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--- dust_and_shadow:fieldtrip_2 [2018-01-25 00:34] – maja
+++ dust_and_shadow:fieldtrip_2 [2019-08-30 19:24] (current) – maja
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-==== dust & shadow - field trip #2 ====
+===== dust & shadow - field trip #2 =====
-... dust trails / transit / Nov 02017 by FoAM.Earth
+Nov/Dec 02017 by FoAM.Earth
-We spent two weeks at the ASU campus, inquiring about existing and potential relationships between people and the desert. We interrogated existing myths underlying contemporary lifestyles and re-imagined counter-myths that could be more attuned to the desert environment. From these myths we created a series of propositions to prototype as embodied experiences and publications in 2018.
-This field trip was an immersion in the academic life in Phoenix. Our primary modes of exploring the field were structured and unstructured conversations, [[:futurist_fieldguide/causal_layered_analysis|Causal Layered Analysis]] and an experimental open space workshop. Occasionally we would venture beyond campus, guided by our very own 'artists' sherpa'. We explored the the Paradise Hills, the Superstitions and the Shadow Mountain; Papago and Moeur Parks; the Museum of the lost Dutchman and the Pueblo Grande ruins. We experienced a silent Full Moon walk with the Museum of Walking and found a site for [[https://fo.am/dust-and-shadow-walk/|FoAM's audio-walk]]. Attuning to the academic environment inevitably involved paperwork, meetings with students and faculty. We gave a lecture and treated the visitors to a clandestine FoAM Apero. Amidst the various activities on campus, we were temporarily adopted into our collaborators' family life, which allowed us to experience (among many other things) our first Thanksgiving feast with the Moran-Nocek clans.
 Guests: Nik Gaffney and Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM)\\
 Hosts: Ron Broglio, Adam Nocek, Stacey Moran, Sha Xin Wei (ASU)\\
+Read more about this field trip in [[https://medium.com/@foam/dust-and-shadow-field-notes-2-3a4542feeecd|Dust & Shadow Field Notes #2]] on Medium\\
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/25203351458/in/album-72157681429258454/}}
-(& Nik Gaffney behind the camera)
-=== guiding themes ===
-__**Desertification**__
-  * Everything shrivels up and erodes into dust; desertification related to ecology and culture (intergenerational memory)
-  * Humans come and go
-  * (Engineering) mistakes cause large scale ecological transformations
-__**Probabilistic Future Preparedness**__
-  * Phoenix holding onto permanence
-  * Civilisations with expiration dates (one moment or slow subsiding)
-  * Prehearsals of obsolescence
-  * Urban desert / urban wilderness
-__**Attunement**__
-  * material wonder & wander
-  * layered time, massive scale
-  * beyond human relationships
-  * solitude and indifference
-  * (i)nertness
-  * naming
-  * conviviality with diverse entities, different lenses of interrelation
-__**Vampiric and zombie utopias**__
-  * Shadows
-  * Ghost towns
-  * Haunted utopias
-  * Troubled past
-  * Living but already dead (eg. Paradise City); planning for unsustainability
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/25203295168/}}\\
-=== core questions ===
-  * **What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the region?**
-    * What/how to extrapolate local conditions to other deserts and environments on their way to become deserts?
-  * **What does a thalient laboratory in the desert look like?**
-    * How to translate animist attitudes into worldviews compatible with contemporary techno-materialist societies?
-    * How to (re)animate pre-modern sensibilities without dualisms of light/dark, good/evil, love/power?
-    * What arts, sciences and technologies become possible if we widen the 'sentience spectrum' and emphasize experience and interaction with diverse beings?
-    * Should we refrain from speech and use the visceral language of experience?
-    * How do we speak of relations as well as things?
-  * How to turn zombie/vampiric utopias into regenerative ('log') utopias?
-    * What would a banishing ritual for haunted utopias be like?
-    * Why attempt to build cities in the desert?
-    * What would a pre-enactment for futures of Phoenix look like?
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/38188527365/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== hypotheses ===
-  * We can adapt or mitigate climate chaos (etc.) with a change of mindset/worldview and the underlying myths and archetypes.
-    * Art can initiate, amplify or test this change.
-    * We can draw inspiration from animism, panpsychism, shinto, shamanism, etc.
-    * Any technological solutions will be perverted by existing dominant ideologies (and vice versa)
-    * Myth-making and reactivating myths can animate inert geological and architectural markers
-    * We need a new form of geomancy
-  * We can become human receptors and listening devices.
-    * We practice the craft of silence and heterogeneous hearing to help us attune to our surroundings.
-    * At all times there are other beings listening. We can hear each other if we pay attention.
-    * We tread lightly seeing with new eyes. We witness and weave threads of connection with other people and places (FoAM)
-    * Our language can liquefy
-    * We communicate to connect, not dissect
-    * With can uncover sacred refugia and wild sanctuaries through our work
-  * The desert invites unencumbered experimentation, yet the desert is also unforgiving
-    * It is possible to thrive in uncertainty
-    * Objectives obscure progress
-    * We should move from social contracts to natural contracts
-    * It is possible to transform zombie utopias into fertile compost for new eutopias
-    * Neo-reaction and new age are each other's flip-sides, collapsing complexity of uncertainty into platitudes
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39039008492/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== methods ===
-... vaporous thoughts condensed into propositions, commonplaces and fieldguides by:
-  * seeing, listening, tasting, smelling, experiencing (sensing & activating)
-  * walking
-  * fieldwork
-  * inquiry (critical, embodied...)
-  * experiential futures and speculative design
-  * action research
-  * contemporary rituals and peak experiences
-  * contemplative practices and attunement
-  * writing
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/35016379345/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== futuring ===
-|              ^ Current              ^ Alt                ^
-^ Litany | Impact, duration & intensity of heat-waves | Seeking shade & shadows; Daily & yearly rhythms attuned to desert cycles (Saguaro time) |
-^ Causes | Climate change; Lifestyle & cities not adapted to desert conditions | Shade-based architecture and transport; Situated learning; Government is the medium; Monastic entities for rethinking time |
-^ Worldviews | Man has dominion over Earth; Right to property and prosperity | Long, durational desert abiding (qualitative time); Redesign of the body attuned to the event (alignment, emergence) |
-^ Myths | Phoenix; Prometheus; Wild West, Desert is a void (purity of wilderness); Noble Savage | Desert Attunement; American Gods; Evolutionary architecture; Long temporality of nothingness followed by abrupt change, return to nothingness |
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/25203130778/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-|              ^ Current              ^ Alt                ^
-^ Litany | Distribution, pricing and quality of water | Governance and sharing of a variable water supply as a commons |
-^ Causes | Weak public infrastructure and political inaction; growing population; economic valuation; water rights and food sovereignty |Variable abundance & commons management (stewarding, minding); Feasts & festivals (train social commitment) |
-^ Worldviews | Individual self-reliance and DIY; libertarian ethos, free market | Sociality of a coven/dionisian feast; Social responsibility, commitment and obligation; A spirit/transformational field|
-^ Myths | Easy Rider, Guns & God; sufficiency and hubris| Carnivàle, Dionisian world (time marked by feasts & silences; blooming, flowing, absorption, ecstasy|
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39069871571/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-|              ^ Current              ^ Alt                ^
-^ Litany | Impact of the tech industry | Impact of Antennae-centric tech industry; Smart-grid & solar; Ambient & responsive; Rise of new attunement instruments |
-^ Causes | Economic incentives; Risk tolerance; Job creation; "Innovation Valley of the Sun" | Collective incentives; Government supports trans-species chanelling, Tech-supported complementary currencies; ecological resource management; Non-representational media and occult/alchemical technologies|
-^ Worldviews | Faith in technological progress; American pragmatism; Distrust of educated elites; Protestant work ethic; Importance of tangible, visible and measurable contribution to society; Immortality |Serial monotasking (commitment to the act); Bringing together heterogeneous systems where medium is the catalyst (biomimicry); Attunement to differentials|
-^ Myths | (Cowboy) Missionaries, John Ford films, Pioneers, Atomism of the isolated subject; Idleness is the devil's playground; Existential quests and transcendence in the desert | City & the city, The Laundry Files, The New Renaissance, dissolving, trance, enthusiasm|
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/24209186507/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== AltPhoenix news ===
-(headlines)
-== Commons news ==
-  * Government is (still) the medium
-  * New century calendar updates approved
-  * Water tokens fluctuating
-  * Wiccan Goddess elected to government in a landslide victory
-  * The governor reveals the new monument "to honor our heroes, the brave homeless"
-  * Salt River Shade Route: new public transit "Covered protection everywhere you want to be"
-  * Polls suggest that engineering majors at all time low, while ficto-criticism, coven studies and environmental theory at all time high
-  * Shade traversal association conscripts snowbirds for summer cycles
-== Daily attunement ==
-  * Heat attunement classes by Cowboy Missionaries at the Desert Monastery
-  * Saguaro monks lead attunement festival preparation
-  * The water levels have spoken!
-  * Desert attunement center reopens after possession season
-  * Death pilgrims return
-== Our living environment ==
-  * New season shadow patterns emerge
-  * Sounds of meteors this spring
-  * Architectural structures form ecomimetic shade routes
-  * Sprouts cracked Phoenix-Tucson highway creating a new venue the Desert Fest
-  * Landscaping co-ops beautify the buffer zone
-  * How to feed your bats?
-  * Seven Arm Jack still standing after floods
-  * Drought cycles lengthening
-== Time Out in Phoenix ==
-  * Where to see, what to do during this summer migration (with cooking tips)
-  * Festival of Shades at the Occult Shade monastery featuring Ethereal Dead
-  * Pokemon Go - Capture that Heat!
-  * The sweet smell of success: Mesquite
-  * Maple syrup - lemon preserve exchange ~ Again!
-  * 3rd International Conference on Shade Studies to be held in Phoenix
-  * Local native community hosts 12th Annual low-tech cooling festival
-== Tech Review ==
-  * Tech boom or antenna bubble?
-  * Antennae repairs not included in dust tax rewrite
-  * Nomad tech on smart grids
-  * Seasonal drift stresses old infrastructure
-== True Crime ==
-  * Tree-cycle clocks vandalised by property fundamentalists
-  * Gun-range courtyard dispute ongoing
-  * Power execs sentenced to 10 years shade growth
-  * Shadow-world expedition washed away by flash-floods (Expect hermeneuts and invite time intensification; Open your courtyards at siesta time)
-== Saguaro humor ==
-  * In shade we trust!
-  * I throw up my arms in despair
-  * These arms are (not) made for hugging
-  * IRS = Internal Review of Shades
-  * Shade grown coffee (and children) are rich, full and robust
-  * Calling all late bloomers (you're right on time!)
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39069991301/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-==== Propositions ====
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39069831191/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== Thalient Lab ===
-A field experiment aiming to find answers the question "what would a thalient lab in the desert look like?"
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/34853353022/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-<blockquote> Thalience is an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell us. It is the discipline that chooses among multiple successful scientific models based on which ones best satisfy our human, aesthetic/moral/personal needs. In other words, given two or more equally valid models of the universe, thalience is the art of choosing the one with the most human face. It is the recovery of the natural in our understanding of the Natural. (...) thalience would use objective truth as an artistic medium and merge subjectivity and objectivity in a creative activity whose purpose is the re-sanctification of the natural world. To believe in an uplifting and satisfying vision of your place in the universe, and to know that this vision is true (or as true as anything can be) would be sublime. Thalience would be an activity worthy of post-scientific humanity, or our own biological or post-biological successors. -[[http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/thalience|Karl Schroeder]]</blockquote>
-=== Attunement Walk ===
-{{:dust_and_shadow:d_s_walk.jpg?600 |}}
-Dust & Shadow (audio)walk celebrating the arrival of desert spring.
-The participants are invited to attune, to experience diverse forms of listening, and to practice a geomancy for the age of climate chaos. Walking in silence through the Sonoran dust in the shadow of civilisation, the participants may begin to hear the murmur of matter, uncover desert refugia amidst urban life, and forge new connections with the unexpected.
-Date: Saturday, March 24, 2018\\
-Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm (golden hour 6:00, sunset 6:40-6:45, blue hour 6:58, dusk 7:08, night 8:06) \\
-Location: Moeur Park \\
-Meeting locale: [[https://goo.gl/maps/oA1hYbeNuR92|North Shore Volley Ball courts]], Tempe Town Lake \\
-Park on E Lake View Drive under the 202 highway overpass. The walk will begin under the overpass. \\
-GPS coordinates 33.435206,-111.941293 \\
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39070110461/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== Seasonal feast ===
-(e.g. a speculative open air museum with stories and artifacts suggesting alternative myths, lifestyles and ecosystems)
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/24209031777/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-=== Book ===
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/38359652784/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
+----
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39039072892 ?maxwidth=1000}}\\
-==== reading, seeing, experiencing ====
+----
+We spent two weeks at the ASU campus, inquiring about existing and potential relationships between people and the desert. We interrogated existing myths underlying contemporary lifestyles and re-imagined counter-myths that could be more attuned to the desert environment. From these myths we created a series of propositions to prototype as embodied experiences and publications in 2018.
-{{ :dust_and_shadow:resonances.png |}}
+This field trip was an immersion in the academic life in Phoenix, specifically ASU's [[http://www.labforcriticaltechnics.com/|Lab for Critical Technics]] and [[http://synthesis.ame.asu.edu/|Synthesis Center]]. Our primary modes of exploring the field were structured and unstructured conversations and [[futuring]]. We developed [[concepts]], [[experiments]], and plans for [[publications]]. In an "Experiential Alignment Unconference" we explored the ideas behind Dust & Shadow using different modalities; collective reading (Quickening), systemic constellation; embodied listening; docufiction ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ54DdUSwRk|The Last Angel of History]]), sacred objects and desert totems, listening to the [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/868923.The_Imperative|The Imperative]] while sipping tequila after sunset...
+Occasionally we would venture beyond campus, sometimes guided other times not. We wandered in  [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition_Mountains|the Superstitions]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piestewa_Peak|Piestewa Peak]], [[https://www.phoenix.gov/parks/trails/locations/papago-park|Papago]] and [[https://www.facebook.com/pages/Moeur-Park/119836564731852|Moeur]] parks, the [[http://superstitionmountainmuseum.org/|Superstition Mountain Museum]] and the [[http://www.pueblogrande.org/|Pueblo Grande]] ruins. We experienced a silent [[http://www.museumofwalking.org/events/2017/12/3/full-moon-walk|Full Moon Walk]] with the Museum of Walking and found a site for [[https://fo.am/dust-and-shadow-walk/|FoAM's audio-walk]]. Attuning to the academic environment inevitably involved paperwork, meetings with students and faculty, including Angela Ellsworth, Adriene Jenik, Luke Kautz and Heather Lineberry. We gave a lecture (adapted from [[https://medium.com/aperiodic-mesmerism/in-anticipation-24c87c34a34f|In anticipation]]) and treated the visitors to a clandestine FoAM Apero.
-  * Mythologies - Roland Barthes
+Along with the various activities on campus, we were temporarily adopted into our collaborators' family life, which allowed us to experience (among many other things) our first Thanksgiving feast with the Moran-Nocek clan.
-  * [[:six_memos_for_the_next_millennium|Six Memos]] - Italo Calvino
-  * Book of Sand - Italo Calvino
-  * Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson
-  * The Enchantment of Modern Life - Jane Bennett
-  * [[:the_timeless_way_of_building|The Timeless Way of Building]] - Christopher Alexander
-  * Dust studies - Jay Owens
-  * Minutes to Midnight - Trent Parke
-  * [[http://dark-mountain.net/|The Dark Mountain Project]]
-  * [[http://wwwedu.artcenter.edu/mertzel/spatial_scenography_1/Class%20Files/resources/In%20Praise%20of%20Shadows.pdf|In Praise of Shadows]] - Tanizaki
-  * Anthropology in the time of the Anthropocene - Bruno Latour
-  * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ54DdUSwRk|The Last Angel of History]]
-  * City and the City - China Mieville
-  * Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
-  * [[:humankind_notes|Humankind]] - Tim Morton
-  * [[:the_mushroom_at_the_end_of_the_world|The Mushroom at the End of the World]] - Anna Tsing
-  * Customs in common - EP Thompson
-  * [[:design_principles_for_common_pool_resources|Governing the commons]] - Elinor Ostrom
-  * Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands - The good-natured feminist: eco-feminism and the quest for democracy
-  * Trinh Minh-Ha: Writing post-colonialism and feminism
-  * [[:staying_with_the_trouble|Staying with the trouble]] - Donna Haraway
-  * Xenogenesis - Octavia Butler
-  * [[:hope_in_the_dark|Hope in the dark]] - Rebecca Solnit
-  * [[http://www.freehouse.nl|Freehouse Rotterdam]]
-  * Too like the lightning - Ada Palmer
-  * The Laundry series - Charles Stross
-  * [[:2312_by_kim_stanley_robinson|2312]] - Kim Stanley Robinson
-  * [[:anathem_notes|Anathem]] - Neal Stephenson
-  * The word for world is forest - Ursula Leguin
-  * How forests think - Eduardo Kohn
-  * [[:thalience|Thalience]] - Karl Schroeder
-  * Ecology of Mind - Gregory Bateson
-  * [[http://www.architectural-body.com/?lang=en|Gins and Arakawa]] (architectural body)
-  * [[http://kkaa.co.jp/|Kengo Kuma]]
-  * [[http://www.olafureliasson.net/|Olafur Eliasson]]
-  * [[http://www.ateliervanlieshout.com/works/|AVL]]
-  * [[https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit/walter-de-maria-the-lightning-field|The Lightning field]]
-  * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsound|Microsound]]
-  * Crystal Radio
-  * 100 year roulette
-  * C14 Clocks
-  * [[https://vimeo.com/126311389|Organic abstraction]]
-  * [[:romantic_machine_notes|Romantic Machine]] - John Tresch
-  * Geology of media - Jussi Parikka
-  * Finite media - Sean Cubitt
-  * Panpsychism (& Noumenautics - [[http://www.philosopher.eu/|Peter Sjöstedt-H]])
-  * [[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/36/61245/reclaiming-animism/|Reclaiming Animism]] - Isabelle Stengers
-  * [[:codex_seraphinianus|Codex Seraphinianus]]
-  * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)|Arrival]]
-  * Desert Solitaire - Edward Abby
-  * [[https://solarpunkanarchists.com/2016/05/27/what-is-solarpunk/|Solarpunk]]
-  * [[https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf|Body rituals among the Nacerima]] - Horace Miner
-  * [[http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/legisact|The Wilderness Act]]
-  * The Imperative - Alphonso Lingis
-  * [[http://topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/classes/readings/Stengers/EcologyOfPractices.pdf|Ecology of Practices]] - Isabelle Stengers
-  * A Practical Guide to Unconscious Reasoning - Marcus Coates
-  * Point Omega - Don DeLillo
-  * Vilém Flusser - Into the Universe of Technical Images
-  * Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau - Blakey & Ranney
-  * Roadside Geology of Arizona - Halka Chronic
-  * Q Is for Quicken - Sha Xin Wei
+----
-===stray photons===
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39070110461/ ?maxwidth=1000}}\\
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/38188369695/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
+----
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/38188512295/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
+Further notes on: [[concepts]] | [[futuring]] | [[experiments]] | [[publications]] | [[resonances]]
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39039183682/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/27292883619/in/album-72157681429258454/}}\\

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