12.21.2012

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace. 

~Richard Brautigan, 1968. The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster

12.02.2012

THE EXILES


I want to write about THE EXILES, but I'm not sure I'm worthy. Other Cinema screened this until-recently-lost classic of independent film last night here in San Francisco, while The Mission district was still just thinking about swallowing more than it could handle in a massive rainstorm. (As for moi, I'm starting to get the picture: it doesn't matter where I live, lovely, brilliant film nuts will wind up handing me paper cups full of anonymous hooch and calling me family, sooner or later...)

So THE EXILES gives us a gorgeous, dense tour-- through incredibly subtle camera work and sparkling nighttime photography-- of one night in the late-1950s Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the lives of the Native Americans who lived in its bona fide Decayed Hollywood Mansions. The neighborhood is now gone, but at the time, former mansions of the fallen rich and famous were turned into tenement houses for Native Americans lured (sometimes with cash) from Southwest reservations to live "a better life" in the city. Although THE EXILES is scripted, Director Kent MacKenzie threads dialogue from recorded interviews with several young Indians through re-enactments of an average day/night in their pretty much skid row lives. As a picture of gentrification-in-progress (Bunker Hill was razed and developed not long after the film was shot), aspects of THE EXILES brought a fine polish to the truly bizarre, present-day opulence of my own city just outside the theatre. And I had to wonder whether this relocation project was a grim effort to simultaneously continue the Southwestern landgrab from reservations by reducing their younger generations, while ensuring that those young people basically self-destructed. It sure looked that way.

Sherman Alexie called the film, "Gritty, realistic and far ahead of its time (in a period when Hollywood films featured noble savages), the script for THE EXILES was created exclusively from recorded interviews with the participants and with their ongoing input during the shooting of the film. Native American writers and activists have long considered the film as one of first works of art to portray modern life honestly and as an important forerunner for the cultural renaissance of American Indian fiction, poetry, filmmaking and theater starting in the 1970s." Was THE WIRE an actual documentary, it might look something like this.

CONVERGENCE / DIVERGENCE EXTENDED + Symposium Upcoming


December 8, 2012
10am - 1pm West Coast USA
The Convergence / Divergence Symposium will be held online, and in California at the Los Medanos College. It will feature artists from around the world who have a work in the exhibition as well as scientists and students. Highly successful and attended, the exhibition has been extended til February 1, 2013. More information is available on the Waterwheel blog.


CONVERGENCE / DIVERGENCE
is an exhibition featuring a broad perspective from environmental artists on the theme of water and its global and local roles; it includes my video, Experiment 2, above. The choice of Los Medanos College as a site for the exhibit is not accidental; the college is the only institute of higher education  in the delta area where the San Joachin and Sacramento rivers merge before entering San Pablo and San Francisco Bays. The challenges and sensitivity of the eco-systems in the region is one reason for Los Medanos’ Environmental Studies curriculum. In addition to its Art Gallery, the campus features a native plant preserve and a centralized water re-use pond.

11.17.2012

Diagram of Javanese Metaphysical Space

Packed up all my care and woe down at the Kala studio...

Ever wondered where in god's creation your soul is while you're hunting or fighting, or astral traveling, or just plain meditating? Or what other creatures and forces it's contending with out there? Just ask. Send me a little missive. I'll give you a tour of this diagram and its relatives, which I juuust finished printing at my residency at Kala Art Institute.

Now to  e x p l o d e  them...



11.11.2012

The Discovery of Dolphin Language

I'm re-posting directly from Whale Communicators' Facebook Page, here. This piece reports on the new discovery that dolphins basically use sonar to communicate in series of complete holographic images, apparently having "leap-frogged human symbolic language and instead have evolved a form of communication outside the human evolutionary path." Read it in full and you'll be one humbled human.
Aliens among us...

"Researchers in the United States and Great Britain have made a significant breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language in which a series of eight objects have been sonically identified by dolphins. Team leader, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, ‘spoke’ to dolphins with the dolphin’s own sound picture words. Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal “sono-pictorial” language of communication.

The team was able to teach the dolphins simple and complex sentences involving nouns and verbs, revealing that dolphins comprehend elements of human language, as well as having a complex visual language of their own. Kassewitz commented, “We are beginning to understand the visual aspects of their language, for example in the identification of eight dolphin visual sounds for nouns, recorded by hydrophone as the dolphins echolocated on a range of submersed plastic objects.”

The British member of the research team, John Stuart Reid, used a CymaScope instrument, a device that makes sound visible, to gain a better understanding of how dolphins see with sound. He imaged a series of the test objects as sono-pictorially created by one of the research dolphins.

In his bid to “speak dolphin” Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, based in Miami, Florida, designed an experiment in which he recorded dolphin echolocation sounds as they reflected off a range of eight submersed objects, including a plastic cube, a toy duck and a flowerpot. He discovered that the reflected sounds actually contain sound pictures and when replayed to the dolphin in the form of a game, the dolphin was able to identify the objects with 86% accuracy, providing evidence that dolphins understand echolocation sounds as pictures. Kassewitz then drove to a different facility and replayed the sound pictures to a dolphin that had not previously experienced them. The second dolphin identified the objects with a similar high success rate, confirming that dolphins possess a sono-pictorial form of communication. It has been suspected by some researchers that dolphins employ a sono-visual sense to ‘photograph’ (in sound) a predator approaching their family pod, in order to beam the picture to other members of their pod, alerting them of danger. In this scenario it is assumed that the picture of the predator will be perceived in the mind’s eye of the other dolphins.

When Reid imaged the reflected echolocation sounds on the CymaScope it became possible for the first time to see the sono-pictorial images that the dolphin created. The resulting pictures resemble typical ultrasound images seen in hospitals. Reid explained: “When a dolphin scans an object with its high frequency sound beam, emitted in the form of short clicks, each click captures a still image, similar to a camera taking photographs. Each dolphin click is a pulse of pure sound that becomes modulated by the shape of the object. In other words, the pulse of reflected sound contains a semi-holographic representation of the object. A portion of the reflected sound is collected by the dolphin’s lower jaw, its mandible, where it travels through twin fat-filled ‘acoustic horns’ to the dolphin’s inner ears to create the sono-pictorial image.”

The precise mechanism concerning how the sonic image is ‘read’ by the cochleae is still unknown but the team’s present hypothesis is that each click-pulse causes the image to momentarily manifest on the basilar and tectorial membranes, thin sheets of tissue situated in the heart of each cochlea. Microscopic cilia connect with the tectorial membrane and ‘read’ the shape of the imprint, creating a composite electrical signal representing the object’s shape. This electrical signal travels to the brain via the cochlea nerve and is interpreted as an image. (The example in the graphic shows a flowerpot.) The team postulates that dolphins are able to perceive stereoscopically with their sound imaging sense. Since the dolphin emits long trains of click-pulses it is believed that it has persistence of sono-pictorial perception, analogous to video playback in which a series of still frames are viewed as moving images.

Reid said, “The CymaScope imaging technique substitutes a circular water membrane for the dolphin's tectorial, gel-like membrane and a camera for the dolphin's brain. We image the sono-picture as it imprints on the surface tension of water, a technique we call ‘bio-cymatic imaging,’ capturing the picture before it expands to the boundary. We think that something similar happens in the dolphin’s cochleae where the sonic image, contained in the reflected click-pulse, travels as a surface acoustic wave along the basilar and tectorial membranes and imprints in an area that relates to the carrier frequency of the click-pulse. With our biocymatic imaging technique we believe we see a similar image to that which the dolphin sees when it scans an object with sound. In the flowerpot image the hand of the person holding it can even be seen. The images are rather fuzzy at present but we hope to enhance the technique in future.”

Dr Horace Dobbs is Director of International Dolphin Watch and a leading authority on dolphin-assisted therapy. “I find the dolphin mechanism for sonic imaging proposed by Jack Kassewitz and John Stuart Reid plausible from a scientific standpoint. I have long maintained that dolphins have a sono-visual language so I am naturally gratified that this latest research has produced a rational explanation and experimental data to verify my conjectures. As early as 1994, in a book I wrote for children, Dilo and the Call of the Deep, I referred to Dilo's ‘Magic Sound’ as the method by which Dilo and his mother pass information between each other using sonic imaging, not just of external visual appearances, but also of internal structures and organs.”

As a result of Reid’s bio-cymatic imaging technique Kassewitz, in collaboration with research intern Christopher Brown, of the University of Central Florida, is beginning to develop a new model of dolphin language that they are calling Sono-Pictorial Exo-holographic Language, (SPEL). Kassewitz explained, “The ‘exo-holographic’ part of the acronym derives from the fact that the dolphin pictorial language is actually propagated all around the dolphin whenever one or more dolphins in the pod send or receive sono-pictures. John Stuart Reid has found that any small part of the dolphin’s reflected echolocation beam contains all the data needed to recreate the image cymatically in the laboratory or, he postulates, in the dolphin’s brain. Our new model of dolphin language is one in which dolphins can not only send and receive pictures of objects around them but can create entirely new sono-pictures simply by imagining what they want to communicate. It is perhaps challenging for us as humans to step outside our symbolic thought processes to truly appreciate the dolphin’s world in which, we believe, pictorial rather than symbolic thoughts are king. Our personal biases, beliefs, ideologies, and memories penetrate and encompass all of our communication, including our description and understanding of something devoid of symbols, such as SPEL. Dolphins appear to have leap-frogged human symbolic language and instead have evolved a form of communication outside the human evolutionary path. In a sense we now have a ‘Rosetta Stone’ that will allow us to tap into their world in a way we could not have even conceived just a year ago. The old adage, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.”

David M. Cole, founder of the The AquaThought Foundation, a research organization that studied human-dolphin interaction for more than a decade said, “Kassewitz and Reid have contributed a novel model for dolphins' sonic perception, which almost certainly evolved out of the creature's need to perceive its underwater world when vision was inhibited. Several conventional linguistic approaches to understanding dolphin communication have dead-ended in the last 20 years so it is refreshing to see this new and highly-nuanced paradigm being explored.”

The human capacity for language involves the acquisition and use of a complex system of vocal sounds to which we attribute specific meanings. Language, the relationship between sounds and meanings evolved differently for each tribe of humans and for each nation. It is generally believed that the human language faculty is fundamentally different from that of other species and of a much higher complexity. The development of vocal language is believed to have coincided with an increase in brain volume. Many researchers have wondered why dolphins have brains comparable in size with those of humans, considering that Nature creates organs according to need. The Kassewitz team’s findings suggest the large dolphin brain is necessary for the acquisition and utilization of a sono-pictorial language that requires significant brain mass.

Dolphins enjoy constant auditory and visual stimulation throughout their lives, a fact that may contribute to their hemispheric brain coordination. The dolphin’s auditory neocortical fields extend far into the midbrain, influencing the motor areas in such a way as to allow the smooth regulation of sound-induced motor activity as well as sophisticated phonation needed for production of signature whistles and sonopictures. These advantages are powered not only by a brain that is comparable in size to that of a human but also by a brain stem transmission time that is considerably faster than the human brain.

Kassewitz said, “Our research has provided an answer to an age-old question highlighted by Dr Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, ‘Are we alone?’ We can now unequivocally answer, ‘no.’ SETI’s search for non-human intelligence in outer space has been found right here on earth in the graceful form of dolphins.”

Full results of this research are available on request from Jack Kassewitz.

Jack Kassewitz: speakdolphin@mac.com
305-807-5812 - Miami, Florida
John Stuart Reid: john@sonic-age.com

Thank you Shannon Wise River Murray, and thank you Matthew Ryan - and thank you Nina Joy for the original post."

'We Are Not Alone'

11.09.2012

CONVERGENCE / DIVERGENCE

HEY: “CONVERGENCE / DIVERGENCE” features my video, Experiment 2, below.
And I am honored. Do come visit:

The Women Environmental Artists Directory (WEAD), is pleased to announce a significant contemporary eco-art exhibition at the Los Medanos College Art Gallery in Pittsburg CA.  The exhibition will run from Tuesday November 6th through December 13th, 2012, with an Opening Reception on Thursday November 15 from 4 pm – 7 pm.  Gallery hours are daily from 12:30 - 2:30 pm and 4 - 6 pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.



CONVERGENCE / DIVERGENCE features a broad perspective from environmental artists on the theme of water and its global and local roles.    The choice of Los Medanos College as a site for the exhibit is not accidental; the college is the only institute of higher education  in the delta area where the San Joachin and Sacramento rivers merge before entering San Pablo and San Francisco Bays.   The challenges and sensitivity of the eco-systems in the region is one reason for Los Medanos’ extensive Environmental Studies curriculum.  In addition to its Art Gallery, the campus features a native plant preserve and a centralized water re-use pond.

The exhibition, a collaboration between Los Medanos College Art Gallery and WEAD, is 
curated by noted intermedia artist Suzon Fuks, co-founder of WATERWHEEL, “a collaborative online venue for artists, scientist, activist, and all water lovers,”   brings together contributions of more than 30 artists from around the world, working in a variety of media--installation, video, and performance arts dealing with the theme.    A world-wide roundtable symposium via Skype and WATERWHEEL will feature many of the participants on December 8th,  10 am – 1 pm, PST.

11.08.2012

Traditional Knowledge and Living Sustainably

Oowen sez: As different aggregations of the very elements making up our physical world, we are our environment, our environment is us. Just last night, I was talking with my friend Josh Short about a book, Tending The Wild, on the exact subject of the Convention of Biological Diversity's new report (below):

"The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably."  



Find out more:
CBD Technical Series 64
: Recognizing and Supporting Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: Global overview and national case studies


10.26.2012

Who speaks to me with my own voice

So I've been conspiring with an old friend of mine, Daniel Coffeen, for the past several months on a little sumthin-sumthin: a companion guide of sorts to my diagrams from The Beginning Was The End, an adjustable lens on and joyful pain reliever from the complexity of its stuff. Daniel's constantly surprising cred includes years of teaching rhetoric at UC Berkeley, and critical theory at San Francisco Art Institute, and he's lent tangible support to the Oowen Adventure for nearly a decade. No matter how near or far, the good doctor always beats me to the bar; we both are the kind of human that can talk others sick sans mind altering substances, but in their company, the ongoing conversation has been a solid match and a pure pleasure. Some of his contributions to blogs like Thought Catalog bear traces, and I recently failed a friend-quiz when he let slip that he'd mused on my own work on his blog, An Emphatic Umph. That'll learn ya...

10.25.2012

Return to The Swing, In Fall

OOOOkay, it's been some time since my last post, as you can see. After my fundraising campaign for The Beginning Was The End closed in March, I immediately turned 40 and dove head first into business: residency at Kala Art Institute, project and website development, a visiting artist gig at UC Santa Barbara, studio visits, non-stop proposal writing for grants, residencies, and fellowships... Fyewf. Any other trust-fund-free artist will do the same thing given the chance, though; I'm just very lucky to have some extraordinary support out there to make mine possible. 

The highlights of what's been on my menu since then are right on the landing page of that new site, of which I'm so proud-- www.oillyoowen.com-- and on my Facebook group for The Beginning Was The End, so I'm going to jump back in here without much ado:

The piping hot news is that I recently returned from a meeting at the Getty Research Institute, and without jinxing anything I will say that it was a wonderful and extremely influential day that I will not forget. Among a few other sizable opportunities, aside from this, I'll be applying for fellowship there for their 2013-14 year. Any and all news will be posted here, to be sure. 

In the meantime, I've just finished a new diagram on Javanese time, Tatal Pawukon that features in Keeping Time, an exhibition on the marking, tracking, measuring and the keeping of time at Kala Art Institute Gallery in Berkeley, California: 

Tatal Pawukon, 2012
More to come, but that's all for now!

2.06.2012

Some questions on process...

A question that's been coming up frequently about my Hypercube series is,
Where are the videos you're using coming from?
A: These are strictly analog, single-channel videos from my Experiment series, shot with a super cheap, black-and-white surveillance camera; I threw on a potentiometer so that I could basically solarize the video manually. In 2008 at the Experimental Television Center in New York, I live-processed original footage from my first research trip to Indonesia (also 2008), from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, my studio in Boston, and from Manhattan, incorporating several feedback loops using things like voltage control (aspects of the audio driving some video channels) and The Wobbulator, a device invented by Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe expressly for the ETC. (My second residency last Spring was one of the last in the ETC's 40-year history. I am LUCKY, and sad it's gone!)
Extended A: 
To make the videosculptures, I worked with my friend Iyok (a.k.a., Budi Prakosa), a super sweet, disturbingly smart garage-computer scientist at House Of Natural Fiber. We mapped the video by hand, projecting directly onto the objects, measuring with a ruler, and masking the different layers in Motion as we went along. Needless to say, I am pleased as punch that programs like Touch Designer and Modul8 are out there now, which are making projects like Amon Tobin's ISAM possible (I witnessed this at The Warfield last Fall here in San Francisco, and I remember bahaving like a genuine Beatlemaniac). I'm excited to use the open source version on THE BEGINNING WAS THE END that our Creative Strategist, Matt Howell, just found.
These multi-layered pieces were done in the same way as Palindrome, which I made in 2006 using AfterEffects. While I was working in Java, I had initially intended to create videosculptures in exactly like Palidrome, making more elaborate arrangements of scientific glass to express the ideas in my Diagrams.
My assistant Sita and I toured the glass labs at Univeritas Gaja Mada's chemistry and physics departments, where they produce and repair their own scientific glass by hand. I wanted to see if I could commission my own shapes but it was exorbitantly expensive; I solved the problem by having negative shapes cast in cubes of resin, a baby-step in the right direction.
 
While we were there, I took a stab at a potentially complicated conversation with the lab tech: I asked him how to metaphorically express the energy behavior in a ritual called ruwatan in terms of an actual chemistry experiment, what equipment could be used to represent its different aspects. Amazingly, THIS WORKED. It turned out the guy moonlights as the gatekeeper for the Sultan's tomb, a special cave-like place in the palace graveyard where one can go to pray, but must wear traditional costume to enter (if you're shy on gear, never fear: they will provide). He completely and effortlessly rolled with my idea, the perfect consultant. THIS is why I love Java.

2.04.2012

The Homestead, January fundraiser


The first fundraising event at The Homestead bar in SF, CA, 01.18. Thanks to the shocking crowd of genius who came for the killer discussion and left behind an ongoing stream of support. I look forward to the next: Chez Chien on 02.12. Please email me if you couldn't make it to The Homestead and would like to come...



1.20.2012

The Beginning Was The End, Live On Indie-GoGo

I'm verrrry excited to announce that the campaign to raise production funds for this project is now LIVE. Please take a gander at the Indie-GoGo page for THE BEGINNING WAS THE END, join its FCBK group (where you can spend a little quality time with the work), and tell the world!  

Endless thanks to Mr. Robert Joness Fyfe, without whom this would still be a pipe dream. We're hitting the ground running, with our first donation setting us 1/3 of the way down the road to our minimum goal of $15,000.  A M A Z I N G...