root

En español : http://intermediae.es/project/404/category/Link%20Dealer

#1

Hello, i am Pedro Soler, your link farmer / dealer this month. Each week I will send you a selection of commented links about subjects that are on my mind and in my life.

This week (5-9/12/12 I am working with a great group in the dance space, La Porta, in Barcelona to create a Reality Creation Kit.
http://www.laportabcn.com/ca/activities/reality-creation-kit.

We have brought together a dream team of creators with performances and seminarios that contribute to a space of collective creation where individual components are assembled to create a reality generating circuit, digging quantum escape tunnels from a reality that has nothing more to do with us.
https://n-1.cc/g/reality_creation_kit

these are the links of the people taking part
https://n-1.cc/blog/view/1528185/participants

La Porta is one of the most interesting groups in Barcelona working around the performing arts, or, as they put it “contemporary creation around the body, as well as creating the proper conditions for the emission-reception of works, processes and knowledge generated by these practices.” This year they worn the National Dance Prize of Catalunya.

They are now publishing an incredible book + 3DVD pack, via a Verkami crowdfunding, on the 3 years of their “Nits Salvajes” series, the best of contemporary creation in Barcelona. . Only 20 euros to reserve your copy !
http://www.verkami.com/projects/3354-noches-salvajes-3dvd-book

Part of the reason that they asked me to participate is because of my involvement in the Mov_i_Ment3 booksprint in La Caldera, another dance space in Barcelona, in the Gracia neighbourhood. We worked together for a week last July 2012 with a diverse team to create a book on the relation between performing arts, society and neighbourhoods. You can read the book online here :
http://booki.cc/mov_i_ment3

Another important inspiration for the Reality Creation Kit is the Transhackerfeminist Oscillator Kit, collectively conceived and built between August and October 2012 in the Summerlabs in Galicia and Portugal.
http://word.root.ps/?p=175

We started the Reality Creation Kit on Wednesday 5/12/12 with an inspiring talk about Quantum Mechanics by Josep Perelló, professor of physics at the University of Barcelona, and director, from 2009 a 2011, of the space in investigation of art and science in the santa mónica art centre in barcelona. This was his last activity :
http://blocs.gencat.cat/blocs/AppPHP/ciencia_artssantamonica/

the catalogue of the event it seems will be coming out soon and this is the text that I wrote for it which will be publshed in catalán :
http://word.root.ps/?p=109

Another of our special guests at the Reality Creation Kit was Helena Torres, check out her blog here
http://helenlafloresta.blogspot.com.es/

and what she writes on the amazing Muestra Marrana film festival that was held last weekend in Barcelona in the Hangar art centre
http://muestramarrana.org

And to finish off, a rare cut and paste VHS documentary on the greatest punk band of the spanish state, Eskorbuto.

“en estas condiciones cabe preguntarse sobre quien volcar el odio, pero en un etorno donde casi todo es odioso, el odio … se acumula, superando su propio objetivo”

thank you and see you next week !

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#2
Hello again ! After working on the Reality Creation Kit (that I told you about last week) I returned Ca La Fou, a former industrial colony at 50 kms from Barcelona, where I am living at the moment :

http://calafou.org

It’s a project started by members of the CIC – the Cooperativa Integral Catalana that calls for an integral revolution – creating alternative cooperative structures to cover every part of our life, from food to housing, from education to health, energy and technology

https://cooperativa.ecoxarxes.cat/

This web was created by Lorea, http://lorea.org, it’s an alternative to facebook, a social network where your privacy is important and your data remains yours and can be eliminated or modified at your will. It’s an excellent platform for working together as a group. I use n-1 principally, also created by them, you are welcome to join ! :

http://n-1.cc

If your are looking for tools and resources for local autogestion, through networking and grassroots auto-organisation, then check out the manual that Afinidad Rebelde have published (if anyone feels like doing a version in English I am sure it would be welcome !)

https://www.rebelaos.net/

Jaime de los Rios and his partner Dani were giving an Arduino workshop in Calafou when I arrived, they are new media artists from San Sebastian with some nice works and a marked interest in autopoesis.

http://www.arteklab.org/

One of the most enthusiastic participants was Julito from the Mutanger group, also residents in Calafou

http://mutangerlab.wordpress.com

Before leaving Jaime gave me a text from 2002 by Kent Palmer about autopoesis and quantum mechanics – arguing that it is precisely in living systems that can be seen quantum mechanical effects : “Living systems exploit the Quantum Mechanical fabric of our world to produce neg-entropic effects which should be illegal in a purely Newtonian and thermodynamic universe”;

http://archonic.net/kent_palmer.html

Today I am back in Barcelona again to organise papers and bureaucratic stuff and to participate in a workshop on urban bees with Josep Perelló, Tomás Diez and people from Okno in Bruxelles.

http://okno.be

I really like this group, they always seemed to me among the most interesting of the art/science crossover – its there i first heard talk of the “wet lab” – big inspiration for the ecolab that we got running in 2011 in LABoral centre de arte in Gijón, Asturies.

http://econodos.net/

its now run by Lorena Lozano, an artist who lives in Gijón and who works at the frontiers of art, biology and land.

http://lorenalozano.net/

Paula Pin was in residence there at the beginning of 2012 where she developed work around plants, sensors and sound.

http://paulapin.com

While doing the investigation for the residence she discovered Michael Marder, a Canadian philosopher who is an investigator at the Basque university in Vitoria-Gasteix. He is doing really interesting work on plants and philosophy, proposing a Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics that will undo 3000 years of Westerna metaphysics that has valued the man’s head above all else, relegating plants to a purely background role.

http://www.michaelmarder.org/

I especially like “Plant Intentionality and the Phenomenological Framework of Plant Intelligence” and “”Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics: Learning from Plants”

http://www.michaelmarder.org/articles-etc/articles-in-pdf/

And to accompany your browsing with a bit of music, Orxata Sound System have just released their new record :

http://orxata.tv/

Free licences and free download, of course ! Enjoy !

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#3

This week I was with old friends doing a workshop called Hidden Signals

http://hiddensignals.com

to build a kit for amplifying and transcoding natural signals – making audible normally imperceptible waves. Soldering there were the architect and musician Xavi Daax!,

http://www.noconventions.mobi/x!/

Dani Miracle, the experimental television magician,

http://experimentaltv.org/

Borja Alexander, of sonom.org, who has just released a documental on the LEV festival of 2012 in Gijón

Alex Posada, who, amongst other projects is working on the SCK (Smart Citizen Kit) with Tomas Diez del Fablab de Barcelona.

http://goteo.org/project/smart-citizen-sensores-ciudadanos

and DJ Miriam, I dont know her web, but she was djing in the Bata de Batiné last Saturday night.

I especially liked the way Victor Mazón, the workshop leader and designer, used the electronics as a machine for reflection and imagination. It reminded me of Martin Howse’s work with circuits , bubonic plague algorithms, earth booting computers, the explicit reference to skrying, the magical practises of John Dee, in his treatment of electromagnetic waves.

http://www.1010.co.uk/org/

And how Aviv uses mending – while mending clothes they talk about mending, what it is, what it means, amplifying their act into something wider. the importance of grounding in everyday life art and inspiration, of the importance of things in becoming ourselves. Amongst his many activities is running this space in Barcelona :

http://centrodecultivoscontemporaneosdelbarrio.wordpress.com/

As Rilke in the Ninth Duino Elegy writes :

“Praise the world to the Angel, not the unsayable: you can’t impress him with glories of feeling: in the universe, where he feels more deeply, you are a novice. So show him a simple thing, fashioned in age after age, that lives close to hand and in sight. Tell him things. He’ll be more amazed: as you were,
beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter beside the Nile.”

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilke.htm#_Toc509812223

From there I went straight to Calafou to prepare the Cabaret Apocaliptico. The  Espectaculos workgroup proposed celebrating the end of the Mayan calendar with a Cabaret with acts only by the inhabitants of Calafou. We ended up with over two hours of show with music, fire juggling, aerial acrobacy, fakirism, dance, striptease and much more. It reflected the diversity of the talents of the inhabitants of this exceptional community in Vallbona d’Anoia.

http://calafou.org

At the same time Apocalipticos from all over Europe were congregated around the mountain Bugarach in the Aude, in the French Pyrenees to await the end. The gathering was closely followed by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts who released a daily Apocalypsis News during the last days exploring various theories with their typical detail and enjoyment.

http://issuu.com/aaa-spdn

The Bolivian government celebrated the solstice as the transition from capitalism to cooperativism. The constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador both include the reference to el Buen Vivir as a principle fundamental of the nation. The Buen Vivir is the indigenous way, looking for a balance between all beings to achieve the good life. It is an alternative proposal for development, another vision of a sustainable future.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/02/28/18639072.php

And i started reading Zizek’s Living in The End times – as usual with him a spectacular intellectual journey where he proposes that the four horsemen of the apocalypse – the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property ; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water) & the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions – are announcing the imminent collapse of capitalism and an emerging emancipatory subjectivity.

http://es.scribd.com/doc/110440823/Zizek-Living-in-the-End-Times

Well I am sending this late already – the prophesy of the 3 days increased gravity after the solstice has certainly been true in my case – so I’ll leave you with some music : “Curadero”, an album released under Creative Commons license by Rafael Aragon on the excellent Cabellito label devoted to “Cumbia Bass & Graveton”

http://caballito.org/post/11695388590/cbllt013-rafael-aragon-curandero-e-p

Welcome to the new era !!!

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#4

“The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.”

So writes Julian Assange in the introduction to his book “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet”. His response to this threat is Cryptography :

“Cryptography is the ultimate form of non-violent direct action. While nuclear weapons states can exert unlimited violence over even millions of individuals, strong cryptography means that a state, even by exercising unlimited violence, cannot violate the intent of individuals to keep secrets from them.”

http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm

Kim Dotcom is intending to use this weapon in his next project “Mega” – all material uploaded will be encrypted so that not even he and his team will be able to know what is being stored there and thus avoid the principal crime of which he is being accused by the United States.

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/12/features/mega?page=1

With less publicity (and with no aim for gain) but intense grass root activity, the CryptoParty movement is spreading around the globe. They have just published a very useful guide for those who wish to join the crytographic revolution.

https://cryptoparty.org/

However, it seems that the most powerful form of encryption is quantum encryption

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-05/fyi-how-photon-teleportation-can-bring-us-secure-communications

although in an experimental stage there are 2 commercial systems available – which have, of course, already been hacked (but in a purely technological

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100829/full/news.2010.436.html

The phenomenom of quantum entanglement (named “Verschränkung” by Erwin Schrodinger in 1935) on which quantum encryption is based is, as Schrodinger wrote, “the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought”. 2012 has been an important year for applications of entanglement – a group in China announced that they had succeeded in transmitting information over 97km and then Zielinger’s team announced 143 km between La Palma and Tenerife in the Canaries, significantly this is the distance to the closest satelites.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/10/quantum-teleportation
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/quantum-teleportation-distance/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/quantum-satellite-teleportation/

We are already dreaming about the global quantum network – however for the moment there are many limitations to the technology – not least that the above experiments can only happen at night – even moonlight can interfere with the photons !

Einstein famously derided entanglement as “spukhafte Fernwirkung” or “spooky action at a distance”. We’ll be working with this spookiness in the workshop on Magic and Technology that I will be leading in the Alameda Laboratorio de Art Mexico DF invited by Tania Candiani as part of the educational program of her solo exhibition :

http://cincovariaciones.com/

I’m not alone in these investigations – the Nuvem centre in Brasil hosted, in may 2012, a tecnomagias meeting and will be releasing a book this year
http://nuvem.tk/wiki/index.php/Tecnomagia

One of the participants there was Fabi Borges who is currently devoting here doctorat studies to tecnoshamanism (here linked in Felipe Fonseca’s blog, a key figure in Brasilian free culture movement)

http://softwarelivre.org/efeefe/blog/tecnoxamanismo

and La Quimera Rosa have just been in residence in mARTadero in Cochambaba developing their “akelarre” (witch’s ceremony)

http://akelarreyaku.tumblr.com/

their investigation of Quinine is especially interesting for the relation of plants to magic, healing and the obscure forces of biocapitalism

http://akelarreyaku.tumblr.com/kinina

In Mexico, Leslie Garcia refers to herself as a media alchemist and, in a recent project, Pulsum Plantae, has worked with the electromagnetism of plants.

http://lessnullvoid.cc/

In Egypt, Yara Merakewei and friends have started the Egyptian Bioart Society page in Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/147828271984151/

where I found this nice algae project from Sweden

Which reminded me of “Latro”, one of my recent favourites, an algae powered lamp that uses 30 nanometre wide gold electrodes inserted into the chloroplasts :

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/09/latro-algae-lamp/

Plants and magic are intimately related, as ingredients, medicines, allies and intricate quantum energy machines.

Unfortunately the Latro lamp is not available anywhere yet but then that was also the case up to now of many of DJ Rupture’s mixes and now you can download them ALL for free ! This is the best present for 2013, the past present and future of global music, thank you Mr Clayton

http://www.negrophonic.com/dj-rupture-mixes-free-download/

That’s it ! Thank you for your attention, thank you 404 for the invitation, I’ve really enjoyed this excercise and i hope that you, the readers, found some useful components here for your personal reality creation kit ! looking forward to reading the next dealers !!!

 

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