My parents are visiting. I take the train from Amsterdam to meet them. They are pretty jet lagged coming all the way from Hawaii. While they were taking a nap, I take a bike ride to the beach.
Before I left New York, I purchased a phone mount for my bike. It comes with a special phone case so that I can easily attach my phone to the handle bars.
I test it out in my apartment. It's strange to see it next to my big computer on the desk. Almost at the same height, but shaped oddly small, and it has a built-in seat. I visit my website on my phone while it's still clipped to my bike and take a photo of the whole apparatus because it feels so out of place.
......
On my bike ride to the beach, I visit my website again. It sits there, as trees fly by. I navigate the bike path. Right, a roundabout, and right again. The site is still open, without any knowledge of the changing environment in which it is being displayed. It makes me feel like the bike itself is part of the website. An extension of the source or maybe the source itself. It's striking how the website itself is so boring, so flat compared to what's happening around it. It's growing dark and I bike through a layer of mist. The light from the phone glows in the darkness. How magical this all seems. The phone is connected to a cell phone network. And this network transmitted a collection of files from a data center in New Jersey to this glowing rectangle. All while in motion. How did is all become so normal, so mundane?
I turn the phone off.
[spotlight turns off]
My website vanishes. I hear the sound of pigeons in the trees overhead and hear myself pedaling and my breath. I try to aim my breath ahead of me, timing it with my pedaling and catching it with every rotation. It feels a little lonely without the site in my periphery. It was like someone or something was looking out for me, lighting my way. Its presence was comforting.
The breath timed with the motion
allowing you to enjoy life, explore your surrounds at your own speed
......
url is a feeling
url is not the end
before you move, take forever
the url moves through the world at its own speed
in the url, the dot sleeps
A dot holding a question mark
A dot holding onto a memory
A memory of the last dot
A dot connected by an exit
......
Two kids came into the workshop room and began drawing on the scroll. The blue blob became the first emotion of the url. An anchor that fixed us to the floor containing a language that we couldn't decipher. The weight helped us become less structured about the whole process.
When building a url together in a physical environment, the url can be written in any order. What becomes, what is material, forms from many sides at once. Unstructured browsing space is a little like sketching. The unstructuring of a standard. A choreography of phrases connected with dots and more
......
I want to become a motion
A series of phrases placed together lightly with dots, slashes, question marks, anchors
A series of dots associated with time
A series of dots associated
A company of dots
The dots are released at random times from the left edge of the screen. And they cruise across the browser, the sky, and collide with the right edge of the space, and bounce, at the same velocity. they head back toward the left edge
And occasionally, some of the dots cross in the sky. I can't say when when exactly. it could be be calculated, but it's feels better to just be surprised when it occurs. The dots are two dimensional (or so we think) and for a second they seem to collide, to become one
And you start to wonder about the dot. If I could show them to you. If we could slow it down and zoom in. Is someone or something in the dot? Piloting the dot? And what is this pilot thinking.
Sometimes the dots fade or change color or glow. Sometimes they are all moving together and sometimes they are perfectly still
Sunday, July 30
I'm at the EYE
Writing
And now I'm reading this
I wonder if this is a way of time traveling
I watched Roswell by Bill Brown the other day
I love how he narrates his images of Roswell, New Mexico through excerpts from his secret diary. He talks about getting lost and how the ET that crashed there was also lost.
......
Maybe I'll try writing to a secret diary...
Dear secret diary...
It's the possibility that excites me, more than the actual movement
Dear secret diary...
I want to make this talk about us. Like us right at this moment, because that's what motion/movement is all about and websites are just these anchor points, part of the movement, just like anything, a drawing, a romance, a text message
Dear secret diary...
Sometimes when people tell me that they don't have a website I feel a little jealous. That I wish I didn't have a website. Then I get home and update my website.
Dear secret diary...
The ferry keeps passing in front of the big windows. I can't really remember how many ferries I've seen while sitting here. I'm not really sure how long I've been here. But each time I glance over i see the ferry again.
......
I think about how much they know about us
And why they are usually spotted over the oceans
What does water mean to them?
What is it about the water
When I'm submerged in water I forget my worries
Do they also need to forget their worries?
Even though we know so little about them... it's comforting to know that we are connected by this thing called water
It seems lonely to fly around in a flying saucer, so far from home
Do they think about us as much as we think about them?
Do they know about HTML?
Do they have an equivalent?
......
July 31
At a cafe near my place I start my talk over again. I've brought 3 hard drives with me today. In a small travel case. Back in New York I labeled them each with a unique name. The names give no context to what's contained inside. The hard drives contain my digital footprint since 2017. The rest of my digital life is stored across 2 LaCie hard drives, 2 Western Digital portable hard drives and an inconsistent 3TB mirror of everything.
......
it has feeling because it travels
The impression of visiting
we were writing and it seemed possible now
After years of starring into a little rectangle of light, we found that the energy we got out wasn't equal to the energy we put in
So we turned out, for answers
Became a messenger
At first nothing answered us
The universe takes time, communicating one email at a time, with lots of time to rest
So resting became a motto
Take as long as you need
It became a sort of music, a groove, and following it until the end
Because moving is better than staying still
Sometimes I move so slowly that it hurts
I was sitting in the cafe
I was remembering
I don't want to make websites when I'm 80 years old.
How do you stop making websites?
Do you turn off your website? Or do you make a new website that says, "Hi visitor, I'm no longer making websites" Or do you put up a sign in your apartment window. "Hello world, I'm no longer making websites."
But I'm still optimistic... I want to learn how to make websites while in motion. Websites can be a way of framing things. Focusing on what's important.
......
Relaxing at a cafe in my mind.
Inside the city but inside the city.
Like a town but inside.
And other people are in this cafe.
And there's a giant light switch.
......
What I'm realizing is the setting is important. More important than the work. I worked at a lot of cafes writing this.
I thought a lot about preparing and practicing and the time leading up to this time. And how it might be more important than what I'm saying right now. With everyone here. How we got here. How we traveled. How we made these documents that left impressions. And the impressions lead to expressions. What is an impression anyway?
Sometimes I feel like my happiness is proportional to the amount of time I am in motion. Do you ever feel this way? Does the universe just prefer to have things in motion? Maybe we just have to get on the highway and things will start to happen?