passing this on from editor Lloyd Dunn -- a marvelous resource and inspiring source -- the online photostatic 'zine archives are now complete! Enjoy!

Over the last five years, the editor of PhotoStatic Magazine (1983-1998) has been gradually converting all of the issues of the series from their published form (on paper) into pdf files for the public to download. We are pleased to announce that the final installment of the archive (PhotoStatic no. 1) has been posted, and so the archive is now complete. All of the downloads are freely available, and 100% copyright free (as they have been ever since 1983).

During its run, the PhotoStatic Magazine series underwent several transformations, as some issues were published under differing titles, which include: PhotoStatic Magazine, PhonoStatic Cassettes, Retrofuturism, YAWN: Sporadic Critique of Culture, The Bulletin of the Copyright Violation Squad, and Psrf. In addition to the 49 print issues released between 1983 and 1998 (which includes two issues of double the normal page count), the archive also includes 10 issues on audio cassette (downloadable as mp3s) as well has a handful of supplemental releases.

PhotoStatic was a magazine, a periodical series of printed works that focused on xerography as the source of a particular visual language that was widely used by graphic artists in the various art and music underground scenes of the 80s and 90s. During this time, the publication served as a forum to collect and redistribute artworks that originated in these scenes. Eventually, its scope extended to embrace not only graphic works, but also concrete poetry, correspondence art, ephemera from works in other media, essays, fiction, reviews, and reports on various cultural scenes, including Neoism, the home taping community, the zine community, and mail art.

from a friend at the YMCA:

VOTE "YES" ON PROP 201 (pdf) FOR A HEALTHY ARIZONA, SUPPORTED BY HEALTH GROUPS

VOTE "NO" ON PROP 206 (pdf) WHICH IS SUPPORTED BY THE R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY

uff. no wonder people become cynical. where anything will be done to protect the flow of cash into an existing mega-industry.

self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. in a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. -- Marcus Aurelius

finally starting to gather work for no man's land, a collaborative online project organized by Varsha Nair and Katherine Olston of womanifesto international art exchange based in Bangkok, Thailand. (photo by Manit Sriwanichpoom)

Consider this territorially imagined line -- the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. Borders also contain/define/give rise to our sense of nationalism, and related historical and current cultural practices and narratives that are perpetuated in a variety of ways help to define ones sense of nation-hood and ownership.

Consider, also, the 'no man's land' itself; it is at once, the in-between space of the border, the borderless scape of cyber space, and the place within us that cannot so easily be explained by the nationality on our passport. The no man's land, in all its diversity is a relevant space that is the reality of many in the globalized world of today.

in a room with others, loudish 1970's rock music playing. does this fit the demographic? sweating. I climb the same number of floors in the World Trade Center. 110 in 25 minutes. sweating. 275 calories apparently. listening to Prairie Home Companion on the way home, there is strange background music playing for one song. turns out it is my new phone, incoming call. don't know the ringtone yet. static floods the radio when I park in the Frys lot, there is a radiostatic hole around there -- no doubt related to the high-voltage lines crossing the land nearby and a massive switching sub-station across the street. and maybe a cosmic convergence. when I get home I erase Kevin's home and cell number from my old phone. but what about his old address in my database? leave the name, but erase the address? the phone? the plight of external memory in remembering and forgetting. better to allow meatspace memory take over instead of archival databases. especially when remembering those who have passed. but then there is the issue of the painting archive. digital. rather look at the painting themselves. have one sitting in the bedroom, a purple wave.



on the phone with friends who generously input into the choices coming up shortly. I seek energy from my network in this time of change. of possibility.



on the occasion of the upcoming thirtieth reunion -- beginning to process and upload the scanned images from Gaithersburg High School, graduating class of 1976. as the main yearbook photographer, I ended up with several hundred negatives from that year. at that time, many of the negatives were not printed for technical and other reasons. now, though, it's pretty easy to scan negatives and make a decent image. so, a couple months ago I scanned around 400 of the images.

on a near-moonless night, 0300 brings a surround-sound chorus of coyotes howling, laughing, and cackling. at first I was a bit worried, but reminded the self that no living human had ever been attacked by coyotes. sleeping on the ground is always a challenge of mind. to believe there will be no scorpions, snakes, spiders, or other varmits looking to snuggle right up in the sleeping bag with. did hear some scritchy sounds coming from the car at another juncture of Milky-Way-spinning darkness, but saw no destructive evidence of rodents in the morning. a recorder would have been nice with the coyotes, but I was happier with a small hunting knife and flashLight instead.

hit the road, heading gradually south and east. through the burned hills of the coast range between Livermore and the Great Valley. avoiding the main roads when possible, but spending most of the day at speeds too high, with death only a wrist-flick away. here again in the Mojave. fullness of stars. moon will be up later. tonight on the ground. head exhausted after first the NYC trip and then the ISEA gig. haven't processed it all. and the short time need for employment. Prescott is a lousy base anyway for that.

head exhausted with the whole last year. need to clear it out and start a new life. suggestions about going to OZ surface again, after the virtual contact and the contact with various kiwis and 'strains in the last couple weeks. hmmm. that or Canada. okay, heading for bed. letting granite grit cradle my brain for a half-solar-cycle.

great visit with the Pulsar Road crew. left five of Kevin's paintings on loan. took the rest with.

the day before Loki turns 14. the separation is painful, especially with no clear plan for the next months except for heading to Colorado and to Missouri. putting job applications in. following up on the UC-Davis opening, and on. spend the next week finalizing everything in storage. keeping out what's necessary. trundling the rest off not to be seen for an indeterminate length of time.

head over with Dana in her mongo black off-road beast for Chinese fast food lunch -- I can't understand what the guy taking orders is saying -- afterwards she checks out her first apartment.

fortune cookie: A partnership shall prove successful for you

head for the pool after that.

long day in the city. starting in the United Nations Plaza which is, definitely a coagulation of spirits. first scenario visiting the eye on regaining ground-level from the Civic Center BART station is that of a seagull in the process of eviscerating a live pigeon. by the time I film, the pigeon is dead. the second scenario: to kill time, I drop in at the Asian Art Museum where the guards start to check everything in my backpack and begin to recite a mantra of all the things that cannot be brought in or used or done (or thought!) in the Museum. I stop them, and say that I am not interested in participating in their particular little corner of the social system, pack my bag and walk out. and head back along streets brimming with urine-reek, the displaced homeless, flophouse hotels, and so on. at a stop Light, a woman standing next to me asks the world in general how can I restart my career? I look at her and say I was going to ask you the same thing! it is clear that social empowerment is at an extreme low here in the center of San Franscisco.



lunch with Casey, and on to a rendezvous with Sophea and Amanda. a double espresso puts an edge on the afternoon. on the way, evidence of a TAZ is spotted: a good omen! although the juxtaposition with other street scenes previously experienced in the day raises many questions about the way a TAZ might be expressed in this time, in this socio-political system.



on to Whole Foods for breakfast provisions, Casey goes home to study, we head back to Amanda's place to prep for the trans-national breakfast with the Syndey



and Adelaide crews at 1630 local time. the breakfast -- French Toast, fruit compote, pashed (!) potatoes, and champagne is streamed and rebroadcast on free103point9 in Brooklyn, NY as part of the live_feed: Breakfast Radio streaming project. the overall performance was initiated by Andrew Burrell and the Hybrid Radio Research Group as part of the Aural Degustation: Tasty Bites to Feed the Ears exhibition at the SCA Galleries at the SCA in Sydney, Australia. participants included: (in Adelaide): Mimi Kelly, Sasha Grbich, Jen Brazier, Heidi Angove, and Tamara Baille ; (in San Francisco): Amanda Hendricks, Sophea Lerner, and John Hopkins; (in San Diego - special telematic drop in): Amanda MacDonald-Crowley; (in Sydney): Lia Smith, Amber Moloney, Clara Chow, Bjel Bakker, Belle Brooks, Heidi Abraham, Sach Catts, Alli Barnard, and last-but-not-least, Andrew Burrell.

a job possibility slips through fingers greased with imaginations of freedom and non-heirarchic relation. no, slips because the structure of relation is, in the case of that particular institution, not flexible or mutable enough to value my praxis. and under-developed skills of institutional negotiation. c'est comme ça. it's a bit of a come-down and unfortunate for the committee who invited me to apply some weeks ago, but when one door close, another one open, as Fela Kuti would say.

and the iDC list blows up with a critique of ISEA. hard to know where to start with that. knowing so many of the artists involved, but also feeling a bit puzzled about some of the extreme juxtapositions at the symposium and exhibitions and around town. the term interactive city seems most problematic. at one end of the scale, the project Moveable Types and Instant Spaces which had a direct impact on locals, especially the enthusiastic kids playing in the fountain in Ceasar Chavez Park.



and maybe it's just that city self-promotion in the US these days -- an integral part of the ISEA / Zero-One event -- is a shrill and aggressive process that is driven by the same ilk of developers and profiteers who have raped the rest of the land into submission.

a blissful 2 kilometers in the outdoor pool. after a week of imbibing in intellectual stimulation, stretching the body a bit in a turquoise 25 meter x 3-meter-deep pool is an absolute luxury.

the last day, more lunches, meetings, panels, and sessions. of multiple form, but with threads of connection throughout. that's the core thread, or simply the core: people. the structure of most of the collective events is the usual podium-stage-screen-VIP-amplification (who was chosen for social and real amplification?). I am only interested in the granular micro individual un-amplified events.

Steve provides this nice image from a small polar/solar path crossing in Caesar Chavez Park in downtown San Jose.

the SoundCulture presentation with Ed Osbourne, Shawn Decker, and Nigel Helyer ... where the organization SoundCulture aims to be a transdisciplnary, trans-regional, pro-actively critical platform for sound art ...

sound is field-like ... fluidity ... formlessness ... nomadic and transient ... sonic everywhere (related to Light ... because it is another manifestation of field energy)

sound in spaces ... how to solve (or use) spatial pervasiveness of sound ...

sound is one of the first inter-media areas, linking multiple practices and media

sound is vibration and relies on material

sound as environment -- sustainability & architecture

sound and music -- hearing and technologies, but what about music and sound difference ...

comments:

overlooked as field; eye is master, ear is slave; architecture going backwards; plus sound-specific work isn't always that way ... music -- the 500 pound gorilla in the room; electroacoustic; sound vs composition, etc. I commented on the possible parallels in the development of photography-as-art-form and the subsequent isolation it faced as materially-defined art form, and then a gradual realization as the digital began to make headway into its domain that photography was just another way to put a 2-D mark on paper.

finally catch up with Tapio as well, for a bit of conversation time.

head home before the SOFA street party really gets underway. don't have the energy to keep on with it. carrying a bunch of equipment is an anchor. so, after filming some of the Latino concert action in the convention center with Amanda and Sophea, I head back to the car and the commute up 680 to Livermore.

spend the morning with Sally Jane, checking out some of the exhibitions including a personal walk-through of the Animalia project with producers Angela Main and Caroline McCaw (more kiwis!). then on to the ART MUSEUM to see THE SHOW curated by Steve Deitz. some amazing works, leading off with the elegant live-chat-based .

lunch with Ken at La Victoria Taqueria, better burritos than Macho Taco which was unexplicably closed at lunch-time.

also happen upon the npr broadcast studio at the downtown cineplex in an unused ticket booth. was wondering where they were broadcasting from -- last night I happened to tune them in at 88.9 on the car radio on the commute back to the 'burbs. so, met Jon Brumit and

hard to begin and end the day with a rattling vibrating swervy commute that lasts about an hour, door-to-door.

some overviews on the conference:

yadda-yadda-yadda; blah-blah-blah.

so many words, so many moving images, so much sound, talking heads, and spectacle. along with nice personal encounters. the monumental, the heirarchic voices along with the personal, networked, and confidential/private.

San Jose is interesting clash of urban-renewal towers of glass and corrosion-resistant metals: ringed some hard-core barrio Victorian bungalow scene, interlaced with the chronic homeless scattered between the shining spaces and conventioneers.

organized networks are interested in new institutional forms. tactical media has come to a stage of confronting itself. question of scalar transformation, (vs) networked organizations. democracy and networks are antithetical. bunk.

prototypes: sarai, iDC, srishdi school of art and media, indy media etc



end up going to see a Mike Figgis remix of his film Time Code. a pseudo-press guy is giving away a couple tickets, so I snag one. he explains that he's not really press, but a writer, and is trying to write a history of media art starting with the world-view of Gertrude Stein. I didn't quite understand what he was trying to tell me. I suppose he very well might be a better writer that explainer. the film is a disappointment -- the subject of the narrative is hermetically sealed in Hollywood and lacks any compelling visual or story elements. Mike is there, verily, and does a live "remix" which consists of rewinding the tape(!) and fading in/out the 4 different screen audio tracks. in form -- the four frames which simultaneously inhabit the main screen that were recorded in four single simultaneous takes starting at the same time -- there is an extremely interesting potential, especially as the overall resolution of video systems for shooting, recording, editing, and playback are gradually increasing. but the possibilities of the form seem completely wasted by the insipid narrative and visual void. is it a joke maybe?

head back to Livermore on the 87-280-680-84 pilgrimage route. not really liking that violent traverse of the land. though one segment moves across the Calaveras Valley which is still unpopulated and sports the rolling amber hills with huge live oaks scattered at stellar intervals.

Kate Armstrong and I try out urbantells.net as their first guinea pigs. tech problems start everything off. and seem nearly as ubiquitous as the number of devices deployed at the exhibition.

the polar/solar brunch ends up with Ed, Ken, and I talking over lunch for several hours -- nice, catching up -- mapping the network, teaching, working, net-working. we then wander over to the CRUMB project run by Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham to have some tea and cakes and some interesting conversation on strategies for survival in the culture sphere.

yeah, isea '06. stories begin to accumulate as to failures of the local infrastructure in support of the program of incoming artists and their projects.



later, doing the gallery crawl with Ken, run into Mathias. catch some interesting work and good food.

things have not really started, but I head down to San Jose on a shake-down run and to see who is around already. the drive and parking logistics are a bit complicated, so it is good to construct an operational headmap without the pressure of schedule. public transportation in central San Jose is revived along with the recent urban renewal that appears to be taking place. a re-colonialization by huge shiny-skinned office buildings, no real community thriving are the foot of these gleaming beasts. just restaurants to cater to the convention crowds. food shopping? no chance for that in this infotainment core. immediately outside there are the remains of a pre-existing indigenous community.

waking up before any sunrise, local or remote. no western peaks aglow, just purple sky. no alarm necessary. no people seen, heard, until back onto the strip of asphalt that bisects that section of the desert. dry washes elaborately choreographed through culverts and under bridges. twenty miles of the Interstate is under construction because the washes have washed out the bridge pilings. that must have come with the Pacific storms from early 2005. same time as when the only gas line feeding Arizona from California refineries was washed out. seems that everywhere one drives in the US these days, roads are in pretty poor condition, infrastructure failing. then follows the numbing drive from Barstow, over Tehachapi, then a side-road to Arvin, across the valley to Interstate 5, and on to another side road that goes through the Kettleman Hills. following the San Andreas fault. ages ago, I did a re-analysis of the Kettleman Dome structure from an integrated gravity/seismic point-of-view for UnoCal -- a beginners project just to see what kind of skills I had with integrating surveys and data interpretation in general. some areas there have small rocker pumps (praying mantises) every 100 yards or so. the classic wildcat scenario without the wooden derricks.

shoving into the month. already moving again. house emptied more-or-less. now out in the Mojave. near Kelso. on the usual overnight stop between Prescott and San Francisco -- in the Granite Mountains southeast of Kelso Dunes -- perfect temperature, negligible humidity. so, star gazing bare-chested. Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, Antares near the waxing moon. Jupiter ahead. took the back way to I-40 at Seligman -- essentially continuing out Williamson Valley Road for 65 miles. deep through isolated ranching territory on the fringe of the Prescott National Forest and something of a soft terrain of limestone, basalt, some red-rock, and green vegetation cover from the recent two weeks of monsoon. even caught a small storm that cleaned the windshield. making virtuality more transparent.

the Mojave as it always is. despite encroaching red-yellow air at sunset from eLAy and other less tangible impacts from humans, bats are winging about, some animals and birds out there -- jack rabbits, nothing else seen, but likely there -- and the plants, rocks, contributing to the raw being of place. and the ever-consequent silence laying heavy behind any sound. even starting up the computer for a bit of writing is a noisy industrial incursion. and with battery running down very fast. so that words either have to form now or simply dissipate into the real ether! setting the alarm early to have a slow breakfast, tea, before the sun breaks the boulder ridge immediately to the east. want to get on the road in this black car so that at least all the hours of the heavy mid-day sun are not spent inside it. coffin.

back to look at stars as battery dies.