words written in the week of
January 21st to January 27th
in previous years.
This was 7 years, 3 months, 25 days ago

herein lies the problems of infrastructure. infrastructure has no layers of abstraction. things go all the way deep - nuts and bolts matter, galvanization processes matter, the temperature at which mortar sets matters, documentation matters. the flat ontology par excellence is the material world, hey, in which there are no theories here, not even models, just the ruthless ping-pong game of one-to-one physics in which if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. there's no undo.

in that setting it is fascinating, it is fascinating, to build (or to point fingers and to watch others build) and to see a space slowly grow. it is also fascinating to realize that infrastructure is boring precisely for the reasons it is interesting. infrastructure and buildings and spaces are slow. they are heavy. there are no layers of abstraction to pile layers of abstraction. no layers of reliability.

(well, there are some. the screw is reliable. you hang your life on nails and joist hangers. you hang your life on engineered wood structures and pre-tested fire assemblies, and margins of error and safety factors that have become baked into objects and their assembly documents alike. you trust in the solidity of a wireless access point, the repeatability of a switch.)

is this boring? is this fascinating? all of the above. it is slow, though, and so easily ignored. software infrastructure is so fast, so blindingly exciting. it seems easier and harder to reconcile architecture and technology, and software seems more dangerous, more seductive in its coherence, platforms in which if it works, it works.

This was 12 years, 4 months, 1 day ago

earlier today I stopped and looked up, up at this building that I had been looking at for years now, years and years since I entered it first six years ago in 2005, but this time it came at me fully, with a kind of succulent richness that I hadn't seen before, and so I had to step back and hold myself for a second because I found myself drawn into it, seeing certain aspects that shone out and emerged from somewhere, a kind of richness only best described as gorgeous, gorgeously poised, gorgeous. from whence did this come?

I guess: like: savoring something on the edge of a metal spoon, slowly, the top of the tongue against cold metal, slow. paced. sunshine slowly flows into a room. etc.

like listening to a record again and hearing the intake of breath of the performer, having the sounds separate themselves into strata, so that the work becomes more like a multilayered composition rather than a single object, like some piece of musical baklava, in which your teeth only know the crunch of a hundred different layers at once..

buildings, and, spaces, and sometimes people. readings, forms, figures. such vibrancy, I think. vibrating, jittering, barely surviving being alive.

this is new, and I know not from where this came, but I know it's new.

This was 16 years, 3 months, 29 days ago

all these values

oscillating
with different periods
back and forth

values of adolescence as several vertical sinusoidal graphs of progress
collectively, a slice of time is disparate, overall, these rhythms make sense


visual hans haacke-- 'haacking'
indicate your ip address


zobeide

no need to have it programmatized
technological optimism
sensitive automatic door sensors


art history vs literature
same audience + an attachment to the visual/object-related/tactile aesthetic


buy insitutional critique reader

This was 16 years, 3 months, 29 days ago

I may be angry, sad, upset, feeling guilty, but I can be better despite (or because) of all of this.


in terms of 'spiritual', mental analysis and interpretation:

what is important is a phenomenology, not a symptomology
a study of effect, not cause -- bachelard's reverberations, and not causality.


new year's resolution #4: good paths lead to good goals. to believe this every day.

This was 17 years, 3 months, 27 days ago

music player back, nod to clara. just press play.

smells like content, by the books.

:of nights when I've stayed up too late.

gotta sleep before this night turns into a morning.

This was 17 years, 3 months, 29 days ago

more time wasted, slipped away.

I've been shooting more, shot three rolls, another one in the works. I'll be going to B&H later this week to get some fixer, permawash, hypocheck.

I should look for places to live.

I'm hearing/watching the books this saturday.

found playlists from 3 years ago. I have discarded logs somewhere telling me what song I played five years ago at some moment, where my computer was last summer. arbitrary and inconsistent digital traces.

I'm sleepy, tired, sick. full of regrets.

Later: I'll develop these rolls of film, sit cross-legged on the ground like some tea-drinking ritual, wait, turn, agitate, wait, empty, refill. In a darkened room I'll hope to find one or two nice images amidst hundreds of errant frames, wait for that skip in the chest, feel celluloid and silver nitrate growing.