The key program of a surviving pattern of nature and man is a subsystem of religious teaching which follows the laws of the energy ethic…. We can teach the energy truths through general science in the schools and teach the love of system and its requirements of us in the changing churches. System survival makes right and the energy commandments guide the system to survival. — Howard T. Odum

Hmmm, this quoted from Odum’s 1971 Environment, Power, and Society which outlined a radical take on the relationship between humans and the natural system of energy flows they were a part of. A bit dogmatic, though out of context in that regard. But in the context of science and, for example, climate change, it might be worth it for humans to get some scientific religion. Then again, maybe it’s all dogma and the processes that thermodynamics seeks to circumscribe will be the ruling factor: they will be, unless there is an intervention by forces beyond anything that science has framed. This is possible at any time, but seems unlikely. Who wants to depend on the unlikely and improbable as a policy driver?

The nature of value and the role of time are recurring themes in Georgescu-Roegen’s work, consistently placing him outside the static, strictly quantitative and monistic approach of neoclassical economics. And his heretical insistence that markets, societies, and ecosystems all share a common dependence on energy and the relentless laws of thermodynamics led him to the unpopular conclusion that modem human society is not sustainable. Shunning even the alternative visions of steady state, appropriate technology, “small is beautiful,” and sustainable development as so much “snake oil” (Georgescu-Roegen 1993b; 1993c), he stubbornly refused to tailor his message for a population infatuated with slogans and sound bites. For Georgescu-Roegen, a realistic view of the entropic nature of existence translated simply into a wise use of resources; by squandering resources needlessly and carelessly, we reduce future choices, shortening the time span of our species. –John Gowdy & Susan Mesner

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 …)

Niina has been researching art and technology for some years now. We met when I was teaching my old netculture class at the Media Lab in the University of Art and Design Helsinki back in 2000. I participated in her research for her PhD then, and … now

> 1.What changes have happened in your work and practices as an artist during the
> last ten years? Do you think your relationship with technology / or the way you
> use technology /has changed during this time?

> 2.What kind of different phases in your life have you experienced as an artist?
> Do you work as a full-time or part-time artist? Or do you, for instance, only
> occasionally engage in artistic activities or organize exhibitions?

> 3.How do you finance your work, career as an artist?

> 4.What do new technologies or digital technologies mean to you as an artist? How
> would you depict the role of technology in your artistic work – and in the art
> world in general?

> 5.You are an artist and work in the field of the arts, but do you also work or
> associate with other (closely related) fields? Do have difficulties in combining
> or reconciling these fields or areas with your work as an artist?

> 6.What does networking mean to you as an artist? Are you networking
> “electronically”? What kind of networks or forums are you involved in?

> 7.During the past ten years, have you noticed changes in those instances that
> you work and collaborate with (associates, partners)?

> 8.How much do you know about author’s/copy rights? Are you familiar with the
> contract practices relating to copy rights? How do you see the question of
> authorship in the context of new art forms and digital technologies? Are
> copyrights supporting and/or limiting artistic expression?

> 9.Do new technologies increase, extend or in some way limit the possibilities
> for aesthetic or artistic expression? From the artist’s point of view, what new
> or different do they bring to artistic work and practice?

> 10.How and what do you communicate or interact with the audience? What is the
> role of communication in artists’ work today? What does interactivity mean to you?

> 11.Are there other, even more relevant or topical, issues that should be asked
> about art and technology now in the year 2011? What are these?

> Any comments and criticism towards these questions are also welcome!

Okay, so in the process of simplifying last week’s posting — 08 Jan — I’ve got to take yet another look at how control is projected by an organism. Or maybe that should be a question — does an organism exert control over its environment? Or does it merely synergize with the flows that are available to it? What affect does the neurophysiological field of action of a particular organism exert on the localized situation? Primitive neuro-systems read gradients or difference that ‘matter’ to their existence. Quantifying these existing gradients of energy relates to an organism’s ability to find the energy sources through which it survives to prolong its life and procreate. This is the fundamental means by which life has prolonged itself on the planet continuously since it began. The existence and control of thermal (heat) energy gradients are also extremely important in the regulation of internal physiological systems through direct biochemical reaction-rate regulation. The surface or edge of an organism is clearly ‘signified’ in thermodynamic and physical terms; the maintenance of internal gradients might be called ‘control’ where the control is a function of defining the primary limit of the organism’s field of action. hmmm.

The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:

I defined the amplifier as a concept which exists at many different scales and in both ‘natural’ and human-dominated systems (though that particular dialectic is a problematic one). It is a system which concentrates (and by default attenuates) energy flows. It is a defined set of pathways for that energy to flow along. (a life-form is an amplifier!)

(As an example, fundamental physical laws, such as the set of principles (gravitational attraction, strong/weak nuclear forces, EM radiation, thermodynamics, etc) that ‘govern’ the process of stellar evolution ‘supply’ the ‘protocols’ for the ‘expression’ of Light energy (radiation) in a highly specific and concentrated form (compared to the availability of that same energy in any random location in the universe).

In essence, humans are ‘merely’ taking advantage of these physical laws to form their own pathways of energy flow. Indeed we can do nothing else, as these laws govern the entire observed and implied universe. So the difference between the amplifier and the protocols that ‘define’ it may only be question of articulation — that is, those physical laws, in human terms, simply exist (for us to discover and articulate over time). The protocols arise as humans initiate articulations of the extant energy flows within which we simply are. So the protocol is, again, merely, a human (socio-linguistic) reduction of observed and extant phenomena. We cannot do anything counter to those phenomena that those laws are ascribed to. However, using these reductive protocols/formula, we set up a wide variety of sub-systems which, cumulatively, are our techno-social systems — complex systems of re-routed energies. As soon as energy is re-routed, you have an amplifier situation because you consequently have a concentration/attenuation of flows. An amplifier is perhaps merely the condition of the existence of a concentration of energies. (this does get into the question of the role of, for example, gravity as a ‘protocol’ which drives the coalescing of energized matter in the universe — or is gravity actually increasing the entropy of that matter?)

Because protocol is a reductive articulation (the map is not the territory) of a ‘real’ phenomena, it is not whole, it is imperfect, and it is not 100% effective. Human systems are a constant struggle against inefficiency and the raw effects of entropy.

Human systems accumulate layer after layer of detailed protocols based on accumulated observant life-experience. However, all these detailed systems of protocol are completely dependent on more basic principles (i.e., as articulated by the laws of thermodynamics).

A road is no exception. In its design and construction it is intended to resist the inevitable entropic processes, while facilitating easier passage of certain ‘types’ of energy. Approaching the road as a protocol-defined pathway, we may look within our own social understandings to circumscribe its actual functions to see how energies are concentrated along that right-of-way. Visualize the differences between crossing the road, driving along the road, or driving ‘off road.’ The end of the road. Middle of the road. One-way street. One’s orientation to the prescribed flow of the road is critical to how life unfolds. (these are obvious, but when looking at the extended concept, protocol, upon which the road is predicated on, these maxims become mapped across all facets of life.) A glancing blow. indirect, roundabout, circuitous, wandering, meandering, serpentine, winding, tortuous, zigzag.

We may observe that the road is an essential element of an amplification system. It is embedded in a wider system of flows, and one might ‘zoom back’ as far as one likes to see this essential embeddedness of the flows — immediate physical, local geographic, nation-state, geologic, cosmological — they are by nature continuous, pervasive, and the essence of reality.

Protocol defines a temporary edge — a fine transition zone — between one energy state and another. When a particular energy state becomes necessary to the continuance of life, a protocol must be applied to the ambient flows in order that they become suitable to that necessary purpose. For example, when a State would change its allegiance from one confederation to another, it will likely have to change some (many!) protocols in order to ‘fit’ into the new league. This might include, in the instance of contemporary war, changing ammunition standards and communications protocol systems — to thus synchronize its energy expressions with that of the confederation. The application of these new protocols will shift the defined limits of energy flow from one case to an other. This shifting of protocollary ‘edges’ and the ‘locus’ of the existing flows requires energy input. Switching protocols repeatedly is a process which depletes and redirects energy flows.

Directed energy flows have inertia. Undirected, ‘random’ flows have a zero-sum inertia (as in a system at equilibrium). Techno-social systems — comprised of a plethora of specifically directed flows — face a considerable challenge to change because of this inertial imperative. The more forceful the expressive output of the TSS, the more difficult it is to change the ‘culture’ of the system. (think – a military junta transforming into a democracy).

The issues around the control of techno-social systems, the projection of protocol across spatial and temporal regions, directly relates to thermodynamics, but what are the implications of that relationship? Is it simply the direct connection between order and the energy required to maintain order? Or are there more subtle and complex? Of course the fundamentals of thermo cannot be ignored, and therefore any discussion of these issues has to be rooted in those basics. But are there, for example, psycho-social factors that will influence control?

I would argue (at present with only intuition supporting me) that all factors will be traced to the fundamentals. This is because life is at base a counter-intuitive phenomena when thermo is considered.

The official blurb for the workshop:

This workshop will draw on Hopkins’ international experience in facilitating creative encounters in the context of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. With an open structure for engaged and focused dialogue, the workshop will explore a powerful energy-based worldview that can open up new awareness of social, cultural, and natural systems. The dynamics of collaborative human relations confined within an attentive space is guaranteed** to generate provocative and inspiring outcomes. Creativity is, by definition, about the formative flow of energy between living organisms. We will move through a variety of environments (including on the river by waka) as we share life-time in the workshop. The workshop will augment the processes of any creative practitioner with a profound, situated, and practice-oriented conceptual toolbox that address the following areas and more:

(Keywords in no particular order): energy, creativity, thermodynamics, technology and techno-social systems, art, attention, entropy, learning, media, networks, participation, process, virtuality, creative action, human presence, Light, human encounter, mediation, concentration, optimization, pathways, meals, sustainability, simplicity, synchronicity, auspiciousness, and serendipity.

**on the condition that you bring along your entire Self, not merely your body, mind, and spirit

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?

What does the law of maximum entropy production have to do with order production? Given the foregoing, the reader may have already jumped to the correct conclusion, namely, if ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow (as required by the balance equation of the second law), and if the world acts to minimize potentials at the fastest rate given the constraints (the law of maximum entropy production), then the world can be expected to produce order whenever it gets the chance — Rod Swenson

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were, the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).

Every social structure (or formation) requires (attentive) energy to maintain its intrinsic (or necessary, mandated, desired) order. Without a more-or-less constant influx of energy, any system will tend to greater disorder. CLUI and its constituent formal organizational expressions (residencies, exhibitions, public manifestations, participants) require a certain level of energy inflow to maintain viability at a level acceptable to both the participants and the wider socio-cultural milieu that they wish to participate in.

As a direct expression of my own long-term praxis of facilitating creative situations, I decided to approach the residency as a (direct?) service to the (overt) sustainability of the organization. By putting my life-energy/life-time into aspects of the material infrastructure, I could guarantee, in some dimension, the continuance of the social structure, albeit in a form reflecting my own judgements (based on where I injected my energy into the situation). In basic form, this process is about raising the order of particular aspects of the system. The question of which aspects of course is critical. If I do not understand the goals of the organized structure (to propagate itself, to demise in (X)(t), to re-form itself), the input of life-energy may or may not affect those goals in a positive way. Indeed, the input of energy might even thwart those outcomes. This is where robust and sustained dialogue among the participants is absolutely necessary to identify those points where energy influx is crucial and most efficient.

The question of entropy and order extends directly to all techno-social systems: fundamental thermodynamics applies across the full range of cosmological phenomena. Any technological system (so defined as a sub-set of all possible systems) requires energy input from outside its defined edges to maintain the ordered set of relations and flows that are necessary for it to exist as a (unitary) system. This applies to all systems up to and including what we have collectively labeled the military-industrial complex.

To whit, I undertook the following processes (and more): scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen floors, hands-and-knees, for several hours; wiped down most of the walls, especially the bathroom; reorganized and cleaned all shelves in the storage closet (refolding all linens, sorting dirty ones, putting extras (falling on the floor) into the trailer; sorting and checking all cleaning supplies); scrubbing the shower, sink, toilet; vacuuming entire floor, walls, ceiling, window frames, vents, etc with the shop-vac; wiping down all furniture; organizing and cleaning desk drawers; rearranged the furniture for maximal productivity; checked all electrical equipment, rearranging for ease-of-use; arranged library materials; sorted, (re)labeled file material; zip-lock-bagged cables in cable drawer; thoroughly cleaned the south-facing (and most north-facing) windows inside-and-out; replaced all window screening; cleaned all window frames on the interior; sorted and cleaned all kitchen-ware; cleaned the refrigerator and stove-top; cleaned microwave and all kitchen shelves; re-mounted the fire-extinguisher in a more available location; removed, scrubbed, and replaced the window blinds; raked the immediate back-yard (south); cut weeds and raked immediate front (north) yard; shop-vac’ed the trailer interior; leveled the wooden walkway to the trailer; swept the patios, collected all clothes-pins and put them on the clothes-line; arranged collected rocks on deck; cleaned telescope, fixed mounting; worked (unsuccessfully on web-cam); screw-nailed external trim in numerous places; scrubbed the exterior of the front door, repaired the interior window frame of the door; tightened bolts wherever possible; spray painted desk and several chairs (removing rust first); raked and leveled area between fence and pedal-car garage; picked up all major flotsam and jetsam accumulated in yard; organized and cleaned all media equipment; etc, etc, etc… (didn’t clean under the fridge or stove, though, nor did I tack down the rest of the linoleum … something for the future or so)

In the workshop: organized the pegboard with appropriate tools; vacuumed the entire space; organized the scrap lumber, scrap piping and metal; gathered all 4×8-foot sheets of drywall and plywood; gathered all screws/nails in one area, partially organized them; re-shelved all electrical, plumbing, other materials; organized all materials stored in rafters; gathered and sorted all tools in desk unit; cycled all rechargeable battery drives for tools; etc, etc, etc…

What affect this energy injection will have on the continuance of the organization is indeterminate: moot, relative, and subjective. It will affect the organization in some way, as will it affect the trajectories of those who come after me.

Early Confucian writings point to the “organization of things in organic categories” as a fundamental in dealing with the cosmos as a primary phenomena surrounding and enveloping life. Organizing is an intensely idiosyncratic process which, at the same time, is deeply linked to techno-social structures and their impression on participating individuals. One normative principle is like-with-like combined with some aspects of use and functionality. Moving from home to home with a frequency that is far greater than the norm, I note the similarity and differences in organizational strategy and behavior among a wide variety of individuals. My primary criteria for organizing is grounded in the functional philosophy of (engineering) optimization. This is the same process which drives wide swathes of the techno-social — the concentration of stuff to be formed and projected, deployed, into the technologically more complex future.

Of course, there is the fundamental question of long-term sustainability — in the sense that public attention drawn to the organization in its educational role (or role creating novel configurations of information/wisdom, and energized matter), this attention may then can be converted to abstracted fiscal instrument which is subsequently converted to hired maintenance versus direct application of the artists-in-residence in maintenance labor. It depends on whether one chooses a localized maintenance cycle or a more involved (and perhaps less efficient conversion cycle) to effect sustainable continuance.

Now, in concert with this level of physical ordering action, I tapped into, literally, many of the myriad manifestations of the military-industrial flows that were converging and passing-through Wendover. I drew energies off in the form of images and sounds to be re-constituted in the web domain for public sampling. At some level, my deep familiarity with both the existence of these techno-social formations and the sampling of the same brought up some elements of tedium in the process — and a concern that in the mere documentation, recording of the techno-social configurations for display within a core mediated manifestation of the master’s house itself (right here!), I was not only not contributing to the demise of such a system, but worse, was contributing to its continuance. No answers to that, the only pathway is the critical engagement and continuance of dialogues surrounding the ongoing situation in the widest sense.

And a final comment: The level of dust and dirt could be seen as a metric of encroaching macro/microscopic disorder. ‘Wind’over, as a locus of chaotic social and natural flows, exists in an increasingly entropic regime. Inexorable decline of order is the order of the day today, everyday, in the state of mind, state of be-ing that is Wendover. When the energy out-go exceeds the in-flow, Wendover will gradually return to the ground state of high-desert solitude. Perhaps Lake Bonneville will once again fill up, or the stresses of the extensional tectonics will cause a full spreading center to develop, and Wendover will be only a down-dropped graben flanked by plenty of volcanic activity.

Simple. Complex. Order. Disorder. Attention, focus, concentration.

Brutal sand/wind storm (again, what else is new in “Wind-over”). I have been almost completely scuppered in doing sound work here by the incessant wind (and not having a decent wind-snout for the Zoom H4. I thought Iceland was windy, well, this place is a close competitor. No trees, and the contrast of the flat playas between the relatively high mountains makes for some adiabatic action combined with a series of major Pacific storm fronts pulsing through. Noting when in (sparsely) wooded mountain valleys of the Toano Range, there isn’t the intensity of blast — the opposite occurs on the air base which is on the edge of a playa that extends 200 km to the north, 200 km to the south, and 150 km to the east: flatness breeds velocity. Velocity and sustainability — it goes on and on with only occasional respite.

There needs to be a repetition of certain concepts at numerous junctures — energy, thermodynamics, flows, order, flux, fields, reminders of the Newtonian language, control, image-based articulations of all key-worded concepts, and precise observations on the structure-of-relation of the (declining) Military-Industrial system. Choosing examples of technological deployment, tracing the affectations of it, across the full distance, simplifying (reducing) the connections. Connecting the altered flows and the ‘original’ flows, along the entire way (using thermodynamics as a foundational guide).

Dialogue, sound, and music are good examples.

Identifying between altered and originary flows is in itself is likely an impossible task. I would suspect that all comprehensible flows are already in a (corrupted!?) state?

Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system's process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow's needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through -- steps/degrees of flow alteration.]

When examining a production system, the primary question would have to be, “does this process end with a net gain of energy that can be subsequently utilized for the evolutionary advantage of the social system?” This question itself would suggest the inevitable rise of an elite subgroup when the wider population reaches certain environmental carrying thresholds — where that (evolutionarily optimal) subgroup is carried by the energy-providing activities of a wider group. But this is another issue to look at later.

The existence of (the) ‘natural disaster’ suggests that the state of a particular techno-social system may be seen essentially as the (ordered) organization of flows to keep back natural chaotic forces or to push those natural forces along certain (technologically-defined) pathways. Does this make the system merely at the affect of natural laws, and thus binding it into a materially deterministic framework? Nah, that ignores quantum, with its statistically indeterminate outcomes. Although obviously, any techno-social system is bound to thermodynamics and all other prescribed or yet unknown ‘natural laws.’

System collapse to simplicity is obviously a result of the ‘natural’ disaster precipitated by war (as an extension of human survival mechanisms?). War is the impingement of one techno-socially organized and directed expression of ordered energy onto another — with one set of system pathways disrupted to greater simplicity. Loss could be defined by the destruction of the internal structure for the directing of cumulative energy of participants in that social system. Winning is essentially acquiring access to the total (or partial) energy sources of the losing social system. This includes individuals, and all the pathways of energy flow that they have constructed — these are then directed, incorporated, into the winning system.

The whole deterministic model seems to focus on material interpretations — that is, metrics of ‘advance’ that will happen along an apparently calculable technological trajectory. Rather, as outlined here, there are conditions of technological advance and retreat that are framed by other factors which make the prediction of a trajectory highly inaccurate. The first being the level of complexity of the techno-social systems, the second, the efficiency of that system, and the third, the stability. All of these factors fluctuate over time and are deeply embedded in a milieu of human and, indeed, cosmological factors. The general trend, however, looking at the broad arc of the history of technology is to increasing complexity, variable-yet-generally-increasing control by social systems of a wider range of ‘natural’ energy flows. Is it deterministic to say that there will be an increase in complexity of any techno-social system unless interrupted by natural disaster? [Clearly, the complexity of a (the!) techno-social system is limited, as the energy basis for the system is not infinite: what does that imply?]

What motivates this evolution to increasing complexity? The short answer could be the drive to reproductive advantage — evolutionary motivations for life to not just continue, but continue with advantage over the competition. It is easy to see that the affect of this drive could be interpreted as having its own character and endless source of ‘forward’ motivation. But clearly the ultimate source for that is, again, the impelling force of life-systems to simply continue and continue with ever-greater complexity (creating an ever-widening ring of increasing entropy). So, the ‘explanation’ for technological change, as a social phenomena, ultimately rests, as do all social systems, on the fundamentals of living systems.

Vastly complex systems obscure the actual and perceived level of reproductive advantage — for example, while modern Western medical advances have increased overall abilities for successful propagation of the species, the wider technological system on which that (medical)sub-system depends generates substances (and situations) toxic to reproductive viability and life in general. One would then have to argue that the reproductive viability increase is for a limited number of the total population. Those remaining after the cull benefit from technologically augmented survival, while the biologically and energetically compromised remainder are ‘used up’ in supporting the few. The increase of complexity may be directly correlated to the larger absolute number of people, combined with the drive to absolutely optimize reproductive capabilities of those in the positions of power at the same time as the elimination of all actual or potential competing life-forces.

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

(but wait a minute, LIFE is, by definition, a redirecting of the flows of energy in a natural system — a redirecting that is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of living systems — according to basic non-equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems.)

However, there is a scalar difference between humans and other living entities where some humans attempt this kind of control on wide scales, with others re-directing those same energies to completely different configurations, some only images of what their ‘original’ pattern of flow once were. (it’s a question of degree?)

The juxtaposition: humans re-organizing the ‘natural’ flows around them (as technology), and humans re-organizing the flows which are human — other humans (as society).

These processes are indistinguishable in their application and only express some difference in the materialized extremity of their results. Humans are simply an other expression of the natural system. It is only in the degree or scale of re-organization of flows that they extend that distinguishes them from other expressions of life. One could argue that earlier Archean life on the planet, utilizing the energy available in certain chemical bonds over eons, completely transformed the composition of the atmosphere in a process of dynamic equilibrium — something we humans are apparently doing yet again in a vastly shorter time. Life, via evolutionary developments, integrally tapped into an available energy source/flow with gusto until the source was depleted or another ‘easier’ source was encountered. Life based on photosynthetic processes of energy utilization is a example that has a long and continuing evolutionary history.

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, explores this process of (the human) redirection of flows as the idea of “fabrication” — as a god-like means to artificially re-create and temporarily reify natural systems. She squarely positions this energy exertion as part of the “external subjectivization of the modern world.” This condition of externalization is a necessary precedent condition for the social and represents the ‘mechanism’ which draws granular and embodied human power from the individual into the social system (for cumulative and disgressionary use by that system). This energy consequently becomes unavailable to the individual, although the pathways that the social system constructs for the expression of its energy may be utilized by the individual, depending on their particular positioning within the system.

(Working at a job for “The Man,” that vaguely persistent image that arose in the times of African-American slavery, frames this dynamic. While most individuals in the middle- and upper-class would consider that their work in the service of someone else is merely a fact of existence and that the convertible and abstracted instrumental returns (money) more than suffice as a reward for the life-time and life-energy expended in this way. It is this collective faith in the abstracted social instrument of money (and other codes) (see Code and Money), expressed as a crucial social adhesive, which gives the social system a form for the expression of the cumulative energy of individual participants.)

Within the life process itself, of which laboring remains an integral part and which it never transcends, it is idle to ask questions that presuppose the category of means and end, such as whether men live and consume in order to have the strength to labor or whether they labor in order to have the means of consumption.

If we consider this loss of the faculty to distinguish clearly between means and end in terms of human behavior, we can say that the free disposition and use of tools for a specific end product is replaced by rhythmic unification of the laboring body with its implement, the movement of laboring itself acting as the unifying force. Labor but not work requires for best result a rhythmically ordered performance and, in so far as many laborers gang together, needs rhythmic co-ordination of all individual movements. In this motion, the tools lose their instrumental character, and the clear distinction between man and his implements, as well as his ends, becomes blurred. What dominates the labor process and all work processes which are performed in the mode of laboring is neither man’s purposeful effort nor the product he may desire, but the motion of the process itself and the rhythm it imposes upon the laborers. Labor implements are drawn into this rhythm until the body and tool swing in the same repetitive movement, that is, until, in the use of machines, which of all implements are best suited to the performance of the animal laborans, it is not longer the body’s movement that determines the implement’s movement but the machine’s movement which enforces the movements of the body. — Hannah Arendt, “The Human Condition”

Do humans (life-forms) exert control over environments by modifying flows to help them re-member and stabilize their forms? To form them in a way that resonates within their energized neural storage regime (life-form)? Probably not, as from a bio-thermodynamic point of view, life exerts control (simply) in order to deplete energy gradients (according to the authors of Into the Cool, an exploration of NET (non-equilibrium thermodynamics) and its relation to life/living systems).

Or can this even be considered a control process, this interaction of modifying flows? Or is it merely part of the cumulative (dynamic) process of life as an engagement of the entropic/negentropic fundamentals of the universe?

I realized that in Regime of Amplification I got the terminology a bit wrong — focusing on the anisotropic concentration and rarefaction of energized matter as the fundamental condition (as driven by gravitational forces). When it is the gradient between the two situations which is of primary interest and importance. — a bit similar to seeing only the elemental yin and yang instead of the overarching dynamic unity, the taijitu. So, a rewrite is in order — to look at the transitional state rather than (theoretical and limited) end-states.

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown. — Albert Einstein

and this work will (already) require an a-cyclic slippage into and out of mechanistic language which makes so much of the territory un-mappable (before a new language can be framed). a skimmering skittering across hot metal plates causing dissipation and evaporation. (where transformed language is a compressed gas, waiting for temperature and pressure changes to expand to fill a dialectic space — wherein the words and word-constructs are tested for vacuity or fullness). Conscious use will govern whether or not there is a sense of movement or an underlying stasis in the text. Thankfully it is a DCA and not a PhD so there is plenty of room for experimentation.

[and a pox on all you slackers who underline in pen or pencil or highLight texts in library books. I don't give a damn what you think is important, so keep yer grubby hands away from public domain books!]

The construction of a worldview is a process of memory and resonance with that memory arising out of an awareness of difference.

We know remarkably little about the ground functions of practically the entire system we are embedded within.

Writing an idiosyncratic worldview oscillates between the interior and exterior of being. It moves through all culture and social systems, the natural world, and every code encoded, every text ever written. To this passage is mixed lived impression, the accumulate energized traces that life leaves on the body — traces that, ultimately, are memory. And through memory, life compares these two strands: difference arises.

Traces of word and traces of where and when word arrived into the body-system: spoken, written, the two means to no end. Each in arrangement, in relation with an Other, Others. The relation to the Other defined by inarticulate resonance framed and directed into word, and left as traces both embodied and those dis-embodied, change left behind as bodies pass by.

The construction of a worldview is an act of will over what is coded outside and what is lived inside. It is about what is coded inside and what is lived inside: and what is consequently expressed. But what, where, is the continuity between those states? The continuity is the cosmological ground that gives rise to all life. So, to that infinite ground one approaches, tentatively. To find the undistinguished and entwined threads of energy that, once gathered, may be traced back to the thousand ends of what is. At these ends are difference, but when that difference is encountered as threaded to the ground, the difference is understood to be simply a state change or an expression of sameness. Difference may be quantified and qualified however, and within that applied process, the body becomes the prime metric. At the site of difference, memory arises as a resonance between that dynamic external event and the internal state of be-ing. Recognition of difference is fundamental to consciousness. This recognition may arise through the resonance and the presence of difference. Once difference is recognized, it becomes part of the body-system. And the body system then seeks later for the same difference. When it recognizes that same difference, through resonance, it deepen the sensitivity to that resonance as the same difference. This may be thought of as a feedback process. Energy seeking the same pathway, and when finding that pathway, part of the flow is tapped back into a storage means (life) which then seeks to replicate or continue the flow along that pathway.

There is a constant struggle between difference and sameness. Difference being absolutely necessary for life to arise and sameness for life to continue for more than a brief flare of being.

It is out of this struggle, or actually, it is this struggle that arises in living organisms that drives life. Difference is the creative, and sameness is the destructive. Sameness is impossible when faced with the actuality of a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system. Equilibrium, the unreachable grail of early thermodynamics, is the (urgent) desire for sameness. Sameness represents safety, and the resonance of the known. Difference, as arising in the movement of life, is the unknown. Without this movement, life ceases. Along the dialectic of difference and sameness a being moves — not to extremes, only in small incremental oscillations. Between relative safety and the unknown. Tracing a world view in the body allows for change and evolution.

Difference is not resonant. Sameness is resonant. Difference requires shifting and changing resonances. Moving outwards into more widely-defined (and limited) sub-systems, difference becomes relative to how those sub-systems are defined. Defining can only occurs when sameness is applied. (etc…)

Back to the construction of the world view: once the awareness of difference is embodied, it is a question of a process of comparison of that difference as arising in a social system (in relation to the Other). This articulation process is part of the ground of a social system. Framing of difference, and allowing for scalar ranges of articulated difference. The greater the tolerance of difference, the greater the potential for evolutionary change to arise. An intolerance of difference is the sign of slow (or rapid) demise.

Presuming the Terran system is a (fully) self-regulating system, then the hypothesis would have to include the entire evolutionary process which produced human beings among other biota under the particular macroscopic and microscopic availing conditions. Self-regulation would then suggest that the system will solve the current problems of human over-population and resource spoilage as it solves all other oscillations of what is a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium. Biospheric self-organization (among a holistic range of other mechanisms that we likely have no clue about in the moment), will do it’s thing. Despite, in spite of, and at the effect of what a specific biotic evolutionary line is doing. There is plenty of data showing wide-scale fluctuations in, for example, atmospheric components related to changing biotic fluxes.

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for — a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a Utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. — Joseph A. Tainter

There is much to explore in the ideas around organizational complexity/simplicity correlated with high/low energy requirements for a system — essentially basic thermodynamics (it always comes down to this). If the wider (widest) scale of human systems could scale social complexity down, the energy requirements would experience a correlative drop. But this is a very substantial IF. And it would mean that the energy reach of the average individual would consequently contract. And human natures seem to preclude any sacrifice of control that is a crucial part of the existing order. China fancies itself victorious, clambering over other nations to arrive soon at the top of the influential complexity heap, but it will soon discover that the price for this status is, literally, high. And it too, as a complex system, will gradually implode again. Though likely not after extracting, demanding, a high flow, or tribute, as the US is now doing, from the global system. That flow comprising the over-consumption and thus concentration of widely distributed materials which now, in their post-use state leave the globe energetically worse off. In the end this is not an issue of nation-state guilt, it is simply the evolutionary state of the tool-wielding bipedal mammalian species. The (over-consuming) developed world crosses many demographic and geographic borders, while likewise the under-consumers are widely distributed.

The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance. — David Price

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

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

Two forces rule the universe, light and gravity. — Simone Weil

With gravity driving the coalescing of matter, the concentration of energy, or fluctuating densities (or simply fluctuation) of the cosmos. The anisotropic distribution of matter in the universe is not an insignificant evolving or existing condition. And Light, well, what may or may not be said about Light?

Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.

(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)

Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.

He does perhaps miss a point where he attaches the energy advantage of a rising mercantile-class in Europe in the 16-1700′s to the energy of sail. I would suggest that it was not the energy of sail, but the potential energy brought about by the technologies necessary to take advantage of this naturally-available store of energy (flows). That is, the social structure (organization of individuals) necessary to construct boats, the availability of the resources necessary for their proper construction — tall trees, steel tools (not merely iron) for working the wood, enough to build numerous boats to maintain a sufficient flow of trade (read: energy). And finally, of course, the existence of suitable natural resource reservoir, ultimately driven by the sun, wind.

He introduces the term high-energy technology which is essentially a set of technologies that have a high rate-of-return relative to the input (read: hydrocarbons, nuclear, large-scale hydro). In contrast with low-energy converters which would include plants and animals (as a food/energy converter for human consumption).

finding some interesting material from Leslie White, an anthropologist who wrote on cultural evolution and based his views on the idea that cultural systems are ultimately technological systems and that these systems can be ranked by their level of energy use and their capacity to access and utilize adequate energy resources. he had a troubled later life between his wife of 30 years dying and his slide into alcoholism. hmmmm

and then Fred Cottrell, a sociologist writing in his book Energy and Society (1955) about a social systems need for a net energy return. not sure if I can find a copy of this in the Australia uni library system, but hope to.

The evidence for Lotka’s position is not yet sufficient to make it clear that it should be formulated into a law. But the tendency it expresses … fits other evidence that ability to control energy conversion is one factor involved in the persistence of patterns that require energy for their replication. Certainly the patterns of observable human behavior fall into that category. Man cannot escape thermodynamics … his effectiveness in controlling energy conversion so that is serves his needs and satisfies his values is one measure of his probable survival in a habitat. — W. Fred Cottrell

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

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

Subject

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

Outcomes

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

Keywords

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

Background for Research

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

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

starting with the UdK-Berlin block seminar tomorrow. 36 hours over two weekends. usually these are challenging and dynamic. good!

back to the brico list discussions:

A transformation whose only final result is to convert heat, extracted from a source at constant temperature, into work, is impossible. (…) I believe the tendency in the material world is for motion to become diffused, and that as a whole the reverse of concentration is gradually going on. I believe that no physical action can ever restore the heat emitted from the sun, and that this source is not inexhaustible; also that the motions of the earth and other planets are losing vis viva which is converted into heat; and that although some vis viva may be restored for instance to the earthby heat received from the sun, or by other means, that the loss cannot be precisely compensated and I think it probable that it is under compensated. — Lord Kelvin

well, what to write. taking a walk with Fling-dinger, seeing the development proceeding apace here in the West, bulldozers, backhoes, dump trucks, and surveyors. confess to doing some small monkey-wrenching, symbolic, but real: kicking a few fluorescent-pink-painted survey stakes out and tossing them into the weeds. what the hell, I’ll be out of the country shortly anyway. but there are just too many people on the planet, eh? needful of a 90% depletion of stock. maybe more. just to reset the clock to when? why do we need to reset the human species’ clock? what about letting the process run itself out? thermodynamics will take its course. and evolution will also operate along its predetermined trajectory. wait ’til next year and see.

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) …

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks)

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

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

most of the texts that I have been absorbing in the last weeks deal with creativity as a discontinuous (non-cyclic) and anomalous event rising above the normal “level” of daily life. this view is an obvious artifact of materialist thinking that treats life as a linear (singular) trajectory and that the expressions of that living can be wholly reduced linguistically to various statements and formulations. accepting that this view IS true within its own limited framework (the history of rational thinking), a critique would have to deconstruct the whole facade of Western philosophy in order to make a substantive attack on the position. this writer is neither qualified nor interested in making such a frontal attack which would simply be tossed aside in the dumpster of academic discourse. instead, understanding that to even name a philosophy or a philosopher that stands supporting that edifice would only give power to a system that I believe is fundamentally flawed, I have chosen to proceed intuitively, and perhaps poetically, making enormous and possibly scandalous generalizations, leaving the normative conventions of the English language behind, and simply dive into thoughts that are reflecting through waters muddied by 42 years of thrashing around in a world that seems more intense and striking everyday. by this methodology, combined with a desire that these texts be only the opening for a dialogue with the Other who might come on it, here in the sea of hyperspace, I will begin.

not being a practicing Buddhist, it is dangerous to rely on the familiar and frequently mis-understood and mis-interpreted dialectic of East – West. however, buried in the residual mudflats of surrounding language, there are things that stick between the toes as one wanders between the tides.

tides return to smooth all things into harmonic ripples, the size and orientation of which are determined by the velocity, depth, and laminar deviation of the liquid flow and alignment of the planar particles of complex alumino-silicates.

there appears to be a fundamental difference in these flows.

there is lacking the recognition that with creativity (creation) there must come loss or destruction (decay). the suddenness of the creative impulse is mirrored (in time or not) by a natural tendency (of the Second Law of Thermodynamics).

suddenness, speed, quickening, all relate to special conditions being met in the movement of energies. humans are specialists in the dangerous play of resistance to universal flows. at the same time their energy-sensing systems are highly tuned to the movements of energy around them, their internal ego systems distort and filter. this dichotomy might be explained by the intervention of ego-forces which distort the reading or interpretation of the raw sensual mechanisms with often dire results. observing children moving through their lives, one sees a more or less direct line between sensual experience and reaction. age gradually moderates this.

results of this resistance are so manifold and compound that, well, what’s the point in exploring the obvious.

at any rate, this resistance to flows is also illustrated obliquely in natural systems where all processes are in fundamental movement, and there is simply scalar differences between different events. earthquake vs fertilization of an egg. while an earthquake is considered a precipitous event of violence, it is a result of continuous forces cycling on scales that are beyond human capacity to imagine. fertilization could be seen as an ultimate violence. or ultimate expression of the cyclic nature of energy movement. but there is never a resistance, only the expression of the true nature of the material configuration of energies.

Buddhist thought provides a more accurate model to follow. at least it makes sense as translated across the gap of language and culture. ego is the source of resistance. or there is something that causes us to resist. and construct complex mechanisms for justifying the resistance.

stretch and bend. images for nowhere. not finding. and so on. notes. undirected speaking at self instead of with Other. cleaning glasses. pick up sticks. associative words. not carving much of. and else-wise. activity. suggesting things. actions. or others. words the world of words. the other world. is it possible to bring what is expressed in words into practice? what is alluded to. what is suggested, instructed, what is dreamed. what of the world without images or words?

everything is potential energy.