meet Karla briefly at a rather banal art event: Kunstinvasion im Blumengroßmarkt, Berlin-Kreuzberg.

idiosyncratic living is, by nature, an expression of a way of going. art (or the art world), as an accepted social function or framework in the techno-social system, puts specific limits on what protocols are acceptable and what not, it is important that the individual 1) realize this, and 2) that they do not allow those frameworks to dominate their expressive possibilities. a life-pathway is the primary expressive tool. the minute and daily form of life is the most indicative expression of an individuals presence and the possibilities of their expressive engagement.

It is sobering to think that we might be almost totally ignorant of the vast if dispersed sources of free energy which underlie our very existence. We may have more in common than we think with the medieval peasants, who could see the stars whirling in the sky but could not begin to figure out the connection between those stars and the physics of their everyday life. Like them, we may be doomed to essential ignorance in our lifetimes. (Many medieval people tried to imagine connections between the stars and their lives, but the results were quite embarrassing.) But if we develop the mathematical prerequisites and work hard and patiently and boldly to extend our real understanding, then perhaps someday our descendants will be able to attain a level of life that we peasants can hardly imagine. Alternatively, of course, the option of stagnation, fragmentation and extinction is also available to all species in the greater biosphere. -- Paul J. Werbos

month(s) end(s), hot Berlin. pushing 90F/33C. summer is here.

Annie points out that the incident team deploys monochrome, a project featuring a wide variety of electronic/network-based projects.

and then there is the blog/audio file from the RCA in London, a talk/discussion on Brazilian Medialogies - Systems of Learning with Carlos Villela, Felipe Fonseca, and Ricardo Ruiz.

fortune cookie: All the passions make us commit faults -- love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. Lucky Numbers: 4, 6, 15, 19, 22, 46.



and on to meet Udo and head to a couple openings along with another session of dkfrf again to hear Ben, Michael and other's perform. beforehand, on the way down, a slow cruise through Görlitzer Park, summer expression! afterwards, sitting outside at a cafe talking until very late.

the tmp-deluxe performance is over. not interesting or successful at all. off track, I should not have wasted my energy of pre-tension on it.

Auto-Destructive Art Machine Art Auto Creative Art [1961]

Each visible fact absolutely expresses its reality.

Certain machine produced forms are the most perfect forms of our period.

In the evenings some of the finest works of art produced now are dumped on the streets of Soho.

Auto creative art is art of change, growth movement.

Auto-destructive art and auto creative art aim at the integration of art with the advances of science and technology. The immediate objective is the creation, with the aid of computers, of works of art whose movements are programmed and include "self-regulation". The spectator, by means of electronic devices can have a direct bearing on the action of these works.

Auto-destructive art is an attack on capitalist values and the drive to nuclear annihilation. -- Gustave Metzger

Palli's MFA thesis project nude studies at Concordia is up and running...

Automated nude studies abstracted through geological intervention. Simultaneous geophysical interpretations of notions of nude-ness in the real-time of natural forces. Tectonic ripples through the core of the Earth.

data mining, cross-correlation of disparate data-sets, data interpretation. how to interpret incoming data. how to make sense? does any one making-sense method excel over another? if it's measured by viability and sustainability, where does art fall? the survivors are the ones left behind. the winners transcend? waiting for the cataclysm. knowing the codes of seismicity, and models of the rumbling earth, and the consequences of it all, taking it onto the body maybe illustrates our disconnect from the elemental. but how to get it back, how to reveal the elemental? dig hands into the dirt!

Rinus makes some nice notes on the Amurikan evening at das kleine field recording festival last week in Kreuzberg.

Rinus is one of those intelligent and grounded souls who facilitate events that are the polar opposite of pretentious. informal, humane, and best, they include a collection of found artists. artists who are connected by their desire to connect with others in an open way. my impression of the evening of performances was largely the comfort with which it proceeded. for example, I had not intended doing a visual set, thinking conservatively it was about field recording. but when Brandon got the video-projector set up, I thought, yeah, why not. so I started the evening with a slowly-building barrage. guilty, sure, of a phat mix. it's partly the software, got to explore how to slow it down for a more meditative mix. density. (going back to the thoughts about levity and density a few weeks ago). Brandon's set was a perfect counterpoint to mine with the levity and Light of his life.

Ben's concentrated sound mix was very attractive, orbital, mysterious, and ultimately productive. so it goes.

A good thing about a book that holds almost one thousand pages is that it can be worthwhile to read it. It might absorb you and make you forget everything around you. Dom DeLillo's attempt to write The Great American Novel that made him create Underworld is such a book. But growing into the story of a baseball that covered three generations of Americans I wondered where my cinematographic memory from my youngest years when I watched the comedy capers interfered with the situations DeLillo described. More and more impressions from movies and photographs showed up before my inner eye. I got lost in the book and didn't get the sense of it. It was a giant flood of pictures, which made me shipwreck and ask myself at the last page why I had read it to the end and why I felt as if I had been wasting my time.

Should there be a clue to understand this? Another book by a US writer, City of God by Doctorow left me with the same question; The book was far more superior to Underworld, but still I couldn't get it that such a simple and even boring plot of a crucifix being stolen from the roof of a church could lead to so many little stories without a point. Some of those stories were pure gems.

The American culture must have some qualities at its very core that could give us a key to understanding. Where the pompous themes The American Dream and The New Frontier has given the world John Wayne and Apollo 11, the rest of the world might return the favor and state that poverty and persecution has given the Americans a good reason to come into existence.

As a warming up to the last edition of dkfrf I had a dinner at my house in Neukölln. Chance made it that three Americans would perform: Ben Owen (who came with his girlfriend Sara) from Brooklyn, New York City, John Hopkins from everywhere and Brandon LaBelle from Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. When talking about the American culture, one of them brought it up that exactly this escape from poverty and persecution is what united most of the early immigrants.

Fear for poverty and the fear for losing one's God given right to individual freedom have burned enormous holes in the heart of the American society. Watching every now and then the Obama/Hillary marathon run I see star spangled smiles and star spangled swollen breasts; I see speakers almost overwhelmed by their own heroism; I hear messages to a people that still seem to be moving west. It all makes up for epic television.

I also see barns and sport halls behind all that decorum. I can imagine tractor shows, junk sales for charity, and Miss Lollipop elections to be held there; I can imagine rows of empty seats, and volunteers drinking endlessly coffee in the backroom. I can imagine that it will get cold in winter, and that there is no money to pay the bill. To cut it short, I can see a lot of individual lives behind all the glamour of a tantalizing political circus that has come to town. And these lives have very short lines to the early generations that arrived to the Americas with a lot of pain.

John Hopkins dinner talks included information about his early years. Born in Alaska, his parents moved with him to another place. John described a community he couldn't relate to, nor take part of. He lives like he lives, being a nomad for almost half of his life, crossing those wonderful frontiers that so many Americans before him had aimed at. His performance gave an insight in his dwellings. A hurricane of images projected on a screen was accompanied by their sounds and unsounds. Dislocating, discomforting, wild and seductive. You need a lot of guts to live like John does. In an abstract way he demanded a lot of civil cultural courage from the onlooker; courage to dive into his experiences and have these sounds and images grow upon them like a second skin. No wonder he split the audience in two. Outside on the doorstep the Republican Party was holding their rally.

While John took us running over unknown lands, Ben Owen returned to the silence of home. He played in the dark. From my other end of the performance space it looked like I was at the other side of the street, watching out of my window; Ben was a small figure, computer screen light on his face. Unidentifiable shadows were around him. The room at the other side of the street is always without sound. Still I could hear something, a monotonous drone as if to underline the alienated waiting situation. Then it started to evolve and I shifted my attention to the speakers. It sounded like they were animated, possessed, and they were discovering the wide range of little crackling and dripping sounds that they held. In the room across the street, in the heart of darkness other sounds were heard, sounds from Brooklyn, where silence meets the far rumble of a big city.

There is no escaping to the American Myth. Brandon LaBelle's set was pure pleasure. It evolved around a very simple scheme: Young, soon ripe, but still not old man shows a picture. Four pictures were shown, four different stages in a life. Four stories from four decades leading from heroes, dreams, identities to the present day; just the story of somebody's life who is Brandon to friends and family, Mr. LaBelle to those who need id-pictures. There was also sound in between those picture stories, sound that served as an elevator, bringing the audience to higher levels of empathy.

It was the first time Brandon LaBelle presented his work in this way. It is hard to imagine that he will stop at this point. It is far easier to imagine that he will continue working on a theatrical piece where pictures emerge from his smooth tale telling voice. Imagination can send you into orbit, away from the little stage where the next story will be told, up through the clouds, past the plane that will bring Ben and Sara back to the States, higher were time stands still and spirits whisper, and where one can look down to the Siberian woods and see smoke coming from the chimney of John Hopkins next residency.

Brandon releases another book exploring sound and life:

Radio makes an impression, casting songs far and wide to end up on innumerable receivers, within countless ears. This instant of reception inserts a soundtrack to physical location and the encounters happening, intensifying music's ability to give emotional charge.

Inviting people from around the world to send in their radio memories - of songs overheard at special moments in their lives - Radio Memory is a collection of stories revealing highly personal experiences that in turn speak toward a larger cultural picture. Are such memories partially created by the songs themselves, rather than being strictly supplements to them? In what way does radio play a part in leaving marks on the psyche? And what may a catalog of radio memories reveal about the musical landscape?

Cataloguing the memories, Radio Memory is an artist project by Brandon LaBelle. Initiated in 2005 and continuing today, the book documents the artist's related installations, along with a CD of new work, making a small testament to the power of transmission. Including additional contributions by curator and theorist Bastien Gallet and Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz.

Vilnius in the rear-view mirror, up at 0500, taxi to the airport, as we leave the Academy hostel, a few of the girls are returning after a night's partying, I guess. tired all day after that early wake-up and very late evening last night, not much done but some organizing of things for the next week or so.

it ends up that we two are the only ones to take a sound walk. the rain started last night and continues most of the day. she takes me to her favorite church, the one without any gold, because gold doesn't have anything to do with God. she genuflects on entering, on leaving. it is pouring rain, she wants to go get some boots on at her house so that we can walk to her favorite place along the river. the cobble road is flooded and we use our umbrellas to block the splashing from cars as they noisily drive past. she walks ahead of me. the door to her flat doesn't work properly, so she has to call her room mate to open it from the inside. it's dark, there is a cat.

the water drains into a hole in the ground right outside a manhole cover. we go to look at the river which has risen at least half a meter since morning. then we walk back to the workshop space to continue preparing for the DIY plug-in-party happening tonight.



food, equipment, installations. the students are enthusiastic and energized despite the sporadic and unfocused situation. day slides into evening, and the party begins.

the workshop begins erratically. 30 minutes late, time already runs down. the first impression is, wow, mostly young ladies attending -- somehow a bit of a surprise



end up at a rather raucous student march through the city, well, not raucous, maybe noisy, around 500 students. they marched from the Parliment to the University where they went in to the administration building and barricaded the university professors in their offices. this for the fact that the professors did not oppose governmental changes to the free education system. I believe it all stems back to the Bologna Accord which seems to bring much harm to the system. although as we later talked about, the system of standardization can bring systems lower than the standard up to a standard. it's all relative. in general it appears that the Lithuanian system is a bit at a bottleneck, with younger students expecting more than their professors can offer in terms of open-ness and progressive thinking.

will reactions to the Bologna Accord finally bring back some serious student activism in opposition to its blatantly globalist/capitalist view on education? it's not clear, 40 years after the '68 movement. they need more effective theoretical platform to work from in terms of the broader view of what education should be, compared to what it actually is. so it goes.



in the evening we are brought to a hot gallery opening -- clearly a scene, to be seen, to see. brazen and blatant art marketism at it's very pretentious worst. I won't even repeat the name of the gallery or the curator, for to name is to bring more attention to the blighters than they deserve. and clearly the local art/culture consumers are mesmerized by the imagination of London come to Vilnius. uff. this can only have a negative effect on the cultural community.

back in Lithuania. immediately the impression of the system not having changed much. not like the transformations happening in Berlin. aside from the few tourist drags, the town is like it was four years ago. and the system still resonates a deep conservative polarity with an inertia still flowing in resistance to ... anything new.

lunch with Mindaugas with the first of several very mediocre meals. and meet Viktorija and Agle, the enthusiastic and hard-working student union officers who are organizing the whole workshop. I am impressed immediately with their determination to make a difference. sadly it is exactly these kinds of spirits who are the ones who leave Lithuania because a realization that things are not changing.

got to tour the Academy, with all it's meter-thick walls and pre-Gothic arched ceilings. no wonder the wi-fi (communications) network doesn't work so well. the place is naturally shielded from anything, it is part of some older church construction. a convent chapel or so. along with a 1970's-era structure which is quite intense. in the center of the complex are two major churches, St. Francis' and the Bernardine. there were the big changes from the East-West polarization collapsing, but since then there are few if any shifts in the faculty, and worse, the mentality. departments are rigidly defined by materialist agendas and territories of control. students are given only cursory freedom to innovate. huh? how do they survive. stoic, a little like Icelanders, but dreaming of more, with Europe at the doorstep. thank god for the Erasmus exchange program which allows the most adventurous to escape to better things.

Alvydas, head of the Media Department, the most open situation in the Academy, mentions again the idea of inviting me back as guest faculty, but I have reservations. on one hand any place is tolerable for a year, but it would be a serious challenge to cope with the conservative vectors in the social system.




we stay in rooms reserved at the academy hostel, in the guest's wing, with windows opening on a small street that is so loud, it's hard to carry on a conversation with the window even cracked open. the garbage truck rattles the windows and so does each car blasting up the street. stone walls, narrow streets, no speed limits, bad roads -- equals intense noise levels.

Rinus, et al, doing their thing at Lokal last night. met Michael Northam, an old ND 'zine editor. blasts from pasts.

so it goes. C-47's flying low and slow over the city. it's the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

doing a quick text snippet search, sparked by the factoid that over the last few years, a top search combo that ultimately got people to my site has been art teaching philosophy or some such combination. I run into two people who have used my teaching philosophy text, one almost verbatim -- one Michael Salmond, faculty member at Northern Illinois University, "wrote" this (although I can imagine he will take this down asap, I have the google cache of it and saved local copies for reference). LAME. then another unimaginative soul, Thomas N. Toomey, in Connecticut wrote this Light remix. sheesh. I guess they didn't notice the copyright notification at the bottom, and they forgot to include plagiarism as integral to their teaching philosophies!

a dkfrf gig with Brandon LaBelle and Ben Owen starts with a couple hours setting up and doing sound checks, then a nice tossed pasta dinner at Rinus' place, then back to the place for the evening of visual and sonic treats.

then get the news that Steve Cisler passed away yesterday. what a bummer. I always read his postings on nettime and a few other lists. Paul Jones has a detailed outline of some of Steve's many activities. as an update, another blog came online for condolences: http://communitynetworking2008.wordpress.com/.

prepping for the performance tomorrow night. never feeling ready with only half my normal equipment. got the files, but no midi/usb controller nor keyboard. and not even the right software. will be winging it. and who knows about the audience. but whatever the case, Said gives one pathway!

Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audience feel good: the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant. -- Edward Said

responding to Roger Malina on metrics on the New-Media-Curating list:

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases in its degree of freedom and complexity, and increases internal controllability for the duration of the time that the system has those standards applied (which is for how long that system has the excess energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards). If we seek for a 'global' standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation, period. As standards are applied on larger and larger systems (thinking of the development of global standards (for example, telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that's cool -- to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). When (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ's) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps between standardized systems. I vote for less standards, more idiosyncrasy. Even if it means I am completely excluded from a standardized system of educational production, thank you... I will somewhat happily forgo the rewards that go along with standardization to maintain an autonomous situation for myself (and the students I encounter). Standards are about conformity, social harmony, control, power, and ultimately about stasis and death. A system with a too-high degree of standardization cannot innovate or deal with change. And, if all is change, well, that is something to deal with. (for example, the long-term effect of the Bologna Accord will be wider-scale reification of the educational system in Europe, no doubt!) Now I realize the discussion here is proceeding based on the idea that we face a previously reified and unresponsive system of standards imposed by a techno-social system that was responding to other degrees of uncertainty that it felt were unbearable (to social stability). But I think it is problematic to think that another set of standards will function any differently. Truly open systems suggest a lack of standards which then stimulates the direct negotiation and exchange process at the granular human level -- this process of exchange arises from difference itself.

busy evening -- Carmin emails me (phone out), from Eindhoven. a few emails back and forth, and she comes into AmDam where we meet after I drop by the Rietveld to see Matjaz earlier in the afternoon. Carmin and I catch up on the decade since we last crossed paths in the Boston Airport. once. all this time, and we've been connected remotely. weird. but great to see her. we sit in a cafe for a couple hours before meeting Rob for a Thai dinner and some serious conversation. then on to the cafe with the best evening Light in Amsterdam to eventually meet Geert. then get Carmin to the Metro and head back to Nieuwmarkt to finish packing. a short conversation with Mustafa before crashing. away tomorrow early.

holiday in Netherlands, Ascension Day. internet goes out. just after figuring things out with the next day's schedule. meeting tomorrow with Carmin, Rob, Geert and Linda, uff.

several times, friends in Europe have expressed the sentiment that they should be allowed to vote for the next US president. I don't blame them.

in a cafe. pretending that I am a normal tourist. visiting this place on a week's break from the job. shaky premise. Chinese tourists, comfortable in their own skins, progressing to world dominance. while Amurika founders in scarce 225 years. street musicians sing "if you're going to San Francisco, make sure you have some flowers in your hair..." or so. he's Amurikan, maybe 40 years old. moybe more, maybe less. who knows. age becomes less knowable or even contemplated. as day after day there is yet another blank page let lie, while pretty girls smile and rub their lover's backs. tattooed arms intertwined. and what of life trajectory, how it goes? year overtaking year. while an older guy sits down at the next table with a baby-fist-sized spherical knob on the top left side of his head. bulbous. the tattooed gal shows the dimple in her lower back to her lover. they kiss. each second of eye contact they have, I age a year. slowly sinking into anonymous senility. nothing to do but stare down the far horizon, if it could be seen at all here in the City, to spot any sign of Death approaching. but there are too many brick buildings framing the space of Rembrandtsplein.

actually the Chinese folks aren't tourists, but part of a rather effective media machine -- making a manifestation in Amsterdam's main plaza on a Saturday. friendly, fair, peaceful. wow.

and what of encounter? where is the flow and energy of that? of immediate passion and spontaneous connection? what parts of Self are open and which are closed off?

and all the while, an Urban Screen commands the plein. why do they do this? dayLight does not reveal enough. and the colonization of public space from greater and greater distance as applied by the techno-social system continues. if the amplification/feedback loop is more immediate there is better reflection of local conditions. (clearly the feedback system is showing it is not adequate in providing the system with any real degree of sustainability. (how does a feedback system actually function to control -- it needs analysis and interpretation of comparative state/conditions.)

so, dynamic equilibrium depends on analysis and awareness and attentive centered-ness. be-ing in the moment (and my own awareness seems so ... narrow.) how to widen the scope of awareness? looking for alternative pathways. (got no imagination. to illustrate the issues, that would be necessary.

and the first clouds in two weeks shade the plein for a moment. the sycamore trees stop for a moment to consider how it is that they are here.

meet Josephine and Florian at Boekie Woekie for a sort-of opening for an Icelandic artists, or so the announcement said. then to the Kunstvlaai the alternative to for the afternoon of openings and then dinner at Josephine's place. great to meet them both. Florian and I have many friends in common as he's an old mail-art networker.

in the last few weeks, I have on a number of occasions been labeled a theorist in the course of reductive and brief introductions. hmmmm. makes me think back to an opening in Aachen when Hans Werner was introducing me for a gallery talk and he used the German word Pazifist for reasons I didn't at the time quite understand, so I stopped him and said I was an activist, people smiled. but to fall under the label theorist seems way off, but probably comes directly from the lack of production of objects. so, it requires a long conversation about the traditional nature of art. and about the materialist framework for judging value.

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes.
-- Fritjof Capra

passing through the cavernous multi-story new station in Antwerp. sound.

When I was just last in New York, I went for a walk, leaving Fifth Avenue and the Business section behind me, into the crowded streets near the Bowery. And while I was there, I had a sudden feeling of relief and confidence. There was Bergson's élan vital -- there was assimilation causing life to exert as much pressure, though embodied here in the shape of men, as it has ever done in the earliest year of evolution: there was the driving force of progress. -- Julian Huxley

dinner after the first day of the workshop is noisy and filling. no roasted pig or slaughtered cow with steaks and potatoes, but then, what was the choice of dishes? I dunno, this is a retrospective entry, and so, takes on the historical from the view of three-week faded memory. ...

take the bus from Maastricht, Rod sees me off at the bus stop just 100 meters east of the border. arrival in Hasselt, waiting for the free bus to the Grote Markt seems a waste of time, and indeed it is only a 5-minute walk to the hotel. (after being in Berlin, when consulting a map, the scalar sizes of cities is suspect). another bed, another random coagulation of humans - a workshop, seminar, conference, happening. begin to meet folks. chili dinner with early arrivers. negotiating some flexibility in the pre-formed structures. more notes on this later.

Rod and Magnús is visiting Rod because they want to rehearse two parts of a three-voice spoken-word performance in Berlin in September. I hadn't seen Magnuús since some performances he choreographed at the HafnarHusid in Reykjavík in 2000 or so. got filled in on the Maastricht, Iceland, and Jan van Eyck Akademie mafia histories. interesting! (audio also to come some day!)

the weather is splendid. outrageously nice for this time of year. not a cloud in the sky since leaving Berlin.

make it over to Rod & Lizbet's place in Maastricht just on time at 1900 for a fine fish dinner. another visit. Magnús is there already. nice to be back. audio forthcoming from the weekend -- what more to expect with a bunch of sound artists hanging out! I'll be helping Tom work on the VEC site which is a platform he constructed to showcase Rod's work. more on that later as well. always too many things to get done.

in transit. first trip in two months. to Amsterdam. it takes about 6 hours door-to-door from my place to Raul & Truis's place on Overtoom. May Day. turns out that May Day really isn't celebrated so seriously in Netherlands, so I'm told. unlike the heavy things that go on in Berlin. nice to catch up with them. I help Raul deal with fridge magnets for an exhibition in Bogota.