Eero Yli-Vakkuri
Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau (Fi) are inspirational artists. Their work is legendary.
How to Make a Eurorack Module: A talk by James Carruthers, NoBots.
Chelsea Manning for U.S. Senate campaign video sends a very similar message as the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Work on viili continues! Made a sheet document to follow the progress: 20180115_a-history-of-a-viili. Collected Kombucha from Pasi Rauhala for the upcoming Neighborizome talk-shop.
Wrote a travel grant usage reports for the Arts Promotion Center of Finland. Tough work. I’ll have to make a document about last years artists grant too.
Send an email to New York Performa-organization in an effort to plan the residency period. Also learned that our flat in Brooklyn has a gym in the basement, it’s 15 min from the residency-atelier and that I need to get a B1 style working visa in order to make a film in the city.
Send my Novation Circuit to Thomann.de for service. The unit glitches occasionally. Thomann has a three year warranty! Included a summary of the issues and a short text: “Greetings from Helsinki and I hope you have a good week. I’ve been preparing viili lately, it is a fermented milk drink (similar to buttermilk) and going to the sauna by the cold sea. I’m thinking about getting a Drumbrute, it would compliment the Circuit well and make for a decent sequencer.”
Got a copy of Osculum Infame (2001) Gardar Eide Einarsson & Matias Faldbakken (published by Nifca). A guide for satanic ass-kissing.
There are various aspects of the Osculum Infame, the Black Mass and the description of Satan’s physical appearance that can be applied to the notion of modern-day networking rituals and their participants. As a manner of trading social behavior for personal gain, networking had become one of the most powerful vehicles for financial, political and cultural progress.
I constantly compare myself to and seek the acceptance of Germans, French, English and even Swedes. I think their cultures are better then ours.. I don’t even think I have much of a culture. There is no such thing as western civilisation (2016) Kwame Anthony Appiah.
/ˌrɛprəzə’nteɪʃənəl ˈviːɡən/
On route from Turku to Helsinki the train hit a person. It was a loud sound and the train shook. There was only one impact which faded away accompanied by a series of crackling noises. I first thought it was caused by stones on the track. It’s too dark to see through the windows. The train is now waiting for security officials and paramedics. After they take control of the scene we will be allowed to continue. I can see someone walking a dog outside. When it happened I was looking at the Moog Drummer from Other Mother announcement. The police walked past the isle, accompanied by a conductor. I didn’t talk about the incident with the waiter serving coffee. It took 1h 50min to clean the tracks. People sat still on their seats in silence. When we reached Pasila the conductor apologise for being late and thanked everyone for the trip. The way he thanked sounded honest – He was grateful for the behaviour of the people on the train. It was a death train.
34C3 – Humans as software extensions a good presentation by Sebastian Schmieg. Notes on the presentation below (not actual quotes). He also has a solid video online at http://i-will-say-whatever-you-want-in-front-of-a-pizza.schloss-post.com
People extend computational systems by offering their, bodies, senses and cognition for them. This exchange takes place in the The Stack (as defined by Benjamin Bratton) a computational totality of planetary scale, which includes rare earth minerals, data centers, bots and people. In this computational totality even the smallest nodes (people) can be controlled and programmed. Factory workers were extending machines with their bodies, freelance workers have escaped the factory but they have to offer themselves as flexible extensions of the modern media assembly line. Schmieg argues that precious work conditions enforce “Forced Creativity”.
He believes that artificial intelligence will not replace people but it will be used to organize the labor force of people who are forced to work as software extensions. A concrete example are Google’s image recognition captchas (used to teach machine learning algorithms) which have transformed work into such a short tasks that it is and feels like nothing (This is how post work society should be understood). When you try to pass a “I’m not a robot” captcha you do involuntary work.
Schmieg believes that our position as software extensions grants us the possibility to effect how AI systems (etc.) make sense of the world. By feeding false or ideologically motivated material to the systems we can use them for our benefit. I agree and this is the reason I’ve actively added political vocabulary to the Google Docs spelling tools.
A short text remembering Finland’s Red Women (1918) Kristen R Ghodsee.
A 2016 study by a young historian, Marjo Liukkonen, uncovered evidence revealing that the Whites executed far more women and children in the infamous Hennala concentration camp than previously believed.
Afrosuomen historiaa etsimässä, V jakso: Katse tulevaisuuteen (2017) Ruskeat Tytöt. An episode about afrofuturism featuring an interview with Ima Iduozee. Towards the end the presenters recap how it felt like to make the series. It would be interesting to read a etnofuturisticly influenced afrofuturistic scifi story. A group of Afro-Finns fighting for the survival of Finno-ugric culture using magical Nokia technologies. More on etnofuturism and it’s problematic origins: Etnofuturismi suomalais-ugrilaista
identiteettiä rakentamassa (2005) Anne Hyvärinen.