Virtual Residency Day Forty-Nine, Closure (NEWSSC)

Today is the last day of my residency and I just completed what I certainly hope is my final edit of an article to be posted in the greenmuseum.org, about a workshop I participated in with scientists at Woods hole last Spring. It contributed to my decision to do this experimental residency. Excerpts from the end of that article follow:

"How New England Workshop for Science and Social Change Contributed to a New Work Direction: A Virtual Residency:

The techniques and ideas explored in the workshop bridged differences by systematically reaching the heart. I could see that the fear I observed from the response to the Exit Art installation over what must be done about global warming might be bridged playfully and virtually.
...

Conceiving of a "Virtual Residency" was my answer. Instead, of flying to any of the potential sites, I designed the first Virtual Residency in August. Participating agencies included, Anke Mellin, of Germany and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, South Korea 2006, the Khoj International Workshop in New Delhi, India and Verdearte in Pescia, Italy. The residency addressed these four physical sites (including the physical site of Ghost Nets) simultaneously, analyzing and searching for answers to on the ground problems. The base venue and "Trigger Point", in this case, was my website (Cities and Oceans of If <)./">www.ghostnets.com>). Progress was chronicled on my blog.

Events climaxed on line with two experimental "Virtual Concerts", using new software (talkShoe.com) for streaming broadcast. I believe this direction will open up possibilities for marginalized "outsiders" to participate in restoration work. I expect to continue to explore the rich possibilities of working this way."

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Eight, Feedback

Methane in the sea floor is likely to be released as global warming procedes. This will create a loop of more global warming : http://tinyurl.com/rwpad.

Meanwhile, I am continuing to try to fit the pieces of research together. Part of that research means internalizing what I learned about global patterns, comparing the sites for the Virtual Residency.

The way I think is by making pictures. I have been painting images of the Gulf of Maine, comparing it to sketches of the Gulf of Mexico I have been generating for the past year.

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Seven, What I'm Learning

The goal of the Virtual Residency has been three-fold:

1. To address the way jet fuel contributes to global warming

2. To find a solution to working internationally that does not exacerbate my illness of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

3. To experiment with the limits and opportunities of a Virtual work site

In the remaining three days of this residency, that will be my focus: to assess what has been accomplished and learned.

The first thing I learned wasn't on my list of what I hoped to address. It was about irritating tech glitches that can arise and how much time they can take to solve: acoustic, for example. Blogger.com glitches with archiving; transferring WAV files; language barriers for international participation.

Re: #1: As far as jet fuel actual use, an EPA pdf on non-road emissions from 1990, estimated that jet fuel constituted 1% of all emissions but at that time was projected to grow by 226% by 2010. I sent in a request to compare emissions from modes of transport on a typical 500 mile round trip. Given the priorities of this current administration, I will be curious to see if I receive a reply.

Re: # 2: The second thing I learned, was that even with all the support of working from home, the project exhausted me. The daily commitments over almost two months of work and the 16 hour concerts, the adrenalin of amassing everything myself: were not sustainable. I will have to design the final Virtual Concert differently and get more support for future work of this kind.

Re: #3: The third thing I learned is that the culture to use this sort of "space" amongst people over twenty, is extremely limited and needs to be developed for the immense potential it represents. The culture of those under twenty is not educated to explore sophisticated conceptual territory (at least, that I could research so far). The latter would be a major educational failure.

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Six, Out of Time

Grist reports from the British paper, "The Independent", that not only is there now incontrovertible proof that the seasons are starting significantly earlier, 14 days earlier in Spain, but the effect of this dislocation between species can mean unprecedented repercussions.
http://tinyurl.com/ou5lr

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Five, Geomorphological Recrimination

I have been thinking about the outpouring over Katrina one year later. Yes, it is good to assess what has changed and why or why not. But what I see is a fair amount of sensationalism: re-runs of floating dead bodies, excuses & promises, blame & retribution. What I want is calm analysis and thoughtful assessments.

The best thing I heard was from an engineer who said the task is nothing more or less than rebuilding the entire coast. That is very expensive work. It was avoidable before all this. It is probably unavoidable now.

The truth is, we have destroyed the geomorphology of large portions of the world, mostly the critical coastline habitats. The effects of Katrina, the extent to which it was the inevitable result of global warming rising sea level temps. and the continued problem of over-extraction causing subsidence to the land, is still not being adequately addressed.

As far as I can tell, the reason for that is human intransigence in the face of change. What is required is monumental flexibility now.

Large governments, global corporations, entrenched institutions are not noted for moumental flexibility. What is required is faith in doing the impossible. As much as the physical geomorphological questions need to be addressed, just so must we address human geomorphologies.

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Four, Ticking Clocks

I have been enjoying a visit here from Elinor Gadon of Brandeis, cultural critic and author of "Once and Future Goddess". Elinor is also a friend of Navjot Altof, the Indian artist who introduced me to the people at Khoj International in Delhi. Elinor has been working with Indian artists for many years. We have been discussing the water problems in Delhi, how they relate to the larger global problem of water and what recourse I have in this Virtual Residency to address the issues they face there.

After the last Virtual Concert, August 12, I had written to Khoj with a list of questions. The questions had arisen while I was live during the concert and I posed and explored them rhetorically then. I was trying to make sense of the research I had been reviewing. That research was about the lowering water table, exploding population and measures to address the gap between available resources and demand. I had composed the letter and sent it but have not yet had a reply.

Elinor read thru the questions and told me the language would pose a cultural problem. She is going to help me write a second query.

What struck me was all the ways people can misinterpret, mis-hear, not recognize the language or the means of communication (as, all those who don't access the net as a means of connection), long before we get to identifying and implementing the correct action to address the key problem. This is as true within the same culture as it can be across cultural zones.

I am always aware, as I consider this kind of problem, that we have a global clock ticking on global warming. In the short term, being in site and effecting an event in situ cannot be under-estimated. The question I have, is if we cannot do the same thing with Virtual reality that we can do with physical prescence, what can we (I) do with virtual reality that we/I cannot do with our/my feet on the ground? Is it just a question saving jet fuel and stamina or am I missing something?

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Three, E.O. Wilson

In the most recent New Republic, E.O. Wilson has written a letter to Christian Fundamentalist pastors, pleaing with them to embrace a pro-environmental agenda. Actually, many already have, but it is interesting that E.O. Wilson is going formal and public with a plea for coalition: http://tinyurl.com/kw64d.

As for myself, I am still digesting the experience of doing the first two Virtual Concerts and thinking out my plan for the last in that series, next month. One of the things I am mulling over is what I learned about the limits and advantages of working virtually on problems at specific physical sites. When I have more insight, I will post it here.

Meanwhile, I planted 22 new heathers in my garden in a design inspired by the healing Native American Medicine Wheel. We are expecting rain this weekend. Normally, I would never plant at this time of year, because normally the soil is dry as dust from our annual drought period. No more. Weatehr changes give me this option.

A bit south, NYC braced for a tornado, It blew over. But tornados in Manhattan?

Virtual Residency Day Forty-Two, Katrina

News about Katrina is ubiquitous and worrisome, I am in overwhelm mode so am letting my pal Paul Challacombe speak for me again as guest editorialist.

Paul writes:

" http://tinyurl.com/eo3w2

This fella has written some great stuff on NOLA and Katrina. I have no idea anymore if master planning or the free for all is a better way to build or rebuild a city. Better go re-read my Jane Jacobs.

There was another item today from some research done at the University of Virgina which implies that corruption increases where and when ever there are natural disasters. The only thing more tempting than the cookie jar is the broken and abandoned cookie jar. "

Virtual Residency Day Forty-One, the good and the bad

In Austin, Texas, Grist reported yesterday, they are aiming to institute building codes that will establish 'Zero-Energy Capable Homes' by the year 2015.

That good news was off set by more terrible news. In Grist today, they cite a BBC report to the effect that global warming will result in more bubonic plague, which thrives in warm moist conditions.

This evening, at a social occasion, I was speaking to a limnologist, who works with fresh water systems. She discussed how mercury has finally leveled off in the systems she is studying. We went on to chat about how tuna is now considered even more mercury polluted. I commented that the toxicity of the poor fish may save their lives... if you don't count what happens to then genetically.

The best of the good bad balance is there is increasing awareness and willingness to finally do something. The trillion dollar question is, will we, can we do enuf? The willingness is the critical part.

Virtual Residency Day Forty, Equanimity

Nancy Gray, former Director of the Foundation, Art in the Environment, an early funder of Ghost Nets and a continuing supporter of my work, writes in response to prints I have sent her of the present Ghost Nets site,

"You have created a resurrection, don't you think. Resurrection of the earth. We have resurrection fern growing on oak tree trunks here, it looks very dead, then it rains and it is bright green and perky again, and no rain, it is wilted and dried up. It is like love, be nice and it is there, be not nice and it wilts."

When wonderful people also do wonderful things, I am resurrected. At the end of a long day, exhausted, my soul is fed and watered

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Nine, Global Warming, Spike Lee & Katrina

Tomorrow is the second installment of the powerful Katrina documentary on HBO, "When the Levees Broke". I cried thru most of it for what I was seeing and on the screen many more were crying for what they lived thru. The last five minutes is images of the dead bodies of abandoned Americans accompanied by minor key violin music and the wreckage of homes.

This is where I came in. This is why I have been doing this blog, obsessed with global warming. The dead bodies is what global warming looks like on the ground. It is why I have poured energy into doing a "Virtual Residency" instead of flying to exotic locations. It is a drop in the bucket we will all drown in if there isn't some help.

Lee pulls no punches in this work. Without needing to say a word against him, Bush is framed by the dead bodies. His inaction and inappropriate action is damning beyond words. It names him by simply letting him speak. That is real artisitic brilliance; less is more.

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Eight, Rain

Today, it has been pouring. It never rains like that here in August. But we have more monarch butterflies than ever before.

I saw on the news that Western India is deluged with rain. Just a week ago I was deep in reflection over the dry periods in Delhi. I need to find out if it usually rains there now and how the water table is faring. The two locations- the flooding and Delhi- are about 1200 kilometres apart and the terrain looks very different.

This is the drawback of working this way: I cannot be on the ground myself. I can only ask questions and try to gather data. Whatever I can conceive or visualize as an ecological art statement for Khoj depends on secondary sources and impressions.

In Massachusetts, wetlands are dying for no known reason. On CNN there was a report on the scarcity of honeybees due to climate change and how many plants we depend upon, depend upon the scarce bees for survival. I have already mentioned, in an earlier post, how our berry crop has been affected by less pollination this year due to the unusual fog early in the summer.

The weather times, they are a changing. Our accomodations to global warming are, at best imperfect.

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Seven, Paul Challacombe Continues

I must confess that after 40 days of concentration, I am thrilled to ahnd over the bully pulpit. Paul writes in response to yesterday:

"hat's a provocative notion. People on a jet airplane might want to crawl into a tech-free womb for a few hours. There's an old joke about grandma; she refuses to get on a plane because she wasn't born with wings, so she's content to stay home and watch TV like the good lord intended her to.

Nope, the flaw seems to be in finding the threshold people will pay for. The Internet brings out frugality among those who consume luxury elsewhere. Or it could be that snakes on a plane want free amenities. I don't know. A business class ticket should probably include the connectivity. The surcharge was a bad business model, should have hidden it.

But then I've always been bemused by how many different prices can be charged amongst a crowd of sardines flying point to point in same aluminum tube.

Then finally, who are you going to e-mail on the plane, the person you're going through all this hassle and expense to see (rather than just e-mail?) "

Virtyal Residency Day Thirty-Six, Boeing & Jet Fuel

My indefatigable friend Paul Challacombe sent me an article from the Seattle Times to the effect that Boeing had pulled the plug on a new program to provide internet connections via Connexion in flight.

Boeing seems sanguine about the failure to build a customer base. As is often the case with art, but oddly to me, I hadn't expected it so much in business, this corporation was ahead of its time. There seems to be a big social delay factor these days with new ideas, at a time when we need them most and need to apply them even more.

Paul writes, "Perhaps you will see the same ironic twists that I did between this article and your current brainwaves. I particular liked the fact that the technology worked beautifully, but the only thing worth the funding these days in aviation is saving “fuel, fuel, fuel”. The antenna is a drag.

Of course Howard Hughes got the point by obsessing the rivets into an invisible smoothness of aluminum – but then he just wanted to go faster and impress the chicks. But the resulting plane was therefore beautiful too: necessity, extremism, curiosity, excess money and lust being the mothering village of all art.

This whole gag reminds me of the geek who thinks I want to watch a movie on my cellphone, then I explain to his horned-rimmed self why I don’t even have a cellphone.

But then it is also true that a big company can just write it off. Boeing is booming in general. If the technology had been from a smaller tech company, it (the failure to connect so to speak) could have ruined lives. The economy of scale isn’t always just the skin of a snake."

Perhaps once in flight, people just want to escape all the tech for a while.

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Five, Unintended Consequences

In the travel secition of the Times this Sunday, there is an article about "volunteer toursim" http://tinyurl.com/lbyek. The idea is that travelers have gone to Niger with basic health & medical supplies and returned with handicrafts they can sell to help the population. An example was iron pills for post-partum Mothers, who often die of anemia there.

It got me thinking about this project. The problem is how to have contact with Others while protecting the planet from the consequences of carbon emissions from present modes of traffic. Isolationism is not the solution. If that were to be the outcome, then that would have severe and scary unintended consequences.

The idea is to maximize not minimize contact. We need the respect and understanding that can emerge from that travel. The Nigerians also need iron tablets for post-partum women, for example, that migth nota rrive any other way. There are so many situations in which "showing up" is essential.

The primary onus, if we are going continue to participate in this world, is then on the business leaders who provide our transportation. I have read that there is a filter available to reduce emissions for jet fuel. The problem is the up front cost. Speaking for myself, I'd be content to fly less frequently and pay more for esssential trips, if I knew fuel emissions were being significantly cut.

The secondary onus, on each of ourselves, myself, is to carefully discriminate what is essential travel in the meantime.

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Four, Population

I have been talking to friends about some of the current insanity in the world. Many feel the Middle East crisis, water and global warming all boil down to too many people. E. O. Wilson had warned us years ago, that this planet can sustain 100 million people. A few minutes ago, the population hit 6, 640, 819, 800. Moving along to 7 billion instead of 100 million.

The Pew Research Center has been working with Fortune 500 businesses on global warming. The Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC) at Pew is working on policy matters with 41 corporations. Money in the service of idealism? Ultimately, my guess is that the most profitable and efficient trade is in what people need. Apparently some business leaders know that what we need is a competent policy on global warming.

In a study some years ago, it was ascertained that prosperity leads directly to a lower birth rate. Is it possible that all these problems are truly enmeshed and therefore so is the solution?

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-Three, Attention

Many disciplines exhort us to pay attention. I try to pay attention before I try to make sense. This is what I am paying attention to: Reuters reported today that Prius, GM, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler will invest over $1 billion to create a super-hybrid to out-compete Toyota by 2007.

Meanwhile, the lobsters are migrating North from traditional New England fishing grounds in search of colder waters. Polar Bears are still dying of starvation. Industrialists are bragging about how they have a jet plane as a second "car".

Is this a race between the smart and the foolish?

Here on Vinalhaven, the first touches of red are coming way too early to the sumac leaves. August, usually our driest month, has seen unwanted rain. I keep thinking about the steadily lowering watertable in Delhi and aridity in Italy.

Weather patterns everywhere are disrupted, bringing instability and uincertainty to a world already teetering in securities. Historically, when people feel unsure, they look for a target: a dangerous option in dangerous times.

Virtual Residency Day, Thirty-Two

Two days after the last virtual concert, we are just beginning to address questions that arose as a result.

How to make international access simple for non-English speakers.
Creating a social status place for younger people comparable to mySpace
Creating a social comfort zone for older users, used to seeing friends face to face at a conventional concert

These are interesting ecological art problems about community interaction to try to solve.

It relates to economic questions being debated now at the Harvard Business School: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/cgi-bin/print. They define these questions as the distinction between the economics of Scarcity vs the economics of Abundance. In that discussion, the distinction is also amde between point source of profit, as the economics of abundance presumes all information is equally available at all times.

If such theories are taken to the ultimate paradigmatic trajectory and applied to ecological issues, that implies there are energy solutions that will address global warming.

Meanwhile, on my island, yesterday, as I deadheaded lilies, a hummingbird wavered in the air mere inches from my head. Nature blessed and privileged me.

Today, in the evening, I attended a memorial for an elderly lady who had spent part of her last years on this island, where her granddaughter lives. The rest of the time, a life long New Orleans resident, she spent there, where she was caught in the aftermath of the hurricance. She did not die there, but in the chaos afterwards, despite ample means and a loving family rushing to her side, circumstances there compromised her health. Until her family could reach her, she had spent some time in a shelter. There, lying on an air mattress alongside the Chief of Police after she was evacuated, she caught a chill. She died within a year. To the end, she was a smiling social doyenne but she was also a casualty of global warming. Privilege did not spare her.

It will not spare me or the hummingbird. It has been a bad year for lobsters. Some speculate that they are migrating North from here because the waters are too warm. Nothing will be spared by global warming.

What started me on the work of this blog, the Virtual Residency and now the Virtual Concert series, was my response to Katrina last year. It continues to be my obsession.

As Anke Mellin put it today in response to the work I am continuing, "I am very interested in this kind of project and want to develop something that allows creating/working/communicating within the arts but does not harm the global condition." If we can design solutions that do no harm, we may also live in a world of abundance for all.

Virtual Residency Day Thirty-One, The Day After

I wnet thru the motions of my life today like a sleepwalker, exhausted from the two concert events this week and numbed by the news accounts of wars and murmurs of wars.

At church, where I sang this morning, The pastor spoke of how we must reach out past our comfort zones and talk to the Other, who is different than ourselves. If only we could wish that willingness on the world. I wanted to stay and socialize but I had promised an elderly gentleman that I would drive him home and, tho dead on my feet, wanted to go home to my elderly lady, my old doberman.

Together, my dog and I walked thru the garden picking late summer berries under the clearest Maine blue skies you could imagine, as I considered what I had learned of India, Italy and Korea so far and how much I still do not know.

It will take me a day or two to bring my mind back to the "go" position. Meanwhile, there is still quite a lot of follow up to be done.

VIrtual Residency Day Thirty, Second Concert

I have just completed the second of three Virtual Concerts on TalkShoe.com. It is past midnight. Each event was 16 hours long. There were and remain many technical issues to resolve before the final concert, at the end of September. I know several artists from Korea tried to log in without any success. I shall have to track down what happened and what may be done for the next event. Tonight, I am too exhausted to think or at least to write out those thoughts I do have.

I can see, however, that weaning us all from what is familiar is harder than I thought. Artists, like everyone else, as Anke Mellin wrote me, want the cultural experience of being in situ to create work rather than remote control creation. Truth is, that is the ideal.

The other truth is that in today's world of global warming, unless something dramatically changes, we may have to consider relinquishing that option for a time. Physical travel of all kinds, may need to take a back seat to sophisticated virtual travel unless we can solve the problem of emissions.

Surgery is often performed now with remote virtual guidance. Perhaps many other tasks will come to follow that lead.

Virtual residency, Day Twenty-Nine, Make More Art

The Washington Post reports that Greenland ice is melting three times faster today than five years ago: http.com/jym7z. CNN reports that airlines are now doing the checking of data bases for passengers that would formerly have been done by the government. The connection between those facts is that the American adminstration is doing precious little to keep the citizens of the world safe, whether from global warming or terrorists.

All the more reason to fight back with art. The Virtual Concerts are accelerating in thier complexity as I try to make them simpler and more accessible. They are each live performances about the issues that concern me and others. Dave Nelson, President of TalkShoe and I are moving along in finding solutions to reach more people.

On the island, I thought there would be bumper crops of berries but the fog we have had all summer discouraged the honeybees from pollinating. So there are fewer than I can ever recall. Nonetheless, my old dog and I go out gathering as many as we can almost every day. She likes eating the black currants.

Perhaps tomorrow, instead of reading texts of research, I will experiment with transmitting the Virtual Concert from my garden

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-seven, combining spatial realities

Today I am sorting thru my thoughts about the event yesterday.

As I have been discussing with Hans Tammen, a composer at Harvestworks, NYC, this kind of work accesses an entirely new generation of artists in new ways- and by generation I don’t mean age but technology/blog savvy. Participation requires some comfort with microphones, interrupting an on line thread and making connections between virtual and physical experiences.

Being a woman doing this is also interesting. It is mostly men I'm encountering so far in this brave new world. What is unique about this project is the interface between virtual and physical sites to address ecological issues. What I am seeing so far is that people are comfortable with one or the other: physical sites or virtual reality. Combining them is less familiar, unless, perhaps, you are very young.... or a terrorist.

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-six, Audiences

I have completed the first of three planned virtual concerts and have learned more than I can say immediately from the 16 hour event. The biggest lesson I've learned is a logistical one: this is a new media that requires a new way to access audiences. I don't yet know how to do that.

It is a teaching media for the "instructor" as much as the attendee.

Participants need clear signs to enter. Those of us on the "inside" are not looking at the needs of those "outside" with sufficient clarity

The potential is enormous but requires organization.

The experience was exhausting and profoundly provocative.

I am convinced more than ever that an answer to global warming (and perhaps some other problems) is in this process of virtual communication coupled with validation of physical connection to place.

All that may be incoherent tonight due to my exhaustion. Later tomorrow I shall revise this post for clarity.

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-Five

Tomorrow is the grand experiment on this site. I want to see if people can comfortably access eachother's ideas in real time without flying here and there. So much has gone into the logistics that I imagine the experience will feel like the tip of a very slow moving iceberg.

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-Four, Visualizing Jet Fuel and Hearing Water

The research background for the events undertaken and journaled for this residency is the raw material I work with. If all goes well, in Verdearte, in Italy, the end artifact is going to be something about the cool blue of paint and the green of trees. In Delhi India, the artifact would be about brilliant color and muted water tones. The sounds of the Italian forest and the Indian water are not yet in my hands but I eagerly await them. The artifacts are where I apply my conventional artistic skills and can draw attention to concerns but they are not the end goal. The end goal is to see green results.

An editorial In The Guardian by Stephen Bayley opens with the assertion that jet travel "damage (it does) to the environment (with carbon emissions that cause global warming) is insupportable" http://tinyurl.com/h9vr9 . This welcome news that others are as concerned as I am comes from my indefatigable friend, the writer Paul Challacombe, who supplies me with articles on a regular basis.

I have heard from Khoj International of their progress and generosity in finding recordings of the river there. Hemant writes, "Aastha is back from the Nepal workshop where she had done a very energetic community radio session She can take field recordings at different points where the river interfaces with the city."

The water of Delhi, which is a city of over 15 million people, is divided into many districts, with New Delhi being the seat of Indian government. It is supplied by the Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganga and as holy. Both are nortoriously polluted. Meanwhile, extraction in response to the tremendous population pressure forces the city to tap into ground water.

We have faced similar problems here on my small Maine island. we are a sole source aquifer and salt water intrusion as groundwater is tapped ever deeper is a serious concern. I know how excessive extraction can be a disaster waiting to happen. As populations continue to increase everywhere and watersheds become fragmented, water for future generations is depleted.

The same paradigms are being enacted world wide. Arguably, Delhi's situation may be among the most dramatic because of the scale of ecological threat. Therefore it is very interesting to me to study the problem there. The problem there is only exacerbated by a run of dry seasons as climate changes.

The problem with using polluted water, as Delhi and most other metropolitan regions globally know, is that filtration is not only expensive but reduces the total quantity of available water. This global problem of loss of fresh water is ironic because the glaciers are pouring melted pure, clean water into the seas at astronomical rates, which returns us to carbon emission issues.

One of the reasons the question of jet fuel pollution is so critical, besides the consequences for the planet of increased emissions, is that the residue of pollution from jet fuel effects the international water supply. I have not seen specific figures but it has to contribute to the reduction of water quality world wide.

I have been discussing various options with the people at Khoj International, to continue to draw attention to the water problems they have. As I research how they are addressing the situation my ideas continue to change. That will likely be the case into the next month, when other artists will arrive there.

As with the experiments I am exploring for Verdearte in Pescia, Italy, I am interested in our global interdependence upon each small part. Each chestnut tree in Pescia has a direct relationship to mitigating the problems I have sketched above. Each incidence of water extraction in Delhi has consequences for the global matrix of fresh water supply. Each plane trip taken by anyone around the world degrades the water that feeds each tree, each human on a planetary basis.

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-Three, Unlikely Bedfellows

Tony Blair and Gov Swartzenegger of California have struck a deal on trading arbon crdits for global warming. FAter several days of gossip on Grist, the news has finally made it out of the ranks of environmental whimsy to the editorial page of the NY Times: http://tinyurl.com/hrwzv.

I have to believe there is hope when such unlikely bedfellows climb under the covers together.
I am listening to some of the tapes that will be downloaded for the concert Tuesday. Some of what will be in bed together will be very interesting. One small step for mankind. Now if we could only get some of our world leaders to make love, not war.

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-Two, Physical Sites

The last two posts may have seemed abstract but I was thinking some things thru in preparation for the public launch of this Virtual Residency project. Some of the logistics are complex.

The intentions are simple: make intercontinental art across differences with out jet fuel.

To make this project work, it is necessary to coordinate events and timing in several places, including India, Italy and Korea. In New Delhi, they have just let me know that they will be able to plot all points of intersection between the river and the city there. This is critical preparation for an idea I have to draw attention to the water issues there. I will write more about that as it develops. It may not be complete until late September, when the last concert is to be scheduled.

In Pescia, I am waiting to hear if we can paint a series of rock markers for the chestnut forest in time for their opening. This is for another idea I have for that location. The first idea, "Numbered Trees" was controversial and did not convey my intention. I am not yet sure why. One of my intentions is to draw attention to the preciousness of each tree there to all of us, where ever we live around the world.

My webmaster, Sandra Oei and I have finally received the dvds of the market in Gongjhu and drummers there from Anke after some trouble with the transmissions. Software and electronics remain an imperfect medium.

I am still trying to figure out how to manage the breaks I will need for the 16 hour marathons on each day and how to post the program in a way that will be as simple as possible for people attending. I must also consider what to do if we have a lightening storm here that wipes out my power.

On Vinalhaven, in "real space," I just came from a party and a theatre event. The first took place on a spectacular point on the island that overlooks several far islands. The day was glorious after days of unseasonable fog and lightening. All the troubles of the world seemed far away except in my heart. I came home to a letter from a colleague in Israel, Shai Zakai, writing of the terror she is experiencing there, the same terror they feel in Lebanon, where my father once played in an orchestra in Beirut.

What the world forgets in the horrors of war is that victims have their humanity as their primary "nationality". Artists are always the cultural essence that expresses the best of that humanity. It is, along with children, our most fragile and precious fountain of hope. I fear for both without national prejudice. Art binds us as humans.

The play we all went to was about a young woman with a painful life who finds beauty, "The Little Locksmith" by Katharine Butler Hathaway, was a soliloquy by a woman who is only 4'1' about a woman who was 4'6". It was moving but for most of us on the island that live here full time and are up by 5:30AM it was hard to stay awake. Attendance under such circumstances is an act of devotion for all concerned, as is any art for practitioners and audience alike.

There are two goals for these events I am working on now:

1. Strengthen the bridges of expressive commonality that bind us all across physical space and national boundaries, despite conflicts.

2. Find a way to do that that reduces global warming

Virtual Residency Day Twenty-One, Logistical Update

Yesterday was 95 degrees. no one recalls it ever being that hot here before. I read an article in National Wildlife about endangered species and lossof watersheds in Alaska as the permfrost melt. My computer was acting as tho it also had never experienced such heat and didn't want to live, blocking emails with music files for the events next week, delaying important information about changes I need to make to the "Numbered Trees" event in Pescia.

Yesterday and today, I have been trying to organize the last details for the concert Tuesday. The download and access to participate will be a lot easier.

Tomorrow I will try to finalize everything for the web pages, including loading visuals. Tonight, I was so tired I started to fall asleep while I was singing in choir. I wish I had unlimited energy. I would use it to make this the perfect event. Unlimited energy, I fantasize, could make the event capture the imagination of people who still resist dramatic change in response to global warming.

Epitectus, the stoic philosopher wrote, "seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are and you will have a tranquil flow of life."

Virtual residency Day Twenty, Meditation on Time

Music is about time. Work takes time. As I move towards the concert dates, I am sometimes more aware of time than I wish. As I type, I am listening to CNN and have just looked at the on line news with some dismay over what is happening in our times. Diplomacy takes time. Trust takes time. Negotiating differences takes time. Meanwhile, in a war, people die and are miserable and live in fear in many places.

This is all very tragic but science tells us that global warming will still kill more people than terrorism.

The Los Angeles Times has been running a remarkable series on the oceans destruction and the New Yorker just published an article on Ted Ames, the guru of Maine fisheries, about how to replenish cod fish stocks. It usually takes time to destroy an environment and even more time to restore it. My friends have been sending me articles I read and it takes time to digest the ideas. On my bed are piles of magazines it will take time to read. Global warming did not happen overnight any more than the ocean destruction occurred overnight. Both the oceans and the climate may be restored with human action and enuf time.

I spent the morning with several other artists. We are looking for a place here where we can conduct a printing studio. It takes time to find and negotiate for space. More time to prepare a plate for an edition. As we sat and spoke, I was composing an image in my head of the three sites that are part of this project besides Vinalhaven. In the afternoon, I struggled with sending out some announcements about the event- struggled because my computer was having digestive troubles. Solving the computer problems took time. Then we had to reshoot the visual that went out with the announcment and that took more time. Meanwhile, I tried to keep imagining how the visuals in my head might fit with actions at the sites. I need to sustain the vision over time and it will take time to make it manifest.

Now it is evening and I am waiting for some of the musical material for the concert. Some has been sent and some is coming and that takes time also as time shortens before the event. I will go practice my own music soon, counting my timing as I go.

My remaining old dog, sleeping downstairs onthe couch, is having ever more trouble negotiating stairs. I have to lift her onto the couch now. Time is over taking her and I am trying to compensate. Soon, I shall celebrate another birthday, another marker that time continues to pass whether I am ready or not; the decline I see in my dog is the mirror of my own, slower decline I must accomodate.

Time builds as much as it destroys. One small action and task at a time, I build this project over time, with faith that it has a place in a larger matrix of hope and meaning in the world.

Virtual Residency Day Nineteen, Meditation on Place

I have been considering the idea of place because this event is taking place in so many places. In formal performance terms, "place" is the locus of action: the proscenium. But in this event, there is no single prescenium. This is a profound relationship shift between actor and audience with interesting implications for modeling alternative worlds.

I am here on my island. I have invited musicians to participate from all over the world. They will do so without leaving their "home" place. There are "on the ground" events that I have designed that have already begun or are being planned in Italy and India. This is the case, even tho I am still "in place" in Maine. The central hub location to co-ordinate these places is here on my computer in my tiny office. That hub-place is experienced by people who visit this site in "their" places, at various locations and each of those places possesses diverse characteristics.

The days of the concerts, the events will take place from various points of origin as well as on line live within the "place" created by TalkShoe.com. Events will be attended by listeners who are invisible from the place of the performers, as each of the performers will be from eachother. The TalkShow site will allow people to talk, listen and write/chat simultaneously or in various combinations, regardless of thier point of origin, creating a secondary place within a place for all participants in one electronic "place" that will duplicate itself more or less identically to numerous other "places" where listeners will be present, experiencing events in the unique cultuaral place int heir minds that they have brought with them to the day.

The effect of this idea, may ripple out to others who have no direct "place" relationship to these events, who will transform it into even more "places". The purpose of networking all these "places" is to avoid spewing jet fuel all over the earth and yet have the chance to connect to many people in a direct and inexpensive manner; to create a modified version of the "place" present behavior is making of this earth.

If all art is an act in defiance of war and death and if this particular project is an experiment in response to global warming, then the final "place" of this chinese box of "places" is probably spiritual and impersonal. Many cultures believe it is possible to pray for peace or the good of the planet. So chalk this one up as one more prayer to some other place with some other power than we have around here.