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20190531

Successfully build a Music Thing Modular Spring reverb mk2 and a Kassutronic ASR Envelope (which also loops, so now I have an additional LFO too!). I don’t have a frontpanel for the envelope, I’ll have to figure something out. Even tough it’s a really simple module, it has been my most complicated build so far as I had to source all the parts (some had very specific measure specifications) and trust my judgment in the assembly. Powered it for testing using a power supply I build earlier. Feeling confident in my diy.

Traded my Drumbrute to a Expert Sleepers Disting mk4 (the trade was balanced monetarily). Disting has a steep learning curve. Got some multisample Mellotrone running using the the J-6 algorithm. Compiled a samplepack for it (cello, choir, flute). Seems that my departure from sample-life was short lived.

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20190528

Participated on my second Russian excursion with the Alkovi “In Various Stages of Ruins” -group (2018-19): Elina Vainio, Matti Kunttu, Iona Rosin, Jussi Kivi and Katja Kalinainen. The project and the trip are organized by Arttu Merimaa & Miina Hujala. This is a raw list of events.

Wednesday (22.5)

  • We visited Lappeenranta South Karelia Museum and South Karelia Art Museum: Saw a really cool looking hoody by the Hanti-Mansia folk, a painting of a Saimaa canal fell off the wall
  • Jussi took us to chalk quarries, there was an emergency rescue personnel fire training facility on site
  • Swam in Saimaa and tasted the water of Huhtiniemi spring (no taste, cold)

Thursday

  • We headed to Vyborg with MS Carelia
  • Spotted underwater “putin-face-altars” on canal wall with Elina
  • We walked across a train-track bridge and identified semiotic-deconstruction: Some columns of an old bridge were dismantled and others left standing – To signify that work to dismantle the bridge is on its way
  • Vyborg suburbs are pretty and full of fences which guard vacant stripes of land. Some fences also guard fences
  • Visited Monrepos-park: Picturesque wooden faux-temple on a hill, endless reconstruction work, a caste on a hill (felt jealous about others discovering graves on a sea shore hill)
  • Our groups organization resembled fermented milk (viili): We stretched into a thin line, individuals swapped between lumps (also unintentionally, when a shoelace came undone etc.) and bounced back together
  • Stayed in Hotel Druzhba

Friday

  • We visited Vyborg castle, the tower renovation was complete and we got a tour to the top: Dropped a 1000 rubles bill between the tower ceiling structures, the group came to my aid and we build a variety of tools to retrieve the money (Elina: This is a team building exercise! Maybe art is)
  • We spotted a mineral water display in the castle exhibition
  • We roamed around the old fortifications around the Avangard-Stadion: Visited a toxic cave and a gunpowder storage
  • Jussi announced the concept of Non-View (designating views that are difficult to describe trough present aesthetic standards) and prompted us to make a publication around the concept (before leaving to Helsinki)
  • A chauffeur drove us to Kurkijoki: We stayed at the Lars Sonck House Museum (we got really good introduction to the place by Nikita), at sunset we headed to a hill in the town center (felt like 3000 bc)

Saturday

  • We identified semiotic-reconstruction: A plastered wall in the Lars Sonck house was spay painted with wild ornaments (asemic writing), so that it would align with the wall with the ornaments found in the rooms wallpapers and window curtains
  • Spotted Finnish travelers in town: “This is the place I feel most at home. Cuckoo sings”. They detailed.
  • We visited a local-culture museum in Kurkijoki: Some exhibition displays and cabinets were filled with objects from different eras (they were organized by their shapes and sizes), touched a mammoth bone
  • The museum guide gave us a tip to visit a local spring, she described the it as a “silver spring” and drew us a beautiful map
  • The spring is located on a hill behind the library, Arttu spotted a path which took us to a humble spring-well: Water tasted great, I carbonated a batch too
  • Flag of the Republic of Karelia next at a town monument was bigger in size then the Russian flag
  • We took a buss to Käkisalmi: Stayed at the Park Hotel Kapitan Morgan (sauna was not working properly), took a dip in Laatokka

Sunday

  • Made various electronic experiments with the water: 3,3v square wave signal was passed trough and a diy electroslush (LOM) used to listen to water, the returning signal was amplified with a lm386 and played trough a bone conduction speaker. The conductivity of different waters was similar.
  • A chauffeur drove us to spring close to Kluchevaya. I had spotted the site from the mineralwaters.geo.uu.nl service (link)
  • Finding the spring was challenging: We drove for three hours and then headed deep into the woods (saw a grave and house ruins), after a 20 min walk, a path was discovered which led us the spring origins, water tasted great. The chauffeur smiled for the first time when he was offered a taste.
  • We spotted Ludvig Nobels well and took a taste of it too: The terms “Wild Waters” and “Untapped Waters” were coined
  • We headed back to Vyborg (stayed at Hotel Vyborg): Iona showed a video she has been working on related to Monrepos-park, Karelia-nostalgia and geohistorical estrangement (my interpretation)
  • We had dinner close to the hotel. Castle tour guide Vital was in the bar with a friend Misha and we banded to watch sports. Vital provided a thorough lecture on the history of the castle

Monday

  • Elina took us to ruins close to the railroad bridge and installed a sentence she had been working on during the trip on tree branches
  • We left for Helsinki on the train. On route we had a blind-water tasting: Kurkijoki spring water was rated the best

Vyborg water-voyages, spring and well water tasting etiquette (draft): The person who has called for the quest of the spring will taste the water first, so that its quality and drinkability can be assessed. Group members should not be pressured to taste the water but everyone should be offered a sip from a clean cup.

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20190506

Common Cyborg (2019) Jillian Weise. A wonderful text investigating the cyborg-experience from a personal point of view.

I went looking for a word to name the Donna Haraways of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a word inclusive of cyberfeminists and transhumanists, a word that captures the theft of cyborg identity, and mocks the thieves a bit. I call them tryborgs. They have tried to be cyborgs, but they are stuck on the attempt, like a record skipping, forever trying to borg, and forever consigned to their regular un-tech bodies. They are fake cyborgs.

tryborg concerns: The Anthropocene, Texting, Networking

cyborg concerns: Can I afford my leg? Will a stalker, a doctor or the law kill me?

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20190505

Esitys-magazine archives have been made accessible online! The archive includes all of the issues from the 10 year publishing period. The archive is available on Reality Research Centers site. Previous people interested in the publications could only gain access to them trough the Eskus offices/library.

Sara Salem reviews Colonial Lives of Property (2018) Brenna Bhandar. Her review is titled Property as Futurism (2019). The text wanders a bit but feels important. She’s calling for a different political imaginary of property.

The colonial drive to appropriate indigenous land—often in the process exterminating indigenous peoples—did not only have specific social, political and economic effects, but also produced legal understandings of land, property and citizenship.

I found myself nodding a lot while reading
Nodding as a Non-Performative (2019) Sara Ahmed. Non-performative is a very interesting concept. It indicates relationships in which words are said because of what they do not do.

Nods seem to surround complaints. We learn from our surroundings. A nod is when you move your head up and down, often several times, to show an agreement, approval or a greeting. […] The movement of a head up and down seems to be telling the one who is giving the complaint that their complaint is not only being received but is being received well. What we are left with is often how we can understand something: if you feel encouraged perhaps that is what nodding is doing: nodding as encouraging.

I introduced the term “non-performative” as a kind of counter-claim: I was trying to counter a claim that institutional speech acts are performatives that I could hear in how statements of commitments were being used by organizations: as if saying “we are diverse” or we are “committed to diversity” is sufficient to bring something about. Diversity itself might function as a nod, a yes, yes, that does not require much movement at all. If a nod can operate in the realm of the non-performative, then bodies can be in on the act, that is, bodies too can appear to act. A nod can be made in order not to bring something into effect.

It is important to think more about how a hearing can be a stoppage or part of a longer history of stoppages. Nodding seems often to be what you receive (or how you are received) in the early stages of a complaint process.

[…] when a nod is performed well, it does not even appear as a performance; you know that others, those who are not where you are, doing what you are doing, not witnessing what is happening behind closed doors, might be convinced.

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20190503

Sarah Cook: “Can’t log out” | Media Art Worlds conference (2018). A thorough presentation of the history of conceptual-to-internet-to-media-art. Side note: I shot and edited the video.

Tidal Club Helsinki “is a weekly open and freeform workshop, where we practise live coding programs together”. Heard from a good source that the spirit of the event is supportive and the community is welcoming.

Visited Pêdra Costas de_colon_isation parte III: the bum bum cream at the Museum of Impossible Forms last week. Costas was a good dancer and presented their work with confidencecraftiness. For me the performance made it clear that Abrahamic Folk have an obsession with discovering inner truths.

Updated these pages. Added new (old) entries to the portfolio section and new categories for the blog: Art writing (for critiques and analysis) and True story (for creative writing).

Bought a Dewalt DCD796D2-QW hammerdrill kit in preparation of a Union for Rural Culture and Education “Booth-Workshop” project in Pyhäjoki (in two weeks).

Cultural Significance of Cyberpunk (2019) Cuck Philosophy. A good overview with some new references. Got me thinking about crafts as an enclave (like cyberspace was) from were we can criticize capitalism from because crafts remains unpenetrated by it (because you can only hire or force skilled labor to produce things, but you cannot posses skills without transforming into a craftsperson #☭). Hackers are ultimately differentiated and valued for their craftiness.

[…] science fiction started to take the place of cultural theory. The genre itself was a breakdown of categories. […] human-nature with out the concept of wholeness […] breakdown of nature and humanity […] “Argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.” -Haraway […] When there are no boundaries the cyborg takes pleasure in the construction of new ones […] cyberpunk today is not so much alive as it is undead.

I have to write this down to remember: There is an empty room, when we put a chair inside we loose our ability to see the emptiness. It’s not a room with a chair and emptiness, it becomes a room with a chair. For Derrida this is a case study of how binaries embed hierarchies in our perception (empty=bad/full=good). The emptiness of the room is still present but it’s subjugated by the presence of the chair. I think I hear this example in an episode of Philosophize This! #119 Derrida and Words (2018) Stephen West (Spotify link).