slid through half of 2008 already. dates, times, places, people, beds, meals, things. which ordered set drives it all? here in Ice Land, as I write on this (which?) trip. despite relatively warm weather 10+C / 55+F or so. several trips to the pool already. borrowing Loki's bike. staying at Sigrun's place that she generously offered while she and Stefan are away in the east on holiday for the next week. it's a block from the pool, so I can wander down there at leisure.

just away from the Björk and Sigur Rós náttúra event in Laugardalur. chilled to the bone from standing for the last five hours up stage front. damn Nikon battery went dead right upon arrival. (flickr shots) did some audio recording, but the wind was pretty blustery, so most of those samples will be useless, methinks. but maybe some short cuts or a remix piece. never met Loki and the others, he didn't want to come over before the show started, so I left the house to catch Ghostigital with Finnbogi Pétursson doing an two hour ambient remix performance under the name that was okay. the whole event was so-so. Sigur Rós cranked through a 90 minute set with some interesting covers of previous work, and played well despite the chill, but frankly, the music seemed repetitive in a concert setting, compared to having an iTunes collection on shuffle play with a mix of experimental-slash-pop. there was a little electricity when Björk joined in one song as a drummer (a tentative one at that!). the smoke from the smoke machines just blew away. that's what the energy felt like, it blew sideways away, towards the big LED screen where those not down front could see the artists close-up.

and the next day's newspaper noted that the entire park where the concert was held was completely filled with trash -- bottles, cans, garbage everywhere: so much for the consciousness-raising aspect of the concert. people still seem to believe in some kind of remote 'nature' out there somewhere. theoretical and not containing the Self as an extension. or not even an extension, but simply part of it. period. until there is a deep understanding of that, nothing will change.

Haukur's attic room is the perfect spot -- nice Light, an external monitor for working, and, if there was only time, lots of music, dvds, and books to check out.



on to the pool again. 50 meters, sunshine, and not too many tourists. other places could learn some lessons about pool management -- shoes off before you enter the locker room, everybody showers without suits or is not allowed to go to the pool.

pizza with Loki, he's working all day doing the standard job of landscaping for the city. it's a tradition that young teenagers are conscripted into low-paying servitude consisting of lying around in the grass sleeping for some hours each day. it's a national joke. but the fresh air probably goes some distance to obliterate the worst symptoms of teenager-hood...

belly full of travel fithrildi. bland poetic insights into leaving Berlin. not much to say. I'll be back. is probably the most profound. sooner than later. but profoundly not knowing the future, what's the point in statements like that, unless they are based on oracular hypersight. or delusion. as delusion is just as likely to fit into dream as any ten-year politburo plan.

out there, outside the door is all this noise. confusing sensory impressions. and arrival in Ice Land is strange, after a four year hiatus. I make my way to Valgerdur's place in Sund. Loki cycles over later to drop in for a bit. my boy. it's good to see him.

bummer, George Carlin dies a couple days ago. he made me laugh, and I am clearly not the only one that he had that effect on.

I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse. -- George Carlin

and godaddy.com threw me for a serious loop with an email thunking down into my inbox saying I had to remove any non-web-related files on my server within 24 hours. and yes, it does appear that the user agreement says no file storage on the hosting account, so I have to quickly create web pages that contain links to all the audio and video files on storage. pain in the arse. but I shot back saying all the content was part of my accreting web space and that 100% of the audio and image files were my own content, so they relented for 30 days at which time they will check the site again.

My former mother-in-law, Helga Thorleifsdóttir, passed away on Monday at 98 years of age.

A half-hour 'composed documentary' for radio by John Wynne on Between the Ears, BBC Radio 3, June 21 at 8:30pm BST. the original broadcast is over, but until 28 June you can listen to this very fine mix somewhere between documentary and sonic art.

Sound artist John Wynne and photographer Tim Wainwright were artists-in-residence for one year at Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading centers for heart and lung transplants. They listened to patients, to the devices they're attached to or have implanted in them, and to the hospital itself.

Hearts, Lungs and Minds explores the experiences of transplant patients and the extraordinary issues raised by this invasive, last-option medical procedure. It weaves intensely personal narratives, often recorded at the bedside, with the sounds of the hospital environment, which can have an enormous effect on patients, shifting unpredictably from comforting to irritating, from reassuring to alarming.

All of the people whose voices you will hear have had a heart or lung transplant -- or both -- or else were waiting for one when they were recorded. Some have died, most are doing well. All of the sounds originated in the hospital; sometimes they are abstracted as the piece explores the boundaries between documentary and radio art.

To listen online http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/betweentheears/

Solstice come and gone. joined in the aporee solstice happening down in Kreuzburg last night at 23:59, the official moment of the Solstice. is today's darkness because of the knowing of the long slide to 21 December? or does it matter? swinging, Light to dark. the performance ritual, reflecting on last year's foray up Pool Creek Canyon in Dinosaur on that Solstice, does not evoke the energy. and screening the old Solstice videos from Ice Land also do not provide the right resonance. what is the essence of performance. making visible the energies stored up when in stellar regions. or?

the streets are chaotic after Turkey beats Slovakia in the European Cup.

Wolfgang bestows a couple of good Solingen kitchen blades in exchange for computer consulting"

Mini-Yatagan -- Windmühlen-Küchen- und Obstmesser "Mini-Yatagan", konvexe Klinge, nicht rostfrei, aus hochwertigem Kohlenstoffstahl / Carbonstahl, blaugepließtet, Griff aus Kirschbaumholz-Schalen

Klingenlänge: 85 mm

Der Yatagan. Diese Form hat einen langen Weg hinter sich. Dem türkischen Säbel entlehnt, über Frankreich zu uns gekommen, hat dieses praktische Messer immer seinen Platz als Obst-, Gemüse- und Kräutermesser. Mit der Spitze läßt sich beispielsweise ein Apfelkerngehäuse besonders gut herausschneiden und auch die bauchige Schneide und gute Ausgewogenheit erleichtern das Zubereiten von Gemüse, Kräutern und Ähnlichem. Das Windmühlenmesser gehört zur Serie der "blaugepließteten" Messer von Schleifmeister W. Fehrekampf. Das Blaupließten ist das aufwendigste Verfahren der traditionellen Solinger Schleiftechnik.

Man erkennt eine solche Klinge an der Lichtbrechung, die sich in den feinen Schleifschrammen als bläulicher Regenbogenschimmer darstellt.

Nan's funeral in Charlottenburg. I see a number of people that I have not seen in some time. Kathy Rae is there from Manchester, and Sandro, one of the students who came to Iceland all those years ago.

the funeral is moving, standing room only. in the room with the casket, a video tape interview with Nan running silently, along with a projection of one of her Light-water videos. flowers, candles. friends in black. stories from a few folks.

after the service, Sandro mentions that he has a photograph from the Iceland trip, which he then pulls from an envelope. I am moved when I see that it is one of my postcards that I sent him after the trip. I think I sent each of the students that I had addresses for a copy, if I remember right. I immediately notice that it is on resin-coated paper, ach, but that was a time when I could use nothing else as I had only the college lab which could hardly be called a lab even. I worked with what I had. he said he would send me a high-rez scan of it. it underlines that old idea I had to gather up all the postcards that I have ever sent and put on an exhibition. what fun that would be. especially if each of the people would attend the show.

it is very nice to let memories of Nan float up, especially her work which is essentially about Light. and her presence as a mentor, teacher, friend, her art. generosity. the community she supported.

and memories of her Armani suit and her fondness for good cognac.

Avalon from Roxy Music plays in one interlude. and this blackbird sings...

(sketch) the seminar ends in two side-steps which confirm the in-sustainability of that particular track of teaching -- the holding to a(ny) model. it is an outcome in facilitating the participants to actually mutiny and go off on their own, rejecting authority and (s)lack, and with strong expressions of independence and a desire to find relevant subject areas for inquiry. when will this happen on a larger scale, across larger swaths of so-called learning spaces? there are limits to tolerance, this demonstrates, but can those limits be prescribed and stretched without pretension? or does any pre-tension doom the process from moving into at least an abandoned form of random encounter, instead into mere buffoonery.

well before the end it was already impossible to sustain a track, so that option fell by the way-side. at the same time, dialogues were undertaken with a ferocious concentration. this had the effect of gradually loosening any vestige of authority-in-relation in addition to any privileging of knowledge or know-ing. dramatic developments. and as the (post)authoritarian protocol became internally incoherent, evolving too many possible interpretations, efforts focused on relinquishing traces of control that the protocol demanded and instead the formation of a new protocol exclusive of the facilitator. did not compile the questions, such as they were. relevancy appeared to be attained, but through a desire to move back to traditional models of relation (the text). very interesting development. will have to re-think that framework. of all the thousands of possibly inspiring texts to consume, which will be the right combination? hmmm. cook book might be the best starting point.

a little awkward with the stylized ending, but as a sample in the extreme spectrum of idiosyncratic confabulation, very interesting!, or ... not. ! a formative de-briefing is hoped for, but that will have to arise independently in other temporal spaces. perhaps easy to be cynical about the self and the situation, but human encounter arises in all forms, this being one of them. no qualitative judgment possible.

the cycling across town to Charlottenburg is fascinating, memorized now, the transitions, the corners, the sounds, the traffic. the tourists, the police, the Park, the City. the images and sounds are building up to something.



head to Lichtenberg for Barbara and Susanne's birthday party, in a green garden shaded by an enormous and very healthy apple tree, late into the slightly chilly evening, a fire of large pieces of timber that clearly were formerly from houses. 25x25 cm cross-section, pieces several meters long, with nails in them. rafters from destroyed buildings. war relics. or reliquaries. incredible food. and a Russian accordionist.

I decide to release The Regime of Amplification: A Primer in advance of any hard-copy publication, with another chapter nearing its final stages, and several intermediate chapters forming more concretely.

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) -- a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples -- the radio and the military -- are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

I am shocked to hear via Raul that Nan Hoover just passed away. I had just talked to her on the telephone back in April she was just back in town after setting up her show in Salzburg, and we were going to get together after not crossing paths for some years. lung cancer and the ensuing chemo took heraway in five weeks.

A condolences site is set up.

we first met through a very bizarre coincidence back in 1991 or so. MB and I were traveling in Germany and were up in Düsseldorf for a day, I don't recall why. we were in the neighborhood of the Academy, so I thought it would be interesting to see this place where Nam June Paik (was teaching) and Joseph Beuys (had taught) at. the place was empty as we wandered around the halls. at some point I saw a name tag on a door that said Nan Hoover, and I recognized the name as this American video/performance artist. it was the only door with a Light shining out from under, so I knocked. Nan answered the door and I introduced myself mentioning right off that I was from Iceland and was at the Icelandic Academy teaching electronic media. she practically fell over. she and her student assistant, Paschutan Buzari had just at that moment been talking about the trip they were planning to Iceland, and that they didn't have any direct contacts at the Academy. needless to say, a synchronous event which was a nice start to our connection. I subsequently did much of the ground logistics for the two week trip. the photo above is a group portrait of Nan (with some of her students and Icelandic friends along with MB and Loki (who was at that moment all of 5 days old!)). It was taken on the top of Perlan in Reykjavík. I hosted the student group at the Icelandic Academy where we had a nice collective happening at the end of their visit. and before that some field trips and visions of the Northern Lights among other activities. Nan and the students stayed in a couple flats that the Academy had right behind our house on Holmgardi. I arranged for her to do a screening and public talk at the Nylistasafn in Reykjavík as well. I later went to Düsseldorf a number of times to visit with her classes, as well as meeting her back in Amsterdam a few times.

re-reading the letters I was sending to Nan back then, somewhere packed away in the archive are her letters to me. her work is profoundly energized and a fundamental exploration of Light and change (the video and installation work). I would really like to get to Salzburg to see the show that she is sharing with Bill Viola. I never saw any of her performance work. time passing. life passing.

A memory of standing in early autumn darkness in Reykjavik, behind my house, watching the Aurora Borealis with Nan and some of her students. Years later, she leaves us, and it occurs to me that through all the ways that she manifest for us, she was explicitly revealing the nature of Light as a process of living and of life. Black absorbs the energy of Light: she spent her life re-radiating that Light in a variety of splendid forms for us to be inspired by. Her vision of Light is profound and it thankfully resonates through all those who encountered her or her work. Thank you Nan for that and for our last phone call.

Cam sends a link to a nice interview with George. whilst the author of Phaedrus still echoes around.

There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture, which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor anyone else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own. -- Socrates

geesh, Junkers JU-52's flying over the city. two weeks ago it was the Douglas C-47's, now it's the Junkers. does this have any geopolitical significance? I was feeling a bit funny the first time I saw one of those planes flying over Germany some years back. so that's what it was like -- to see low-level paratroopers pouring out of those things (not sure how often the Wehrmacht did that, but). or just a slew of those plowing across the country skies, bringing troops to the battle.

just back into town, now I recognize when I hear one of these machines. accustomed, but aware.



headed down (south-east) into Brandenburg to Zeesen to visit with Ulrike at the family dacha (well, actually a large and nicely designed home of her parents -- the dacha is in the back yard.) she's up from Zürich for the weekend. the lake is a few meters away. it is delicious.

she tells about her uncle who lives next door in his beautiful rammed-earth house. I am fascinated to run across this technology existing here in Germany. and there is Sunny, the happy bulldog. conversation drifts along wide paths through language. Saturn setting in alignment with the first-quarter moon, Mars high, Venus rising only in the early morning. nice to sit in the top-floor deck and watch stars, though the sky does not get completely dark any more as the Solstice approaches.

whilst Marx and Engels look on, Berlin goes about it's business...

at home, watching NASA teevee. people on the point, at the peak of collective human expression into regions where life is not sustainable without complete protection. what does it take to make that expression? considering the sequence of flows which lead to the ISS, I am struck by the precision first of the activities of the EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activities). the level of controlled choreography going on between Ground Control and the astronauts. large catalogs of instructions are compiled to guide the Ground Controllers as they talk the astronauts through the precise sequence of every task. the degrees of freedom are extremely limited. precisely because of the fact that to make this kind of extreme (energy-consumptive) expression of the TSS (techno-social system), the flows of energy have to be on tightly-defined pathways, else they become diffused before reaching their goals. the more extreme the goal, the more control necessary to be applied to the pathway: a more rigidly defined pathway. is it possible to have an extreme expressive goal and not to need focused energy to get there? only where there is unlimited incremental energy sources available. focus seems a necessary constituent. and that is lacking in certain circumstances. focus. to reach extreme goals, or even mean ones...

across Berlin-Mitte and the Tiergarten to Charlottenburg and to the UdK seminar.

starting with the UdK-Berlin block seminar tomorrow. 36 hours over two weekends. usually these are challenging and dynamic. good!

back to the brico list discussions:

sotto voce: Speaking as someone who first majored in mining engineering and ended up in geophysical engineering for a major oil company... (my profuse apologies in retrospect :-\ I am very doubtful that "new" technologies will solve the problem -- as what would be termed higher technologies require more intensive usage of the pre-existing techno-social system or infrastructure to develop those technologies. Things like nano-technologies, because of the consequent need for greater precision and so on, require that much more energy to maintain highly precise infrastructures. Not to mention another couple layers of machines (made by machines made by machines) all which ultimately sit on the extractive minerals industry. The greater the order/precision/complexity of a system the more inflow of energy you need to maintain that order. This is simple thermodynamics. The only way you can deal with this problem is to look for incrementally system-wise LESS complex solutions. This is the key weakness of forward-looking utopian technological-development horizons. If it requires a greater degree of complexity, it will have a consequently larger foot-print related to primary industrial processes like mining, refining, and extraction.. And, the consequent human price is paid -- as we drain energy resources OUT of a social system -- it is thermodynamically no surprise there are larger degrees of social disorder in those systems (Nigeria, Middle East, Brazil, Appalachia, the Rheingebiet -- actually EVERYWHERE that these extractive processes take place!) I'm starting to have the belief that we will simply go through a peak of consumptive civilization and as energy sources are depleted, the global techno-social system will not be able to maintain the globe-spanning order (try driving tanks on vegetable oil...) it has now, things will become more local. Imagine that it could very well be that in our life times, that the prospect of one of us visiting from Europe to Brazil will be as difficult and time-consuming as it was 200 years ago... or more! (200 years ago, there were still some trees in the world large enough to construct robust ocean-going vessels)... Okay, so what to do in the mean time? I believe lowering complexity in our lives by avoiding higher-technologies when we have a choice -- in eating, working, living, playing -- complexity generated by participating in distant extensions in the food cycle, the communications cycle, any technology cycles, by higher precision devices and systems, by globally standardized systems of all sorts... should I give up email and talk to my neighbors instead? yes, most likely... at least that way, if war breaks out, I will at least know something about my neighbor...

can a lack of imagination be overcome through intensive observation of the world-that-is? what is imagination? the dream of what-could-be? realizing that there are parameters of be-ing which govern imagining, what can be done to optimize the process?

and, only marginally related to imagination...

sotto voce (posted to brainstorms on back-channel communication and surfing in the wired classroom): I think one of the elephants in the room is the question of relevance. By this I mean -- yes, the network provides channels to access information about the apparent subject of the learning experience. But what about the learning approach where a group simply maps their own understanding of a 'knowledge' space, and extends that space with their OWN ideas, relevant to their situation, rather than the constant referencing to what is becoming the standard (knowledge) 'out there' in the (socially-defined, dominantly-positioned) network. I believe this loss of autonomy of the local group of learners will have DEEP repercussions in the future. Indeed, it represents a loss of idiosyncrasy and autonomy of the learning process AND a deep dislocation of local relevance. It also represents a deep loss of diversity in the dominant social system. (a deep gain in conformity!) This might explain how students are finding 'public' education as a real learning situation ever more irrelevant and in need of being avoided or dis-engaged from at all costs. People will pay attention to information relevant to their situation.

unfortunately, to qualify the last sentence, they will also be easily distracted when seduced into believing something is relevant based on external pressures rather that internal impulses. c'est comme ça!

Bo Diddley went on to heaven yesterday it is said:

Garry Mitchell, a grandson of Diddley and one of more than 35 family members at the musician's home when he died at about 1:45 a.m. EDT, said his death was not unexpected.

"There was a gospel song that was sang and he said 'wow' with a thumbs up," Mitchell told Reuters, when asked to describe the scene at Diddley's deathbed.

"The song was 'Walk Around Heaven' and in his last words he stated that he was going to heaven."

I took these photos at a concert that Bo did in the Green Center at the Colorado School of Mines as the kick-off concert of the annual E-Day party weekend, April 1979. as Special Editor for the student newspaper, hung around back-stage with Bo and his band, made some shots there, but unfortunately don't have those scanned in my digital archive at the moment. the acoustics of the auditorium were lousy, and the concert wasn't particularly memorable, but the guy can definitely rock!

old mail-art node Ruud Janssen has recently published a series of five books featuring interviews with well-known artists in the field of Fluxus and Mail-Art.

The interviews were conducted by Ruud and were part of an independent project where he integrated many different communication forms/channels as part of the process of the interviews: personal visits, letters, faxes, telephone calls, and e-mails. The results are now available in these self-published books. See http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma for details and ordering information.

Ruud's webspace : http://www.iuoma.org
Ruud's blog : http://iuoma.blogspot.com
Mail-Art Projects blog : http://mailartprojects.blogspot.com