DIARY TEXT 8/99-3/00 - FOR TRACE ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITY (writer-in-residence position) http://www.alansondheim.org/worldaxis2.jpg [ Again I'm changing direction; from now on, new sections will be added _at the end of the file,_ in order to prevent reading down and up, up and down, constantly reversing. So the narrative will be continuous, _after_ the marker: xxx xxx xxx xxx below. ] Just woke up, realize "in reverse" the direction to go, here I'm beginning to top myself - 1:15 in the afternoon still thinking about Burroughs. Now, later, I've been reconfiguring X Window in Linux - it can be difficult be- cause there are too many files that need changing, in too many director- ies. X Window, which is a graphic interface for Linux, has the feel, like the Mac or Win98, of a totality - in other words, a coherent and unified skin over the hardware and software of the computer. But looking through Linux, it becomes almost immediately apparent that, like language, the X Window is not so much a _system_ as a collocation or accumulation of scattered files and processes that seem almost chaotic. I imagine that a great many computer applications are like this - for example one doesn't think ordinarily that Pico or Pine are anything but simple editor or mail applications - but if you log in at 300 baud and watch the continuous re- writing of the screen, you realize there are other things occurring. Even the keyboard itself, say entering an "e" on-screen - is a system of com- plicated interrupts, voltages, integrated circuitry, software, etc. Like the human body, which appears symmetric, whole on the outside, asymmetric and complex on the inside - all of these are designed to appear organic, comforting, and surface "blank" ... One wonders if the body or language themselves might, in other circumstances, be considered applications as well... Then this would be the third part of the diary text, working chronolog- ically in reverse order, opening to the most recent layering of the world, backing down, re: stratigraphy, the Pennsylvanian where I come from, fossil sigillaria, neuroptera. So that _above_ this would be the current, or currency, this later on August 29th, already a disorderly beginning: should I start or stop the consequences above or below? The text falls out differently for the writer or the reader, but all diaries in cyberspace open for renewal _at the beginning_ - one scrolls down for the traditional order, one begins _here_ at the origin, over and over again, repeatedly, within the phenomenology of the digital. This is the beginning of the diary text, which I'm using _now_ to configure the directory structure for the residency project. You might consider this entry an empty one, one designed to behave as a construct or marker - hold- ing the place open, creating the header for future work, occupying a site. Addresses behave like this - a certain amount of diskspace for your perusal. And it is now August ... probably the 27th, as time escapes me. It's August 29, just turned. I worry about the demographics of the material for the love and war texts - whether people will contribute whether there will be really enough material to become self-sustaining. Meanwhile I'm entering test messages on the backbone websites - I like the tests them- selves and the possibilities. And I'm currently downloading the webbie.mpg from the Elite agency - Tookay Webbie, who will go into the Kyoko Date directory on my desktop - I'm interested in the relationship between anime, manga, virtual idols such as Kyoko Date and Webbie, etc. - as well as the otakuworld site, with its Kamishibai and PlayKiss paraphenalia - things that would be interesting to explore in relation both to avatars and to the residency (we could all work with the Kamishibai software for instance). Today Azure and I also found a number of Burroughs' books at the Salvation Army - I want to read the Electronic Revolution text in the Ah Pook is here book, as soon as possible... Finally, I've been working with electric guitar again (I want to do some performances with it, a Fender Cyclone, the model was apparently designed by Kurt Cobain), and I'm reading cover to cover the Sobell A Practical Guide to Linux, backing up my knowledge here.. xxx xxx xxx xxx Diki Today I went to the Diki site and downloaded several music videos, around 60 megabytes total. These are the current Kyoko Date imports into Korea, and the theme is based on the intermix of virtual and real, the (male) artist (re)creating the female statue-come-alive; what's interesting is the construct of the mesh holding the skin - the sexualization of interior hollows as the armature turns, the skin running jacketed around the body, cuts carefully made away from breast and genitals as it approaches. So there is also a literal representation of introjection/projection in the sense of an injection of skin covering the hollow of representation, an interior which can be considered a screen of and for desire. The music is the same as Kyoko ever; there are also closeups of models inextricably (everything is inextricable online and offline in the future-real-here) electroded, their movements tallying with Diki's, giving birth to Diki at a distance, teledildonics. It is easy to imagine lush-Diki-skin on oneself - that is to say, an other e-mergence; the PlayKiss Kyoko Date doll gives a sense of this, even though the manipulation is literally puerile (removing her clothes, dressing her in others, in a paper-doll fashion). I am always reminded of, for example, Nikuko's _dirtiness_ and abjection in relation to all of this, the _real_ of Nikuko _not_ based in simulation, but in a speaking of the unconscious, insertions and assertions across the (key-) board. Nikuko scratches at skins, removes them, exposing the wires beneath - or the flesh - or what would pass for a melange of the real - what is constructed on Diki is torn apart by Nikuko, expanded like condoms holding birth in abeyance while fondling it. I can push Nikuko and the others (Jennifer, Julu, Alan) until I can't sleep at night; with Diki and Kyoko and Webbie Tookay, I'm lulled into the foreclosing of any gendered dieges- is; sleep comes easy, permanent, the sleep of the death of the real. Unlike Nikuko, the creation of Diki occurs at a distance, through control-room, gloves, screens, keyboards; there's a scent but no odor. It's as if culture guarantees that the real _has_ that other end, far cry from Diki, but even later at night, when I do deep sleep for a moment or two, Diki-Nikuko merge through the sound and sight - merge through the imaginary - there's a love and ecstasy I can never imagine - there's a permanency outliving me - I'm abandoned - I turn back into the dreams - I know if I dream, Nikuko will come back to me and Nikuko and I will watch the Diki videos over and over again, together - Today was a sad day, I found out a second person very close to me has cancer... Death is beginning to seep in everywhere. And I huddle by Azure or online with the machines, looking into other maybe darker maybe brighter spaces, reading Sobell's A Practical Guide to Unix, which has just solved a couple of other problems; I've more texts than usua. I try all the time (it's the early morning by the way of the beginning of the residency, September 1st) to create a wide bandwidth for my work, scatter the surface content, pushing my thinking into as many areas/zones as possible - and I do this with the greatest fear and hopelessness in the world at times, an engine for production which questions itself only so far ... Now it's the first of September, towards evening; I've been looking at Ibn 'Arabi, Les Soufis D'Andalousie, from the 12th Century, reading more into The Ecology of Fear (Mike Davis) and a Japanese dictionary, more linux; the residency seems off to a good start - I'm hoping the conferences become self-sustaining. So far there are no software/hardware bugs I can find on any of the systems I'm using or the Webboard for that matter. I'm exhausted and worried about the pace I'm keeping - but then trying to work the Diki dreams, etc., into pieces, again pushing those intermediary or borderline states. A friend is going up before a grand jury on Friday for theft; she didn't do it, was mistreated by the police (which I don't doubt - under Giuliani, mistreating seems the order of the day - two deaths in two days that could have been avoided, one, a Chassidic Jew with a hammer and eleven shots fired into him, etc. etc., now still another up in Har- lem, it's an epidemic of brutality, overkill, slaughter), and will prob- bably be convicted... And this is a "dry" spell. I had the manuscript returned from the anthro journal (Kyoko Date one) for revisions; if I have the energy, that will happen tonight, with another sendoff tomorrow... Meanwhile I sent out the press release with my phone number attached - to just about every list, ah well... Millennium Project - Help Needed, Comments Invited !!! (September 2,1999) This is a proposal for a millennium project that would involving running traceroute and similar applications across the December 31 / January 1 _hinge._ Traceroute is a linux / unix command that can also be downloaded as a small application for Windows; the command-line (prompt) startup is: {k:1} traceroute <address> - for example {k:2} traceroute cleo.murdoch.edu.au Traceroute then executes a series of internet packet transmissions that target each router between one's local site and the address; each target is usually hit three times. The send-and-return time for each router is then given to the user. The result is a table or textual map of the health of the route between the local and final address; if a router is down or not responding, that is clear from the * in place of the send-and-return time. Here is an example: {k:110}traceroute cleo.murdoch.edu.au >> zz traceroute to cleo.murdoch.edu.au (134.115.224.60), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 isdn2.nyc.access(166.84.0.123) 184ms 169ms 169ms 2 xenyn-eid-FE0-1.nyc.access(166.84.0.97) 169ms 169ms 169ms 3 587.Hssi2-0-0.GW2.NYC4.ALTER(157.130.17.145) 179ms 179ms 179ms 4 132.ATM2-0.XR1.NYC4.ALTER(146.188.178.134) 189 ms 179ms 170ms 5 189.ATM2-0.TR1.NYC1.ALTER(146.188.179.18) 179ms 189 ms 189ms 6 104.ATM7-0.TR1.LAX2.ALTER(146.188.137.129) 249ms 249ms 249ms 7 299.ATM7-0.XR1.LAX4.ALTER(146.188.248.253) 249ms 259ms 260ms 8 192.ATM8-0-0.GW1.LAX4.ALTER(146.188.248.101) 269ms 259. ms 249ms 9 optus-gw.customer.ALTER(157.130.227.182) 249ms 249ms 279ms 10 hssi8-0-0.ia4.optus.net.au (192.65.89.241) 599ms 559ms 549ms hssi3-0-0.ia4.optus.net.au (192.65.89.237) 549ms 11 ge9-0-0.ia3.optus.net.au (192.65.89.225) 569ms 579ms 589ms 12 aarnet-wa.ia3.optus.net.au (192.65.88.190) 649ms 629ms 629ms 13 murdoch-parnet.parnet.edu.au (203.19.110.146) 629ms 639ms 619ms 14 cleo.murdoch.edu.au (134.115.224.60) 639ms 639ms 649ms All of the intermediate routers between the local address (my desktop com- puter routed through panix.com) and cleo.murdoch.edu.au are listed in order; the IP address is given after the name, and then three times are listed for every address. What I propose is a skein or matrix of traceroutes run all around the world - not just from major cities - sites - at the time of the millennial turnover hinge. Participants could run one or several traceroutes; the results would be sent to me or a trAce site via standard email, and assembled. (It may be possible to create a visualization, but the cost of this seems prohibitive.) The result would give a map of some of the world's nerves as Y2K comes to fruition; it would be a unique and historic signature or imprint of the passing of an era (marked by B.C./A.D. or b.c.e. a.c.e. common time - I'm well aware of alternative date systems). The text would be a world-text, a self-reflexive look at the Net by the Net, data-crawling everywhere. One site might not have traceroute running at all; another might connect just as easily as usual. A major problem is that almost no one will be around for the hinge (and don't forget the hinge itself will take a day to travel the world). The computers would most like be set up (if unix or linux) with the at or cron commands, which automate task running at particular times; if they connect to the Net, they'd also have to ensure that the ISP connection remains open. All of these are difficult problems; one solution would be to _actively_ make connections when the participant's local address is not on the hinge - but to target hinge addresses. Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. trAce (Sue Thomas) and I have tried to find programming help on this, but so far it appears costly. Martin Dodge at Cybergeography has been thinking along similar lines, but nothing is firmed up there, either. [ The above was sent out to various mailing lists. ] ___________________________________________________________ NOW: k4% traceroute Version 1.4a12 Usage: traceroute [-adDFPIlMnrvx] [-g gateway] [-i iface] [-f first_ttl] [-m max_ttl] [-p port] [-q nqueries] [-s src_addr] [-t tos] [-w waittime] [-z pausemsecs] [-A as_server] host [packetlen] k5% traceroute -r world.std.com traceroute to world.std.COM (192.74.137.5), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote world.std.COM 40 chars, ret=-1 1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote world.std.COM 40 chars, ret=-1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote world.std.COM 40 chars, ret=-1 * traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote world.std.COM 40 chars, ret=-1 2 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote world.std.COM 40 chars, ret=-1 ^C k6% traceroute -r Yahoo.com traceroute: Yahoo.com has multiple addresses; using 74.6.231.21 traceroute to yahoo.com (74.6.231.21), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 * traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 2 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote yahoo.com 40 chars, ret=-1 ^C k7% traceroute -r AOL.com traceroute: AOL.com has multiple addresses; using 98.136.103.23 traceroute to aol.com (98.136.103.23), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote aol.com 40 chars, ret=-1 1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote aol.com 40 chars, ret=-1 *traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote aol.com 40 chars, ret=-1 * traceroute: sendto: Network is unreachable traceroute: wrote aol.com 40 chars, ret=-1 ^C ___ TRACEROUTE(8) System Manager's Manual TRACEROUTE(8) NAME traceroute - print the route packets take to network host SYNOPSIS traceroute [ -aDFPIdlMnrvx ] [ -f first_ttl ] [ -g gateway ] [ -i iface ] [ -m max_ttl ] [ -p port ] [ -q nqueries ] [ -s src_addr ] [ -t tos ] [ -w waittime ] [ -z pausemsecs ] ] [ -A as_server ] host [ packetlen ] DESCRIPTION The Internet is a large and complex aggregation of network hardware, connected together by gateways. Tracking the route one's packets follow (or finding the miscreant gateway that's discarding your packets) can be difficult. Traceroute uses the IP protocol `time to live' field and attempts to elicit an ICMP TIME_EXCEEDED response from each gateway along the path to some host. The only mandatory parameter is the destination host name or IP number. The default probe datagram length is 40 bytes, but this may be increased by specifying a packet length (in bytes) after the destination host name. __ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
[NetBehaviour] DIARY TEXT 8/99-3/00 - FOR TRACE ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITY(writer-in-residence position)
Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour Mon, 03 Oct 2022 07:39:57 -0700
