December 2007

Oh gang violence, wah wah, we had the third reich!

Scott Blake talking at the Musemsquartier, Vienna

Tonight Scott Blake presented his Bar Code Art at the Musemsquarter here in Vienna. I worked with monochrom to get him in while I was here as part of my residency. I’ve known Scott for like 15 years or something and the amount of trouble we’ve caused over the years is rather immense, and I’ve loved his work since he first started playing with Bar Codes so I was really psyched to help get this together. I really wish we had video of it, because hearing him talk about it was amazing. (more pics here)

It funny, I was expecting this week to be a bit more calm from the first week I was here since Roboxotica is officially over (btw, audio from all the Roboxotica talks, including mine, are online now) however it’s been anything but. On Monday I spoke at the Akademie Der Bildenden Künste Wien aka The Academy of Fine Art here in Vienna (yes, the very one Hitler was kicked out of before moving to Germany) – I was expecting it to last an hour or so, but it went for almost 6 hours. Contrary to what you might instantly assume this was a good thing, the class was interested and asked a lot of questions and Leo, the professor, had a great deal of accessory info to add to what I was talking about and I have a list of notes I need to follow up on and research myself. I’ll have more to write on that very soon. I didn’t realize it was going as long as it was until, well, until it went that long.

Next week I’m playing insane jetsetter again and decided to bounce over to Paris to lobbycon LeWeb3. Then I found out about a Creative Commons 5 year event in Berlin just following that, so decided to tack that on to the trip too. And just to make it that much more fun every stupid leg of the trip, Vienna to Paris to Berlin and back to Vienna, in 3 days, routes though London. Fucking hell. At least none of it is overnight. So yeah, Paris folks who want to get together on the 11th or 12th let me know, and Berlin folks let me know about the 13th and 14th. I’m back in Vienna on the 15th.

Academy of Fine Art, Vienna

Tomorrow I meet the other residents at the Museumsquarter this month, which I expect will be cool and I’m going to try and hit up some of the other amazing museums withing spitting distance of my apartment. That feels so funny to say, I’m actually living here now, as opposed to sleeping in someone else’s guest room or at a hotel. Even if it’s just for a month, it’s still something I never thought I’d be doing. Before I leave at the end of the year I hope to pull off some other cool events, and I think I’ll be speaking at the University in Graz as well. I’ve made a few great new friends which is more than I was expecting honestly, but I’m rather happy about. Of course I miss my friends in LA, but a few folks here have been going above and beyond to make me feel welcome. And I can’t thank them enough, so I won’t even try. More soon.

(title is a quote by Johannes at dinner tonight, top photo is Scott talking, bottom photo is the Academy of Fine Art)

fly in the disappointment

I realized today I’ve become a lot more cynical and jaded than I ever was, which is saying quite a bit because I’ve been pretty fucking cynical and jaded for a long time. I started thinking about this earlier on this trip when someone was talking about something, I don’t recall exactly what, but it was in reference to someone who was married and a 3rd party who was interested in one member of the couple, and they said “well in San Francisco you can at least ask ‘how married?'” Point being that to many people being “married” means they are just with that one other person and that is the end of the discussion, where as in San Francisco it could mean that, or it could mean something else entirely. I know people who are married who regularly make out with other people they aren’t married to, and with the consent of their marriage partner. Sometimes it doesn’t end at making out. And sometimes that isn’t the only thing that ends.

I don’t have any first hand experience with that, and honestly don’t want to. My feelings are if you are in a committed relationship you need to be committed to it. If you aren’t, you need to get out of it. One person being more committed than the other is just a bomb waiting to blow things all to hell. Those couples are better off not being a couple, but I refuse to play any hand in it. It’s tricky when that’s out in the open, and even worse when it’s not. There was a time when marriage meant “for as long as you both shall live.” That’s not a cliche, there was a point in history when people did in fact stay together for the rest of their lives when they got married. If people had problems they worked them out because they were stuck with that person for ever. That changed at some point, and as I was explaining to a friend a few months back, the fact that people now have the option to get a divorce and not be a social outcast, or maybe find something better has become a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. If you have no choice, you find ways to make things work, if you have a choice, that is always on the table somewhere and eventually it’s more appealing than fixing whatever problem is at hand. It’s not shocking that the divorce rate continues to climb, and my guess is that it will keep on keeping on.

Coming to this conclusion is cool on some level because I feel like I have some kind of actual insight about how things work – like I’m not under the same delusion as everyone else, but sucks on some level because I know that some fairy tails don’t come true. It also makes it hard to know how to react to other people who are on the other end of that spectrum, either just married or just getting married. Oddly enough relating to people who have been married for a while is no problem because they know the score already. How do you be happy for someone, while at the same time know that chances are they are building a house that is eventually going to get knocked down. Like I said, a new level of cynical and jaded. Sorry about that.

And then, there’s the other end of it where someone is in a relationship that is over, but not publicly or officially or even maybe they just don’t even know it. In talking to people here and there over the last year I’ve been shocked how many people were going through the same thing I was at the same time, but neither of us knew the other was in that situation. It might have been helpful, or consoling to have someone to talk to who knew exactly what I was in the middle of, but I wasn’t letting on and neither were they. One more awesome thing to chalk up on the ego score card. Stupid ego, always playing damage control. Oh well, the fun things you learn after the fact…

I don’t know why I’m thinking so much about this this week, well actually this week would have been my 9th year wedding anniversary so I guess I know exactly why I’m thinking about it. I just have to remember to keep building new dreams for tomorrow, and not focus on the ones that died yesterday.