the end always come at last.

I come back after being lost for a couple of days. Lost in the middle of elsewhere, and still sitting somewhere in the html code of Big [B]0ther, knowing that the time was passing by.... getting ready to put an end to all this.

The last couple of days i been working on this non-linear documentary about this software which automatically generates texts, the idea is to interview some mexican writers about what they think of this sofware, and the way in which a computer could replicate human inspiration and creativity thru imitating the live natural databases from where a writer gets it's stimuli and more or less the same way in which he process the information and then weaves it into a story/novel, etc.. of course in a way it's fiction (let's say a reflection of a possible world). cindy and my sister sol will play spys who are kind of trying to destroy this software and those mantain natural inspiration and writers alive.... basically it's about problematizing creative writing process and the posibility of a computer acquiring this talent.

I just checked my email, and there it was, the bussiness propposal to do bussiness in Nigeria (sitting right next to an invitation to attend a film programm during Cannes Film Festival in may)... just the opportunity i was waiting for, the spam-mail which i knew existed but somehow didn't fit into the Angola-Congo-Sierra Leona Connection. But there it is, waiting in my Inbox for a reply which will make me millionaire once and for all, so i can invite all of you to a retreat in the Caribbean so that we can network the Big [B]0ther of our dreams, while we endlessly work on our own secret projects...

Tomorrow there's a big event happening in Mexico (the show/spectacle must go on): the season of Big Brother 2 starts on tv. The city will be paralized, the country will be glued to their tv sets (fernseh-apparats) as we officialy declare ourselves free from our stay at the Walker Art Center webserver. Thanks Steve, again. And thanks to all of the participants for staying around for a whole month, and to all the user/voyeurs who stepped into our space/lifes and took a moment to read what we had to say/live during this long/short month.

This week Cindy and i started a new activity, which is boxing. We've been already 2 times this week at the ring, wearing our heavy red gloves while we sweat and throw punches to our virtual enemy, the character inside the arcade who gives us the chance to sweat our stress at the same time that we exercise what boxers must feel when a full coliseum has payed to see them fight (we always attract a crowd of 7 or 8 passerbys who stand around watching our virtual match against the arcade computer)....

and so, we slowly fade into future adventures and scenarios. i finally finished reading alejandro gándara novel 'ultimas noticias de nuestros días'. the stasi spys at last understand there is no more hope for the world they once knew. what follows is the unknown. and so, their translocal fully functional network slowly fades into being a sort of disfunctional rhizomatic system, as their reality fades into whatever individual lifes they can still have. they lived for the network, and utopian ideas, and a world which suddenly stopped existing in a few seconds. or as that wonderful novelist from the twin cities (st. paul/minneapolis) who wrote wonderful books during the roaring twenties once said: 'the end comes slowly at first, abruplty at the end.' this is what francis scott fitzgerald once said, or in any case he said something very similar. i'm not the best one when it comes to memory.

what i can say, is that after the berlinale talent campus i see the world of film in a completely different way, that i'm a little tired of both hollywood and national sponsored cinemas, that i can only see an alternative in the independent way, and for this i could only think of adapting alexandre astruc 'camera-stylo' theory to the computer world. for this means the 'narrator' doesnt hold compromises to sponsors, governments, publishing houses and so on. and still, it means he's adapting the industrial and technological processes into his own private little world, and still having a relationship to internet changes what could be a problem of distribution. altough of course, distrubution and intellectual property will give us a lot of headaches for the years to come... but to me, what's interesting is the small ways in which the individual voice can work it's own way thru narrative media, as the individual always has a direct link to community and the world. i think we just had enough of the dominant corporative narratives which have been replicating themselves so much for the last decades, that sometimes it doesn't hurt to go offline or into the wonderful world of minor media. as for narrative media, this is only beggining, and i do wonder what will come right after massive online role playing games and systemic world, and even interesting realist virtual realitys, serialized sitcoms, real tv.... and i wouldn't be afraid of suggesting that the next thing would be reaching into our offline worlds, and maybe hacking available media technology to tell and live our own stories in our small private ways. i believe there is the future, away of big brothers and that well know alienation to which media can easily imprison us.

i would only have to thank all my rommmates once more, Cindy, Eduardo, Germán, Jeroen, Luis, osfavelados, Pacho, Pedro, DJ Pod, Tatiana, Teresa A, Teresa D and Tony.

And of course, once again thanks to Steve Dietz and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

I believe this weblog will go touring along 'the how latitudes become forms' exhbition, across several museums in Planet Earth. I wonder how will people read it there, i have to think we must invert the entrys so that whoever reads this starts during the day we arrived (beginning of february, end of january in some parts of the world), and not at the end (beginning of march). we would'nt like to spoil possible readers into starting our month just at the moment of completion. And i do wonder if people will read it sometime, somewhere....

And so, this are the things to come. Don't ever forget: Exist!

ps, i owed you 2 net.films, here are the links:

This are Narcojuniors lthe movie which is responsible for me coming to the Berlinale Talent Campus...

Fast Food! (the movie which is part of Story Streams, the Streaming Cinema 3.0 / Nora Barry project where 3 filmmakers made a movie around the same storyline/idea, and which at the end was mixed/edited into a single fim by a vj/filmmaker live on stage.

y ahora sí, adiós!

will this continue as a project or a collaborative weblog elseweher online? (to be continued...)

...

[you are still invited to listen to 'modem radio' programming in translocal channel, where scrub channel konlum (sevilla), dj pod (san francisco), serhat koksal (istanbul) and others dj's will be performing experimental electronic music sets. as well as talk radio show produced by cindy and me (mexico city) and hopefully osfavelados and the teknoborders (sevilla), and many others. the show is webcasted every wednesday at 9pm (minneapolis/mexico time, gmt -6). the address is: http://channel.walkerart.org/admin/player/playerFrameset.php?nttID=1

it is important to say that there's programming the whole day, and that you can listen to material from many collectives around the whorld, including the sarai media lab (new delhi).]

Posted by fran ilich at March 1, 2003 11:59 PM