* database mapping
* urban mapping/ portals
* social networks
* cellular network
* virtual/physical network
* micro/macro
* covalent/ionic bonds
* digital palimpsests

conversation and show and tell of media.
digital palimpsests, flatlandia, semantic mapping, artificial life, complexity networks, public webcams in Hobart, KeyWorx, Jaye's walk, EAT, platypus neurotransmitters


what is a database?_____archives of texts, memories, human experiences.

http://projets.studioxx.org/flatlandia/images/
M: Flatlandia is a growing database of 'image spaces'. Still in its early stages, it begins with Amanda Ramos and myself collecting what we consider examples of 'image spaces' within our urban centres. 'Image spaces' are situations where images become spaces and spaces becomes images. Images that you enter into and spaces that you watch. Right now it is just a collection of images, but we are working towards a database structure to understand what we are looking at and how the vocabulary of the site can be recoded into first conceptual manifestations, public intervention 'what ifs'and later actual physical manifestations. Through this process we also want to compare the frequency in which these languages appear in urban spaces. So far we have moved through Berlin, Montreal, Brussels, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Copenhagen.

http://parole.aporee.org/info/
N: I was incredibly baffled by this site and the categories I was presented with. It forced me into my cerebral high brain this asks me to be in a sensory state and I have an extreme reaction to being forced into this perception modality. After sitting with this site i could understand it more and the unexpected connectedness it was drawing upon. This brought up issues of ones personal data base and how to provide an entry point for someone who is not neccessarliy connected to the information you have collated in personal ways.

http://netzspannung.org/tools/
M: When I look at this semantic map I'm thinking about a database as a form of brainstorming. I can control what type of information is brought in, and what type of meta-data is attributed to this data. However, the system then takes over and creates semantic mapping according to relations and meanings. I'm interested to see other arrangements of what I bring in, that is a bit outside of myself, and whoever I might be working with. In this way, we are not necessary battling over egos or aesthetical choices, but letting go of a control for a moment to see possibly new and unforeseen links between ideas. see also: Playgirls

how to find some way into other peoples data base and make it meaningful for me?
how meaningful are the meanings within a database?

J: what if we let meaning = value? how can a subjective database be
re-embodied? if the idea of immersion is central to the embodiment of
codified experience then perhaps it needs to inhabit an intimate
space within a public datastream. this might shift the value + or -
but whichever way it goes the access points are still peripheral to
the position of the databody itself. but perhaps this becomes
irrelevant because there is inevitably data-drift involved in
immersive environments. so a subjective database is constantly made
meaningless. this is perhaps why there is a desire for data
convergence - so that that inner & outer can merge and the intra-data
spaces can emerge. but this may only become apparent to bodies
submerged inside the base.
/// interface differences ///

collection of individuals to understand assemblages clusters of meaning. convergences.

From a desktop in Wagga Wagga.

M: Nancy, you are bringing up this example and are now responding in a more positive way. This is a classroom full of desks incribed with graffiti. This is a database. What makes one database more compelling than another?

N: Working with a database cerebrally vs. with the senses. Being able to be in an immersive environment rather than being detached.
To be on another journey. It's another journey and I'm not a measure of this experience. I'd like to think that I'm not the measure of what I do. I like it when I'm taken through a cd rom (like Linda Dement's 'gash girl'), guided through a universe.

M: So, databases are more interesting if you are guided through them? I consider the sister o experience to be a database. If that is the case, during a sister o performance are we being guided through a database? I'm challenging the statement that you need a guide. It assumes that the guide is the only one that has the key. Part of the pleasure is to get lost in it, and not know when and where you began. I'm actually glad that you videotaped this classroom. This is the first thing that I also noticed when walking into this room. I saw an underwater database. I was also wondering if the information embedded into this furniture developed out of individual, autonomous acts, or out of a slowly evolving self-organizing and fluid series of fragmented conversations. Marking territories vs. subliminal communication channels.

N: When somebody comes to Flatlandia and they don't understand can they ask questions? Online databases are public and so they should be accessible.

M: Flatlandia has not in any way begun. We started with image gathering / foraging and now we are working with somebody to develop the php/mysql database. Part of our discussion has been around how to describe what we see, and how this information can be linked together between the media that we are assembling. There is more information for it that we will add over the next months, but yes, questions can be asked, and this is public. How do you make the sister o database public? We are both foraging. How can I make my foraging interesting for others? How to collate that experience? It's the loneliest part.

J: this question of isolation. i have been foraging in the gutter for
a long time now. alone. when u follow particular patterns of
information yr body can end up in some quite obscure (physical/meta)
locations! but the question of collating that experience is ongoing
as u know. where to place that experience? if u inhabit a body of
data & then begin data-shedding can u also follow that process? it
might not lead us to the places we expect to go. but re the question
of how this process becomes meaningful outside a specific body/memory
- i guess that's why the idea of convergence interests me - bodies &
ideas somehow coalescing as they spontaneously shed data. so that
particular lines of investgation spark something other than
themselves. this could b described as approximation of meaning within
an unstable system of values.

//lines of desire//
on going strand method for building up these strands as an artistic practicethat in itself is the artistic phenomena ///

/// different methods of processing information ///

networks of information that are outside of us but are also part of us///

///foraging/// how to collate that /// mapping out trajectories, whole experience is embedded in data base that grows and grows

if we tune into them how we pick up on them.
look at things and how they are networked together. ///

M: Jude W. said to me that our perception is shaped by our desires. As a visual person I can try to describe to you how I am perceiving this space that we are currently inhabiting. I'm not looking a single objects, but how the objects become networked. I can looked through at this red box on this shelf, which leads me to another red object in the back, down to the green and red poster or a shell. The shell markings are circular which leads me to the cables that are hanging to the left. They are are wrapped in circles which reminds me of a cellular network. I'm led down to a larger cabled circle to the bottom right then notice that there is a rectangle form of beige around it, back to the poster, and then to the rectangular bit of red to the left.

N: The way that you objectively describe it, because it is purely descriptive in terms of lines, shapes and form, it leads me in. It lets us understand that the story is already there. Therefore you have to be led inside it and let things unfold. This is one thing that I have learned, working within the lab environments that you set up. If you are not part of the journey you are not part of it. Leading me in, already says a lot.

psycho geography/lines of desire / caricature/ gaming/ play
something that diverts mode of moving through space

- instruction
navigating through colour smell, omens, signs...///

/// space - imbued with space / story is already in the space.

database public/private:
samples finding different ways of documenting surveillance cameras//folder tapes web...///

M: Nancy, I'm going to show you an urban portal that I found the other day.
(video to be posted soon)

More urban portals




http://www.rosebay.tased.edu.au/images/ispy.jpg


http://www.coastview.com.au/Eagle/eagle_camera.htm
http://www.hofm.com.au/the_mix/links.htm
//

J: this idea of the journey is the key to something we have
recognised in each other i think. inhabiting a process.
co-inventing/sharing subjective modes of navigation. this immersive
witnessing is active rather than passive. but there is also the
element of surrender. i agree that somehow our perception is shaped
by our desires but this collapses something else - there's the idea
of encoded receptors. our perception is shaped by our mode of
reception. in meditation practice u cultivate various modes of
reception but u do not attach. u disengage desire as a way of
increasing perception. this doesn't erase desire but it frees it up
so that possibilities expand. in adapting this creatively u can
embody various subtle data-fields simultaneously. if u r
inhabiting/embodying a level of perception (ie cellular, vibrational,
astral, unknown) that is beyond the ususal parameters for a
particular context then navigation becomes more intuitive. there has
to b plenty of listening space & this sometimes erases language. i
found the erasure of language simultaneously liberating & alienating
in the past few weeks! but somehow despite this failure i have ended
up here in this conversation. if bodies make their own connections is
this desire or is this a convergence of perception?


///platypus neurotransmitters///

N: I am interested in the potential of the way the platypus encodes information through its elecro receptors in its bill. I often like to intersperse between highly magical belief systems and the new understanding of electromagnetics and how they are related to networked communication and multinodal activites. These are harbingers regarding modern developments in psychophysiology and psychoneuroimmunology and other fields of modern medicine. It is precisely these kinds of ideas relating to imagination, and the invisible realm that virtual communities may operate from.

The neuro transmitter system is the nervous system and the visceral (organ) system. Rudolf Laban's movment research developed the conviction that the body holds truths which through sensitising practices, can be reached and should be sought. The neuro-transmitter system in the body is then vitally important for me as a performer as it is about different modes of communication and be-coming, it affects virtually all the tissues in the body. The nervous system provokes or controls the release of hormones, which in turn may support or diminish nerve impulses

J: i've been exploring similar terrain between spiritual practice,
bodywork, scientific research into the human EMF & mediated
environments. if all physiological/electrical/spiritual/technological/ecological systems
overlap u can navigate paths between them. so when my radiobody makes
an interface with an external system via a portal there is mutual
interferance as vibrational data is exchanged. people are often
aliented by the intangible stuff (which brings me back to
convergences...) but as performers working with vibrational
transmission & electromagnetic disturbance u notice it shifts in/out
of view. u notice people & objects opening up around u. this
discussion of hardwired transmitters makes me think about human
receptivity to signal input & how it shifts/slips/fails. is this
transgressive evolution in progress? my relationship to technology is
symbiotic becoz of my cellular embodiment practice. i can upload &
let the machines do the mojo but by inserting my body back in2 the
network am i remembered or am i lost? disappearing into the cellular
network can create a crisis of perception. i am dissolving myself
into networks, data fields and frequencies as a way of becoming. but
what have i become?
http://home.mira.net/~areadman/plat.htm
http://www.totalretail.com/platypus

Many fishes emit a continuous train of electric signals in order to detect objects in the water around them. The system operates something like an underwater radar and requires that the fishes also have electro receptors (which are located in the skin). The presence of objects in the water distorts the electric fields created by the fish, and this alteration is detected by the electro receptors.
Electric fishes use their system of transmitter and receiver for such functions as
* navigating in murky water and/or at night
* locating potential mates
* defence of their territory against rivals of the same species
* attracting other members of their species into schools
Electro receptors
Electro receptors are also found in some non electric fishes and in some amphibians. Even the duckbill platypus, a mammal, has electro receptors (located in its bill). With these it can detect the weak currents created by the muscle activity of its prey (e.g., small crustaceans) as it noses around in the muddy bottom where it feeds. (Photo courtesy of Australian Information Service.)

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/E/ElectricOrgans.html

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/E/ExcitableCells.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A735004

In addition to the five senses humans and most other vertebrates experience, some fish have a sixth - the ability to detect electrical fields in their environment. These 'weakly electric' fish, principally the African Mormyriformes and the South American Gymnotidae, have developed a unique electrosensory system which consists of an organ that generates pulse-type electrical signals and an array of subcutaneous electroreceptor cells which detect electrical signals. Weakly electric fish use these unique adaptations to detect and identify objects and organisms in their environment and to communicate with other weakly electric fish.

Anatomy of the Electrosensory System
The electrosensory system consists of the electric organ which generates electric signals and the array of electroreceptor cells which detect electrical fields in the fish's environment. Weakly electric fish can, consciously or unconsciously, encode useful information in the waveforms of their EODs, which can then be detected and interpreted by other weakly electric fish. It has been mentioned previously that weakly electric fish of different species have differently shaped electric organs made up of different types of electrocytes, which produce species-specific EODs; there is also variability within species between the sexes and between individuals (9).Hopkins CD. 1999. Design features for electric communication. J. Exp. Biol. 202: 1217-1228.