pine needles
moss
quartz
sea water
sunshine
cloud not from today
but highly illustrates today's energy
last week i played a virtual show with about a dozen other programmer-musicians for the second edition of flashcrash[1]. the event focuses on livecoding, which has the premise of building music from code and showing the screen as it happens. my set was captured for asynchronous viewing[2].
the community that created the performance series also materialized a meta-micro-genre: mapcore, which has its own university[3].
[1] flashcrash.net [web]
[2] tehn, from flashcrash 2 [youtube]
[3] mapcorps.net [web]
“I do not particularly like the word work. Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
- masanobu fukuoka, one straw revolution (1975)
today i awoke to the existence of something i dreamt of fifteen years ago:
shade map [web]
when we were looking to move rural we understood the importance of sunshine, but the best we could do was go by the often-repeated advice (for the northern hemisphere): find something with southwestern exposure. that formula is ridiculously oversimplified if you live somewhere with steep winding valleys.
i imagined the thing linked above: basically a map with date ranges showing sun exposure.
my reaction today upon discovery was a curious mix: initial enthusiasm given this is a nice use of computers processing data into physical reality usefully, but immediately boredom given a decade's familiarity with the valley's shadow-shapes, and lastly a irksome trepidation that this is the sort of data that fuels land prospecting in a time of scarcity.
which made me recall my pre-move excitement for a herd of whatever where i might fit them all with radio-frequency-id tags and have my computer display a map of their whereabouts, you know, because data is interesting... or more precisely, perhaps i didn't know where to apply my skills? now i cringe upon hearing "internet of things."
i am interested in technology yet it has become a tsunami of dread. the ship promises the shipwreck. technological solutionism is absurd, and it is the new optimism.
but standing in the presence of a tree in the wind, sun or shade, there is respite in now and being.
(this feels like a draft and i'm going to publish it anyway.)
non-metaphorical wild blueberries
when picking wild blueberries
and sugar snap peas
and red currants and even shiitake
it's important to stop and
change positions and
look at the exact same spot
and something appears
sometimes you must simply close
your eyes and
open them
the american sycamore shades the chaparral ravines where i grew up. they grow well near water, even if that water is seasonal. on the opposite coast this tree is also found but not in our particular valley. we planted dozens and they seem to be at home.
negative capability — the ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt without reaching for absolutes (whether science or spirituality)
phrase first used by john keats [wikipedia]
twice yearly ritual: quitting coffee
the exact dates are difficult to anticipate
go by feel
field of grass
field of pattern
field of algorithm
more machine drawings, a reminder
the trees and late afternoon light provided a visual capture for sounds awaiting full actualization.
we travel
the path
until
we find
ourselves
back at
the beginning
and then
we continue
recently jay gilligan created this video with music i made not so recently.
writing things down allows us to be more effectively perplexed by our past selves.