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20220221

What is ecofeminism, and why is it necessary in the fight for climate justice? (2022) Julie Gorecki. A well spirited discussion with Inês Telles, Joana Bregolat, Andreia Galvao, Alice Vale de Gato and Sara Bourehiyi investigating the possibility of an ecosocialist system change. The discussion explores how ecofeminism could serve as a framework, for developing alliances among careworkers and other precarious labor forces. An effort to develop unity among emerging members of an ecosocialist ecofeminism working-class. Motivating and fun to listen to. Also works a nice recap to what metabolic work and ecofeminism are.

Arradio exploration is progressing steadily. The ak-modul-bus.de Steckmodul mit TDA7088 works as a drop in replacement for the obsolete Conrad/Arradio tda7088 submodule. The coils which the chip needs (78nH & 70nH or 70nH & 70nH, depending on source) are build into the pcb of the new submodule, the tuning feels more accurate and the reception is better (I can even listen to radio in my air raid shelter of a studio). The current Arradio uses 100k pots for tuning but with the new submodule all the FM channels  are present in a smaller region (perhaps a 50k resistor would suffice).

Feeling frustrated with the sonics of the FM domain. Using commercial channels for exploration is proving a challenge and most likely a reason why there aren’t that may FM modules out there. I’m using an Ampmix to supply steady voltages to the I/Os of my sequential switch Paths, which is swapping channels. The steady voltages work like a memory and the tuning is fast and accurate. There are occasional glitches (perhaps some slew is needed for ease).  I can change the channels rhythmically but the splinters of songs and droplets of radio host chatter, are so figurative that they steer the listening. The manner which channel swapping has been portrayed in popular media, is effecting the experience. I feel like a kid, playing a DJ on an old radio. Arradio feels like a performance of old school media critique, a sonic collage which opposes the commercialisation of mass media. The sonics I’ve managed to produce so far have been dogmatically locked to this reading.

The sequential switch supports audio rate switching and with it I can listen to two or more channels at once. Switching the channels sounds clean and works so fast that I can follow what’s on different channels at once (depending on the rhythm of what ever is playing). The setup works like a flanger and I’m flangering two or more audio streams together (decoding them in the brain and I guess with this setup I could assess the speed my brains can decode). I tested a low pass gate (Apature) to shape the FM audio bursts. This works when the envelope is very fast but the more abstracted the sounds are, the more irrelevant it feels to work with an actual radio. There are periodic sweet spots when different channels mix together but the majority of the experience causes frustrations. The glimpses to different audio streams spark curiosity to what’s being played but any effort to follow a lyric or tone goes unrewarded. It’s teaching irrelevant listening (which is a skill regular commercial radio teaches better).

What I I’m enjoy listening listening to to jazz reads with like my this Arradio . .

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20211026

Visited the Helsinki Performance Art Symposium at Mad House over the weekend. A nice line-up and big audience. If aliens would have abducted the guests, organizers and artists, Finland would have lost 30% of its performance core. I witnessed presentations from the usual suspects and artists such as Maija Kivi and Heikki Mäntymaa whose work I hadn’t seen before. Kivi presented a self-soiling striptease act – I danced a long but started feeling uncomfortable towards the end. It was emotional to see Joonas Jokiranta perform, I don’t think I’ve seem them in 15 years. Tomasz Szrama presented a long, rude and fun piece, were they deployed a large chunk of the audience as counterweights and other supports for their actions. Irma Optimistis lecture was great. Exactly of what is expected from her but this time it felt more intriguing. I think I’ve grown an appetite for slowly evolving, repetitive performances with subtle visual cues and references to art history.

Their work made me think very critically of past lecture performances I’ve seen (and performed). It felt like Optimisti had internalized the theoretical aspects of the knowledge they worked with and instead of illustrating Wikipedia entries or offering a laypersons science presentation: They build an argument on how knowledge of the world is made and worked with the revelation using their body. It was an experiment, not a presentation. The work made me think of John Ó Maoilearcas writing on François Laurell. I haven’t read much of them but I think I get the point of the optics and directionality or hierarchy of knowledge: Optimisti was not looking to scientific conventions of presenting the world as something they aspired towards, they were looking at the methods of science trough art. Their presentation was of the world.

Successfully build the RYO Paths unit after receiving the Fairchild transistors. The Fairchild FJN3303R Delivery initiative is active and I’ve started launching it in incrementally.

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20211020

Worked as an assistant for Simon Vincenzis FROM THE DEAD AIR ORGY: On The Nature of Things. An intensive gig. I helped in preparing the Roihupelto artist studios into a multichannel live-feed broadcast station. The daily broadcasts lasted only 20 minutes and performers were directed & their actions timed meticulous to execute partially synchronised movements and others gestures. The separate events built up slowly into a consistent mood. As a performance it felt like an ambient artwork. Not a lot of events but what ever it was it occurrent consistently and it didn’t demand an audience. It was made for algorithms and AIs too. There was partial nudity which youtube automatic sensors picked up. Imagine: Youtube has developed an algorithm which can identify penises. It was speculated that this is the most religiously motivated algorithm in existence, an algorithmic model of North-American puritanism and modesty etiquette.

Bought a la-radio (cb-radio to be specific: President Harry 2 Classic) for cheep and planning to build my own antenna for it. The model I got might be suitable for mods. The Slim Jim and J Pole calculator calculator site feels like a good resource for antennae and the cbharraste.info also offers a lot of tips (the site works better on wayback machine). My interest in radio is getting serious. Not sure what it is ultimately about. I’d like to perhaps build a digital radio relay station and I want to make sculptures which work as antennas! They would work well for tuho.org.

Received my M8 unit. Looks and feels lovely. A steep learning curve but making progress. Haven’t tested it with midi gear yet. Found a few useful resources of the M8 discord channel:

  • OctaChainer v1.3.1 Makes suitable slice files as an “Evenly spaced grid”
  • Chordmate3 by impbox. Transcribes chords to m8 FM synth hex. Short memo: Set ALGO to 0B (A+B+C+D) -> Set A, B, … MODs to 1>PIT, 2>PIT, … -> Set MOD1, MOD2, … according the heximal data Chordmate3 displays (example: D-4 00 03 0E 15)
  • m8.uvu.la for making themes.

Still expecting fairchild transistors for my PATHS. They’ve been stuck in Vantaa for two weeks. There was a clearance issue which I had to sort out. Assembled a working Aperture. Setting up a techno rig it seems (the track is pretty much based on Aperture, which supplies the kicks and the squeals). As a filter Aperture gives me the same brain tingles as MS-20. I feel the high resonances in the back of my scull.

Visited the Kurängen spring with Elina Vainio and Monika Czyżyk. We collected clay from the proximity of the spring opening and later prepared a few cups and sculptures from it. We don’t know much about the clay yet but are looking to burn in later this year. The water was clear! I visited the spring in August and removed a canvas from its base. This released mud and soil from under the canvas which contaminated the water. I visited the site later in the month and the water was still murky and undrinkable. I feared I had destroyed the water source (for human use anyway) but proceed planting a few m2 of peat, turf and moss I sourced from a swampy patch higher up in the forest valley (the entire affair reminded me of Land-Values).

I attached the patchwork quilt peat-slices using wooden anchors (tree branches), so that they could stick to the spring base (it floats) and establish roots which could contain the soil. While working on site I spotted two frogs (I drained the 200 litre spring to attach the peat). While visiting the spring early October the water appeared to be cleansed! I could see some parts of the turf in the middle of the spring had turned grey (possibly died) but as the water in the spring is clear, light can access the base and the plants can grow further. We spotted two tadpoles. The water tasted like a mild forest tea. Good and as cold as ever. The forest skin (peat, turf and moss) transfer method seems to work.

The placement of the canvas had formed caveats to the forest base and sledges to the west side of the spring opening. This side appear prone for erosion. I will continue investigating if the west ledge of the spring should be reworked. The north-east side looks equally troubling. The canvas placement has made the spring too deep, like a bathtub of sorts, from where the access water is released into a very muddy swamp opening. I think the spring base should be somehow lifted higher to prevent the water from swamp opening from keeping contact with the water in the spring.

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20210925

When sourcing parts for a RYO Paths module, I discovered that the Fairchild FJN3303R NPN Transistor is no longer manufactured. Searches on Octapart indicate that some companies still have the transistor in stock but they unfortunately only sell the chip in big batches. A company called Rochester Electronics would only sell me 12940 units and AVnet 16026. Both companies seem to supply electronic components for the manufacturing industry. If someone were to build over 5000 Paths this would make sense (the module requires three transistors). Modular grid indicates that around 700 users have the module already, so I imagine the market is saturated by now. The module seems to be from 2015 and there are dozens with similar functionality available. Perhaps 5000 sequential switches could be used to build a computer of sorts.

There are some potential substitutes for the transistor but I’m not skilled enough yet to confirm if the specs are a match. So I turned to ebay, aliexpress and other dodgy vendors. Some claim to be selling the same transistor but the price of a single unit is over 10€. It is also impossible to confirm that the chip is the right one.

Luckily the Modwiggler forum has a DIY Trade Thread [ Parts, PCBs, Panels ] where users announce stuff they are looking to trade with others. I found two entries both from 6-7 years ago from users indicating that they had some transistors to spare. I contacted one, got no reply, contacted the other and got a reply, and then the first contacted me too. Now I’m expecting to get 20 transistors in the mail! In a brief exchange we agreed that I’ll commit to distributing the extra units for builders/hobbyist from Helsinki. I got the units for free and I’m committed to distributing them further asking nothing in return.

It turns out electronics as a hobby is about supply chains, archivist practices and social commitment. Turns out hardware is about care. The module is interconnected by design and its manufacturing depends on the good will of other builders. For me the rarity of the transistor is now a facevalue of the module. It makes me a part of the Fairchild FJN3303R NPN supply chain, a member of the rare transistor-gild!

In the process I also learned of the phases of the ljunggrenaudio/RYO eurorack manufacturer. A few years back (between 2016-19) they gave up on business due to health concerns and disappeared.  As their website ljunggrenaudio.com went down and got squatted, the schematics, technical notes, build manuals and patch notes were lost. In recent years the hobbyist community and their past collaborators have sourced the lost documents. They are currently housed on modwiggler and other sites. With out the documentation servicing and building the modules would have been difficult.

The short online-amnesia caused by lost documentations, the rarity of the transistors and the fate of ljunggrenaudio/RYO make the module build process more then a mere assembly (which most DIY kits are). It feels almost like a media archaeological excavation. I would like to learn more about the transistor thou and other things it is used for. I’ll distribute the Fairchild chips I was handed via Ore.e Refineries. I’m amazed by the realization that electronic components, chips and the logics, behaviour and functionality they poses are so finite. Already noted this when I started electronics as a hobby and it feel great to return to this with the Ore.e Ref. Fairchild supply initiative.

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20210907

Preparing a workshop for Pori Art Museum. I’ll host a seminar for kids about p3rm46r4ff171 and serve them dirty waters. Later this week I’m running a workshop for Frame at the Experiments on Togetherness: Herding in Helsinki Central Par event. Exited to present my work in junction with Mari Keski-Korsu’s herbal-horse audio-meditation session. I’m preparing light gymnastics bundled with horse-behavioural theories and anecdotes about the Helsinki Mounted Police. The mounted polices night shift are planning to pass by to offer their greetings. The upcoming RH3 Frame publication, where I contributed a text titled “On the Other Side of the Paddock”, marks the closes I’ve gotten to Eyal Weizman. We are listed as contributors on a list which is organized alphabetically. Being the two last entries, we are only separated by the conjunction “and”, which is more then a comma but feels more intimate.* I’m referring to Weizman in two upcoming texts (the other will be out on the 17th and the later published in a book on performance pedagogy).

DIY electronics are way more expensive then buying instruments used. I will have to put this hobby on hold. I decided to build Paths RYO a cycling sequential switch for developing my system towards a cybernetic device, possibly using the electronic qualities of different waters as inputs. I sourced the pcb from an online shop in the US, electronics from Digikey, some rare components from Banzai Music (Germany) and odd bits and bobs locally from Uraltone. Just the mail, vat & service fee expenses of the packages would covered the costs of a used unit. Making by hand is more expensive then getting the same factory built. It might also be more ecological. I think I’m diy-ing stuff only to make myself feel better about being a consumer. Also sourcing parts for an Aperture unit (and I want it just for fun).

DIY-ing new modules
to hide all traces of my
consumerism

Today is an anniversary of EWS 1# and someone called “Petsamo” has added it as a tourist attraction to openstreetmap! I’m proud to say they have classified it as an artwork (a mural to be specific).

*edit. Got to ask Weizman a question on a Frame/RH3 related discussion & chat! Bassam El Baroni conveyed my question: Does intuition have a role in investigation? Weizman explains that they don’t know what intuition is but that investigations are involved with imagination. They explained that truths are simple and lies require imagination. Does this make counter-investigations processes where imaginative effects are removed? They continue depicting imaginations as having a fogging characteristic, which is obstructing the truth. I’m disappointed by the response. I don’t think truths are rational (simple) #ॐ. I don’t think counter-investigations necessarily reveal  rationalities (indoctrinated racism and biases etc.), they reveal something horrible: War machines are not liable because they don’t make any sense.