1. SO... WHO ARE YOU? TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF! SOME CORE OF TRUTH WOULD BE NICE, BUT PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BE COLOURFUL...
Onomai wa Charles desu, am living in New Zealand, have been involved in 'polis' stuff for quite a while, from very close to the beginning, as far as I can tell, but not before, like some. Nevertheless I was still thinking and doing stuff prior to the polis - so I am not a sole construct of the polis; I have other origins also.
Currently am working as a technical support person for a NZ software company named eCOSM. Flagship product at the moment is a spam filtering proggy called MailWasher - it's really quite good, you should all use it :) I am pretty bad at communicating regularly by email, but considering my job requires me to answer email queries all day, you might get a prompter response from me if you phrase you mail in the form of some technical difficulty. My profile on the company website implies I'm psychic (http://www.ecosm.com/v3/?section=1221). [reading the future in the entrails of tower cases and machinery?]
Hold degrees in Information systems and technology and Classics (Greek language and literature). Spent a quite a bit of time in the past making improvised free form classical jazz noise with others and on own. Acoustic string and friction instruments in groups with others, personal tendency towards electronic (lo fi home built and scavenged items). Founding involvement with a group C.M ensemble, many live performances and CD-Rs and tapes produced, one proper released CD on NZ label Metonymic, group still seems to be active (I'm not involved any more :). Also fringe involvement with local Krkrkrkr industrial label. Recent interest in vocal sounds and using the voice to produce sounds directly. Always have been interested in the process of transfering / controlling a sound from the mind through the air. Trying to minimise the distance between the concept (feeling/impulse) to the physical vibrations of sound. Also like drawing stuff (monochrome ink drawings), used to create comix type things, and sometimes writing.
2. WHAT DOES POLIS MEAN TO YOU, IF ANYTHING? GO ON, GUESS, EXTRAPOLATE...
A good motivational way to tie in and unify (by name) all the odd and varied life activities I used to spend/waste a lot of time and effort on, causing stress, frustration, irritation and sometimes even enjoyment. (these are those activities that don't involve eating/sleeping/defecating/earning money/doing anything in an institution/talking to people who, beyond my control, put themselves in my way). Creative stuff. (sound / drawing / words / making objects / machines / data structures / systems / programming / thinking / observing / learning / creating)
Links between creations (aka nodes), reuse, recombination, and building upon prior nodes for its own sake. A process. parallel to "the great work", "journey is the destination".... yadda yadda.... A way to do all the clichéd stuff (enlightenment? living?) without consciously/constantly having to resort to cliché.
3. DO YOU HAVE ANY PARTICULAR INTEREST IN VIRTUAL REALITY/VIRTUAL WORLDS, OR GENERAL THEMES/DEPICTIONS OF URBAN SPACE?
yes. but not all aspects. I like the idea of conceptual cities, inhabited by thoughts and abstracts, rather than people. Also vast empty natural spaces, potential to be filled by an observer, or something (else) external. I would certainly find something to do within a virtual urban space though : )
4. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE AN ARTIST, EITHER PRINCIPALLY OR AMONG OTHER THINGS?
I used to consider myself an anti-artist for a while. Most of
the stuff I created was born out of aesthetic negativity. So much
"art", or produce of "artists" seemed crap, and I thought, I can do
that too, but make it even worse and do the job properly.
(obviously painful and irritating sounds that were somehow less
irritating than radio music). Other stuff I would do because I
liked doing it, it could have been called art, but it wasn't so
much the goal to produce a piece of "art", just something I didn't
mind having around me to look at/listen to occasionally, or for a
bit of humour. Calling myself an anti-artist is probably just as
much of a joke as calling myself an artist. I'd rather not have to
consider it and actually do stuff instead. (I know too many ppl who
consider themselves artists, and they don't really do
anything).
Art is such a loaded concept. I'd like to blame audiences for art,
if there were no audience to observe it, an artwork wouldn't suck,
it'd just be.
Answer: No, but I'm probably just bitter : )
5. IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST, DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR ART WORKS (OBJECTS, ACTIONS, WHATEVER) THAT WOULD EXPLORE POLIS THEMES OR IDEAS?
hmmmmmmmm...... polis is the work
6. WHAT ARTFORMS DO YOU CONSIDER MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
imagination and thought, everything/anything else can be used to represent that.
7. WHAT IDEAS FROM ANY NON-"ART" FIELD DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
science, spatial and gravitational physics, particle interaction, virology, parasitism, emergence and complexity, magick, belief structures, religion, data formatting, storage, and exchange, craft, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, history(internal and external histories), linguistics
Probably crocheting too.
8. DO YOU KNOW THE DADA, FLUXUS, OR BEAT MOVEMENTS? DO YOU SEE ANY PARALLELS BETWEEN THOSE AND WHAT POLIS MIGHT BECOME, OR ANY INTERESTED LESSONS THEY MIGHT HAVE TO TEACH US?
Yes, had quite a fling with dada in my youth. Always thought it was a good idea to build a suicide mechanism into a movement to stop it growing old and decrepit (dada was suicidal). It's as if the body needs to be killed after a while so that the soul can escape and perhaps live on after everyone has forgotten the that there was ever a difference between the spirit of a movement and the tired eventually ingrained trappings of its administration, politics, members, and output. It would be nice for polis to avoid the "old, decrepit, and misunderstood" problem somehow. Maybe if it starts out on the right foot it won't happen. It'll be interesting anyway to see how it grows and evolves.
9. ANY OTHER MOVEMENTS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT? THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE "ART" MOVEMENTS...
futurism was quite cool. It never really went anywhere though.
10. IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT PLACE DOES ORGANISED LINEAR MUSIC HAVE IN POLIS SOUNDSCAPES, IF ANY?
"organised" and "linear" sound subversive. Like the idea of creating an ethnicity and then their "ethnic" music. A way to explore primitive music by re-creating music from scratch oneself. There is nothing particularly wrong with organised music. Not all the polis needs a sound track, but lots of it can do. Sound is a very good medium for stimulating/setting/evoking thought(s).
11. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN THE POLIS MANIFESTO? DO YOU THINK THE MANIFESTO SHOULD BE TEXT ONLY? MULTIMEDIA? SUGGESTIVE OR EXPLICIT?
Overall suggestive, but with succinct and explicit (un-aesthetically offensive) statements that set the lack of restrictions clearly. It (or at least an obvious and un-hidden part of it) should be in lay man's terms and explain as much of the polis as is definable, and explain the general scope of its potential. If the rules were not stated, people would quite possibly assume that there were a set of rules somewhere that they were not being told about. [thought about this lots with Vaughan and expressed it better - losing momentum in answering all 20 of these questions, will have to come back and revisit some later]
12. NAME ONE THINKER (OR DOER) WHO YOU FEEL SHOULD BE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST TO POLIS? HELL, NAME A BUNCH OF THEM IF YOU LIKE...
Eric Satie.
13. DOES POLITICS HAVE ANY PLACE IN POLIS?
Touchy subject, in modern-traditional sense of politics I would say no. Perhaps Yes in a more original Athenian sense, everyone has an equal say, the citizens govern and influence the course of the body-polis. Although, within the polis there is more space (unlimited), so individuals don't have to tread on each other's toes so much, they may live in the same city, but move further over to another empty lot.
14. DO YOU THINK THERE SHOULD BE A DEDICATED POLIS WEBSITE, OR A DISTRIBUTED NET? OR BOTH? OR SOME OTHER ALTERNATIVE?
I think it should be the responsibility of those who submit to host their own work and link/have it linked by others. There is nothing wrong with sites that store more than one person's work, but I don't think POLIS should be limited to only one location.
15. DO YOU KNOW ANY PROGRAMMING/SCRIPTING LANGUAGES? PARTICULARLY JAVA OR VRML? IF NOT, WOULD YOU LIKE SUPPORT IN LEARNING FROM MEMBERS OF POLIS?
Play around with JAVA, VRML, and anything else I can get my hands on. Am willing to help others.
16. DO WE CARE ABOUT THINGS LIKE HACKING, AS A GROUP? SHOULD WE BE ENCRYPTED FOR ANY REASON?
not really, it wouldn't be good to be hacked, so POLIS stuff should be sensibly security conscious, but no more than any other group should be.
17. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN TRANSHUMANISM, OR EVEN KNOW OR CARE WHAT IT IS?
Am interested, have done a bit of research into to it. Interested to know what people are doing practically to transhumanise. Singularity concept has me wondering.
18. DO YOU KNOW ANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE INTELLIGENT, CREATIVE, AND MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN JOINING THE POLIS GROUP? IF SO, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TELL THEM ABOUT US, TELL US ABOUT THEM, FORWARD THIS MAIL, WHATEVER SEEMS APPROPRIATE...
ok.
19. HAVE YOU SEEN "EVENT CITIES" 1 OR 2 BY BERNARD TSCHUMI (THEY'RE OBLIQUE ARCHITECTURE COFFEE-TABLE ART BOOKS)
nope, sorry.
20. ANY OTHER THOUGHTS, ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?
have rambled enough I'm sure.