A Proud Boy with his Poster Bored.

Hi all-

The print shop at work turned out to be total failures, so I had to use sharpies to draw out my poster for the conference. The picture is above. It ended up getting more attention as a work of hand jammed psuedo-art. Pretty cool, really. All the time I spent carefully preparing the poster, adapting the format into power-point, pruning the text, filling in PA forms, etc. didn't make much of a difference, after all. The title 'Turning Philosophy into Science (via Magic!)' was the real winner.

Overall, good conference. However, the constant fumbling foibles with 'are we science?' 'where's the data?' 'Woe is me, nobody likes us!' was a little off-putting. This was supposed to be AAAI. No slouches. I did end up meeting some cool people, and having incidentally insightful conversations about coherence, experience, truth, etc. Mostly with the gov'ies.

Also the taker of the above picture and her friend were pretty cool folks.

More pictures here...
http://picasaweb.google.com/secondzflat/PaloAltoWelcomesYou

Rock and Roll,
Anthony

Ontologies are Scary

Hey-

I heard a talk on yet another ontology effort. The domain was well chosen, and I wish other so-called 'ontologists' would show the same prudence. Too often I see the 'one giant ontology' idea rear its ugly head on one way or another. The recent framing attempt claims that 'communities of interest' are the answer, allowing small enclaves of users define the world away.

Ontology frightens me. It frightens me because I believe that language is alive. It arises out of the mutual consent of its speakers and the world they live in. It is immersed, hot, sticky, and should never be pinned down. Yes, I know it's a problem when people disagree or mis-communicate. Yes, I realize that Webster's dictionary disagrees with some of this claim. But there it is. My belief is that the freedom in interpreting language as we see fit goes straight to our basic freedom, condition, essance, soverignty, etc. The very fact that I can't find a word for this concept is exactly the point. We should all strive to be at a loss for words. It means we still have something to learn; a reason to be engaged.

So let your words fly, do not let the Semantic Web folks hold back your torrent of fluid, esoteric, post-hoc, and violently misunderstood words. Because they are your words.

-Larson

The Referential Nature of Information.

Yo-

I've been working on art lately, I don't neglect this poor blog only because of artistic drought. Although that's sometimes a good reason too. Honestly, I'll take any excuse to just ignore the little empty white space that is begging me for words. It's begging, I say.

A new series of paintings is in the works... I just have to solve one of those engineering problems that come with teh territory. It involves using metal frames to push canvas into shapes; stretched outside the traditional, Cartesian two dimensions. I'm striking a blow to the third dimension... it will never be the same. Or something.

Otherwise, I've been putting some music up on my myspace page. Normally, I would not be on the myspace-ness, because as a craze it's over... and I can't be on a social network for social reasons, only because of bleeding edge technology reasons. I'm a the most frenetic luddite in town, y'all. However, since myspace hosts music, there it is. More of that music stuff to come.

I've also been working on a writing peice on twitter. You can follow anything started with #letter, it will recap you. I haven't been keeping much track of it honestly; it's kind of wandering. Tarry with me, I say!

The photo above was taken from my picasa album. There are more of them, but I need to do a better job at organizing them. More on that to come... I have a trip next week and will be photo-ing profusely. Via some tarrying.

-Larson

Conduit + Photo

Conduit.

I'm staring down at my paintings and
letting them haunt me with the need
for continuity.

I wonder how long I can
self-obsess and claim humility at once

how long I can
fuck strangers and still stick a flag in 'naive'

I won't have an answer that's found
anywhere outside the canvas,
and that's what's keeping me away.
it's what's keeping me trading
1/3 sized replicas of moments
when i knew myself,
in the form of a sterile canvas
and a dirty art.

dropping down the drop cloth is the only way.
putting away the old, and walking up to
my first really blank canvas
(whatever that means);
letting the sight and sound
make itself known, and letting the conduit
be the only continuity.

-Larson

Mimosa + Photo

Mimosa

We are meeting for breakfast.
We are passive-agressiving at each other.

You: "It's great that you are still treating art
as a full time job, even after all these years."

you are my mother and this is the thirty-seventh time you've said that.

Me: "it keeps me busy, way busy. I just thank god
that I decided against having kids."

we let our forks make that squeaking sound on the plate... I know you hate it, and you know that I inherited that trait from you. We have our own mutually assured destruction that goes quite nicely with our own cold war.

You: "I talked to Jenny, that girl you used to date the other day.
Her fiancé's a doctor, you know. I told her you said hi."

Defcon one. There's only so much a man can take.

Me: "I made your mimosa with cheap champagne."

You grab the knife, but only to cut your omelet. For a moment, I saw some white knuckles. That means I win.

-Larson

Thank you card outside my apartment...

Hey all-

I found this strange card on the ground outside of my apartment. I had my digi with me, so here it is...



I opened it up and it had some text inside. Looked like someone went through the trouble of typing a thank you message out inside.



Here's a wider shot, the thing was getting pretty wet... since it's snowy and such up here in Utica (welcome to the six month winter).



Kinda weird. Not the first time I've found litter, but this is pretty up there in the 'wtf' sense.

Malibu?

-Larson

Pm: The beach by the generator shack

The beach by the generator shack

There was oil in the water,
we were on a little beach.

Not the kind of beach that faces the sea,
but the kind against a murky lake...
all mud and tree trunks and alive.

The wet sand is showing rainbows.
I'm reminded of a grocery store parking lot,
the smell just begging for rain.

We are making sandcastles,
laughing and choking about who-knows-what-anymore,
speaking our own words together.
My hands are putting mud on you,
making little towers on your shoulder blade in dribble
and wiping them away.

We jump into the brown water,
and we are both too squeamish to go out far.
We both try to open our eyes underwater, only to see brown.
Pushing, pulling, daring, tangling for the first time.
Later I will blame it on the fumes,
but for a while I don't even know what I'm doing.

On a hike, you are sitting calmly
on a rock, with deerflies all around.
I'm swiping at them frantically, like king friggin kong out here.
"Just be still, and they'll leave you alone." Like fuck that'll work.
I've always been excitable,
and you've always wished people thought you calm.

We worked in the restaurant downstairs that night,
and each got a T-bone steak to eat.
upstairs in the bedroom,
after we finally stopped talking in the dark,
I heard your breath heavy and your blanket moving,
but now that the fumes have worn off,
I'm going to pretend that I don't hear.

In the morning, we'll sit on the front porch while
the old people come to the restaurant,
and your mother works the bar.

In the fall, we'll sit side-by-side on the bus.
The beach and the oil and the deerflies
will be very far away.
and so will we be very far away.

-Larson

Sketches and Poem

From Sketches

Hi all-

I posted some sketches up here on google photos. Handy little place to keep lots of pictures for the world to enjoy. I hope you get a chance to take a look and enjoy them.

-Larson.

Also, here's a short poem, also for your enjoyment.

Driving

It happens when I'm driving
sometimes, I can feel everything at once.
the seat under me, the slick wheel
all cheap rubber. the belt on my collar bone
the dead air and pin pricks on my face.

and then I realize I'm still driving,
and jerk back into place.

often it gets me angry, to be unsafe
but every time it happens
part of me wants it to never stop,
because my greatest fear is that
it will never happen again.

A Find at the Bar...

Hey,

I went to my local pissing spot for a... well... a piss. After my second drink I headed downstairs to make room. Here's what I saw on the stall.



What the hell is that? I'm all for graffiti... it's the reason I carry my point-and-shoot. But this is something else. Here's a closer shot.


Thoughts? Nobody else at the bar knew what was up... but then again, they weren't exactly in an art mood.

-Larson

We have 'good', how about 'human'?

Hey all-

We have 'good'. There are a lot of 'good' things in the world, cheaper cars, better toasters, smarter phones, bigger airplanes, etc. These 'good' things come from technology. Engineers tinkering away and getting paid the big bucks to come up with more 'good'. We have that, and we have a process to get more. However, I believe that the process to get more 'good' is reaching a critical problem. Really a couple of problems. First, there is no ending condition for 'good'. 'Good' can always be 'better'. There is always just one more thing to do, one more attribute to increase, one more factor to optomize. This is because the world is messy and imperfect and kind of crazy, but the engineers and business-folks who want 'good' will never admit it. The second problem is that 'good' also includes 'good' cost. In other words, the cost of designing, producing, shipping, and consuming 'good' things is dropping. In fact, cheaper is part of being 'good'. So these two problems get us one thing: never ending increases in quality combined with never ending drops in cost. And then the world gets its say, and kind of ruins it... or at least tarnishes.

So, we have a lot of 'good'. But do we have enough 'human'? To me, the human-ness of something admits the messy nature of the world. The uncertain nature of our reality. The conflicting nature of our decisions. The ordinary, everyday, profound ambivilence that consumes us all. On one hand, it's disabling because there is never any certainty. On the other, it's great because it means we can always act right from the here and now. Humans are finite. There is an upper bound. Despite the messy, uncertain world, people make decisions all the time. We go on regardless. And I'm talking something that '80% is good enough' kind of reasoning can capture. I'm talking about the world that blows a probability space away. Poeple act right from the seat of their pants, right from here and now, and don't even realize the power that's there or what kind of odds it overcomes. And yet here we are, and yet here we are.

What kind of technology is 'human'? And where can we get more?

-Larson