"Adams, Plaid and Persen combined the poem with electronic music and the ambisonic field recordings to produce a piece titled Nord Rute -- the first in a four-part collection of performances about indiginous peoples titled The Compass Series, which merge poetry from Valkaeapää, music from Plaid and ambient audio from Adams. Nord Rute is a narrative account of the Sami people's annual migration.

The resulting performance is described as a "three dimensional psycho-acoustic experience" and an "ambisonic narrative evocation". During a performance the floor is covered with reindeer pelts and surrounded by speakers that create a plane of sound within which blindfolded audience members can immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the journey across the frozen wastes. To enhance the experience, there'll be absolutely no heating -- blankets will be provided and schnapps will be served instead."

"As I walked through the markets of Hong Kong, staring at jade jewellery & Angry Birds paraphonalia, it occured to me that I could order everything on eBay or Amazon. The foreign land’s treasures have been globalised to a point of total consumer disinterest. The only thing that was left to consume was food & architecture…

Could it be that When you are drowning in a digital culture that says that social is everything then you might forget what makes you special? When Amazon and every ad banner online knows what you like, what happens if you forget what you like. Anti-consumption…

When you can be anywhere, you have to celebrate where you are right then and there. That’s luxury.

True affirmation of identity and uniqueness has become tricky when you are constantly forced into relationships with “friends”, Groupon deals and “other people also bought this” prompts. Perhaps travel and food, as sensorial experiences that one cannot share, will become even more prized than they are now."

"An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home. The term comes from the late 16th century: from late Latin itinerant (travelling), from the verb itinerari, from Latin iter, itiner (journey, road)."

[Boomarked for the lists "Types of itinerants" AND "Itinerants throughout history and today" AND "Notable itinerants"]

"Edward Harran shares his personal story into the knowmad movement: an emerging digital generation that has the capacity to work, learn, move and play - with anybody, anytime, and anywhere. In his energetic talk, Edward gives us a compelling insight into his story and highlights what the knowmads represent: the beginnings of the next renaissance."

[See also the video, the rest of the post, and http://www.educationfutures.com/2011/11/17/knowmads-and-the-next-renaissance/ ]

"Artist Ranu Mukherjee builds expansive video visions of nomadic existence, based on fragments of experiences by strangers. Her works draws from nomadic lifestyles of all sorts, from geopolitical displacement to daily business travel."

"Cloudworker lifestyles…create a psychological transformation that is very similar to what happens when animals go feral. In animals, it takes a couple of generations of breeding for the true wild nature to re-emerge…But in humans it can happen faster, since most of our domestication is through education & socialization rather than breeding.

You might think that the true tabby-mutt human must live outside the financial system…that’s actually a mistaken notion, because that sort of officially checked-out  or actively nihilistic person is defined & motivated by the structure of human civilization. To rebel is to be defined by what you rebel against. Criminals & anarchists are civilized creatures. Feral populations are agnostic, rather than either dependent on, or self-consciously independent of, codified social structures. Feral cloudworkers use social structures where it accidentally works for them…and improvise ad-hoc self-support structures for the rest of their needs."

"The Authoritarian High-Modernist Recipe for Failure…

• Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city
• Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
• Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
• Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like
• Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality
• Use authoritarian power to impose that vision, by demolishing the old reality if necessary
• Watch your rational Utopia fail horribly

Central to Scott’s thesis is the idea of legibility. He explains how he stumbled across the idea while researching efforts by nation states to settle or “sedentarize” nomads, pastoralists, gypsies and other peoples living non-mainstream lives…"

"brooklyn-based designer / artist kevin cyr has sent designboom images of his latest work and exhibition. known for his sculptural pieces such as 'camper kart' and 'camper bike', that explore themes of mobility and shelters in our contemporary society, cyr currently presents 'home in the weeds', a solo exhibition at 941 geary in san francisco on now until june 4th, 2011. he has developed all new work for the show, including new large-scale installations that continue to explore the idea of shelters at different stages or circumstances, each one serving a different function, expressing ideas of mobility, concealment and protectionism. 'home in the weeds' is cyr's personal reaction to the fragility of our society today, he also explores these themes through drawing, painting and photography, looking at ideas of shelter as a safe haven for a future worst-case scenario, along with more optimistic considerations of the home and self-preservation. 

"I’m trying to think of the reporters I know who would do their job as volunteers…people who feel so strongly about importance & social value of the evening news that, were they were offered somewhere to sleep, three meals a day, & free dry-cleaning – they would do that for the rest of their days…such zeal is scarce. <br />
<br />
Aside from feeling sexually attracted to the people on screen, the target viewer, according to consultants, is also supposed to like easy stories that reinforce beliefs they already hold…<br />
<br />
I have serious problems w/ direction taken by Canadian policy & politics in last 5 years. But as a reporter, I feel like I’ve been holding my breath…<br />
<br />
“I thought if I paid my dues & worked my way up through ranks, I could maybe reach a position of enough influence & credibility that I could say what I truly feel. I’ve realized there’s no time to wait…<br />
<br />
I’m broke, & yet I know I’m rich in love. I’m unemployed & homeless, but I’ve never been more free.<br />
<br />
Everything is possible.”

"For the nomad, the question of why you are temporarily somewhere is simply ill-posed. It’s like asking a settled person, “why aren’t you moving?” For the nomad, a period of rootedness is unstable, like travel for the rooted…a disturbed equilibrium that requires explanation. An explanation of non-movement, & eventual resumption of movement, are required…<br />
<br />
It is not inconceivable that the world could be arranged to provide all these in a way that supports both rootedness & nomadism.…it is becoming easier every year. I’d like to see trains getting cheaper…health insurance becoming more portable…government identity documents becoming anchored to something other than physical addresses…executive suites and coworking spaces sprout up all over…<br />
<br />
There is no necessary either-or between nomadism & rooted living. Technology has evolved to the point where the apparatus of the state should be able to accommodate illegible people w/out pinning them down."

"For Bolaño, even his non-fiction defies clarity. He shows little interest in providing order or streamlining his thoughts. For him, order is a lie. The purpose of both his fiction and non-fiction then is to capture this disorder on the page and make it feel as real as possible. In Bolaño’s writing one can only recognise sanity within the context of insanity. Answers—if there are any—are found not by searching, but in searching.
 
Bolaño was a nomad of the planet and the mind. While much of this collection is standard criticism or brief observations, the pleasure is less in the writing than in experiencing—for just a brief moment—the world of a man immersed in his art."

"A person only flails around in regards to their rig when they don’t have a clear idea of what constitutes their work. Suitability and fit is paramount, and one is never going to find what they’re looking for if they don’t know what they need. So, I looked at my work, I watched how I used my computer for a day, and found out all I do is draw vector shapes, surf the web, listen to music, and bash words out in plain text. That’s hardly the type of activity that requires computational brute force, though I understand there are some of you out there that require just that. Not me though. Nope.<br />
And these computers? As much as I love fiddle-faddling with the damn things, I mostly just want to forget I have one and get on with saying stuff and making things. I realized that I valued freedom more than power, flexibility more than blazing speed. I want the choice of being able to be mobile, and to carry around my whole setup with me at all times without much inconvenience."

"A Yin is documenting his home province of Inner Mongolia. He is a self-taught anthropologist-photographer who has made it his mission to record the last of the nomads there. The phenomenal changes he captures tell the broader story of China’s transformation. A Yin was cited by the National Geographic All Roads Film Project in 2007. Sim Chi Yin, a photographer and writer based in Beijing, interviewed A Yin for Lens. Their conversation has been translated from Mandarin."

"Our aim is to foster a reckless kind of genius that rips across disciplines and is always conscious that the work of the classroom should not stay in the classroom. Are we a training camp? Are we an observatory? Are we a university? It is yet to be determined.