a few days before leaping off another earth's edge. north almost over the pole. if it was Helsinki, would get to 80 degrees north. but only London, so, north Greenland. detritus spread around the room, juggling, sifting, compacting for the two-month tour ahead. some disturbing points, some to look forward to anxiously.

Ryan heads out early for the Buick Invitational in La Jolla with some friends -- he's a golfer. I say goodbye to Andrea and head north to Seal Beach to stay with Dan and Robin, & their gals, Amanda and Rachel. much catching up is done. it's been 19 years since we've crossed paths -- a few years after I resigned from my position with Union Oil of California where I worked as half the International Grav/Mag team with Dan. history.

Gary and I head out towards Balboa Park, but don't actually make it. I wanted to get online for a couple hours of work, so he takes me to a cybercafe in North Park where the PowerBook exhibits it's intransigent side -- something that comes up about 2% of the time when connecting to a wifi node -- it can see the node, says it's connected, but refuses to actually establish a viable connection. grrrrr. the usual spate of re-starts, config changes, etc, to no avail. Gary puts up with my whining, then calls an acquaintance nearby, Christian Michaels, a professional photographer who happened to have a wifi network at his studio. we head south on Ray Street, a funky neighborhood to the beautiful studio built in a former sign-manufacturers space. he's got a huge video projector with a 25x25-foot projection area at one end of the main studio. as we chat, turns out that he is hosting a share event in the evening! we have a good laugh that I am the share-nomad node. synchronicity! have lunch at a taqueria around the corner, and head back to spend the afternoon with Andrea and Ryan. then Gary comes by to fetch me for the evening happening. end up meeting Morgan Sully of share-San Diego and others. there is a screening of Metropolis, and I do a short VDMX improv. nice!

opening at gallery, artists presentation, driving around town, working in the library, military vehicles in the air. semi-Santa Ana winds push heavy orange pollutions into the sea to the West. San Diego spreads to the south of Mount Soledad past the naval port, to disappear in heavier pollution hazes drifting seaward from Tiajuana. Gary and I have a nice Cubano lunch with Sarah, faculty at University of San Diego, a Catholic school. then we hang out in her studio looking at some video Gary shot at Burning Man, and other things. end up watching the dvd Tell Them Who You Are, Haskell Wexler.

long day! Adriene and I finally f2f before her morning class which I jumped into. traffic made our anticipated leisurely breakfast turn into a quick stop at the local Whole Foods for a turkey wrap and on direct to class. interesting group of students. I do not make a roll listing as per usual, twice now, I've missed that opportunity. one of the students, Tara, graciously takes me on a walking tour of campus, and a long lunch conversation.

and finally Gary and I rendezvous after 11 years passed. last time was in Baltimore WAY back or so. this time in front of the UCSD Geisel Library, hanging.



dinner with Adriene at the house of Michael Krichner and Carmen Cucina -- a reception for a candidate for curator of the UCSD Art Gallery. finally met Jordan along with the curator from the SDSU Art Gallery who invited me to an artist's talk tomorrow for the exhibition John Q. Public & Citizen Jane: Private Americans in the Political Domain.

down the coast, nearly crossing pathways with military vehicles in the air, at sea, and on the ground. great swaths of California real estate frozen in military reservations. one way, good, as there is no development of the ubiquitous California-style suburbs, bad, as the military never had oversight of pollution issues.

to reconnoiter campus for tomorrow's class, I decide to cycle down from Del Mar, without taking another quick look at the map. and end up, for the first time in years, not finding my objective! it was a good ride, but I never did locate campus. doh!



maybe one reason I got lost...

long haul from Santa Barbara, down PCH through Malibu, up to I-10 at Santa Monica, retracing my morning commute from the apartment I had at the beach to downtown eLAy back in the dark ages. so long ago. traffic was intense for a Saturday afternoon across eLAy, down to Orange County to Pete & Susie's place. again, the GoogleEarth preview provides an excellent visualization of where to go. brilliant. the twins are there, Colin and Devin. Colin lets me crash in his room while he sleeps on an inflatable mattress in his brother's room. eighteen years old, I'd never met them before. and they are studying for finals the whole weekend. last time I'd seen Pete & Susie was in 1987 maybe, 1988? nineteen years. sheesh. too much time passed. catching up, seeing the way things go, the way things are. watching the football play-offs.

listening to: muslimgauze & Phil Niblock

good art allows a deepening of internal vision, a precision of being, as delineated by an Other's perspective and world-view combined with their abilities to express that view in a way which catches the streaming of Self, gently re-directing it to an alternate placement.

Wes takes me on a uphill cycle ride around Santa Barbara that ends back down on the ocean-front and a cafe for some refreshments. mmmm, that Southern Cal feeling.

our arts birthday stream goes down smoothly, though I never did succeed in tapping into the actual European Broadcasting System satellite output feed of the event. August recorded the stream file on his Linux box.

Wes invites me to jump into what turned out to be an excellent evening -- cycled down to fishbon (see their blog) -- a weekly salon for an ecclectic group of cultural activists in Santa Barbara. the evening starts with a demo of the Wii by a local teen, then a Kung Fu demo advertising the establishment of some special courses starting in the fishbon space. Wes and a friend do a MAX/jitter visual/sonic performance, and after that I do a very short 15-minute improv with VDMX.

and shortly, my talk in the IHC:

tech-no-madic pathways: networks and sonic energy

This talk, framed in observations from 20 years in the Cultural-Industry Sector of Europe and North America, will look at the energetic intersection of body and sound in the midst of chaotic social systems and restless movement. It will doubtfully answer the following questions among a thousand others: What does it mean to be a sound artist? What is a sustainable creative practice? What are we doing here? How did it end up this way? Afterwards, let's talk!

long day yesterday starts with packing up, more conversations around breakfast, and then on to UCSC to meet with Margret, chair of the Digital Arts / New Media program. good sushi for lunch. that and a couple of fine muffins that Isabelle packed for the ride south, alright! arrived in Santa Barbara after a longish drive down the 101 -- slowly getting acclimated to the car culture, though with some guilt feelings about carbon footprints and all. no time to do the legendary Route 1. met August at UCSB in a dark parking lot and were in good



time for a presentation by Takuro Mizuta Lippit, one of the Artistic Directors at STEIM. cool to be reminded of the vitality of euro-culture while far-away here in SoCal.



arts birthday comes up in a few hours...

slow cool morning, a tour of the great studio that Mike & Isabelle have brought together. a walk to the creek, marveling at the trees, the rocks, the land.

It is vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e., than I import into it. -- Henry David Thoreau

make it down to the sweet redwood grove where Mike and Isabelle make their home these days. it was dark when I arrived, but weaving through the already-massive trunks of the second-growth coastal sequoia, well niiice! even in the extreme and unusual cold that blankets California. the beauty of the spot was confirmed in the morning with breakfast taken on folding chairs in a small grassy opening surrounded by these magnificent trees. no scale in the photo, but each of these 'saplings' is about five feet (1.5 meters) in diameter!



yesterday, have a leisurely afternoon with Mike, Isabelle, Ed, Elena, and their son Oscar in Santa Cruz. coffee and cakes. ending with a chilly walk down the pier to see the seals snoozing on the dock.

well, what about that? venturing into San Fran for one of those talked-about media events, though I missed Steve Jobs by three days with the hyped unveiling of the iPhone. I did see the worshipful milling about the two glass cases with the two 'working' models. hard to engage with the masses of people around. too much time in the boonies! did run into a somewhat familiar face -- Steve Bisque of Bisque Software -- his father was a prof of mine at CSM, and Steve is a Geophysics grad from CSM, graduating a year after me. his company makes a range of amateur and professional astronomical software. otherwise, well. lotsa toys, things to possibly buy. data security solutions and iPod cases are everywhere. a scattering of Chinese companies have stiff staff manning empty booths, compared to the chaotic and relaxed professional Amurikan consumer and consumee. ID tags are scanable at every booth with all the data that was required for registration to get into the show. perfect marketing. scan your card to enter in a drawing for a Nano. scan it for propaganda to arrive in the email box later. so it goes. try to buy a discounted replacement battery for my G4 PB, but they are all out. and no microphone is available for my iPod. too old. have to buy a new iPod and then I can get a CD-quality stereo recording mike. sheesh. always something more to buy! never-ending.

Cynthia heads out into the wide world yesterday, tracing the process with her DTS blog.

hanging out with the family. Dana is the initial portrait for the New Year's project -- a return to the work that I dropped in the interim between stopping with black&white 35mm film-based and getting the new Nikon D200 SLR which makes that work once again possible. in between, a hiatus of six years, while having access to a variety of digital cameras, the serious lack of one critical feature made my work impossible. that feature is the near-instantaneous synchronization of the shutter -- when the shutter-release button is pressed the shutter goes without hesitation. the D200 is the first digital cam that I've had where there is no delay. that millisecond delay in cheaper cams makes the difference between the picture and a wasted shot. it's all about synchronicity between my eyes, the collaborative subject, and the mediatory machine.

movement begins to impact the system. not so easy as the last times, but with more interesting prospects, no doubt. 2007 will bring something, eh? one can only hope, given the paths of the previous 18 months.

another image from Loki. will shortly set up an online gallery for him to manage his own images in order to showcase his eye-work...

completely remiss on the travelog in the last weeks -- it comes second to the flood of logistical planning communication with the upcoming five month world tour. starting shortly -- California tour to several UC campuses, the UK, NL, DE, FI, EE for a couple months. then back west all the way to AU and NZ for more workshops. whewsh.

but, of course, that movement will kick up the blood flow and force the mind to spill here!

planning to do a series of audio interviews along the road as well, as I'll be crossing paths with a lot of interesting people so far planned, and surely many more unplanned...

Loki's interest in photography prompts me to request an image a week at least, to continue to hone his sharp & creative eye. this is the first in a series that I'll be posting here.

a last look out the guest bedroom window towards Granite Mountain from the house my father built. 23 years after finishing the construction, the house now sits empty, victim of the housing crash of '07 which has hit this region harder than many others after the hyper-inflation of the last three years. a crash was inevitable. the house is completely empty.

well, what to write. taking a walk with Fling, 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.