if ViromeCaravan ^ ? – frictions through affordances

art and culture within and yet not without? #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 02/11/2020
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covided culture in a shut cinema?

I think it is a legitimate question for us, during covid – how do we do culture?

Before getting into that, let’s try and and unshade a few things. Doing culture, imho, is an evolution, energies that escape with, without and within volition.
aka – i doubt living is plausible – let alone possible – without culture, human and otherwise.
Therefore, imho – whether we go to cinemas, galleries, clubs, cafes, libraries and such places –
affects How we do culture, rather than waht the image suggests.
(..that somehow we are without art and culture while places like cinemas are shut..)
Indeed, when considering Cinema kind of places, venues humans may come together to question, reflect, wonder, imagine, energize and therefore evolve Their culture collective –
it seems the focus comes on art and culture as a collaborative oriented process.
Even when the orientation comes on individuals, the collaborative togetherness is there through reliance of such individuals on various shared contexts.

Since we have been covided – aka implicated by a virus that enforce alterations in life and therefore culture ways of doing things –
perhaps the question should address the How imho.
There are
instant solutions that we swell into- tech network oriented solution. Museiums, festivals, conferences, galleries and performances have been
xoomed since covid began.
Apart from the fact that there are other – not commercial – technologies we can use,
I think that perhaps we can also ask a wider question that these covided times may offer –
have we shared culture, before covid, in the best way possibly plausible?
Could
this break in the art sharing and doing habits,
this forced change,
could it not come as na opportunity to consider, let alone develop, other?
Some other ways to share, or are we going to confine ourselves into the technological solutions alone?

There’s nothing against technology going through my mind as i type on a networked pad via a laptop.
However, diversification is on mind, as well as multiple physicalities, frictions and ways.

The Virome Caravan offers a here and now suggestion to share and connect, do art’s calling for a shared evolution in a covid safe manner, while keeping a physicality mediated by other than binary pulses.

log news

is this skateboard with you or someone familiar? #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 01/10/2020
Sticky post

This is a recording of yours truly at Brighton police station, asking whether the local police folk are happy to:
Locate the skateboard.
Promise no criminal action against anyone involved.

A little bit about this skateboard?

Here’s a snippet:

This board and has been through more than 1500 miles along 3 different continents.
Arsenic, the skateboard, has gone through mountains of snow, buckets of torrential rain, deserted desert roads flapping in heat, the northern european lush plains, and many city roads. From the dusty roads of Timisuara, through to the dense traffic of Rio de Jenario, from the ordered roads of brasilia, to the wildly shaking pavements of berlin, from the wetness of Manchester, to the hulls of Istanbul – and many other journys with plenty of stories untold.

However, respect.

Someone was willing to risk their freedom just to get this skateboard.
or
Someone might have bought it from some-one who thought taking this board will help them financially one way or another.

Therefore,
in case somehow you have a clue where Arsenic the skateboard might be –
I am happy to negotiate an agreement of returning back to who-ever
has the board.

For more details about why it might be cool to get in touch in case you do have the skateboard:
Here’s the long version about Arsenic.

log news

a skateboard taken?

Post author By aha
Post date 30/09/2020
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Just realized that someone decided the skateboard is much better off with them.

It is kind of strange, IMHO.

I mean.. Look at this board and set up.. There’s nothing like that in the whole known universe.

The shape comes from non euclidean, 2 hyperbolic spirals. The material is carbon fiber and the name arsenic is made of phosphorus.
(
the board came from considering it – the skateboard – as a living organism yet to breath.
therefore elements of life were put together. from a shape that’s based on life forms’ geometry, through to carbon – a material for organisms, phosphorus – required by most life forms, and the name “arsenic” reflects on non carbon based lives we know of, the ones using arsenic instead.
)

The brackets are unique since they don’t require skateboard trucks and the whole setup is designed for long distance – something that is hardly everyone’s kind of kick.

In case anyone fancies using the board, it is very easy to recognise. Why would someone place themselves in risk of being tagged a thief so easily?
(
I would not want, wish nor desire Any Harm done to them – who ever they are!
However,
doubtful they know that, yes?
)

Currently unsure what to do with this..
However, obviously.. Something will require a bit of a change until the skateboard issue gets sorted?

about

about ViromeCaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 17/08/2020
Sticky post

It looks somewhere between ridiculous and ludicrous – this Virome Caravan “thing”.

Yet, since this “Virome Caravan Thing” is done in full display of all sorts of vulnerabilities and intimacies –
perhaps Virome Caravan helps to bring questions of aesthetics, to do with power, that we might have grown to take for granted?

Power aesthetics that are revealed to bite fanged full and utterly bare through covid oriented times?

ViromeCaravan got made for under £200, and while testing, and it broke twice. (I’m not much of a DIY person really.)

The current ViromeCaravan moves from one place to another like a virus since directions aren’t enforced but afforded.
Motion is done through a combination of pulling – either through skateboarding or by walking.
(Afforded motion – as in to be un-opposed, moving-on and get something done without enforcement.)

Viral infections move from one host to another when cells afford viruses an entry. In a similar way, the ViromeCaravan moves between places when and where it is allowed. Moving into to such and such place, this or that environment, comes with ease – without enforcement.
Therefore its hard to tell, from one day to another, where the ViromeCaravan will go to, and when.

As a creature, the ViromeCaravan has a few peculiar inter-related dynamics.
Traveling creates frictions, while frictions offer possible range of dynamics and movements. Through these symbiotic connections between traveling, movements, and their cross negotiation dynamics –
short reflective texts in forms of diagrams (PersonalBows) are created, collected, and shared.

PersonalBows are written with chalk on the caravan’s body. This way other elements (eg rain, winds, walls, trees and such like) get to leave their frictive marks with the texts. Rains may erase texts, winds smudge letters and trees that host birds – offer poo marks.
All these come together as elements negotiating each other by need rather than force.

This way, the ViromeCaravan operates as a port through which various kinds reflective frictions are made, shared and later, may come spewed as a new specific language of aesthetics.

A virus oriented background?

An art oriented background?

about log news

#viromecaravan – brighton seafront #

Post author By aha
Post date 17/08/2020
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* Images by Simon. Many grateful Thanks!

Taken a pic or a clip?

about

What’s in a name?

Post author By aha
Post date 09/07/2020
Sticky post

Virome
A term to describe viral genetic material sourced directly from the environment.
Virome refers to the assemblage of viruses. Each such assemblage is often investigated and described by meta-genomic sequencing of viral nucleic acids that are found associated with a particular ecosystem, organism or holobiont.

Caravan
A company of travelers, pilgrims, merchants, etc., going together for security.
A word that was picked up during the Crusades, via Arabic qairawan, from Persian karwan “group of desert travelers” (which may be related to Sanskrit karabhah “camel”).

thoughts

conspiracy education? #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 08/11/2020

Is it a conspiracy to assert that we live in a period of relative prevalence of conspiratorial oriented opinions?
Perhaps it feels like that prevalence since a fair few peole approach me while thinking the viromecaravan has something to do with covid as a conspiracy.

When chatting with such conspiracy oriented humans, i think
that while i should counter their line of thinking one way or another when possible – ie
not leading into some kind of a circular self righteous argumentation session –
such interventions should be made with dignity and respect for the human i am speaking with.

Is that approach a mistake?

Indeed, it seems i learn too from these interactions. Afterall, these are humans with thought processes that i have not really encountered before.

For example?
A person that actually expects people in power to offer a correct guidance to rely upon without questioning.
A person that may take power greed as a sign for not that something is wrong with power and violence but of
an evidence that anything they say is misleading –
hence anything that they oppose or don’t say, is true..

Or
a person who told me they know covid is a conspiracy because they never met anyone who had covid.
Do you think the suffragettes were a conspiracy?
No..
However, you never met them, have you?
But I have seen films, seen photos, read texts..
Yes, i said, so it is possible to tell whether something happens even if you have no direct experience. (Thought it was nailed, however..)
But that was history, not what’s now.
Is it not possible to transfer the same kind of info-crossing research to the present?
How can you when the government obviously lies.
How?
They want to use covid to control us!
Yes.. That is possible – however, this is a different question from whether there is or isn’t covid. Its to do with how do we respond to the situation. How do we make the best of it and move forward better than we have entered. no?
Maybe.. But i do not think covid is real!!
At this point I broke a bit, i think.. Done something that perhaps i should not have. Said a truth:
Actually, a very good friend is fighting covid now, as we speak, at the hospital.
Here?? In Brighton??
I was surprised by the response.. This means they might have thought covid happens in some far away places but not here..
Curious??

Perhaps another strange thing that comes clear is that we don’t have lessons in critical thinking at school – and sometimes not so much at unis either.
Are there classes to work on fallacies?
Indeed, how do you tell another human they might have a difficulty in thinking?
Nothing psychological or intellectual in-capacity, but a luck of knowledge and experience in appling ways of thinking.
Yet, with AI, we do teach them how to overcome fallacies with ever increasing rigour…

log news

someone has seen the wondering skateboard #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 06/11/2020

A visit to the open market in brighton produced an unexpected fruit –
someone
told me they Know who has the arsenic skateboard!
What?!?!
Yes, they said – someone around brunswick sq, they insisted.
Any more details?
They said that whoever has arsenic tried to sell it for 50 pounds or something like that. Apparently no one bought it for the thing is too unique and it was obvious the person attempting to sell
might not own the board entirely legally.

We exchanged phone numbers and the person told me they will try to make the connection for a bit of a fee.
A strange demand imho – however, they did not come across as thriving but barely surviving.. (which may explain away a certain seeming obsession with money? why explain..?)
the strange thing is that by demanding money they may place themselves in a peril.
How?
Suppose I was a bit of a capitalist?
Boom!
I’d go to the police and say: Recall the skateboard story? Here’s a name and a phone number of someone who Knows..
The police will go Thanks, pick up the homeless person and make their lives a bit harsher.

all for money??

No way!

about log

how to continue during lockdown #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 03/11/2020

Seemingly we are at the brink of a new lockdown from the 5th.
(some tory publications say that since the R rate went down past day or so – lockdown may have a delay button, and with bojo-and-gang, u-turns come as the preferred jungle..)

Since I didn’t manage to get any electricity generetation with the virome caravan, and
because electricity is needed imho
the movements with Viromecaravan will have to alter and include
electricity.

( 🙁 that so far i am yet to hear back from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HzZ6lRacFI )

So far, the wind was instrumental in telling where, which direction, to move with the caravan.
On route, we stop in places like cafes to charge electric devices.
However, now that cafes will be only take-away, how do we charge while moving between no-wheres in particular..?

Here are the options as they seem to begin with. (any thoughts, additions, suggestions and other betterments are welcome.)

* Asking people to offer electricity from their houses. (i could park outside and get a looooooooooong cable.)

* Keeping around my house. ie coming and going only for electricity while moving away in winds’ directions.

***
all these moving inclinations come with a notice that in case the local police
notes that viromecaravan can not move AT ALL during lockdown
then
the affordance movement, the
moving of a virus by where, when, and how they are afforded a transition from one place to another –
will become confined to where my house is.

log

a spontaneous pandemic way to live? #viromecaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 03/11/2020

Was stopped for a chat about viromecaravan.

At the end of the chat, I wished them good luck with the lockdown. (due to descend in 2 days.)
That prompted a jesting speech to the tune of:
“yes.. with all these lockdowns – we’d all Need a virome caravan”

Sometimes, I think, there are revelations in jest. The funny stuff points at certain things that actually hold.
It seems so in this case because other people mentioned in passing that the virome caravan may come as a kind of solution for maintaining movement – rather than confinement and being locked – during pandemic times like covid.

It comes interesting imho since
one of the prompts for the caravan has the aspect of how to maintain connections and movements despite the mortal need to keep
safe and distances that support safety.

log

winds, air, curiosities and gender?? #viromcaravan

Post author By aha
Post date 24/10/2020

Sitting in a cafe and drying from the windy rain.
The caravan is in my view. Left the window open (only one at the back), since it will be good to get air circulated after a condensated night.

People pass by and look At the caravan. Some read the words on the body, some look around and under, others swing head at the caravan’s direction as they walk by, yet more stop to look at a number of things (can tell since they point) and discuss.

In my mind, it is strange that people may attempt to resolve, to unforld in their minds questions like: “wtf is this caravan?” – rather than simply go to the website or searx the name.
Perhaps humans enjoy – or feel some thrill – attempting to reply a question based on past clues berried in their culture’s minds?
Perhaps, indeed, the process isn’t to do with the seeming resolution to questions like “what is this” – but
a feeling of satisfaction that may wait in case they could asnwer themselves
or
could this could also come as a process in which
though using pre existing notions, concepts, ideas, experiences and knowledge – the thrill is
in the operating the formerly held mind?
or indeed
a bit like I do here –
just a thrill of sliding and surfing from one thing to another from a particular question into an infinity that has yet to come into senses?

Why know something when we can have sensations from it??

However, when male and female looking humans come across the caravan – mixed sex couples – the body langugage from curiosity seems generally different.
How?
The female looking humans attempt to look inside, through the open window – while the male ones take a step back.

PersonalBows Images