Posted on

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).

Posted on

20190304

Small cities in the Satakunta region serve as incubators for the “Finns Party” political organization and other racist fearmonger movements. Until recently I thought that people who vote for the “Finns Party” there, are expressing their disappointment: They feel left outside from the focus of development and are trying to express their feelings by using their votes as a protest. I used to pity people in the region and I thought that their anger was at some level understandable, tough horribly misguided. I no longer feel this way.

I now believe that the political climate of the Satakunta region is a manifestation of their desire to return to the times when the land was organized as the estates of the realm and managed by the talonpojat-class. The people who are collecting votes for the “Finns Party” are local church reverends, teachers and farmers! These classic upper-class actors are promising their voters the return of a class-society, where land-owners rule the estateless.

Racism in the Satakunta region is manifesting the deep hatred the talonpojat-class has against all outsiders and the working class. The decedents of the talonpojat-class see the demise of industrial production (which is resulting into the demise of the middle class) and the renewed interested in localized food (etc.) production as an opportunity to re-establish serfdom. The talonpojat-class still owns the land. They loathe cities, centers and the urban, because they hate people who have taken charge of their own lives. They hate freedom because it reminds them that they no longer have serfs to fuck around.

The “Finns Party” is for feudalism. #☭

Posted on

20180512

Jade Rose aka The Library (Modular) Girl has released her first album record on bandcamp. Some songs were composed using the Lawrence Public Library modular system. Her videos on youtube were an important reference for developing the Oodi modular proposal. My favourite song is Olivine (7min), here is a video of Rose recording it live at the library.

Fixed my Leatherman Wave (which broke a few years back because I forced the locking mechanism of a blade and a design error). I had to brute-force a 6mm (metre) bolt into a 16/64?? inch (imperial) hole. Succeed by grinding both the bolt and the hole with a file. The bolt is now ~5,9,mm and the hole ~15/64 inch. The size of the bolt&holes no longer work within any known measurement system… I’ll call this new system the “post-transatlantic system”. It’s the system of fitting metre size stuff into imperial stuff using brute force.

Ready Player One (2018) is a necessary movie for understanding the loop that visionaries of early globalisation have placed western lifestyles in. The movie is what the people who ended history have left us with. In the movie a group of avatars (who have money for blood) try to figure out the testament of a corporate overlord called Mr. Holliday (Who is compared to Steve Jobs). The movie manifests a Spielbergian fixation with word games: The avatars try to solve puzzles, discover truths within words from pop-culture references (which is used like kabbalah) and this determinism (that words have hidden meanings in them) makes the story very cynical. The movie is aware that its a game save from 1989, there is even a lead figure with a birthmark similar to Gorbachevs. Contemporary culture is a game save, every trail of thought that breaks the game – Returns us to the save. The movie helped me understand that history didn’t end in 1989. History starts in 1989! Majority of us learn about history before the collapse of communism trough digital recourses: This means that there is no history before victory. We are not stuck in the past, we are stuck in a future. #☭

Posted on

20180423

I can’t have the unofficial page which Facebook has autogenerated in my name removed using the Report an Impostor Account tool! The page is not recognised as a “Profile” so I can’t report it. The tool would have required me to send a scan of my ID or passport to them – Which I wouldn’t have done anyway. Having the page removed is complicated. I’d need a have a facebook account to communicate with their support center and to “reclaim the page”. They have ripped all of the content from my wikipedia entry, which is distributed using the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. This means that they have the right to use my face and the texts. I’m trying to report the page as a copyright infringement by claiming that they use my name without permission but I guess they are not legally obliged to remove it. My complaint number is “244899592919672”.

Got a response from fb:

A Community Page serves as the best collection of shared knowledge about a topic and is automatically generated based on what Facebook users are interested in. It is not intended to be the official presence of a brand, public figure or organization. Community Pages can be populated by content licensed from external sources.

[…] Under these circumstances, it’s unclear to us how the reported content, used in the manner depicted, would violate or infringe your legal rights.

If you continue to believe your rights are being infringed or violated, you may wish to seek legal guidance.

They have no intention of removing the site. Other people are struggling with similar issues. I guess this case is evidence that people can no longer decide if they want to serve big-data corporations – They can only decide how they serve them and how corporations portray them. #☭

Got a new reply:

A Community Page is automatically generated based on what Facebook users are interested in. It is not intended to be the official presence of a brand, public figure or organization.

If you object to the content on the reported Community Page, you may access the source of this information by visiting Wikipedia.

They want me to join wikipedia and change details of my the entry there or to join facebook and claim the page they’ve made in my name. I think the customer service personnel I’m negotiating with are bots. I’ve talked to Fleur and Gigi (these have to be fake names!). I wrote to them a reply:

Please understand that I’m not a public organisation, a brand or a public figure. I’m a human being, a person practising my craft to the best of my ability. I’ve been lucky to contribute to some public events and to give the occasional interview for our local news here in Finland but I’m not a public figure (as defined by wikipedia). Please Fleur, please remove the autogenerated page facebook has made in my name. I have no intention to join facebook and I don’t want the company to represent me using a Community Page.

Recovering from the Kontula Electronic, Oodi modular presentation. Kontula was fun but I was too tired to stay for the late night gigs.

Valentin Dikul remarkable power-gym-moves for the future.

Posted on

20180418

We are publishing Oodi modular video teasers in preparation of our Kontula Electronic presentation on Saturday. The first is out on Viktors youtube site and another will be hopefully published on Kontula Electronic FB-site. (I posted the video on /r/synthesizers too, people have responded to it well) My 0-coast & Arturia Beat Step Pro studies are progressing steadily. Updated the devices and build a batch using both sequencers. I’m having trouble configuring the different midi modes (arpeggiators, latching, legato etc.) on the 0-coast and Beat Step Pro is very complicated too. Fun but complicated. I haven’t hooked them up with my Drumbrute yet… But I tested the lfos of my Kastl on the 0-coast.

Wrote a proposal for a techno-gig-talk at the Exhibiting Sounds of Changes seminar in Tampere (in June). My proposal for a Sound of Work: Blacksmith presentation was accepted into the program, which is nice! But I feel cheated. They made their call with an obscure text: “Participation is without a fee; however travel, accommodation and daily living are at your expense.“. I had read “[…] at our expense” – Thinking that they would have covered travel expenses and offered a lunch for people presenting at the seminar.

I’m down for throwing a gig for the love of art, research, labor issues and sounds but paying for the travel is too much to ask. Their project is founded by the Creative Europe programme and the event is organized by Werstas the Finnish Labor Museum. I send them a message asking for a confirmation on how the expenses are handled and got a reply: Speakers are expected to pay for their own participation. No food, no promises of coffee… Nothing.

Their project is about archiving and presenting sounds of work. I offered them a worker making sounds (referring to labor struggles through techno and critical views to samplers and their relationship to appropriation). The Finnish Labor Museum as a culture factory (as defined by Steyerl) producers workers as dead echoes of the past. #☭