walking down Bedford Street I meet the lady with the lime green brolly briskly on her way to the wine shop, kitty-cat in a tote bag, and stories about winning over the boys in the community garden. dinner with Amanda and Stephanie, at Amanda's place in Brooklyn. along with Mr. Tiger, Amanda's new cat who seemed easy-going and sociable despite battle scars from street life in Brooklyn.

earlier I was able to get together with Eric, a sharedj activist among his many other talents. at a cave-like cafe in Brooklyn he showed me some of his keyworx-based work which immediately brought to mind Stan Brakhage's aesthetic which could easily be described as the precursor to much vj work in the present time (including my own). although my contact with Brakhage was, on a film-production level, limited, the discussions, and more importantly the simple exposure to his vision through screenings of his and other's work was moving and formative to the inner eye. he had his little cubby-hole office next to and half the size of mine when I was a grad student, so we got to know each other better through informal chats -- life is short art is long...

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, and eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word.' -- Stan Brakhage

anyway, back to Eric's output -- he also collaborates as a tenor and lutenist on an entirely different plane in Asteria, a Medieval/Renaissance music duo. he passed on a copy of Soyes Loyal, their latest album featuring Burgundian chansons of courting and love from the 14th century. Eric's divergent interests and skills are incongruous on the surface but stand as a strong example of how personal energy transmission does not have to be closely tied to form but rather to the efficiency with which one finds the projection of such energy through a chosen material mediation. Eric is attentive, concentrated, skilled, and definitely efficient transforming his energy into a variety of forms of inspiration.



you can test track their two albums at magnatune.

dropping into eyebeam to meet Amanda, then back to KidsConnect, then to see Francisco Lopez, Stephan Moore, and Todd Merrell at the issue project room with Sophea.

morning spent making a photo archive of Kevin's work that Stefan and Ellen have. adding to the archive, not really sure how many works are out there of Kevin's -- he had a lot of cultured friends, and he liked works to go to good homes, so.



an afternoon with Josephine and Dan and the KidsConnect crew. interesting to work with 7th - 10th graders from around the metro area. I jumped in with a simple facilitation of the local human network, hearing their stories. later met the Scottish couple who are acting as advisors and tutors on the Second Life platform that is the virtual platform for KidsConnect.

head into the City early in the afternoon, burning heat. take the bus to Port Authority in plenty of time to get to Mundial for the performance at the regular Sunday evening sharedj happening. too early. sit in a café across the street for an hour.



then wander around to a garage sale in the paved yard of a Catholic Church.



then back to Mundial, grateful for the cool air when finally Patrick, one of the owners, arrives. Eric comes a bit later as does Dan, both main movers in the sharedj collective. Stefan, Sophea, and Randy are there for my simple mix, and only one glitch when the HD on the sound system crashes out because it gets too full when archiving the sound part of the mix. the only thing left is to continue with video mixing to carry the energy. then later, the video fragments are lost as well in the quicktime editing process -- a mistake. so, yet another loss of archive. dogs of war.

the SCANZ project, taking place in New Plymouth, New Zealand is in its final stages, an oblique offshoot of the polar/solar residencies. Ken Gregory has a nice blog and a cool kite project (at night above); along with avatar body collision and the weather blog -- small hints of a nice time.

begin the arduous work of documenting Kevin's work, or at least starting to with the 450+ works which are still here in his studio. the new Nikon seems quite up to the job so far. got to shoot raw images, number the paintings on the reverse with a Sharpie, write a description in my notebook (enough to identify the painting in the image), then later I'll edit the images, add any pertinent meta-data, and put them online. huge job. hope also to gather the 150 or so paintings which are already scattered across the globe -- to list the owners, the story behind the acquisition, and assign numbers in the same system. but how is it that I have made the time/energy to deal with this stuff? dunno.

we all head down to the Glen Ridge community pool for Evon's first swim meet where he's stoked for the 25-yard free-style. the first pictures with the Nikon D200 are clunky and ... ill-composed. 6 years of shooting video -- sonic & moving visual -- so different from using a SLR camera. simple things like the 3:2 image ratio vs the video 4:3 ratio make a big difference, along with the limitation of having only one shot, and no sound. at least the camera works like a film-based SLR in that it actually takes the pisture when you hit the shutter-release. none of that annoying delay as with cheap point--and-shoot digital cameras. but the size is a bit daunting as is the sheer number of buttons and menu items.