The Will to Knowledge

Limited Return in a Limitless Situation

2008-05-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

After a three month hiatus, I've returned to talk about an incredibly interesting essay by Wednell Berry in Harper's Magazine. The essay, entitled "Faustian Economics", explores the ignorance most Americans have regarding the limited nature of our resources and the huge push that capitalism must make to maintain this myth. Our desire to continue to American way of life, Berry says, transforms our perception of science as a limitless field of knowledge that will solve all of our problems by figuring out new ways to convert different resources into energy -- a truly flawed perception that parallels the condescension that science usually presents toward religion: the notion that something will save us from our challenges and that we need not change our life to conform to the will of the time. Now, tragically, even the most enlightened among us rely on technology to "solve" the problems of global warming and resource reduction, spinning our capitalistic practices in various "low-impact" ways in order to lessen to dent on the sum total.

All this talk of limitlessness reminds me, of course, of Virilio and Baudrillard, and the way in which technology distances us from the problems that face us (and which are in part created by technology itself). What remains in the American mindset, says Berry, is a complicated notion of unity and freedom juxtaposed with a particular individuality inspired by late capitalism.

If we go back into our tradition, we are going to find a concern with religion, which at a minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of what human being are and ought to be.
This concern persists at least as late as our Declaration of Independence, which holds as "self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." Thus among our political roots we have still our old preoccupation with our definition as humans, which in the Declaration is wisely assigned to our Creator; our rights and the rights of all humans are not granted by any human government but are innate, belonging to us by birth. This insistence comes not from the fear of death or even extinction but from the ancient fear that in order to survive we might become inhuman or monstrous.

This last line is powerful. Considering the distancing-effect of technology, the isolation of individuals in space against one another, the drive for survival constantly ignores the notion of becoming inhuman or monstrous because we are not fully aware of the consequences of our actions (or consumptions). Our national resources, depleted, are now imported through sketchy treaties and alliances with governments known to have heinous human rights records. Not only is our consumption monstrous, we are exponentially compounding monstrosity by the consequences of our consumption abroad -- not to mention destroying the world's ecosystem and encouraging global warming at an alarming rate. Berry's basic assertion is that we need to change the way we live in the world, and I agree. We cannot merely change the products we consume, we must change the way we understand consumption and our impact on the larger world. While this idea is almost cliched at this point, it needs to be driven home: through our ignorance of limitlessness, we are making the world ever more monstrous.

French Grammar Ghosts

2008-02-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

From my French textbook:

"Il y a is used to state that a person, place, or thing exists. It does not necessarily mean that the item in question can be seen from where you are standing:

Dans ma chambre il y a un lit, un bureau et des chaises.

In my room, there are a bed, a desk, and some chairs. (They exist.)"

When learning a new language, the mechanics of grammar and reference reveal themselves in interesting ways. Thinking back to things I've read and the way ideas are translated into my native tongue, it is enlightening to feel the nuances of poetic texts. The words that I read shape me through their presentation, their phrasings, their quickness or slowness, their tones. But we don't remember the words of the text exactly, we are left only with senses and spirits, ghosts of the words composing our sustained reality.

I'm glad I don't have a photgraphic memory. Like these phantom poetries, I can only remember what I feel from remembrance; an impossible articulation of feeling, cyclically emerging from a point of emotion deep within recollection. From Poetics of Space:

"And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. And when we reach the very end of the labyrinths of sleep, when we attain to the regions of deep slumber, we may perhaps experience a type of repose that is pre-human; pre-human, in this case, approaching the immemorial.

But the daydream itself, the recollection of moments confined, simple, shut-in space are the experiences of heartwarming space, of a space that does not seek to become extended, but would like above all still to be possessed. In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may have seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting."

We can never recount our dreams perfectly; people think we're mad or boring or distant from them, and writing them down leads to a forced embellishment erring on all sides. We can only emerge into dreams and out of them into the swelling feeling of a true memory, the fountainhead of a feeling. We are always only ghosts of ghosts of a memory that can never be written down, can never be spoken of.

When Technology Kills Aesthetics

2008-02-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

Technology and the market have combined to destroy a beautiful thing: the polaroid.

It's interesting that the instantaneity of the polariod just isn't instant enough for us.

Two Landscapes Speak

2008-02-04T13:02:00.000-08:00

From Heart of Darkness

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence.

It is interesting to juxtapose this quote, which obviously describes a distinctly un-urban landscape, with the onslaught of things that modern urban life fills itself with. Things pile up, forcing themselves into every conceivable space, taking up all available terrain, just as tree limbs, vines, and creepers take over the jungle's open spaces. Heart of Darkness can surprisingly tell us something of our own modern experience: in the scramble to bask in the sun's rays, the lifeblood for the greenery of our planet, the world becomes shrouded in darkness by the sheer massiveness of the takeover; so too with urban space and the human scramble for real estate and useable space -- the world can be shadowed by buildings or consumed by "beautification" and "gentrification," leaving the few remaining spaces in a sort of darkness, but in its modern, noisily apparent form.

Listlessness and Productivity

2008-01-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

The speed of my own life has slowed considerably in the last several weeks. Moments seem to drag on and on, and though one would think that this would be a blessing for my own productivity, instead this slowness stalls any actual creative thought - except, of course, thinking about slowness. Months ago, life zoomed along; now, activity has petered off and left me with a lot of time to myself. Last post I mentioned that I had a new ritual that catalyzed my "productivity;" this ritual is important because it breaks my own consciousness of the slowness and opens me up into my active environment. Perhaps I am addicted to the milieu. One fantasizes about being a hermit in the woods, alone with his books. If I found myself alone with my books, I don't know if I could ever read a single one of them.

Books, or ideas in general, represent a matrix of dialectical relationships: perhaps we have unlimited time to ponder an idea, but what makes that idea most interesting is the affect it has on the world as it emerges from writing or speech or whatever expression. Nothing is stagnant; beauty is uncontainable; brilliance - epiphany - is an idea affecting the entire body at immense speed.

But if we take a good idea as an experience of speed, "something with which I am concerned," then we must also address the syndrome of our modern age: anxiety, or the experience of the accident of an idea in the function of speed. Defining the accident as the de-realization of an object's reality, anxiety shatters an idea into different sites of thought. Some of these become compounded ideas that are troublesome or confusing, making such ideas difficult to tease out while simultaneously rendering anxiety a difficult thing to transcend. Sometimes, in slowness, anxiety can become the overwhelming feature of time -- paranoia, hyperawareness, helplessness.

By containing speed -- not allowing it to dominate our lives -- we can inspire the moments of brilliance that we strive for so much. Too much too soon gets one caught up in the wheel; bit by bit, we must reveal ourselves to the world and the world to us.

New Rituals

2008-01-10T13:43:00.001-08:00

I have begun a routine in which I insist that I do something intellectually productive every day. This ends up playing out as a trip to a coffeeshop and a couple of hours of reading and writing. I leave my house because it forces me to interact with the world and the movement itself is a good primer for casual reading. The location is usually a coffeeshop because the caffeine is vaguely inspiring. Coffeeshops are also public places and I like to see and be seen, like any other modern person.

This ritual is a centering practice: it reminds me that there are ideas that I care about in the world and that they are worth exploring.

Some blurry images from my life:

MUNI Drivers

2007-12-21T13:57:00.000-08:00

There is a sign on the bus that is positioned directly behind the driver toward all of the passengers:

"Information gladly given but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation."

You can tell I've been reading a lot of Paul Virilio when I immediately find this sign ripe with meaning. It is incredibly telling of our disconnected present. Drivers, Who are necessarily (for now) human beings, are produced as computers -- able to communicate information but off limits as far a real, intimate connection goes. Safety is the reason given for this disconnection; it dictates that "accidents happen" when people connect, that casual conversation is "unnecessary" for the situation and should be avoided. Thus, the bus merely becomes a mode of transportation -- a very pragmatic conception -- instead of a social space where the city's inhabitants interact and coexist for several minutes a day. As mere transportation, individuals are isolated in a trajectory that simultaneously privileges and fears the accident: in order to preserve our precious, comfortable human lives in the age of technoscience, we must neutralize the spontaneous and potentially creative forces that we are capable of, silencing ourselves, locating ourselves in isolated seats, looking forward, alone.

More Virilio in a space with another purpose, which is currently unclear to me.

*()

2007-12-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

We live in an opt-out society. Genius.

2007-11-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

Exploring Google Maps, especially the Street View, is an interesting way to artificially experience locations. Since they are captured at certain times and collaged together, there is something very uncanny about exploring a city in Google-dictated space.

I'm thinking of doing a "walkthough" writing/blog project that involves streets in San Francisco and the differences between the way I view these streets and the way Google Maps portrays them. What follows is only vaguely related to this idea, but serves as a introduction to my home in the world -- which is off the Street View grid, so to speak.

Bernal Heights, Approaches to Negative Space

Bernal Hill is the dominant feature of this neighborhood, as you can clearly see. I live at the tip of the park, if viewed as a triangle. Or, more specifically (and from a different point of view), I live here:

I've edited this map, which is clearly a Google Map, in order to convey the spaces from which the following Street Views were taken. The "views" all point toward a street that, some way or another, eventually takes you to my home. An interesting thing geographically about Bernal Heights is that it is a contained neighborhood on a hill -- Cesar Chavez to the North, Mission to the West, Cortland to the South (though Bernal Heights technically exists south of Cortland as well), and 101/Bayshore to the East. I will represent three of these four views, as Cortland does not have Street Views and any further south is outside my own personal experience of this section of town.

A: 101/Bayshore

This image, taken from a fast-moving highway, is an elevated view of Cortland Ave, which is not documented in the Street View function (fortunately or unfortunately).

B: Cesar Chavez and Precita/Bryant

The buildings in front seem to be blocking the sun. There isn't much light on this street at the moment. Precita Ave, which flows into Bernal Heights and parallels Cesar Chavez a block from this shot, is the quintessential street of a microcommunity: coffee shops, a restaurant, a corner store, a laundry, a cute park. It is the analog of Cortland.

C: Cesar Chavez and Alabama

Alabama is the most direct route to my house. The road rises steeply at the end and drops you off on a ridge that serves the many intricate pathways and tentacle-arms of Bernal streets. This shot is strangely put together; for some reason, the upper floors of a house on the street have been negativized. One wonders what this virtual (mis)representation does to the spirit of the space itself.

D: Cesar Chavez and Folsom

Folsom is a beautiful street lined with trees. This is another direct route to my house; it follows the road that straddles Bernal Hill and approaches the aforementioned ridge from a different direction. (This street will, perhaps, be my first "walkthough")

E: Mission and Powers

I never take this route, but it is important to conceive of Bernal Heights as a neighborhood with "options for escape." What I mean is this: Bernal's steep roads are only one line of flight; there are also numerous paths and stairways that allow pedestrians more freedom and creativity in the routes they choose. The point being, I could take Powers and, simply by orienting myself to the hill, could figure out two dozen routes to get home. This option is what is so charming about the neighborhood -- one can always have an interesting walk through Bernal Heights' meandering and hidden paths.

F: Mission and Cortland

Cortland is the lifeblood of Bernal Heights. Though Precita has amenities, Cortland makes Bernal Heights a legitimate neighborhood because it has one of everything: grocer, laundry, bar, restaurant, salon, bookshop, etc, etc. Coming down from Cortland to Mission is one of my most common routes and also one of the most fascinating -- Cortland and Mission are two totally different worlds: Cortland has families, a large lesbian community, and some of the upper crust; Mission is gritty and real, a mix of Latinos and young up-and-ups, and full of the life that makes San Francisco so charming while maintaining its "reality." In some ways, living on a hill is like living in the clouds; moving down the hill grounds my experience of what is real about this place.

ABC/Facebook and National Politics

2007-11-26T16:28:00.000-08:00

I came across this article today and found it interesting. The ability to "follow" reporters in the field and possibly respond to the way they portray an issue is a complicated issue. On the one hand, I like the idea that we have extended the breadth of communication through the internet to the point that we have "full coverage" of everything, thus allowing informed, nuanced positions to be made available to everyone. On the other hand, this sort of full coverage means a loss in the spirit of change: as we collapse extension and duration into mere communication, change cannot manifest in the world-shaping ways. We no longer experience revolution, only the continual reification of the present moment, a history forever paused in an extended modernness.

Briefly, On Book Collection

2007-11-14T14:19:00.001-08:00

Everyday needs a catalyst for inspiration. There is always the option to stay in bed, but waking up and engaging in something immediately -- cooking, reading, sudoku, crosswords, music -- increases the speed and intensity of one's thoughts. Activity is the active mode.

Recently, I have left the house each day with lists of things I want in my life. Because where I currently live is still sparse as far as furnishings go, I essentially set out to "furnish" my life. This isn't simply a desire to have something but more an active progression toward how I want to live in the world. This active progression never comes to an end. Rather, its destination is a utopia in itself: a mode of existing in the world that will never truly occur but is easily reducible to a possible description or image of existence. I've talked about heterotopias before, but there is a certain utility in the utopian vision of one's life that necessitates the idea of the heterotopia in the first place. As utopian conceptions intersect, you're left with being in the moment -- beautiful, tragic, sad, depressing, boring, lovely, and so on -- that is frozen outside the trajectory. It is interesting to come to terms with the notion that the way I furnish my life will never complete itself -- in some way, "feeling at home" in the world is accepting the inability to "complete" the home.

When I leave the house, I walk up Cortland Avenue to visit the bookstore. Furnishing my life with books is important as an act of collection that I find soothing. I have certain books in mind when I enter the bookstore, but I am also quite conscious of an overarching, socially inscribed value to authors and particular texts. Thus, when I move on from the bookstore to the man on the street selling books, I buy the "valued" book for a quarter.

Literally: I will never read the book. It falls in the pile of "valued" but does not overlap with my actual interests. But having it is part of the constitution of myself (which perhaps in this moment is broadcasting "fake") just as a bookshelf represents an individual's way of seeing the world. This isn't a totalized vision, but rather an interesting cross section of how one chooses to represent oneself. So, I buy books that I don't need and won't read for the purpose of having intellectual "capital", which can be freely traded using Bookmooch for books that I actually want to read and display on my bookshelf (which doesn't exist here, so all the books I've accumulated since moving to San Francisco are actually on the floor).

Just like the way I envision utopia but never realize that existence, I am always progressing toward a collection of books that will perfectly represent me. Obviously, the irony of this trajectory is that it goes to infinity, thus making my accumulation of books so excessive that representation becomes vague; the only thing conveyed is that I have too many books that I won't read. Simultaneously, the beauty of the infinite limit is that collection and "furnishing" are realized as active modes, as ways of articulating the spirit in ourselves.

Sound Maps and an excuse for Nomadology

2007-11-08T14:12:00.000-08:00

The recent This American Life on various forms of cartography is one of the best I’ve heard (the one on Unconditional Love, which made me cry, is also excellent). The programs covers different ways of seeing the world through maps, which are interesting because of their hyper-specific orientation in and projection of the world. The section on sound maps – the harmonies and chords produced by the objects which surround us – resonated particularly well in light of recent experience I had on the San Francisco MUNI.

The story goes:
Due to a recent “incident” that occurred on Halloween, I have changed the path I take home from work. Instead of a straight shot from work to the bus, I walk up two blocks in order to take a different route home. This detour gives me several minutes to process the events of the evening: work, coworkers, my eating habits, my plans for the evening, and so on. Eventually, I reach the bus stop and get on.

The bus is always well lit and filled with a range of different passengers. Though the ride is seemingly entirely quiet, there is a permeating feeling of tiredness and intent; most passengers, it seems, are on their way home from work, locked into a closed space with strangers who happen to share the same obscure hours as they do. We glance ever-so-briefly, play different music into our individual headsets, look at papers left by those who came before, and always thank the driver at our stops. But getting off the bus, for me, is always the most profound.

Having spent twenty or thirty minutes on the bus – which resembles a place in limbo, where time does not physically manifest but rather emerges only as a static figure on the ticker – I get off at a stop which is quite dark. In front of me, the bus pulls away, its hum serving as a final, fading reminder of the plethora of noises that accompanied my ride. These noises, I immediately realize, comforted me in some way, assuring me of companionship; even if my companions were total strangers, we all shared the same bus, all located ourselves in the precarious space that is constantly moving without visual indication of being in motion.

I step off the bus into the street. The quietness calms me. The quietness alerts me to the emptiness of my new environment, which leads more directly into solitude. There is an image, in a movie that perhaps I’ve never seen but imagined in great detail, of the bus pulling away from a deserted street. The image is the exact moment when the bus finally moves away from sight, cutting off both visual and aural indication of its presence as it rounds a nearby corner. The environmental sound changes from a hum to a low murmur, an atmospheric sound composed by thousands of sleeping, breathing bodies in the darkened homes around me (the protagonist). And though I am calm, I realize that my wakefulness means solitude at this time of night, and I have been unwillingly thrown into this position.

Instead of idling in solitude, I begin to walk up the hill, which is quite steep, and my own breathing joins the sleeping chorus. Mine is heaving, more strained, but sparks within me a sort of tired bliss as my body tries hard to forget that my feet hurt from wearing dress shoes and standing all day. As the ground levels, my footsteps suddenly seem louder than before; I’ve become accustomed to the sound of night on these blocks and my steps serve as an uplifting beat that rises louder than the sleeping, breathing murmur.

Finally I reach my door, turn the key smoothly in the lock, and step inside. In this final transition, I realize that I have moved through various sonic environments, all of which affected my general mood:

The bus was a sleepy hum; the street was the murmur of solitude; the hill was a strained, rewarding effort; the level ground was an upbeat movement; and the turning key in the lock was a smooth, clear finale.

It’s worth noting the your sonic environment – the hums and buzzes of your home and workspaces – as a tool toward further understanding your personal practices of life and your own emotional sanity. Music theory aside (I’m ignorant here), we know what sounds beautiful to our own ears and taking the sounds around us seriously can potentially open up new ways of stimulating our ways of being in the world and serving as a strategy for changing our affectations. Though I felt solitude from the deserted street, my movement into new sonic environments changed my own feelings and allowed me to process further my understanding of myself in the world.

If nothing else, let this speak toward nomadology – a specific nomadology on the sonic plane.

Brain Age (2)

2007-10-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

Since I've been staying on a couch in the Richmond District of San Francisco, which is pretty far from the heart of the San Francisco I'm looking for, I have taken up playing Brain Age 2 on my host's Nintendo DS. The game is basically several programs that are designed to increase the functioning of certain centers of your brain; these programs are "training" for the central goal of the game: to decrease your "Brain Age" to 20 years old, which has been defined by the game as the optimum age for brain functioning. (Mine began at 50, I'm now at 36 with an all time low of 35 -- so basically I'm middle aged.)

Though I don't agree with all of the implicit claims of the game, I have been diligently working every day to decrease my brain age. Part of what is interesting about the game is that you cannot continue to play during the course of one day to improve your brain's age; you must return daily, complete the training programs, and attempt to get a better score on the Brain Age test. The test itself is a selection of several random programs, some of which are extremely hard and some of which are extremely easy, which is obviously subjective. After completing three tests your brain age is calculated, and once you've logged a brain age for the day, you can't take it back and you can't try again.

So, every morning for the past week, I wake up and play the game. Though I am trying to lower my Brain Age, what I also end up noticing is my ability to function in light of the previous night's events. This should be self evident to anyone who spends a moment in reflection, but playing the game has come to serve as a humble reminder of the connection between my mind and my body and the ways I learn and expand my mental capabilities.

I'd like to believe that playing the game has improved my ability to count, memorize, and give correct change. It certainly has improved my Sudoku skills.

Found Note - A Bit of California Geology

2007-10-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

I found this note that taught me something new about California. I feel bad for the individual who lost it, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to learn a bit about the geology of the state. I've made transcribed the notes in a more readable style, but the content is unchanged.

[Midterm of 4-7]

Petroglyphs - scratched patterns by native peoples.

CA deserts are arid = desolate kind of landscape

Ventifact - triangular shaped faces created by wind. Carved by consistent non changed winds -> sandblasting effect.

Sand accumulates to form dunes (Algodones Dunes (near El Centro))

*Chapter 7

Basin to Range Province characterized by 1 of 3 types of faults
1. Normal Fault + special type = detachment fault
2. Reverse
3. Strike-slip.

basin and ranges -> oldest rocks uplifted.

[October 11th]

Oldest rocks in CA in Basin + Range -> Metamorphic.
Basin - low land areas
Range - mountain areas

->a series of low land basins accented with mt ranges.

Fault = a feature that's formed when rocks are broken and moved along the break

Stress: causes rocks to break.

Tensional Stress (pulling apart kind of stress) - crust

What's strange about finding this sort of note is that this information is passed on out of context; it is meaningful on a surface level to me, the new reader, but perhaps crucial for the note-taker to get that A grade.

Google Maps Street View

2007-10-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Having recently moved to San Francisco, I've found that the housing market here is not only exceedingly competitive, but quite disheartening as well. That aside (I have another blog for emotions), today I found the wonderous/daunting Google Maps Street View.

San Francisco, being the darling cultural gem in gem in geeked out Silicon Valley, is one of the cities that Google has photographed so extensively as to offer a view of houses right at their front doors. Not all of the city has been shot so far, but I assume that will come shortly. Basically, one is able to view a Google map and, in some locations, shift the perspective to the street. Not only can I see where the house that I'm visiting is located, I can get a look at the outside of the place before I even take the time to go there.

Useful? Only sort of. But a good reminder that we must, from now on, be aware of the fact that vision is becoming total; its scale is widening, becoming more precise and having more depth of field -- which itself basically gives way to another moment of vision, as in Google Maps Street View. In the web 2.0 program, you can actually see people on the street who happened to be there the moment Google took the picture. They exist like some strange ghost-like presence, perpetually tagged into the landscape for the world to see. You can make out their faces, see their boredom, their hurrying steps, or a personal smile to themselves as they walk to work.

Diving in to see people heading to work, going about their day.

The map:

View Larger Map

The street:

Upclose, forever bonded to this simulacral space:

3rd World Farmer

2007-10-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blogs, Pruned, called my attention to a game called 3rd World Farmer.

The game is, as one could probably decipher, in the "third world." The point of the game is to raise your family and increase your earning potential. The game simulates common third world problems such as drought, revolution, and corruption, which all affect your ability to make a living. It goes into surprising depth for a flash-based simulation: you raise children who can either go to school (and so be available less for work) or get married and leave the farm (but earn a nice dowry), there are infrastructural building opportunities, and aging is a factor. To go directly to the game, click here (but look over the hunger related subtexts at some point).

The game must be a bit too easy once you get the hang of it, as I won in 26 turns. But the high scores reveal a much deeper obsession with actually making that Saharan farm worth millions. All intelligent people will understand this isn't a simulation per se, but a metaphor for the hardships and catastrophes faced by "third world" farmers. (Now you too can toil the African soil, but from the comfort of your first world nation.)

High Mayhem, Saturday ~ Loud Objects

2007-09-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

I attended the High Mayhem Emerging Arts Festival and witnessed some spectacular performances. Among the notable (only one will be truly noted, digitally) was the Loud Objects, a New York duo who literally built their input in front of the audience.

It went a bit like this: two gentlemen set up a standard transparency projector -- the one they used to use in science class -- and secured to it a transparent plastic panel. With only a single input, the gentlemen proceeded to practice a creator-surgery (the almighty god sort) on the panel and the input, which was hooked up to large speakers in front of the projection. Creator-surgery, the word I have (regretfully?) chosen to describe their work, was a sort of construction of sound by soldering wires to the input on one end and circuits laid onto the panel on the other; as they soldered different combinations, different frequencies of sound were manipulated through the wires and the circuits, ending up at the input and eventually experienced (sensorially) by the audience.

(During one hilarious moment that I won't recount, except here, in a super brief aside, a bug flew into some superglue, used to secure the circuits to panel, but miraculously escaped and became part of the performance. I believe I heard one man shout out, minutes after the now-averted disaster, "where's the bug?" Please understand that the similarity between circuits, which are commonly 6-pronged, and bugs is not lost to me: I'm calling for papers discussing it.)

As the show went on, the sound became more and more complex; a beat emerged, oscillating tweaks and twangs intertwined in movement variations, and the audiences' pulses raced in excitement. We (us, that audience - a necessary component, as pointed out by my dear friend Jesse (now undergoing a sort of reversal creator-surgery at the moment: his wisdom teeth are being pulled)) watched from our bleacher seats as we witnessed the construction of both the input/instrument and the sound; The sheer unpretentiousness of the construction and subsequent manipulation made the whole thing, shall we say, enlightening.

A really phenomenal performance.

Hans Schabus, SITE Santa Fe, and installation loneliness

2007-09-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

SITE Santa Fe, the contemporary art space on Santa Fe's Railyard District, commissioned an Austrian artist named Hans Schabus to take over their entire building with his meditations on the desert. From the essay accompanying the exhibition:

In Deserted Conquest (2007) -- an installation commissioned by SITE Santa Fe and the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States -- Schabus stages a series of confrontations (permanence vs. mobility; the grid vs. spiral form; artificial vs. natural; among others) within the New Mexico landscape that questions our beliefs about the desert and the American West. The objects in this exhibition -- a deconstructed mobile home, two videos, collages, over 100 tons of dirt, and an assortment of "found" items -- not only embody the oppositions that Schabus sets up, but also speak abstractly to notions of history, mythology, and alienation.

-- From the Exhibition Essay, which fails to mention an author's name.

As a whole, I enjoyed the space very much. Schabus makes huge installations out of mobile homes and the walls of old buildings, using their weathered and dilapidated aesthetics in contrast to the whiteness of the gallery space. He accents this with Cabin Fever, an interesting wagon wheel chandelier holding some two dozen candles, continuously lit and allowed to drip onto the floor over time.

In addition to these installations, Schabus takes some video footage from Yeso, NM, juxtaposing the loud, oncoming train with the dead quiet of the now ghost town. It was a stunning video that really resonated the emptiness of Yeso's spaces and the power and beauty of an oncoming train. The piece is called East, West, South, North

The title installation, Deserted Conquest is something like 10 tons of dirt packed down into a room that has its title emblazoned on the wall in steel. I imagine the space changes over time as visitors explore the empty room that is literally just full of desert dirt.

But what was most interesting, however unintended, was the fact that I was almost alone in this room. That is to say, I was actually the only patron in the entire gallery when I viewed it, but I was not the only human being. As I walked into the building, I was greeted at the desk and immediately headed into the exhibition (it was Friday, which means that there is no admission fee). I was tailed by a young woman, probably in her early twenties, who was carrying a walkie-talkie and was dressed in the casual, dark toned uniform of a SITE employee. She told me to watch my head on a specific, slightly hidden piece. This was our last direct interaction; after that, she casually milled about in whatever vicinity I was in the museum.

Now, I understand this is her job, but I felt sorry for her because she was obviously uncomfortable walking around with me but without interacting with me, basically "keeping watch" over something that hardly needed watching-over. I ended up feeling strange because I was wandering in Schabus' purposeful emptiness, an expanse that, like our romantic notions of the desert journey, seems best suited for solo exploration. Happening upon the space at the right moment allowed me such a solitary experience that was constantly disrupted by the woman guarding me throughout my viewing of Schabus' work.

Ultimately, I came to associate her presence with that of a ghost. She would not follow directly behind me, but rather wander between the rooms quickly enough to not seem like I was under constant surveillance. I instead felt like I was always vaguely being followed by something that, upon turning around, was just disappearing behind a corner.

In the end, this added to the experience Schabus sets up in his recreation of the solitude and expanse of the desert, as the ghost town of Yeso came to embody the dirt covered floor, leaving only a wispy trace of life that is always just behind you but outside of reach, outside of language, and experiencing something wholly different than you are.

The Luxury of Time

2007-09-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to drive from Santa Fe to Nederland, Colorado, over the weekend, making the trip up and back in two days.

(An aside: I remember what Deleuze said about the American journey vs. the French -- it's an interesting take on something (today) we wouldn't necessarily assume. The American journey is the journey into the smooth, an escape from striation.)

In preparation for the seven hour journey, I uploaded some podcasts into my ipod. Though I usually listen to music, this trip I found that for such long treks listening to conversations and lectures open up a different sort of intellectual stimulation that were more metaphysically enlightening. I had previously found some In Our Time podcasts and downloaded a couple. Now, I can't seem to download individual podcasts or archived ones. Strange.

An interesting thing about aural media in combination with driving is that there is an intermixing of disembodied philosophical speculation and the movement of one's body in space. The landscape coming down from the mountains of Colorado into New Mexico presents a vast scene that is simultaneously endless and yet free of a daunting blandness; trees and vistas poke out of the fluid, lapping waves of the ground. Such a beautiful expanse paired with the spark of philosophical banter made me realize the luxury of the moment. These moments are few due to the constant distractive jarring of our normal lives in the milieu.

It is quite an interesting place to be -- contextualized in nature around oneself yet encapsulated in a vehicle that moves quickly along the ground. A sort of hovering in the Umwelt. Though surrounded by very technology that facilitates this experience, one feels in tune with the phenomenological thread at the edge of consciousness, and perhaps reveals that plane in which the two merge and emerge into one another.

As we align ourselves into the openness, we streamline the intellectual rhizome as is bursts forth from our bodies in space: like releasing a ghosted line of fog as we go along, we insist on the creation of form through the mesh of spirit.

Blackle - Google and Color Inversion

2007-09-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

From Jazzy (and Lizzy):

Blackle
(.com)

because inverted colors are more sustainable. and, occasionally, more interesting. the (.com) is the actual site.

Another trick that serves the same purpose but operates system-wide (mac os x wide) is:

ctrl + alt + apple + 8

that inverts the colors on mac os x. It isn't an extremely advanced trick, but if you're running low on battery life and/or care about saving whatever energy you can, try it out. just don't try it with blackle on, because then you're inverting the already inverted colors, which means that you're totally counteracting whatever small change you were enacting.

From Another Space

2007-08-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

I am posting this older blog post that was the sole entry on my old blog Autotechnomy, dated Tuesday, September 26, 2006

* * *

Finesse -- Virilio and Dance

"To me, dance is an extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think"

--Paul Virilio

I need to outline my vision for the body's way of 'computing' technology in an attempt to set it outside of reducibility to technology. This is what I call finesse, the subtle and graceful movements of the body that can move and flow like a dance with the earth. It is a form of transcendence from the errors and misfiring that the mind can have when overwhelmed. It is conscious meditation, it is flirting, it is sex. It is the pulse you pick up on when you listen to music and can hear nothing else, the vision of god above the clouds during a sunset. It is the beautiful articulation of what it means to be inside your own body and mind.

But is it nostalgia? Finesse is what nostalgia wants to recreate. I don't rely on memories anymore. I rely on the movement of the body forward, to the experience when you start to speak and everything you say is perfect and completely coherent and everyone walks away beaming at you. It is the moment when you bring everyone to the same page in a book and learn from each other. It is, and has always been, love.

* * *

and by love, I mean spirit

The Master Cleanse Failure

2007-08-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

After approximately 36 hours of fasting, I had to break the fast. Failure is painful, but I have realized that my relationship with my body and with food is important and cannot merely be sidelined for an experimental fast. That is not a justification as much as it is a more a need for proper context when embarking on such a journey. I had jumped into the fast in an excited manner -- which is the way to do it on a certain level because it keeps your attitude about the fast positive -- but didn't consider that its the best part of the late summer harvest and that I wasn't actually mentally prepared to forgo food for 10 days.

I gave up early, but I ultimately have drawn an understanding of my limitations. The fast could potential be undertaken at a later point, when I've had time to think it through. Besides, the spirit is intricately intertwined with my relationship with food.

The Master Cleanse

2007-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

I've just begun the Master Cleanse, a fasting detox-diet that we all have been thinking about for a while. You can check out the cleanse here for a more detailed account.

Essentially, the Master Cleanse is a fast in which the Master Cleanser drinks 6-12 glasses of lemonade every day, as well as some laxative tea and a saltwater cleanse interspersed. It should be clear why the Master Cleanse is also called the lemonade diet. But the lemonade isn't powers or crystals, rather we compose it from fresh squeezed lemons (or limes, which we are actually using also), grade B maple syrup, a dash of cayenne pepper, and distilled water. The lemonade tastes pretty good, especially when you're hungry like I am now.

With that overview over with, I have to say that I'm excited about the cleanse because it gives me a chance to really escape from the horrible things I do to my body on a daily basis (smoking, drinking, and generally living). I'm concentrating on myself and attempting to reach out to and embrace the spirit, which has recently come to represent a broad spectrum of vague beliefs that I hold while simultaneously standing for extremely nuanced and specific conceptions.

Sometimes blogging taps me into the spirit, as it has now. I'm not feeling very hungry. I expect the next several days to be more interesting and fruitful.

Update

I oscillate between hungry and not; I have already come to appreciate my previous relationship with food and the general freedom it allows me. Also, it strange how much of one's day is taken up by food and food-related activities; I'm having trouble finding things to fill my day, which also serves to take my mind off the fact that I'm actually quite hungry.

Guacamole

2007-08-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is not a food blog.

The Necessities

Ripe Avocados (4)
Red Onions
Garlic
Cilantro
Limes
Salt

Creation

(The ingredients above are only the base mixture for whatever sort of guacamole variation. You could add cucumbers, chopped spinach, or sauteed bok choy to it too, but start with this base (and don't add sour cream).)

Cut the avocados, remove the skin and the huge seed, and place the green meat in a bowl. Chop up about a handful and a half of onions into tiny cubes and add. Dice the a clove of garlic (or two) as well as the cilantro -- I like about a closed fistful of cilantro because it really makes the flavor. Obviously, less can be used. Add the garlic and the cilantro. Get two limes, cut them in half, and juice them into the mixture (~1 lime for every 2 avocados). I usually scrape the inside pulp into the mixture with a small paring knife. Add a thin covering of salt to the greenish mixture, then stir it with a fork. Don't whip it. Eat with anything.

Salads, Intensities, Rhizomes

2007-08-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

Quite simply, a Salad Recipe that I conjured on the spot and is good enough to write down "to remember."

The individuated parts:

Snow Peas
Snap Peas
Mung and Assorted Bean Sprouts
Baby Spinach
Red Onion
Blackberries (and some juice)
Gorgonzola Cheese
Balsamic Vinegar
Celery Tahini

The construction of the whole:

I cut up the peas and the onion, one part onion to two parts peas. I threw in some bean sprouts and at that moment some fresh blackberries arrived from my backyard. I added one part blackberries (more would be fine), and placed the salad in the empty bowl in which they were picked. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar on top, then shredded some gorgonzola on top (a pretty liberal amount as its a crucial flavor). Then a dab of celery tahini, topped with a big handful of baby spinach.

Toss lightly but thoroughly, and serve.

A thought on opening-up, intensities, positivities, creations

2007-07-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Baudrillard claims that desire does not come up in Foucault's work because its place is already occupied by power; thus, Deleuze and Lyotard's theories of the schizoid and libidinal are analogous to Foucault's power-systems -> they are rhizomes, openings-up, continuities, etc.

Isn't it interesting (though this is one of Baudrillard's critiques) that the three take up different themes in similar ways, as if suggesting that the intensities and rhizomatic structures of the earth are ideas that have been teased and teased until their tangents emerge, their connections light up, and their systems channel information to and fro continuously.

Blogs, Frustration, and a New Idea

2007-07-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

I am attempting to engage with questions of sustainability, consumerism, and what I call new "techniques of existence" in the technoscientific age. What concerns me most is the co-optation of "green," "environmental," "sustainable," and so on by business. That isn't to say that I am not guilty of buying so-called green products, but the sort of ignorant consumption that is promoted by blogs in general is quite disturbing.

For instance: today, I was searching for hacks and diy projects related to electronics and technology in general; eventually, through several tangents of RAID kits and wandering in the dark as to the fundamentals of modification and hardware hacking in general, I came across a "green hacks blog". What the "hacks" suggested, however, amounted to a basic tips sheet on how we can change our consumption habits to be more sustainable. What the blogger clearly misses is his reliance on his current lifestyle. He fails to see that consumption itself is a blight.

Combining these two ideas: a blog/site that offers step by step ways to reduce consumption of resources and encourages the development of symbiotics in human/earthly life.

For example:

an electronic switch stepup that allows circuits in the home to be shut off entirely. this would allow devices that are constantly connected to electric outlets, such as televisions and appliances, to be cut off from power flow entirely. The reason for this is that televisions and appliances have circuits that constantly use energy even when not on. So, besides computers and clocks and whatever else needs a bit of constant electricity, the rest of the power in the home could be totally shut down.

Maybe I'll get some more ideas later.

New Direction

2007-07-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Having completed my senior thesis, "Cyborgs, Posthumans, and New Techniques of Existence in the Age of Technoscience," I have found that I have less time than ever before. But soon that will all change, and I hope to expand this blog from a notebook into something more interesting and fruitful.

As the title of this blog still conveniently suggests, knowledge remains a large intellectual concern in my own thought processes; currently, I am interested in the ways in which we learn and experience the world through mediated sources as opposed to our sensorial being in the world.

My first question arises from differing practices of understanding and learning. An example comes to mind from my own life: I am trying to learn several foreign languages at the moment, as well as a computer-based language. For the cultural-linguistic languages, which are French and German (simultaneously!, or at least I'm making an attempt based on another assumption that I won't detail here), I have acquired a program called The Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is supposed to be a great, visually-oriented program that immerses the user in the language without "teaching" it in the strict sense. There are, for example, no conjugation charts or proper grammatical lessons that I have found thus far.

I still can't speak French or German, but my understanding of basic vocabulary and some elementary verbs has improved -- and improved far better than reading a beginners book on the language. The glaringly obvious problem with the program is that the immersion is one sided and digital, not heterogeneous and "actual". This is not so much a complaint as an observation -- I can't very well go to France or Germany at the moment, I understand that I'll need more language classes later, and so the program actually becomes the most progressive step toward these future endeavors because I'll have some basic understandings but no strictly formal education.

The idea here, and the one I find the most interesting, is the becoming-childlike that the language program has sparked within me; I hold to the belief that the ever-wide eyes of the child occur because it is always amazing at the surroundings and stimuli its taking in. The trick, for me, is to become-childlike in any endeavor, but with the abilities and sensibilities of someone much older. (I'm reminded of the film "Unknown White Male" at this moment that, though perhaps a hoax and surely a bit overdone, brings up this idea nicely.)

My experience with the program speaks to my understanding of experience-in-the-world as extremely important, but also the advantage of knowledge/memory (in this case, the program and its presentation of a language to be learned) that technology enables us.

Delayed

2007-03-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

As soon as my thesis is done, I have BIG plans for this space. I just want to jot down some ideas for now.

Posthuman(ism) and:

ornithology
conchology
the beach

Dynamic flash site:

humanism/antihumanism/posthumanism
the cyborg
the posthuman
the human outline and potential updates to her form
3x3 navigation boxes via magnetic central launching node

The website is envisioned as a space for continually developing posthumanist notions (critically). Academic rigor and animated representation and incorporation included.

Simulation/Madness

2006-09-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

"The first Gulf War was the first "live" war. World War Two was a world war in space. It spread from Europe to Japan, to the Soviet Union, etc. World War Two was quite different from World War One which was geographically limited to Europe. But in the case of the Gulf War, we are dealing with a war which is extremely local in space, but global in time, since it is the first "live" war. And to those, like my friend Baudrillard, who say that this war did not actually occur, I reply: this war may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thans to CNN and The Pentagon. This is a new form of war, and all future wares, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents.
(Wilson: How will this removal affect people?)
Firstly, a de-realization, the accident of the real. It's not one, two, hundreds or thousands of people who are being killed, but the whole reality itself. In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real. Imagine that all of a sudden I am convinced that I am Napoleon: I am no longer Virilio, but Napoleon. My reality is wounded. Virtual reality leads to a similar de-realization. However, it no longer works only at the scale of individuals, as in madness, but at the scale of the world.

By the way, this might sound like drama, but it is not the end of the world: it is both sad and happy, nasty and kind. It is a lot of contradictory things at the same time. And it is complex."

--Virilio, Cyberwar, God and Television: An Interview with Paul Virilio
Conducted by Louise Wilson, from Digital Delerium

Virilio's comparison of madness with simulation is really interesting because if we've been taught as liberal academics to treat madness as an interesting singularity in personality, simulation must be able to divulge similarly interesting points. Of course, we may not seek out madness, but we do seem to seek out simulation, at least on some level. Taking, for example, Massive-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), the real player can become Napoleon consciously and willingly, interact with others as Napoleon. But perhaps the previous example is "active" simulation, whereas something like television and CNN is "passive" simulation because one does not choose the way in which it overtakes the body.

Beginning Life on the Screen

2006-09-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've just begun Sherry Turkle's book Life on the Screen: Identity and the Age of the Internet, finish the introduction and the first chapter. Turkle begins her book, which is mostly about MUD-based interactions (think self-designable chatrooms, for now), with an interesting distinction between Modernist and Postmodernist of computer technology. The modernist defines the computer in the sense of an enlarged, more powerful calculator, capable of "computation" in the very literal sense. Postmodernist views, which she obviously prefers and embraces for the book thus far, see computer technology and the internet as an embodiment of itself; computers decentralize and fragment themselves, link (or hyperlink) between objects in infinite number of ways, and allow individual or unique creations in both hardware configurations and representation of the self (MUD chat rooms are her example).

Briefly summarizing the latter, a user can enter a chatroom and become who they want to be. They can become someone of a different gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, etc. and design a world and a simulated life around this persona that they've chosen to adopt. She asserts that some of these users feel more Real in their simulated environment, as if they've final constructed the life they were always meant to have had. Turkle moves on to lay out a history of computer-culture before the internet, while maintaining her modernist/postmodernist binary. What becomes most interesting for me is when she moves into the subsection "objects-to-think-with"...

Computers have become objects of orientation, of remembering, and of life processing. Much like what Sontag says of the photograph at a wedding re-membering the experience, the computer creates a tension between the user and their input and the way it is re-received. But, like photographs, they have become a part of remembrance, so much that we can often rely on photographs (now digital) to recall an event or experience. (Virilio talks about this too, in The Information Bomb in a totally different light). Further than that, like the way certain knowledges are appropriated by the masses and become a part of the way we think about the world (such as Freudian Slips or Dream Analysis from Freud), computers shape ours:

"Today, life on the computer screen carries theory. Here is how it happens. People decide that they want to buy an easy-to-use computer. They are attracted by a consumer product -- say, a computer with a Macintosh-style interface [note, Turkle is writing 11 years ago]. They think they are getting an instrumentally useful product, and there is little question that they are. But now it is in their home and they interact with it every day. And it turns out they are also getting an object that teaches them a new way of thinking and encourages them to develop new expectations about the kinds of relationships they and their children will have with machines. People decide that they want to interact with others on a computer network. They get an account on a commercial service. They think that this will provide them with new access to people and information, and of course it does. But it does more. When they log on, they may find themselves playing multiple roles, they may find themselves playing characters of the opposite sex. In this way they are swept up by the experiences that enable them to explore previously unexamined aspects of their sexuality or that challenge their ideas about a unitary self."

-- Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity and the Age of the Internet

...
My apologies for the vague and overlong summary. My purpose was to get down exactly what I liked about the introduction and the first chapter. The book is extremely pro-digital technology and has done little to complicate that thus far. But it is very informative in drawing a map of the sort of subjectivity-grounded-in-postmodernism. By far the biggest problem with the book is that it is 11 years old and a considerable amount of technological advancements have happened since then.

My main concern at the moment comes from the idea of computer technology (and, more related to the present moment, cyber- or internet technology) as an extension of the self. I hope Turkle goes into more depth here, because she rejects the equation of the computer with the human mind, so the usage of the computer for the mind doesn't quite connect. Virilio and Baudrillard (and Lyotard?) seem to address this from the other point of view. It will be interesting to dive deeper into both sides.

Optics in 20th Century

2006-09-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

"As the century of unbounded curiosity, covetous looking and the de-regulation of the gaze, the twentieth has not been the century of the 'image', as is often claimed, but of optics -- and, in particular, of the optical illusion.
Since pre-1914 days, the imperatives of propaganda (of advertising) and, subsequently, during the long period of Cold War and nuclear deterrence, secuity and iintelligence needs have gradually drawn us into an intolerable situation in which industrial optics have run wildly out of control.
This has produced the new opto-electronic arsenal, which ranges from remote medical detection devices, probing our 'hearts and loins' in real time, to global remote surveillance (from the street-corner camera to the whole panoply of orbital satellites), with the promised emergence of the cyber-circus still to come.
'The cinema involves putting the eye into uniform,' claimed Kafka. What are we to say, then, of this dictatorship exerted for more than half a century by optical hardware which has become omniscient and omnipresent and which, like any totalitarian regime, encourages us to forget we are individuated beings?"

-- Virilio, The Information Bomb, pages 28-29.

I'm interested in the connection Virilio makes with the age of curiosity, because the use of curiosity invokes an image of childishness and wonderment. There is a notion of innocence that comes with this excuse for the gaze, as if this sort of optical technology is a toy for man (Virilio elsewhere in this book talks about 1900s visions of the new century as a vision of blown-up toys for adults). Carelessness comes with curiosity and, just as "curiosity killed the cat" is a horrible saying used to prevent children from sticking their noses into other peoples' business, we can take this age of curiosity as a warning. But perhaps digital technology has made up for this by also making this an "age of consent".

We click 'agree' license and privacy agreements in digital technologies without reading them. We willingly submit details about our lives in the hopes that others will find them interesting (or dateable, or sexy, or intelligent). We post photos of ourselves, tagged with our own full names, searchable by any moderately competent search engine. We allow 'cookies' to show us form-fitted advertisements. Conversely, behind the veil of the screen, we turn and look at all these things in other people. We can browse profiles on dating or social networking sites, look at pictures of thousands of people we don't know -- and their friends and family -- without feeling like a peeping tom. Have voyeurism and consent allied themselves in digital space? Such a question is totally superficial, but worth thinking about in the sense that we can no longer strictly define what is private and what is public.

Transitions -- Quotebook to Notebook -- and a Pseudo Thesis

2006-09-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

This post is necessary in the sense that I feel like I need to state, for my own records (though I do not currently keep records, I am told I should), this blog's transition. Previously - ie. all the posts below this one - I had laid out quotes from books I was reading and then commented on them. This will not change. I enjoy reflecting on these quotes and processing them for myself afterwards. However, the intention of the blog has changed, or better yet has been amended. Now, this blog will be regularly updated as a requisite of my Division III project in my final year at Hampshire College. Though the Div III has no title yet, the topics I will begin to explore (starting now) include:

-->Critiques of Technology, in particular Digital Technology.

-->Accessibility to Knowledge and the Encyclopedic Nature of the Internet.

-->Digital Culture, Techno-culture, Cyberculture, and any other clever configurations of culture which relies on technology or is significantly shaped by technology.

-->Communication Studies, in particular the reduction of distance (as manifested in this blog) and hyperproliferation of communicative devices

-->Visual Culture on the internet and New Media Studies, looking at diverse topics such as art on the internet and personal profiles.

I plan to draw these topics out and position them inside Subjectivity - how the subject is constituted by the world around him - from the schools of continental philosophy, critical theory, and EGS-style mass communications. Thus, my Division III will be theoretically rigorous and include a large written element. However, I also plan to explore, to no lesser degree, creative expression through technology, attempting to question digital technology's reproducibility, temporality, and utter solitude in massive sea of webpages.

Also, though I doubt anyone read this blog before now, I want to be more personal in the way I respond, while still maintaining my previous (supposed) academic demeanor.

Notes on Passwords

2006-06-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

"Alongside commodity value there exist moral or aesthetic values which operate, for their part, in terms of a set opposition between good and bad, between the beautiful and the ugly . . . It seemed to me, however, that there was a possibility for things to circulate differently, and other cultures did indeed offer the image of a form of organization in which the transcendence of value, and with it the transcendence of power, was not established, since it is on the manipulation of values that that transcendence is constituted. It was a question of attempting to strip the object - but not just the object - of its status as commodity, to restore to it an immediacy, a brute reality which would not have a price put on it. Either a thing is 'worthless', or it is 'priceless'; in either case we are dealing with what cannot be evaluated, in the strongest sense of the term. From that point on, the exchange that can be effected operates on foundations that are no longer of the order of the contract - as in the usual system of value - but of the pact. There is a profound difference between the contract, which is an abstract convention between two terms or individuals, and the pact, which is a dual, collusive relation."

-- Baudrillard, Passwords - "Value"

The chapters "Obscenity" and "The Transparency of Evil" distinguish the fact that revealing-all or total sight becomes obscene, as in pornography, whereas something which is secret, which is not visible, takes on an evil disposition in light of its lack of transparency. Once again the limits of visibility are the restricted areas, the outer limits of itself.

"But if our world is indeed inventing a virtual double for itself, we have to see this as the fulfillment of a trend that began long ago. Reality, as we know, has not always existed. We have talked about it only since there has been a rationality to express it, parameters enabling us to represent it by coded and decodable signs.
In the virtual, we are no longer dealing with value; we are merely dealing with a turning-into-data, a turning-into-calculations, a generalized computation in which reality-effects disappear. The virtual might be said to be truly the reality-horizon, just as we talk about the event-horizon in physics. But it is also possible to think that all this is merely a roundabout route towards an as yet indiscernible aim.
There is a positive fascination today with the virtual and all its technologies. if it genuinely is a mode of disappearance, this would be an - obscure, but deliberate - choice on the part of the species itself: the decision to clone itself, lock, stock and barrel, in another universe; to disappear as the human race, properly speaking, in order to perpetuate itself in an artificial species that would have much more efficient, much more operational attributes. Is this what is at issue?"

-- Baudrillard, Passwords - "The Virtual"

Nostalgia as Utopia

2006-05-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

Alexander R. Galloway writes in Warcraft and Utopia (ctheory.net):

"There is a second model of utopia that is less often identified: nostalgia as utopia. This utopia privileges life before capitalism, minimalism and disengagement from the world system. Thus, in the historical period in which the commodity is no longer primarily an object, but has become an image -- the so-called society of the spectacle that emerged in the middle twentieth-century -- one sees the emergence of minimalism as an aesthetic project."

This strikes a personal note. Reflecting on nostalgia, memory seems to have re-cast the past in a light that is pleasing. We find ourselves trying to re-live certain moments that are only pleasing in recollection.

Expression of Thought

2006-05-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

"Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help lbut liberate and enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of existence, in its very dawning, is in itself and action -- a perilous act."

--Foucault, from the opening leaf of Language, Counter-Memory, Practice

Quick Note on Foucault

2006-04-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

The Subject and Power in "Power" is a masterful, concise, and clear essay on the workings of power. It deals with the the situating, categorizing, naming, and isolation of the subject in order to normalize him.

From the Just comes the Unjust, in Arrogance

2006-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

"You must nevertheless bear in mind what I am about to say to you: in the seed of the city of the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and pride of being in the right -- and of being more just than many others who call themselves more just than the just. This seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire of revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do."

-- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, from Hidden Cities 5

This is the last city Marco Polo describes in Calvino's book, wrapping up the tour by explaining the virus that grows within what must inhabit the city: Justice. The call to order mankind makes beautiful monuments which elevate its stature and make ever more grand statements about its existence. But as Hidden Cities 4 describes, immediately before, nothing else may flower:

"The city, great cemetery of the animal kingdom, was closed, aseptic, over the final buried corpses with their last fleas and their last germs. Man had finally reestablished the order of the world which he had himself upset: no other living specieis existed to cast any doubts."

Foucault and Continuum

2006-04-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Foucault takes Merleau-Ponty's essential philosophical task as his own, making a beautiful treatise on academic work and literal self-consciousness in thought:

"Never to consent to being completely comfortable with one's own presuppositions. Never to let them fall preacefully asleep, but also never to believe that a new fact will suffice to overturn them; never to imagine that one can change them like arbitrary axioms, remembering that in order to give them the necessary mobility one must have a distant view, but also look at what is nearby and all around oneself. To be very mindful that everything one perceives is evident only against a familiar and little-known horizon, that every certainty is sure only through the support of a ground that is always unexplored. The most fragile instant has its roots. In that lesson, there is a whole ethic of sleepless evidence that does not rule out, far from it, a rigorous economy of the True and the False; but that is not the whole story."

--Foucault, For an Ethic of Discomfort

In my studies of Foucault thus far (the never ending quest and digestion of his thought, the rotation and rearticulation of all points), this passage is one of the most meaningful in light of his work. At the beginning of the essay, he encounters the question asked in a German journal: "What is Enlightenment." Kant responds, but Foucault sees the question more important than the answer. For him, the question implies a sort of self-consciousness that manages to rupture the Enlightenment simply by calling it into question; there are no static periods of time, only fluid movements of thoughts and discourses which, when called into question, double back on themselves and analyze, reinterpret, and rearticulate towards a horizon of distance. The question is an important thing in life -- the self and the public or society -- because it asks for reexamination, and thus an understanding that we are located in an infinite continuum where our beliefs and practices constantly change around us. We must ground ourselves in the middle of the stream in order to understand its current.

Blogging / Bookwriting

2006-04-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

While reading on sexuality I came across this quote, seemingly unrelated.

"I also reminded myself that it would probably not be worth the trouble ofr making books if they failed to teach the author something he had not known before, if they did not lead to unforeseen places, and if they did not disperse one toward a strange and new relation with himself. The pain and pleasure of the book is to be an experience."

--Foucault, Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume Two

Though blogging is not the same experience as writing a book, my project views the experience in much the same way. I am reaching for limbs of knowledge I've not yet encountered, and the processing of them is what is rewardingly transformative.

Rhizome metaphor

2006-04-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Rhizome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A rhizome is, in botany, a usually-underground, horizontal stem of a plant that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. They are also referred to as creeping rootstalks, or rootstocks. A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but exists above ground, sprouting from an existing stem.
Many plants have rhizomes that serve to spread the plant by vegetative reproduction. Examples are asparagus, Lily of the valley and Sympodial Orchids. The spreading stems of ferns are also called rhizomes.
A tuber is a thickened part of a rhizome that has been enlarged for use as a storage organ. They are typically high in starch. An example is the common potato.

Herzog lecture

2006-04-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

I saw Werner Herzog give a talk today at Amherst which was truly brilliant. He's such a charismatic fellow. He filled my head with thoughts and I hope I can get some of them down for processing and perhaps editing into a Div III of sorts.

Most potent: The way Herzog shifts the focuses of his movies and riffs off tangents which truly isolate the "reality" of his films. He showed a clip from The White Diamond, which I haven't seen, in which the camera moves from the scientist to the local man who is formally uneducated but really quite wise. For me, this sort of work goes to show the ways in which narratives can fragment themselves in search of what Herzog referred to as a "truth". He distinguished fact from truth, asserting that truth was something more profound and emphemeral than a solid fact. Information, particularly the new realms of information brought on by digitality, present ways in which tangential elements can form a more individualized space and what is actually taken from "an exploration" is quite unique. This is obviously related to my hypertext project from the collector. Perhaps I could use his films as a catalyst to re-explore some of the themes I was trying to articulate through hypertexts.

I'm in the midst of passing my Division II. I hope to be able to work out some of the groundwork for my Division III in this space.

From a recent meditation of Space, Knowledge, and Power

2006-04-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

From Foucault's Space, Knowledge, and Power

Another interesting aspect of power that Foucault touches on in this section is the relationship of architecture, and more generally space or geography, to power. For him, infrastructure had a great effect on the way that society in the modern sense was molded; the development of railroads and later electricity definitively changed the ways that people interact within a space and, more broadly, feel about themselves as a nation. On a more microscopic level, the development of architecture was both liberating and confining depending on its usage: an enclosed square could be a very nice open public space while simultaneously being available for unending surveillance. Thus, there is a tension with individual’s interaction with space, and their tendencies within. This relates to Foucault’s important idea of the Panopticon and Panopticism, which draws the connections between action and surveillance. The element of knowledge and communication comes forth in both the micro and macro levels; accessibility and mobility increased, communication increased. This notion of infrastructure is even more interesting in light of more advanced technology that he didn’t live to see in an operable state. The internet in particular, with its ability to traverse the globe and glean information from millions of sources changes the way in which we interact with the world. A new power relation is formed in the way this accessibility and knowledge effect us, one where control is perhaps (optimistically) further relinquished in favor of the individual.
Conversely (and sticking with the internet tangent), the internet also allows greater surveillance in the sorts of information that is digitally transmitted. Take, for example, Google’s recent move into China under the pretense of government controlled censorship. Further, the inexplicable advertisements that seem to know exactly where you live and the sorts of products you consume, due to the advancement and manipulation of “cookies” embedded within folder in your hard drive.

Sleepiness

2006-04-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

The problem with narrative which relies on sleep as its launchpad is that its rhythm and movement resemble sleep too much. I realize that this is the point, but also beside it. However, reading such work slows the mind, inducing it into a sleep which is both brilliant (for its catalyst and its self-realization) and unfortunate (because it closes the text and makes it inaccessible). I read books on memory and sleep in order to reveal worlds in web-outlines and periscopic views on individual moments. This is beautiful. But like a dream you never remember it all and feel as if you are doing an injustice to the author by only half-completing their book and half-forming your own memories about what was actually drawn from the page. Nonetheless, reading these sorts of books can still be enjoyable, if only because of the happiness of realizing what's going on between you and the piece.

Beyond Good and Evil

2006-03-25T09:52:00.000-08:00

The notion of the Will to Power describes the will as both commanding and obedient; the orb that floats between magnets, constrained by both positive and negative elements.

"It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker senses in every "causal connection" and "psychological necessity" something of constraint, need, coompulsion to obey, pressure, and unfreedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings -- the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "unfreedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits at any price (the vain races belong to this class). Others, on the contray, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else."
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The will is classically indicted for some form of manipulation. It seems that both strong and weak willed, as examples, mingle with each other. Most often one wants true credit for their merits, but will take no responsibility for an error or failing.

Nietzsche also talks about the way that the modes of interpretation affect truth. One takes a necessary jumping-off point and assumes correctness because of fluidity of connections. Different intentions reveal different readings.

[As an aside, I mistakenly sat down at an extremely well concealed Christian cafe. A missionary group wandered in as I was reading this quote, and I was struck by it:]

"Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them. Where the people eat and drjnk, even where they venerate, it usually stinks. One should not go to church if one wants to breathe pure air."
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Here Nietzsche is showing his nihilism and dislike of humanity, because he sees it as ignorant and superficial. The intelligent man, he claims, recognizes the ignorance and superficiality in other men. There is a repression of awareness and a laziness to question in the indigent, causing them lie to themselves for the sake of themselves.

"A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life. Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends. And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there -- and that this is well. Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profuound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpreation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.--"
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

So the common man constitutes an image of the intelligent man(a philosopher for Nietzsche) by the way that his words are misinterpretted and taken to mean different things than their honest meanings. A mask is grown around this man because he is considered in the way others see him; he is alienated from the common man because his views must be digestible and accessible.

Judicial and Juridical

2006-03-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

Distinction:

An anthropological penal system punishes the person(ality) for their ability or dispostion to commit a crime. It is purely psychological.

A Juridical system punishes the act, not the personality. It is purely circumstantial.

The current system is a mixture of the two. This system is set within a true binary: Free and Confined.

Language as a weapon

2006-03-14T08:37:00.000-08:00

"To condemn someone to a perpetual prison term is to transpose a medical or psychological diagnosis onto the judicial sentence; it is to saqy, "He is irredeemable." To impose a detminate sentence on someone is to ask a medical, psychological, or pedagogical practice to give a content to the judicial decision that punishes."

Foucault, To Punish is the most Difficult Thing There Is

The marking of a criminal, or perhaps rather the creation of one, is based on the judicial and medical language that occurs before conviction. There, the narrative is constructed which shows that the accused is predisposed to commit the crime. No bother his very predisposition labeled on him may be out of his control. To send someone to prison for life is to give up on them, to make the extreme discision that they will never be able to control themselves, that they will never be able to be just.

OuLiPo and Structures of Texts

2006-03-11T23:36:00.000-08:00

Abilities to harness a structure, to bend it to your will, allow a flexing of a work which further brings out the elements written within it. OuLiPo, for example, used mathematic structures or formulas for constructing works; it is in these structures that they are most able to exploit and subsequently articulate an idea, ultimately breaking it free of the mold or pattern. It is this method - a method of constraining a text - that allows it to grow and develop within certain bounds. Once properly developed, it is released, and it can serve as an example of an exploitation while simultaneously representing itself as a unique specimen of thought, of a potentiality.

Perec's meditation of spaces and structures of our lives resonate with the unthought; it is precisely what certain spaces represent and go unnoticed that is most interesting.

Historicism (through Von Humboldt)

2006-03-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

Historicism seems to be based in an interesting, though weak, metaphysics. It takes on a poetic element and composes the fragments of narratives and places in order to design the future. Von Humboldt goes so far as the claim that a truly accurate representation of history is impossible because we would be able to tell the future. Though my interpretation may be a bit literal, the point resonates a deterministic tone which doesn't sit well. As I see it, there is an authoritive history which, indeed, represents a configuration of reality today. But this history seems to be doubled back on itself; it justifies itself within the context of history (cause) and the present (effect). However, I am interested in the admittance that history is fragmentary. There becomes a desire to see history as art and as a representation of humanity; things that are ultimately beautiful thoughts but I'm not sure if history is represented as art and humanity in its practical application today.

By this, I simply mean that history in historicisms view is a justification and an appologist; it is less a discourse and more a monologue for the present.

Notebook Layout / Grizzly Man

2006-03-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

I just discovered the Notebook Layout in Microsoft Word for Mac. The formatting capabilities are amazing and functionable; I had no trouble taking fabulous notes while watching Grizzly Man.

Herzog's piece of Timothy Treadwell shows the beauty that can happen simply by accident. The narratives overlap and interact with each other; Treadwell is creating a documentary narrative while also (perhaps unintentionally) forming another narrative about himself. The openness, meditation, and self-reflection that we see in Treadwell is striking. Herzog overlaps his own narrative voice on this footage, complicating Treadwell, who is often portrayed as merely crazy. Quite a beautiful film and one that is probably superficially rejected on several obvious premises.

I think through this, there's a lot to be said about animalism or hyper-anthropomorphism. The binary between a civilized world and a wild one is blurred through explorations such as Treadwell's. Regardless of opinions on righteousness or harmfulness, Herzog stretches his film to carve out this blurred space.

Tracking Semiology

2006-03-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Is the birth of a thoughtful mankind based in the semiology of animal tracking? From the sight of tracks in the mud, we gain the ability to abstract the animal that left it. Perhaps it is our attention to detail that sets up apart?

Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History

2006-03-07T22:48:00.000-08:00

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

--> Benjamin is here talking about historicism, which translates today's world in relation to its past (history). Thus, it always ends up siding with the victor. We study Ancient Greece and later the Roman and English Empires because that is where historicism locates our present moment: those victors are responsible for our civilization today. To historicism, these victors require respect.

Historical Materialism on the other hand situates the present day in relation to economic and technological events. I've heard the term before in Marxisms.
Historical Materialism presents a unique experience with the past.

"History is the subject of a structure whose site is not a homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now." (The now being a mystical now, an ever-presentness perhaps(?))
Further: "Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate"

The Historical Materialist may 'blast' his way into history, thus affecting the era and thus the entire course of history? Benjamin's take is a Historical Materialism which accounts for the movement of thoughts and stops them at various points in order to achieve a singularity (translators word: monad). Better put:

"Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad."

Depth, Records, Jacks

2006-03-07T16:51:00.001-08:00

"I concentrated on Jack: Prep school and Harvard accounted for my pleasurable fear and his overalls and red chamois shirt; I knew others who used poverty for depth."

--Robert Gluck, Jack the Modernist

Some topics: Jacks-of-all-Trades, Hybridity, Bio-Politics, Self-Policing. Gothamist appalled me today by posting a mug shot. I tried to join in on the discussion but people were generally unresponsive to me, but flamed another (incidentally, his name username was Jack). (Reading two Jack-related books... Just finished Jacks: A Gothic Gospel by Anne Stone, now reading this Robert Gluck book.)

Record keeping is a form of marking; personal histories can ultimately come back to haunt someone because of an assumption of "predisposition." We mark someone as problematic, digging a certain channel by which other events and circumstances can be interpreted. Situating someone in such a position binds them, indicting them for character issues and not for actual events. Cheating once means, for the rest of your life, you will be considered a cheater. Criminals, even when paroled, are always former prisoners. The record creates a spectre which haunts. And by reflection, ultimately constitutes an identity which is intimately linked with this conception. With records, people are prevented from actual change; their actions may change, but their historical relationship remains the determinate for the rest of their lives.

Science as Power

2006-03-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

Genealogies' or genealogists' answer to the question "Is it a science or not?" is: "Turning Marxism, or psychoanalysis, or whatever else it is, into a science is precisely what we are criticizing you for. And if there is one objection to be made against Marxism, it's that it might well be a science." The question or questions that have to be asked are: "What types of knowledge are you trying to disqualify when you say that you are a science? What speaking subject, what discursive subject, what subject of experience and knowledge are you trying to minorize when you begin to say: 'I speak this discourse, I am speaking a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist.'"

Foucault, from Society Must Be Defended, Lecture 1

By Genealogists he's refering to a thinker who refers to the connections that seem apparent between different objects and link them in complex relationships. I think of it in terms of a spider weaving her web.

The Beginning

2006-03-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

I won't publish a manifesto because I don't want to set any standard. This is just application of the thoughts I'm having, mostly related to tangents of what I'm studying. Current interests are animalism (though not through Deleuze... yet), specifically lycanthropy and datura, knowledge/hypertext/interactivity/hierarchy, power, narrative/text, technology, post structuralism, and other truly obscene topics.

This is also a test run for an idea I have in conjunction with my Div III. Best of luck to myself.