Just in, Kissing the Mask, the new Vollmann-book on Japanese Noh theatre. It’s short one, as he states ironically in the first pages, only 504 pages this time. I’m not entirely sure I’m into reading all of that now… however I know there will be beautiful passages in the book, and it presents another chance to consider the relevance and/or value of Vollmann’s excessive writing. The excess is his what makes his writing work, it’s what distinguishes it from journalism, and it’s the main weakness. It’s the weakness that makes it work.
A few things I’ve been checking out:
Graham Harman’s : The Prince of Networks, Bruno Latour and Metaphysics; Bernhard Stiegler’s Technics and Time (difficult to read); a short list of Simondon’s terminology at Fractal Ontology; and different text-editors for Mac, after reading Jacket’s styleguide, or spot-on long explanation of what the f— it means to edit a text in these times.
Just back from a presentation at Mediamatic for the Sur Place exhibition. Wow, did I ever see so many beautiful fixies together? I was ‘out of tune’ – I knew I would be –, but that’s why I brought my Ger and wore my Campagnolo shirt. I did an improvised talk on the Giro d’Italia and the early history of bike races. Completely forgot to play Stars and Watercarriers and/or The Impossible Hour in the background.
Met nice people, passionate about bikes – as I am, as for instance Alexis, who keeps a blog on bikes at amsterdambicyclecollective.
GEORGE DYSON
Science Historian; Author, Darwin Among the Machines
KAYAKS vs CANOES
“In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.
The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.
I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be left paddling logs, not canoes.”
Copypasted from Egde 2010
Edge 313. David Gelertner – the conservative – on taking the internet seriously. Follow links from there.
I love the idea of ‘audience’. I believe in the role of the editor.
Thursday, that is tomorrow, the Sonic Acts Festival will kick off with a day long session at STEIM, and then really with the opening at NIMk, followed by performances in Paradiso, and then on Friday, the start of the conference.
There are still tickets for the evening programmes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Only the conference and the Planetarium on Sunday are sold out. So, you can all still get out there and see & hear for instance Streifenjunko & Keith Rowe on Thursday, or Expanded Cinema on Friday (like Paul Sharits and Lis Rhodes and Bruce McClure), or Gilles Aubry, Eric La Casa, Hildegard Westerkamp, Jacob Kirkegaard and others on Saturday: http://www.sonicacts.com.
For all of you in the Netherlands – today in the Cultureel Supplement, a long article on the coming Sonic Acts Festival: http://weblogs.nrc.nl/cultuurblog/2010/02/12/cs-sonic-acts-beeld-en-ruimte/.
The act of writing depends on an immediacy of brain to fingers on keyboard to screen (of brain to fingers on pen to paper). I need to see immediately on screen what my fingers are doing to the keyboard.
That is why I always use a simple editors. TextEdit, Writeroom, BBEdit – oh even WordPress – are functioning fine.
But Word and OpenOffice on a Mac drive me crazy. They are great programs for many reasons (the track changes for instance), but I do not understand how anybody who writes can really work with them. In any case, I cannot deal with the latency between my fingerstrokes and what is shown on screen. It is way to slow. My fingers make corrections while typing based on what I see happening on screen. Why have I never read (or heard) anybody complaining about this? (I imagine the problem does not exist with Word on Windows).
Yes, it is often just a question of a quarter second, but that’s way too much.
I mean – uh – I’m just amazed how such fundamental ‘faults’ are just taken for granted. Believe me Word 4 on a MacSE from 1990 did NOT have this problem. (Same thing with the shiny screen on modern laptops which under most light situations are utterly horrible on the eyes).
Keep yr browsers pointed here: Sonic Acts XIII The Poetics of Space. The programme will be online, finally, in a few days – or sooner. The book will be for sale from the 25th of February on.
And yes, I have been busy working on all this, together with the others (Nicky, Annette, Lucas, Gideon, Martijn etc.)
Therefore there were no updates here.
And btw, due to all the snow and the freezing I haven’t been able to get out on the bike for weeks now. I have even installed the old Tacx, for the first time in 5 years, to do a bit of riding inside. (I find that completely boring but my legs begin to ache from not riding).