS :: IMI (Brunswick) ADM-141 TALD :: Rafael/Lockheed Martin AGM-142 Have Nap :: Continental RPVs MQM-143 RPVT :: ADM-144 :: Teledyne Ryan BQM-145 Peregrine :: Oerlikon/Lockheed Martin MIM-146 ADATS :: BAI Aerosystems BQM-147 Exdrone :: Raytheon/Lockheed Martin FGM-148 Javelin :: PQM-149 UAV-SR / McDonnell Douglas Sky Owl :: PQM-150 UAV-SR :: AeroVironment FQM-151 Pointer :: AIM-152 AAAM :: AGM-153 :: Raytheon (Texas Instruments) AGM-154 JSOW :: Northrop Grumman (TRW/IAI) BQM-155 Hunter :: Raytheon RIM-156 Standard SM-2ER Block IV :: Raytheon MGM-157 EFOGM :: Lockheed Martin AGM-158 JASSM :: Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) AGM-159 JASSM :: Northrop Grumman (Teledyne Ryan) ADM-160 MALD :: Raytheon RIM-161 Standard SM-3 :: Raytheon RIM-162 ESSM :: Orbital Sciences GQM-163 Coyote :: Lockheed Martin MGM-164 ATACMS II :: Raytheon RGM-165 LASM :: Lockheed Martin MGM-166 LOSAT/KEM :: Composite Engineering BQM-167 Skeeter :: Lockheed Martin MGM-168 ATACMS Block IVA :: Lockheed Martin AGM-169 JCM :: Griffon Aerospace MQM-170 Outlaw :: Griffon Aerospace MQM-171 Broadsword :: Lockheed Martin FGM-172 SRAW :: Alliant Techsystems GQM-173 MSST :: Raytheon RIM-174 ERAM (SM-6) :: :: Douglas MGR-1 Honest John :: Douglas AIR-2 Genie :: Emerson Electric MGR-3 Little John :: NOTS RUR-4 Weapon Alpha :: Honeywell RUR-5 Asroc :: Ford MER-6 Blue Scout ERCS :: Raytheon ADR-7 :: Revere (Tracor) ADR-8 :: Tracor ADR-9 :: Raytheon ADR-10 :: ADR-11 :: ADR-12 :: USAMICOM MQR-13 BMTS :: Martin Marietta AGR-14 ZAP :: USAMICOM MTR-15 BATS :: Atlantic Research MQR-16 Gunrunner :: General Dynamics FGR-17 Viper :: NWC GTR-18 Smokey Sam :: :: JPL PWN-1 Loki-Dart :: Aerojet General PWN-2 Aerobee-Hi :: University of Michigan/NACA PWN-3 Nike-Cajun :: University of Michigan PWN-4 Exos :: Cooper Development PWN-5 Rocksonde 200 :: Atlantic Research PWN-6 Kitty :: Atlantic Research PWN-7 Rooster :: Space Data PWN-8 Loki Datasonde :: Aerojet/UTC PWN-9 Kangaroo :: Space Data PWN-10 Super Loki Datasonde :: Space Data PWN-11 Super Loki Datasonde :: Space Data PWN-12 Super Loki ROBIN

Transmediale09 tasks start to form up. Though the decision to go to Berlin is not made quite yet. I can participate to a degree without going, working as a remote online moderator for the conference.

Winter Solstice about over and gone. To stretch days to June 21. No problem with that. Here sunrise was at 07:33 and sunset at 17:23. Not bad, day hardly shrinks from summer when the nights are still long and dark.

As the basement chill grows. It’ll be long underwear here. With no sunshine. Star shine tonight, perhaps sun tomorrow. I’ll watch the sun come up. The windows are warped in most the house. One way or the other. Gap at the bottom of the big one facing south. When the Pacific storms come ripping through both that window and the western one over the guest bed leaks a bit. Will have to see if I can effect a fix. Reading Thoreau. And others.

I do not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation and it put me on the alert to see more like it. I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was bran new, and adequate to the occasion. I let science slide, and rejoiced in that Light as if it had been a fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for pale daylight. Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes.

It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day — not an empty chamber, but an inhabited house — and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them. Your so-called wise man goes trying to persuade himself that there is no entity there but himself and his traps, but it is a great deal easier to believe the truth. It suggested, too, that the same experience always gives birth to the same sort of belief or religion. One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man. I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing from the missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me his. Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the Light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth. — Hank Thoreau

Sarah invites me to go to a morning pre-screening in the Atlas Center of the movie Speaking in Code along with David and some of the other principles from the Boulder Media Festival. they are considering the flick for screening at the next festival. it’s … okay … funny how historical the scene got so quickly. ancient times, techno seems.

right after lunch, I meet Holly at the UMC and we take a wander around campus talking about her options upon graduation from high school this spring. we make a visit to David’s office to talk about the TAM program, etc. it’s cold out. and the art department is now a construction site. I decide to cycle downtown to meet Sarah and Kate later at the Laughing Goat. then still later, we wander back up to campus to catch negativland who Jane brought to CU for a couple (free!) shows featuring their concentrated and comprehensive performance on the mediated social system of religion in It’s All In Your Head FM.

We believe that the healthy evolution of art and creativity has more value than simply counting how much money is lost or made. Art, science and technology have evolved because of how we all build upon the ideas and works of those who came before us. Copyright was always intended as a balancing act between giving ownership to creators so as to provide incentive to create new works, and allowing works to lapse into the public domain so that new ideas could develop. But our founding fathers could never have imagined the kind of world we live in today and the amazing new technologies that we are surrounded with – technologies that encourage and inspire us to interact with the world and create in unprecedented new ways. Protecting the author of a creative work is a good thing, but the benefits of copyright have been thrown off balance by the disproportionate influence of those with the most money. In fact, the more recent expansions of our nations copyright laws represents a break from our nations past and from the intentions of our own Constitution. — Mark Hosler

long day, many ideas are danced around. it’s good to see former students so active with things, thoughts, and spirits.

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.
(more …)

Berlin, Kiel, Berlin, New York. place frames time. more-or-less. and what of it? multiplicity of options and possibilities frames the next phase of movement. and it is only a matter of survival.

Miga makes a plate of pancakes. with jam from his parents garden in rural Lithuania. nice!

creative production slows to small fragments of text, some images, and some sounds. no mental space to work on the numerous proposals which hang over the head. not interested in the green consumer revolution which is leading the media art world around, tugging on gold-ringed nostrils to keep the plod in acceptable directions. as with so many times before the engagement of science by art is naive and un-productive even in the simple critical sense of raising real issues and stimulating real dialogues. disappointing.

but conversation with Udo last night around aporee maps and some ideas come up along with possible information/collaboration sources that I already have in place from older networks.

in Berlin for a day.

the tmp-deluxe performance is over. not interesting or successful at all. off track, I should not have wasted my energy of pre-tension on it.

Auto-Destructive Art Machine Art Auto Creative Art

Each visible fact absolutely expresses its reality.

Certain machine produced forms are the most perfect forms of our period.

In the evenings some of the finest works of art produced now are dumped on the streets of Soho.

Auto creative art is art of change, growth movement.

Auto-destructive art and auto creative art aim at the integration of art with the advances of science and technology. The immediate objective is the creation, with the aid of computers, of works of art whose movements are programmed and include “self-regulation”. The spectator, by means of electronic devices can have a direct bearing on the action of these works.

Auto-destructive art is an attack on capitalist values and the drive to nuclear annihilation. — Gustave Metzger, 1961