not enough sleep after the dinner at Mokki with the Pixelache folks and the Prix Mobius people. finally caught up with Juhani who was on his way to Manchester today.

up early to meet Tapio at mbar for a short session about future polar/solar plans and dealing with future web-documentation and such.

then over to the gallery at noon to begin the final set-up. remote presence :: streaming life gets underway with preparations for the evening's happening. all runs smoothly. except for the entire network going down about an hour before opening time. turns out to be one of those crazy glitches around a print job submitted to the wrong printer. it brought down everything for a tense 30 minutes before I could figure out what was happening. otherwise the transformation of the gallery space was completed some hours before the opening, and it looks very nice. did miss the final session of the conference with Lisa and Armin, as well as missing the last event of the Nordic VJ program. too busy.

many folks come to the opening -- Antti, Bernice, Owen and his wife, Kaisu, Amos, and on. I was not so able to chat much, monitoring the outgoing streams, but the vibe was good. the sonic stream is an interesting mix, though the video input was sparse and not so electric. we would need another couple days to spruce up that medium & means. the ambient sound in the gallery is warm and party-like.

day two. Elénore catches her plane from Strasbourg, but gets tangled in security at Charles de Gaulle, missing her Helsinki flight and so I am left with a two-hour morning conference panel to anchor solo at the Goethe institute. presenting the context of the workshop and the paper that I contributed to the Pixelache publication. it goes well. although there are skeptics in the back row. not vocal, but disturbing the atmosphere by talking during much of the talk/discussion. they make no direct critique of the propositions nor contribute to the lively discussion. boring people who do that.



at another point, a bit later, someone who was to show up at placard in Kiasma isn't able to come, so, with a little chunk of open time in my schedule I jump into the corner hot-seat and do a one-hour impromptu mix for a handful of headphone-donning folks. the sun streaming in the window, I have a good view of the Parliment building as a source of rock-solid and cubic inspiration.



Erik (aka Mr. Placard) runs the multichannel headphone mixers, the stream, and keeps an eye on the irc channel.



then, there's Manu & Mukul along with Indigo, their young boy. hanging around waiting for the screening of their film Faceless in the Kiasma Theater.

up early at Linnunlaulu for day one of Pixelache 2007. Ubiquitous Helsinki is name-dropped as a project, while the local wifi network goes down in the morning. so, no work gets done in the day. faugh. the context for the presentations remains heavily backgrounded. projects are presented on platforms that are not grounded to any particular understanding of the larger global context (real sustainability, viability -- too much technological determinism). or the reality of what is going on now. hmmmm.

back in Linnunlaulu, 6.5 years later. the restoration was just completed when I stayed there on the fall of 2000 for three months. but even that short a time has taken a heavy toll on the exterior. common sparrows are nesting anywhere they can squeeze a perch. little caches of twigs sprout from cracks and eaves and the balcony is warping.

two rather friendly, though dark granite bears flank the entrance to the building I'm staying in. granite everywhere. that's always the first thing I notice in Finland. the density of building materials. granite. the window in the bedroom looks out over the entrance from the second floor. another bedroom in Helsinki. realized in conversation last night that I've been coming to Finland for 13 years already. wow.

Finnish flags are unfurled on every building. not sure what that's about.

head down to the Andorra Theater to meet Andrew and Sophea to see the movie The Planet. part of the Lens Politica Film Festival. I see Steve Kurtz walk out of the previous film early. I don't know him, and didn't really feel like interacting. he walks away through the mostly empty lobby. the movie is darker than Al Gore's tour-de-force on the same subject of global warming. and it covers a bit different territory including e-waste, and developing-world attitudes about the problem. experts paint dark pictures, and pictures paint darker pictures. dark. realizing I likely won't last to 2050 seems auspicious, though there is a curiousity at the idea of catastrophic change, planet-wide. what terrible lessons that would hold for those who are alive. how they will revile the fools of this present age. but the planet has the potential to re-generate another species if we eradicate ourselves. give it another 500,000,000 years. why not? or is our presence here a unique expression of order not to be replicated ever. what is it about these imaginations of disaster projected by science that seem to fascinate so much? and in the end, it is still us in the developed world, sitting in theaters in our cities, receiving the images of film producers, telling us what is in the world, rather than us out in the world, be-ing there. fully.

workshop continues at a rare intensity. only a good scene. fine mix of intellects and spirits. something good will come from this. while the situation in Sydney apparently continues to unfold, but with what characteristics and forms and potentials I do not know. there is a degree of stress heading to the unknown place.

two participants, coming respectively from Melbourne and Southern California, used couch surfing sites for housing -- I may need to make that scene in Oz if housing alternatives run out.

But the number of sand I know, and the measure of drops in the ocean;
The dumb man I understand, and I hear the speech of the speechless:
And there hath come to my soul the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise
Boiling in caldron of bronze, and the flesh of a lamb mingled with it;
Under it bronze is laid, it hath bronze as a clothing upon it. -- Pythian
prophetess

no doubt a pithy oracle. Herodotus quotes. from the histories. run across that after skyping with Loki around the histories of the Greco-Persian Wars -- he saw the movie 300. is there a difference between understanding history derived from Herodotus and Hollywood? are the histories essentially the same in that they are subjective accounts of an individual as translated through a series of other individuals? as Herodotus is the primary source for any information regarding the wars, Hollywood has some relation to this, but what is the texture of relation? and the idea of telling the relation visually and in two hours. complete. no answer. though reviews point to the obvious glorification of the defeat of the Persian by the infidel hyper-militaristic Americo-Spartans.

whoa, way behind. but the email inbox gets more and more full, a tidal wave, or at least a tidal surge, about to cover nose with a sludge of glimmering words. back in Helsinki. having to take the extra time to type the word Helsinki slowly, otherwise it gets typed wrong.

workshop migrates into the second day. dialogues generate, pathways open up, words, energies are exchanged.

meet Tapio at mbar in the Lasipalatsi, where my old office for cafe9 was. the center of town, different now since the huge Kamppi underground bus terminal complex is finished. that complex is behind the Lasipalatsi, and looms like a mini-Tian'anmen (Gate of Accepting Heavenly Mandate), though the Finnish translation must be something like Gate of Accepting Earthly Commerce.

gallery space begins to acquire a lived-in look in the last couple days. Cady and Mari oversee the conversion from a booming white concrete cube into a rather comfortable space where conversations are actually possible. definitely not an optimal space. workshop begins this morning. slowly rising from the ground.

a wander down to Kiasma in the very unseasonably warm weather finds skaters out in force.

unfortunately I have to miss the christening of my little friend, Fritz, there in Kiel, Germany. what a fine child he is. holding him over the days there at his home, began to recall the wonder of children when they are so young. life is essential, irreducible, refined, intense, and open. such luxury to be in such a state. it requires only that there are loving Others (in this case, Steffi & Zorak) around to allow this free life to be sustainable. the dialectic blessing and the burden of parenthood.

Freue dich und sei fröhlich!
Denn siehe, ich komme und
will bei Dir wohnen.
So spricht der Herr.
-- Sacharja 2,14

a routine jump from Hamburg to Vantaa airport, in from there on the Finnair bussi and Nathalie meets me on the corner in front of the building where the Kiasma flat is -- Museokatu 23, in downtown, shows me around to the flat A 11, and we talk about the situation so far. her organization of the practical matters is impeccable. then after a few minutes unpacking and settling in, I head over to the Lasipalatsi Cafe where I find Sophea and Andrew hanging out. then it's off to the avanto sauna on Suomenlinna. it's mens night -- as is customary in public saunas in Finland, split genders -- and we meet Juha at the ferry terminal. there is little ice around, a few spans of rotten left-overs around the sheltered parts of the island. avanto is the deLightful Finnish habit of chopping -- or, in contemporary times, chain-sawing -- a hole in the winter ice so that one can take winter-tired body and jump into the water for a



leisurely paddle. tonight it's a good 25 meters between the sauna building and the avanto dock -- across gravel. that's enough for me. I take the pictures instead of going in.

I notice a cluster of Amurikans on the platform in AmDam Ceentral Station, and at Osnabrück, and Münster. turns out they are 80% of the Grateful-Dead-inspired band, Dark Star Orchestra. on tour.

over to STEIM to meet with Taku to catch the scene there. quiet, and possible.

the inaugural KillerTV broadcast from the Pakhuis de Zwijger building with André Gringas goes really well. online participation was the highest ever, and the local scene was fantastic! ookoi does a live/online SL sound performance, Sher and Janine interview André and I. no extant archival stream footage is around yet (ex post facto), but I made some audio samples which are here remixed with other sounds from my visit to Amsterdam.

the view from the living room. the Waag Society has one set of offices in the building to the right, on Nieuwmarkt, it's the oldest secular structure in Amsterdam. this complex includes the Theatrum Anatomicum the best-known space to public dissections...



over at the Pakhuis de Zwijger offices, a too-short meeting with some of the staff, to explore research methodologies that extend into art-making. one hour simply is not enough to generate dialogue -- it is good only for talking about issues at people. not with people. the network develops at the speed of life. later, dialogues spring up out of the initial meeting context, with vigor -- accentuating the problematic one-hour theory. dialogues which are the point and an expression of (my) methodology per se.

also met the current keyworx development crew, Lodewijk & Jokke. to see the whole new Open Source paradigm, including the web-based patcher. looking forward to alpha and beta testing!

trying to get more job applications in, but time is so packed with meetings, there is only peripheral possibility. but the UNSW/COFA one is in and good. at least the interview process will be in hand whilst in Sydney.

Hence, the academic grappling with his computer, ceaselessly correcting, reworking, and complexifying, turning the exercise into a kind of interminable psychoanalysis, memorizing everything in an effort to escape the final outcome, to delay the day of reckoning of death, and that other -- fatal -- moment of reckoning that is writing, by forming an endless feed-back loop with the machine. This is a marvelous instrument of exoteric magic. In fact all these interactions come down in the end to endless exchanges with a machine. Just look at the child sitting in front of his computer at school; do you think he has been made interactive, opened up to the world? Child and machine have merely been joined together in an integrated circuit. As for the intellectual, he has at last found the equivalent of what the teenager gets from his stereo and his walk man: a spectacular desublimation of thought, his concepts as images on a screen. -- Jean Baudrillard

is it worth it in the end?

the accession to thought, and the impulse to create removes us from the flow of present be-ing. outside the Nieuwmarkt is noisy with tourists wandering in search of meaning, the people in the market stalls, selling, café sitters. with beer, coffee, lunch. enjoying a bit of early springtime afternoon sun. inside the tipping flat, where front wall is leaning drunkenly forward over the café tables set up on the brick sidewalk four floors below, inside, there is the atmosphere of closeted dis-knowing. but a dis-knowing in need of gradual release into a form.

no network. so discommunicator. decide to go to Montevideo to see David Garcia's show of video works, Faith in Exposure -- a project in which artists 'talk back' to the news media.

The exhibition addresses the central narrative of western democracy, our 'faith in exposure,' the unquestioning belief that the circulation of knowledge through the news media (and other means) constrains the powerful and guarantees democracy. In a world where we may know but are still compelled to obey, Faith in Exposure is a platform for artists and researchers to ask whether it is still tenable to believe the central myth of the information age: that knowing the truth shall make us free.

technical difficulties with a couple works. intriguing, some arrive at the tableau of just-more-media -- in the process of projection in white cubes. how to disassemble the house of the master with the tools of the master. and find truth...

finally meet Sher. network crossings. dinner (red beet pasta with smoked mozzarella, mmmm! at Mappa), then on to a dance performance by choreographer André Gringas. what to say. networks are alive because of the real energy going into them.

somehow I am surprised that she is American! all this time I was thinking that she was Dutch or something. another cultural refugee -- thriving in Europe.

short morning with Rod. then off and about in the Light rain. just make the train by a minute despite leaving with plenty of time because of the bus driver shutting the bus down after a couple stops. reason? at the second stop about 40 high school kids get on, packing the bus, a couple stops later, while trying to sardine people onto the bus, he wants them to transfer to the bus behind him. they refuse, so he turns the bus off. and waits. interesting scene.

on to Amsterdam. to de Waag. some serious aerobics up to the third floor reception, am handed a phone and keys, then back over to the flat which sits on



the south side of the Nieuwmarkt. nice place. a single cold beer in the fridge. but the wifi from Waag does not quite cut across to the flat. sort of, but not quite. so I am offline for the weekend perhaps. though Sher says that the network should be accessible at the restaurant in the ground floor of de Waag. I'll be checking that out tomorrow, for sure. and on for a dinner with Geert and Linda, Calin Dan, and Emile Zile.

The whole problem is one of abandoning a style of critical thought that is the very essence of our theoretical culture, but that in some sense comes under the head of a prior history and life; of carrying out, just as we have carried out a deterministic analysis of a deterministic society, an indeterministic analysis of an indeterministic society, a society that is fractal, random, exponential, one of critical mass and extreme phenomena, wholly dominated by relations of uncertainty. -- Jean Baudrillard

a tour around to the Netherlands Architectural Institute where Rod is gardening for the Edible City exhibition/installation (which happened to have some of the nice ceramic work by Piet Stockmans). Rod leads a wander through the old town, starting with Hell's Gate, and on to Heaven for a few minutes where I chat with the head of the local growers cooperative.



the balance of the day is spent listening to, talking about Rod's work, and the work of others who we know. an artist's artist, Rod can't be bothered to take any pause in making work and keep human connections running to worry about creating a web presence. though there is some of his work is on ubuweb, put up by a collaborator, Jesse Glass, as is a good wiki page, such a wealth of material would be an inspiration to a broader public, methinks.

bad night's sleep again, not sure where that is coming from. feng shui of hotel rooms. don't like hotels. open window too noisy to sleep; closed, nose imitates room and stuffs. maybe caffeine. some small cups of coffee during meetings, not just to be polite, but it smells so good. so, wake up before alarm, force the obligatory liter of water down, gradually clear head. body drags along behind. pack, and hobble down to breakfast and wifi access to at least consume croissants and Eudora. and some Firefox. though belly is fat and getting fatter. can't wait for a swim, cycle, something aerobic. but Dirk has made a tight schedule of luxurious 2-3 hour meetings with such an interesting variety of people. and so, this morning, he comes to breakfast a bit after Thomas Laureyssens comes tentatively to my table.

excellent generation of ideas, intiutive connections, and pathways, dynamically evolving possibility. Thomas is working on a social networking project which aims to create a functional gateway for Belgian new media initiatives.

Brussels as the background. some good food, some short visions, hardly any time to catch the tourist scene, and no photographs made. nothing missed on that account. previous visits, the most recent was in 2000 for the closing cafe9.net meeting which ended up in the scandalous shouting match among participants at a Chinese restaurant. so much for European solidarity.

Dirk and Thomas head off after Angelo Vermeulen arrives for a short meeting before I have to catch the train to Maastricht.

Angelo illustrates my dialogue-based worldview with several direct anecdotes which counterpoint his prodigeous and stimulating formal creative output. and reminds me a bit painfully the lack of a PhD is a deterrent to social viability. that or a book. so that story haunts again in the background. text trumps lived praxis, title trumps actual presence. sheesh.

we have lunch at the brasserie Falstaff with a nice interior where "you can admire the transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco," and the staff looking like they should be in a Paris bistro. and the pay toilets governed by a wrinkled old lady. just the way it used to be. mais oui! typically touristic, with a complete backwards look to the future. tourists would never distinguish that this is not real. maybe tourists are so conditioned by looking at the world via tele-vision, that when confronted by the real thing, they cannot tell when it is a simulation of something else authentic. like Disneyland. seems like a great place to actualize physical presence in the 'world' when compared to prime-time teevee. uff!

over to Maastricht, train to bus to Rod and Lizbet's place. nine years since last time. catching up on years of remote art, music, books, Iceland gossip. talk about getting more of Rod's work online aside the wiki page that a friend has done -- he's a networker, and a singular one of that breed, a networker's networker. no time to worry about publicity, the market, promotion. the work and the network are all that counts, matters, all that provides life reason. his output into that network is prodigeous, profound, and humane. his archive is priceless, marvelous!

meetings start up early and run all day and through the late evening. (will update this entry with more links shortly) -- OKNO, Argos, FoAM, and so on...

Letters written with ink (bits) do not really exist qua letters. For the letters are but various forms to which meanings have been assigned through convention. What really and concretely exists is nothing but the ink. The existence of the letters is in truth no other than the existence of the ink which is the sole, unique reality that unfolds itself in many forms of self-modification. One has to cultivate, first of all, the eye to see the selfsame reality of ink in all letters, and then to see the letters as so many intrinsic modifications of the ink. -- Brad Brace, Insatiable Abstraction Engine

a long day yesterday riding the rails from Kiel to Aachen, back into familiar spaces again there. a really nice but far too short visit with Günter, Christina, and Manon -- who is now as tall as her mother! last time I saw her she was just a little child, maybe eight years ago?! lovely child. so, hanging out talking about books, art, life, music, so nice to re-connect after all this time.



re-creating the passage of time. young children grow up.

a leisurely breakfast with Christina, and she then drove me to the Hauptbahnhof for my train through Liege and on to Brussels Midi, a short walk to the hotel, where Dirk has faxed a three-day plan of meetings with a variety of artists, artist's collectives, and educators working in that fuzzy space of new media. my room is not ready, so I stash my bag and start wandering towards the first agenda item: a roundtable (around a rectangular table) with two of the principles of LA[bau] -- a laboratory for architecture and urbanism -- Manuel Abendroth and Els Vermang.

a nice lunch (those dang baguette-sandwiches are always so crunchy that they cut the skin in my mouth at first, I forget to remember this and take care, flipping the sandwich over so that the smoother side of the baguette is up). but mmmm. on the way to lunch, however, a strange event. walking towards a building under reconstruction, a scaffolding is being set up, maybe four stories high at the moment. I catch the eye of a guy who is stacking parts to be hauled up on a cable winch, nothing unusual there. I am looking at the structure which looks somehow unstable. I decide to walk off the sidewalk instead of under the structure. I am looking up at the structure, calculating it's condition. a pass it by, return to the sidewalk and hear a clang, then a meter in front of me a wrench, a heavy one, smashes to the ground. there is a group of 4 guys walking towards me about the same distance from the landing point as I am. faugh! how weird is that. I had the prior intuition something was wrong with the situation, and I can't really say that the slight detour I made brought me closer or further away from my head intersecting with this tool which must have fallen from around 15 meters up. far enough up that is could easily have killed me or those other people.

so the rest of the day, I am watching things more carefully, but what difference does it make? if you look one way, you miss what is coming the other.

at any rate, they outlined their program and a couple of the main projects they have undertaking recently. tough to cross over my lack of background in architecture -- it has always been a distant field of interest, but seldom the opportunity to crack the conceptual world that it is embedded in. the one time jumping in on a final critique with some of EJ's students at Boulder was interesting -- along with a surficial awareness of functionality in housing design -- but does not provide any preparation for the contemporary conceptual spaces of inquiry. it does seem that innovative, and especially decorative design elements in architecture are about something. but the connection between the about-ness and what I would understand as the reason for the existence of architecture is not clear to me. but this is perhaps my own weakness combined with a deep frustration at the frequent appearance of non-functional design in built structures and in objects, for that matter.

at any rate, their work shows the presence of superior economic capital, and the consequent high production values which is nice. professional. sleek, designer, urban.

been in the desert too long, or, not long enough.

Crabbit
(cra-bit) dialect, chiefly Scot. - adj. 1. ill-tempered, grumpy, curt, disagreeable; in a bad mood [esp. in the morning]. (often used in 'ken this, yer a crabbit get, so ye are'). n. by their nature or temperament conveys an aura of irritability. -- drink coaster at Christina & Günter's place

a nice network crossing late with Fernanda, in Berlin now, formerly from ISNM. in crisis mode, figuring out some steps to take next in life. she had written me a couple days back, after returning from a five-week holiday in Brazil visiting family, back to a deadening job in Berlin, in the angst of being alive, but having that vitality being drained by pointless and un-inspiring work. half the battle is not to fall asleep to the liveliness that surges up from life. not to allow the pressures of social production to compress dreams unless it is to press carbon into diamond. to make dreams fly with Lightness and certain brilliance. no matter what, though, is to not let life be weakened so much that each moment is lost to the dull and stultifying grind of labor. finding a labor that brings joy is a rare pleasure, but finding a life labor that brings some social recognition as well as that priceless joy is ever more unusual. surrounded and obscured in a matrix of dark matter, searching for a life that does not lack Light, what do we become?

so, we talk about these things, not quite strangers, but desiring to know the Other's life and the path it takes, has taken, to bring us here.

Lunar Moon day 5
Year of the Red Overtone Moon

kin 141: Red Spectral Dragon
I Dissolve in order to Nurture
Releasing Being
I seal the Input of Birth
With the Spectral tone of Liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled
-- from the Lunar Calendar site

the usual Light night's sleep before travel. because of early rising and tight schedules. fog persists into the morning, the remains of the clouds which obscured the lunar eclipse last night.

a long stroll to the Hauptbahnhof for tomorrow's tickets. end up using the electronic ticket machine which leaves me with exactly no change because it doesn't take EUR 100 bills. fortunately I have exactly the cost, EUR 87.50 from Kiel to Aachen. should have gotten a rail card 4-days/one-month it would have saved me a bit. too late now.

muttering German phrases, words, repeating to self the texts on signs. down to the harbor, ever so often, becoming mindful, not enough, but bringing the breathing and the hyper pace down a few levels, and deepening the breathing and shifting the worldview. on the way down there are several conglomerations of police in full riot gear. apparently a football match between Lübeck and Kiel is taking place today. the police presence is overwhelming, and at the Hauptbahnhof there are at least 100 officers deployed, forming a press to search fans as they get off the train from Lübeck. some are outfitted in dark green cloth-covered body armor, some are in black. no clear difference between the two uniforms. they mostly are large and imposing figures, a few women among the men. the football fans repeatedly break out in hoarse and echoing chants. the police escort the city busses to the stadium with riot vans, along with officers filming everything on dv-cams.

the sonic ambience is interesting. getting good use out of the Zoom H4. it seems to get pretty decent sound with the built-in microphones. I have yet to try the external phantom miking possibilities. now it's a question of getting the content online, though, I'm way behind on that. when each day is full of in-ma-face email pressures and logistics issues. so it goes!

then Björn sends very dramatic footage from the riots in Copenhagen, right from his flat overlooking Sankt Hans Torv. he caught some of the molotov cocktails going off and some rude crowd action until the tear gas forced him to close his window.

time stuffed with logistical and administrative duties, fielding queries about the workshop, hunting train schedules, job applications, lecture notes, articles to finish, travel food shopping, and the list goes on!

I wanted to go to Bremen before leaving Hamburg, but the Light is so frightful, and the constitution of the gallery there now so doubtful (I mean what pictures have they left hanging), and my apathy so enormous, that I have not made the trip. -- Samuel Beckett

or did I?

so, the market spirals down. while I travel. back to Kiel today, after a very late night at Martin's where Anja teaches me:

Kopf hoch auch wenn der Hals dreckig ist.

(something like -- keep your chin up when things are tough...)

the train is canceled, apparently there is a derailing between Bremen and Hamburg. so, after a wait in the Bremen Hauptbahnhof, catch a slow train to bus to slow train to Hamburg. then on to Kiel in a train car packed full of 10-year-olds. got some choice audio of that. soon to be online, but not now, too many bush fires to put out.

and so, last night was also a share:bremen meeting with Jan, Jürgen, Thomas, and Martin. Stefan from my Uni-Bremen workshops manages to drop in for a visit as well. we discuss the possibilities and histories of share:bremen, thinking ahead with workshop plans, and other actions.