As of this writing I am currently on a long term hold at a county mental hospital in Los Angeles, the site of mobius: era one. I have no shame about this fact, it is easy to lose your cool when the world is in upheaval. I do not plan to ever come back to a place like this, but, when you reach out for help emphatically and someone in your neighborhood arranges for two people with guns and badges to intervene first – there is only so much you can do to avoid state sanctioned nap-time.

If you look at the logo for L.A.C. U.S.C. you will see that the Los Angeles depicted is a good birth-of-fire analog to that in “section one” of the official myth of the machine treasure map, created circa 2009.

Mobius Era One - L.A./Orange Country

Perhaps Ms. Rufflegrouse, the crew cartographer, has more than a bit of  the witch-y intuition in her roster of senses. The Map above will be revealed one section at a time, in 7 parts, over the course of the next year. Each section will be a digital element, in Jpg and Psd formats, so that it can be expanded and detailed with elements of the story the website tells. This map is one of great legend. It was dictated by my whim (to aforementioned bird familiar) and drawn in the rufflegrouse families’ architecturally splendid nest, in the suburban sprawl of Widanfer: Orange Country, California. The map in its full splendor is too much to digest at once, so I will parse it out wisely. I mean that with all my heart. It has driven we well past the brink of madness several times. So, like any properly legendary scroll, it is now good and lost. It now only exists as slightly blurry (there is a lot of texture here that was hard for a scanner) high-res tiff files made in 2009, currently backed up on 3 hard drives and my usb key.

Raw, Raw, Ra

So, is there more than a similarity between the picture of Los Angeles I keep seeing as I walk by the nursing station and the one above?

I like to believe in the uncanny whenever given the opportunity; and, to tell a good ghost story, one must remain entranced themselves. I can affirm I am most certainly seated as such, though I took my seatbelt off some time ago.

To picture me more fully I am wearing MLK Jr. branded medical scrubs for my pants, and have a t-shirt with a ghost printed on it, which was most certainly a wise costume decision, though waking up one week ago it felt trivial. I am in a room with two single beds and a cabinet, split down the middle and labelled numerically by our separate stations. I am in bed one, above which hangs a sign reading: “fall risk” (under this a stick figure tumbles down a flight of stairs). There is a permanently closed window in the room and it looks out into a park area in between buildings. The image is skewed by a metallic ledge above; so that the image is one of a tree bent at a right angle in a reflection at my eye level. The real kicker is that at some point a previous patient got creative with some smuggled art supplies and has written on the mesh screen of the window “all ye ghosts”. And now I am here, and it feels true.

But I am not going to talk further about madness, simply the joy that drove me off the edge one last time (hopefully).

And now, down to brass tacks.

The Naming of Parts - Click to the Left to Hear a poem by Henry Reed.

The Purpose of Myth of the Machine:

Mythofthemachine.org - A digital mythology Intervention

Myth of the Machine is an umbrella of sorts, a container really, one that encapsulates: websites, files, magic media boxes, classes, recipes, healing circles and, perhaps art shows, though the latter is the least interesting to my tastes. Truly myth of the machine is most important as a blessing for other people’s projects. One that acknowledges that this semi-anonymous author can fully testify to the positive stance and Johnny good-times vibe of the thing being blessed. I have to have a good amount of face-to-face conversations to confirm that this person or people are serious about personal transformation through their work, whatever it may be. Then they will get linked to, and will get a special set of site graphics to insert as a visual representation of the myth blessing. I aim to be a version of kickstarter  that has absolutely no desire to confirm your feasibility or coherence: just that it is “out there”, it has soul, and it deserves eyeballs that will be hard to get in a world that has a hard time endorsing the weird. This is an attitude and ethos guage first and foremost, but there is much more to it.

To clearly divide the terra firmae here. 1. Mythofthemachine.org is a red hot badge sunk into anything I see as working towards ending the scariest/most dehumanizing aspects of technology. I fear not the machine and I ain’t afraid of the ghosts of past labor. I am looking forward.

There are two books that get the retroactive seal. One is Studs Terkel’s “Working”. This book makes labor tangible and honest. Both in its occasional atrocities, and in the joy and self worth that can come through any type of work if it is respected (or, when the worker in question can transcend their conditions by finding personal satisfaction). Any job can bring moments of pride, worth acknowledged, and friends made.

From Working:

“…I’m a dying breed. A laborer. Strictly muscle work … pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it
down. We handle between forty and fifty thousand pounds of steel a day. (Laughs) I know this is hard to believe – from four hundred pounds to three- and four-pound pieces. It’s dying.”

The other is Lewis Mumford’s two volume series for which this website was named. (abstract of part 1). I will simply point people to these books, and let them know that they were the prime movers of this website idea. They point out some stark truths about humankind’s relationship to technology. His observation, to give a sound bite, is that when religion ceased to be a convincing justification of power; the apparent neutrality of machines rose up to fill this void.

Stemming the flood of digital information

I would like to teach a class on these texts between February and March in Los Angeles. I will be submitting the class idea to the public school website in the next weeks.

What is the Mobius Text

The Mobius Text - The story of the story of technology

2. The mobius text is whatever ends up produced under the myth of the machine banner as original material. This could be a poem, an epic tale of derring-do, an annoying animated gif that does the watussi, a reel of super 8, an audio recording of two people discussing the mayan calender, or even a leaf. That is right, a leaf could be part of it, that is how wide this net reaches. Memory (and our experience of time in general), are, in my perception, best descibed by the figure of a mobius strip. In order to pay homage to the BBS boards and IRC Channels in which this idea was inculcated, I chose the mischievously out of date medium marker “text”.

Together, on this site, an open source world will be built – as a protest against corporate ownership of existing signifiers. If some people could imagine trademarking every element of reality, well then, we shall just have to fabricate new environments to set the stories of freedom. We will work on setting the creative commons attribution settings as a group. In this way we can make these resources available to the entire internet in a way that benefits the most.

A pre-modern rendering of mobius city

It will be told on this website and in live events. These events will include: shamanic circles, karaoke and music composition nights, both of which have had trial runs; as well as the more ambitious events, each of which has an individual proposal that will be put into play as this all moves forward.

Creation of Gardens

Originally planned for the elysian park museum of art. This is where we will create the fauna of the virtual world. I have a number of zoological books to share the most intriguing thoughts on evolution and behavior in public parks around Los Angeles and subsequent cities.

Open Source Animals

Next, we will use this information to create a stock list of freely reuse-able digital animals with special skills, as a protest against the insanity of trademarked genetics. These original animals will be fodder for story elements and art projects. Some will be helpers, some domesticated; and, of course, some threatening and wild. Hopefully all will be interesting and engaging.

As the above attempt reveals, this is an absolute failure in the hands of one person.

We are not walls, we are windows

The title of which is an internet meme I am hoping to make stick.  This is a project that will serve as a post-maximalist representation of our collective digital energies flooding the internet.

It was made on my memory tapped pc by keeping every conceivable program open and then spinning the windows to a song by orbital, with the intent of producing as many pixel artifacts as possible. I will gladly include new videos in the broth, or let people know the quickest ways to degrade their computer to a proper point of chaos. I have included it with the live events, as i can imagine ways this could be done in a theatrical setting cooperatively.

Bible by Committee

A group performance piece, which sounds subversive, but is an act of pure devotion. This is really a form of creative arts therapy, in which participants write a new narrative of spiritual experience in a safe and supportive setting. Check out the pdf proposal below:

The Mobius Text – Bible by committee

Choose-your-own-Adventure Mixes

My personal favorite. This project will grow on the website, but its real lifeblood will be live interaction. I hope dj culture will glom onto this one when they see the potential to use ableton live for something far cooler than girl talk. These are mixes that will mix one of two different ways, and that mixing will involve both the music itself and an accompanying narrative arc. On the internet this will be accomplished with mp3 zips. Imagine then, you are in a deep cavernous space, the music is industrial and coursing (coil, nine inch nails, einstürzende neubauten). You are then instructed to choose one of three different mp3s to continue your journey. One will involve fighting a giant spider, so you can expect more of the same musically. One will involve running for your life, so you can expect you will hear that story set to drum n’ bass, or techno. Third option: you can take a breather, and investigate a bright shining pool in an opposite cavern, in which case light ambient will be your texture of the moment. In the live version of this idea (which had an embryonic trial last year) the audience will physically move to one side of the room or the other based on their choice. The democratic option if you will. The choice with the persuasive numbers has their will responded to in mix form. It will be great fun. I am working on a template in ableton to explain how to make these mixes with an example scenario.

Feel free to e-mail if you would like to hear more about any of these of these ideas, I like the idea of giving personal presentations, this is mostly how the website has been planned.

The Party of Midway

There is also an event I very nearly pulled off a long time before it was justified called “Save the L.A. Raver” that I would like to do as a charity benefit for friends of the l.a. river. This is planned for the start of June. That mix was made in 2009, and has only gotten spicier since. I will be e-mailing delegates of a few responsible clothing companies to discuss teaming up to supernova that one. I really just want to give my friends an excuse to meet up in L.A. for the weekend, as this usually leads to tomfoolery and widely creased cheeks. Given what a goodly matt and I almost accomplished in 15 hours, I am literally frightened where half a year of planning might lead us. I have an idea that there will be two pirate radio signals at a location we will only reveal the night of. (Channel #1) Flash mob music and games and (Channel #2)) Sci-fi/fantasy/adventure book club discussion at a slightly removed wooded spot I picked out. Tune in, drop in, and never fall away.

The Dates

I didn’t know how straight a face to keep about all of this, but I have no idea what to think about the end of the Mayan calender, so I won’t pretend otherwise. However, it is a powerful myth in the middle of all of us, so I am going to use it for all it is worth. I started this project in its finalized form on December twenty first, 2011, and will continue it (though gently at this point, as the event related in the start of this post was a major life lesson) until December twenty first, 2012, the end of the aforementioned epoch. At this point I will seek a successor to take over the site as I apply to graduate programs, to learn more about the subject this site deals with, and eventually teach said subjects.

I will casually suggest that it is not worth waiting for massive change to happen. It already has, and we now simply need to channel these changes in positive ways to keep the tide  flowing in a beneficial way. I can’t imagine why or how the world would end, but something new seems already to be upon us.

Thank you for you interest,

Iktome,

The Spider

Next up: Council Roles Defined