the father of a friend once told them a good story: that there's a fine line between being dedicated and being stuck
robert wyatt - nothing can stop us (1982)
cocteau twins and harold budd - sea, swallow me (1986)
gowns - fake july (2007)
[mp3] - 10:41
"By claiming the end, energy is freed up to create new beginnings."
any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from religion.
for the last couple years i've been slowly refining a collection of ideas embodying the whimsical term "computer folkcraft." it's perhaps a mix of permacomputing [web] and anarchism and appropriate technology and plain old antiquated "computer literacy," but the "folkcraft" aspect energizes this combination: common people and artistry.
despite numerous conversations and scribblings i hadn't spend much time investigating the potential origins of my, uhm, quest (and its accompanying obsessions and ideologies.) a fellow traveller writes perceptively:
"From time to time, certain small groups of tech-savvy people happen to grow up in the same place and at the same time as certain powerful new technologies. Because of this unique background, these people - and these people alone - are able to very clearly perceive visions of the future which are both glorious and 100% technically feasible, the technical feasibility being something that they feel in their bones by virtue of direct experience, or at least direct observation. Those people therefore mistake these visions for being not just compelling but actually being inevitable, for being the obviously, undeniably natural and pre-destined state of the world, for being exactly what everybody else would want too, if only they understood things properly! But these futures aren't inevitable, they're actually mostly wishful thinking and they simply don't come to pass."
this reckoning can also be liberatory? in that disappointment is real but perhaps the secret knowledge was actually just circumstantial.
i think this was what i needed to understand in order to move forward.
spiro world - lupron (2021)
fatima yamaha - what's a girl to do (2004)
park hye jin - call me (2018)
[mp3] - 13:46
(thanks to k for the discoveries)
sometimes
it is profoundly difficult to write words on
the internet and
othertimes
it is profoundly difficult not to write words on
the internet
a few sentences which have recently haunted me after emerging from the mist:
"high on metaphysics"
"normal life file structure"
"performative kindness in the age of the global village"
philip glass - glassworks iii (island) (1981)
recoil - freeze (1992)
nine inch nails - the warm place (1994)
[mp3] - 17:58
"The past is the enemy in their eyes— a stubborn foe, always resisting the future."
years ago a hawk ate most of a mouse on the dock, and a skeleton rested there for more years, and now there there is a beautiful multicolored patch of moss. a sort of reincarnation.
eight years ago we founded a community called lines [web] where people share and discuss art, music, and technology. the site grew out of the monome forum, which itself was founded nine years earlier alongside the release of the first monome designs. lines came into being as a de-branded monome forum, where the topics might feel more expansive and welcoming without the pretense of being within commercial territory.
a few days ago we took the next step. lines is now community funded, and belongs to the community itself. despite the de-branding from the start, monome's heavy presence was foundational given how many discussions revolved around our open-source instruments. over time this became less central yet we continued to feel compelled to cover server costs. the monthly fees were not insignificant, yet this move to signify ownership and shift to direct support has been profound.
in two days the community raised enough funds to operate the server for three years. this is an order of magnitude more than we were aiming for.
the early days of a new project are always a joy. as the years wore on, moderating the community remained a net positive despite more frequent stressful episodes. in recent years, however, the scales tipped and we (my friends who volunteer to moderate) have been wavering. there were many moments when i wanted desperately to burn it all down.
do not underestimate the power of giving things away. what is this weird lightness? seeing a project refocus and reenergize. it will live on. it is free.
the snow departed and a new year arrived.
cleaning out digital closets by cramming everything in a single much larger closet.
found this photo of the workspace from august 2017. there is energy.
make art, not data
attempting to bury our digital past, into a new extremely spacious mechanical hard drive. it makes sounds which are a near perfect simulation of the winter mice chewing the inner walls of our old farmhouse.
"Man is probably not a machine, but he behaves as such in a situation where the machines impose his operating rules. Indeed, the progress of technology should not be understood as necessarily being the progress of mankind: far from it, they are not accompanied by a progress of thought, reflection and responsibility, since they eliminate their intervention and even often make them impossible."
the third way, i suppose, is to cease believing in the idea of progress altogether
fifty degree drop in an afternoon, blowing wind, rain to ice, water down the mountains, seemingly unfreezable, mist rising above the waves of the brook
ratio of collecting to reading
approached then energetically crossed the crisis threshold
today while visiting a beautiful church i met a beautiful pipe organ, to whom i quietly apologized for the undignified tunes it was being forced to play
"Reinecke was a smart though modest man — along with his early Chicago partner James Barnes, he once argued that the idea that “form follows function” was stupid because it assumes “that there is one, and only one right way of doing a thing.” The designers considered this restricted concept a “a hangover from the Platonic postulate of an eternal and immutable ideal form inhabiting a misty other world.” Here is a properly Deleuzian (and West Coast) sentiment: don’t make copies that derive from fixed tradition — make novel simulacra that work!"
early attempts at cataloging the language of shiitake
"All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend."
ideals as "probable cause for future experience" feels like a pretty good reason to have a few ideals! how do we talk about ideals?
schizmogenesis is the creation of division. graeber and wengrow cite it frequently in groups primarily defining themselves in opposition to one another. to say, it's been happening basically for eternity.
seeing how our present moment inclines one to be more or less against everything, the challenge becomes speaking about ideals on their own. not simply in reaction to garbage.
"She looked up fondly at the façade of the House. That it had been built as a bank gave peculiar satisfaction to its present occupants. They kept their sacks of meal in the bomb-proof money-vault, and aged their cider in kegs in safe deposit boxes. Over the fussy columns that faced the street the carved letters still read, "National Investors and Grain Factors Banking Association.' The Movement was not strong on names. They had no flag. Slogans came and went as the need did. There was always the Circle of Life to scratch on walls and pavements where Authority would have to see it. But when it came to names they were indifferent, accepting and ignoring whatever thy got called, afraid of being pinned down and penned in, unafraid of being absurd. So this best known and second oldest of all the cooperative Houses had no name except The Bank."
here at monome we are versed in a wide range of technologies.
when we teach soldering workshops i like to repeat something conveyed to us when we worked for a cinematic robotics company: hot glue was originally developed for the electronics industry, but co-opted by the craft world. in some sort of futile missionary work to elevate the reputation of this very useful material, we show how it strengthens and insulates wire connections.
i have no idea if this story is even true. and we also employ hot glue like any unsuspecting scrapbook enthusiast.
a friend suggested simply calling it what it is, even if it takes more words. for example:
listen to music
outside
in the daylight
under a tree
which is a radical departure considering my currently favorite-named thing, isms: technically correct in a meandering poetic-philosophical way yet also completely obfuscating and i dare say, stupid.
weird is relative
we saw the way but then got distracted
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
fifty years on, contemplating how far into the future they thought they were inventing. how many different futures there may have been. the potential recklessness of precipitating the truly unpredictable.
accelerated season willow fluff lands on pond outer space
tehn@nnnnnnnn.co