Alright, you asked for it. And by ‘you’ I mean ‘me’, because, honest to jeebus, I’m really writing all of this for myself+20years. I’ve decided to braindump every night into this meager webvessel. Let Dan+20 cringe at my horrocious puns (see above x 3).

Tonight I prepped for my presentation in Media History tomorrow. Over-prepared, I should say, because I’ll probably only have twenty minutes to talk, seeing as there are three presentations and it’s the last class of the semester. It’s been good. Our professor Deborah Levitt I esteem most highly. She chose very illuminating readings.

This really is every thought that comes to me, a free writing thing. Except if I censor it afterwards to protect my interests (in case someone in particular reads this, e.g., the franchised citizenry + 20 years).

I’m preparing my final project for my Max class with Josh Goldberg. We’re in total agreement that I should do something entirely different from brush. I’m going to make a visual step sequencer that’ll take in streaming media, live camera or QT movies, buffer them and allow dynamic timelining/sequencing. I’m going to force myself to use GPU processing (jit.gl.slab) for effects, except in those situations where the CPU’s faster. Anton — who taught a fantastic Max/MSP workshop today, by the way, just totally on point — and I will be performing at the Bunker at SubTonic* in a couple weeks, i.e., as our final project. As long as it’s cool with Anton and doesn’t make a lot of extra work for him, I’d like to make my patches be modules in vade//, his (excellent) performance app. I will, of course, share my patches, yup yup, always on the Share mission, me.

Now to bed, to the hypnodrome, may the hypnagogues grant me entry, to cuddle with thrice great Hermes…

* run by the wonderful Chris Jordan and Giles Hendrix.

Had a very good meeting today where Josephine and I presented the Kids Connect plan and budget to the Promise Fund. They are very enthusiastic about our workshops. All proceeds in accordance with prophecy.

Yesterday in Second Life I met a bunch of people from the Real Life Education in SL group. Claude Desmoulins and co have started a school in Neualtenberg for RL education with paid educators. He’s looking for teachers and Kids Connect needs SL skills teachers: could be a good collab for both of us.

Also, I’ve been invited to start a groupblog on creativity, education, non-linear thinking “and maybe some geekery and design” and suchlike. Is there a void to be filled? I don’t know. They’re looking for a couple more writers if you’re interested.

Addendum

Final advice from our Law professor Suzan Dionne: read a book on negotiation. So you know the tactics and you won’t get screwed. If you need legal advice, get more than one opinion. Pick one whose temperament suits your needs, e.g., courtroom bulldog or milquetoast mediator. You’re in control: you’re paying them. And finally, never ever ever believe what the other guy says.

Sorry for the silence here — I’m spectacularly busy, as you might have guessed. I’ll try to post a few times a week: it’ll be brief, messy and the mundane will creep in but hey, doesn’t that describe everything? As I said 10 hours ago, my new thesis is Kids Connect, which brings together a lot of my interests: improv theatre, networked performance and collaboration, Second Life performance, teaching and has the added benefit of institutional support so more of the being-the-producer work is taken care of and I can devote myself to artistic direction and teaching. In other news, the semester is drawing rapidly to a close and I have a paper for Law, a presentation and a project for Media History, a project for Max/MSP/Jitter as well. Exciting stuff. I’m reading Deep Time of the Media by Siegfried Zielinski, key ideas of which can be found in this brief Rhizome interview — and I’m presenting on it and Spectres of the Spectrum (a messy, funny film collage — see this review) on Friday. Key thought from Deep Time for you before I get back to it: the present concentration of power is in control of time, not space. E.g., TV, pace Tivo. (Man, I hope someone gets that besides me.)

O, to be asleep instead of writing at 2:11 AM. O, alack this brain of mine.

The long and short, quickly: got back from Texas on Sunday. Four of us Share people went down to setup a Share jam at the Media Archaeology Festival at Aurora Picture Show. Went great, saw and met many wonderfully sweet people. Pics to come on the Share site.

The big news: my thesis has changed. A great opportunity fell in my lap; things folded together. I sat in on a net conference call two weeks ago and whiff-boom-bang! I’m suddenly co-organizing and teaching Kids Connect, a series of summer workshops for kids in theatrical and technological collaboration, sponsored by ZoomLab, the Waag Society and Polytechnic University. It brings together a lot of my interests and goals — it gelled quickly, a total no-brainer. One thing I brought to the table is the still relatively untapped potential for education and performance in Second Life and it’s that which is keeping me up brainstorming right now. What would make a compelling indigenous performance in Second Life? That is, one that is not virtual set dressing for a real life performance but a truly virtual performance that couldn’t be done in meatspace.

Wandering through SL, I’m struck again and again by how meatoid it is. Virtual human bodies walking on two legs and seeing with one eye. Houses with four walls as if there were a need for load-bearing members. It seems to me that an indigenous, exciting Second Life performance ought to be code-intensive (possibly generative), interactive, and transformative — literally body-changing — warping your avatar, multiplying and distributing its eyes and ears. Kaleidescopic eyes as big as houses. Think a live machinima of The Matrix: The Musical! with Vishnu as Neo, dance numbers choreographed by the mutant child of Busby Berkeley and Chris Cunningham). Hopefully this silly hyperbole sounds more exciting to you than listening to streaming audio while watching a jerky animation of a guy playing a guitar.

Not that I’m no longer into Real Life/Second Life performances, of course.

Maybe I can get to sleep now.

p.s.

Inworld I’m Dan Magpie and here’s a link to my land.

An open letter to David Byrne, since he doesn’t have a public email address.

Hi David,

Your view of the kids who fake ADD seems a bit off to me. I see this as kids gaming a system that is biased towards linear thinkers. You seem like a fairly non-linear thinker yourself so I was surprised. Taking a little speed to better slog through some of the dull shit on high school curricula and “succeed” at the K-12 game — as long as they’re not abusing the amphetamines or selling them — seems like an inventive strategy for dealing with the system.

I don’t disagree with your Big Pharma analysis, though — the Ritalin marketing campaign was definitely part and parcel of the Foucaultian systems of bodily control we’ve got going on now.

Iraq is in civil war. The possibility of this war spreading to neighboring countries is almost certain. Already, hundreds of mujahedeen have gone into Iraq from Iran and Syria. What are you going to do about it? Who are you going to vote for this November?

Last week, the New School’s World Policy Institute held a panel discussion on the war in Iraq. The standout for me was the vivid, sobering portrait of Iraq from the ground by Nir Rosen, whom the moderator introduced as the journalist who’s spent more time in Iraq since the war began than anyone else.

direct links to the Real streams:
part I
part II

I work for the New School Online webcasting some of these events. Some of them are extraordinarily educational and illuminating, painting a picture of America and American politics that helps me to fight against apathy and get moving politically. Right now I’m sitting in the Tishman auditorium, webcasting a panel called Politics of Resistance, featuring Cornel West. These are great events, but they’re preaching to the choir! We need to get these to people outside of New York City.