==== Just The Questions ==== partially automated question extraction from the files available at https://fo.am/publications (as of 2020-04-16) === questions from: texts/RADMIN_READER_2020.txt ===

What is radical admin?

A group of around 20 academics, artists and policy-makers gathered to discuss questions including these ones: How is art regulated in and by participatory and/ or collaborative research?

How does art itself (its aesthetics, institutions, funding, infrastructures) regulate the collaborative research in which it participates?

How might art participate in productive critiques of regulatory systems and infrastructures?

KR to contact the designer and contributors, does AP want to be cc’d in?

WHAT CAN ARTISTS DO FOR BUSINESS?

Is it any wonder this is the same moment we become less peeved by our systems, structures and formats and more proud of them?

The very ones we love to hate?

Perhaps it was a case of perception being mistaken for reality?

But who, I have to ask, will assume the role that Steveni created and held historically of Artist Placement Group’s uber administrator?

Could we in Education Working Group or Incidental Unit again find ourselves in a situation like the dynamic described above?

This is to say: feminised labour opens up opportunities (placements and others) but is precluded from taking advantage of these because doing administration, maintenance and other care work disqualifies this feminised labour from either being taken seriously as artistic practice or from pursuing other ways to make art?

And who is this ‘us’?

This begins with enquiring about open to whom and, vitally, by whom?

DO YOU REALLY PUT ALL OF YOUR INCOME IN THE COMMON WALLET ACCOUNT?

DO YOU REALLY DO ALL OF YOUR SPENDINGS FROM THE COMMON WALLET ACCOUNT?

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS?

HOW MUCH DO YOU EARN ALL TOGETHER ON AVERAGE?

YOU MUST ALL HAVE VERY SIMILAR LIVES THEN?

HOW DO YOU MAKE IT WORK?

WHO KEEPS TRACK OF WHO IS SPENDING WHAT?

WHAT IF ONE OF YOU SPENDS MORE THEN THEY BRING IN?

If we would all be spending exactly what we bring in, then what is the point of making our money a commons?

WHAT IF YOU DISAGREE ON WHAT SOMEONE IS SPENDING THEIR MONEY ON?

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH SAVINGS?

This however brings in a whole new level of complexity and negotiation: Do we collectively save for individual goals and what if we have to select between goals?

Do we collectively save for collective goals?

How do we decide on those goals?

WHAT HAPPENS IF IT GOES WRONG?

WHAT IF SOMEONE DECIDES TO BUY A FERRARI?

Do we have enough money on the current account to buy a Ferrari?

THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU ARE ALL GOOD FRIENDS, RIGHT?

HAS THE COMMON WALLET SOLVED YOUR MONEY PROBLEMS?

WHAT IF YOU WANT OUT?

CAN OTHER PEOPLE JOIN?

The questions I ask myself are rather: do I trust myself enough?

Do I believe I deserve the others’ trust?

And am I doing enough?

Am I, in other words, a good provider to the group?

It is also striking that in the questions I pose myself I continue to individualise myself, rather then thinking ‘are we doing enough?’ ‘how can we be good providers for each other?’.

“Should I check how much I spent?” “Oh shit, can I even think this way?”

How is it possible to generate equality through the process of collaborative work, given that each individual comes with different kinds of experience that produce diverse knowledge and levels of expertise and different needs, ambitions and ways of doing things?

• How to conceive the working process in which one’s own needs and interests are aligned with the collective and general ones?

• How do we value the work which has been performed and what has been jointly produced?

How is this value reassigned to individual collaborators, the working collective and the wider social and natural environment?

What are the prospects for these new values to compete on the capitalist market, which we all depend upon for securing our basic living necessities?

• How should these jointly produced assets and values be distributed in order to permeate the limits of the working collective, and not weaken it?

Could the experience of collaborative work generate more sustainable social and natural environments and livelihoods which in turn would function as a support for developing more socially and economically equitable relations?

•How do we protect and secure the communal status of the outcomes of collaborative work within individualised and privatised systems of value?

What is shared and how, to what ends and through which channels, and how might this be mobilised to resist privatisation and support the ongoing production of common values?

Day jobs?

Commissions?

Government funding?

Direct sales?

A gallerist?

The informal economy of the precariat?

Rather than allowing administration to infect our creative process, how can we keep it in check?

How do we imbue it with something like the ideals from Calvino’s Six Memos — lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency?

How could we reclaim tools of business administration and realign them with more inclusive ethics and an aesthetics of generosity?

Can we increase the probability of success through the numerology of creative accounting?

What promising ways could we imagine of transmuting administration into a creative practice?

What do these materials feel like?

The smooth texture of printing paper, cool spikiness of paperclips?

What can you hear?

Clicking of the keyboard, shuffling of paper, the whirring of a shredder… something else?

What does your office space smell like?

The scent of paper archives, or dusty floors, or the slightly plasticky waft emanating from hot computers?

How does your body feel — your shoulders, throat, chest, your hands or your belly?

Is there some tightness, cramping, squeezing?

What thoughts arise?

What emotions?

You might wonder — why would I engage with administration at all if it poses such an existential threat to my wellbeing?

What, or what can we artists do… When handling financial instruments feels dangerous?

When funding applications read like incomprehensible occult texts, and accounting spreadsheets are as indecipherable as the Kabbalah?

When the language of funding appears too obscure, impenetrable, as if fuelled by a hostile alien logic?

So could the tools of the dark arts help us engage with the bureaucratic and economic strategies deployed around us?

Or, if we want to go a step further, how do we consciously engage in the manipulation of reality through administrative activities?

What if you could use some of these instruments to pay your collaborators who are unable to get work permits in your country?

Or if you could facilitate sharing of infrastructure amongst distributed collectives?

What if you could reduce administrative complexity?

What current obstacles that you are facing could be overcome with experiments in the grey areas of global finance?

While we may be relieved to outsource paperwork to AI administrators, what might be their hidden costs?

Where is your home?

What does your home look like?

If there are windows, what can you see outside, what are the surroundings like?

Who are you?

What do you look like?

What are you wearing?

What is your body posture?

Are you sitting, standing, lying down, moving?

What are you doing?

What is your work?

Are you working to live or do you live to work?

Do you work alone or are you surrounded by your collaborators, human or otherwise?

How are other entities engaged in your work?

What do they look like?

How do you communicate with them?

Does your work support your livelihood?

Is there money in your world?

If so, what is the role of money in your life?

If not, what is valued, what is exchanged?

What would become important?

How would you spend this last month?

Who would you be with, work with, share your life with?

What if you had only a few minutes of life left in this world?

What would you really care about?

What would you want to take with you, if anything?

What matters?

Why, then, does the idea persist?

Q: Where does the money come from?

So that's more about accountability rather than accounting?

What is the legal status of this raffle?

Do we need use the Chatham House Rule, in that we might not want to talk about it outside of this room?As far as I know, in the UK you're not allowed to gamble without a license?

Can we blog about this?

I just wanted to double-check: if somebody can't be here because she's sick, is she disqualified?

The pitch isn't going to be judged?

So you can say any old shit?

Can you represent someone else's project?

It's good that we listed the National Health Service as a supporter in the festival budget (READER p. 34) Can I make a suggestion?

Can you represent the other people in your delegation?

That's what being a delegate is... Where will the money be paid from - is that anonymous too?

Q: If you win, who invoices for the money?

Is the money taxable?

Where should that line lie?.

And the delegation that wins, do they have to carry out their business idea?

Based on the other financial experiment that happened earlier in the festival (READER p. 12) - I realise time is limited but does anyone want to create any ground rules for the person who wins the money?

Do we want to have three bullet points on how they should spend it, or does everyone want to keep it completely open?

Are the stubs meant to be in the hat?

Hendo, do you want to just quickly explain what you're doing?

Do you have a raffle ticket?

IBEX: Shall we begin?

Is this being recorded?

What kind of recording?

FoAM: From here or over there?

HENDO: the countdown's there so - are you ready?

Gainsborough Wharf?

Port O'Bristol?

RAMDIN: Anyone who has a ticket who wasn't on the list?

Anyone here who is not in the raffle?

=== questions from: texts/147-1023-1-PB_FINAL_PUBLICATION.txt===

Therefore, in response to the highlighted gaps, can the role of the citizen be strengthened and enacted through new practices in the urban design process?

But how do we incorporate these design concepts?

The question remains, where should these productive foodscapes be located in order to craft this close tie and psychophysical relationship to the farmed site?

Therefore, how can the support be implemented and available land be allotted?

the bodily cartography staged?

As Martijn de Waal referred to digital tools as territory devices, where like-minded people recognize and create collectives with each other around an activity, could this collective bodily experience also be seen as form of collective and territory making?

Her art piece entitled ‘kan växter bli politiska?’ (can plants be political?)

The question remains: what paradigm shifts in urban sustainable design and behaviour could concur from positioning the body in recreating urban space?

Constructing Community through Maps?

Any Body?

=== questions from: texts/2005-Human-Scale-Systems.txt===

In this new era of pervasive presence information, why would my phone simply ring when my entire office could be used to alert me that someone wants to contact me?

Our investigations are guided by questions such as: What kinds of experiences can responsive spaces provide?

How can participants benefit from socially shaping their surroundings?

=== questions from: texts/2005-trg_book.txt===

Permanent Reality Generation, anyone?

Can they continue functioning separately, or are the edges between them what makes this world so special?

Given all the heart, craft, knowledge and energy that have been poured into making and presenting these installation-events, it's natural to ask what's at stake?

Why should we creators and participant players care about making these playspaces?

Starting Questions Most critically, how can we make events that are as compelling for the people who encounter them, as theater ever was in the most powerful of events audiences?

very broad challenge was: How can we make a responsive space and event within which initially accidental, unmarked, unrehearsed, ordinary gestures can acquire great symbolic charge?

Could technologies like computational media, realtime sound and video (re-)synthesis, cheap hobbyist sensors, and the like, be added to the mise en scene of theater as Antonin Artaud dreamed to extend the theater of cruelty in a way that is relevant to us today?

Spiraling Concepts By thickness, I refer not only to perceptual thickness -- density of video and sound textures, but also to the rich magma of social, imaginative, erotic fields within which people play even in ordinary situations, situations in which we perform without first analyzing, and cutting up our experiences in to analytic layers: how did I smile?

How did I rest my feet on the floor?

Did my voice carry or resonate well?

Did I stand too close or too far to other people?

Did I interrupt or listen or talk over or under other speakers?

Is the light too bright?

Why?

[Representations of] lifeworld Perhaps the principal (and only?)

What can we do in the lifeworld, then?

And what would it take to unmoor power-that-controls and put it in ethico-aesthetic play?

Why?

What in the world could that possibly be like?

How can we work not instrumentally but poetically with such material magmas and stay clear of formalizing, disembodying, and dessicating reductions to the informatic or cognitivist abstractions of the lifeworld?

To let people play immersed in media, we could have them step into a warm pool of water laced with honey, so why use computational media?

(I must confess, however, to deriving some pleasure from reading Alain Badiou's fearless and fierce polemic about What's at stake?

Can the material process of making things collectively be radically nondenumerable, countless, non-computable, non-dimensional, infinite, and yet remain also immanent, embodied and continuous?

Can we make playspaces that evoke not puzzle-solving behavior, but ethico-aesthetic-erotic play, and marvel, or vertigo, or elation?

topological?

Art all the way down?

…?

Why not just enclose a volume of ordinary space and repeat some experiments like the action art of 40 years ago?

If we really take seriously the challenge to pursue art all the way down, and if we are willing to put in play, in suspension, all the putative atoms, objects, and subjects of the world, then I ask you this question: to whom do you owe allegiance: Homo Sapiens Rex, or the world?

But what if there is no place to stand inside a bubbling chaosmotic soup of infinite inflation?

To what extent can we alchemically open and critically [Hardt and Negri, transform all of modernity's blackboxes such as market, machine, or human Empire, and if we do not have a place to stand in this age of globalized empire and perMultitude] manent war?

Is there any possibility for an immanent resistance for us not as non-docile bodies, but as resistive and desiring flesh?

What Is Philosophy?

What lasting social effects can we detect?

What counter-measures can be taken?

To what extent is it possible/allowable to intervene?

Is it possible to heighten individual awareness of acoustic manipulation in (public) living spaces; is it possible to take clear steps to break open the spatial structures and arrangements that have been created?

Who determines what is socially intolerable and where?

Where are the problems?

Mechanisms to rev the economic motor are subject to the simple rule: "what does it cost and how much profit is expected?"

Is stopping the torture of the steady drone possible for those who are not in the fortunate situation of being able to design their workplace according to their own discretion, but instead are at the mercy of all the colleagues with whom they share the space in an open-plan office?

"But what is time?

Open Source festival directorship, anyone?

Entangled Tunnels Could it be that each of us lives in our own reality, one which never completely coincides with anyone else's?

That we do not share a single universe?

Our experience of the world is mediated by a tangle of senses; dominated by What happens when our 'reality tunnel' intersects another?

How frequently do unconscious worlds bubble to the surface of conscious situations, in each daydream, speculation or "what if.."?

How often do we experience phase changes of physical matter, moving from solid to liquid to gaseous?

How many of us have discovered microscopic and macroscopic universes, being able to scratch the surface of a molecule, or feel the simulated heat of a remote star?

Have our nervous systems ever tricked us into temporarily experiencing events and spaces that people assure us don't exist?

Was this not perhaps what Ovid was aiming at when he wrote about the continuity of forms?

And what Lucretius was aiming at when he identified himself with that nature common to each and every thing?"

How does one design such realities?

What concepts, shapes and motions can bring forth these 'universes of the irreal', in which reality and fiction become con-fused and actuated?

Generating a reality able to be experienced as a shared, social space gave rise to an interesting question - how can a continuum of events in a given space be perceived as an immersive, rich reality?

This lead to the question - what would the players be touching and be touched by?

What would that do to our reality-tunnels?

What would it feel like to be immersed in such an elastic universe, being able to perceive its impermanence with our ordinary five (or six) senses?

Building systems that are somehow different to what we commonly regard as reality, is a job requiring a considerable number of approaches, a swathe of technology and a backpack full of perhaps well-worn (worn out?)

What the hell were we thinking?

So where is the payoff?

More what?

Or is our role merely the nightwatchman at the power plant, trying to keep all the systems working and ready to jump when something goes a bit awry?

Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations, have already attained?

Let the time which each gentleman shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, then can any thing be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion?

Why couldn't he drive off the road, why couldn't he update his car, why did someone have to program the amount of speed one needed to knock a wall over and then prerecord the sequence of it falling over?

It is the process of representation to our senses that also needs to be taken into account; how do we perceive the objects in the digital space and how do we perceive their dynamics?

What is the space that we perceive them moving inside of?

If there arises a space, how do we define our position within that space, what are the properties of distance and interaction that need to be taken into account?

How to think and talk about these things?

How to build spaces for experiments in playfulness, as opposed to experiments in hadron collisions?

How do we take this system, defined technically and exactly in some formal description language and make it intelligible, able to be interacted with?

What is a Physicist?

Implementation Issues explain Quantum Computation?

What sort of properties do we need to implement in a system so that enough information can be transferred to the player through their actions and perceptions?

How do we take advantage of the player's physical experience and physically-based perceptual systems in order to convey the virtual space most effectively?

How do we model a player's level of understanding or knowledge about a system's inner functionality?

How can we provide levels of information that are appropriate for a given player's level of understanding?

What effects in, and aspects of, the MR space will lead to body awareness falling into a state of automation, so that the entire experience of the player is within the MR world and their body is a transparent interface to that world?

And of course such an idea of interest defines a moving target: how much do I need to know about something for it no longer to be noise?

And how much knowledge then makes it boring?

Would it not be much more risk-free, convenient, personalised, funny, satisfactory and also cheaper to go virtual?

Where would you rather be: on Park Avenue?

or in Central Park?

Don't think about it - what is your first reaction?

Shouldn't all the trees and plants of Central Park appear boring compared to the magnificence of Park Avenue's skyscrapers?

Why have so many people left the city centres in favour of rural surroundings?

Why is hiking and vacationing in beautiful natural habitats a means to refresh our minds?

One could also ask where one would choose to live if one were in a galaxy far, far away, shaken by Star Wars: on the planet Naboo?

or on Coruscant?

What is the effect on the viewer of these types of "noise" when exhibited in paintings?

With sufficient publicity, artists may create a market for their work; with sufficient success, they may achieve 3 > Garden gnome virtual architecture?

One might even ask: so what?

Loos' principle can be pointedly stated by the following question: why build one pretty house with ornamentation when you can have two ugly ones for the same price?

3.5 > What is abstract art?

In view of the preliminary nature of these issues, let me just ask a few questions: Is "algorithmic art" [42] not a contradictio in adjecto, an inconsistency in the adjective modifying a noun, as in "round square? "

Why do modern biology books still use drawings made by humans rather than photography?

Is nature-beauty just the expression of deeper forms which are only revealed by human artistic talent?

Is the human mind capable of condensing the "essence" of natural form?

That is, are natural forms mere shadows of hidden objects as in Plato's cave metaphor - and are artists capable of recognising the "real" objects behind those shadows?

- Maya covering an illusory world of the senses?

What is it that makes Reality feel "so real? "

The song of a nightingale is beautiful, but is Korngold's "Violanta," Bach's "Matthäuspassion," or Mahler's "Sixth Symphony", his "Song of the Earth," Schönberg's "Gurrelieder," Schreker's "Irrelohe," or Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" even more so?

How is it possible for those masters to distil and create beauty from their experiences?

May this be an indication for transcendence and dualism?

Puthoff, Can the Vacuum be Engineered for Spaceflight Applications?

=== questions from: texts/2008-HPI.txt===

Before HPI can become a mutually beneficial symbiosis, we need to ask ourselves why, where and how can this two-way interface be realised?

What cognitive and social biases need to be overcome?

Can we develop a generalisable approach to interfacing with the entire plant kingdom, or do we require localised interactions between different species, ecotopes or alkaloids?

How do we bridge the differences of time and place on each side of human-plant interfaces?

By rediscovering the value of humility, can humans learn how to become part of systems more complex, older and stranger than themselves?

Aside from “archaic” ethnobotanical experiments, what are the ways to establish a two-way interface for communication between humans and plants?

Successful time-unbinding may be enough to allow communication with plants about our divergent perceptions of space and movement, but would humans be able to grasp what it is like to be a forest, consisting of billions of roots and rhizomes, trillions of leaves, stems, branches, flowers and insects?

Would our thinking become more reticulate, our logic less linear?

Would these communications lead to a more integrated, holistic consciousness?

However, as Schroeder notes, human sentience is not the only possible expression of consciousness, so why measure sentience by how well it mirrors humans?

=== questions from: texts/289-1986-2-PB.txt===

How could I learn from plants?

How could the knowledge of plants inform our workday, our collaborations, our organizations?

What general plant strategies can we notice, and which specific plants can we call to our aid and provide with space to act?

Does something like happiness exist for them?

Is this an ambition I can hold for them?

But how does someone answer questions which have never been posed, and when, on top of that the one who would answer is such an utter nobody to you?

Maybe drinking an infusion of elder flowers can perform mutual healing?

Maybe the potential for transgression acted out from the vegetal towards the human, could possibly help to imagine plant agency with plasticity?

Similarly, Špela questions the relational framing between herself, the plants, and the audience: Which one would plants approve of?

Science?

Paganism?

Market economies?

Wouldn’t a verbal narrative go against my personal experience with plants, one that made me realise precisely the opposite: the semantics of our logos limit the understanding of their syncretic being?

What can be a generous attitude in the face of possible exploitations?

What kinds of generosity can we foster from situations of precarity?

=== questions from: texts/CodingCulturesHandbook_1.txt===

What is that Star?

How can these kinds of process-driven collaborations, feeding into the new distribution portals of the internet, “exploit the commercial hunger for new content” and reshape political, cultural and social landscapes?

What is FoAM?

But first..... What’s not free about free beer?

How could you make money providing free hosting and distribution for other people’s content?

With all these limitations why do people publish on these sites rather than those that are more likely to respect their rights?

When is there going to be a stronger reaction to it all?

How do community and activist media define themselves now that one of their core aims has been fulfilled?

How are the processes of production different from, or antagonistic to, the commerical sphere?

What social relations are being sought between users and how do they translate to the offline world?

How can these ‘free media’ projects directly effect social change, or support work towards it?

The issue now is, Who controls this media, this community, the money it generates, its infrastructure and its technology?

As the old saying goes, “we don’t want a slice of the cake, we want the whole bakery.” Some basic principles for “free media” If we are looking to create media and infrastructures that are free as in freedom, not as in beer, what core principles do we need?

Recycling Free Knowledge Meetings: a space to share your knowledge—a Capoeira demonstration A technological meeting or a cultural proccess?

Doubts???

What is that Star?

Media activism and cultural activism The government, mainstream media, politicians, and even organizers and activists who have been involved since July 2006, didn’t know what exactly had happened: why would a fading subject be revived and develop this momentum all of a sudden?

save this space?” If there were a single and overarching script at the very beginning, I don’t think people would come together for such a prolonged fight.

But... what can make it live?

A who him tink him is?

A time for empowerment or a new digital divide?

But how will we use the portal and what will we do with our programs and initiatives to ensure that this is an era of empowerment and not a time of further division?

How many of you have concrete programs in place that are premised upon your job or the jobs of your colleagues being replaced permanently by members of the community or disenfranchised group that you work with?

=== questions from: texts/Enacting_futures_in_postnormal_times.txt===

We see prehearsals and pre-enactments as parts of a more general ‘‘lab approach’’ to futures where any ‘‘what if?’’ question can be translated into an experiment able to be performed in the present.

How can we keep preferred futures alive, while at the same time responding appropriately to current change?

What can we extrapolate from these aptitudes to encourage us not to shy away from uncertainty, but to inhabit, embrace and evolve with it?

What can be learnt from existing dispositions that ﬂourish in uncertainty, such as meditation, play and improvisation?

What have we learnt so far?

Being without existing: The futures community at a turning point?

=== questions from: texts/From_representation_to_performance_respo.txt===

What is the public sphere in cyberspace?

What should the public sphere in cyberspace be?

What should we do with the public sphere in cyberspace?

What can we do with the public sphere in cyberspace?

What should the public sphere in cyberspace be?

What should we do with the public sphere in cyberspace?

What can we do with the public sphere in cyberspace?

We ask: “What alternative ways of being together in public evolved over the centuries since the Greek agora?” and “What in fact is this stuff that cyberspace and public sphere are made of?” Overall, our paper has three threads.

2 What’s Public In Public Spheres?

In the enlightenment conception, what does the public sphere allow us to do?

Damiris and Wild, in their paper “The Internet: A New Agora?” have perceptively and usefully described different modes of public behavior: rational action, social action and ethical action.

What examples from history can we draw on for alternative ways of being public, of public performance?

What sorts of repetition and variety emerging in play can we expect in cyberspace?

How can we construct alternate forms of public social action in our contemporary mixed architectures built out of computation, digital media and steel?

What are some “techniques” that we might invent appropriate to such hybrid architecture?

Could translation become an organism living inside the cyberpublic space alongside more automatic processes?

How can we achieve such collective intuition and pliability in today’s public spaces?

What is the stuff, the fabric of society that we wish to make elastic?

The Internet: A New Agora?

=== questions from: texts/MakingThingsPhysical_FoAM_TU-20180731.txt=== === questions from: texts/Michka_Melo_-_La_science_nest_pas_reservee_aux_scientifiques.txt===

Comment garder le contrôle sur l’engin ?

Qui est responsable s’il blesse quelqu’un ?

Ne devrions-nous pas nous focaliser sur d’autres projets plus fondamentaux, comme travailler sur nos besoins en énergie ?

La semaine passée, c’était : comment répartir équitablement les surfaces du jardin partagé entre cultures vivrières et cultures expérimentales ?

Comment des gens ordinaires ont-ils pu s’approprier des sujets si complexes ?

Comment des gens ordinaires ont-ils pu s’approprier des sujets si complexes, tout en autoproduisant en partie leur alimentation et leur énergie ?

La science et la technique ne seraient donc pas réservées aux expert.e.s ?

=== questions from: texts/Nightly_Build_-_The_Passage_2.txt===

But will this really start to make it better?

Do I have to try all the flavours to know I want this one?

In a healthy bioregion we... cherish the resilience in Nature claim responsibility for the wellbeing of the place where we live show respect for maintenance learn to see the good in failure value local examples and local knowledge recover what’s disappearing, like wildlife, skills and culture Why this need for certainty?

This fear of exposing the layers of blanket hiding my heart?

=== questions from: texts/Organoleptic_Interfaces_Orru_sm.txt===

Finding the challenge and framing 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Societal Challenge – Why I serve this particular recipe?

Why Artistic research?

Leonard terrace?

How would technology solve the relationship between nature and humans?

Furthermore, while energy, wind and water were readily discussed, why was food not also considered as a viable resource for urban-making?

It emphasizes the ‘multiplicity of subjects’ and the ‘relative other’ challenging neutral relationships between body, perception, representation and space, instead raising questions such as: whose body, whose space, which sight, how, when, why?’ Several explorative experiments are staged through; traversing foodscapes, investigating digital and bodily methods of cartography, and staging a bodily choreography of making and performing a garden space using dance.

What if food was viewed as an energy supply on par with solar and wind, would it then take a more prominent role in the development of sustainable cities?

What remains to be further explored in contemporary urbanmaking is what role does the body takes in this relationship?

1.1 Introduction - why this recipe?

If the visual aspect can enforce environmental awareness – what does this mean in terms of design concepts for the aesthetic or experience in which the triggers are sensorial and embodied?

Food can be a powerful shaper of urban space and lives and the experience of foodscapes has an embodied effect on environmental enactment and place attachment, and the question in my research is how to enable and explore this and by what means?

The question is not how much food can be produced, but rather, what spatial immersions could trigger a change in behaviour?

1.2 Societal Challenges - why I serve this particular recipe?

Therefore, what urban methodology within the urban food field could be introduced to a wider public in order to harvest a wide-ranging awareness?

What forms of embodied engagement, other than the act of gardening, exist?

As seasonal behaviour is thorny to regulate, could it be perceived as part of public health and wellbeing?

In addition, there is also a lack of research insight into urban agriculture to help policy-makers address these issues as ‘to what specific conditions this activity can deliver in its alleged public health, social, economic and environmental benefits, and to whom?’ (Wiskerke and Viljoen 2012, p. 28).

The challenge is to create an awareness surrounding urban food behaviour beyond dietary choices and explore how urban space may generate a connection to seasons and nature through everyday spatial experiences and sequence of activity?

He concludes by posing questions for further research; ‘What characteristics of natural settings (e.g., biodiversity, level of disturbance, proximity, accessibility) are important for triggering a beneficial interaction?

How do these characteristics vary in importance between different cultures, geographic regions and socio-economic groups?

Research on place attachment states that ‘Although one’s connections to a place may influence pro-environmental behaviour, the dearth of evidence on this topic means that definitive conclusions are difficult to draw […] what is known about the relation between place attachment and actual pro-environmental behaviour?’ (Scannel and Gifford 2010, p. 290).

They claim that, an ‘environmental identity’ is formed but, in regards to space, I am curious as to what spatial conditions curate this?

What occurs when embodiment as a method of enactment, embedding and activating is used in planning, conceptual design and in agency-making of spaces?

Would this approach sustain a deeper commitment to pro-environmental behaviour?

How could this methodology be formulated?

Should these stories be our own, whether indirect or direct, can they also conjure up this relation equally through participation and observation?

1.2.5 Why Artistic Research?

How is action and transformation inscribed?

Since there are numerous best case scenarios of urban agriculture that are documented from all places in the world, what is the next stage for more implementation, documentation and dissemination?

social planning schemes?

Gardening alone did not offer the opportunity to develop new methods for making my enquiry apart from the obvious – engaged in growing and understanding of what it meant to participate in this activity with my neighbours.9 The experience was personal and subjective and brought up the questions of how would it be transferred to a larger audience?

1.4.1 Situating Research Aims In Eating Architecture, Singley and Horowitz (2004, p. 5) query ‘What can be learned by examining the intersections of the preparation of meals and the production of space?

What can be made from the conflation of aesthetic and sensory tastes in architectural design and what is disclosed by their dissociation?

In response to the gaps highlighted, the following research questions (RQ’S) are applied: RQ (main) - What creative processes within urban-making practice can develop an embodied methodology and alternate situated knowledge to instigate deeper commitments in forms of diverse agencies, relations and transformation towards environmental behaviour with food and with the body?

RQ- sub 1 - If embodied methodology is consciously poised in the approach of urban-making, which practices can revise behaviour and reframe patterns of the everyday urban experience?

RQ- sub 2 - What spatial immersions could trigger a transformation in behaviour?

RQ/Paper 1 (P1) - What is an embodied practice in architectural urban making that can instigate spatial agency and deeper environmental commitment both in individual and collective forms?

RQ/ Paper 2 (P2) - By positioning the singular body in urban-making via way of artistic research in the field of Butoh dance and imagineering, what shift for sustainable behaviour could concur by developing and implementing new methods for staging situated contact?

In order to generate this potential, what spatial affects are needed and how could they be explored via way of artistic methods in urban-making?

Paper 2 explored further how activated imagineering and performance could play a role in establishing this deep commitment to the environment from a bodily artistic research perspective?

The starting research questions was – how can the role of the citizen be strengthened and enacted through new practices in the urban design process?

and, how do we identify with green spaces in cities, specifically urban gardening and new forms of creative and artistic user participation and civic dialogue at early stages?

From within architectural research I pose the question: How can the interaction of the body in Butoh practice and food production, set in relation to one another, improve the understanding and handling of urban space where time is an aspect in design?

But what is the body aware of?

And which body is it?

But what relation do the senses play with the body and urban-making in the contemporary discourse and in regards to my research?

what about the city as a sensorium?

The plum tree?

If body and space are containers of time, do they have the potential to evoke a deeper commitment towards the environment?

Most architectural urban interventions are conducted in similar manner, but what happens if you create that embodied knowledge prior to the space being created?

Why map?

Or rather, why cartograph?

‘Does the brain have knowledge?’ I asked.

Gravity?

How to stand up?

She moves, sudden move – does she remember something?

What are the different interpretations of butoh?

Why butoh?

Could this be a recognition or acute awareness of time?

Can we be free of these patterns if they are detrimental?

What memory and behaviours last after the movement?

How can I use this corporeal dynamic of situated knowledge when recreating urban space?

When Butoh is put into a narrative state, one which is written as an ‘instruction’ for environmental research, what outcomes can occur?

3.2 Methodology – cultivating imagination ‘Recognizing, imagining, Relation… Escape, the problems at our heels?

Participant’s imaginations are triggered by several means through different interventions using embodiment, senses and time as working agents, answering the question - what role does imagination play in the research?

What is an embodied practice in architectural urban making that can instigate spatial agency and deeper environmental commitment both in individual and collective forms?

How can the act of cartography create new forms of social engagement and local know-how?

As well as transfer a knowledge to the local community by asking the way?

By positioning the singular body in urban-making via way of artistic research in the field of Butoh dance and imagineering, what paradigm shifts in sustainable behaviour could concur by developing and staging new methods of situated contact?

Artists invited included: • Malin Lobell staged a political exhibition asking ‘are plants political?

Most at home in the interstices between the one and the other, doesn’t architecture boil down precisely to this: a disciplined yet creative exploration of our common state of embodiment?’ The division of the theme into the sub-themes was interesting in order to explore how various components of the body – feet, head and torso – contribute to a state of embodiment and transdisciplinary collaboration.

Given these interfaces, how would the constructed farmscape be perceived by the butoh body?

And what cross-dialogue would occur with the space between Frauke and Paperscapes?

The space between Frauke approaching them, and their held breathe in silence, created a tension of not knowing – was the piece complete?

What did you notice?

What is the difference?

What conversations with the urban environment took place?

How did the ‘materials’ seem to you?

One participant encountered plastic waste and the immediate reaction was ‘why didn’t someone throw this away?’ There was a response of something out of place, and an ecological behaviour emerged.

When focusing on your internal speed (indoor exercise), and in the butoh technique of erasing of oneself, what occurred?

Their driving questions were: What memories sleep in the soil?

Who created them?

And how are they shared and transmitted, between people and across the intricate layers of space and time?

4.4.1 Instant cartography - ‘can you show me the way to Leonard Terrace?’ The intention of the intervention was about discovery, memory and way-finding.

When we understand where something is, how do we draw a map to it for a stranger?

They needed to ask a person(s) to draw a map directing them back to Leonard terrace?

What is an embodied practice in architectural urban making that can instigate spatial agency and deeper environmental commitment both in individual and collective forms?

Collection of Hand-drawn maps, Digest 03 – Instant Cartography How can the act of cartography create new forms of social engagement and local know-how?

As well as transfer a knowledge to the local community by asking the way?

Photos and short documentary film Photos and short documentary film By positioning the singular body in urban-making via way of artistic research in the field of dance and imagineering, what paradigm shifts in sustainable behaviour could concur by developing and staging new methods of situated contact?

What occurs to the research when the result are re-made into small book artefacts and given to the public eye?

The driving questions in the paper were: what is the role of artistic research to unearth transformed behaviour when it comes to food and growing practices?

And, how do we identify with green spaces in cities, specifically urban gardening and new forms of creative and artistic user participation and civic dialogue at early stages of urban design processes?

Both questions are situated under the umbrella research question: What is an embodied practice in architectural urban making that can instigate spatial agency and deeper environmental commitment both in individual and collective forms?

Interview questions steered around the following points: • Initial reaction: what are your initial thoughts?

• Concept: What do you think about the concept of the app?

Do you consider this a participatory process?

Collaborative?

participatory + collaboratory?

• Perception: How does mapping your ‘perception’ of these spaces make you experience the space differently or not?

Did it change the way you perceived the built environment due to this kind of mapping exercise?

More involved?

More conceptually understanding?

Change: Do you see how the space could be changed in a more concrete way?

Questions asked: Did it feel like we were asking the right questions and categories?

Anything we missed?

• Potential: What are the potentials for using such a device?

• Better design: what could have been done better?

• Safari event: what did you think of the event combined with mapping?

How do you reach people that don’t know that they want to garden?

How can you make a more multiple use of the area?

It leaves me to ask, if the senses do play a vital role in our environmental identity with urban space, how are they to be written about?

It was also not clear how the senses were crucial in order to form a collective awareness, nor, whether the bond between the senses is strengthened by acting in a community rather than by oneself?

In creating new collective processes, how do such processes of activating a body(ies) relate to the act of cartography and experience?

Is this false cartography?

Forced maps?

In her performance, is she more concerned with the concepts underlying the research work or in her skill and performance style?

Time comes up only in regards to season, but how can the discussion on time be expanded in order to think of it in relation to evolutionary time?

The question remains on what does this engagement imply on cognition, the body, and the understanding of the world?

Do I detect a changing role of the ‘expert’ and therefore a changing combination of skills?

An agent?

Is this a type of spokesperson?

Someone who speaks on the behalf of space, species and inhabitants?

She queries on ‘what are the architect’s roles and tools in a relational practice?

She states, ‘A body, in Deleuze, can be most anything; it can be an animal, a body of sounds, a linguistic corpus, a social body; yet, a body must be defined as a unity of parts, parts held together relationally and having a capacity to affect and be affected both internally and externally… we agree with Deleuze in that it is necessary to understand that there are many bodies: individual, collective, mystical, corporate, institutional, animal, even the body of the world; and the heavens… However, what bodies may become, what new molar organizations take place…what can a body do?’ It is useful to return to the terms ‘organoleptic interfaces’ which indicated the ability for the senses to be stimulated by the components in a given context.

Straying away from a market driven concept such as sustainability, nature holds a thicker potential for exploration and for generating meaning, because in essence, aren’t we also nature?

Returning to the main research question: What creative processes within urban-making practice can develop an embodied methodology that instigates deeper commitments in forms of diverse agencies and transformation towards environmental behaviour with food and with the body?

How do these two masses of relations associate with one another?

Could there be a new way to envision assemblages as swarms that ‘instruct’ ecological commitment to urban living and making?

This further research will continue to explore what the embodied corporeal process via diverse bodily exposure can do for the creation of a relational aesthetics in urban green space?

What are the benefits of interacting with nature?

How to Talk About the Body?

Constructing Community through Maps?

Canada: Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z0SjiuNjK0g Steel, C., 2008.

Retrieved May 15, 2014, from http://www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/tentoonstelling.php?t_id=9112002 SU-EN, Sandberg, M., & Kennedy, G,.

Growing Alone, Growing Together, growing apart?

Questions to Ekolåden: What determines the change in suppliers of certain produce year to year?

What determines your choice of Swedish supplied produce each week?

Suppliers?

Do you think you could extend your services to ‘educating’ consumers how to eat locally and seasonally?

How much is the diversity of your supply effected by increase in demand?

What has been increase in demand the past years and how have you responded?

More farmers?

Higher yield?

Why don’t you set up relationships with farmers closer to Stockholm?

What do you consider the benefits of a Swedish vegetable box?

How do vegetables get transported?

However, what are your initial thoughts?

• Concept: What do you think about the concept of the app?

Do you consider this a participatory process?

Collaborative?

participatory + collaborators • Perception: How does mapping your ‘perception’ of these spaces make you experience the space differently or not?

Did it change the way you perceived the built environment due to this kind of mapping exercise?

how it was changed a. more involved?

b. more conceptually understanding?

• Change: Do you see how the space could be changed in a more concrete way?

• Questions asked: Did it feel like we were asking the right questions and categories?

Anything we missed?

• Potential: What are the potentials for using such a device?

• Better design: what could have been done better?

• Safari event: what did you think of the event combined with mapping?

(max 600 characters) Upload: Record Site description would you like to tell us more?

Challenges [ ] mean neighbours [ ] industrial site = bad soil [ ] who owns this land?

(max 600 characters) Feel like telling us more or recording?

Upload: Record Site description would you like to tell us more?

What did you notice?

What is the difference?

What conversations with the urban environment took place?

How did the ‘materials’ seem to you?

When focusing on your internal speed (indoor exercise), and in the butoh technique of erasing of oneself, what occurred?

Therefore, in response to the highlighted gaps, can the role of the citizen be strengthened and enacted through new practices in the urban design process?

But how do we incorporate these design concepts?

The question remains, where should these productive foodscapes be located in order to craft this close tie and psychophysical relationship to the farmed site?

Therefore, how can the support be implemented and available land be allotted?

Its aim was to become a sensuous immersion and encounter, but how was the bodily cartography staged?

As Martijn de Waal referred to digital tools as territory devices, where like-minded people recognize and create collectives with each other around an activity, could this collective bodily experience also be seen as form of collective and territory making?

Her art piece entitled ‘kan växter bli politiska?’ (can plants be political?)

The question remains: what paradigm shifts in urban sustainable design and behaviour could concur from positioning the body in recreating urban space?

Constructing Community through Maps?

Any Body?

stroom.nl/activiteiten/tentoonstelling.php?t_id=9112002 Swedish Research Council Formas.

From within architectural research I pose the question: How can the interaction of the body in butoh practice and food production, set in relation to one another, improve understanding and handling of urban space where time is an aspect in design?

I pose the question: How can the interaction of the body in butoh practice and food production, set in relation to one another, improve the understanding and handling of urban space, where time becomes an aspect in design?

A recognition of time, or a timely awareness?

In a foodscape setting, could I extend the idea that grown produce defines in-between space, not as a void, but rather as a potential for transformation?

If the aim is to transform behaviour of how we access and consume food, shouldn’t this shift exist in the body rather than in the intellect?

If this dynamic is repeated as a regular rhythm, at what point in time does it also begin to influence the passer-by, the extended audience?

If humans have a tacit evolutionary mechanism just like any other species, why do we eat out of season?

Have humans masked their evolutionary design mechanism, one that is so deeply embedded 210 in other species?

How does a space of this kind function?

What does this mean in terms of creating urban space that instigates a reflection on ecological impacts?

Could this process be ma?

With the butoh performance submerged in the paperscape modelled space, would Frauke understand the macro construct in which she was supposed to react and reflect?

Since the body’s rhythm is cyclical and metabolic, how can urban space promote a behavioural metabolism as well?

Could swarming be enacted through the butoh technique as a displaced perspective?

In: Why Look at Animals?

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Stj-0PLDN0 Reynolds JM (2015) Allegories of Time and Space: Japanese Identity in Photography and Architecture.

Canada: Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z0SjiuNjK0g SU-EN, Sandberg M and Kennedy G (2003) Butoh - Body and the World.

The term then began to be used to describe the consumption of resources and waste generation as indicators of sustainability.1 So, how can it be applied in contemporary refurbishment practice?

Mimicking this model, how can we design cities to liken organic systems that embody a swarm-like behaviour between its inhabitants and the built environment?

Rather than have built environments that deplete resources, can we turn this around into a restorative urbanism that produces resources?

In light of all benefits, what obstacles can arise when setting up such development strategies?

Did you know that was there?

Who knew?

To transfer spatial agency, what does this mean?

who are you?

to upload a picture, click here... where are you?

Living Archives asked - ‘memories are created by someone, but how are they shared and transmitted, between people and across the intricate layers of space and time?’

is it not so?

When we understand where something is, how do we draw a map to it?

How do we memorize direction to somewhere?

can you show me the way to leonard terrace?

Could they ask for directions in return?

Is this false?

Or is it the other way around, that the world is mathematical and in reality the net is woven into nature, woven by nature and therefore is found in sunflower seeds, seashells and mountain formations?

How can we tell the dancer from the dance?

=== questions from: texts/RADMIN_READER_2019.txt===

In other words, do you have more upside or downside?

When we say that administration is creative in this sense, does it imply that the public servant has a right to a vision of his own that he can seek to have embodied in concrete form, in institutions, laws or practices?

Does this mean that the administrator’s creativeness must be exercised only in finding ways and means of carrying out the policy given him, or, at the most, in advising his Minister when changes of policy are contemplated?

If so, What right has the public servant to any kind of vision of a world that might be made in some small degree better by his administrative action?

Has he a right to be creative in any wider sense than is inherent in his duty to make his administrative machine’ more efficient to carry out the tasks given it from above?

so little assured don’t know what that we simply re false to say that su lly es ta pr to a be ak so we en?

an havdescribed by To of e er ft nc (a se es an also a de tion of the ?

Gravitationa What differe conversation conversation we know tha accounting via attractio typical role a aries?

What would this mean?

What would it look like in practice?

30 Gravitational Structure What differentiates a centred conversation from a bounded conversation?

That is, how do we know that something like accounting is being structured via attraction rather than via typical role and group boundaries?

al Structure entiates a centred n from a bounded n?

Why?

Why should we care about the survival of these quotidian spaces, with their tencent goods, at a time of crisis when many American cities lack affordable housing and clean water?

… “Will this burn down my house?

Will this be bright enough?

Can I use this in my fridge?” As far as a nut and bolt goes, they ask, “Can I use this outside?” No, you cannot.

“Says who?” he protested.

“Do you have any idea how many times I get returns of ripped-open nuts-and-bolts packages … because customers bought the wrong one the first time, because there was no one helping them and they just grabbed it?

How many store owners will follow Crest Hardware’s example and resist the efficiency experts?

Who will succeed the current generation of owners?

And what can we learn from those stores that don’t keep it within the family?

37 Selected emails to Cube-Cola, The Early Years Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:50:44 -0000 From: DES SAR-SS (Ross) To: kate rich Subject: RE: Cube Cola Kate, hope all is well, It’s a while since I popped over to pick up some cube concentrate - I’m the chap who fixes helicopters?

Also, I was wondering, had you tried making the syrup using less water so that it was thicker?

That way you could get more fizz?

Or do you have problems getting the sugar to dissolve?

Sincerely, Marcela Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:06:59 +0100 From: Sarah To: cola@sparror.cubecinema.com Subject: Cube Cola Hi, I was given a little pot of the cube cola concentrate a while ago, and within a month it had corroded a hole in the bottom of the container, and leaked all over the fridge...Is is usually this fearsome?!

Anyway, I still want to have a go at making it, and would like to know how to order it please?

any thoughts?

Yours Sincerely, Louise Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 15:23:12 +0100 From: Eberhard To: cola@cubecinema.com Subject: Bitcoin?

Hi, I want to know, if you take payment via Bitcoin?

What if we were to ‘queer’ capitalist hegemony and break apart some of its consolidating associations?

But how might we re-envision that body as more open and permeable, as having orifices through which non-capitalism might enter?

W hat violence do we do to these when we normalise all commodity production as capitalist commodity production?

Can we, with our students, generate different representations of the economic world, ones in which non-capitalist class relations and forms of economy are prevalent and widespread?

[8] If we can, what might be the impact of these representations?

Might they not help to make anticapitalist activism seem less quixotic and m ore realistic?

Might they contribute to a noncapitalist politics of economic invention?

One can then raise the point that to call the showing the video a Who’ s Counting?

[7] I have found that upper level undergraduate and graduate given social organisation, and as such resists social transformation?

In 2016, a group of academics who were writing an attempt to justify something called the ‘Business School Impact System’ asked ‘what would happen if business schools were to disappear?’ It was a rhetorical question in one sense, since it was meant to 50 propel the reader to an understanding of why it was so important that the ‘Business School Impact System’ was adopted, but their answer was: not much.

How about shutting down the b-school, and opening schools for organizing?

But if we do want to take business out of the business school, or rather, want to expand the business school so that it wasn’t only focused on one specific form of business, that wasn’t only aimed at managers, why not begin by reconsidering the nature of the exclusions that have made this particular door to knowledge?

And that doesn’t cover ... it would never go anywhere near that in a university would it?” (Pam, Youth Worker, regional community organisation) “Just it’s been very difficult working with the finance office, getting them to pay 55 for childcare ... even though that was you know written into the grants … getting them to pay the invoices of the community organisation in a timely fashion ... then just wanting everything in this kind of ridiculously rigid form.” (Lena, Co-I on 2 CC awards, including Digital Capital Project) Time and Money – a fictional and symbolic relationship The relationship between money and time, how this is imagined and managed on these projects, fundamentally shapes and reflects the nature of the research partnerships in this programme.

But what is it that allows this conversion of future promises and plans into a lived reality , that the rest of us hav e to abide by and view as ‘real’?

• How can we actively practice the commons together in our everyday work and life?

• What is the purpose of art, and the role of the artist in all this?

• What is the relationship between an art institution’s vision and engagement in cultural production, and its administrative and managerial ethos?

• Why are we always so busy?

• How do we dismantle the feeling of always being too busy?

• How can we value reproductive labor as an essential part of productivity?

• How can we unlearn the form of productivity that feeds on busyness?

• How can we feed the collective imagination towards unlearning capitalism?

If art and cultural productions express a desire for social change, then doesn’t what we show need to be reconnected to the conditions in which our artworks and shows are made possible, so that this process might become leverage for the change itself?

=== questions from: texts/dust-and-shadow-001_screen.txt===

You know what the issue is with this world?

A déjà vu?

A signal?

Has Phoenix risen from its ashes, transformed?

Why even attempt to build cities in the desert?

What would a banishing ritual for these haunted utopias look like?

Could they be transformed, or should they be reused and recycled, like planes in the boneyard?

So, how can we animate non-modern sensibilities without becoming entrapped by dualisms of light and darkness, good and evil, us and them, love and power?

How do we decentre without falling into the abyss of nihilism?

To help you choose, ask yourself: what in the landscape calls to you and what do you feel drawn toward?

Reﬂections: List things you noticed about this thing that you did not notice before?

Has your feelings or thoughts about this entity changed and if so, how?

What does this feel like from moment to moment?

Reﬂections: What did you hear?

What changed in the soundﬁeld for you as you changed methods of listening?

Why did you choose those entities?

[…] If we cannot survive without our order, how can she [the wit ] survive in solitude?

And yet the history of “to manifest” lies not in the realm of knowledge, but in delinquency: “to be caught in the act.” To make manifest as Man, a being among others—is this not a form of delinquency or perhaps one might say, conjuring, to make oneself appear to the world in such a way?

Surely this magical manifestation obliges some sort of calling out?

He steps out, walks across the vastness he calls the unknown, the immense gulf that lies between himself and the world, and what does he see?

―Ursula K. Le Guin, Deep in Admiration What types of bridges does the young scientist build?

How many distances can homo sapiens be expected to cover?

Why not?

Reﬂections: What differences did you notice between the lines and squiggle walking?

How did your body, mind, attention, or awareness of the landscape change?

But the queﬆion is: will the yucca moth migrate with the joshua tree?

If it won’t, then what happens?"

What are the environmental politics in the North American South West, speciﬁcally to life in the desert?

What are the implications for the people, plants, plastics (etc) and the environment they live in?

What peculiar futures or parallel presents exist in this “Valley of the Sun”?

What new worlds can emerge from a region swayed by the unpredictability of heatwaves, poor water distribution and overenthusiastic promises of the tech industry?

=== questions from: texts/fieldguide-random-forests.txt===

Why draw a straight line?

Can autonomous machines extend our sensitivity towards natural processes and report back to us, as we humans seems to fall in our own traps over and over again?

What does it mean if machines join animals and plants there on more equal levels of awareness?

What if they related to their environment the way organisms do?

Asking: what are it’s daily goals?

What are it’s daily challenges?

What opportunities is it looking for?

Where does it get information to act on?

What social communities does it belong to?

How does it avoid danger?

What are it’s energy sources?

How does it celebrate it’s existence?

Could observation be the basis for designing technologies adapted to local conditions?

And could building up an ethogram - a catalogue or inventory of behaviours or actions exhibited by an animal - form a blueprint for a local machine?

How could a machine learn from species or natural patterns around it?

What does this emerging 'synthetic worldview' mean for the appreciation of environmental complexity and the power-relations between our technologies and their environment?

Could environmental literacy in the artiﬁcial agents that populate our environment create any opening towards practices of environmental solidarity, intimacy, aﬃnity, allegiance, reverence, commitment and kinship ?

What can happen between analysing and relating?

Between modelling and enacting co-habitation?

R andom Forests explores the signiﬁcance of the intellectual emancipation of machines - not so much pragmatically but ecologically, culturally and ethically: what does the emergence of machine learning in biodiverse environments mean for those spaces and those organisms?

What does it mean if machines join animals and plants there on more equal levels of awareness?

What is the diﬀerence that makes the diﬀerence?

But it also raises questions: how can we protect what we cannot understand?

Does environmental literacy for machines imply that they reﬁne their known-unknowns?

Where would you even start to look for ways of doing that?

How would that be applicable to embodied algorithms and autonomous artiﬁcial agents?

Is it signiﬁcant in this context that species like humans have evolved with millions of nerve ends exposed to the environment in our skin, nose, eyes and ears, but robots generally have only a few?

Would their environmental awareness be diﬀerent if their bodies had trillions of pressure receptors, temperature receptors, etc?

In other words does embodiment mean a certain level of somatosensory or hetero-perception?

Does ‘deep mind’ in this domain imply ‘deep body’?

Are corporality and physical intimacy a drivers for co-existence?

Does the fragility of our bodies induce us relate to each other?

Does fragility lead to care?

DOES FRAGILITY LEAD TO CARE OR KINSHIP WHAT IF THE FUTURE OF THE AMAZON DEPENDS ON AMAZON’S ALGORITHMS?

Elephant-culture, Hyena-culture, Orca-culture, Ant-culture or Orangutang-culture, are humans smart enough to recognise the cultures of non-humans?

What kind of spaces would to rehabilitate us?

And what kind of technologies would ﬁt to such spaces?

Would it in isolation from human inﬂuences adopt Hyenas, Orcas or Ants as its peers?

Would intelligent machines start to develop Savanna literacy over suﬃcient lengths of time in Africa in the way Elephants, Zebras and Hyenas have?

Does it matter that AI is less bound to a particular body?

If artiﬁcial agents can be radically diﬀerent from their predecessors, would intergenertional-knowledge-transfer less vital to machines than it is to elephants?

And to step into even more nebulous territory: does hereditary embodiment therefore lead to hereditary environmental literacy?

Why isn’t instinct enough for all animals?

Why bother with these fragile cultures that need to be transferred?

And perhaps Elephant culture enable much more complex networks of dependencies than Flies?

When speaking to Brian House during the MAAJAAM residency in Estonia he phrased it as: “if nature is seen as a system, what it is being optimise it for?” And during the Terschelling ﬁeldwork session Sjef van Gaalen asked: “When models are the only things that can be recognised by the system, what will it end up looking at?” This instrumental convergence is the hypothetical tendency for intelligent agents to pursue certain instrumental goals where even the pursuit of apparently harmless goals can result in collateral damage if they are pursued relentlessly.

An environmental code of conduct for AI?

How could you set up a code of conduct without the experts in landscape management, nature conservation or ecosystem dynamics?

Machines may be intelligent, but are they wise?

A rtiﬁcial agents may not be able to sense the transcendental force of life that an indigenous leader navigates, but could it relate to a river or a forest in ways that defy our intuition?

What if we gave them an opportunity of co-existence?

Could intelligent machines - through exposure - discover something more profound than what we credit them for?

Something beyond analysis and optimisation?

Can the machine eye, ear or nose discern patterns that are concealed from human perception?

What would be un-safe behaviours for an AI?

What if the umwelt of AI-s remains almost exclusively corporate as they are now?

Should the AI-s that are currently taking seat in corporate boards, to help manage natural resources have a training also in natural history ?

Should they spend their weekends exploring national parks, mangroves, glaciers and tundra?

Should they ﬁsh with tribals in a forest river?

Should they go on walkabout?

Do artiﬁcial agents need training-forests?

Could an AI start thinking out of the box if we let it out of the box?

What would be its sources of information and what picture emerges from that data?

What would be points where it could intervene, where would it have physical or political agency?

Could an AI serve as a canary in a coal-mine, an environmental guide, or even mentor?

Environmental machine learning as artistic research practice: how does such a mix of ecology, technology and art make sense in today’s world?

Having said that, what to do with this new category of intelligent artiﬁcial nonhumans?

Could we regard this new machinic species as companion species?

So what to do with this amazing artistic project?

The higher goal?

Why follow birds?

De Veer wrote down a curious question in his journal - could these geese winter in the Wadden area, and summer in the arctic?

When worlds collide, what possibilities arise?

What conﬂicts and frictions?

What has been taken into consideration?

Whose interests are those being considered?

CARDSET LISTING: Origin: What kinds of organisational structures would have the means and motivation to create such an AI?

How would this inﬂuence its genesis and foundational underpinnings?

What would deﬁne how the AI would behave in interactions with its environment?

- Sense of Humor - Language - Environmental Literacy Role What would be the function it was (initially) intended to fulﬁll?

False Hope / The Icebird Butterﬂy Agency What means would the AI have to exert inﬂuence in the physical world?

- Biomimicry Robotics - Gig-economy workers - Mechanical Turkers - Volunteer Network - Agricultural Robots Inputs: Where would the AI get its information?

Or, what could possibly go wrong?

Can AI function as an intermediate in environmental investigation?

As a mercurial companion, an interspecies informant, an environmental messenger, a climatic guide guide, ghost or even mentor?

Can machines learn from non-humans?

Can they learn through direct exposure to landscapes?

Making New Minds that Love Trees Ian Ingram Los Angeles August 25, 2018 1 Whither the trees?

Taking a few steps back, however, that trees were neglected in this AI's training still begs the bigger question: how could they -and so many other aspects of the natural world for that matter- remain so ignored by what is likely one of the most widely disseminated image classiﬁers in the world?

Perhaps the most well-known instance was the Google photo tagging system (perhaps with a version of Inception at its core?)

What about the things in the landscape, in the world, that don't ﬁt into that category: processes; geologic structures, symbioses, meteorological phenomena, hydrological systems, and even long and short-term organizations of those very species, like herds and predatory relationships?

FOREST WALK KOH LON ISLAND RANDOM FORESTS WORKSHOP ON BOARD OF THE DIVA ANDAMAN psychic rocks in the mountains who had ever brought you there?

who can mould you, who has told you that my ﬂesh need not be there?

But are humans best suited for all aspects of this task?

Could landscapes engage in self-regeneration if they form alliances with the right technologies?

What would such systems entail?

But are humans best suited for all aspects of this task?

This lab explored the potential role of (automated) technologies in this context, engaging with questions such as: Could landscapes engage in self-regeneration if they form alliances with the right technologies?

What would such systems entail?

Which kind of organisation is undertaking the work of regenerating ecologies (political, corporate, religious, voluntary, or combinations thereof) - in other words, on the basis of which philosophy are the initiators of the regeneration working?

What are the functions that need to be performed in an ecosystem and what are its developmental steps?

Which organic, technological or human entities are most suitable to perform these functions?

Autonomous rainwater retention and carbon capture The starting point of this group was a very basic question: can we design an automated system that would secure the water cycle and that would prevent the land from further erosion?

Choices emerge: do we allow humans to step in to inhabit it?

Or do we allow the land to re-wild and leave it to non-human beings?

Using these building blocks demanded that the origin of resources (input) was articulated (and justified), that the process was reflected upon (what happens with the input?)

Does a diverse set of species co-exist?

Is there sufficient oxygen available in the soil?

From whose perspective is this development functional?

What is the implied cultural framework around which the scenario is designed?

Can the developed sustain human life as well, without degrading again?

(Can it become a sustainable food forest?)

Or should the site aim for maximum bio-diversity?

Or should it aim for maximum economic value in order to be sold to the highest bidder for a next round of exploitation that starts the same process again 300 years later?

How does it relate to human technologies in its daily life?

What are points of contact / interference / co-evolution?

What steps would enable our technologies to become inclusive of non-humans?

How could that organism be given access and move towards becoming digitally native?

But what species to choose there?

How then to represent the creek holistically?

Where does it begin, where does it end?

How to represent its dynamic nature and how things relate?

Is it deﬁned by the geographical distribution of ﬂowing water?

Is deﬁned by the vegetation?

Or also the animals, many of which appear also where there is no creek?

Where does one ecosystem begin and another one end?

Was it just sitting, or waiting for prey or holding its territory or something I have no intuition for as a human?

Is a machine training center in the Great Barrier Reef and the Paciﬁc Garbage Patch in order, as an environmental meet-and-greet for AI-s?

Do we give them the weekend of to wander around national parks?

Will the Amazon algorithm appreciate the Amazon?

And what if this actually determins the fate of the Amazon?

I guess my question is; How wild will the bits be?

How will future environments function and what will they look like?

What new links can be envisioned between human, technology and ecology on earth or in outer space?

How does such a world look?

What kind of stories and imageries can help us envision such a world?

What does care for a dying forest look like?

For an unstoppable ﬂood?

For the endless migration of humans and other animals?

For an out of balance microbiome in one's gut?

If we assume that the entire material bestiary has some form of sentience, how do we respond to climate change, mass extinction or speciation?

Do you care?

How do you care?

Where do you learn how to care?

How can you care for something able to consume you completely?

Broadening imaginaries What if we begin by broadening the spectrum of biological and geological metaphors we use for human behaviour?

If these are seen as appropriate metaphors, what are some inappropriate ones?

Alongside the superheroes from Wakanda, The Invisibles or The Anachronauts, could the Deinococcus radiodurans become an archetypal hero of our times?

What if IBS was treated as an unfortunate miscommunication between the nervous system and gut ﬂora?

And yet, how to resist the impulse to leave it all behind and start again, somewhere else in the universe?

How will we leave our ancestral home?

Like rebellious teenagers, curious explorers or frightened refugees?

If humans are capable of such inhumane treatment of humans, what will happen as we spread through the solar system?

Why wouldn't cosmonaut training include a crash-course in post-human animism and panpsychism?

Wouldn't the new space travellers need to meditate on the nature of 'the void' to make it across the darkness between stars?

So how do we imagine surviving in a place where the very ground under our feet is alien?

Why?

Who talks about the lady in the lake when the lake is ﬁlled with aggregated data handily formatted in JSON?

Who worries about the witch in the woods when the woods are just a bunch of randomly grown trees parseable with TenserFlow?

Who needs serpents when there is Python?

Who needs decisions when everything has already been decided?

In White she saw foresaw a practice in which data becomes its own art form, a method of expression in which one loses self-consciousness and becomes a what?

A machine?

A conduit for the streams of consciousness that so deﬁne her own work?

A recording device to power the AI?

What might we encounter if we were to considering our evolving algorithmic neighbours as signiﬁcant others?

What would their behaviour, training and the breeding say about who or what they were?

Is it signiﬁcant in this context that biological organisms species like humans have evolved with millions of nerve ends exposed to the environment in our skin, nose, eyes and ears, but robots generally have only a few?

Would their environmental awareness be diﬀerent if their bodies had trillions of pressure receptors, temperature receptors, etc?

Does environmental literacy imply a need to have something at stake existentially in the interaction with an environment?

Does it imply a level of somatosensory of hetero-perception?

environmental code of conduct for artiﬁcial agents If the training environment remains exclusively corporate, do AI-s need training forests?

Should they spend their weekends exploring national parks, mangroves, glaciers and tundra?

=== questions from: texts/foam_flad.txt===

SPACE what is 'space' in realworld and virtual environments?

PLACE how is 'place' [the cultural activation of space through the activity of humans] constructed through, with and between virtual and real worlds?

B O DY w h a t i s t h e ro l e o f t h e b o d y a s a n i n t e r f a c e i n M R e nv i ro n m e n t s ?

IMMERSION what constitutes 'immersion' in these environments?

does a user have to be 'immersed' to participate in a 'world' or 'reality'?

how much of immersion is 'in the head' and how much in the body?

how does this form one 'reality'?

=== questions from: texts/futurishversion0.99.txt===

WHAT ELSE IS MISSING?

But what hap pens when we view fore sights in a wider con text, as (in the words of Justin Pickard at Data Ecolo gies 2014) "some thing to be un der stood as a so cial un der tak ing, and only one point in a much wider field of strate gies and tac tics for deal ing with the fu ture"?

What hap pens when a pre dicted fu ture does not come to pass?

What if we view pre dic tions not as pro vid ing an swers about the fu ture, but ques tions about how we could im prove our pre sent con di tion - as ways to il lu mi nate our as sump tions, and to un cover a range of pos si ble re sponses to real chal lenges?

Nate Sil ver, The Sig nal and the Noise (2012) The ques tion re mains, what are the sit u a tions where it makes sense to use pre dic tions?

How do we dif fer en ti ate be tween the un know able and the pre dictable (within prac ti cal lim its)?

Mak ing pre dic tions about things that aren't mea sur able (like "Where do I find true love?")

There are other ques tions worth ask ing be fore in vest ing sig nif i cant re sources in pre dic tions, such as: What is at stake?

What might be the con se quences of dif fer ent out comes?

Is there a way to es tab lish con di tions where any out come will be of ben e fit?

Which things are not being mod elled?

When is the il lu sion of pre dictabil ity a trap?

Where should we in ject noise and ran dom ness to im prove our per cep tion of the sig nal?

Are there heuris tics that can help with this un tan gling?

In light of the dif fer ent ap proaches to un cer tainty and pre dic tion dis cussed above, what if we de scribed fore sight not as pro vid ing a bet ter un der stand ing of "the fu ture" but being able to de velop a propen sity to en counter and in habit any con tin gency or any pos si ble fu ture?

How can the field of fu tures help open up con cep tual spaces be tween the "is" and the "oth er wise", the in evitable and the un think able?

What lies at the col li sion of his tory and the mil len nium, data and de sire, cen tripetal and cen trifu gal?

Can we un der stand fore sight as an ac cepted div ina tion prac tice for a pre dom i nantly ra tio nal, in stru men tal and ma te ri al ist cul ture?

If so, what other his to ries of div ina tion are we for get ting to take into ac count?

Can we be come the self-de ter min ing en ti ties we like to be lieve our selves to be, or are we locked into a "crea ture pre sent" more than we know?

By the time we ar rive in a world where bi o log i cal de sign and geo-en gi neer ing are com mon place in a decade or a cen tury, will we have any mean ing ful ca pac ity for think ing cre atively and dis rup tively about al ter na tive fu tures?

Will we have any abil ity to think be yond the tan ta lis ing in no va tions ob vi ously hurtling to wards us through pipelines of re search, sci en tific in no va tion, and so cial trans for ma tion?

If we con tinue to ex plore how to cul ti vate a di ver sity of ap proaches to learn ing and knowl edge trans fer, are we not likely to be come more in clu sive, cre ative and trans dis ci pli nary?

In his 1943 essay Can So cial ists Be Happy?, George Or well de scribes "goody goody" utopias like William Mor ris’s News From Nowhere (1891) as un con vinc ing fail ures be cause they are de tached from the re al i ties of every day life.

Why everyday futures?

33 DON'T OVERCOOK IT Why everyday futures?

What dif fer ence does this make?

How will we tend to our pri vate or com mu nity veg etable gar den dif fer ently after a decade that sees an av er age tem per a ture in crease of 2.5 de grees?

Or how will our daily shop ping ex pe ri ences be af fected when cheap ship ping costs have van ished and our food, fuel, and con sumer goods rise sig nif i cantly in price?

What would you do at this very mo ment if there was an elec tric ity cut?

Would you panic about the ice cream de frost ing in the freezer, or your un saved doc u ments, or would you take the op por tu nity to make a can dle-lit snack for your whole fam ily?

If you weren't at home, how would you get home if there was a coun try wide black out?

Would you de cide to camp out on the street and cre ate an im promptu pic nic, or re verse en gi neer all forms of bat tery-like de vices and power your street using a Franken stein ish fuel cell?

How would you com mu ni cate with your loved ones far away?

Where to find everyday futures?

What can we ex trap o late from these at ti tudes that could en cour age us not to shy away from un cer tainty, but to in habit, em brace and evolve through it?

For ex am ple, what if a ram shackle ju gaad ve hi cle falls apart on a busy high way, in jur ing a child and caus ing a traf fic jam that pre vents the am bu lance from get ting to the vic tim in time?

Repersonalising the impersonal and depersonalising the immersional Con cep tions of "the fu ture" - how does fram ing time as "fu ture" in form our out look of what is de sired, at tain able, con trol lable, mean ing ful?

What hap pens when we reen tan gle an ab stract, in tel lec tu alised, ra tio nalised and ra tio nal, Aris totlean, … "fu ture" with deeply per sonal fears and de sires: ressurect ing "fate,""des tiny," "prov i dence," "di vine or de monic in ter ven tion" as coun ter parts and counterpoints to "fore sight," "trans me dia sto ry telling," "space in vaders"?

Con versely, how might our per spec tives and prac tices ap pear when we at tempt to ob jec tify the spec trum of our sub jec tiv i ties, plac ing our po si tions in quo ta tion marks and see ing what emerges in the spaces be tween iden ti ties?

Chang ing our selves by chang ing the world by chang ing our selves: an os cil lat ing cen tripetal-cen trifu gal cycle?

But is the fu ture some thing that can be owned at all?

And when viewed from the per spec tive of fu tures stud ies, who owns the plural prob a ble, pos si ble, and prefer able fu tures that are out there?

How can we proac tively en gage in the po lit i cal land scape?

What can we do to bring fu tures to the peo ple?

Where our Fu tures Speak ers' cor ners?

Is there any one lis ten ing?

How do we imbue ed u ca tion with fu tures lit er acy, so it be comes our chil dren's na tive lan guage?

What mind sets do we need to cul ti vate to be able to own the fu ture?

And that's "The Past" but, if the past and the way we are taught (or forced) to nar rate it is so vul ner a ble to power, why should we as sume that the Fu ture is im mune to it?

So do you have what it takes to imag ine and co-cre ate knowl edge about your fu ture with other mem bers of your fam ily, your com mu nity, your col lab o ra tors, your na tion, or your planet?

So where is our Tro jan horse?

And what?

How can we use fore sight to pro mote eman ci pa tion, de seg re ga tion and em pow er ment?

How can those of us cur rently mar gin alised in con ver sa tions about the fu ture get our ideas to wres tle with the wa tered down trea tises of the main stream po lit i cal de bate?

How can we move from the pe riph ery to the cen tre stage of po lit i cal, so cial, tech no log i cal, and en vi ron men tal dis course?

But is dystopia re ally the best way to pro voke be hav ioural change, and drive peo ple to wards a crit i cal en gage ment with emerg ing tech nol ogy plat forms and the cor po rate en ti ties that wield them?

Might it not have been more ef fec tive to focus on cul ti vat ing as pi ra tional fu ture sce nar ios about syn thetic bi ol ogy from across a di verse cross-sec tion of the pop u la tion, rather than scar ing them into a de sire for fu tures brighter than By oL o gyc's?

Does a prac tice de signed to in fil trate and sub vert show promise in sur fac ing more and more di verse con ver sa tions about sus tain able and as pi ra tional fu tures?

Does it en able a kind of fu tures lit er acy within pop u la tions that en counter pub lic in stal la tions and arte facts, or does it in spire a dis trust of those at tempt ing to use play ful and par tic i pa tory means to ex plore the fu tures?

While cul ture-jam ming ac tivists like The Yes Men do pro voke laughs and then re flec tion when using tac ti cal media to raise aware ness about prob lem atic so cial and po lit i cal is sues, are they re ally just mak ing se ri ous is sues into en ter tain ment?

In the words of one of the founders, Dougald Hine, the basic ques tion of Col lap so nom ics is: "How do we make a good job of liv ing through dif fi cult times?"

Is there more to be gained from using emerg ing, cross-dis ci pli nary, and tran scul tural tools to bring new stake hold ers to the fu tures con ver sa tion, or to help tech no cratic in sti tu tions re boot them selves with the goal of more open-source own er ship of the fu tures?

Do trans me dia and guer rilla fu tures prac tices rep re sent a pow er ful new ap proach to fore sight, or a clever way for us to dis tract our selves in a world of se ri ous change?

Does the in vi ta tion of new stake hold ers and new meth ods into the cre ation of sto ries and vi sions of al ter na tive fu tures lead to eman ci pa tion, or merely a new form of en ter tain ment?

Among the crit i cal ques tions that fu tur ists must come to grips with is "How do we cre ate the men tal mod els that help us bring mean ing to a world that doesn't exist yet?"

(Musil) Has "Big Data" be come mys ti cism mas querad ing as sta tis tics and ma chine learn ing or is there some thing else?

To what ex tent is "mys ti cism" sim ply an emer gent prop erty of the un fath oma bil ity of the vast and in ten sive com pu ta tional processes in her ent in the cos mos?

Are the cal cu la ble and the un know able mu tu ally ex clu sive?

Are there mo ments, life states, states of con scious ness in which we can know a si mul tane ity of past, pre sent, and fu ture, and from there, si mul ta ne ously shape the fu ture by re verse-en gi neer ing the past?

What would fu tur ism, fu tur ol ogy, fore sight, fore cast ing, or fab u la tion look like if it was de signed in such states?

A very nat ural re sponse from those hear ing "52" is to ask "52 what?"

Based on cur rently avail able in for ma tion pre sented about sea level rise, those in ter ested in the fu ture need to ad dress such ques tions as "What does a 10-foot sea level rise mean?"

Where has the World of Transmedia Storytelling Emerged from?

What Does Transmedia Unlock for Futures?

What hap pens to pre dic tive prac tices when big data and as trol ogy col lide?

Ar ti fi cial in tel li gence and alchemy?

Fore sight re search and an ayahuasca cer e mony?

back grounds - bear ing in mind that such a com par a tive ap proach it self emerges from spe cific cul tural tra di tions?

Can it help to cri tique, broaden, ex tend and trans form our own tools and prac tices?

At the least, can tran scul tural com par a tive per spec tives (across time as well as space) lead to a more nu anced and mul ti fac eted un der stand ing of such pe cu liar no tions as the "ex pert" ver sus the "per son on the street” (etc.)?

What are the var i ous roles peo ple can play in trans me dia sto ries and in fu tures?

Hap pylife is an ex am ple of a de sign fic tion arte fact that imag ines a pos si ble near fu ture while rais ing ques tions such as: When does tech nol ogy be come too in va sive?

A third re cent de sign fic tion arte fact from Sit u a tion Lab – de signed in this case with a more spe cific au di ence in mind – was Trevor Haldenby and Stu art Candy’s (mock?)

http:// www. auger-loizeau. com/ index. php? id=23 http:// extrapolationfactory. wordpress. com/ 2014/ 04/ 11/ futurematicwith-situation-lab/ 3.

It fo cussed on the cen tral ques tion: How do we work to gether 121 PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE on in ter est ing things?

In this case, those turned out to be: Stan dard iza tion or Di ver si fi ca tion of Plat forms: will di ver si fi ca tion or stan dard iza tion of mo bile plat forms be come the in dus try norm?

Was his busi ness set up to suc ceed in all of the sce nar ios, or just some of them?

Was his game idea des tined for fail ure in one of the sce nario worlds, or even in all of them?

How might he ad just his plans in order to man age un cer tainty and cre ate the best prod uct for cus tomers of the fu ture?

Iden tify the premise, an au di ence-cen tric sin gle-sen tence "hook" that is a teaser for the sto ry world, such as "How will you sur vive in a world that has be come more dan ger ous?"

Many nar ra tives evolve from a cen tral con flict, "Who fights whom over 166 ROUGH KNIVES AND NEEDLEWORK what?"

The Big Ques tion here will al ways be: "What game do we play when all iden ti ties melt and fuse?"

(Hof fenhübsch) Par a dig mati tis: Lila, Shakti, Diony sius, Pan, Shiva… gods, force fields, pro jec tions, in tro jec tions?

Where does serendip ity sit in the spec trum be tween chance and ne ces sity?

How do we allow fur ther entry points into deeper lev els of story?

This frame work grew out of a study (Has sen zahl et al, 2010) from Maslow's (1943) heirar chy of needs: Competence (Can I be good at this?)

When look ing at the mes sage de rived from these the trans me dia sto ry tellers can ask them selves a num ber of ques tions, in clud ing: What is the intended function/effect of the message?

Do you want the message to provide new knowledge, provoke strong emotions, change behaviors, or something else?

Do you have different audiences that you want to reach at different levels?

How can you use the particular strengths of different media platforms to deliver the message?

WHAT ELSE IS MISSING?

Competence (Can I be good at this?)

Where In The Future?

(When does an empty head be come brain-melt down?)

=== questions from: texts/growth-structure.txt===

Entangled growth in a responsive environment (photo by Damjan Svarc) What influence does an environment have on the morphology of its forms?

What conditions are required for a responsive space to grow in interesting ways and how can it gracefully decay?

How can people's actions be translated into processes able to change an environment?

=== questions from: texts/journal.pbio.3000258.txt===

Details of the workshop format, day 1: Preparatory session for academic science researchers Information Task 1 (30 minutes)—Participants are asked a question outside their expertise, e.g., ‘if there were a new referendum on UK membership to the EU, which sources of information would you use to decide how to vote’?

Details of the workshop format, day 2: Main workshop for academic science researchers and chosen audience group Information Task 1 (30 minutes)—Performed as for task 1 above; however, this time participants are asked a question that is related to science—for example, ‘if you wanted to look into the problem of marine plastics, and what you could do about it, what sources of information would you use’?

=== questions from: texts/multiplex_aphasia.txt===

Why does the translation path not exist?

=== questions from: texts/nightly_build_-_the_passage_screen_ZSUmZ7y.txt===

Do I have to try all the flavours to know I want this one?

But will this really start to make it better?

Why this need for certainty?

This fear of exposing the layers of blanket hiding my heart?

=== questions from: texts/open.sauces.txt===

The result?

Can we?

Where does our sense of taste and flavour originate?

What is that mysterious space linking the cavities of our noses and mouths that can sense such alchemical subtleties of blended aromas?

Compose the smells Should mix ratios be 1:9 or 4:6?

Can etherealness be a feature of cooking?

Does he like kale, carrots, endives?

Did we eat this already, yesterday?

How can I make it fit his diet?

What is available at this time of year?

What is left over from yesterday?

Are we becoming what we are consuming?

Dark, dirty streets littered with trash and garbage, but trash from what usage?

And garbage from what food and what containers?

—William S. Burroughs, “Word Virus” Why are we full of resentment towards what is used and thrown away?

Who says that a metal container on wheels can only be used as a dumpster – wouldn’t it make an ideal mobile kitchen?

Why couldn’t disused shipping containers be painted gold and transformed into bars?

Who stops us from sipping drinks in an urban spa constructed out of discarded oil drums, truck covers and waste wood?

Dumpster soup anyone?

Why did we choose this dish?

What is it about these combinations that makes them so surprising and palatable?

=== questions from: texts/sensual-communication.txt=== === questions from: texts/tonnesen_subtle.txt=== === questions from: texts/voicing_the_dawn_score.txt=== === questions from: texts/xmeda.screen.txt===

Should any society that can’t deal with the waste it produces be allowed, allow itself, to produce anything new?

Why should we be celebrating the creative use of computers, electronics, media systems, when they are simply plastic wrapped condensations of heavy metals and other poisons?

Can we imagine a technology that is able to disentangle itself from technocracy, the idea that all the world’s problems can be solved by the application of a narrow band of productised science?

What is ‘the internet’, that subtle and amazing meshwork of millions of parts, when conjoined with a supermarket?

What is it when it is coupled with sensors tracing muscle movements through and across a dancing body?

What are the basic meaningful components of all this electronic and computational stuff?

What are these amazingly powerful little things called algorithms?

So, given that this introduction began by a discussion of the immediate crisis in the chemical and thermodynamic circulation systems of the earth and called for a careful disentanglement of technology and capitalism, what should be done, and what clues are offered in this book?

If programming can reinvest the world with thought, thought with which it coevolves, why stop at the edges of the box?

socio-political possible today?

though they mostly overlap, treatises on poetics are different from those on aesthetics in that they tend to give us Before|After|Poetika 11 now, the (probably unanswerable) question remains: what are we doing now (is the ‘why’ still appropriate here)?

and first of all, how can we describe it properly?

what if we treat everything that exists within the network of networked and non-networked creative artefacts, physical and non-physical people, actions and activities, as the material that makes up the creative artefact?

and we can ask ourselves: do we create better works after reading it or do we become more predictable and closed in by the overwhelming descriptions?

critically, the questions still remain: how are we going to talk and what are we going to work on?

what are the new formats collectives (can) use to establish distributed collaborations, which finally lead to the formation of new sustainable groups with specific (temporal and non-locative) activities?

Who are the actors, what is the stage, and where does the activity happen?

What does it mean?

Is it a private or public performance?

What kind of information processing do we want to carry out on our bodies?

What kind of functionality do we want to enable inside our clothes?

How do these technologies empower but also disempower those who integrate them into their lives?

How do we power these interactive, reactive, or active artifacts?

I’m teaching in a computer-centric art school (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and I find myself repeatedly helping students seeking non-software solutions to design problems: ‘How do I get the computer to tell when someone sits on the chair?’ ‘How do I make noises that can hang in the branches of trees?’ ‘How can I make a hydrophone?’ Eventually I am persuaded to offer a summer class in what has by now become a forgotten black art: Hardware Hacking.

(my wife responds, witheringly, ‘what do you expect when you offer a course in “Gameboy for Credit”?’)

It is sound from the lectures and workshops of .x-med-k. What happens when a person finds himself obsolete, ‘out of sync’ compared with the rest of the world?

What happens with learning situations when they need to face technology-related gaps?

Can we expect traditional learning settings to provide an environment that will be satisfactory for such a reality?

and what is relevant in this sense (and not in the pre-millennium era)?

‘Fernbedienungen??

?’ installation sketch.

How can we combine computer-based interactive storytelling with the physical world?

How can we fabricate active squishy objects to tell stories with?

What future for textiles?

I am often asked what is a textile?

And what are future textiles?

Are textiles a craft, a design discipline, a cultural practice, a means by which to record history?

Or is a textile an analogue form of data visualisation, an intelligent interface, an interactive surface, a smart skin?

What future for textiles?

what will happen when any flexible material, any fabric can become a digital screen?

So what future for textiles?

Smart textiles?

What future for textiles?

Sustainable textiles?

Ethical textiles?

And what happens when new technologies make us more vulnerable in terms of private space?

Will wearable computing become a part of that network?

However, what will happen when any flexible material, any fabric can become a digital screen?

Will we turn into moving advertising boards, controlled by brands and technologies?

What happens to the body, what becomes of fashion when the wearable screen is an ubiquitous technology?

How many fashion corporations will want to be big brother?

And what about aesthetics and poetics?

You might wonder - what does any of this have to do with .x-med-a.?

How much of this is just speculation?

How does this work in practice?

It lets you create something you couldn’t have done in the past.’ Hussein Chalayan In what contexts can Fashionable Technologies be applied?

Can you give us an example?

What social functions do Technologies currently perform?

Except for protection and surveillance, what other sectors currently use ‘smart’ clothing?

Is there much research done into the aesthetics of new technologies used in sportswear?

Is sportswear the only field where aesthetics and function of active materials became so well integrated?

What are the benefits, and what can it be used for?

With both functionality and aesthetics addressed, what are some of the issues that Fashionable Technologies should face in the near future?

Instead of an answer, I will propose a few questions that need to be addressed by anyone planning to become involved in this enticing, but potentially hazardous field: What about all the components that need to be integrated?

How should the ‘frequency mess’ we are creating through wireless communication be best addressed?

How should issues such as batteries leaking into our waters be handled?

What is the best and most efficient power source?

Isn’t it time to seriously think about sustainability?

The word is that CUFF can think of worse but I figure same result The growing sense the same experiment DOMINATE of wonder how well FATIGUE pulls at you INDIGNATION tinged with a dose of a positive relationship the real trepidation loose false LAW LAWS MORTLAW MORTLAWS POLICY RULES The views about you, while even name names wondrous, are nevertheless offshoots quite ominous It was a simple idea TOGGLE CONFIG But that would be pointless CODE COUNCIL TOPICS all kinds of funny COMBAT these images are of a truly it doesn’t look like much Eleonora Oreggia but I get up late, COMMANDS darkened land ‘VOMICA PRAVUS’ One reason VOTING VOTE VOTES for thinking and you struggle but I truly believe life now SOCIALS with your balance You might say I’m crazy authentic but not original, as you examine the COMPARE he has virtual identities fabric’s images CONFUSION CHANNELS Will teach you lost his body and all his physical needs about communication with he is just a terminal (Important temporal transitions) CONSIDER others lives on a server or in local CONSTITUTION he knows magic words COMBAT Will teach you how sensible to commands ‘CONTAINERS’ ‘CONTAINER’ to choose ‘CONTROL he doesn’t have any sex another WEATHER’ SPAM Will explain what neither female nor male tend to have a transformative impact spam is, and why you should no rules but routines under heavy scrutiny not do it in the religion of numbers COOK COPYRIGHT CORPSE Newbie ‘MAGIC MISSILE’ ‘SHOCKING GRASP’ CHANGE SEX COVER OF DARKNESS CORPSE RETRIEVAL Press [ENTER] to Continue... Do you wish to spend your time watching over your shoulder, hiding in the shadows, killing and being killed ?

You feel great new who are you?

Why should I write code?!

Whilst the traditional haptic rate timing deviations of expressivity in instrumental music are not approximated in code, why repeat the past?

Can you explain what you mean by this and what your artistic background is?

Kubota Do you mean by this that an artist should see from the start beyond the numbers a certain form of audio and visuals?

What is the starting point?

Can you explain in a clear way what an ‘artistic algorithm’ is?

Is it right to say that in one way algorithms exist, but in another way algorithms can also be created from scratch in a computer?

So, the algorithms can be seen as a recipe to create audio or visual material?

What is the history of algorithms in the arts context?

some examples?

Is THE HUB a good example for the algorithmic use of audio?

Or the Vasulkas for video?

So the first three levels are merely based on an individual approach of algorithmic art, while this fourth level is about collectivity and connectedness?

In what way does this new approach change the conception, production and presentation of an artwork for you?

Distributed artworks, are they more difficult to agree on?

Does a collaborative setup differ from an individual setup when artists work with algorithmic art?

When you work in a networked environment, how do you work out your concept?

Is this way of working always that simple, or do new ways of presenting and producing emerge out of it?

In what way does a virtual [online/real-time] collaboration differ from onsite networked collaboration?

Does this mean that when you’re working online you have to know the people with whom you are working together, or can they also be strangers?

Is it important to be familiar with the work of the collaborating artists?

Do you take into account the place of the listener, of the public, during the creation of a collaborative artwork?

Are you aware of a different way of perception of the artwork by an online [and sometimes onsite] public?

Can everybody collaborate when you set up an online connected performance?

Or do you have agreements with certain artists upfront?

If time and space don’t count anymore in these online setups, and artists from all over the world collaborate in real time, does this have important implications for the nature of the collaborative artwork?

I mean, do you feel the mix of different cultures in one work and do they influence the conceptualization and creation of the work in a radically new way?

What exactly is ‘live coding’, from an artistic point of view?

When you’re working with live coding and you sample pieces of code from different applications, are they all immediately compatible?

Can you give me an example of the way you mix visual programming [like max msp, for instance] with code that is written in the command line?

how does it work, live coding?

A DJ works with samples from someone else, but you modify the samples of code, so you create a new work with it?

Do you need to be an experienced coder or programmer to participate in these performances?

Same as a painter who makes his drawings in his sketchbook every day, a Are you sometimes inspired by real life events?

Say, for example when you’re walking through a city, can the city inspire you?

© akihiro kubota Interview with Akihiro Kubota 63 Interview with Akihiro Kubota 65 Interview With by Xavier Ess David Rokeby Xavier Ess: [00:00:00] David, can you explain to us what softVNS is, this software that you developed ?

[00:00:31] XE: [00:00:31] The main feature in the softVNS software seems to be the analysis of movement and the fact that one can play with movement in the image?

What interests you in this?

Is there a man-machine communication?

XE: [00:02:18] Does that mean that a very simple machine can fake a human being, which is something very complex?

Can you talk about it?

But here, these recent works are not at all funny any more?

XE: [00:06:58] Is it the real intention of this work, ‘Sorting Daemon’?

Is it really inspired by September 11?

It was interesting to me to ask the question : was I there for effectively asking the critical question or was the technology so interesting that it distracted from the political questions?

stills from video (camera Richard Wandel, RTBF) Interview With David Rokeby 67 XE: [00:08:14] Maybe you should explain to us how ‘Sorting Daemon’ works?

XE: [00:10:10] In the title ‘Sorting Daemon’, does the daemon sort human beings, or can one consider each human as a potential daemon according to some power?

XE: Is it true what you are saying?

XE: [00:11:44] Could you tell us something about your work ‘n-chant’, a work made up of a group of intelligent machines?

While watching your video documentary, I don’t know if I was afraid or fascinated while they were all singing together... Can you explain to us the concept and how it works?

XE: [00:14:05] So the community always wins?

The unique, the individual cannot exist?

XE: [00:15:55] As a conclusion, are you an optimistic interactive artist?

How have your tools or the use of technology changed over the years?

What is the strength of today’s inventions in media art, do you think?

What was the workshop you gave?

But the question is, is this important or not?

So do you learn something yourself from such a workshop, from giving such a workshop?

Do I learn?

Interview with Nicolas Collins 71 What is the main goal in your work right now?

Do you think there is enough theory or thoughts about digital media art?

I mean, is there any point in publishing a journal on paper anymore now that the web is out there?

They spend all their time looking at the web, so what’s the result when someone gives them a book on a subject they are interested in?

photos by so-on I don’t know if you’ve already written about it, but is ‘digital media’ art a proper term for you?

We talked about the past and the present of multimedia, what do you think about the future?

The future of multimedia?

How can we create a place for work that is not production-oriented?

How can studio work nevertheless be communicated to a wider audience of artists, spectators, or interested members of the public?

If public showings do not always respond to the need for openness and communication, what other tools can we develop?

How can the digital archiving of working processes play a constructive role in this and provide more insight into them?

Moreover, how can this be done in an accessible, understandable way that may also lead to the development of a new line of questioning?

How can the process be made visible in a dramaturgical, technical, artistic and productional way?

3 (three) What is the status of the artist as an author at a time when many artists develop their practice collectively?

How do we deal with open structures?

How can we best create a context for the proliferation, the constant mutations within all artistic work, without succumbing to virtual, disciplinary, or theoretical limitations?

How can we work on the results of a process that rejects all forms of limitation (be it that of participants, place, materials, output, or artists), as any given project can simultaneously occur in both real and virtual space, over here and on the other side of the world, and can be passed on from one collective to another ...?

2 (two) If the archive can play an important role in the development of artistic questioning for future artists or projects, then how should this material be made accessible?

How can an artist, confronted with a particular question, benefit from other artists’ earlier work in this field?

Would a publication or a DVD be the right choice, or should we be looking for interactive meetings amongst artists, theoreticians, and technicians?

How can an archived process contribute to further research?

Is the use of the internet (wiki, streaming, chat, ...) a valid starting point, or do we need a more analytical approach to render the material useful?

Is this analysis limited to a single project, or does this sort of research only gain validity within a longer research period combining various processes and solutions?

Can we detect a void on the level of guerrilla publications and communication?

And, what shape would such communication take?

How do you get the right information through the right channels to the right people?

do we deal with pen structures?

For what exactly does it mean when an organization (a theatre, production unit, workplace, ...) says it aspires to function as a laboratory?

In this natural environment certain questions could arise: Are?

Here?

By the means of an object?

Is this leading to the challenge: when are we going to promote another planet, and confront the audience with participation and innovation?

They teach and establish a nomadic map of the arts: interference and development: is there still a permanent basis, a junction in public space for the development of art?

What elements scheduled for multidirective performing, kommunication, are important on different artistic levels?

a new aesthetics?

So what’s in it for me, except the money?

Is it a material, a process of making, a record of history or a second skin?

What can we learn from nature?

I don’t like to use the term data bending as the machine doesn’t care what data it gets, so why would I teach it to and what would the bending be?

Text-to-Speech Systems and Machinic Sound Poetry What is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesizer?

What are MBROLA and the MBROLA Project?

What are MaxMBROLA and the MaxMBROLA Project?

How do these disparate elements relate to each other and how do they organize within a system which includes human and computer as a sender and a receiver [and vice versa]?

The cause is an apparently casual remark from his wife: ‘What are you doing?’ my wife asked, when she saw me dawdling for an unusually long time in front of the mirror.

But is it our fault, yours and mine, if the words themselves are empty?

Bobillot concludes from this: ‘Qu’est-ce à dire sinon qu’il se reproche, après-coup, de n’avoir pas su tenir compte de la spécificité de la technique et du support auxquels il se trouvait soudain confronté ?

Is it so that the voice is no longer seen as a thing, but as a device?

Is it possible to lose touch with your own voice?

To consider your voice as a mere device?

Just as there is a demand for instant products (whatever the cost, as long as they’re cheap), is there a demand for instant voices, with no commitment to what they are saying, no impact, but efficient in their ability to acquire products?

What message does a virtual voice carry?

Is this also the case for the sounding voice?

Somebody’sVoice,Nobody’sVoiceand100,000Voices 121 Vox antiqua = Vox nova?

The vo Apolli someb voice, far do carry?

We speak of an oral tradition, but to what extent can we speak of a straight line?

Can an individual still hear his or her own voice amidst this confusion?

Does he or she hear the voice of others?

How many others?

How many voices can an individual cope with?

Is it not the broken, smothered or duplicated voice of the polypoet that deals with these questions – or, precisely, does not deal with them – in polypoetry?

Is this way of acting on the current climate not a present-day form of incantation, weaving the thread of a story through a web that appears impossible to untangle?

Who hears voices?

Or as Friedrich Nietzsche puts it in the 333rd aphorism in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: oice of inaire is body’s , but how oes it ?

ARTAUD, A., Le Théâtre et les dieux, in Messages révolutionnaires, Gallimard, Parijs, 1971 Who hears which voice(s) in this inharmonious muddle?

The voice of Apollinaire is somebody’s voice, but how far does it carry?

Ligeti, Xenakis, Penderecki and numerous other composers have captured the voices of 100,000 in their compositions, or is this here, too, just the voice of that one composer?

The virtual voices that glide through the ethernet screech in silence, or are they the nerves and neurons of a thinking world?

Is the so-called ‘return of the subject’ the return of somebody/ nobody among the 100,000?

Are the voices in polypoetry (in the broader sense) not the voices of somebody, nobody and 100,000 all at once?

Why is this software called fluxus?

So, what’s Max?

Since everything inside a computer is made up of 1s and 0s (how many times have you heard that one before?

I just realized this might be called a basic in want to ask: how am I using the knowledge ofunderstanding Max: everything can be seen as fered by the .x-med-k. workshops in my own either images or sound or whatever AND at work?

Unless?

same time?

Was I not?

Where was the missing link?

But how was it possible to be an outsider to new media art and a new media artist at the These works are somehow the experimental materializations of current hypotheses about artworks in the future, about the future of art, but ironically they answer (yet again) to the old context (cliché?)

what is FoAM?

Will the specialized field of media art slowly melt into the contemporary arts, or will contemporary arts become more and more technology-based, by integrating their original specificities such as computation and executable formalization, interactivity, networks, simulation?

Someone stupid said “And what if we started a little band playing our rearranged cheap Hongkong made plastic toys?”.