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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ready to vacate the camp ground: the omens and portents are not good.

Bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

Nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. Camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. The premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. For entertainment. (Note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). The word entertainment is key. It is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. The body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). (more …)

hmmm, combinations of local circumstances impede encounters. structural deficiencies route possible crossings into different spaces. turtle-like, looking out onto a complex and unknown landscape and socio-cultural milieu.

find any openings for contact, sussing-out, phishing, checking in, checking out. finding where there is a break in the construct, gaps. small TAZ’s crouched and ready. intervene, connect.

and on another note entirely. sadly, transcendentally. hearing on the underside of the planet. or the reverse top. as shadows point to Antarctica. another giant come to an end in this world. how to expect that another world is? or that there is some way of standing in both for more than a while.

So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

aren’t disco balls just enhanced simulators for dancing around a fire? what’s the dif? why not dance around a fire more often? gyrate under washes of starLight with limb warming fire to back and front as oscillations permit. in a crowd of like-smelling co-habitants, oscillating to rhythms of necessary presence.

what of having fun while living?

Modern man is insecure and repressed — isolated from his fellows yet desperately clinging to the collectivity which he trusts to protect him from the might of other collectivities. Divided within himself into instincts and spirit, repressions and sublimations, he finds himself incapable of direct relation with his fellows either as individuals in the body-politic or as fellow members of a community. The tremendous collective power with which he allies himself gives him neither relationship nor freedom from fear but makes his life a sterile alternation between universal war and armed peace. The modern crisis is thus a crisis both of the individual and of society at large. — Maurice Freidman (1976, p. 245)

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

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

The local controversy around widening Williamson Valley Road continues. It is a microcosm of the more general issue of development in the southwest of the US. Arizona has one of, if not the fastest growth rate of any state and the Prescott – Prescott Valley – Chino Valley “Tri-city” area is near the fastest in the state. When the folks moved here and built their retirement home (purely my father’s impetus — the clear-sky suitability for his astronomy), theirs was the second or third home on the street, and the view — a 200-degree panorama that reached 100 miles to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff — was long and relatively free of any spurious Lighting at night. Williamson Valley was still populated by several large ranch spreads, and the road was narrow and twisting as it approached Iron Springs Road and the fringe of northern Prescott proper. That was twenty years ago. The population of Prescott has increased by a factor of four, and the Tri-city area by a factor of six. Everything from Mac-mansions and gated communities to cheap tract housing and trailer courts are changing the landscape on a daily basis. Traffic increases, and now, with development along the WV corridor stretching 20 miles northwest along the fringe of the National Forest, the wealthy folks who have chosen to live that far out are upset when the traffic slows their ingress to town. The first five miles of WV road has more than 75 side roads — everything from driveways to major roads — many of them blind entrances. The second five mile stretch is more straight and has only around 50 intersections. The City of Prescott, working with Yavapai County officials decided unilaterally (well, with the heavy hand of The Developers behind them!) on a “Master Plan” to widen the road, now two lanes, to five (and sometimes 6 or 7) lanes to accommodate the increased traffic and make the road “safer.” If only! Given the drivers who are already tailgating folks going the speed limit (anywhere from 35 to 55 mph) an extra lane means there will be, in effect, an extra fast lane in either direction. That means, if any of the other local 5-lane roads are any indication (including the infamous “Blood Alley” of Rt. 89A between Prescott and Prescott Valley) impatient drivers will be hitting 65 to 80 miles-per-hour in the fast lane. Residents with entrances on the opposite side of the road along that ten mile stretch will be required to cross up to three lanes to turn into their driveways or enter the road. Try that with a blind entrance and 80 mph speeders. The body count will be significant.

It is clear that it is The Developers who will benefit the most — that class of people who carve up the ranches into salable chunks and build houses. Most frequent now are the aforementioned mentioned Mac-Mansions — monstrous homes up to 5000 ft2 (450 m2). Emblems of consumerism, with Hummers and other SUVs parked in the driveway, in front of the four-car + RV garages.

The most annoying aspects of this housing excess is the lack of design features that show any awareness for the local environment. Generally the only nod to the surrounding environment are massive windows (usually placed towards the north-west) which allow the standard spectacle of virtual-environment-as-entertainment. No need to actually go outside!

The house my parents designed and built went up during a short window of time when the state and federal government was giving tax credits for energy-efficient features. My father took full advantage of this, although the house was going to be designed for solar anyway. It has active and passive solar components along with energy efficient characteristics like 6-inch outer walls (instead of the normal 4-inch), anywhere from 3x – 5x the normal insulation factors in the foundation, exterior walls and attic, and so on. Perhaps the single dominant factor, one which affects the comfort of the house most, is the simple orientation of the foundation. There is a sun room at the south end of the house — a room that gets a full blast of Arizona sun during the winter months. The room has a concrete-slab floor which acts as a heat reservoir to store the solar influx. The room has a sloping ceiling which carries heated air up towards an intake vent which carries this pre-heated air down to be pumped out into the 4 – 6-foot high crawl-space which is under the rest of the house. The air then comes out floor vents located in each room. This simple system which needs electricity only for the circulation fan — it easily keeps the entire house at at least 68F in the winter when the sun is shining, the sun room in the 80′sF. On the rare cloudy days, the wood stove in the sun room acts as a substitute. There is a solar water heater which acts as a pre-heating element for the regular water heater or, it can supply the house with 50 gallons of 100F water by itself. Not bad.

Sure, my folks were part of that wave of retirees who came 20 years ago, just another wave coming to the warm west. It’s been going on for 150 years at least.

Presently, along the road, on the wide easements are horse, mountain-bike, and ATV trails paralleling the road. These will be wiped out, further reducing the ”usability’ of the corridor to local residents.

I dunno. Watching the developers consume the landscape of the West is pretty depressing — unfortunately, though there are alternative ways of going, they drive the process with little effective opposition. There is the web site of citizens opposing the widening at http://www.Wvroad.Com.

lines of the hand, with the skin thinning, turning to trapezoidal textures that shimmer differently than they used to do. cool tonight, here at altitude, in the dry west, when the sun goes, warmth goes as well. remembering the nights in the desert, so many times. no matter the heat of the day, the night gives the heat back to the darkness of the sky. only in deep summer, is there more heat delivered than can be reflected away, so that only at the null hour, a time before dawn, does the air loosen itself of the burden of heat. but as soon as fall comes, with a couple days of cloud cover, the night air is an empty chill.

time: money: energy. what about this triad? the conversion between the first two concerns a number of roles and activities that one undertakes. probably the first thing to notice is that time as a phenomena exists outside the framework of the social system. at the same time as recognizing this, a primary task of an evolving social system is the construction of a regulated mechanism for quantifying time. this is a feature of even technologically ‘underdeveloped’ cultures — where the importance of the cyclic variations in the seasons was carefully framed and marked by religious holidays to remind citizens of their places in the (agriculturally) productive life of the society.

time as a raw phenomena is an intangible, of similar import to gravitation and Light. however, the development of devices which would demarcate apparently consistent segments of time has been and is important to any social system. one metric of the advancement of a society can be tied to the accuracy and extent of standardization of temporal measurement devices. framing of time is a key element to any set of basic standardization metrics. and, to the extent possible, these metrics are rigidly applied to all parts of the social system — you know, those kind of people who don’t wear a watch? a little revolt against the microscopic reach of hegemony in the social structure. try meeting someone without depending on some kind of shared standardization of time. at sunset? at high noon? at the first moon after the vernal equinox?

what is “spending time”? it is a commitment to share a portion of the lived expenditure of life-energy on some activity. life-time, and the co-committed life-energy that is ‘used’ in a unit of (standardized) time cannot be retrieved. time is a uni-directional flow that often appears to change speed, irrespective and independent of the standardization applied by the social system. cosmology suggests that perhaps there are regions of the universe where this flow is distorted significantly, though not reversed or stopped. it is a given that the existence of our local system of complexity that life-time flows in one direction. therefore, ‘spending time’ has a significance equal in importance to any other fundamental choice facing a sentient being. along the flow of time, biologic entities, at least considered as discrete material objects, display the uniform characteristic of increasing entropy according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. there is a clear relation between the limited amount of energy an entity can obtain, generate, use in an apparently materialistically limited existence and passing time.

then there is the issue of money. money is not the thing itself. money represents something, being only printed paper, it shares a parallel history to the development of the printed word, and before that, the abstraction of written language. but since the social system designates a set of equivalencies — sometimes of limited number, sometimes in near-infinite variety — to actual configurations of matter, or actions undertaken by other sentient beings. (to be continued) …

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

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

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

after a short visit to the Courthouse Square Bluegrass Festival, we wander over to the Smoki Museum to hear a persentation by Ramson Lomatewama, a traditionalist Hopi artist and poet from the Eagle Clan. he referenced Martin Buber’s I and Thou philosophy which pleasantly surprised me, commenting that the Hopi language did not allow for the it of English, making all relation an I/Thou state. with an audience of mostly greyheads, white retirees, he commented on several misconceptions about the Hopi, including a strong critique of Water’s Book of the Hopi, and a short history of Navajo encroachment. he works in a variety of traditional and non-traditional media including stained glass, glass-blowing, cottonwood-root Katsina tithu carving, intaglio printing, and poetry, the following called

After the Rains

Sandstone cliffs
reflect the red
of the setting sun.

My hoe is caked
with evidence
of my labor.

I see clouds
going to the east.
Dark clouds.

I look to the sky.
There!
A rainbow
is arched above me.

As I walk down
the dusty road
I look up.

Again!
The rainbow
dressed in beauty
walks with me.

There is no need
for us to speak.

Silence
will speak
for us.

it’s a bit of a question, the whole concept of the Smoki Museum — founded in the 1930′s by a passel of white business men who wanted to dress up like Indians and fake traditional dances: there is a strong streak of paternal exoticism in the premise (even the name Smoki is made-up). somewhere there is a wish that what the bahannas (whites) have created for themselves isn’t so great, and that the ways of the indian are somehow more romantically sustainable. add a dose of good old fashioned guilt at the unacknowledged centuries of genocide and lies, and an obsession with Southwest Art, and there you have it.

you might think that western art might include all the great traditions of … but it turns out that the western art fair this weekend on Courthouse Square in the old downtown of Prescott consists of bronze cowboys, landscapes with mesas and rivers with teepees and warriors, horses, wildlife in either whimsical or mysterious homogenic poses, chubby barefoot Indian babies, bronze Indian maidens, buffaloes in marble, and all the artists with few exceptions are very white and waspish. the distinctions from booth to booth come almost purely in technique – pastels on white paper, oils, pastels on black paper (in the tradition of Elvis on black velvet being sold in abandoned gas station parking lots somewhere), bronze casting, pencil, charcoal, a few acrylic works, very few traditional prints (litho, monotype, engraving, or mezzotint). depressing lack of originality. some excellent technical works, a few oddities, but otherwise a rather crass and predictable presentation of uninspired cultcha. hmmmm.

Marcus gives me a paper about Bernard Noël.

What is it to be face to face?

From the depths of the window comes
the self that is not other

Through the eyes he casts
a cry of smoke

Then the knowing is
the torn off fingernail

Head and knife are cold
in the thought

and this excerpt from the powerful essay “The Delicate Oppression”:

Therefore, behind the appearance of a free and universal culture, is the attempt to seize entirely the cultural field and the mental space of cultural subjects, transforming them into simple consumers. The mechanism of this transformation is so simple in principle and practiced so regularly, that it becomes imperceptible as soon as it goes into action. It can be summarized in the following way: every cultural action always involves a certain effort of comprehension, learning and of listening, its movement leads to an exchange of pleasure. Cultural consumption, on the contrary, only requires a bit of passivity. A show serves as mental activity, an activity which is only agitation and ends by discouraging reflection, to the advantage of the voracious appetite of ones own nonsense. It is sufficient to sit in front of a television and watch, in a totally natural way, and what you are watching will drag you into its movement and become your thought.

this would apply to any form of re-produced, re-presented cultural manifestation, and in-authentic constellations of be-ing. so, again, a reaffirmation of the power of authentic be-ing in the world. not a retreat or return to some ‘primitive’ state of living, no Luddite protestation by refusal or opposition, but simply an awareness of the extreme psychic danger inherent in the collectivization of human expression.

noting the yet significant differences between Czech Republic and Germany. like the cost of rail travel. it will cost me more to get from Dortmund to Rösrath today than to fly from Prague. and if I was doing the same trip in the East, it would cost about a tenth of what it costs here in the West. no wonder people are making counter-migrations to the East. though there seemed to be fewer Amurikans evident in Prague these days, there were plenty from other places. not much to say. en route on an ICE train right now. deciding the connections to make. surely a ‘nicer’ system here, but not to a degree to justify the cost. the long-distance rail runs must be getting killed by the short-hop discount airlines. what does competition do to a previously nationalized system? it forces privatization. Frieder was mentioning that there are now private regional rail lines (actually they share the same rails), that was a surprise. it would be a pity if they move in the direction of the British Rail system which is a real mess. ach. whatever. doddering words here. full of nothing. noticing that International equity market funds are pegging a good upward stride this last month.

second day of the workshop. hard to read the situation. everyone is in an unfamiliar environment. the ambiance in the place is calm. but hard to decode. we are strangers. landing from one planet to another. it is unusual for me to be sharing the direction of the workshop, or at least trying to. there is an internal process of deference, but that clearly is not collaboration, I need to retune myself. it is hard for me to find a balance because of this. on my part. waiting for the students to make the 0900 morning start request to appear after losing most of the first day to stragglers who arrived late into the evening. there is a lack of awareness of the meta-structural social dynamics that would facilitate a greater intensity. but this is the normal condition. intuitive actualization is possible, but going through the gymnastics of cognitive understanding first seems the only way to bring back the operational authenticity of that intuition. either that or just get drunk with them all night, see who is the last standing.

I think what we need is critical consciousness. Critical consciousness towards the entire construct of technology. Technology is not neutral, it’s not God-given, it doesn’t come from the burning bush, it doesn’t emerge from the world of antimatter. It’s something that human society makes. So all of human society is inscribed in the machine in this sense – and then the machine becomes a force to reinscribe something on society. And you can have the negative aspect of this, and you can be truly creative – why not. I’m absolutely not denying anyone’s creativity. All I’m asking for, for myself, is critical consciousness about technology. — Hakim Bey

What is it about the insularity of the US population that makes it so hard to see relations and connections between actions and results? Take for example, the issue of Chinese economic advancement. Almost every object that one can buy in the cheap distribution points like WalMart, CostCo, K-Mart, and pretty much all other consumer institutions in the suburban consumer US is manufactured in China. The Amurikan consumer is able to consume at such a rate primarily by the subsidization of the Chinese worker by the Chinese government. Not through some kind of controllable mechanism related to the government in power: the relative hegemonic position guarantees a certain stability of markets, but it does not control the procession of wealth and movement of global capital.

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind … And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. — William Shakespeare

landscapes: social, cultural milieu shift in range of eye and ear. Amurika, what it is, what it should be, what it imagines of itself, how it synthesizes its face, how it acts, how it predicts, within the full depth of its deepening un-sustainability. to surface through the fragile impossibility of material wealth. it’s confusing. no critique, rational or irrational, will have any effect. teevee shows of crying parents and wives, reading last letters of soldiers gone in Iraq. what is this for? why this mediation of grief. what is this? presenting the lined faces, the tears, the quavering voices, and the simple expressions of life now gone, erased through some destined fate, whatever that is. sustainability is erased in the same way the youth is erased from the soldier’s face.

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

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

church and a Sunday dinner. eating far too rapidly, though, a family thing. recalling one Thanksgiving with about 20 people or so where from sit-down start of the meal to clearing the after-dinner coffee cups away took less that 40 minutes. not so much enjoyment of the food at the table, just stress about getting finished and eating enough to make it worth it. hmmm. but good food none-the-less. the church service includes a long-distance live phone patch to the minister’s son who was in France studying as a missionary soon to be going to Senegal. a surprise connection on Father’s Day facilitated by one of his assistants.

Sanibel Island, 20 kilometers of white shell sand beach, lined with mangrove, non-native tamarisk, and palm trees. early morning arrivals are best, before the few baked tourists who can’t afford to come here for a couple months to a palatial winter get-away estate. cheaper in summer. so they come, despite the high gas prices and the threat that the terror of life might happen to them. from the northern realms only recently liberated from the Midwestern chill. couple hours in the almost wave-less water, imagining that there might be a 3-footer lurking out there beyond immediate view, waiting to curl slowly up, 100 yards off-shore, breaking left and right, doing that special rolling break like at Huntington Beach. a curl to ride forever, all the way in. but this is the Gulf Coast, so, more like a warm bath-tub, with minimal slopping around, and nothing remotely ride-able. scoped out a free 25-yard pool halfway up the island. free, lanes open, pull-buoys, extra #45 sunblock, kickboards. open air swimming with the sun popping up between the legs on each kick-turn. direct overhead. burning a brilliant path.

Amurikans have a sense of complicity and guilt for anything that happens in the world.

commentary on the state of things. or energies and their propensities. birds around. black turkey vultures on the side of the road — feasting on some unfortunate beast’s recently intersected bodily incarnation with the pent-up energies of hydrocarbon-driven monsters. at least they were happy.

development seems to be a substitute term for the large-scale redirection of concentrated social energies to alter the natural landscape. scale is an interesting issue, however. it is such that at the most obvious human metric, that of feet and meters, humans concentrate most their efforts. but at other scales, their ‘dominion’ is much more transitory and their hold less intense.

somehow the miasma of corporate food chains and globalized society that is centered around consumption of a tedious modicum of cheaply manufactured material goods. food no different from plastic deck chairs, disposable particle-board furniture, and ‘art’ reproductions. in perpetuity. with the end-point not just extrapolated, but reached, over-reached, and saturated.

(fabulous that Coppertone is made of a tan-coloring agent, saves the trouble.)

more mappings of separation, widening divergences between Europe and the US. the dollar and the euro.

reading IEEE Spectrum, NSPE, Science, and all that stuff. The old Encyclopedia Britannica, playing chess with Loki using the old Japanese ivory chess set. Finally he beats me. twice. I made him work for it, but he came through with not too much complaining. and ends up beating me all the time thereafter. monsoon season maybe did start up today. actually got wet, but it evaporated within an hour. the respite from sun was welcome, clouds are okay, too, nights warmer for the insulating effect, but highs are lowering. mountain biking today, and swimming, that’s good. necessary. gotta do a longer ride tomorrow.

the “P” on the side of the mountain south of town has been changed from all white(wash) to stripes of red, white, and blue. this area of Arizona has many veterans who started migrating to the area following World War 1, seeking a dry climate for health reasons. the Veterans Administration established a hospital in Prescott on the site of Fort Whipple, an early outpost for US military control of the native American ‘situation’ in the region. the Yavapai Indian Reservation abuts the Fort, and extends in a rhombohedral shape that sticks into the middle of the east side of town. between that and the “World’s Oldest Rodeo,” it’s cowboys and indians here.

possibly en route soon. nature steps in. dumps a couple meters of snow. the easy transit turns into a logistical gamble… the trees along the creek crack and groan under the weight of the wet spring snow, many fall. traversing the parking lot, there is a sedan trying very unsuccessfully to park. I approach the car and ask if I can help — the guy, Mohammed, turns out to be from Egypt, hardly knew snow, this was clear. nice to make that transcultural mapping, given this fuckin’ war looming.

This time of the year, under the shadow of the Flatirons. Dreaming of honeysuckle in my mouth. Wine and roses, Goshen, and awakening powers. Finding a Lady Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum) in the deep wood. Delicate soil-changer. Growing. (Like all rising, growing things, waxing, increase).

Why is this? Is a pivotal point happening sometime soon, has one already transpired? Or was one missed in the noise of the daily movements? No way to tell, except that I do feel inspired by the place. Not the socio-cultural, but the raw presence of place. Why not?

meet Atle in the afternoon, walk through the Høstutstilling, have a beer in the cafe there, letting the conversation travel through the space of shared experience. and the town is full of football fans from the two teams fighting for the national championship. in this cafe I have met Janine, Hilde, Kristin, Kenneth, and now Atle. strange how it is still such a cultural attractor for the Norwegians. obviously a profound and central expression of the cultural life of a nation-state. later I wander into a game shop and watch as a Dane instructs a passel of your Norwegians in the finer points of the LOTR battle game.

the carefully tended dirt field, sitting between the Joensuu Technical center where the University Media Department is located, and the new track-and-field center is the scene of changing activities. when I first arrived in September, there was kids football (soccer) matches happening in the afternoon and Saturday mornings. then, one Saturday, there appeared a large group of 30-to-50-something men playing what I would term a Finnish variety of lawn bowling. suited to the available materials, the game pieces consisted of 12 or 14 solid wooden cylinders about 14 cm high and 7cm in diameter, painted orange-red, and two perfectly cylindrical bats (unlike a US baseball bat), each with a smaller diameter end for grasping, and the rest about 8-10 cm in diameter, and maybe 80 cm long. the small pieces were set up, stacked two-high in a line, spaced about 20 cm apart, at one end of the playing field. each player then took turns flinging the wooden bat at the line from a distance of about 20 meters. the object, like bowling, was to knock down as many of the pins as possible. I gave Sanna a call to see if she knew what it was. she didn’t, but called me back later after researching it. turns out the game is called kyykkä. it’s an old Carelian sport that is not commonly played or even known anymore. anyway, that game appeared only once (check out http://www.kyykka.com/ for the full scenario, Finnish only, sorry) and now half the field has been taken over by the installation of two hockey rinks. waiting for the chill. there is an outdoor rink not far away with refrigeration pipes, that was fired up two weeks ago, and there are daily hockey workouts and figure-skating classes held in the middle of a pine forest, near the indoor swimming pool.

public works are apparently locally organized, possibly with some EU support, as this is literally a fringe region. there is the Technology Center, also EU funded, the location of the Media College‘s facility along with tens of small technology companies, the local University Biology Department, and state-of-the-art media (digital teevee and audio) production studios, Cadimef.

yet over all this, repeated in medium-to-large towns across Finland, there doesn’t seem to be much creative output. but maybe this is an outside view — the system internally cranks onwards.

talking to myself, fighting for space in the swimming pool. the last month, between jumps away to other locations, been pushing the physical envelope. up to 3000 meters a day in the pool. 2500 seemed very nice, 100 lengths, 50 minutes, roughly a meter per second. then, why not go for an even hour of exertion. somehow this seems to have put me in an entirely new mind-state. can’t quite tell, but seems to have made more aggressive? hmmmm. aside from the constant psy-ops of dealing with the scissor-kicking grammas and kamikaze grampas in the fast lane. there actually IS no fast lane. the pool, when not hosting the ubiquitous swim-teams, is roped with 2-lane-wide segments, where supposedly one should be doing slow counter-clockwise circles, down on the right, back on the left. there is no idea of segregating each of the three double-lanes for different speeds of swimmers, so I just choose the one with the fewest swimmers, and start off by going up and back in the center of the double-lane. this is only problematic if there are already swimmers of widely varying speeds, causing the need for two people passing at the same time. that and people who just aren’t aware of anybody else in the pool. if there are only three or four other people slowly doing breast-stroke laps, I force the situation by taking up half of the right lane, and swim up and back. my speed is anywhere from 2x to 5x the speed of the others with the rare exception of a real swimmer, in which case I can match anybody but the fastest young men swim-teamers. either way, I have to stay very alert for new swimmers coming into the lane who assume that everybody is going slowly, counter-clockwise, and the kids cannon-balling off the sprint-blocks. usually a few dramatic kick-turns lets folks know that I just want to have a quiet workout. a few times there have been aggressive men who join the lane and play chicken, sometimes I have actually swam under them head-on. mentally I rationalize the whole stance that the management COULD allocate lanes by speed. but I know this is an impossible concept for the leveled and overly-socialized culture to even consider the segmentation by physical ability. Nordic plain-ness. so, I just act like a foreigner. why not, I am one.

wandering between school and the flat that is home. like so many of the other flats I have stayed in during the last years. cable teevee. which is a magnet. would much rather be listening to public raydeeoh, but I never did make a habit of carrying my Sony shortwave after starting out on this long road 6.5 years ago. rather find my network connection and tune into KCRW or something decent in the way of music. like the special ARS01 version of Ambient City radio — a comprehensive history of ambient music featuring my old favs like The Hafler Trio and Kraftwerk. no DJ, just CD after CD. for a month or so. that’s cool.

it has begun. working after school. 1700 or so. Sanna sends me an SMS if you are not watching teevee, you should be. a bit strange message. I surf to BBC, but can’t raise the site. keep working and a bit later try CNN, can’t raise that one either. hmmmmm. odd. I leisurely pack up and make the 15 minute walk home and flip on BBC cable when I get to the flat. the rush of images, a bit incomprehensible at first, completely incomprehensible, mediated. half a world away. a place where I just was a few short weeks before. impossibly brilliantly horrible act.

pieces of a puzzle or perhaps an example of seeing what one wants to see: I have still only seen two instances of a woman driving a car with a man sitting in the passenger’s seat. and one of those was when the woman was driving up to pick a man up. then Harri mentions he is going to a funeral tomorrow, of a 46-year-old man who had a heart attack. he said this area of Finland specifically has a very high incidence of heart problems among men. hmmmmm. then later, I meet an elderly fellow in the sauna who tells me, among other things, he has had a triple bypass and a stroke, explaining why his English isn’t so good, the blood to that part of his brain dealing with language was interrupted — he had to re-learn Finnish as well. piecing together bits of a strange puzzle in this place that was on the front line of the Winter War.

unsatisfying swim (a workout in a public pool is a metaphor for life always: I like a lane to myself or with someone who is sensitive that they are sharing a lane!). I have opinions, I have points-of-view.

hang down your head Tom Dooley! Kingston Trio. vintage. Prescott is a desert for water and radio — public or otherwise.

and pondering this PNEK project in Norway, to see what it can be. will there be culture producers swarming and so tough, well. or will it be a complicated cross-cultural event (where I have been, in the minority for the last 12 years). gees. and trying to juggle Colorado into this equation. for the spring. a carapace to put on. but it could also be a lot of fun. working with a crew of hypersensitive networkers. why not!

dialogue and the re-presentation of being. contemplating my practice. how rooted it is in various levels of presence.

Friday nite. after net.culture class, jam down a beer at Meteori. but detached as hell.

forced marches, liquid skies. tatters of language still sticking to carrion corpses. use what is available. upload, download. split, divide, conquer. don’t worry about spelling, look, or feel, except when feel is skin-to-skin, and when that happens, the only worry is about why. passing passing passing. no gossip here, all the “art” meetings I have experienced, all the academic meetings, confluences, and the institutional structures applied. well, what is it — institutions are codifications of the human will to survive. that is, survival comes best to those who can spare energy to feed into collective social structures. apparently a collective can be more efficient with energy than an individual. or perhaps it is just that we are of that species-type. social animals. is it only in the space of dynamic flows can there be diversity? or, wait, that wasn’t it, walking home from KIASMA, art consumption (but free with the art card), thinking about institutions and structures, and what to say in response to criticism.

hanging at the bus station for a bit, pick up the return ticket to Tallinn for Friday, then going on to the Occupation Museum this afternoon. end up spending several hours there, trying to understand the history of the Nazi and Soviet presence. borders shuffling around, people treated like so many animals. herded around from place to place. with an absolute minimum of care for their survival. pogrom, gulag, concentration camp, resettlement, and the barbarity of the regimes. a little bitterness towards the West, also, with the understanding that the three Baltic Republics weren’t big or important enough for the West to confront the Soviets over. now the issue is how the large Russian minority is to be dealt with. there is a language law coming on the books which declares Latvian as the national language, but I think this will come into something of a conflict with EU directives on minority rights within (potential) member states. the Welsh people, the Sami, and other groups have benefited from the EU mandate to support minority cultures already, so the precedence is not in favor of the Latvians who, by only 4 percentage points, are a majority in their own land. presumably, this will be a major issue, and treated specially within the EU framework. I am staying with friends of Rasa and Raitis, Karl and Kristin, in their roommate, Xavier’s, room. he just left for an extended visit to Mexico, his homeland, Vera Cruz. Karl is Swedish, Kristin is Latvian. on the wall next to the bed is a detailed map of Latvia which I can study abstractly while lying in bed, and hanging over it, obscuring half of it at least, is a big black sombrero with white and silver piping. opposite on the other wall is a big black and white silver print of a woman wearing a swimsuit standing on the sea shore, on a rocky beach, child next to her on hands and feet looking at the ground. the woman is facing the sea. about 10 meters offshore from her, lopsided and partially submerged, is a war bunker with gaping windows and a broken staircase leading down into the water. a man is looking out of the second floor window casing. the woman has her hands on her hips, something of a bouffant hair style from the 50′s and, from a distance, the tone of the swimsuit top makes her look topless. there is no horizon. she is day-dreaming, and that day-dream is my reality. every sensual impression that I have ever experienced she created in the fleeting fraction of a second when that image was made. even when I say to myself (preparing fragments for my public lecture on Thursday): I am a be-ing of energy. it is only because she dreamed it, the energy of her dream has become me. I am that energy. passing through a series of scenarios as disjointed and mute as some dreams can be. giving nothing, taking only the form of the present vessel of place, for the moments of occupation, then immediate, complete dissolution, moving on to the next phase condition. altered state, alter ego. much beyond all that, to the next condition of be-ing. energy-in-motion IS creativity. but how to peg that to the social and cultural conditions of the time. that gap, I cannot bridge with my own abilities at language and the primarily visual tools available to me. which begs the question, what tools would be optimal, what would allow me that full expression of embodied energy? would massive capital of digital power do it? would big photographic prints do it (I have always thought so, thinking that better this or that physical solution would be sufficient to put the whole effort over the edge into electric saturation). joke. making images in silver seemed to be a way of going, but that process, one which I was immersed in for 20 years seems difficult to access lately. it is hidden within the inner topology that has evolved in the last years. hibernating, forgotten. senseless?

It’s not just on the sidewalks, but even on the streets, too. Because of special local environmental conditions, a particular phenomena that I have come to label chicorus nordicus. Local variations are especially intense here in Bergen. Because of the tempering action of the marine climate, there are not such extreme cold temperatures in the center of town. Two hundred meters up the sides of the fjord, there are heavy snow accumulations, but in the center, streets and sidewalks stay relatively clear, most of the time as a slushy mess. The local city street-keepers have made the decision to use salt as the primary street clearing device: it is effective and with the volume of rain that falls here, probably does not cause any undue environmental damage. Most towns in these northern climes — those to the north and east of Bergen, away from the balmy marine influence have totally different climates that require the use of crushed rock of one type or another to keep people and automobiles moving safely on icy and snowy ways. Abrasion from studded tires on the street reduces the surface to a double-tracked wagon-way by the time springtime comes and the law that dictates the end of the studded-tire season gives the street-keepers six months of respite to repair the seasonal damage. Here in Bergen, though, things are different. Without the wholesale use of abrasives on the sidewalks, another thrilling visceral and visual manifestation presents itself. Wandering around, even the most casual visitor will notice the ubiquitous distribution of one-to-three centimeter diameter circles in a variety of pale or pastel greens, vanilla, and off-white colors pressed into the sidewalk surface. The statistical distribution has nothing to do with the material matrix — cobble stone, asphalt, stone slab, concrete. And there are occasional concentrations to such a degree that every five centimeters there is one of these expectorated exclamation points. Chewing gum. Too cool and wet for it to stick to the sole, and never too warm in the summer to regain its tack. It stays and stays. No wonder that old wives tale — that if you swallow too many pieces over a time, they will get stuck in the appendix and you’ll end up in the hospital, doubled over and ripe for surgery. Hey, it’s tougher than asphalt!

All Hallows Eve, as is told in the Midlands, and the Dia de los Muertos in the Sierra Madres. but here, here in Finnish Lapland, just nigh on the Arctic Circle, on the cafeteria tables are plastic Happy Halloween decorations, sheets cut like ghost costumes, and black-and-orange streamers hanging from the ceiling. this IS NOT a Finnish holiday, but it spreads, like Mother’s Day, on the wings of commerce. looking for money in the dead in the last days of fall, before winter comes. how the market overtakes all — it even tries to cheat death and make a profit on it. digitizing videos to send out on the internet. broadcast. streaming dreams.

Sunday morning. affectation — (writing is an). foggy until after noon, then the sun comes out. maybe time to get out of bed. but it is warm and shared. Pancho Sanchez does the timbales from that box in the corner. portable stage, opera hall. head to Kiasma to catch Phil Hoffmann’s series of new films from the Toronto scene. good deal. cultcha. wonder if Tapio will be there? sneaking suspicion that some people look on my engagement in ART as a dance of ignorance — ignorance of the philosophical, ethical, and critical issues that are the maelstrom of contemporary cultcha. who cares? I decide to posit a position, make a stance, do the song and dance, and bed down for success. who cares? maybe just bed down and focus on that level of collaborative dialogue. the dialogue of bodies.

In a painted corner, words fail me, in the class — this space that I have voluntarily entered with these other humans, who also entered voluntarily also — adjusting our collective visions and expectations so that they are in an eternal alignment, or internal alignment, or infernal inferno. In that painted corner the suggestions range from rescue to BREAK THROUGH THE WALL behind the back, to a basic “Let’s get outta here!” And so we do. A stroll through town to the bus station to get ice cream soaking up the brilliant sunshine that is here now. Fragment: approaching the bus station, an old man sits on a bench in the sun. At the corner of his mouth, as we approach, I see a sparkling diamond (this is a sign, but I do not know it, it penetrates my head like the summer sun Light on North Atlantic water. (more …)

Today, a long day. I planned to meet Björn by the aquarium in front of the ticket bureau of the Stockholm Central rail station at 12:15. I got into town rather early and decided to catch some of the scheduled festivities around the Kings birthday, at the palace in the Gamla Stan (Old Town). So I rushed down and was able to make a rather good audio recording of the 21-gun salute and the fighter-jet flyover, as well as the Royal Army Band playing some marches at noon. I then ran back to the Central Station and met Björn a few minutes late. Our first stop was Galerie Nordenhake, one of the more prominent galleries in Stockholm where we met Bettina Pehrsson and the gallery owner, Claes Nordenhake. We then stopped at another gallery, trE, after checking out the situation with the 400-meter-long smorgasbord on Kungsgatan — which wasn’t to begin until 15:00, exactly the same time as the King was scheduled to make another appearance at the palace. We opted to head for the palace after I bolted down a huge salad bar lunch at a tacky French restaurant while Björn had coffee. (I did eat too much today!) Well, not much to be said for the continued spectacle for the King’s birthday. He made another appearance, first on the balcony of the palace, then on the veranda with his wife and kids. One wonders about the aristocracies/monarchies of Europe, their function (if indeed they still have one other than something of a clowning sedative for the over-stimulated masses as they approach the brink of the Millineum). Enough said. I did get a few more audio captures which are sure to come in useful in later days of digital production… Bettina did tell me exactly where the Art Node offices are on Skeppsholmen, so after saying goodbye to Björn, I walked over just to see where they are for future reference (of course, nobody was around…). I then headed back to the ‘burbs. I got back to the house around 18:00 and helped get a barbecue started — the special day of celebration features big bonfires all around the country in the evening, fireworks, and family activities. We took the Winnebago over to the nearest bonfire where we met Cristel (and I did a portrait of her and four of her friends). We had coffee and cookies in the Winnebago. The USA vs Sweden hockey match was won by the US, and Canada beat Finland, so Scandinavia is out of the competition, much to Martin’s dismay. Strange to be mixing spectacles like this, first witnessing (rather than watching) the King’s party (well, part of it, at least, including a 21-gun salute, two big warships moored in front of the palace, multi-jet fly-over, hipp-hipp-hoorah three times, yellow flowers decking the palace railings, a men’s choir, a women’s choir, and a children’s choir, and loyal subjects singing to the 50-year-old benign monarch), and then seeing the hockey match, then seeing footage of the King and Queen in a receiving line shaking hands and kissing people ad infinitum, and then going to the bonfire, and then back to the teevee watching first a bad English police series (extremely violent and graphic), then a bad American police series. Pretty numbing, the combination of activities. The today of one of the most “civilized” countries of the world …

On a totally different note (production of spectacle rather than consumption. I just had work (the book of 1000 Buddhas, as a video installation) accepted for a show in Uppsala at Ekeby Qvarn. I called Luciano Escanillo, the organizer, just to check in and see if I should go to Uppsala, he thought it would be a good idea, but do I have the time? Maybe Saturday, but I will be going to Pori via Tampere and Turku on the Silja Line boat early on Sunday morning to see Kaisu Koivisto, so, I don’t think I’ll have time… Tomorrow the Swedish Stock Exchange will allow trading via the Web. Wonder how that will go? Seems to be a bit risky.