As of 2025, these notes must be seen as emerging from a certain tumultuous period in the ancient history of FoAM; unpolished though not spontaneous, they never had pretensions either to objective veracity or literary merit. I’m putting them up now because I’m fed up with them sitting on my hard drive doing nothing so they may as well sit here and do nothing as well. In this they have come a full circle, as they actually started out as some kind of “live blogging” exercise on the Libarynth. —Alkan

I feel I have outstayed my welcome in this city, although I have a peculiar affection for it. It would have been most logical to leave after the Telpa un Uztvere symposium, but I had nowhere to go. I have come to wish to escape. What is this place? Is it half-byzantine, nether orient nor occident?

I realise now that the first four days - the Space and Perception symposium and afterwards, with its participants - were the highpoint of my stay in Riga. Now I am just a common backpacker, spending time in common, seedy hostels. When I arrived I was still in a state of “role distance” from the whole thing. I thought that my “true” interests would emerge from the seams of my “overt” purpose here. I was even against taking photos of people, for example. I regret that now. I met the most wonderful characters in this symposium.

Will anything come of this journey? I feel I am irresponsibly dissipating myself. This whole week I have done nothing, just tried to survive, and wandered the city. I cannot concentrate, there seems to be no quiet place.

Let me try to recount from disembarkation in Riga.

First impressions of the green gentleness of Riga, the wooden houses, the birch trees, the girls' beautiful faces, their soft sharpness, their flashing sombre glances, their cats’ eyes. The outer suburbs of Riga on the bus to the city: quiet, dilapidated, everywhere leafy and green. The hot weather, bright, clear, penetrating.

The Makslas Dienas building in which RIXC is located (and in which I now sit in the RIXC office writing this) is a big Soviet-style block. I get my key from the guard in the lobby. It is a cavernous building with endlessly long dark corridors dimly lit by hanging lights. It is impossible to know what is happening behind the closed black doors, for most of them are unlabelled and I cannot read the signs when they are in evidence. Evidently there are a lot of different things happening. On some floors, behind some doors, there seem to be businesses in operation. In other rooms people seem to be lodging. The toilets are very hard to find, quite dirty and unkept and if you’re lucky they might have toilet paper. Otherwise it seems to be BYO. Throughout the day, a pall of tobacco smoke permeates the corridors and seeps into every room. It is impossible to open the huge doors of the Artist’s Studio in which I have lodgings for a week. When I get in I face a moment of despondency, thinking: thus is my destiny, to fall in with these mad artists, living in a studio with these huge windows and empty space. (Now all this seems to me a great luxury, in spite of the tobacco smoke and the huge windows that let in the blinding morning light and which prevented me from getting any sleep in these long northern summer days.) I have a view of St Peters Cathedral spire, the spire I have hitherto always used in Vecriga to navigate my way, and an alley where some Russian-speaking youths always shout and yell every morning and night and do burnouts in a noisy car.

I hardly have time to contemplate all this, however, since the symposium is in progress even as I unpack. I hurry down the endless halls and stairs to the RIXC Media Space, a circular, high-ceilinged cathedral-like space. I am weary, and jumping straight into a mixed reality symposium causes me a moment of intense apprehension. Maja is speaking as I enter the darkened space, illuminated by an overhead projector and dim fluorescent lights on the walls. It is a relatively small audience. To my delight I see a some familiar faces. Tech people are moving back and forth behind the round table at which the speakers sit. Maja is talking about TRG in Slovenia. Then there is a question time. The schedule seems to be highly permeable: the programme, even the updated one which is given to me on entering the symposium, seems to be entirely out of sync with the actual proceedings. Naturally I am disoriented by all this, perhaps the most disorienting moment of my arrival. The session adjourns, we go out into the warm sunlight. I don’t want to participate in a symposium today, it is too nice out. I am more interested in the city as a whole. Some of the arrangements with the RIXC staff are confusing to me. I don’t know what the protocol is. (How often will this happen to me!) Several girls who are evidently temporary staff sit on the sidelines throughout the symposium and gaze blankly at the speakers and at the audience. I feel a strong identification with them. Those exquisite faces again.

I miss the evening session and go on a walk around the city. Then try to get some sleep, but it is impossible. I don’t understand how things are done here. This building is such a “mixed reality” itself that I can’t understand how it works. The next day I participate in the symposium more fully and meet many of the characters, such as Xin Wei.

Xin Wei is a quintessential elusive magician-sorcerer. He is a remarkable character, entirely mad! He throws up curtains and veils, steps in front of them then behind them again. I cannot think of a more apt field of endeavour for such a character than mixed reality. You feel he spontaneously seeks out your standpoint, your firm ground (or what you believe to be such, or what he senses to be such) and with infinite courtesy and tact, proceeds to dissolve it in spiralling curlicues of sophistry behind which at the same time there is a certain adamantine resolve. He does this because it is his innate predilection, not because he wishes to purposefully trip you up, for he is remarkably friendly and gregarious. Which makes it all the more disconcerting. In the garlic restaurant in the evening he cheekily and slyly said from the other end of the table, “Alkan, are you by any chance feeling some jet-lag now? You’re very quiet down there.” He has met Don Ihde but doesn’t like much of his work, thinks the concepts of “microperception” and “macropercption” are so much fluff that should be stripped away. He discussed his work on T-Garden as a process of experimentation and discovery, in part with FoAM, which did not yet exist in the year 2000 when he started on it. He sees T-Garden and his other work as experiments, partly in the effects of various mixed reality technologies and installations on participants. He has little interest in producing a “final product.” When talking to him I found his concept of experimentation somehow amoral, but now I think it was my general debilitation through weariness, jetlag, and so forth.

Xin Wei picked up on the schizophrenia that is inherent in my role as an “ethnographic fieldworker” and proceeded to warp and twist it in such a way that I felt no longer capable of maintaining the split of such a dual personality, which itself produced a multitude of splinters in a sense of self already fragmented by hemisphere displacement. Dealing with such complexities in future will no doubt come to be a daily task in this line of fieldwork, observing and participating with these sophistic magicians who dally in spinning subtle and unsubtle glass bead games of logic, perception, and identity and then unspinning that very warp they have wefted.

(Ah, it is so pleasant sitting here, in RIXC, a quiet space at last to file my thoughts. I look out over the Daugava river as the sky becomes steadily more overcast and hear the wailing of police or ambulance sirens in the distance, which wail with great sweeping modulations. A long freight train carrying gasoline and other cargo rumbles across the bridge that does not seem to have a name. The people here are so courteous and nice, one takes it for granted until one has to stay for example in a youth hostel, those dens of iniquity and tedium. If only I could find some device that would allow me to participate with these people more; this is something I will have to give much thought to with FoAM as well. There is always the language barrier, of course. In this pleasant state of mind I feel some self-esteem returning, the hope that this quest, this voyage towards I know not what, I know not where will be fruitful. Just jotting these personal notes down is very soothing.)

Pix is eminently approachable, has a highly versatile intelligence I don’t usually credit to those deeply absorbed in software and computing work. He wanted to know about Adelaide and Australia. I mentioned that there was little that made me homesick, and he said one thing he misses is the light. Later on he discussed anthropology with me and the position of the “ethnographer.” He is an extreme vegan, and, according to Maja, quite vocal about it. He was thinking in terms of “maximising” his vegetarian diet where being a total vegetarian was impossible.

I didn’t talk much to Nik and Maja. It was good to see them, very briefly. They were so kind as to keep my portion of a leftover dinner they had when I didn’t show up to the evening session of the symposium.

(Why did I not write this as it happened? This exercise is near-impossible. I must keep it short and simple, random jottings and notes. But these always invite me to extend and elaborate them. Anyway, all this is just a warm-up for my “real” fieldwork in a month’s time. If the travel experience is conceived in layers, with the “official” layer being the topmost (ethnography, fieldnotes) and the bottom layer being more intimate reflections, then it could be said that these journals may provide the undifferentiated earth from which the grass of fieldnotes may grow. (Cf. Xin Wei’s clod of earth and the madcap shenanigans of replacing it in the ground, with full video documentation by Lina and commentary by Xin Wei - which I thought somewhat ridiculous at the time - but now this too seems mysteriously to provide another piece of the jigsaw puzzle…))

Saturday morning and I go for a walk in Riga and go up into St Peters Cathedral spire. It is all still new and exciting for me, and I don’t want to return to RIXC. The afternoon seems to drag on. Xin Wei’s talk is one of the best. He pulls out a lump of earth with grass on top to demonstrate some point. And again, one cannot be certain who or what this trickster is tricking. I want it to end, but Rob drags things out by asking everyone for “one word,” to summarise what they have gained from the symposium or what they think is necessary to do. (He uses OS 9, and simply projected Microsoft Word on the overhead and wrote out the “words” that people said to him. Somehow this all struck me as being crude…) I would have been more engaged if I were less tired, and less “role distant.”

The garlic restaurant, a feast of garlic. The break into the garlic and the non-garlic factions. The Saturday night rowdiness of Riga. Talking with Lina about Lithuania, how there was such dynamism in the beginning, which has ebbed now. Lithuania is trying to reach toward the West and forget its past. This is a pity, she says, since they have something that others do not - she realised she had something others in Western Europe do not when she came there. But they are trying to dispense with their uniqueness, forget their past. She notes how Rob criticised the fact that Riga has security cameras on nearly every corner and all along its streets: it is all very well to criticise but when these big social ruptures have taken place, such things might actually be necessary. She mentioned that outside their hotel some young hooligans were smashing things and banging on railings in the street, and that in the past Lina would have felt it alright to go out and tell them to stop, and they would have. But now she would not do so out of fear for her safety.

I am dropping with weariness. I must say goodnight.

The Space and Perception symposium seemed to be over before it started. I saw the rest of my time in Riga as a solitary and personal quest. So I made my way to the train station with the intention of going to Jurmala, to walk along the seaside in meditation. I wandered around the station, in and out of underpasses, and on and off of platforms for what seemed ages. How could such a small central station be so hideously baffling? The signs did not correspond to the things. Times listed on electronic timetables were inconsistent between boards. Getting completely lost and flummoxed I decided to brave the Latvian transport system a bit later, after I’d had something to eat and a rest. When I got to the Makslas Dienas building, Rob the convenor of the symposium was sitting on the steps. He happened to be waiting for some other symposium participants to go to Jurmala for the day. I thought I would not join them. I was in a bad state. Yet before I could escape the others turned up, Laura, Miryam, Yon and Karmen, and Geska.

The comic confusion at the train station. Rob nominates me as their “tourist guide.” The serendipitous finding of a restaurant on the beach. The waiter who hardly registered our orders. The heat, the bright sun, the lavish and cheap lunch. The waiter disappears, reappears about half an hour later and barely seems to notice that we are ordering. Speaking with Laura about Russia, about academic position versus freelance, about the slowness of change in the academic context, but that change does happen (slowly though). Geska, her name, Sweden’s tradition of having name days, how Geska is not a traditional Swedish name, how she also has a middle name and therefore has three name days a year (not including her birthday?). Long talk with Rob regarding the state of society, resistance, and lack of resistance. I feel that I can argue up to a point with him, it is impossible to argue further. But my impression of him changed for the better on this Sunday’s outing - though even in the symposium I felt he had some good points to make, except for the end bit with the “one word” exercise in futility (though today I receive the email with a link to the blog that’s been started around this. It may after all prove to be a good idea…) He is a good fellow, and very committed.

We wander around Jurmala. Geska describes to me her father’s farmstead, in a beautiful southern part of Sweden. Her father hunts, grows fruit, works the land. But he is getting old, life cannot last. Geska and her sister will end up inheriting the property, and will do some work to maintain it. It will be their country retreat. She tells me much more about this place, though in my enthusiasm I didn’t listen properly. A wonderful character, warm, quirky, open. On the train back to Riga, the late afternoon sun in my eyes, the green of birch trees and pines outside, the metallic, almost electronic sounds of the train, I sit opposite her and we discuss Swedish mythological characters: I’ve forgotten the name of the mythical woman whose appearance from the front is that of a beautiful maiden, but from behind she is a black empty abyss.

Yon and Karmen explained their latest project proposal to me, to do with predictive sonification. I didn’t grasp many of the details.

Another restaurant. It is located under Hotel Victoria, where many of the space and perceptioners are accommodated. On our way we run into Zeenath, who happens to be looking for a place to have dinner as well. The restaurant is in a mysterious basement that is like a labyrinth. More interesting discussions about mixed reality; Alejo describes the situation in Columbia, the workers on cocoa farms have now become cocaine addicts, which seems strange to him. Karmen describes drug use in Croatia during the war. She describes someone’s life that was wrecked by cocaine. Much of the conversation in this restaurant I only listened to. If only I could have kept notes closer to the time on all this. We finally disband, everyone complimenting the niceness of the day.

The state of time segues into another quality.

I spend my birthday on a tour of Riga with Zeenath and her marvellous friend, Veronika, “Nika.” She wears spectacles and has this way of going “grrr” in her throat, is quiet, gentle, strong, abstracted. First we go to a modern student art exhibition, then wander up to Riga’s old cinema, through the Lido eating place which I have frequented almost every day since, on to the Orthodox cathedral, to Nika’s place of study, an old church-like building now used as an academy for arts. Nika mentions many of her impressions and experiences of these places; she often returns to noting the impact of the Soviet regime in many things, and its end. We then catch a tram to the outlying suburbs in the late afternoon, the long bronze sunlight breaking through the leafy greenness of the dilapidated streets and wooden houses. A quiet, in many places derelict, but peaceful place. Onwards to the “highest point” of Riga; to more streets and more trams, greater dilapidation. This is a very idiosyncratic tour. Nika says she thinks it’s important to see these old and decaying parts of Riga as a form of historical remembering. We come to a zone, an abandoned warehouse-like place where ragamuffins scrimmage among the rubbish and debris. Nika explains how young people come here because for them it is a place where they can be free and uncontrolled. She elaborates on many of these details at length in a way that might have been exhausting if it weren’t so touching. We traipse along the streets to view the woman’s prison - at a distance only. Then back on the trams to a kind of amusement park where we eat rather late in a Latvian-esque restaurant of three levels and enormous logs.

Bus ride to Parnu; the dullness of this country town; wait for four hours until bus to Hostel Soomaa; I am “homesick” for Latvia, dislike the Estonian language. The picturesque countryside. Dropped disorientated in the weird village of Soomaa where I go to the hostel and find no rooms are available and the receptionist does not really speak English, the place nearly impossible to find since it is just another anonymous building in this grouping of dwellings made up of drab Soviet-style apartment blocks. I talk to the man who runs this hostel on the phone, which is essentially a canoeing ranch. He will pick me up in half an hour from the shop, the one general store in this village. I try to surmount the language barrier and get some supplies since there is nothing at the place where I will be driven to, six kilometers away from the village. Finally he arrives and takes me to Sarisoo, his and his family’s household and canoeing base camp. I will be staying in a little outhouse. An Italian couple have been located on the bottom floor, they are as disorientated as I am at being brought out here. They don’t speak English too well. […]

Only three days here and I can no longer bear to look into people’s sullen faces, their suspicious sidelong glances. This city, this country has brought me to my knees from the moment I arrived. How I am going to make it through the next week and a half I do not know, the angels alone can save me. This place is hell. Even if I knew the language better, even if I had more contacts or I were not travelling alone, I think the immensity of the groaning, leaden streets, the conjunction of a blatant consumerist facade behind which oozes the utmost degradation and decay, would drive me to desperation. How do people manage here? There are exceptions, of course. And perhaps this is the key to unlocking what shines within the darkness in this terrible realm - the exceptional. Anything could seem possible in these streets, in these side alleys, and in these bright, decaying, collapsing, luminous buildings and cathedrals.

What am I doing here? The only reason is: for my own education. This city is both banal and quite unpleasant. It is so unforgiving to strangers. I am a stranger in a strange city. Usually the staff in restaurants and cafes serve you with stony sullenness and passive disdain, or else they mock and smirk at your attempts at communication in their language, and laugh openly to your face. Either way they are extremely inhospitable; they have no sense of politeness or friendliness. This may very well be different if you have contacts, if you know these people from the “inside.” Only some of the older people I have met have a sense of courtesy. The person I talked to in Riga, who has a wife in Russia, described them as having no “service mentality.”

I stifled tears in the cemetery before the grave of Dostoyevsky. What is this place now? Who am I to say. I do not, cannot, and no longer want to know. I am utterly alien here. And yet the worst is that I feel my own face reflect the sullen faces around me, my own eyes echo the weariness, resignation, and evasive futility of all those whose eyes I look into. In this I am one with these people, yet with the exception that I cannot communicate. This is a headless world. It is as though there is no sense of direction. They seem indeed so very backward here, as everyone says, inward looking, without any aspiration to reach for something more. Why do they go on existing? Yet there is of course a kind of ghetto energy here. But it has no focus, it goes nowhere, It even seems there is no desire to reach anywhere. What will become of this place? While its deranged government courts multinationals and closes itself off from everything else.

Going up into the cathedral open all night for the White Nights. The brightly illuminated streets of the city centre give way to the deepest gloom and darkness of the outlaying suburbs. It is terrifyingly eery and disconcerting.

Still Bois is welding the components for Project Lyta and it is nearly 10 pm.

First part of the day Pix worked on testing the software for driving the “muscles.” He gives me a very convenient account of the convoluted relationship between the Wolfsburg commissioners for the project, FoAM, and Merlin, the company responsible for providing some of the parts relating to the muscles. This project would seem to be a very straightforward installation, even more straightforward in the form in which it seems that it will be realised than in the initial idea and the concept described on the FoAM website. Yet the degree of complexity and contestation resulting from the interaction of the various players, personalities, and technicalities is phenomenal and bewildering to an observer. Todor, Bois, and Pix spent much of the afternoon arguing about a very small technical detail relating to the muscles. I cannot quite follow the specifics.

It is twilight now in the studio. No one turns on any main lighting. (Just now Nik has turned on some lights.) There is a quite remarkable degree of communal living here. Every day or evening a different person cooks a meal. Another person washes up (which I did this evening). In the wide main space of the studio there is the lounging area, where I now sit and Pix just wandered over to lie down while welding, hammering, and so forth continues on the balcony area just outside. This part of the project, the welding and assembling of the basic structure, is going apace. Todor, who seems to randomly appear, discuss and plan for a few hours, then disappear with other business at hand, left while we were eating dinner which Maja prepared. So, all activities are fused into a continuum, just like the space here is mostly just an open studio, with a few rooms partitioned off here and there. The work, of course, is the central focus.

0:17:59

Somehow at this hour I have reached a state of tranquil detachment after helping stack these metal drawers that Bois has been welding until now. This project [Lyta] was first mentioned in August 2000, according to Maja. It has been a sequence of delays and mishaps. Nik and Maja show no sign of stopping their computer work. I won’t be getting to bed either until they finish.

For this afternoon I have silence and solitude in N and M’s apartment while they are away, and Pix is in the FoAM studio. The afternoon light streams into the big, white and rather untidy apartment space. The ferrets are as silent as the dead. Through the wide windows, on a balcony that faces this apartment, which can be seen over the high painted brick wall, Arab children sometimes come to sit and seem to watch me at times. Their calls and cries ceaselessly echo from the street and surrounding dwellings. This seems to reach a peak around 7 pm. I am frightened of going into the city centre; I have been avoiding the streets. I have no feel for this city, I wonder if I ever will. And now, at last, it is finally cooling down.

Lull in activity over the last few days. The “hours of work” in the studio are totally random. Institutionalised new media labs vs. independent media labs: Nik’s comments on this. I must think much more about the possible modalities of my research, become more flexible about the use of a variety of approaches. Firsthand participant observation only one possible approach, perhaps in this context not necessarily the major one. Yet simply “hanging out” is indeed indispensable.

15:00

A phone call from Merlin, the small company supplying the muscles and boards for Lyta. Maja broke the news. The earliest all of these parts will be ready is now the first week of August. I forget the name of the person who broke his arm, delaying the engineering of the parts. Everyone is saying they can’t believe how much like FoAM Merlin is. They handle this great setback, the latest one of many yet more severe at this critical point in the production process, with a certain cool and humorous despair. Pix now has nothing to do for two weeks while we wait. Yet within a week Merlin may be able to deliver two boards and eight muscles, which Pix thinks may be enough to be useful. Subsequently, Maja mentions further bad news regarding finances.

What follows is an attempt at an entirely approximate reconstitution of a conversation with Pix when I returned to N and M’s apartment to make some lunch (since I can never work out when the group mind will manifest lunchtime, and since they all seemed to have eaten something already).

He mentions a collaboration with Julian Oliver from New Zealand. Julian had the idea that it would be collaborative in the sense of “blurring the boundaries” between design and technical programming. But it turned out that Pix did almost all of the work backstage, on the programming, and then right after the performance (which occurred in Croatia) he had to return the machine which they had been using for the performance. So Pix missed out on the attention Julian received right after the performance when people were congratulating him.

He says he is not interested in blurring the distinctions between the design and the technical implementation, since what he enjoys is implementing other people’s ideas and making them concrete. He has ideas of his own but he lacks motivation to implement them. So he hates the hype about blurring the boundaries in the production process, which Julian wanted to do at least in rhetoric if not in practice, and simply wants to focus on what he enjoys.

He knows it sounds terrible, but he wants to discreetly ask Maja about whether he will be getting more funds for this project, and if so he will suddenly feel much more motivated.

He reiterates that project Lyta has proceeded with very little planning, citing the lack of diagrams or anything tangible to give to the other company, Merlin, to specify what FoAM requires. This is also because those specifications change with nearly every appearance of Todor, who, because he is not present at the studio most of the time, automatically assumes that he has priority when he is in the studio, and who changes the plans with almost every appearance. Pix isn’t surprised about how things have turned out, because he could see that they would need to start work “now” several months back.

Spent the afternoon finishing cutting up the blue aluminium pipes. The saga of impediments to Lyta continues with mishaps regarding even such a relatively simple matter as finding the desired colour of paint for the frame.

The streets are more deserted than usual. Pages from school exercise books, sketches, connect-the-dots drawings, times tables, graph paper, are strewn across the pavement and bluster in the wind and swirl in the movement of the traffic. A massive jet plane coasts slowly upwards in the distance, blurred and glittering in the haze.

An afternoon wind blows through this city, blustering dried leaves. An angle-grinder grinds nearby. Children’s voices again. I wish to know where the forests are, where the meadows and glades. Brussels is not a green city. Just paving stones, bricks, concrete; except looking down from above, where people’s small garden lots and their sprawling roof gardens can be seen.

Discussions about FoAM’s future. I brought up the issue of the implications of FoAM’s funding. The issues are these: when they were putting in the application for the next two years’ funding, they decided on a minimum amount at which they would cease activities as such if their funding was that amount or less. Nik notes that it is impossible to be independent, and he would rather be writing funding applications than working as a graphic designer for clients.

Regarding Sha Xin Wei: Maja might be doing her PhD with him next year in September, yet it is not fixed. She says that when she meets him she feels really inspired, but when he is back in Atlanta and sends her an email with some references, she thinks “what an elitist academic bastard!” Nik explains it as a difference in values: while Xin Wei (in a classically philosophical point of view) understands that to make something happen in theory is sufficient and to make it happen in practice is an unnecessary and superfluous detail, Nik says that for FoAM, the ideal is to realise theories in practice. Maja notes also that Xin Wei does not understand the difficulty of putting ideas into practice. I note that Xin Wei said to me that his interest was essentially in making phenomenological experiments to test (or rather to elaborate) certain of his philosophical contentions.

Nik notes that what they have learned from Lyta is not to get involved in a project in which they have little grasp of the technical details.

Nik and Maja this morning are at a meeting. “What’s the meeting about,” I ask, and Nik replies “About money.” It is with their bank.

Yearly thematic focus must be decided, for funding reasons, two years in advance! My excitement is renewed, a little, on hearing Maja’s list of themes for the next AGM.

At lunch discussion briefly about the meeting with the bank to apply for an overdraft. Maja was not at all prepared to explain in the level of detail the bank person wanted regarding their need for an overdraft. Nik: “We don’t fit into his understanding of the world.” Lina: “But lots of people don’t understand what we do.” Maja: “But we don’t explain ourselves well.” (Cf. Pix’s note that they don’t really explain themselves too well, so even he has trouble understanding what is happening some of the time.) The level of detail in which they were required to explain their project was necessary, Nik says, because FoAM is a non-profit organisation, so there is no established procedure by which the bank can recoup its losses should FoAM go bankrupt, for example, as there is with a conventional (for-profit) company.

17:53:09

The level of complexity involved in Lyta seems quite staggering considering what appears to be the apparent straightforwardness of the end result. Today Todor has returned from England, managing to prevail through the British transport system, inconveniences due to the recent bomb attacks, and a mother who captured and would not release him until he visited her. After all that, he managed to bring back eight muscles. Fifty muscles should have been given to him. There are ongoing issues regarding the design, testing, and final manufacture of the muscles and the boards. Pix expressed total ambivalence regarding the capacity of the company in their coding of the boards, as well as everything else they have done. Conversation between him and Todor developed into a discussion of the difference between assembly language and C. And Pix also noted that the muscle mechanism would be very slow.

The levels of complexity appear to be: the technicalities of the sheer physicality of the installation (pipe cutting, painting, welding, etc.); the vital components of the system where physical engineering segues into software engineering, as with the muscles and the boards; the more purely computational dimension, which however can only be developed in feedback loop with the physical components and their specific setups; but above all, there is behind all this the ceaseless negotiation, interpretation, re-negotiation, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, opacity, blurred communication, and quite likely the incompetence of the contractor for the muscles. However, as Pix said FoAM is not inculpable either, since they have not developed final plans and diagrams of what they require. This in turn may be due to their lack of understanding of the various factors involved in this kind of installation.

19:01:08

When I return the same kind of discussions are still going on between Todor and Pix, but about slightly different technical details. Asked how much money they were given for this project, Lina says €90,000. Todor: “A lot of money for 4 muscles!” Lina: “Yes, I don’t think we realised…”

16:32:12

Everyone is out today. Some Foton people come in and start working in their space in the studio; Nik and Maja are out on unspecified errands; Lina has left; and Pix is tinkering away on the muscles, trying to rig up a test set.

Other relevant notes regarding Lyta:

An inspection is happening this Friday. The person from Wolfsburg wants to see at least four muscles working. (It is somewhat unclear to me at this moment the degree and kind of involvement the Phaeno institute has with the technical production of Lyta, but they must have at least a some awareness of the technicalities. My understanding is that Lyta will still by and large be a “black box” (literally as well as metaphorically) in terms of its end installation, but this box will have drawers that can be accessible to the staff of Phaeno (metaphorically speaking, but perhaps also literally). The budget for the entire project is €90,000, with possibly €10,000 more. FoAM is not equipped for this kind of production. (Bois and Todor joked, as they were drilling, grinding, and smoothing the various metal components, that it was an industrial production line. They joked that they would “have to unionise.”) Given this is the case, Lyta would be impossible if it weren’t for Maja’s ex-partner Bois, who at least has much of the necessary equipment and knows how to use it. But he is working full-time and can only help on the weekends.

I heard mention that the installation would be tested by an “in-house” public for a month, until October. But Maja noted yesterday that FoAM has “exactly a month” to complete the project on their side, including their own user-testing for which they should have at least a month. At the rate they are going, they will possibly have three days for testing. But probably not.

17:08:41

There is of course “huge amounts of [ethnographic] data” (as Zeenath declared on that night wandering the streets of Helsinki now so long ago… “You will have access to a huge database!”), even if it could be said to be a limited subset (i.e. very small group, etc.). The question is my own capacity for making use of it, my capacity to survive and not be driven to desperation by the fear of becoming all-encompassed by FoAM, by Brussels. I feel an appalling need for maps, bus timetables, transport routes to connect me to the wider district, both in Belgium and within Western Europe, and both geographically and socially… It depresses me that every day I walk to and fro between the apartment and the studio, never making the slightest contact with the local Moroccan diaspora, only ever glancing at them from the corner of my eye. I hardly communicate with the Foton people who are absorbed in their own work and their own language. I haven’t even met anyone else in the building in which FoAM studio is situated. The African church across the balcony is an entirely separate world.

Maja: “I feel everyone is stepping on each other’s toes…”

Discussion at lunch. In sum, juggling between limited time, space, and personnel resources. Conversation reached an impasse when it came to a discussion of painting the frames. This is Nik’s job, but he has financial reports to do by the end of the week. Maja also has to complete a financial report, over the weekend probably, given how much work still needs to be done for the sub-inspection this Friday, which is causing tension that seems more grim and resigned than frantic at this stage. And there is the ongoing delay caused by Merlin in delivering the muscles. Today they received one board, no muscles; they were expecting eight muscles. Maja emphasises that from today, they have exactly one month before it all needs to be done. Discussion regarding how to portray what hasn’t been done in a positive light for Todd the inspector. Differing theories and suggestions as to how best to create a good impression given the state of play. Pix notes that whenever Todor comes in Pix’s setup stops working; Maja tells Pix that Todor has designed a new software engine for working with the muscles. Everyone was expecting Pix to start groaning but he said he was very happy and would like to see Todor’s development.

If you ask me it seems like a sinking ship, and I will be interested to see if and how they manage to get out of this fix. No one is openly declaring despair; everyone seems to persist doggedly, even with some good humour.

A rat was brought in today by one of the Foton people, apparently rescued from a rat trap. Nik notes that it is probably not a good idea to have a rat in the studio. Maja and Lina are more favourably disposed towards it. I am entirely nonplussed by the creature. Thus the advent of a rat in FoAM’s studio is a further bone of contention.

18:46:33

An involved discussion between Pix, Todor, and Nik regarding the necessity of having a “switch” to switch the installation on and off. These seem to be quite basic issues - you would think they would have been decided much earlier. Does the installation even need to be switched off? Phaeno requires that all the 250 installations must be able to be turned off and on within one minute.

This discussion blew up into a full-scale meeting which I will try to outline below.

Safety concerns regarding the compressor.

Nik mentions a discussion with me next week to define “what you expect.”

Is this really true? That “stories about the memories and the homeland are never very far away here. It is dominated by a sort of collective longing for Morocco and the desire to return there.” I wonder if this is what I have felt when passing every day through this neighbourhood. Probably it is merely my own melancholy. Or perhaps my own sense of displacement is amplified by the displacement of these people.

18:07:35

N.B. Discovered also in this discussion that Lyta must be operative for at least two years, rather than the two months I had presupposed.

The discussion regarding shutting Lyta down [yesterday].

How to turn Lyta off? Should it be turned off? Should the muscles be turned off independently of the computer? What repercussions would this have on the hard drive head of the computer should it be turned off? Do modern hard drives get damaged if turned off without being docked? This is the kind of discussion Todor and Pix were engaged in. Nik became involved but averred that he “didn’t have the headspace” to discuss such convoluted questions while he was doing the finances. He kept saying to Todor that he should sit down with the rest in a group and define the issues involved, and set up a dependency chart. He mentioned this dependency chart a number of times. Todor appeared to be nonplussed, and kept bringing up the issues. Pix tried to say what Nik was saying in different words. Finally Pix got up and made to walk out of the computer room, exclaiming “I’m not fed up with the conversation, I just want to move it out to the other room with everyone else!”

Todor was construed, it seemed, as the one being recalcitrant and unable to negotiate. Yet it would also be accurate to say that, if they wanted dependency charts in the first place, the whole group should have sat down and drawn up dependency charts, and much earlier in the game to boot. But everyone was too busy: Nik with the finances, Maja with some detail of the metal frames, and complained that they had no time to sit down. So Todor was not really the one solely to blame for seeming to want to avoid sitting down and discussing the project in the form of an overview of some kind. Recalcitrantly, Maja unrolled a big sheet of paper on the kitchen table, got out some textas, and started to note down in big capital letters the issues Todor raised, about five in number and mostly interrelated. Just this act, begun reluctantly, was enough to diffuse tensions considerably and soon those in this ad hoc discussion group were participating a little more enthusiastically. It allowed everyone involved to see each issue literally “on the table” - at least the issues surrounding this one dimension of safety/control, and to a lesser extent making the installation accessible to the Phaeno staff. (The Phaeno guidelines were elaborated in a thick bound A4 booklet which was lying round on the table. This is the first time I have seen them refer to this booklet.) The concern of the muscles being destroyed became paramount, and ways of shutting the muscle activity “to zero” were proposed by Pix and Todor which were all rather costly and complex. For, if the muscles were active and the air was cut off for some reason, the components would be destroyed and this would constitute a design flaw that FoAM would be responsible for (rather than a flaw that would be considered the responsibility of Merlin or Phaeno). I didn’t catch how it came about, but Maja made a phone call to Bois and he apparently suggested the use of a pressure valve that would automatically cut off the power when it detected the air pressure had been interrupted. This solution was seen to obviate the whole sequence of complex concerns and work-arounds that had already been proposed. Pix then Todor sketched a rough circuit diagram and the hastily called-together session was adjourned and we ate dinner, reviving some good humour in the process, it seemed.

[Before:] Meeting with Professor Pinxten, Gent

If I had professors like this when I started at university I might be far more advanced in an academic career now. As with other aspects of my experience of Gent Uni, Pinxten is congenial, relaxed, and open-minded. While I don’t feel I explained myself very well, he took what bits of information I did offer and suggested further contexts and people that might be helpful. This meeting reversed a sense of being at an almost terminal impasse. Furthermore I now have a context that is separate from the FoAM scene, something important given the “all-absorbing” quality of living, eating, and sleeping with them. This meeting has somewhat offset the desperate myopia that has overcome me while in Brussels. I feel I can and should change my fieldwork/study/research strategies. All of this can be mentioned in my discussion with Nik and Maja regarding my positioning in FoAM in the coming week…

Mentioning that “FoAM” can stand for “foundation of affordable mysticism,” Pinxten noted that his department had a strong focus in religious studies. (He does not have a problem with the notion of “religion” but he notes that many do.) He mentioned a number of doctoral and postdoctoral students who had worked in this area. All of this is fascinating. It is as though my original interests are gravitating towards me in an unexpected way.

This discussion leads to his mentioning the symposium at the end of 2006. (“If you’re not here then you could think about returning for this symposium.”) Keynote speakers Ulf Hannerz, etc. The symposium, very broadly speaking, is concerned with identity, understanding, and making sense of our unprecedented and massively urbanised life which is only going to become more pronounced in future. A triangle of contributors: academics, artists, and representatives of religious groups. He talks of this with a hint that it would be interesting to get a group like FoAM involved. In this connection he notes how academics stand at a remove while artists are engaged in the immediate. He says that he is looking for “middlemen” to participate in this symposium, though I don’t quite know what he is referring to.

Therefore the themes suggested are urban studies/anthropology, identity, religion/mysticism.

Robert Pirsig, who wrote a text that was presented only at Brussels. Pirsig wrote Lila in Gent, in a boat on one of the canals (!).

N.B. The Islamic scholar he mentioned who will be a keynote speaker at the symposium.

The study group at his office every month - I suppose, on glancing at the introduction of the Culture and Politics journal issue he gave me, that this would be CICI. He has invited me to this. More wonderful support.

He mentions a number of postdoctoral and PhD students I should meet, and probably inadvertently will, including Els and An. The other names I forget, but Laurent is mentioned.

The comparative success of Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, at least in Europe, as compared to Christianity.

I mentioned my despair of fieldwork, and Pinxten reminds me that “it is quite common in the first two months of fieldwork for anthropologists to be flabbergasted.”

At lunch today a bad discussion yesterday is mentioned, then elaborated into another discussion. Ongoing conflict between Pix and Todor regarding an interface for diagnosis of Lyta. Pix wants nothing more than to be done with the project, which he expresses without reservation, so he is happy for Todor to win the argument regarding a Max interface. But his understanding is that Nik and Maja want him to work on the project.

Everyone says I should have been there yesterday, I’m missing some good “juice.”

Maja says that Todor is “emotionally hurt” by the issue of the Max interface.

A new disaster: the tubes have been found to be irregular and not perfectly circular. The tubes are not meant for this kind of work anyway; they are aluminium, and meant to carry air. The buntings are also slightly irregular, as is the construction of the frames. The net effect is that the tubes slide irregularly, with a considerable jerking motion, when extended and retracted under the pressure of the muscles.

This came to light as Lina and I set off through a summer storm to order pizza and visit the DVD store, getting soaked and enjoying the cool rainy Brussels twilit streets.

At dinner the group first glumly runs through every possible technical aspect which could be causing the problem. Nik sums up by noting that the net effect of many inconsistencies is producing this result. As the wine takes effect, we start to joke and suggest strategies for making it look like this was how the installation was meant to be, that it was in fact a virtue, that “we thought every tube should have its individual character,” and so forth. Then all possible ways of working around this problem are run through. In sum, every strategy is enormously labour-intensive and more or less impossible. Maja suggests “we wait and see” on Sunday for Todd’s verdict. Todd has a vested interest in having this project accepted because, according to Maja, he has “invested a lot of personal effort” in this project. The comments made in jest about passing off the defects as “features” begin to be taken seriously a little…

And now everyone is glum again; Todor is drilling, Maja and Lina testing tubes in various frames. The coping strategies of those facing immanent disaster? They doggedly continue to labour, since really there is no choice. €90,000 is a lot to bust. Will they even have eight muscles working by Sunday’s inspection?

Work is starting slowly, though the deadline is tomorrow. An overcast day outside, raindrops making rings in puddles and shrouding the weighted buildings. They work in the gloomy studio in pools of light from desk lamps set up in an ad hoc way, the same way in which they set about working… Occasionally a rumble of thunder in the overcast skies outside. Wilted sunflowers on the table, still bright yellow.

Maja and others have been deciding what constitutes “good material” on my behalf. Must therefore explain, with due apologies for the (unavoidable) vagueness of “what I’m looking for,” how my focus is quickly becoming very different from what I had suggested in my research proposal, etc.; which itself was to be anticipated from the outset.

16:20:05

The gauche chiming of the ice cream truck doing its rounds pierces through the overcast streets, filling me with a particularly ghastly sense of melancholy.

17:53:44

Let me try to summarise (piecemeal and subjectively, as ever) what has transpired in the studio over the past week or so, and attempt a summary of a few reflections arising therefrom.

Work increased to a fever pitch on the night before the Sunday Todd was due to show up. By 2:30 am a crippled version of the final installation concept was rigged up, four muscles were communicating through the software Pix had spent yet another all-night session rewriting, the muscles were calibrated adequately enough to get an idea of what their behaviour would be like in the finished product. Lina attached a plastic membrane and an ultraviolet light was shoved beneath the pistons, illuminating the installation in a garish light. The studio was darkened and everyone congregated around the installation as though mesmerised.

Sunday went by extremely slowly; Nik and Maja had to continue work on a financial report the specifics of which I would not be able to understand or explicate even if I wanted to; everyone else came in and waited. It was then discovered that Todd had gone to Paris instead, having missed the Brussels station.

23:48:04

At some stage I should try to summarise the daily incidents of the past week, after the visit of Todd, FoAM’s project consultant.

But just today, this afternoon, yet another email from Merlin, which was construed by everyone present as to be dissimulating and downright arrogant. Todor had apparently emailed them not long before regarding a relatively minor matter concerning the responsivity of the boards, suggesting that some small changes be made. Today Maja received an email from Merlin to the effect that to make such changes would mean “some delay” in shipment, and furthermore, that due to the company’s financial standing they would need to forward an invoice to FoAM for €40 for the additional assembly costs. Considerable time was taken debating the finer points of the contract FoAM has with Merlin, and trying to adduce, through a convoluted process of intuition, past experience, guesswork, and inferential logic, how things really stood within that company vis-à-vis FoAM. Renewed bouts of joking - regarding Merlin’s being English (“Damn those Englishmen!”), their drug habits, their Jaguar habits, their excuses and prior dissimulations - circulated afresh. Complicated strategies were thought out regarding how to wrangle what FoAM had asked from them. Pros and cons, how culpable Merlin is and to what extent, and to what extent there are mitigating factors, were all debated, in the all-too-familiar atmosphere of resigned desperation. How the muscles are being manufactured, by whom, where, and when, all of these questions are debated and speculated upon at some length. Presumably if anyone asked Merlin these questions they would not get a response, or otherwise more aversions. Later on at dinner, jokes that sometimes verged on being half-serious were circulated about sabotaging Lyta and reaping the insurance.

The group seems to be making great efforts to interpret how things stand, attempting to see through the opacity which shrouds all of Merlin’s activities, motives, and communications, and trying desperately to make what good they can of the situation.

Maja started seriously to discuss transport to Wolfsburg for themselves and the Lyta installation. Later on Todor reminded her that they have only three weeks to complete everything before they go to Wolfsburg. I am still amazed that they are persisting against such odds. Is it virtue or madness which drives them on? Pix expresses a sense of fulfilment at finally being pushed to a point of having to make use of a set of C libraries in his programming, thus enabling him to clean up his code; and so working on this project is at the same time an excuse for him to knuckle down into some problems he has wanted to tackle for a while, making success or failure in the larger scheme of things less of an issue.

Yon, who first suggested they contract Merlin for the muscles, and then promptly “bailed out,” is coming tomorrow with Karmen to pick up some stuff he left at the studio and in N and M’s apartment.

Interplay of the “official” and the “tacit.”

Pix re the experimental loop encouraged by putting my notes online; he observes that all of FoAM’s partnerships are essentially founded on personal relationships, and thus stumbling upon my online journals could potentially be the equivalent of opening a 14-year-old’s diary!

Further notes re how putting up an online journal affects my position, activities, etc. Elaborate how all this is fodder for theory of a postmodern bent, but I no longer want to play those tedious games and prefer to treat everything as simply as possible.

12:13:01

Some thoughts on project management and communication in relation to Lyta:

It seems, though, that whatever the initial artistic or aesthetic inspiration for the project, it has now moved on to become a case study in loss management - an effort to offset financial loss but also loss of reputation or kudos (since in this context, it seems, it can be affirmed that the various forms of capital - economic, artistic, intellectual - are indeed transferable within the logics of their respective fields). Needless to say this is not a desirable outcome from a point of view of artistic endeavour, but from the point of view of an observer it is simply a further development and evolution of a social drama, neither more nor less interesting than any other eventuality. It is quite remarkable that even those deeply implicated in the project can also adopt such a viewpoint at times and retain a sense of grim humour despite the evident pressure they suffer.

…Communication and translation between different forms of social network; communication and translation between different forms of knowledge; in short, an interplay of distinct and often conflicting modes of discourse (and modes of sub-discourse within broader forms of discourse). What levels or modes of discourse can be observed in the process of Lyta’s production? Is there an even more basic dissonance between world views that could encapsulate a summary of the Lyta case? We could return to the folk wisdom that artists are not managers, and vice versa. Yet periodically art and management find themselves coupled, for various reasons, in what is usually an unhappy and miserable union. However, both are intrinsically concerned with communication. Communication here can be understood fundamentally to encompass rhetoric and metaphor, and therefore could be described as a game of sorts in which the players become embroiled in interpretations and counter-interpretations, misinterpretations and reinterpretations.

15:30:57

I arrive at the studio while a meeting is in progress with Nik, Maja, and Pix. They are discussing the options for designing and setting up the maintenance procedures that the staff of Phaeno are to be given. They have decided against having a screen and a user interface.

Pix avers that he doesn’t know what Todor is doing any more; Todor is apparently becoming preoccupied with the sensors and their sensitivity, while Pix doesn’t see an issue at all. Todor sent another email following the one which precipitated Merlin’s reply which was discussed last night, about the same issue. Pix mentions that this one in turn could become an excuse for Merlin to keep delaying.

Nik mentions the figures €6000 and €8000 for the service Merlin has been contracted to offer over the next two years for the Lyta installation. Nik questions why they should be given this. They debate Merlin’s capacity to administer the installation by plugging their own computers into the ethernet connection and getting to their boards directly, bypassing FoAM’s own software. They debate whether Merlin actually has a laptop to do this. A representative of Merlin apparently came to FoAM’s studio with no more than a paper notebook. A further series of guesses without any firm knowledge of how things stand with Merlin. The terms of the contract don’t seem very well understood. Now and then a detail is revealed, such as just now with Maja’s reminding the others that Merlin is obliged under contract to be responsible for the components that they manufactured and service them. Pix says it is like giving a child a mop and asking it to clean the floor: in other words no one trusts Merlin to fulfil their part of the contract.

2005-08-07

Discussion of the dependency chart being designed for maintenance routines; Part of the involved process of making a manual for the installation. Todor has arrived and is discussing this chart.

Still hypotheses about what Merlin is doing. “We will find out tomorrow [Mon 8 Aug].”

Maja: “At the moment I have approximately €14 left for the Lyta budget.”

Pix discussing poll sends with Todor.

Nik sent a message to Merlin saying that payment will only be made if everything is delivered by 15 August.

Last night, the visit of Yon and Karmen.

Sourcing for glass, plexiglass, key to lock installation, etc. etc.

Endless discussion re technicalities of a frame surrounding the inner metal frame of Lyta.

I still can’t understand why these details have been left to the very last minute.

Many points where some detail will depend on something else which they are awaiting to find out, or which is dependent on what external manufacturers are able to produce and contrive.

Maja was saying at dinner that morale is better now since before everyone was totally reluctant and didn’t want to continue with the project, but now everyone really wants to get it done and installed. Lina says that actually everything is much, much worse. The muscles haven’t arrived, not a single draw of muscles has been put together, and there are numerous other details that are only just now being attended to. At this time as I write (23:40:00) They are still sitting around the kitchen table, discussing. Maja and Lina apparently discussed many of these details earlier in the day with Bois, but Todor arrived long after Bois left. Now Maja and Lina must run through the details again, while Todor brings up many issues, suggestions, and comments about what had been decided upon. The discussion is growing heated. Again, though, there are no “master plans” or diagrams, and the group draw by hand on random sheets of paper on the table.

No one is being intentionally troublesome; Everyone has a valid point to make. No one wants to precipitate or prolong an argument.

As if there weren’t enough technical issues already.

Pix and Nik and I sit in the computer room in almost complete silence, though I can hear Pix’s music blaring from his earphones. The pressure seems mostly to be on Maja. Even though to a large extent there is an overlap of expertise and interests in the project in that every member of the team has something to say about every aspect, M is the one who has to coordinate this and be attentive to every element in great detail. Lina has nothing to do with the software but is concerned with the fabric and such materials, the aesthetic of the physical object. Pix is of course engrossed almost entirely in the software writing, but not solely. Nik’s main role at present is designing and writing the manual for the Phaeno staff. He has been painting the frames, and has also produced a dependency chart. But of all the others his role seems to be the most shifting and because of this it sometimes appears that he has nothing to do with the project.

Though everyone is aware that this project teeters on the edge of disaster, it is worth being attentive to a number of novel ways of doing things that have been evolved by the group.

00:04:14

I am signing out of the studio for tonight, before everyone else and as spineless as ever.

Maja at dinner saying “It always turns out like this… the fourth project is always so difficult…” She made some important points about the cycle of FoAM’s projects but I forget the exact words.

2005-08-08

Pix: writes emails to himself to remind him of what he must do the next day. “Morning Pix” and “Evening Pix.” This is because he tends to talk to people to work out his programming problems. He notes that while other people have a lot of input into each other’s tasks, when it comes to the programming everyone seems to “just leave it up to Pix.” I mention that the software is in a way the “soul” of the project, and he says that this is a bit of a worry since he is just realising that he might not be so sure of how his coding will work when the entire assemblage of muscles is in place. He is considering the alternatives of changing the entire software architecture so that the protocol communicating with the muscles is able to do so on a per-draw basis rather than a per-muscle basis, as it is designed at present. There are two alternatives, one is a more “elegant” one of rewriting the entire program, the other is a hack which involves a cheap and nasty workaround. When he was working in Australia his company had a meeting every morning at 8:30 am. The pros and cons of this. Some people thought the meetings were a waste of time but they were a waste of time because those people made them that way. Pix says everyone is utterly beyond worry and is just working as best they can on what they can.

I have this conversation just while I have been pondering strategies of organisation and management, in this case in artistically-focussed groups. The different possible models of management.

16:00

No word on the muscles; no word from Merlin. The regulator of the pressure pump blew up this morning.

I am surprised how casually everyone here endures me, a lurking observer who apparently does absolutely nothing but drift here and there, hardly knowing what is happening and hardly knowing why, occasionally making disjointed comments, observations, or sporadic communication with the denizens of the studio. But they can see the humour of the situation much better than I can, and make ceaseless jokes about posing as an ethnographer, observing and taking notes on all that transpires. In fact I don’t take notes on them - at least not directly.

Nik is still at the apartment, so as to concentrate on removing the “dust” from his inbox. Some of the Foton people have turned up, presumably they’ve returned from the Summer vacation, and sit in their part of the studio, making telephone calls and working on their computers.

Nik and I talk about the implications of not getting the muscles on time. Either they come and the project is completed, or they don’t and the project is cancelled. I maladroitly mention that it would be better for everyone’s health for the project to be cancelled. “Not really,” Nik replied. “Not after everyone has put so much time and work into it.”

15:20:14

I have thought more than once that the best way to understand FoAM’s essence would be to make a detailed and meticulous analysis of the structure of their server’s file system. Would this not divulge vastly greater masses of ethnographic data than any superficial scrutiny of the merely human entities involved? And as to actually attempting to communicate with such human afterthoughts - would this not become entirely superfluous?

What are the techniques and strategies for doing fieldwork in a situation where so much of the action takes place in an informational realm, inside the (compressed, conflated) space of networks and hard drives? Of observing and describing anthropologically the point at which this realm intersects what can be called the “human” scale of flesh, blood, steel, eating? Much theory has been expounded on all this; when I have access to a library - when I can register at Gent University and borrow books, hopefully in English - I will be able to substantiate some of these reflections (this goes for all my attempts at holding forth about things throughout these fieldnotes). For now I make do with the local Nik and Maja library. We spend much of the day in silence in front of our computers reading, writing, programming. Not a word passes between us. It is as though we are a peculiar species that only starts to speak and act in a world somewhat detached from our computers as evening approaches.

20:36:03

Must remember that these notes are often no more than mnemonic devices. But the sense of pressure for them to be something “in themselves” not only for my own sake, but now for the sake of putting them online. But what goes online is a selective version of what is in my (offline) notes, and what is in these notes is a selective version of what is in my head.

00:10:09

Maja: “We are now in damage control.” Maja wanted to email Merlin but Pix was saying no, don’t email, it will just be another excuse to delay, so she called them a little before 17:00 and they said they were having big problems with the boards, which would mean an indefinite delay, and an 80 per cent failure rate with the muscles. They said they would immediately send the 40 muscles they had promised last week. So everyone was sitting around at dinner, beyond despair, calmly discussing what they could do with 100 muscles, which they still seem to think it will be possible to get. Todor wasn’t there. We had a nice dinner and they consumed two litres of red wine. [At this stage I was presumably still being a teetotaller.]

Merlin did not mention Nik’s email in which he wrote that if FoAM did not have everything they asked for by the 15th, they would not pay Merlin. Pix would like to know how Nik worded this email. The subtlety with which things are worded has become a significant part of FoAM’s communication with Merlin, he says.

Pix was “so ready to drop the whole project two weeks ago.” “I don’t care how much money’s involved, just let me get away from here!” We are both amazed why no one has yet openly thrown their hands up. Pix thinks Todor comes very close to it, saying that Todor has often exclaimed how he cannot work in these conditions, how terrible the workspace is, how inadequate the equipment and tools are, and so forth. On the subject of the outer frame, Pix says it was always worrying him and thus he wanted to stay away from that part of the project, to draw the line - to stay away from the parts that will fail. Now he says that to be brutally honest he’s only there as someone helping out a friend in trouble who’s crying, “help, help, get me out of this!”

What are the alternatives to doggedly persisting in the face of what seem to be obviously insurmountable odds? Is this persistence in itself part of the project, a statement? Is it better this way, or should they declare the project cancelled and spend their time and energy working out strategies to deal with the repercussions? Should they have done this a long time before, and perhaps thus have already been able to move on to something else?

My understanding is limited since I have inadequate knowledge of all that went on prior to these latest developments.

12:00:10

This morning logistics of transporting the Lyta installation to Wolfsburg are discussed. “It’s scary,” says Maja. They have discussed this before, I had the impression something had been decided upon already. No muscles have yet arrived.

Maja receives an email about invoices for their previous TRG project.

Lina has just called and sourced some glue which will cost €130, the company takes only cash, with no guarantees whether it works. Debate regarding the glue’s specifications; Maja looks it up on the net. Maja has found three possible lock places to get locks, which she wants to investigate today.

Nik continues to spraypaint frames and draws.

18:03:03

Todor is here. Lina, Maja and him are still debating the outer case, the way the doors open - horizontally or vertically, and so forth.

23:10:36

Maja: “OK, let’s have a meeting about what we’re going to do.” Everyone is present, including Bois and Todor.

“Do we go on or do we cancel the project?”

There was apparently the option that an installation with just 50 muscles in each box would be accepted by Phaeno. This was written into a contract in January. The contract, however, is entirely vague.

It is made clear that Phaeno has contracted FoAM, who have subcontracted Merlin. This will have legal implications.

No one says yes or no to going ahead. Everyone merely voices at length the many problems, essentially saying it is impossible, foolish, or both to persist, but not in those words.

The outer frame will cost about €3000. The conundrum is: were they to go to court, it is in their interests to appear to have completed their side of the contract to Phaeno, while making it clear that Merlin have not completed theirs. Lawyers are expensive and for one even to look at the contract between FoAM and Merlin to see how well FoAM is protected would cost not much less than €300. But if they don’t make the frame it will appear that they have failed, weakening their case against Merlin.

Todor suggests to go on with the things that don’t cost anything, but don’t continue with such expensive things as the outer frame. Then he notes a part of his work - I can’t recall, it is the soldering of some wires or something - that itself will cost a lot.

Pix volunteers a lawyer friend from Germany who might be able to help. At dinner afterwards, a FoAM friend, Margo, who is the partner of one of Foton’s members, also volunteers a lawyer friend she knows in Brussels, who does commercial law. This case falls under commercial law, apparently, not corporate law. Nik mentions the issue of having the contract written up in Wolfsburg: the German version of the contract is the legally binding one, not the English translation. Todor asks why they didn’t have the contract drawn up in Belgium, but Nik points out that this would have made more problems since they would have had to make a separate contract with Merlin in England.

Pix and Todor break into a separate discussion, again about the calibration of the muscles and the implications of muscle stretching and degradation. This was in relation to the mention that the earlier model of the muscles that Merlin sent FoAM had been tested extensively, but subsequently without warning they changed to a different model which has not been tested at all. The muscles stretch dramatically even in the span of a week.

Much is made of the fact that in view of all past experience, Merlin cannot be relied upon to communicate or deliver on time. Nik points out that, should the project go ahead with muscles of some sort, the relationship with Merlin would have to last another two years. This leads to the point that the moment lawyers are called in, FoAM can say goodbye to any further relationship with Merlin, and thus of course any further muscles.

Just after the meeting an email from Merlin saying that the 40 muscles were being sent and the boards would be sent the day after.

2005-08-10

Lina arrives about 11 am. “Have the muscles arrived?” No, they haven’t. In the computer room, piles of folders and documents have been pulled out. Nik and Pix, however, continue to sit at their computers and exchange geeky banalities about graphical user interfaces, articles about the habits of Continental versus English alcohol consumption, wildcard searches on Google, and so forth. Maja and Lina sound like they are engaged in a rather more serious conversation at the kitchen table.

17:32:57

Maja has faxed the contract (must clarify if this contract is an overall contract, made in Germany, or if there are specific contracts between each of the players and binds them). She is not sending it either to the contact that Margo suggested, or to the contact Pix emailed last night, but a separate party. Pix still hasn’t heard back from his contact.

I am thoroughly unprepared for the kind of anthropology that is suggested by unfolding events, but this is what I meant when I was asked what it is I am looking for, and I said I couldn’t exactly say. It is the luck of the draw, like fishing, and you must cast your net and take what you get. It indeed presents some difficult methodological issues: how to get at the most interesting information, which is also exactly the kind of information that is the most sensitive and what the group will be most reluctant to discuss with me.

This afternoon at 14:30 a glue consultant came. We spent hours going through the various options for gluing the aluminium plates to the plastic plugs for the tubes. He has a vast knowledge of all aspects of gluing. (A “real human being,” Lina said at dinner.)

The muscles also arrived, all 40. Pix has done some tests and announced that they are shorter; there is a discrepancy of almost 1 cm in the cases he has been looking at. This has implications for another component that joins the muscles to the tubes.

Outside, a bright, clear day with a fresh breeze. I look through the windows at the newly-built square below the studio and envy the children playing ball games, running round, enjoying the beautiful weather.

I come back into the studio as a phone call to Merlin is in progress. Todor is speaking to Steve, and has the loudspeaker on. Everyone sits or stands nearby, listening to the hesitant and vacillating British voice on the other end of the line. Actually communicating with the company live, by telephone, seems to be quite a novelty and it is the first time I have known it to happen. Previously communication has always been through email. Todor has a sequence of questions regarding the status of production of both the muscles and the boards. Throughout the conversation, Steve vacillates, contradicts himself, and sounds extremely squeamish. It is still difficult to get a clear sense of what the actual situation is with them, except that they are having numerous delays and what they have produced is often faulty. A 50 per cent failure rate was reported for the muscles. They were having trouble with the boards, were uncertain whether to try to fix the ones they had already made, or to start over from scratch. But Todor, at least on the phone, seemed to think that the situation with the boards was better than that with the muscles. After a long conversation with Steve, Todor asked to speak with Simon, whom Steve thought would know a bit more about a certain aspect that Todor was enquiring about. Simon didn’t have much more to say but that they were indeed having trouble meeting the deadline, after Todor stressed that FoAM needed to install the project in two weeks.

Soon afterwards, Maja telephones Todd. A long, quiet conversation while I help Pix roughly measure the new muscles with his desultory setup. She reports that Todd thought a partial installation would not be a good idea. They can postpone the installation date to 19 September, complete the install by 1 October at the latest. But everyone will be away during September. Maja has booked tickets to see her parents. Pix will be back in Berlin, going to parties. Lina can’t be there at the beginning of September. Todor also won’t be available during September. Everyone is more glum than ever. Various possibilities are discussed, such as going to Wolfsburg at the very end of August and trying to install the main things in the few days before Nik and Maja are due to fly to Croatia, while they still have most of the other team with them, and then return in the second half of September to do the rest. Things are discussed in detail to the point of considering the possibilities of driving to Wolfsburg overnight or setting off in the morning and arriving in the afternoon.

Though understandably dispirited, by and large the team handles things with grim humour, as I have continually noted. But tension broke out between Maja and Lina over Nik and Maja’s decision to go to the wedding of some friends [Rachel and Hias] in the coming week. Lina was against this when it was first mentioned some weeks ago, citing how crucial the time was and that Maja would need to be in the studio. This evening she referred to N and M’s departure as a holiday. Maja said she couldn’t believe that Lina could say that, since Maja would be gone for one and a half days and would always be reachable by phone, and that Lina spends a lot of time in the studio just watching movies. Lina ended up apologising for the way she worded her criticism of Maja’s decision.

Maja announces, “We must do a ceremony!”

Back in the apartment, playing with the ferrets and collapsed round the table, Nik and Maja are discussing the incident. Nik returns to his observation regarding the particular mixture of “guilt and stoicism” that characterises what he has called the “Osteuropa” complex and goes on to elaborate in considerable detail the implications of this complex, and how it compares to other forms of “damage control” in other groups and cultures. One certainly has to wonder what is keeping this project going, if it is indeed “guilt and stoicism” that are at its basis. Maja says that in comparison to other creative projects, in this project there is now only about “1 per cent” creativity. She keeps giving to it but gets nothing in return. This makes her sick. She doesn’t want to continue this way of working.

10:36

Yesterday afternoon, another phone call with Merlin. The muscles will be ready on 23 August at the earliest, but the speaker said that “hopefully by the end of the month…” Maja suggests that FoAM do some of the work at least with the boards, but this would end up being more time-consuming since they would have to be sent back to Merlin to be tested. Maja, Lina, Nik and Pix sit around debating the possibilities of installing in the second half of September; doing most of the work in the first half of September and, for N and M, cancelling their flight to Croatia. Pix chooses this moment to declare, “I don’t know how well I can deal with stress…”

Todor arrives, and hearing this news says “So it is basically impossible to install.” He is informed of the preceding discussion of the plans to install in September.

Pix’s lawyer contact in Germany responded with a long email going over the terms and conditions of the two contracts FoAM is bound by: the contract with Phaeno, and the contract with Merlin. Pix’s friend’s “random thoughts” (her words) on the two contracts seem to indicate that FoAM’s legal standing is not as precarious as I (and perhaps they) had imagined. It seems that Phaeno can only sue them if they demonstrated wilful negligence in completing the project. However, they cannot claim Merlin’s negligence or inefficiency as an excuse because FoAM must take all responsibility for their subcontractors. Pix says that it is thus best for the group to continue like they are since just to stop the project could be construed as negligence, and Maja concurs and says that no one wants to just stop making Lyta.

15:10:19

Maja just came in and announced that Simon says Merlin has 100 more muscles that can be sent tomorrow in two shipments or on Monday in one lump shipment.

It is still unconfirmed whether Lyta can be installed in September; Pix was overly optimistic in supposing that this was confirmed. Nik also mentions that it depends on whether the available personnel will be adequate for a September install.

Nik and Maja are just off to the meeting with another group of lawyers.

18:24:44

N and M have returned from their meetings with representatives of the legal profession. Margo’s friend was very keen, according to Maja, to know how much Merlin owned - houses, cars, properties - for the sake of suing them. Her preliminary verdict was moderate, and she will look at the contract over the weekend. She charges €100 an hour with an initial fee of €350. Maja thought she was very keen to go to court.

They also consulted another legal organisation.

Todd has not yet been contacted; Todor wanted to know whether it was definite one way or the other if they were not going to install by the end of August.

Todor is beginning to solder cables to the boards.

Earlier today, thunder and rain. My spirits were lower than ever. The sun has come out now.

Phone call from Todd. He has “personal disappointments” about a delayed installation but he says nevertheless that it is possible to install any time in the second half of September. Since he has “a personal attachment” to the project, he would like to be there. Todor says that it would be good for him to be present at the time of installation because he would “smooth things between FoAM and the Wolfsburg officials.” Desultory discussion regarding who can and cannot come to Wolfsburg at that time.

So I guess there will be another month at least of continual tension about Merlin delivering the muscles. No one seems particularly surprised, happy, or unhappy about Todd’s verdict. Everyone continues at the same rather lackadaisical pace as before.

Dream of being in Minsk, which was beautiful, green, gentle. I have to catch a flight soon, but I think I have time to explore a little beforehand. Yet presently I realise that I must catch the flight right away, and soon I will be too late. I worry about visa problems should I miss this flight, but this does not change my buoyant mood. I walk past a rather opulent clothes shop, it looks like it sells fur coats and hats, and for some reason this gives me a particular sense of happiness - to think of winter and the fact that there are these warm clothes that people here can wear when it gets cold.

16:24:44

Yesterday, leaving the studio early in the overcast, brooding weather, feeling utterly desperate and dreading the thought of ever setting foot in the studio again. But today the weather is cool, and though still and overcast, I feel light and carefree and have no concern for what may or may not come. I can ignore my fears and reservations.

15:43:14

Monday, a public holiday in Belgium (or is it only in dreary phantasmagoric Brussels?), and the computer room (which Nik has pointed out is actually the “board room,” because it has blackboards) has been occupied by the Foton people for their board meeting. Everyone is silent, Nik and Maja working at their computers, Lina at times at her computer, at times cutting some foam caps for the installation. In short, another sleepy, strangely pensive and sombre afternoon in the FoAM studio.

Lina and Maja discussing sourcing materials for covering Lyta.

18:08:53

Similarities and differences between FoAM and Insect.

Implications of having the Libarynth and such archives of material produced by FoAM for study. In a way this extends the actual “fieldwork” component both before and after it takes place.

Rereading the comments to my research proposals. How deluded, conceited, and clouded I was! And what am I to do in the face of such comments by Rod Lucas, which even (especially) now I don’t know how to answer? “No great engagement with people or social practice.” Just sitting here at a computer. But on the contrary, this is a practice (if not a “social” one) that is significant if only for its pervasiveness.

Pix on the way from the apartment to the studio: he designs software in his sleep, was sleeping all day and waiting for it to happen, but it “wasn’t happening.” He is worried because he has not been “close to the code” for a week now. I had assumed he’d been programming all along. But he’s actually been working on calibrating the muscles (presumably with the present state of the software). Pix asks Maja about this, saying that he is not sure what is required of him, whether he is expected to be calibrating muscles, or whether programming.

19:37:52

Todor arrives. Concerns with the compressor that Maja thought would “begin with a whole shelf,” not with just a draw or two. No one seems to have been doing much beforehand, but Maja seems to have been engaged in the endless administration. Nik gives the appearance of tuning into his computer world.

Todor ask’s Maja, “Have you called Merlin to see if they’ve sent the muscles?” “No, what can I do, I’m not a policeman, or their mother…”

Three zombie movies will be shown in the studio tonight at 8. “But I don’t think we can do much anyway without the muscles,” says Todor.

Lina draws and paints in watercolour at her desk in a pool of light, listening to music on her computer, oblivious to the rest of the studio. Her fantasmic figures and faces.

Todor mentions the possibility of installing by the end of August after all. He notes that the “rhythm of the group” is slowing down. Ongoing discussions between Pix, Todor and Maja about the design of the outer frame, the calibration board, the placement of various components underneath the draws of muscles.

(SMA - Shape Memory Alloy)

Maja has announced that FoAM has received another payment from Phaeno, without incident. She sent the invoice not knowing how it would go, and just got the payment.

Dinner, long discussion about food, meat, eating. When I left they were setting up to watch a zombie movie. Lina is working because she just got a commission from her sister (who apparently is living in Israel) which must be completed by tomorrow.

There is some kind of flow, even if disjointed, that I can submit to. It is even a pleasurable pain to do so, since I have come to feel a melancholy joy in submitting to what fate brings… whether it is here, not knowing ever exactly what I am doing, or elsewhere…

But I cannot dwell on the nostalgic longing for another life… it is a terminal condition.

There are still children playing below in the new courtyard. Across the courtyard, an arched window shrouded by some shabby gauze, with a towel hanging out; sometimes the silhouette of a figure comes to the window and opens it further, or pulls the gauze closer across it.…

It is enough to hold people in one’s memory, at a remove.

13:54:45

Engulfing desire to renounce all this, to lead a monastic life. But it has always been this way. I am a hideously divided, twisted soul. It is my burden alone. No one can offer consolation, no one can “save” me. I must endure this pain and solitude until such time that life itself offers some kind of abatement and relief.

It is too late now to change the external course of my life. I have made too many decisions which have been, if not wrong, then founded on superficial transient whims. I can, of course, alter my inner disposition and orientation.

This strange task I have taken upon myself. It is perhaps in the end an educative experience through the working of contraries: it could lead to a clearer sense of being through opposition.

21:32:40

The muscles haven’t arrived.

Gluing caps.

Resignation, “stoicism,” uneventfulness.

The power supply shorted out last night in a plume of smoke, according to Pix (no one else was there), and this evening Todor spent hours with the others trying to determine the cause. An early evening since there was little else to do.

Maja mentions the collapse of Starlab and how the present circumstances are mild compared with those times. Nik and Lina didn’t have residence permits; no one had an apartment; their finances were below zero. All they had was their enthusiasm and belief in the project they were doing and felt that they had to get it done. Maja contrasts the enthusiasm they had then with the lukewarm momentum at present.

Foton meeting with FoAM, regarding the coordination of activities between FoAM and Foton.

FoAM’s relationship with Foton; time management; space management (i.e. venues, sites, types of activity in them - cf. the locations for the prospective TRG-derived performances this coming October and February next year - the importance of these happenings in “Flanders”; what it means to be in Flanders, what it means to be Flemish, the impact of this on their posture as art organisations); funding management; presentation and representation of their cases to the Flemish Ministry of Culture - the process of planning and writing grant applications; presentation and representation of their cases to the “public” through the more mainstream media.

After a late lunch, sitting round the lunch table, Peter and Jo remain while another Foton member returns to his computer at the other end of the studio. At the table are Nik, Pix, Jo, me, Maja, Lina, and Peter. Peter outlines Foton’s schedule for the coming months and for next year, and their plans for applying for funding. (Next year for the first time they must make three grant applications, Peter says, because it is a transitional year for the department of the Flemish Ministry of Culture that is funding them.) Peter and Jo mention the onus to “make connections” between organisations; Maja jokes that these connections should not be with FoAM because they must be “Flemish” organisations. The possibility of working with FoAM impacts on how they will write their proposal; discussion of presenting it as a Foton production in collaboration with FoAM and the implications of this for their proposal.

Peter proposes four solid months of collaboration with FoAM some time next year, saying that in the past they have always worked together “on and off” which has been fine, but now they could try a more focussed joint effort. Problems with the timing of this for FoAM; Nik and Maja are undecided about their own plans, undecided between themselves.

Production of DVDs. (I must enquire how FoAM and Foton are in collaboration with this.) Again, issues of timing. Peter asks how soon FoAM can complete the video editing for the next DVD production, and makes it clear that it must be done before December if they are going to have it released promptly. I don’t think the timing of this was resolved. More than one DVD is discussed; these matters relate to some prior material that is yet to be turned into a media artefact, or to a prior ongoing collaborative project between FoAM and Foton.

Interrupting the discussion, Maja receives a phone call from Todor regarding the power adaptor. Todor also asks after the muscles. Issues with the price of different power adaptors.

Jo brings up the idea of FoAM’s “micro-events.” Maja reminds him that they were not meant to be planned in advance, they are meant for whoever might be passing through at the time and could involve a lecture, “someone screaming,” an installation with some kind of bubble-like things, etc. A Foton event is mentioned and they discuss the need for an appropriate space, because it involves choreographed movement. The studio is discussed as a venue for various activities and everyone agrees that it is not appropriate to hold more “party-like” activities in the studio.

Both Foton and FoAM are funded by the Flemish Ministry of Culture, but FoAM is funded by the “performance” department (they used to be funded by the “visual” department), and Foton is funded by the “sound” department. Maja asks Jo how Foton present and explain what they do. Jo says they describe themselves as a big octopus with many tentacles, all converging on the main body which is sound. All their projects have something to do with sound.

The TRG-derived performance in a Flanders town (I forget the name: look this up) [Kortrijk]. Mention of something to do with the Groworld project in Scotland next February (2006).

Mention of Nik going to Australia for passport reasons.

In noting that FoAM hasn’t finalised its activities for the coming year, Maja mentions Cocky Eek and bringing her into the meeting. This is the first time so far that I have heard her name mentioned in connection with FoAM and FoAM’s plans.

Though a short meeting, much was mentioned, a lot being new or unfamiliar to me, and I will have to follow up many of the threads intermittently.

Maja receives an email reply from Simon regarding the email she sent yesterday asking after the materials promised on Monday. More problems, more delays. Nik and Maja discuss the advice they received from the lawyer: that they need to elicit a written response from Merlin stating that Merlin will deliver the products on an agreed date, for the purpose of holding this statement against them if and when they do not deliver by the said date. They say that this request should be worded as though they needed this statement for Phaeno, with the explanation that they’ve already negotiated an extension and are running out of leeway. She does not want to give any additional information to Merlin, such as their change of installation date, their being granted another instalment of funds.

Maja phones Merlin and discusses the email; again the phone is set on loudspeaker. Once again Simon’s half-promises, inconsistent statements, and so forth. Maja asks for a written confirmation that Merlin can deliver the components by a certain date, which she says she needs to have in order to forward to Phaeno. Simon hesitantly agrees, and a little after the phone call Maja receives an email in which Simon has said he “believes” he is able to deliver the remaining muscles on 23 August.

14:17:58

(Mention this to the group also.)

Needless to say my focus has already changed almost entirely even since a few months ago in Riga. One thing that seems to be emerging which is interesting anthropologically is FoAM’s relationships, of course the microsocial relationships within the group itself and its partner organisations, but perhaps even more interestingly the macrosocial relationships with its funding institutions, lawyers, and commissioners. This especially in view of the collaborative ideology promoted by FoAM, which could be seen as a symptom of the ideology of “cooperation” in the wider political field of the EU and the construction of “Europe” - cf. of course Zabusky’s ethnography of the European Space Commission.

The constitution of an aesthetic through the above.

14:50:12

99 Muscles have arrived, along with the boards. Pix is going to Mechelen to get a power supply; he says Todor has started being a “loser” about the whole issue of getting the power supply and Pix doesn’t want to leave it up to him. (I ran into him on his way out of the studio just as I was arriving, at the roller door.)

Lina is here alone, working on various parts of the installation, the rubber that lines the draws and such.

17:55:14

Pix returns with the power supply, to mock applause at the kitchen table where Peter, Lina and I are sitting, talking about movies again.

Todor arrives a bit later.

Pix has shown me how his visual recognition software works through an iSight camera. He takes a piece of paper with a checkerboard design on it, and holds it up to the camera. A series of dots and multicoloured lines appear in the video monitor and Pix says this is how the software is calibrated. He demonstrates a few other software implementations of the same idea, each latching on to your face or movement in a different way; for example, one is sensitive to facial characteristics and when it discovers your face puts a red rectangle around it.

Doing this has inspired him to think more about the proposed October mixed reality event [Sonokids] even though he said categorically yesterday that he could not do it. He mentions that this kind of technology has been around for a while but never really took off, you don’t see it being used much. He remembers going to a trade show which was really a new media show where the same kind of thing was being demonstrated. Yesterday Pix mentioned that Julian Oliver might be in Berlin next month, and that Pix might think about collaborating with him again.

Now Pix is configuring the newly-arrived boards, finding them on the network; he’s written a small program to convert them for the purposes of their work.

Todor and he are discussing various technical matters as they tinker around with their electronics; Lina has returned to her drawing - which is a commission not for her sister but for someone else in Israel that her sister knows. It is about chess, so Lina’s drawings are all about chess and chess figures.

I leave them to it and return to the apartment; Nik and Maja have not yet shown up after their wedding escapade yesterday. They were meant to come at 6 or 8 pm.

At lunch, discussing the lack of work done the previous evening. Lina notes Todor’s habit of starting discussions at 11 pm. Todor is asking to get nine more power supplies. He is over budget; Lina is still within budget; some discussion I don’t catch about explaining how this budgeting system works. Pix and Todor set up one draw but didn’t end up testing it. Pix has a headache today and stayed home to sleep. Maja says, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

No one estimated that Lyta would consume so much compressed air. It is “really worrying.” And the original idea was to have 1000 muscles. Yon’s stated reason for leaving the project was because they decided to go below this number of muscles; by deciding this, according to Yon, they compromised the artistic vision of the project.

The Foton people haven’t come in today, it’s Saturday; but usually now, since they’ve all returned from their summer vacations, they sit in their part of the studio, quietly at their computers.

12:36:13

Maja has just banged her head in the apartment while cleaning out the ferret litter. She has been lying down for over an hour now. Nik coughs atrociously every morning, but it leaves him for the rest of the day.

Yesterday:

Although Merlin sent 93 or so muscles and some boards, they did not send the cables they had promised and that Maja and Simon had explicitly discussed. Todor suggests that Maja write him a “very angry” email about this.

Maja went with Todor to Mechelen [check the spelling of this!] in the afternoon to pick up four power supplies. They also brought back a monstrous old compressor, which we fooled around with for a few hours trying to drain out all the gunk.

Discussion at dinner: as ever, further jibes about Merlin; this time they mentioned making a voodoo doll of Simon. Maja’s communication with the lawyer; FoAM and their decision about employment; Nik and Maja’s “company” in the Cook Islands, Membrane.

Maja was in (email) contact with the lawyer yesterday (Friday 20 Aug). The lawyer was, according to Maja, annoyed that Simon wrote “we believe we can deliver” and nothing more definite in his emailed response. Discussion ranges over the same topics: the terms and conditions of the contract, its renegotiation, differences in view and approach between Pix’s lawyer friend and the lawyer Maja is in contact with, the implications of changes of delivery date negotiated informally, the question of what has been said over phone and what has been in writing in email. Nik says, to conclude, that while Merlin can send an invoice to FoAM after they’ve finally delivered what stuff they end up delivering, FoAM will reply that due to expenses resulting from the late deliveries FoAM cannot pay the invoice. They will itemise every expense emerging from the belated deliveries and withhold money from Merlin accordingly.

Maja mentions that they had to make a decision about employing people based on the taxation they would have to pay under Belgian law. Must enquire further about this.

Nik and Maja have a “company,” Membrane, located in the Cook Islands. It is a “perfectly legitimate” company. Apparently it even has a secretary (located in the Cook Islands as well?). They must pay about €1000-2000 annually to keep it going. At the end of this year they will have to make some calculations to see if it will still be viable. They use this company to make “black” payments and invoices. Since my knowledge of the entire field of this kind of setup for the purposes of tax evasion is totally lacking I must make more enquiries into the details of how it works. Todor notes that Belgium has among the highest taxes in the world, and Nik says that the Wikipedia entry for Belgium cites tax evasion among its list of Belgian “hobbies.”

18:10:00

Phone call from Todd. Maja speaks to him about finalising the revised Wolfsburg install date. Todd said that the museum thought 22 September was a bit late in case that something went wrong, and Maja replied that this was precisely why FoAM wanted to test the installation in their studio for an extra week, then take the finished thing to Wolfsburg and install it. (Much later this evening, while we are walking home through the asphyxiating dark Brussels streets, Maja exclaims “I didn’t get the new date in writing! Todd didn’t send an email!”)

Maja’s lawyer has wanted a transcript of all the past email correspondence with Merlin. Maja has received an email reply from the lawyer giving suggestions regarding what to write to Merlin. The gist of the lawyer’s email is that a “we believe” from Merlin is not good enough, and Merlin must give a more definite affirmation in view of the problems their late delivery has caused in relation to a renegotiation of the delivery time with Phaeno, in relation to lost working hours, and so forth. (Maja notes at dinner that according to Belgian law “loss of reputation” is also something that can be brought to court.) Maja asks Nik to actually write the email, which Nik will forward back to Maja for her to send to Simon. This email has legal efficacy only if it is received by Merlin before the date informally agreed on for the new delivery time - in order that this date become legally binding.

Maja has translated the lawyer’s email from Dutch into English. Apparently in Dutch it does not sound so strong, but in English it sounds like daggers are being drawn. Maja says that “there are three native English speakers here” (me, Nik, and Pix) and that we should all read the email and try to “polite-ify” it in English.

Bois arrives in the late afternoon and works on the mechanical engineering dimension of the installation; the work feels like it has picked up.

At dinner, served about 10 pm, a big discussion breaks out about this email. Todor is concerned that, should this email be sent to Merlin in the next few days, and then should Merlin send the boards on the date they “believed” they could send them, 23 August - which was, according to Maja, renegotiated to being the 24 August - FoAM risk losing the legal option of penalising Merlin for damages already incurred over the last several months. Todor emphasises that damages have indeed been incurred, since the installation is now “almost impossible” and a delay of even another week will certainly make it impossible. He suggests that Maja send the email back to her lawyer for checking. But by the time Maja’s lawyer checks the email it will already be too late; the email must be sent before the date informally agreed upon between FoAM and Merlin. However, a strongly-worded email may, they feel, reduce all further cooperation from Merlin’s side to zero; a firmly-worded email sent in July apparently made Merlin “drop all work for a week.” They all think that the lawyer is “eager to sue, eager to go to court.” This is “not FoAM’s way,” they say; “FoAM doesn’t work like that.” Todor mentions that of course you must have a lawyer that you trust. The delicate psychological situation with Merlin has been conveyed to the lawyer, but distrust is evident among the group.

Continued discussion of the nature of the contract, and what constitutes a renegotiation of the contract. What is legally binding, what is not? The initial contract with Merlin apparently had a specific due date which was set at March of this year. A change of contract must be made in writing. Does Nik’s recent email of early August, for example, saying that if everything is not delivered by 15 August then FoAM won’t pay, constitute a change of the contract? (Did Nik’s email say that FoAM wouldn’t pay for everything, or just wouldn’t pay for the next delivery, the question came up. “It’s unspecified,” Nik admitted.) Pix reminds everyone what his lawyer friend Karen wrote in her email, that just because FoAM “receive” the goods from Merlin at the later date does not mean that they “accept” the later date as a renegotiation of the contract. However, the group agrees later that this is hazy. Todor says that the problem is “we are trying to think like lawyers, but we are not lawyers.” Everyone murmurs agreement.

Back in the computer room I hold forth that basically FoAM has to decide whether to be firm or continue making concessions, but in view of the fact that this is the final deadline. Pix and Nik mutter that it’s just the same as before, that it’s been the “final deadline” for months. I persist in making clear that, according to my understanding, this is in fact the really serious deadline since Phaeno will accept no further further extension of the install date; which Maja concedes and Pix and Nik say nothing. So I persist in saying that they need to ask themselves what, at this stage, and given that any further delays will, as Todor says, make the installation impossible, they actually have to lose by being firm with Merlin. Pix offers a “geeky” (his phrase) way of looking at things in terms of game theory, where the two worst-case scenarios are 1) that they send the email and this causes Merlin to stop working immediately, the install is cancelled but by sending the email FoAM are legally better protected; and 2) they try to be diplomatic with Merlin and Merlin still don’t deliver, in which case FoAM must also cancel the installation and they are not protected so well. He says that if it were him he would err on the side of being firm with Merlin and better protected. Nik says that actually it would still be best to make the email as diplomatic as possible, since otherwise it would mean cancelling the whole installation and going to court, which he just doesn’t want to do because it’s a “huge headfuck.” Maja exclaims, “so should I leave the bit about contacting a lawyer in or take it out?!” Nik just makes noncommittal groans and sighs.

Pix murmurs that “we just can’t play the game like everyone else,” that FoAM doesn’t want to work that way.

14:52:10

“We were supposed to be in Wolfsburg today.”

“Almost all of our problems have been caused by the muscles that were made according to a design we didn’t approve,” says Nik. Maja has been looking through the backlog of email correspondence with Merlin. “The butter’s on our heads too,” says Maja, “but it is more on theirs.”

At lunch discussion of the previous night with Maja, Nik, and Lina. Todor wants or has ordered some fans at €200. Bois left at 6 in the morning. The only people within budget are Lina and Bois, according to Maja.

Last night Pix and Todor made some kind of measurements on a single muscle and estimated that it would take 2000 litres to drive all the muscles in one cabinet. They are seriously discussing getting an even bigger compressor, though Bois says that any compressors bigger than the ones they have will take 370 volts. They discuss how to arrange this. “There must be somewhere in this building that has 370 volt power sockets.” Even so, the muscles will now only move 2 cm. Another complication with the casing means that the muscles will not even press up against the membrane…

Lina says Todor was spouting his usual wild theories last night, the later it was, the wilder they became. He questions everything, and won’t listen to the others. But he does listen to Bois. Maja says that when Bois arrives it seems that “everything is fine,” which is because of his “assertive manner,” in Nik’s words. “But Bois is not an übermensch,” says Maja. “He’s making mistakes as well.”

The lawyer has just replied to Maja’s email of last night, saying that Maja should also include a request for a written confirmation that Merlin will deliver by 24 August, and that if they don’t deliver they will be liable for damages from the earliest date agreed on in the contract - which is March of this year. Maja reads out the Dutch to Nik, and he says that no, the damages part does not need to be mentioned straight away, only later if things come to that.

Pix arrives, saying that Karen has not responded to his latest email about the planned email to Merlin. I read this email (the planned email to Merlin) and made a few observations. “I will send it to Pix as a last check,” says Maja about this email.

15:22:38

Pix says “mmm yeah OK.”

Lina comes into the computer room, asks Maja if she wants to measure some muscles this afternoon, then says “So you’ve sent the email? Quick, I will spray some water on the windows!” Maja explains that this is some Lithuanian custom for encouraging success.

18:42:13

Merlin has replied saying they can indeed deliver 150 muscles by the date stated in Maja’s email. We even have a tracking number for the delivery. They are sending an additional parcel with the cables (at additional expense to FoAM).

The regulator has blown up on the bigger compressor, so they have gone back to the original, smaller compressor for the time being for Pix to do some tests.

Pix: “Frankly I just want to get out of this unscathed.” He says the project is so far off the original design intention that it’s pointless. Maja suggests that they make the project into something that could even be quite different from the original plan but Pix is not convinced at all by this tack. Maja says she entirely understands how he feels, but can she do anything to make it better, and he says that basically no, nothing can really be done at this stage. Pix says that they should just get the thing installed then run away as far and as quickly as possible, forget all about it, just disown the whole thing. He will do what he can while he’s still here but he can’t wait to get away.

I feel a sense of creeping dread at hearing that Merlin will deliver, since it means an excruciating, frenzied delirium of overwork which seems most likely to be pointless in the end.

23:35:38

While we walk home under the overcast Brussels night, Maja expresses concern about what I hear her and Nik discuss in private about FoAM. This is what I was trying to warn of from the beginning, and I reaffirm that these matters cannot easily be resolved, if at all. Nik says again, “Ah-ha, where do you draw the line…” And so it must be concluded that what is “proper” and “improper” ethnographic material remains in a state of constant negotiation.

Maja goes on to mention “another thing in the long list of what I could look at,” which is lunches and dinners at FoAM. They used to be made because FoAM had no money to pay visiting artists, and so they made them nice dinners instead. But now everyone expects that these lunches and dinners should happen, that they have to happen. This leads to the further point that Maja and Nik can’t “escape” FoAM. They try, but they always get drawn back into the “total environment” of FoAM. She feels they are obliged to provide not only a studio but an entire social life for those visiting, since mostly people are coming from elsewhere to FoAM and don’t know anyone in Belgium or Brussels, and she’s sick of it, it makes her “sick” and she wants it to change.

This morning Todor was in the studio, the first time I’ve ever encountered him here in the morning. Nik has stayed home today, completing the editing for (I think) the TRG book. He says he won’t come in at all.

A little after lunch the courier arrives, bringing the 150 muscles and the control boards.

Now, Lina and Maja are attaching some joinings to the muscles. Pix has been “procrastinating” in front of his computer; he has a list of things to do but they all depend on having draw to do calibrating on. Now he is making a stand for the draws to do more testing.

Discussion about the air consumption. They seem to have decided now to ignore the recommendation of Phaeno and install regardless of how much air Lyta consumes, provided it doesn’t go above a certain value that Bois suggested. They say that Bois will talk to the technicians at Phaeno and convince them. But Bois also said that they should discuss the matter further with Phaeno if it is evident that Lyta uses air in excess of a certain threshold, I think 2000 litres.

“This evening I humoured myself by participating in a completely pointless activity among the foamies.” Pix was imagining what my journal entry of this afternoon would read like. The pointless activity was adjusting the bolts which attach the muscles to the pipe, to a considerable degree of exactitude. I had questioned the value of this, since once the muscles started stretching, wouldn’t these fine adjustments be rendered completely useless? I fear it sounded like I was feeding into the general apathy about the project, and thus increasing Maja’s exasperation. Later in the evening Pix said that the one way he could picture this installation was it sitting in the museum with a “out of order” sign strapped to the front.

I have come to FoAM with a whole set of preconceptions - which are now one by one being dismantled.

13:30:44

The excessive theorisation of artistic practice; the divide between theory and realisation; the causes and constituents of this theorisation - the imperative to define projects to 1) funding bodies, 2) partner groups and individuals, 3) themselves. The interweaving of these imperatives that gives rise to the resulting amalgam. A large part of their “artistic” practice lies in defining and promulgating the theory, whether or not and to whatever extent there is a mismatch between rhetoric and activity.

18:09:19

I come in late, and am now feeling awkward in the studio as usual. The day has turned gloomy and overcast outside. This oppressive atmosphere seems to be transferred into the studio, though I can never tell if this is just me or if others feel this way… What is certain is it makes me long to be elsewhere. Never mind, all will pass.

The computer room is being cleaned out ready for a meeting tomorrow.

We are getting a big compressor tomorrow, says Maja.

Pix has just exclaimed that he gets a change of 1 cm in calibrating the muscles when Todor opened the window, and he says he remembers how it was said the muscles should be calibrated to temperature. A bit later he says no, it’s probably just random.

Pix is about to engage in yet another test to measure air consumption by one muscle. He expresses uncertainty at the accuracy of his measurements and blames it on drinking wine at dinner.

23:11:56

Maja has known Vali since 1998. They have tried to collaborate over and over again but their cycles have always been out of sync, and now in September, when Vali will be coming to work at FoAM for a few days each week, possibly with a project in mind, they will finally have a chance to work together. She knows a lot about software, she has good ideas and she’s willing to work for free. She has been working for the BBC and has specialised, as she describes it, in mixed reality.

The “pre-meeting” with Maria, who met Maja with or through Vali some time ago in America or Berlin. Pix, Maja, Nik, Lina and I are in attendance. She has just come up from Greece (Vali comes from Greece as well). She talks to us while Maja and Lina continue to put bolts on the muscles. Maria’s peculiar proposal which obviously does not gel well with the FoAM ethic; Nik and Maja continually laugh and make sour faces at what is being described, sometimes even exclaiming “but that’s exactly the wrong way to go about it!” and “well, all the buzzwords are there!” Maria herself expresses boredom regarding the project since she has been doing this thing for years and everything feels like it’s been done before. She reminds us that there’s nothing “spectacular” about this proposal, but Maja replies that even though it’s all been done before it may not have been done well. Maria asks, “so are you interested?” and Maja says she would have to meet the other participants before making up her mind.

There is a peculiar relationship among the various players in that some have very little to do with the project’s theme, but have been invited, according to Maria, due to mutual favours between companies and organisations (for grant money presumably). Jokes about acronyms, titles, and the vagueness of the project title. A very diverse and rather incongruous range of participating organisations and institutions are mentioned. Tomorrow, I guess, I will hear about them in detail.

After the pre-meeting we go out to eat pizza, Pix and Todor coming as well. On one end of the table, discussions about soap operas, the formal wedding customs among Indian Americans; at the other end, Pix and Todor are discussing such things as motion tracking software and algorithms for determining certain behaviours.

10:55:52

The HASTEN meeting yesterday. The peculiarity of having these people in FoAM’s highly informal environment. Somewhat comical to see them taking a break and talking in groups amidst the hulking detritus of Lyta. Those attending are all representatives of universities and research institutions; though they are not exactly corporate executives, the line is blurred and they could in effect be considered as such. The youngest people in attendance are me, Nik, and Maja. Vali brought her baby along and it was placed in a corner, amidst all the rest of the studio’s paraphernalia. The meeting started with Maja’s presentation and a distribution of the Txoom DVD to all those present. Maja concluded her presentation and was absent for the rest of the day. Nik remained instead.

Maria then outlines the proposal, which is couched in a barrage of jargon amounting to the vaguest possible concept. This project cannot be done by an IP, only by a STREP. The discussion takes place on the most general level while giving the impression of dealing with utterly vital, concrete, and topical issues.

The parties at hand presented their research and their possible relevance to the project in turn, and then we broke for lunch. Pizza was ordered, people had to pay in cash, there was a tremendous fuss over getting receipts. We ate our pizzas largely in awkward silence in the FoAM board room.

Afterwards it was about 3 pm and the whole project, such as it was, was meant to be pulled together and all parties were meant to be allocated work packages (WPs) in accordance with their respective skills and expertise. Although the strictures were never explicitly stated, the discussion continually referred back to the EU or EC and what was considered acceptable by these funding bodies.

The figure of €250,000 is cited. “Not a lot of money, is it?” says one of the participants, meaning when it’s divided among the ten organisations potentially involved.

An eery experience, watching this empty and nebulous concept solidifying into a whole set of concrete guidelines, work allocations, bureaucratic verbiage, propositions, and so forth.

Usability, the construction of the “user.” Ironically, the neuroscientists are asked if they could contribute on the level of quantitative testing of usability. Among other things, what amounted to measuring the user’s “boredom” quantitatively. In this scheme the user is, presumably, incapable of voicing his or her boredom directly, and quantitative, neurophysical techniques can be deployed to elicit such information more accurately (very important information too, given that this project is meant to elicit interest in users).

“Authoring tool” versus finished installation. What is “authoring,” I wonder, though everyone seems to use the term with full knowledge. Only much later does the question in fact arise: “What do we mean by authoring?” Ditto for many other things mentioned. The construction of “specialities” and their affinities and aversions to other such specialities. It will be interesting to watch if and how FoAM’s involvement plays itself out in the context of these university/corporations.

It could be said that there is a very simple algorithm at work: the more abstract and “Platonic” the discourse deployed in such meetings is, the more powerful and efficacious it is deemed to be. Leave discussions of such proletarian concerns as a “piece of work” aside. Concentrate on the rarified, sublime essence of the proposal: i.e. money.

Nik observes laconically that if FoAM end up getting involved in the project, I will have the opportunity to observe the triumph of bureaucracy over artistic intent.

During the day Maja asks me to help Bois lift a massive, heavy compressor from a van into the elevator. Only to discover after we heave it to its resting place outside the studio doors that no power sockets in the entire building will be suitable to run it. The entire day was spent arranging and delivering this compressor, for nothing.

After discovering this, Maja calls Mark of Merlin in response to a call from him earlier. He was asking that FoAM pay for the cables he delivered since it was not in the contract. This concern was prompted because of an email Maja sent a few days ago, she says, in which she dropped a hint about payment options. “No!” Maja exclaims at this proposition, and is outraged.

Lina asked to borrow my mobile for the evening, to send SMSs to someone. At night, when Nik, Maja and Pix came home and returned the mobile to me, I discovered that Lina was arranging to design a wedding dress for the bride of someone who had “stalked Maja for four years,” persistently and relentlessly. He once had to be forcibly ejected from the studio by a group of people forming an “antibiotic” ring around him. He went to visit Maja’s parents once, claiming to be a friend, but they grew suspicious when by 3 am he hadn’t stopped asking them about her childhood, what she was doing, and so forth. This individual is now apparently getting married to a “Romanian beauty.”

An email comes from the Belgian National Bank, of all places, expressing interest in “contemporary art,” and in particular - of all projects - Lyta. There will be a meeting with them on 14 September. FoAM seems to be getting involved in more and more unlikely projects, turning into a menagerie for all sorts of increasingly bizarre and uncomfortable combinations.

14:28:08

Conversation with Pix about the Netochka Nezvanova case.

Netochka Nezvanova (NN) is the nickname given to the person who apparently stalked Maja for four years and for whom Lina is now designing a wedding dress.

According to Pix: it is uncertain whether this person is one of the programmers belonging to the software company that created Nato, or just someone associated with the company in some undefined way. In the process of perpetuating the persona of NN he stole Maja’s identity some years ago when Maja was well-known in digital art and new media conference circles. Maja was advocating and discussing many “strange,” mysterious, and hieratic matters concerning media, technology, and mysticism, and thus an ideal type to be co-opted by the persona of NN. Maja essentially was NN, according to Pix. Maja’s identity was appropriated against her will and she was not complicit with the myth-making instigated by the Nato associate (or whoever else conspired in the NN fabrication).

Pix had a run-in with this persona through an internet mailing list (was it the Max list? I forget) on which “she” started behaving obnoxiously towards him. His own reaction was to write an email asking “her” why she was doing this and telling her to leave him alone. Independently, the moderator of the mailing list also reacted to her obnoxiousness by banning her from the list. Apparently this made her retaliate strongly by imposing an additional monetary tariff on all those who tried to purchase the Nato software in Austria (where Pix and the moderator both resided).

Pix noted that the NN persona incorporated the flavour of some kind of archetypal Eastern European communist ideology at the same time as professing the rankest capitalism. What is more “she” was a woman persona, anarchic, rebellious and profane, thus perhaps constituting a prototypical icon of feminism. I’ve forgotten the incident Pix mentioned in Amsterdam where he met a real woman who was complicit with the NN persona and intentionally posed as NN.

This discussion leads to Pix averring that Nik and Maja are generally oblivious to how almost no one understands their writing. Pix says that they simply have a “phenomenal communication problem,” and notes their interest in autism as a correlate. Pix wasn’t entirely convinced when I suggested their obscurity was deliberate and intended as a kind of artistic statement. They get angry that nobody understands their online and other writings, but are simply oblivious that nobody can understand them, he says.

He feels FoAM have got in “way over their heads” with Lyta. They keep buying stuff without really thinking about it, the costs are mounting. We try to think if FoAM has ever been contracted for a project, and Pix concludes that they’ve never had a contract like this one. FoAM posturing as a scientific organisation doing art, or an artistic organisation using scientific ideas in some way, becomes dangerous in this respect, Pix suggests, since they are undoubtedly artists and cannot be treated as scientists; for example in terms of experiments, research according to the scientific method, laboratory work, etc.

Pix says that back in the late 80s when he was starting to get into computers there were two types who were into computers, the geeky type and the cool type. The difference between them was that the geeky type did not try to conceal their geeky obsession with technology, while the cool type, though they were still probably just as obsessed with technology, strove to make it appear that they were not so obsessed and used technology in a “cool” way. This distinction still holds today, according to Pix.

11:58:51

Pix has been at the studio for three days straight, and yesterday he went home after a sleepless night. He woke in the evening with a headache, and today he is still at home, going for “another round of sleep” before returning to the studio. Everyone seems to be thinking mostly about holidays in the back of their minds. Maja has been calibrating muscles and Nik spent yesterday evening on “sys-admin.” I feel quite aimless, at a loose end, and directionless.

A few days ago: Maja was saying that in 2003 there was discussion of Lyta’s concept. Maja had suggested something much more fabric-based, transmitting touch through a change in the sensation of the fabric, even, for example, through vibration, but Todor and Yon seemed to be intent with on idea of pistons and muscles so she let them carry the project forward since they seemed to be the most keen on its development. She says that now she’s reaping the bad consequences of that decision…

I am tired of including tedious bouts of pseudo-analysis in these notes. What am I trying to prove? It should be enough that I simply make memos of incidents and events.

The weather is magnificent, but I am not going out to appreciate it… I sit in the apartment and read the production diary for Howl’s Moving Castle. In any case I continue to neglect my duties (though even these I have no clear notion of and invent as I go along), but it’s just so painful setting foot in the studio with that feeling of not being able to escape.

19:55:54

The last traces of the amber sunset fall in through the arched windows of the studio.

Maja is calibrating the muscles according to Pix’s new method in which the tube, encased by the spring, protrudes above the draw. This allows calibration without using the string-and-weight method, which Pix claimed was giving results significantly different from those obtained when the spring was exerting force on the muscle inside the tube. There is a large proportion of dead muscles, and Pix insists on labelling them so that when they are returned, FoAM can say what is wrong with them, rather than Merlin saying, in the worst-case scenario, that the muscles are OK and sending back the dead muscles.

Todor just arrived (at 8.30 pm) and brings up the question of the ethernet cables with Nik. They think that it would be cheaper to buy them, since connectors for the cables they already have in the studio would be more expensive.

I sit in the computer room browsing the internet as usual, while there’s a racket outside in the main studio. Lina is cutting up some foam fragments, and there is vacuuming going on.

Nik and I preside at opposite ends of the table, behind our computers. We don’t say a word, just peer obsessively into our computer screens. He constantly shuffles and snorts, and occasionally glares up menacingly, twitching his eyebrows. The room is getting darker. The table is illumined in a pool of light from the overhanging lamp. It is like some standoff or silent battle of wills.

Pix comes in to discuss Nik’s work at the computer, and in this way I learn that he’s trying to get some software to work (what was this? I always forget these details).

The pink plume of a jet trail unravels across the western sky.

At dinner, Maja declares: “This is an official cry for help.” She leans her head in her hands, then on the table. She took three and a half hours to calibrate one draw of muscles using Pix’s method; she managed to do two draws in a day. She says that we would have to work 24 hours a day to complete them before the end of the week, when everyone will be leaving to go on holidays (except Todor). And if they don’t get them done by that time, Todor won’t be around to solder the sensors, and these will have to be affixed later by some less secure technique. She wants to do at least one more draw before the night is over; Nik looks at the clock and says “so you will be here until 1 am?” Nik suggests that they go home, play with the ferrets, and see what they can do next morning. The most time-consuming task is fiddling with the leaks; even a breath, it seems, will displace them and throw the calibration out. This is not to mention the delays incurred by having to remove a dead muscle. Another long discussion about muscle dynamics ensues, which seems to recapitulate most of what’s been discussed before. The previous installation for the Todd demonstration is mentioned, Pix saying that even though they had the calibration for those muscles set up with some precision, after a few days left alone the settings were once more out. Pix suggests setting up the workspace to let two people do the calibration. This will involve throwing the whole workspace out of order, since the calibration setup is tied to the usage of the compressor.

Then discussion shifts to the outer case of the installation. It turns out that they have decided to make it out of glass, something to do with time and cost factors; this case must be ordered by tomorrow. No one has time, Maja says, to focus solely on a single task - such as calibrating the muscles. The case is discussed by Todor, Lina, and Maja for a while then they return to the question of calibration, with no resolution.

Pix has stayed in the studio all night again. Earlier in the evening I overheard his conversation with the Foton people that he would be driven by FoAM back to Berlin, I think because this would be less expensive than sending him by train. This was in the context of a discussion about the party he’s going to there.

12:29:24

It was patently clear that nothing would be ready by 22 August, when the group originally planned to go to Wolfsburg to install. Earlier in the game, they pulled something together for Todd’s inspection, which gave the feeling that they could indeed get something ready by the August date. (I just realised that this inspection was on 31 July - exactly a month ago - and still the group haven’t got a single draw of muscles working!) The continued lull in activity over the beginning of August made me think that either they were very confident or very deluded, but in any case I found it surprising. The situation seems the same now in that I can’t really see how they will possibly get anything done by 22 September, and in that sense, things are exactly the same as they were this time last month. Even if no one were going on holidays, it would be highly unlikely. And yet I still wonder, can they do this? Could they do this if they stayed to work? But I think it’s too late now to ask these questions, which should have been asked - as they are all aware - months ago. Furthermore, now one has to reflect that the email sent to Merlin, which was meant to protect the group legally, could have been a mistake, since Merlin did deliver by the date. (This was the concern raised by Todor and Pix.) So what will happen now? I cannot know, but I feel a sense of ominousness when they continue to speak of ordering expensive parts, such as the very expensive glass casing.

Endless discussions of computers and computing. A small, closed world but infinite in its infinitesimal dimensions.

19:50:11

I am trying to answer this questionnaire sent by the undergrad student. The questions are surprisingly good, which makes me feel sorry for the poor fellow who wants answers from genuine, bona fide media artists, straight from the horse’s mouth, not some pre-digested pat answers from a university student, to a university student. Maybe this absurd situation could only happen at FoAM. Doing it reminds me how much my perspective has changed since I first started getting absorbed by the FoAM entity. At the same time, I recall a little all the things that first made me interested.

15:03:16

I arrive at the studio while Bois is just fitting and turning on the big compressor. It whirrs and hums like a jet or space ship. A moment later the power went down; some of the other floors in the building could have been affected also. The power is back up now. Everyone is jittery, irritable, argumentative.

Discussion about drilling more holes in the aluminium tubes to offset the muscle’s leak from rubbing against the side, which is apparently one of the causes for throwing the calibration out so much.

Pix says he shouted at Todor last night. He planned to come home and get a good night’s sleep but it was pretty “depressing” in the studio so he did another all-nighter to get some work done. He got one draw assembled, but it is very slow, “body speed,” so that you really need to lean your whole body against it to feel an effect, rather than press it with your hands. This, he says, is good in a way since it will dissuade people from poking things out of position.

Maja has been in contact with the lawyer, because “we’re not happy” (with Merlin).

The usual humour over lunch, but everyone seems much more agitated than usual and the laughter has a hollow ring. Nik has just gone to the bank.

I have been asked to answer the questions sent by the university student of new media, Maja doesn’t have time. Nik has offered to go through the questions with me but I have no idea when he will have the time.

Lina announces the quote for the aluminium frame: €1,300. The glass frame has cost much more.

Pix is spending much of the afternoon talking with Jo about parties, DJs, mountain bike riding and crashing, everything.

Maja, Lina and Bois have left to do something, perhaps check out the glass frame, since Bois is going to be drilling the holes to affix it. Nik is intent on some computing task.

Through this week I have been trying to work alone on calibrating the muscles, while everyone is on holiday, and when I finished the sixth draw yesterday, Todor had more work for me. So much for making time to look for an apartment, let alone getting a break. Todor and I mentioned that it might have been best if FoAM cancelled the installation in August when the muscles were late. But then again, perhaps not, because FoAM must “prove that it doesn’t work,” in Todor’s words. And more importantly, it is a difficult decision because everyone has invested so much work, time, and effort into the project. He says that by continuing with the project instead of cleanly cancelling it FoAM will perhaps damage their reputation more.

The frame arrived yesterday, the manifolds the day before; the foam to fill the tubes has yet to come. Todor is alarmed over a number of design elements of the frame. Firstly it’s too big; he says it will be impossible to calibrate the muscles against it. The inner sleeve of the frame was meant to be indented but it is flat with the outer part, and Todor thinks this cannot but slice through the membrane when it is attached. More muscles burst as we tested the newly calibrated draws which I have spent all week doing; all the tasks seem futile since how could anyone believe at this stage that the installation can go ahead when it is so lame and crippled? Todor and I greet the explosion of each new burst muscle with a certain perverse satisfaction. One exploded deafeningly in close proximity to his ear. We made a count of 29 draws. We discuss the implications of having muscles burst like this when the thing is installed. Could they injure someone? I suggest that the shock might be the most troublesome part; who will go near let alone touch an installation that threatens to explode in your face, or under your touch?

Maja has been coordinating a little from Croatia by phone and email, but it is difficult and it seems that much cannot be done except in person. Todor called her last night and reported that among other things, Simon of Merlin apparently lied and said that he had delivered 390 muscles. Todor hadn’t communicated with Maja before yesterday. He sent some updates to the Lyta list regarding the broken muscle count. There seems to have been a communication breakdown regarding the specifications of the frame. I tried calling Bois yesterday two times then sent an SMS, but there has been no reply.

I left the studio around 8 pm last evening, dispirited and weary, while Todor was still working and stress testing the wall some more.

Yesterday afternoon, while Bois and I were testing and discussing the frames, a box of repaired muscles arrived from Merlin. More muscles to burst! When Nik and Maja return from their holiday tomorrow, there will be exactly twelve days left before the final deadline for installing at Wolfsburg.

(I must ask Nik and Maja for access to their email with Merlin, at least from July when I came among them. I always find it difficult to ask for such things…)

On Friday, 2 September went with Lina to Antwerp to get the plexiglass for the frame in Hans’s huge van. The overcast day turned to rain. The long highway; my weariness. We got quite lost, mainly due to the faultiness of the directions which Lina had got from the internet; it was in part comical except for the fact that Lina had a plane to catch in the afternoon. She says it has often been like this, that she leaves Brussels in a rush with lots of last-minute things to do. Before we went to Antwerp we went to the bank for Lina to draw €2,000 (to pay for the frame and the plexiglass), parked in a delivery zone, raced through the city, Lina saying “If I drive a bit wildly, don’t worry.” I felt oppressed by the industrial wasteland of this country, especially on the outskirts of Antwerp with its hideous traffic and oppressive highway “rings.”

Driving the van at 120 km/h back to Brussels, Lina asked me how my research is going… at just the time when I felt most unable to answer that question. I hemmed and hawed and tried to come up with an answer. She suggested I just take notes for now, then later try to understand and analyse. She suggested also that I make comparisons with other groups. (Remember how Lina also said that it’s a good idea for me to find my own apartment if I’m studying FoAM, since I will need some distance.)

I said that after this PhD I wanted to do something very different, “perhaps even just join a monastery!” She said that she had thought about doing this in the past also, but it is a hard life. She has a friend, a really great person, who was in a monastery for a while but couldn’t function properly; she even developed physical symptoms. It is a hard life. So her friend left the monastery, but still studies and is involved in that path. Strangely, Lina had a dream about this person the night before. I was really surprised to catch a glimpse of this side of Lina.

Lina met Maja in Holland where they were both studying. She was given a proposal to work on the fabrics for the T-Garden project. This was when she didn’t know anything about mixed reality and all that; she was simply studying fabric, drawing, painting, graphic design, etc. A friend explained what the proposal meant, since in addition her English was not good at that time. She and her friend’s first reaction was “how weird!” but Lina was interested enough to design the costumes. When she saw how they were used she thought “it’s wrong!” From there Maja and Lina entered Starlab, the same with Nik.

14:16

• The return of Nik and Maja
• Nik’s discussion re Qfwfq, funding, reorganisation of FoAM’s membership

19:59

Last night Nik and Maja came home late, around 12.45 am, after a great thunderstorm and torrential downpour beset Brussels.

This morning an early lunch and discussion at their apartment.

“This will be good material for your anthropological study,” begins Nik. They are going to try and convince FoAM’s membership to become more actively involved. This task is slated for the next AGM in October.

Nik mentions Qfwfq, and Vali’s involvement in the project, which could be more on the graphics side. He notes the disparity between funding for arts and funding for science and how this is an interesting study in its own right. For TRG, for example, they put together a grant application of about 100 pages, and received about €300,000. For Qfwfq, on the other hand, they are applying for a science grant [check with Nik as to the exact foundation], with a five-page proposal followed by a 30-page proposal if the first is accepted, and the lowest that applicants are expected to ask for is a million Euros. They have started this process three times before. Two times their preliminary proposal was accepted, once rejected. But with the proposals that were accepted, they failed to follow up with the main, 30-page proposal in time. What Nik must do is finalise the preliminary proposal once again, ready for the next submission deadline on 20 September. He is showing it to Vali, who has had experience sitting on the committees which evaluate these kinds of proposals before. She thinks its a good idea, so he’s showing it to her to clean up and to make it “sound” like it’s a good idea to the committee that will be evaluating it.

Nik must also complete the editing for the TRG booklet. Only the FoAM articles remain to be edited, but it could take up to two days of Nik sitting at home. He must take an added day for the Qfwfq proposal as well. The issue of priorities. Nik says they need to work out their priorities, but Maja says “everything is a priority at the moment.” Nik: “But if everything’s a priority nothing will get done.” They have a week and a half before the Wolfsburg deadline.

Pix is coming back tomorrow; I thought he was arriving on 15 September.

On arriving at the studio Maja was alarmed at all that hadn’t yet been done even now. The boards hadn’t been put in place at the bottom of the shelves; the sensors hadn’t been wired; the frame hadn’t been drilled.

Bois came in after two; Todor phoned to say his partner Stevie was assaulted last night on the streets and was in hospital (though there were no serious injuries, just shock perhaps), but he was still coming in.

Most of the afternoon was taken up with discussions of the appalling workmanship of the frame. Maja cautioned, however, that half the problem was FoAM’s because they gave measurements for the width of the frame based on factors which were rethought after the frame was ordered. The current specifications of the frame thus have disrupted the rethought design. Maja, Bois and Todor were speaking Dutch much of the time, occasionally breaking into English. I tried to follow most of the conversation through the gestures they made. Nik remained in the computer room for the most part. Maja expressed great anxiety throughout, while Bois, as usual, gave the appearance of making light of the situation with mocking humour. When Maja asked Todor about the soldering of the sensors, he said he just put everything on hold, waiting for a verdict on the issue of the frame. (Maja said later that she thought this was probably just Todor making excuses.) Bois also hadn’t drilled the holes he was meant to; when Maja asked him about this he said something noncommittal which I didn’t catch, perhaps in Dutch. One option was to re-drill all the tubing, so that it could be brought forward to protrude further. Later this option was discarded because Todor said there would be problems connecting the sensors with the extra distance. The other option they arrived at before leaving for pizza was to connect an extra bit of tubing, fitting it over the existing pipe. Maja and Bois go to and fro with her laptop looking up information for these kinds of parts. Bois notes that you can’t just buy this stuff off the shelf, at this quantity you have to order it in. More time wasted. Furthermore, it will be yet another (considerable) expense.

Maja comes into the computer room, gives Nik an update on what’s being discussed regarding the frame. Nik: “Is it really impossible to calibrate the installation with the frame the way it is? We won’t know until we’ve tested it with the sensors in place.” Maja: “But Todor won’t wire the sensors until we decide how to extend the pipes.” Me: “Pix should be the one to know about whether it can be calibrated or not.” Nik and Maja: “Yes, after three days’ discussion with Todor.” “When Pix comes there’ll be another endless discussion.”

Later, I say to Nik that I don’t want to criticise, but it would be good if everyone discussed things together especially since all those working on the project were so “dispersed.” Nik makes a sign of dissatisfaction; we’ve been discussing everything all along, he implies. He comes back to the idea of a dependency chart where decisions could be mapped out on the basis of a number of vectors, where it could be seen what was the cause of what, what led to what effect, what cost various choices would entail in the design process, and so forth. “But it’s hard to get people to sit down and do that,” Nik concludes laconically. “No one has the time. After all, everyone’s got work to do.”

Maja suggests the group take a short pizza break. “Why not a long one!” says Nik. When they return they could start a round of muscle calibration, “to feel a sense of achieving something today,” says Maja. I left them to it and returned to the apartment to recouperate and write this up, which always takes a disproportionately long time.

16:25

• Maja’s concerns
• Peter’s (of Foton) mention of the history of the studio space
• Pix’s arrival and comments re Lyta: “We’re such idiots…”
• The continued discussion about the frame with Pix as well as Maja and Todor

Maja: “And on top of it all, the Flemish government will be mad at us for only working on Lyta, and not on any other projects. I really want to work on something else…” Bois didn’t glue the caps onto the manifolds when he attached them to the draws. When asked why, Maja says he just said “because the bosses were away.” Pix says he expected Todor to be more like that, and Maja confirmed that he was. They all had clearly defined tasks, but since “the boss was away” they didn’t complete any of them.

Maja went to see “Benji,” Benjamin, the maker of the frame. He was out; Maja returned to the studio; discussed the matter with Pix and Todor; left again to see the frame maker, only to return later having spoken to his father. Maja said that when she asked Benji’s father about cutting the frame into a different size and the time she wanted it done in, he seemed very doubtful.

Maja, Pix and Todor discuss the frame, its design implications for stretching the membrane across the sensors and the problems involved in calibration due to the membrane bulging in the centre. Plus the problem that having an entire cabinet running has never been tested. Pix avows how strong the pressure will be when all the muscles are pushing against the membrane, and the implications of this for the design of the frame and for calibrating the muscles in software.

Pix has arrived and did not expect to find things in quite such disarray. He says that everyone knows there’s not much chance of finishing it on time but everyone just continues to work on, nevertheless. He likens it to the following scenario: If there’s a 50 per cent chance of rain, do you take a jacket or leave it at home? if there’s a 60 per cent chance, what do you do? 80 per cent? 90 per cent? When is the point that you take a jacket? Everyone knows this is the case, but no one can decide what point to call it quits. Perhaps, he says, the group has been through so many points like this before that it no longer registers - until, of course, the final, “real” deadline.

His job right now is to scale up his PD software interface to handle an entire cabinet. Previously he only designed it to work for a single draw; he declares that he was always “realistic,” in that he always thought “a whole shelf will never happen!” But it has happened and now he must redesign his software. His PD patch is only an interface to the software on the Mac Mini which is running C. In the final installation PD won’t be used; it’s just a means to an end, a way to calibrate the muscles.

Peter arrives, has a talk with Pix, then we discuss the studio space. How it can be used for a twenty-person dinner; how it can be used to watch movies, have parties; how there’s a stage with curtains in one corner; and so forth. He says that the studio would have been used to store goods that were brought up the canal in the old days. In the 60s and 70s many of these warehouses were empty. A family of four moved in afterwards, when there was a general trend for “loft living.” FoAM and Foton discovered the space together, Peter says.

19:35

Nik is spending most of the day working at his computer on undisclosed activity. Occasionally he emerges to do something with Lyta; or murmurs something about possible future projects to Maja. Pix has reinstalled himself at his laptop and has vanished into the world of programming.

I am constantly surprised by new projects or potential future projects I knew nothing about being brought out of the hat by Nik and Maja.

Call from Vali re Qfwfq proposal proofing. The FET deadline is 20 September.

Pix discussing PD: its inflexibility when it comes to large complex systems. “The whole idea of computers is that they allow you to do things more flexibly than in the physical world.” But PD doesn’t allow for this.

Todor is still here when I arrive, from last night. “Ah, I hate all this mechanical stuff!” he exclaims. “I joined this project to program the interaction, and now I won’t be doing any of it. It’s grotesque!”

Nik is spending the day in the apartment again, editing the TRG articles. He will come in to the studio at 7 pm to see Vali. Maja was in the studio early this morning, and has been to speak to Benji again about the frame, and all options sound time-consuming. Phone call from Lina in Lithuania. Discussion about the frame.

Loaded up the frames in Hans’s van to be taken back. I spend much of my time unloading things then loading them back up.

Over the few days, ongoing negotiations regarding the HASTEN project through phone and email.

Calibrating more muscles, which promptly explode. Two out of eight of the muscles that were returned by Merlin, supposedly repaired. As the late afternoon wore on I felt the familiar feeling of utter desperation, thinking that this would last for an eternity, the sense of no escape.

Maja left to post something, and was out on other errands for much of the afternoon. Pix and I had jobs to do but we sat down for a long while and discussed software, programming languages, FoAM.

Nik comes into the studio at about 6.30 pm. At about 7.30 pm, Vali arrives. Nik and Maja sit down at the kitchen table and I invite myself as well. It is a rather short meeting in which Vali discusses a number of points in the proposal and gives N and M the opportunity to make suggestions. Nik and Maja obviously don’t really like much about the proposed project or the way it has been structured (“It’s totally fragmentary,” acknowledges Vali). Lots is mentioned about work plans and fitting FoAM’s role into the various categories laid out by the format of the proposal. The meeting ends with the suggestion that they plan a totally new proposal and submit it to a science and technology organisation which has a grant scheme for the kind of project they are interested in doing. (I made a point to try to remember the name of this organisation but have now forgotten.)

Vali leaves almost at the same time as Todor arrives. During all this time the Foton people have been assembling for one of their regular meetings, coming in and out, the main group lodging in the board room, another group sitting in the lounging area into the evening while we work and eat dinner. Peter comes over later to eat some of the leftover food.

I summon the courage to broach the topic of accessing their written records such as grant applications and even selected email. They are surprisingly open about the possibility of letting me access such material.

After dinner, Nik spends the rest of the evening in the bathroom of the studio with the taps running, applying a suction device to the drains to empty them of accumulated sludge. He occupied himself with this procedure last night as well.

The mood grew ever more tense and doom-laden. Maja discussed all of the things that had to be known about Todor’s side of the project. He is leaving tomorrow and has to be at the airport at 12. I am overwhelmed at seeing how much Maja must keep track of. She drinks Red Bull all evening. With Todor gone, the group has dwindled to us four. Even if none of us were spending most of our time procrastinating, it seems to me that it would be pretty much impossible to complete the amount of work that must be done by next Wednesday.

Spent the whole day wiring the draws with cables. Got the whole lot done at about 11 pm tonight. Maja was putting foam into the tubes as sound insulation. Nik sporadically does things for Lyta, then returns to his computer; I have no way to determine if what he is doing there is useful or simply procrastination, though I suspect the latter. After dinner he seemed to reach the conclusion that the drains were still blocking up and needed yet more work with suction pumping. So he spent most of the rest of the evening working at that task.

Pix is back to his usual routine, staying in the studio all night and sleeping during the day. He got home to the apartment at 8 am this morning. Todor was still in the studio, reportedly almost delirious. He mistook the time his flight departed and Maja had to drive him to the airport in great haste. He has left us with much work.

Hans of Foton joined us for lunch. Maja asked him about the meeting last night and he said, “not so good, I can’t talk about it now…”

Irritating music was played during the afternoon and into the evening for about five hours. Being so irritated by the music made me try to think of ways of escape, but right now there are none. I have become part of this project.

Peter cooked dinner for us. Maja looked incredibly tired, and Nik also. Peter brought up what transpired in the meeting. He now basically considers Jo to no longer be part of Foton. Jo is apparently depressed, and in trouble with unemployment issues. He thinks that working at Foton is a distraction to finding work. He said that the others were not giving him as much as he gave to them, which Peter considers untrue and thought was an inexcusable thing to say even if Jo is depressed. But Jo only becomes involved in “fun” things, especially DJing. When it comes to the “dirt,” he doesn’t deliver. This has happened repeatedly. Peter says that he considers Jo welcome to come into the studio at any time, and that the rupture isn’t personal. He invited Jo to dinner tonight, but was pretty sure he wouldn’t turn up (and he didn’t). This explains why after the Foton meeting the other day Maja asked them “do you still like us?” Apparently, after the meeting Jo said that one of the activities they had planned together couldn’t be done due to budget, and the way he said it or something made Maja anxious.

Also explained for me is the group which gathers periodically on the sofas in the lounging area to talk amongst themselves. They are a design team who have been working for Foton since March to come up with a T-shirt design logo and similar things, but have yet to do anything. “They’re out next week,” Peter declares. They are criticised by Maja and the others for making no effort to interact with the rest of the studio. They just talk among themselves and one girl even looked the other way when Maja made eye contact with her. They asked if they could bring an extra table into the studio in July, and this table actually was brought in only the other night. Foton offered the studio space for them to use as an infrastructure to work on their project for Foton, but they’ve hardly ever made use of it. And so, as of next week, according to Peter, they’re out.

Mention of a project possibility in Antwerp and someone offering to support it who has not responded to FoAM’s email. This was to be a TRG-related project to take place in February next year, but for a few months now nothing has been heard. Jokes about Antwerp accepting anything, the “city of the greatest gullibility” as Pix phrased it.

Most of the day again spent calibrating muscles, this hopeless and futile task. Nik was out to meet with Vali re the Qfwfq proposal. (This proposal is being sent to a branch of the European Commission. I mention the other organisation, NEST, that he suggested they send in a proposal with Vali, and he explains the relationship between this organisation and the one he is sending the Qfwfq proposal to. He spends most of the day in the computer room but now comes out for longer periods to engage in certain menial tasks of Lyta’s production. He came out once to ask Pix to think of suitable alternative acronyms for Qfwfq that would be palatable to the committee to which the proposal must be sent. This is a translation of his manner of wording the question, which was of course as convoluted as possible.) Maja called Benji about the frame, and it would be ready “normally in half an hour.” She calls Hans and they go in his van once again to pick up the frame. I was in the studio about 11 am and stayed until 7 pm. A lighter mood than yesterday, though still the feeling of oppressiveness lingers. The autumn weather is cool, brisk and fresh. Various characters arrive and depart in the studio. Foton people trickle in and start making noise. Maja goes out again looking for lights to put in the installation. Next time she came in, it was with a huge bag of bubble wrap slung over her shoulders. After all these tasks she settles in to soldering the sensors at about 6 pm. Pix came in about 12:30, and fumbles about with his software issues.

Pix has been getting unsatisfactory results driving the muscles. Many of them move only a few centimetres. He declared that he had partially solved this problem by upping the drive signal, since the problem was, he thought, with the SMAs. He maintains a running commentary throughout the day, which is informative but hard to keep track of from moment to moment. Later in the afternoon he declared that there were major disparities between the drive values sent by different boards. In effect, if a set of muscles were calibrated using one board, they would all carry this discrepancy. This would mean that we are “fucked.” Ongoing jokes about drawing and quartering the Merlin company, soldering their naked skin, exposing them face on to 300 exploding muscles, and so forth.

Yesterday over lunch a meeting with me, Pix, Maja and Nik together drawing up several pages of semi-flow chart squiggles of what tasks remain to be done for Lyta, then ascribing personnel their respective tasks. The glass came in yesterday as well. Lina’s friends Aureaa and Mark [correction: Auriea and Michael!] came by momentarily, wished us well, left some pralines, then left the studio, realising how tense and busy we were. The Foton people came over to join us at lunch. I felt extremely glum and antisocial throughout.

Maja’s birthday is on 20 September. They hope to pack up on the 21st, leave for Wolfsburg on the 22nd.

Read Maja’s story she wrote for the HASTEN project. This is what she would have been up writing from 7 in the morning yesterday. She sent it to Maria, and the other partners in the proposed project were “scared off” by it, but the proposal doesn’t have a chance anyway, she says.

Maja suggests this morning that I come to Wolfsburg with them, since my level of involvement in the project has increased greatly. At first I refused, saying I had too much to do and that I wanted a break. “There are sure to be other installations that I can go to,” I say. But Maja replies, “Probably not for a long time.” But on second thoughts, I accepted. Bois said that I had to come, since it made no sense just to see the “nasty” part of the project so far and miss out on the “good” part when it gets installed. More heavy work today, angle grinding, lifting and positioning the frames, the glass, and the plexiglass. Nik spends the day alternately working on his Qfwfq proposal in the computer room, pumping the drain pipes, and sporadically helping and making comments about Lyta.

Maja mentions the October general meeting briefly, how this one will be done differently from the others. In previous meetings everyone said what they wanted to do and the projects would try to incorporate at least some parts of people’s interests. This time Maja thinks it might be best simply to present the possibilities and see if people become excited by one or another proposition.

Pix alternately sits for long hours in front of the laptop, sometimes wanders with it over to Lyta and holds his calibration plank against the caps for extended periods. He says he has done most of the laborious work in his programming and now it has come to more refined matters which require greater care and thought. He has been idly trying to come up with a solution to the problem of calibrating the muscles, and is getting a little desperate.

Long discussions in Dutch between Maja and Bois regarding arrangements for the next week. Only one frame was completed today, before Bois left to go home for an early start at his work tomorrow. Maja has to spend more time negotiating, cajoling, and “bossing” to get anything arranged. He will probably come on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete the second frame and all that it entails: attaching the glass, the plexiglass, arranging the air pressure system, etc.

Though Maja was disappointed, I thought that a lot of progress had been made by the end of this Sunday. Maja herself has been soldering the sensors in a seemingly endless production line. By yesterday afternoon I had all the muscles calibrated and the last two functional draws installed with pipes, wiring, and springs. (How did I guess that I would be helping with Bois’s tasks immediately after I had completed all of my own “official,” prescribed jobs?!) The other somewhat remarkable thing is that the compressor was running over Saturday almost continuously, we had many other electrical appliances on as always, and Bois was furiously welding and angle grinding, but the power fuses didn’t blow. Nor did the muscles, and the ones in the cabinet have now endured many hours’ testing over the last night and today without bursting. People were even leaning against the wall last night getting back massages.

The night before last, the group went up to the top floor where there was some kind of installation involving punching bags. They injured their fists punching while they imagined effigies of the Merlin staff and furiously pounded their faces.

Another beautiful day today. Some kind of subtle aromatic scent permeated the air. It was a car-free day today, and the feeling on the streets was amazing, everyone out on bicycles and walking in the middle of the road: the absence of heavy noise and pollution is something I have never experienced in a city before. The last evening, in between going to and fro between the apartment and the studio, I stole away for a walk through the Brussels streets under the vastness of the full moon.

Yet returning to the studio at 9.30 pm, more heavy work awaited, lifting, hack-sawing, while Bois welded all night and the loud African church continued to function up to about 1 am, with lots of Congolese passing and waiting on the balcony and watching us. It was the same this afternoon as well. Jokes in the studio regarding the Bible, the music, etc. We left the studio after 2.30 am and Bois stayed over at Nik and Maja’s apartment. It is somehow reminiscent of the last time Bois stayed over: a very late night at the studio doing endless welding. Most of the afternoon they listened to their annoying music. Bois asked me once, “is this your kind of music?” and I emphatically said it was not. “Idiots,” he said. “It’s just noise.”

The glass on the sides and the plexiglass on the front don’t work well together. “Who is the designer of this project,” asks Bois. Maja: “Good question - everyone and no one.”

Pix has set up a PD patch that works with two values of the muscles. After Todor left, he felt he could go all out and program entirely in C, leaving behind PD. But in “a bit of a blow to the ego” he’s had to stoop again to using PE, possibly a new version that can display graphs of the activity.

Only briefly in the studio today; it was such a fine day. I remembered only at about 11 am that they needed the glass lifted off the frame, and the frames lifted outside for Nik to paint.

Nik has been putting the finishing touches to the Qfwfq proposal. A phone call from Vali who read through the latest version Nik sent her this morning. Maja is cutting out the membrane and attaching it to the inner membrane frame. I ask if there’s anything else that needs to be done after the lifting, and she says “You want to disappear. Disappear! There’s a lot of other tasks, I can’t remember them right now, so just disappear.” The date for our departure has been more or less agreed to be Thursday night. Maja, Nik, and Lina will go in the first wave, in the van, since there is space for only three people. Me, Pix and Bois will come a day later in Bois’s car. Bois will be coming tomorrow and Wednesday to complete work on the second cabinet and frame.

While moving frames talked with Nik about the Qfwfq project. He is sending the proposal to the other partners, in Portugal and France. They don’t necessarily need to make comments or emendations since this proposal has been written before and is only the preliminary proposal. Any disagreements between the partners can be worked out later; they merely need to approve. Nik thinks the project is long enough to be completed in time, and exciting enough so that people won’t lose interest during the three years they would be working on it.

Nik has been communicating to Merlin in very curt emails. Maja thinks this is good because whenever she sent one of her long emails it always “scared them off,” so she no longer wants to write or phone them.

11:29

Someone from Merlin (was it Mark?) called last night when I was not present at the studio. Nik’s account was that they had “perhaps” finally understood the severity of the situation, that no one would get paid if the muscles didn’t arrive on time and the installation was late, and furthermore FoAM would be liable for damages. However, later I hear that Merlin are blaming FoAM for up to 90 per cent of the failures because FoAM has not handled the muscles with sufficient care. Nik suggested that someone from Merlin come to Brussels after FoAM has finished the installation in Wolfsburg, to discuss matters in person. At lunch today Hans and Peter join us, and debates continue regarding the management of FoAM’s legal position vis-à-vis Merlin. Peter suggests sending a registered letter in reply to Merlin’s invoice which will hold FoAM in good legal stead, but everyone agrees that if and when this is sent “shit will really hit the fan.” Debates regarding the payment or non-payment of the invoice in view that Merlin have not delivered the agreed upon amount of muscles. Bois suggests sending €5-10. Bois jokes sarcastically again that reasons for delays were due to “the bosses going on holiday,” further aggravating Maja, who in any case can’t hide that she is at her wit’s end.

Maja’s birthday today; I come into the studio as they are cutting her birthday cake and having a very small “party” with Cocky and her partner, who came yesterday and stayed the night at Nik and Maja’s apartment. Maja has been out most of today arranging various matters to do with transporting the installation.

I have been helping Bois again with the second cabinet: more welding, lifting, hack-sawing in what feels like an eternal nightmare. Bois has been taking so many days off work for the sake of this “stupid project” that he wonders why he’s still in the company. He also has so many things yet to do renovating his new house in Antwerp. He expects that we will be here later than 2 am tonight, and for tomorrow he mentions the issue of the cables and how they will be attached to the frame. He hopes to leave by 5 or 6 tomorrow, because he needs just a bit of quiet time.

Another box of muscles arrives today; there should be 72, but this still doesn’t change the fact that Merlin have not delivered the agreed upon quantity. Debating at lunch what this quantity constitutes, what payments should be made when for what quantity. Was it 300 or 600 muscles that was the agreed amount to be received before FoAM would pay the invoice? (I write this in the studio half-dead and in-between the endless labour. There is no chance to make these notes coherent.) Susanne (Peter’s partner, apparently from New Zealand) says that there should be a “behind the scenes,” a “making of Lyta.” They get onto the topic of the TV crew that are meant to be following their installation at Wolfsburg, and Pix says that “we’ve really got to get our lines sorted out - they’re going to want to interview us, after all!”

Pix has been playing with a piece of software that calculates the salary owed and the number of personnel required based on the number of lines of code written. He mentions the sum of $56,000 for the amount of work he has put into the programming of Lyta so far. Last night Maja mentioned that she has discovered where Pix goes when he has occasionally disappeared over the past few days. He goes into the sound studio where it’s quiet, to get some rest.

Cocky and her partner [Theun - I just discovered from Pix how his name was spelt [Monday, 3 October 2005]] arrived at the apartment with Nik and Maja at 12 pm last night. I could at last discover some information about the branch of FoAM located in the Netherlands, what Maja had jokingly referred to when she described FoAM as a “multinational corporation.” Cocky says that FoAM in the Netherlands gradually grew smaller, it was hard to keep people together. But she and Theun are persisting on a part-time basis, to set up projects. Sometimes they do it under FoAM’s name, sometimes under their own. They must both work outside of their FoAM doings to support themselves, unlike here in Belgium. She says that it is good to have the connection between the two organisations. But I still didn’t get a clear picture of the precise relationship between the two.

19:04

Pix has hit an impasse with his programming; he had everything working perfectly just before; but he’s changed “so much” of the architecture and now nothing’s working. He has a splitting headache and can’t go into the sound studio for a rest, because the Foton people are in there recording.

An early night; left the studio at 1 am. Maja had “collapsed,” Pix had fallen asleep on the bean bags and was snoring loudly, Bois and I continued to fit the glass to the cabinet.

12:34

Yesterday: A gruelling day. Everyone becomes involved in the final packing, with Hans and Peter called over to lift the cabinets into the truck with Nik and I. The studio looks very empty without the massive metal boxes of Lyta standing in the middle, even though piles of junk are still strewn in all the corners and under the tables. Nik, Maja, and Lina were planning to leave in the truck at about 8 pm, but packing itself didn’t stop until 12. Predictably, everything takes longer than expected. Nik spends all evening in the truck packing. He tells the others to put everything in boxes and organise what to take, and he will just “pack them up in the truck.”

They decide at the last minute to leave at 4 am. Nik and Maja go home to the apartment to get a short sleep before departing. Lina leaves for her apartment with Hans, who presumably is driving her home, and rushed decisions are made as to where to pick her up on the way out of Brussels. Pix stays on in the studio to concentrate at last on some programming. He was hoping to spend the whole day testing his software in action, but got perhaps two hours to drive a full wall of muscles in the end. He was saying that he would have about one day to program the interaction: what the whole installation was meant to be about, the rest being “mere details of implementation.” Most of us are exhausted and irritable.

At about 10 pm, Maja receives a call from Todd. Something has happened and the museum’s compressors no longer work. They will try to hire a compressor especially for FoAM’s installation.

The Foton people are setting up some kind of DJ rig in the studio while we pack. I don’t know what this is for, and dread that they will start playing some of their music then and there. Maja makes dinner again, and while we are eating receives a call from Bois. He gives her last minute advice on driving to Wolfsburg in the truck. Maja replies “yes Papa!” Bois apparently says he’s done so much work on the installation he would hate to see it smashed on the way to Wolfsburg.

Pix and I are to go to Antwerp today by train to be picked up by Bois and his partner, who aim to reach Wolfsburg by 12 in the night. Bois doesn’t want to drive, he will be working all day, so his partner is coming with. Over the last few days Pix has been wondering when in the last minute the group will realise that the installation is impossible, despite the fact that the very last minute is now and they are going ahead with it. He has voiced concern more than once about getting our story straight for the Austrian TV crew that will be following the installation on site and probably interviewing us.

The day before yesterday, Wednesday 21 September, Bois was in the studio all day working on what was not completed the night before; welding, fitting the locks, and other tasks. Vali and Doug come to the studio at 8 pm with their baby; they say they were coming “no matter what,” and Maja said she had forgot to tell them not to come since things were too busy. Nik and Maja stop to talk to them, while I help Bois with some very loud drilling. Whereupon Bois decides to leave me with the rest of the work and go home. Later, Maja says she thought he left because she stopped work herself for a moment to talk to Vali and Doug. Nik leaves with Vali and Doug and is away for hours, saying when he gets back that he was having a quick drink with them (Nik was meant to be a placeholder for Maja, celebrating her birthday with Vali and Doug on her behalf, and was meant to be gone for only 15 minutes, according to Maja).

Amidst Bois’s recalcitrant exeunt and Doug and Vali’s farewell and extended best wishes for success, Lina makes an appearance after her three weeks’ holiday, looking absurdly refreshed and healthy, a different person from when she left. I feel regret on her behalf that she must return here and become embroiled once more in the burdens and strains that seem to hang over our studio like a dark cloud.

The task of drilling the plexiglass, drilling the holes in the front of the frame, and fitting rivets into them, is left to me. I have seen Bois do this once before and hardly know what I’m doing, which annoys me. At first no one really seems to offer any advice or help; gradually Lina becomes more involved with helping me, and eventually Maja offers some explicit directions and conveys some of the information she gleaned from Bois regarding this part of the work before he left. We end this day at 1 am.

14:57

Pix mentions that Maja said to him that she wonders how much this Lyta project has damaged FoAM’s relations with its collaborators. He says that it’s only through “incredible altruism” that anyone remains with FoAM to work on this project. Yes people have left, but any sane person would. He knows they’ve got a lot on their backs but that’s no excuse for them not to be aware in the back of their minds the position and imposition in which they place the others working for them. He says he would feel much better if Nik or Maja were to at least offer their thanks and apologies that he was really stepping out of his way for them. As it is, they seem incapable of doing this right now, he observes. Furthermore, it was their responsibility to cancel the project if it seemed that it was going badly. Nevertheless, even Pix confesses to being excited by the “journey” of Lyta, the more so the more others say how impossible the project will be to do.

13:18

I am so very unsuited to this task, to this “field.” Always I think that someone else could do this job, in these circumstances, so much better than myself. However, be that as it may, this is where I find myself, this is where I got myself, so I must make use of what is before me as best I can. As long as I remember that afterwards, when this is over, I shall probably end up doing something entirely different; and as long as I don’t try to portray myself as anything other. For whatever reason I have needed to go through with this, though it is often very awkward and uncomfortable, and I long for the sense of schizophrenic division to be over.

Only in the studio briefly today, beginning the search for apartments in earnest. But always the sense that I should be in there, even if I am wasting my time and twiddling my thumbs and feeling utter despair. I wander the wet, cavernous and overcast streets thinking dismally of my standing with FoAM, with the studio, and with this project.

Nik and Maja were apparently catching up on email and other administrative work; I feel I am intruding; this wretched schizophrenic feeling simultaneously of intrusion and of not participating as fully as I am expected.

Maja mentions briefly that Peter and Susanne are performing at Nadine tonight, and wonders if I’d like to come, at which I say, “maybe … not.” I should, I know, have gone, for professional reasons if none other. (This explains why Peter was mentioned as being in rehearsal yesterday; and why he and Susanne had set up their sound equipment in the studio as we were leaving for Wolfsburg. These little occurrences are never explained to me directly, I glean their import from hints and overheard conversations, this is my main mode of finding out what’s happening at any one time. I have always considered this a defect in my approach, but instead it could be seen as a concomitant vicissitude of it, or even better, a kind of guessing game that makes things more interesting: for if everything were explicitly laid out for me from the outset, what would be the purpose of entering the field?) But there is the “Microfoton” party tomorrow, which I must go to for at least an hour or so. When I came in today piles of old armchairs and sofas were stacked on the ground floor under the balcony; Hans went to some secondhand store and bought all of them, at €2.50 a piece, and mentioned that they had to get rid of them all afterwards so if I was interested… Which I am, in fact, due to the apartment hunting.

Murmurs regarding the AGM; Maja saying this time it would be “much more formal” than any of the others; Nik correcting her, saying, “well, a bit more formal.” There will be an agenda and presentations. People have been emailed an invitation to participate based on their significant and “long-term” commitment to and interest in FoAM’s activities. Lina mentions Nat Muller, but Maja says that Nat is no longer considered as having a long-term interest. (Recall the story of Nat that Maja and Nik told me last year when they were in Adelaide, when they came to a dinner at which Nat was and were given the cold shoulder…) The Foton guys are invited but Lina cautions that they probably won’t come since other things will crop up for them at the last minute. Further murmurs regarding the budgetary assessment for the coming two years; murmurs from Maja: “but I’m not at all sure we are going to be here in two years…” Maja laughs about it being FoAM’s “5th anniversary,” and therefore the importance of this AGM.

Lina mentions that Pix just emailed her and said that he would probably have “almost nothing” ready by 9 October, when they are supposed to be doing their “mini-TRG” event, Sonokids.

20:21

[Last weekend, Wolfsburg]

Neither Pix nor I had enough sleep the night before our departure on Friday afternoon, therefore we were fairly worn out even before the long journey began. Maja phoned to say they had arrived in one piece, bolted Lyta to the floor of the museum, and had lunch, but nothing more. Pix and I hung around the studio for most of the afternoon; I went back to the apartment briefly. At about 6.30 pm Pix tried calling Bois, but Bois hung up on him. Just as we decided to have a pizza while waiting, Bois called me, saying that he was in heavy traffic but could be at the train station in about an hour. Pix was annoyed that we were summoned at the last minute to get on a train that we barely had time to reach the station to catch. He had done something to his ankles and was limping whenever we had to walk anywhere. We set off on the train to Antwerp as the evening gloom was deepening, and arrived in the dark.

I called Bois again from the Antwerp station, he would be there to pick us up in about ten minutes; we wondered if we would be heading straight out or if we would pause for a while beforehand. It turned out we were setting off directly from the train station. When we got in the car Maja’s voice was speaking in stertorous tones over the car’s speaker system from a mounted mobile phone, giving Bois’s partner directions on how to get to Wolfsburg, which she was writing down intently. Pix and I exchanged despairing glances when we heard that the CD Bois was using for GPS navigation didn’t reach as far as Germany, and no one had any idea how exactly to get to Wolfsburg, nor how long it would take. Thus began our irksome overnight drive, along endless anonymous European highways under infinite ranks of orange streetlights, signs indicating turnoffs to strange, generic European cities flashing past in the dead fluorescent night. Several times we stopped at unknown and bleak locations, roadside pitstops with nothing but concrete bunkers of toilets lit in cold garish light, trucks howling past on the nearby autobahn. After one such stop, Bois had got onto the subject of what I was doing here, if it was difficult to get a visa, and so forth. I mentioned how Nik married Maja to get European residency, and neither Bois nor Sylvie said a word for a time; they had never been told that Maja was married to Nik. Then I realised I’d let slip something that was probably considered confidential by Nik and Maja in relation to Bois.

(Bois’s mentions of his own past, his joining the army for a period, that he went to an alternative school, etc.)

We arrived in Wolfsburg at 3 am. There was confusion over how the accommodation was being arranged and paid for. Apparently Maja hadn’t debited the FoAM card prior to our stay; Pix and I didn’t know whether we should check out the next morning or stay at this hotel for two days, the same time Bois and Sylvie were to be here. I said I wouldn’t be getting up as early as everyone else but Bois mocked me and said I’m not here for pleasure, I’m one of the workers now, and even though there would be assistants at the museum, he didn’t want them “because they were German.” Pix was incredulous that they were charging €15 for breakfast; it was the only hotel he’s ever stayed in that charges so much for breakfast.

I set off an hour after Pix checked out, directed by the hotel receptionist to the train station, which was next to the Phaeno museum construction. The fresh air compared to Brussels, the clean and leafy streets; it was a sunny Autumn day. The museum was easy to find, I had only to walk in a straight line from the hotel down a central street and shopping mall and it was in front of me. A “futuristic” concrete construction, it was raised off the ground by asymmetrical pillars, appearing to have been designed with the idea of a ship in mind, an “ark” for science and technology, with its porthole-like windows and its entire shape bearing a passing semblance to a ship’s hull. None of FoAM are very impressed with it; Nik suggests that it is an attempt at high modernism because it tries exactly to mirror the abstract conception of the architect without concession to the qualities and contingencies of mere physical matter. He jokes that it looks like it has come straight out of a CAD program. It was still very much under construction. Later I heard that the entire building had started sinking because the builders had poured the wrong kind of concrete for its foundations. They had to excavate all of the wrong concrete from underneath, holding up the building during this process with a complex of supports and bolsters. I found my way to a back entrance and sometime afterwards Nik finally found me; I was led up into the innards of the building where a security guard gave me a “Besucher” badge.

A number of exhibits were already in operation, including a mechanism attached to the side of a wall which expanded and contracted various parts of a yellow chair, and a whirling piece of rope stretched from floor to ceiling that oscilated rapidly with multicoloured lights shining on it. Most of the other exhibits were covered in plastic, literally under wraps and waiting to be unveiled when the museum had its official opening. The FoAM team were preoccupied with discussions regarding Lyta’s assemblage. Several builders were working nearby; security guards periodically shuffled past; a few other people, evidently Phaeno staff, came and went, sometimes standing around and just watching us work. It seemed that nothing had been done since yesterday but bolting the frames to the floor. The cabinets were about 100 metres apart, positioned next to a wavy embankment that rose to another level of the museum’s plan. The interior was dominated by glass and concrete that appeared to have been laminated with a plastic surfacing material. It emphasised curves, asymmetrical levels and divisions of space, dune and spiral shapes. Generally I had the impression, as I often do in museum spaces old and new, that the space was marred by the chunky exhibits and would be best experienced empty. The mechanical, gadget-like and gimmicky appearance of the exhibits clashed with the effort at a sleek, futuristic spaceship interior look. However, as far as the gadgets went, I got the impression that Lyta fit in perfectly in conception and design with the others.

Early on, Pix left the floor to start tinkering with the software in an office on the ground level. A makeshift air supply was piped in from a compressor located somewhere in the depths of the building, far away from where we were installing. A lot of work still had to be done. Bois and I fitted the glass, only to realise that one side was matt, the other shiny. Before this no one had checked about this because the protective plastic coating had never been removed. Chris, who had been allocated to help FoAM in Lyta’s assemblage, said that it would be best to have the smooth side facing outwards, because it would be easier to clean. Most of us thought, however, that the matt side was more aesthetically pleasing. There was much discussion about this and finally Chris called in Malcolm, who had the final word in these matters. Malcolm affirmed that the smooth side was easier to clean, but the final decision would rest with FoAM as an aesthetic matter. The issue was compounded with a consideration of the plexiglass front, with which everyone expressed displeasure. An American man appeared with a camera, talked to everyone loudly, and started taking pictures of FoAM working. I mistook him for a photographer associated with the TV crew that were supposed to have been following FoAM’s installation, but it turned out that he was Joe Ansel himself, the project director of the whole operation. It was him that actually commissioned FoAM to do the installation. I asked how he found out about them and he said it wasn’t very hard; there was Ars Electronica, and he could just look them up on the internet. He said that there’s so much talk about innovation these days, but no one is actually prepared to have the guts to take a risk and sponsor innovation. He considered that he was doing just this with FoAM’s Lyta project. Everyone wants something new and innovative but of course, he said, new and innovative things have never been done before and therefore they might not work, there’s a risk involved. Most of the exhibits at the museum were “solid,” meaning that they were well-established pieces by well-established makers; they would work, and were an assured investment. He wanted to allow for at least one potentially risky but innovative project in his budget, and in this case it was Lyta.

In conversation with the team he was saying that it looked professional, it was well-made, and so he was “happy already,” even though he hadn’t seen it actually operating. It turned out that it wasn’t a chain around FoAM’s neck, they hadn’t been bankrupted by it, and so everything was OK. All this was in marked contrast to the infamous rumours I’d heard about Joe beforehand; that he was a completely impossible person to work with in January. Now, Maja mentioned, he’d made a complete turnaround, he felt bad about the January incident. The contrast between Joe’s apparent casualness and lackadaisicalness and FoAM’s desperate struggle.

We broke for lunch then everyone worked until after 10 pm, the time the museum was to close for the night. It was at last in a nominally operational state, more so than ever beforehand, but everyone was in a bad mood, argumentative, irritable, and tired. Pix was angry at Nik for trying to take on a “manager’s role” and covering up how bad he was at this. Bois was about to go on strike again because I was sliding down the concrete embankment next to the installation while he had to work. It was first Nik’s idea to go sliding, since there seemed to be nothing for him to do and he probably wanted to relieve the glum atmosphere. “Really, if there’s something I can do just tell me,” he kept saying; Lina exclaimed, “Just go for a slide!” Bois almost threw his hands up and said “Right, he’s going sliding, why should I be working?” Sylvie spent most of the day lying on one of the couches by the west-facing windows, reading Harry Potter novels, or wandering and looking at the exhibits while Bois worked. As it got dark Pix returned from the office, and started running the muscles of one cabinet. Then the other cabinet was ready, and finally both were being driven together, at the last minute of our working day. As we left the museum everyone seemed to drift apart like atoms or motes of dust in an uncoordinated mess.

We had dinner at the same Turkish takeaway shop that we had lunch at. Maja had been feeling sick the whole time, she had a stomach ache and ate nothing. Lina missed dinner and went back to the apartment they had rented, saying that it was too late. The rest of us caught a taxi there right after dinner. Bois and Sylvie drove back to their hotel. Maja tried to agree upon a time when Bois would come in next morning, but it came to nothing; Bois was recalcitrant and would not give a definite answer. It concerned me also, since I would be catching a lift back with him. Earlier in the day, Maja mentioned that I had let slip that she and Nik were married. “What a tangled web we weave,” Nik observed.

Apparently on the final day (the day after I left with Bois and Sylvie back to Brussels) there was a moment of satisfaction for all the team, everyone was smiling and laughing and Pix had a big grin on his face and said that now he felt all his programming had been worthwhile after all, according to Maja.

17:53

[Yesterday:]

I was out looking at apartments yesterday afternoon; I came in very briefly after eating lunch (at Tree and Leaf!). The Foton people were preparing for their party; the old armchairs and couches had been placed along the footpath beside the canal, on both sides, and candles in large clay dishes had been rowed all along on either side of the canal footpaths. Lina was in the studio, asked after my apartment-hunting efforts. She was helping Hans with some fabric to be put up on the walls for the party; Hans had only four hours’ sleep the night before, and he had to be awake for the whole of the coming night. I was leaving just as Nik, Maja, and Bois came in. They were about to move the compressor out, and I stammered I had to go and look at an apartment now, I couldn’t help.

I returned to the studio later, after eating dinner. There was much activity. The candles were all lit along the canal. A van was parked on the other side of the canal, housing a projector that shone images on the (30-34 Koolmijnenkaai) building in which the party was taking place. More candles lined the sides of the entrance driveway. Not many sofas had been located in the parking space where the event was to be held; the DJ rig was set up under the overhanging platform, opposite the balconies that lead into the various studios and workplaces of the building complex. Green lights shone upwards on the whitewashed brick walls. A projector under the overhang was beaming images onto the wall behind the DJ rig, and to one side further bench space was made for the VJ artists, Nik, Maja, and another person who was doing the visuals for the second half of the evening. People were drilling and hoisting the cables above the ground and running them along the ceiling of the overhang to reach the various setups. Portable toilets had been placed close to the entrance, in the other section of the space of the parking area. According to Lina, this was the first time they had made use of the parking area for something like this. We both thought that it was a good space for a performance/party. No one else seemed to be in the other buildings; only once did I notice the curtains furtively parting behind one of the windows of the African church, opposite FoAM’s studio.

In the studio, Nik and Maja were in the computer room working on their VJ performance. Maja was holding accelerometers on her hands and Nik was tweaking a Max patch; both were looking intently at the unfolding blurs and smudges of colour on the monitor, commenting and trying to come to an aesthetically pleasing orchestration of them. I commented that the relationship between Maja’s movement and the visuals wasn’t obvious. Maja said that you have to “grow into them” and see how they unfold; Nik said that the movement has an effect on the characteristics of the sprites (how quaint that this is still the term used for the kind of graphic objects they are working with!) just being generated; they will carry the imprint of these characteristics throughout their evolution and decay. I ask how such subtleties will be noticed amid heavy techno music and the party atmosphere, and Maja declares that they will “just be wallpaper.” In the end it seemed that they hardly needed to have done any of this work, as the visuals ended up being projected at such low resolution.

In the main part of the studio, food was being prepared by friends of Foton enlisted to cater for the evening (whether paid or not I don’t know). A number of unknown and half-familiar faces of their “extended family.” Two children, and their mother, who appeared to be the main chef for the night. Jo showed me a chair, placed directly opposite the DJ rig, and said it was put there especially for me, as my “observation chair.”

I left to walk a bit round the city on the White Nights festival, to see what was happening. As usual, I couldn’t find anything specific, but I went into St Catherine’s church for a while and there was a peculiar convivial atmosphere in there. Elsewhere on the streets there were candles rowed along the footpaths, and armchairs in the open at various places. A duo were playing a piano that had been placed under a bus stop shelter at the termination of Dansaert street at the canal, outside the Walvis.

Everyone was sitting round the dinner table when I returned. They joked about the special chair I had for observing. Food was being dished out by the caterers for Foton and anyone else who happened to turn up. There were a few characters I’ve never seen before; one person came in saying “Ah, so here’s the centre from where it all comes!” As I sat outside listening to Jo’s music I felt again that I never wanted to end up as one of those “rave culture” social theorists.

Today, it is getting dark. Nik and Maja have been lurking in their room all day, hardly ever emerging. It is cold and sometimes rains outside. The ghostly forlornness of an apartment in sleep.

Yesterday night, a discussion with Nik and Maja about FoAM, the new media scene, their hopes and fears for the future. I asked them where they would like to be after two years.

Maja says that if they knew that, they wouldn’t be here in Brussels. it’s hard here because there are no like-minded organisations to form a partnership with for projects. But it would perhaps be no different anywhere else, though Nik says that they should make short visits to other places if they want to find that out for sure. At the same time, Maja feels that it would have to be somewhere very amazing to warrant the effort of starting from scratch in another place. Nik says that Belgium is interesting because it has no new media scenes such as in the Netherlands or Germany, or many other countries. I mention Holland: but what would be the point of going to the Netherlands, which is already so close. The Netherlands has better funding (but there is more competition for it), and has an established “new media” scene. Nik claims however that the groups there don’t like FoAM due to various differences between them; but they don’t recognise the good that FoAM could do for them. In Holland the mixed reality scene has become institutionalised, whereas FoAM wants expressly to avoid becoming an institution. But according to Nik the groups in the Netherlands are secretly unhappy about being institutions, and therefore might possibly be jealous of FoAM. Maja says that all these groups - in the Netherlands and everywhere else - mushroomed during the 90s and were dynamic and independent during this time, but then became institutionalised in the last several years and now “don’t know what to do next.” Maja mentions a big mailing list discussion that took place on this topic, with people writing pages and pages about possibilities, what could be done, and so forth.

Nik discusses the issue of sustainable collaboration with Maja, and how collaboration based on monetary incentives has turned out to be unsustainable. They mention a number of characters who will be here this December, I will get to meet them, including a woman who considers “everyone to be an instrument for her artistic projects” and spends her time trying to convince them that this is in fact what they are. She funded her own travel to come to FoAM and do some kind of project involving solar energy. This was in the context of Nik’s concern whether FoAM gets as much out of a collaborative venture as it puts in. Maja mentions the requirement (of the Flemish Ministry) that FoAM host residencies.

Nik mentions that his sister will be coming the next day. This morning Maja said they were all going to the Ardennes for a day tomorrow, and staying the night.

Lina had inflated a large white blob that is intended to be used in the Sonokids event this Saturday. I asked if I could jump on it and she said she expected me to ask that, but it needed to be inflated more. It felt strangely liberating to bounce around on what is effectively a massive air mattress in an unusual shape.

Pix turned up fairly early in the day; he had flown in and was “destroyed” from a party and socialising after already being entirely wasted from the Lyta experience. He went to sleep soon after arriving in the apartment, got up a few hours ago and had dinner with me, and has now gone back to sleep. This is in an effort, he says, to bring his daily routine into synchronisation with the kind of early morning working hours that he will have to do in preparation for Sonokids on location. He says that he and Lina were to go to the location and work on the installation over a period of successive mornings before the event, to work around some other people who would be making preparations in the afternoons in the same space. Lina seemed to think today, however, that they would be going on 6 October. She was wondering when Pix would show up in the studio.

Maja is busy emailing invitations for the workshops in December. I don’t know what Nik was up to behind his computer.

Maja left to go to the bank, but not this time to do any financial transactions: this was to visit the National Belgian Bank that had expressed interest in commissioning FoAM to do something for their offices. A little later the door chime sounded; a representative from the bank had come to FoAM to talk. Lina called Maja to return immediately, made coffee for the man and had to keep him occupied until Maja arrived. Maja had a longish discussion in Dutch with him that I didn’t try to listen to, and afterwards she said he was “overwhelmed” by the studio and FoAM’s projects, but constantly warned her that the bank was “conservative.” He asked if they could do screensavers. Apparently some kind of sound installation was proposed for a “really horrible” corridor with red carpet and marble pillars. But the representative had to suggest it to his superior, who himself had to take the idea to a committee for approval. Maja mentioned the Lyta budget and the bank representative said that they didn’t have that much for funding any installation FoAM may do. Apparently the bank has 1,800 artworks already, but everyone speculated that they simply bought paintings and such which would usually cost around €10-15,000 a piece. Then Maja gets a call and everyone bursts out laughing when in the course of what otherwise sounds like a perfectly serious conversation in Dutch she sprouts the phrases “fruity ferret” and “crunchy ferret.” The conversation was with regard to another big shipment of ferret paraphernalia from a specialist store in the Netherlands.

Yesterday was Nik’s birthday; him, Maja and Genevieve left for the French Ardennes yesterday midday to stay the night.

I searched for more apartments, went to the study group in Gent.

Pix is having problems getting the hardware to work for the upcoming Sonokids event. He had things working before, but when he tried using a long USB cable to connect the camera it didn’t work on his laptop. He has had to set up a whole separate PC box, a Shuttle, to work around the cable problem. Now he his solely preoccupied with trying to get the new setup to work. Lina has little to do, having already made the fabric to cover the blob and purchased the matting material to cover the floor surrounding it.

Pix has at last got it to work. “16 frames a second,” he mentions. He alternately bobs himself in front of the camera and clicks at the computers. He keeps muttering “Lyta all over again!”

Discussion with Pix regarding the entire FoAM approach, to Lyta, to collaboration, to communication.

Even though he felt a sense of excitement at times in the heat of Lyta’s production when from the outside it would have seemed they were all doing something pointless and painful to themselves, he can’t see what he got out of it in the end. Even if he didn’t get any financial reimbursement for the immense amount of unpaid work he’d done for the project, spending many all-nighters programming, coming to Brussels so often for so long while still paying rent for his flat in Berlin, he would like something - some recognition for his efforts and how much he has put himself out for FoAM. They can’t pay him, of course, they don’t have anything to pay him with. But if there is something - he can’t say exactly what it is he wants - some recognition, then the collaboration is still among friends and does not become a matter of “score keeping.” He says that if he asked directly for money, for how much he could expect to get paid, the working relationship immediately becomes one of score keeping, of how much I’m getting paid, how much they are getting paid, and how this compares. This changes the kind of relationship entirely. He mentions the vagueness of Nik and Maja when he asked them if there was any money they could pay him for his work. He asked before a long time ago, and they vaguely said there was some money; he asked later, when it was all crazy and the opportunity to cancel the project had basically passed, and they said there was none.

12:24

Nik, Maja, Lina, Peter, Hans, Vali, Pix, Cocky, Theun, Alkan

Maja:

Recapitulation of FoAM visions, past activities in terms of statistics and finances. What still needs to be done.

Proposal - for artistic funding, explain why technology is important; technology is changing our way of life and our artistic practice; FoAM choses to put itself in the centre of the changes in technologies and use, misuse, apply, and experiment.

Human-scale technological use; aesthetic use of technology; the way we want to do this - we have been saying this but not doing it - make a “playground” using technology for the public.

The experience within the organisation was really based on a work ethic where makers work and work until they collapse.

Perception on a human scale: synaesthetic, hearing, seeing, touching; dissolution of artificial boundaries between vision, hearing, etc. How we wanted to do this: an edge-habitat, term borrowed from biology and ecology; a coastline for example where new hybrid forms of life grow; art outside of the black box of artistic venues; promote activities on the edge of art and science disciplines so no one stays within just one discipline; integrated cross-disciplinary thing - collective artistic processes always with more than one person; working with open-source principles so no one can own ideas or techniques; another big rhetoric in the past five years: where people work only in teams in collaboration: this works when things go well but when things go badly everyone returns to the hierarchical ways of working.

Belgian new media: 49 per cent collapsed since their formation in the past five years. In Belgium FoAM started as the only mixed reality lab, now there are more and more; we focussed on the interaction between local artists and international artists, but we got mainly international artists; we want to be positioned between a scientific and an artistic institution where artists are cared for but where projects can reach into wider contexts.

International context: research on FoAM by others: collaborative approach; mixture of science and art; practice-based; many labs collapsed because they were mainly theorists and they lost anything to theorise about; but theory is important; one of the only organisations in the world that takes public participation so seriously that we make it integrally a part of the creative process; highly developed administrative apparatus.

We started out big, attending lots of conferences and international events; we got less money so we were unable to keep up with these activities, and began to be perceived as more and more closed off, hermetic, and weird; we haven’t published much, and our marketing strategy is non-existent; specifically a problem in Belgium where we are unknown; because of this there is not not the sufficient critical mass of people doing similar things; no “peer review” can take place with other Belgian organisations; also to do with us not actively searching for such people; biggest flaw, doing too much with not enough time to reflect. (Nik: this is also part of the marketing strategy.)

Our audience is becoming much more professionals, artists.

Statistics 2000-2005:

• 3 long-term projects:
• the T-series, three environments - TGarden, Txoom, TRG;
• Lyta (“a cancer of a project, not fitting in anywhere”);
• GrowWorld
• 15 yearly residencies
• No residencies in 2005 due to budget cuts
• 15 short-term programmes
• In the beginning, whatever came along if we liked it; later on, more structured
• “glue”
• 2003, the year we started to do less
• 10 lunchtime “bite-size” lectures
• people passing through Brussels, with food and drink
• 7 workshops
• 4 DVD or book publications, of which two still need to be finished;
• 17 articles in journals or conferences
• 2 newsletters
• one large website with an even larger library (the Libarynth)
• 126 public events
• worked with approx. 170 people, inclusive of workshop participants
• to do all this we wrote 44 funding applications, out of which 25 were successful (Was that good? Vali: Yes, that was excellent.); 20 commissions (e.g. Lyta)

As you can see: “TOO MUCH”

Pix: what was a residency, what was a workshop? how many of these have been documented?

Nik: Financial summary. Comparison of activities and resources.

Vali: Was there any time during these years when you felt you had more fun doing these things?

Maja: at one time we wanted to do other people’s productions, then we got fed up with that and wanted to do our own things again…

[ask Nik for financial summary; Maja for the PDF of 2001-5 projects]

People payments went up because of new regulations, therefore we have no budget for making things next year

Vali: publishing is actually marketing? Maja: It’s somewhere in between.

Maja: best project, TRG; worst project Lyta. Lyta put extreme stress on the organisation; why we went through with it, because we liked the idea of a distance-touch generator; also because we were contractually bound; it’s now installed, not entirely proud of it but it’s done; it went against our idea of collective creativity; decisions about technology and shape of things done by someone who left the project at a critical moment, after which everything became a patchwork; huge energy consumption of this thing, 500 litres of air, etc.; most of the materials were metal and hard things and none of us have any experience in industrial design; we know a huge amount about screws, glue, springs, the science of bonding [Pix]; in most of our propaganda we say we want to make things that grow and evolve on their own, here everything had to be constructed in every single detail; Pix: the physical world is just not ready for us! Cocky: a fridge!

Nik: non-disclosure agreement with Merlin - their misplaced idea of professionalism, the anti-Foam project: a benchmark for how bad a project is.

Vali: are you sure any other project didn’t get to this point?

Nik: combination so many little bits that went wrong.

Maja: we knew while we were working on it we weren’t very proud of it.

Pix: we were really working hierarchically and because of this we had no ability to change anything.

Vali: does this mean you won’t work on any commissions in the future?

Nik: no, we’ll still work on impossible projects, but just a particular type of impossible.

Maja: Ansel Inc. suggested working on another Lyta with six times the budget.

Nik: but it’s just hypothetical.

Maja: not going to say never again -

Nik: but there’s a lot of things we never should do again.

Maja: but with proper evaluation on what’s possible and not.

Groworld seedballs in Bristol; several events with the Foton guys; never enough time to prepare for them. Bigger things with Foton, the Microfoton performance, good because we actually had an audience; we had a very small audience for our own events.

Peter: you have to keep up events with a high frequency, otherwise people forget about you.

Maja: public events are so labour-intensive, that’s why it’s good for us to change focus.

Hans: is this structural?

Maja: yes

Although Lyta is finished and everyone is more relaxed, we still have three DVDs, two workshops, to do before the end of the year.

Nik: Proposal for a real-time 3D graphics workshop; possibly introductory, with a necessary programming component due to the nature of the software.

Maja: I have a slightly different idea of this: a more serious overview of programming for artists who want to get deeper into the tools they are using, then use Fluxus to investigate this.

Nik: who’s involved will have a significant influence on how it’s organised. [To Pix:] is it a completely stupid idea to teach people how to use Fluxus?

Pix: I like explaining things to people, especially when it’s very introductory; I quite like doing this; Nik’s good at all these whacky languages, I’m good at the sane programming languages, the boring real world.

Maja: TRG book: if it’s not done soon they will start taking funding away from us; Magda hasn’t sent her article to us, it’s not going to happen; she’s been out of communication.

Second DVD with Peter and Susanne.

Peter: Bent Object DVD: electronic music, live vocals, dance, sensor capture all in one. Susanne dancing and singing and at the same time recording herself through sensors on the body and manipulating real-time recordings, in coordination with the choreography that changes the sound. That is the first first phase, the the first system we have made. DVD: different parameters: components will take place in a different space to each other; visuals and audio the main thing; logical next step in Foton’s release policy; the CD medium is no longer a very promising one, we are expanding our vision, so it’s logical that if we release a product again it will be a DVD.

Nik: do the Bent Object DVD before the FoAM DVD? Schedules exactly the same but the DVDs get swapped around.

Maja: DVD closure of the first step, then they start working on the choreography and visuals.

Peter: next step integrate the sensor data on the DVD, but we’re not going to wait because we have enough materials to make a good DVD already.

Maja: 500 days of FoAM became 1000 days of FoAM!

[Little exhibition in Recyclart, arts centre underneath the station between Central Station and Midi, about light.]

Hans: making the centre more visible during the winter months; should be ready in November if we reduce the size.

Cocky: FoAM Holland: second event, costumes from Papua New Guinea; every mask or costume resembles someone who dies.

Neighbourhood in Amsterdam: free dinners to bring the cultures together; Moroccan guys playing but no Moroccan people at the dinner.

Sonokids: about 200 kids.

Lina: good to see how we can set up very quickly.

Pix: camera tracking from the ceiling; currently on the Locust website, 3 hours of kids bouncing around.

Adjournment

16:12

Maja:

Scavenging technologies - home electronics to NASA technology…

Technology gets used or subverted to get used as an artistic tool; more attention to the origins of these technologies and how we are using them in the cultural sphere; more strict rules about using environmental and health-damaging technologies.

Target of laboratory: ecology of small and big projects that inspire each other; mixed/hybrid reality art forms participatory; audience involvement; more involvement of public; we keep saying this but usually the public only get involved at the end; research more about the effects of these environments on the audience.

Hans: how are you going to find this audience?

Maja: for example work with neighbours, organisations doing social and artistic work; already talked to a few of these; “naive” users not used to this sort of stuff; on the other hand, work with artists, performers, for interesting feedback.

Hans: so it’s basically you who pick out people to participate in the design process?

Maja: but we will have open labs. More serious ethnographic research needs focus groups to come and come again and is a bit more structured.

Thematic focus: five broad themes within which to develop activities: mixed real - mixing between every day and digital reality; meta-real - the effects of mixed realty worlds on consciousness and perception; multi-real: meaningful in public spaces; micro-real: new materials, blur between media and material; real - “life” - moments of pure experience without cultural baggage and expectations.

Nik: different words for the same thing to keep us on our toes!

Maja: core activities: research with and within creative practices; make room for concentrated and supervised research; supervision because a lot of artistic organisations say they are doing research but it’s in fact just fiddling; there are research processes that are valid but must be supervised and followed out; compared to scientific research where you don’t necessarily need a finished product; successful experiments into full-blown productions over the years; gap between research and public becomes a bit smaller; still keep layered programming from long term to mid-term; long term 3-5 years.

Pix: each of the T-series was just another step, but we completely changed things except for our folk-understandings of these projects. Guided by lots of things not one thing; we’re colouring something to make it approachable by the audience.

Maja: the steps would be smaller, each would involve production.

Pix: media and aesthetics are always set up at the end; two solutions get things done sooner or work in the dark somewhat.

Hans: does this mean that you will do no public events or on the side? Why did you do 126 public events: because you liked them, for the money, because you had to?

Pix: the scale would be very different. More like open labs - really important distinction between the kinds of public events.

Maja: intermediary smaller things like the blob thing could be tested in an open lab and slowly you move from research into production.

Pix: it would really suck if we were hidden away for two years but if you were constantly opening to people.

Maja: most museums and galleries want finished productions; no matter how much they say they are interested in open processes they really want a finished production; package something, hide stuff under the table and look a shiny product.

Nik: a question of context: galleries vs. the idea of an open lab.

Hans: if you did this here it is your agenda and you’re completely in control; if you go elsewhere they will have their agenda.

Pix: if I had more time to work on Sonokids as it was set up it would be heaven. From a development point of view if it’s already set up it’s so much fun to work on.

Pix: if we don’t do any public events we may as well do nothing at all. Because art for artists sucks.

Vali: always danger of not having the pressure: you might end up like other artistic groups that do lots of research but nothing else.

Maja: but our deadlines have been so tight that we haven’t had time to reflect.

Open labs; research presentations.

Pix: who is the audience?

Where I worked before we had morning meetings to get everyone up to speed.

Hans: a difficult exercise: you’re talking about different dimensions of reality; people are involved; but then the need and the urge to do research where you close yourself off from others.

Maja: I’m not saying research has to be literature; there’s times when research will be practical; therefore we need different research methodologies more suited to mixed reality, but I’m not quite sure how.

Open labs, research presentations, bite-size lectures - these really for the public public - these we wanted to do with Foton so that we somehow combine it.

Mid-term: big question mark - supposed to be residencies; but as we got half the money we might cut this out and do mid-term things ourselves unless we are really sure there are people who are really refreshing and who we want to invite.

Hans: residencies and open labs overlap?

Maja: residencies usually last for about three months and this needs to be facilitated; we don’t have staff to do this; artists expected FoAM to become in service of their residency. The whole thing was really draining.

Lina: but if it was someone we really really know - like Honor for instance -

Cocky: scanned through!

Hans: all these people sleep and live at your place…

Nik: because it takes so much effort we would prefer to do other things first.

Peter: to me it sounds like you would like to do it but you don’t want to do it at the same time, so why keep a bit of money for it.

Maja: because it could be really refreshing, it’s nice.

Peter: is the energy you put into it worth what you get out of it?

Maja: not until now.

Pix: There could be a holy grail residency that could work, what defines FoAM most is that a certain kind of person that fits with FoAM.

Peter: in between the lines I hear “it could be cool but it’s too much work.”

Maja: it’s also funding.

Nik: residencies good because it’s well established but also ambiguous.

Hans: having people live with you - I would find it unbearable…

Peter: but it’s hard to just give people the key and tell them to work it out, but also hard to help them with everything…

Maja: lots of “collaborators” just want technicians. The worst example of this was Anna, saying she was working the same way we were, she could do her own research and just wanted to discuss things; a month later she came to Maja and said “Maja, people just don’t have time for me.”

Cocky: residencies without technicians!

Maja: short term: professional development; consultancy; as a service of the Werkplaats.

Maja: regarding research: access to research material. Research reports.

Nik: People often saw it more as an acquittal.

Pix: open source, documentation, where and how can we release our research and software…

Slam the breaks on by requiring meta-documentation…

Nik: the Libarynth could be a good compromise between formal documentation and a mess…

Maja: but with other forms of research we have to work out how to do it, make it available, document it, etc.

Hans: internal lectures?

Maja: that’s these presentations.

By documenting in some form - it doesn’t have to be written - it encourages reflection on what’s been done.

Vali: what you’re going to be documenting - for example researching on the process - the design process, the creative process, the documentation process. Getting an expert in…

Maja: the artistic community could benefit from such research…

Proposal for one workshop per year, due to funding. Second year proposal for a workshop with Symbiotica…

Maja: I don’t want to overcommit to the Flemish government who have cut our funding in half…

Pix: what are the things in the proposal that you want to do and what is necessary to get funding?

Peter: you got half the money, so you’re doing half the projects. What you take out depends on the other things that will be taken out.

Maja: core activities of the Werkplaats then we have additional activities (that we want to do!).

Newsletters: now one per year - not really a newsletter!

One catalog of activities on DVD in two years; whatever documentation we can find - more media, pictures.

On-site and online library: now only online - the Libarynth.

International work, social-artistic work - taken out.

Nik: if we can do enough stuff to keep them convinced it might be possible to keep going until 2008…

Pix: try and convince them to give you the full amount next year - should you be slightly tactical about it so that next year they’ll give you more funding…

Maja: specific niche that no one else can do. Only Constant is doing research but they focus on net art, gender and copyright; therefore it’s better to focus on research rather than residency to avoid the overlap with other organisations.

On the other hand in two years they said they will cut a huge number of these places…

Peter: basically a survival of the fittest…

Hans: from their point of view it is a good idea.

Nik: I think they have a terminal incapacity to make decisions.

Peter: I don’t think so. They are just looking at things from a practical economic viewpoint: the importance they give to accounting and numbers; who stays up, who goes down; those who stand up can be worked with, something constructive from their point of view; they keep the game going, they keep the ball rolling.

Maja: Their rhetoric this year: a few organisations will get more money, others are out.

Peter: they will never reach your level of understanding.

Maja: projects - are they actually projects? - OK initiatives, whatever you want to call them!

Two broad categories; if you want others you have to suggest them now: growWorld, focussing on life, growing, the creative processes, looking at growing evolving things. Within this three strands: sym, bio, sis.

Nik: Qfwfq - try to allow us to do everything we’ve wanted to do with hardware and software up to now. What we’ve been doing already on the sides but not in any formal or structured way. If we don’t get it funded we can still work on it on the side.

Hans: methodologies or tools?

Nik: more about developing different tools. In the proposal more like taking all these things and developing them in an integrated environment…

Hans: a multimedia Esperanto?

€1.5 million; whether or not funded it’s still part of FoAM’s charter.

Pix: soft and hard Qfwfq. If there’s not this huge save-the-world Qfwfq. I’m more involved in the soft Qfwfq.

Vali: HASTEN project: many partners; not a huge amount of money if we get it because it has to be divided; using storytelling as a way of enhancing a visit to a museum.

FoAM will focus on the storytelling and mixed reality.

Total budget around €200,000.

Maja: distinction between experience of applying for artistic and scientific funding.

Request for proposals.

Maja’s interests: ways to make technology actually generative and growing. Reading, researching, alchemy, molecular cooking.

Pix: interests in low power computing - perhaps fits with the “sys” dimension of groWorld.

Also, counter-surveillance.

Maja has a list of research projects that fit with the two themes; Pix and Cocky make suggestions to which Maja responds that “surprisingly enough” she had listed just such a project idea.

Psychoactive research, jokes about using psychedelics for making TRG…

Hans: interest in setting up a mixed reality world inside the FoAM studio; interest in the fun of having the public come in; helping with FoAM’s activities.

Public productions take so much time and energy, so you don’t have time to do your own stuff, not the only reason, but also financial reasons…

Maja: If we offered you money would it help you do more of this?

Peter: we already have six events lined up for next year, of which four are certain; plus Microfotons, which don’t make any money.

Regroup with everyone you know, close your ranks, be very cautious who you let in; a sign of the times and maybe in five years’ time it will change…

Maja: yes, it’s the same with us…

Peter: yes it’s more logical to be egotistical…

Peter: I don’t think it’s egotistical, it’s the only way to go further - by regrouping and make a solid base, and then you can reach out…

Maja: yes we are repeating things and losing imagination without consolidating our ground, without researching…

But the small distinction between Foton and FoAM is that FoAM’s members are financially dependent on the organisation.

Distance within the organisation, need to break behaviour patterns.

Hans: does all this enhancing of technology really help people or is it just some kind of make-believe? A duality in me, I’ve always been fascinated with technology but also hesitant… On the one hand I think your projects are useful, on the other I don’t think so.

Cocky: I agree entirely…

Pix: it comes up within FoAM itself; how much does it add to the experience?

Discussion of Sonokids and Pix’s programming.

Maja: the only reason I use technology is when something is impossible to do in the real world. I would like to see some of these imaginary worlds being made real.

Nik: how technology is embedded in the popular imagination… how to change this imaginary.

Hans: technology killing imagination; When technology is applied it somehow kills the imagination… the original idea gets strangled… it is very difficult to make a parallel world where you can really think “I’m in a dream.”

Pix: cultivate wonder in the mundane… teaching someone to become a kid again…

Nik: we don’t have a culture that can cope with leisure.

Hans: you guys are in the middle of things but you’re worse than the others…

Peter: if you guys set up a rubber toy factory you’d be just as frantic about that… technology and the way it’s marketed are two different things. Marketing is the capitalist system…

Maja: as artists you want to engage with what is happening around you… and for better or worse technology is all around us now…

20:54

[Continued based on memory after my laptop batteries ran out…]

Hans elaborated on his divided opinion regarding technology and the value of FoAM’s projects. He said he saw FoAM as believing in the capacity of technology to “change the world,” but in fact that it was just something they used among themselves to make themselves happy; a little bubble. This was not a bad thing, he just thought they should acknowledge that they were playing round with things that interested them rather than doing anything for the larger scale of things. For example, an installation might make just one kid happy somewhere, while look at how many children are born every day in the most miserable circumstances. (Cf. Nik’s comment on the train the other day; see the appropriate entry.)

Pix replied that they weren’t trying to change the world; they were just doing their thing like everyone else and something from that activity might emerge that has an effect on something wider. He refers to himself as “a technician looking over the shoulder of art.”

Maja mentioned an experience where a woman came up to her after one of her performances in tears and thanked her; this gave Maja a reason to “live for another day” and continue what she was doing. In reply to Hans’s mention of impoverished children she noted that it was on FoAM’s agenda to try and reach these kinds of people and bring them something they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, but somehow without appearing as bringing something “better” from the “West.”

Discussion of the budget allocation. Each member of FoAM gets a €5,000 fund by default for research of their choice. Work done by Nik and Maja which previously went unpaid will now be allocated a budget. People can decide whether they want to take some of this work on themselves over the next few months, or leave it to Nik and Maja, who would therefore take all of the funds allocated to the different tasks.

Foton were invited to do some of this work since Maja knew they were short on money and they would also be present in the studio, unlike Pix who would be in Germany so it would be practically hard for him to do server administration. Hans thought it seemed that the work represented in the budget made an almost perfect fit with “all the people in the room.” Hans took Maja’s suggestion that Foton become involved in FoAM’s administration to the next step by suggesting that FoAM and Foton could merge somehow. [Cf. Maja and Nik’s mentioning on the train about FoAM and Foton.] Maja suggested Foton could do everything to do with “parties” and public events, while FoAM could do everything involved in the “backstage” such as research. Peter and Hans voiced various qualifications to this idea, since they both have other possible commitments and desires for next year; but it’s still up in the air.

Discussion of cleaning; discussion of cooking and food budget.

21:43

Summarisation of last weekend and the first half of the week:

• 7 October, explosion of Pix; departure of Pix and Lina to Kortrijk
• 8 October, performance at Nadine
• 9 October, Sonokids

On Friday, 7 October I returned to the apartment at about 8.30 pm to see Nik and Maja sitting at the table drinking from big wine glasses; they laughed as I came in that they were trying to keep quiet so as not to disturb what they thought was my siesta, though I had been out for the past three hours checking out a share apartment.

Apparently, Pix had blown up when they returned from their DV recording of Peter and Susanne’s performance. (Later, Tuesday, before he departed back to Berlin, Pix described it to me as saying bluntly everything he had previously tried to find tactful ways of saying. He said it was a combination of all that he had discussed independently with me and Lina.) Maja said he had said that Lyta should not be considered as over and done with, that there were still large unresolved issues. Nik noted that Pix seemed to calm down immediately upon speaking with Maja, but was sceptical that such a rapid transformation could take place, and they both worried about the state he would be in at Kortrijk. (Pix said to me that once Maja had told him that the discussion of Lyta was to be delayed - something which apparently had been discussed with everyone except him (and me: I heard nothing about the plans for not mentioning Lyta until round about the time of Pix’s explosion) - his anger was ameliorated.)

I suggested it could be a matter of recognition. But Maja felt she had bent over backwards to make Pix feel recognised. She said that in the past week there was no special treatment given, no food prepared, and so forth, and it seemed that as soon as she stopped bowing to almighty Pix, he would break up. Pix apparently said that no one was relaxed after Lyta because too many unresolved issues remained. Nik said that in fact for himself he was more relaxed, and so was Maja; they thought that Pix was the only one out of the group who felt otherwise. They were very busy with all the things that had been put on hold because of Lyta so they didn’t have a chance to discuss the things that Pix felt needed to be discussed. Maja asked what she had to do to make Pix feel recognised; she just didn’t buy it that there was a lack of recognition. Nik said that in any case something was not working, since something made Pix explode the way he did. He observed that of all the organisations he’s worked, in FoAM there is the least amount of mutual thanking and congratulating. On the other hand, if they were to be constantly self-congratulatory they would end up thinking they were the greatest people on earth, so a level of self-criticism was essential. They both asserted that it was expected that people would be able to be self-congratulating in FoAM; that the esteem for their work should come from within.

Maja reiterated that when everything is going well, it’s “us,” but whenever the bad weather sets in it always becomes “FoAM” and “me.” She was in tears about this. Nik said that it was a weird thing that under stress people so easily fall into a hierarchical model of working. They did this because under such a system you can always absolve yourself of responsibility by pointing to your superior. FoAM never wanted to work in a hierarchical way and has always striven for a collaborative model where there is no hierarchy, but again and again their experience with various collaborators have demonstrated the difficulty of doing this. I mentioned that it could be a matter of communication. Yes, but who has to do the communicating? Nik asks. It’s Maja who has to keep up communications between all the collaborators.

I went with them on the evening of 8 October to a 3D performance at Nadine, “Revenge of the Nurbs.” [2006-01-12: I just discovered this was only Nik’s nickname for the performance. It is doubtful whether the performers themselves would have been happy with such a characterisation.]

We arrived at Nadine, to which I had never been before, when they were having dinner. It was another warehouse-studio setup, eerily similar to FoAM. Everyone was sitting round chatting, while dinner was being prepared in the kitchen. Everything had the obligatory rough, warehouse-kind of unfinishedness and disarray to it. The space was arranged in quite big storeys, with performance areas on each level. We went upstairs to where the performance was about to start, a sort of big loft space with another mezzanine yet higher above that extended, Nik said, a long way into another part of the building that was walled off on our level. The plastic seating all had its legs cut off. There was a table dimly lit by a low-hanging light where everyone’s computer was set up. Another bench was set up where the two women had their laptops set up, next to the projection screen, which was simply left propped up on floor level. The lights were darkened and coiling, gelatinous, wiry coloured shapes pulsed, flexed, dissolved and emerged on the screen. Low, dense, abstract electronic music was playing with samples of chattering high-pitched voices, static, and clicks. One of the performers made arm gestures with sensors attached to her hands; the other stood at her laptop and periodically dangled naked sensors attached to wires and moved them slightly. There were frequent stalls and freezes where the computer’s processor was obviously struggling with the intensive task of generating live 3D shapes. After the short performance people went round to the bar, a small place hidden away at the end of a long hallway. Apparently the barman, Ferdinand, and the man with the baby who was making constant jokes about his child being “version 1.0” and other jokes likening the baby to a software program, are the individuals almost solely responsible for running Nadine. They have the help at times of an accountant, but it’s basically their work.

October 9 we were to join Pix and Lina in Kortrijk, travelling by car, but the car service was unable to lend them a car due to a glitch in their computer system so we ended up catching the train. On the train Nik and Maja continued to discuss the AGM, their hopes and fears. Both ended up announcing, in response to a mutual question of what they wanted next year, that they didn’t know. They were trying to come up with possibile organisations to collaborate with for the EC grant. [Just today, Maja said that there was a fracas about this. It seems that RIXC is intending to put in a grant application that is very similar to the one FoAM was thinking of, taking most of FoAM’s partners. There’s some big players involved, and it is highly unlikely that the EC will independently fund two projects that sound so similar. Maja brought this project up towards the end of the AGM and I forgot all about it. I think it was the one that she said she wanted to word “as vaguely as possible” in order to have the most flexible options for doing what they wanted with it. But FoAM itself was not mentioned. Maja emailed Rasa and asked what was going on, and Rasa replied that sure, FoAM was on their list of partners; but why, Maja wonders, wasn’t she made aware of this.]

Sonokids was part of a wider festival not specifically aimed at children, which explains why it was taking place in a warehouse with that certain “rough” or “heavy” feel to it. I found out afterwards that Maja was responsible for most of the conceptual design of the blob space, such as having an entry foyer with tables and rolls of paper and many textas for the children to scribble on. Maja had wanted to guide them a bit to draw things which related to the experience of the installation - their anticipated experience and their recollected experience after coming out of it - but she was called away almost immediately to manage their entry to the blob section itself. This was to be Lina’s task; but all the children spoke Dutch, and Lina could only respond in English, with confusion as the inevitable result. Maja had to intervene. The inflated rubber blob was surrounded by white elastic fabric stretched taut around it and reaching up towards the ceiling, creating a kind of womb-like enclosure with the blob as the undulating floor. The kids entered through a small hole and bounced around inside for a certain period. Pix’s camera was attached directly above to the ceiling. This blob complex was itself surrounded by more elastic fabric veils stretching almost from floor to ceiling, irregularly cut in the manner of a trapeze, which partitioned off the blob complex from the outer foyer on the one hand, and the backstage area where Pix had the computer and sound system set up, on the other. The entire inner space was bathed in green and blue light which created interesting effects when one peered through the small hole into the womb-like enclosure. The foyer was lit normally, with the standard warehouse lighting. The installation had to be halted twice for nearby performances, because of the loud bass sound that rumbled and droned from the four speakers surrounding the blob enclosure.

From the start the queues of children could barely be held in check. At first they took their shoes off and put them in the lockers provided, but later just threw them anywhere on the floor. Maja and Lina were gradually pushed further and further into the partitioned area as the children milled at the entrance. Three children at a time were let in to play around inside the blob-womb. When the installation had to be halted, many were so upset that they wouldn’t leave unless Maja gave them a number written on a small bit of paper that would guarantee their priority of entry when the installation resumed. Despite the ad hoc ticketing idea, some kids never left and remained in the queue until it was due to start again. It was bound to happen that forgeries of the numbering system would soon be devised. One parent was irate about some confusion regarding her place in the queue and stormed out angrily, dragging her kids with her. The children themselves were fine without the parents, and Maja said afterwards that parents in general should be kept away. This was the only problem though, and in general the parents were reasonably behaved, waiting in the foyer and watching over their children unobtrusively. Regarding the sound effects, Pix himself said that all his work programming was for nothing, since you couldn’t really go wrong with a big bouncy blob and another soundtrack entirely could have done the trick just as well. According to Lina and Maja only about three children seemed to realise the connection between their movement and a change in the sound. They did big movements that made a significant change in the sounds, and apparently realised and tried to repeat these movements afterwards.

The peculiar contrast between the “backstage” of Pix’s computer setup and the rumpus on the other side of the fabric partition. The incongruity of watching the aerial view of the children bouncing round in the blob on Pix’s computer screen, alongside the readouts of his PE patch. [Pix mentioned in the AGM that he’d archived all three hours' footage of this video stream and put it online in the format of a number of low-res avi movies.]

The other night: involved discussion with Nik and Maja re cooking in the studio, the problems surrounding this. Maja doesn’t want to be locked into cooking so much at the studio; she decided this a few months ago. Nik mentions that in all the studios and studio-like places he’s worked, every one has fallen apart over the issues of cooking and cleaning. Maja wants to discourage treating the studio as an all-purpose living space. Nik seemed more moderate in this regard, and suggested that having cooked meals in the studio did make a difference to how people felt about working there, even if they might not themselves recognise it. Maja stressed that the studio was a “nice” place to be, it was pleasant and easy to watch movies, eat and drink. (Nik contrasted it to the other studio they had, which apparently wasn’t a pleasant place to be in and therefore there was no reason to use the working space for anything else but work.)

Over the last few days, ongoing discussions about grant applications, Lyta, and the upcoming workshops. Apparently Rasa of RIXC has considered applying for an EC grant which Maja - seemingly by coincidence - also wants to apply for. The problem is that RIXC has suggested many of the same partners, some of them “big players,” that Maja was thinking of, and that her ideas for the proposal sound very similar to those of Maja’s, and the funding body concerned would be very unlikely to sponsor two such identical projects. Apparently Rasa said she had suggested FoAM as a potential partner but Maja didn’t know anything about it until asking Rasa directly; the emails Maja forwarded to me indicate a rather convoluted loop. Maja continues to work on this, and has just now apparently received some sort of advice from another party.

Nik is despondent over the number of applicants with which his VAPOUR proposal must compete; he’s been consulting the website where the proposal’s progress can be tracked and mentions that there are over 400 others. About 10 or 15 proposals can be accepted. I ask Maja if she’s going ahead and applying independently and she says yes, Rasa’s stuff is a mess. Nik says that Maja should be cautious about “phrasing a question as a statement” to Rasa. The emails to and fro continue. Later, Maja says that Rasa seems to feel that she (Maja) is being competitive about the grant application.

Regarding Lyta, Nik is still using the “structured procrastination” technique with regard to the service manual, which was meant to be finished on Tuesday. He says that it will be done today for sure. Lina and Maja have been discussing the placard or label for Lyta, whether there should be one at all, how it should be designed, what it should be made out of. I hear that Todor is possibly coming back today to discuss the electrical problems which are his area of responsibility in the ongoing troubleshooting of Lyta.

I finally got my identity card from City Hall; Nik and Maja were eager to see it, perhaps because they didn’t believe that it was so easy for me to get it.

11:53

Last Saturday: Maja discussed the EC proposal with Hans and Peter.

A complex interwoven web of partners, sub-partners, projects, and layers of funding. Maja again proposed that Foton become involved on the level of making bridges between the local and international scene, of organising public events, and so forth. Hans suggested that Foton could do something a bit more “broad” than mixed reality, which he said was a fairly specific and specialised focus of FoAM, involving the experience of “different realities.” He suggested that if FoAM made a mixed reality environment, Foton could do something “inside” it. Mention of a travelling circus-like production, which was always Peter’s dream - to take a bus and go on a “magical reality tour.” The budget would be about 1.5 million for six to eight partners. Each partner, under EC guidelines, is required to supply five percent of the total budget, meaning that for the three years of the project Foton would have to supply €75,000, or €25,000 per year. This was clearly the sticking point for Hans and Peter, and they thought that it was a bit “above their bank accounts.” They didn’t know what their budget would look like for 2007; the project would start November 2006. Maja emphasised that they wouldn’t have to pay this immediately, that their role in the project would come later and therefore they could supply more financial input as they became more involved later on. However, a contract would have to be signed at the beginning, in which they would have to agree to be in the project for the entire duration. Peter asked to see some kind of documentation regarding what the project was about, and Maja gave him the TRG proposal, emphasising that the present project was not TRG. Peter and Hans were to read over this in the following night. The proposal must be put in by 28 October, so Maja needs to know from Foton as soon as possible whether they are in. If they decide not to take up the offer, Maja and Nik are thinking about a few other universities or organisations that might be interested in such a project and could be asked. Peter skimmed through this document, then asked Maja why she wanted to do this project. Maja said that the EC had urged FoAM to apply again since the Commission considered them to have a strong chance of getting funded; that the kind of collaborative productions FoAM wanted to make were only possible with such big grants; and that it was fun to go to different places, eat food. Peter and Hans seemed neither uninterested nor overly enthusiastic.

Then we set off into the country to visit Rasa and Pieter, friends of the FoAM team. Only later, after dinner, did I learn that Rasa will be catering for the upcoming workshops. Rasa is Lithuanian, so presumably it was Lina who first met her.

Sunday: Nadine conference about curating.

Today:

Vacuous meeting with two curators who presented at the conference yesterday (Jacob Lillemose and Sarah Cook). It seemed like they didn’t quite know what they were doing in the studio. I met Dirk De Wit for the first time, who came with them to the studio; he had arranged for the them to visit, apparently. Magda was mentioned, it seems that Sarah knows Magda independently. They came early, about quarter past two when everyone thought the meeting was at three. Maja was not there, Nik called her and she said she was staying home the whole day sick. The curators asked few questions, seemed rather uninterested. At no point did they indicate that they wanted to find out more about what FoAM was doing, or to follow this up in future. Lina started off the talk by saying that FoAM was interested in moving out of galleries and museums. Nik pointed out that most galleries were unable to allow for a long installation period before an event that might only last a few days; whereas in theatre it was acceptable to rehearse for six weeks before the final production. But FoAM wasn’t doing theatre either, since in theatre audiences were passive spectators. So FoAM’s work possibly sat somewhere uneasily between a gallery installation and a theatre production. Lina also mentioned the additional difficulty for a gallery-based installation, in that the FoAM team had to be continuously present during the period in which their productions were put on, and cited Sonokids as a case in point where guidance of the participants was necessary to avoid the whole thing collapsing into chaos. The topic of violence expressed in installations somehow came up. Lina said it was very hard to avoid violent behaviour entirely in the kinds of environments that FoAM made, especially with adolescents. The only thing to be done was to be always present, and if the behaviour becomes excessive, to ask the persons to leave. Nik gave the curators each the txOom DVD and showed them the cards. Shortly they said they had to go, because they wanted to see some of the Argos festival before departing back to Canada.

Further discussions regarding the EC proposal. Maja says that both Kibla and the Interactive Institute have submitted all the necessary paperwork for the grant to go ahead. She is still waiting on the others. Lina, Maja, Nik and I went out for dinner and spent three hours trying to come up with an acronym for a name for a title for the proposal, but the process rapidly degenerated into a constant stream of joking. Eventually Maja declared that we should ask “What are we?” and have the proposal title proceed from that point; but it didn’t work, and we returned to tossing about various silly words for acronyms. On our way back from the restaurant, though, Nik came up with an acronym that sounded suitably FoAM-like, meaning it had the sound of many of their other names or code-words for projects and proposals.

In this dinner more rumours about Starlab were also mentioned. Another department in Starlab knew of the impending bankruptcy beforehand and had a scheme to set up some kind of research institute in Dubai; the future members of FoAM were invited to become involved. FoAM were considered traitors because they were seen as attempting to establish a breakaway organisation. Maja spent a week desperately coming up with a business plan to find some way of saving them after the bankruptcy, since they had nothing. Nik mentioned the other day that just as he was about to get his first real, official paycheck, the wealthy entrepreneur declared Starlab bust.

More work organising the workshops for next week.

Visit to Nadine concerning partnership in the EC project. Maja said that they had agreed previously by email to be part, but she wasn’t sure whether they fully understood the implications. We walked to the northern side of Brussels where the oppressive glass and concrete local government offices are, bought some food from a supermarket, picked up a hire car and drove to Nadine. Lina, Maja and I loaded some chairs into the hire car for the coming workshop at FoAM, then Maja outlined the terms of the project to the two denizens of Nadine [Trudo and Ferdinand]. Nadine’s orientation sounds very similar to that of FoAM. In the coming years they want to encourage residencies that focus on research, which might not result in anything tangible at the end. But they said that there would always be some kind of “closing event” for these residencies; some kind of “public moment” would always be an aim, whether that was a workshop, a symposium, a lecture, or so forth, which could take place in a single event or a distribution of activities across time. They also emphasised that any work done, any residencies held, would be documented. Ferdinand noted that this idea of a “laboratory” was very abstract and he wanted to ensure that they didn’t always try to reinvent the wheel.

All this fitted very well with Maja’s outline of the project. There was considerable discussion regarding the intricacies of funding arrangements with the EC and the Flemish Ministry, and mention was made of the infamous “universal” Excel spreadsheet that everyone who has dealings with the Ministry must encounter. Maja mentioned that there was a nice small collection of partners, which was good for mutual trust. She mentioned that although this project falls more naturally into the “audiovisual” category, she was hesitant to submit the proposal in this category because there was only three openings available. For the “performance” category there was, however, seven openings. While Ferdinand cautioned that €26-27,000 represented “a significant portion of our budget,” this did not represent a major barrier to collaborating, as it did to Foton. They thought that the overall budget (€200,000 for each partner for three years, inclusive of their own contribution of €78,000) was neither too much nor too little, since a budget could always be either, so this budget was “OK” and “fine.” They were happy to work with this amount.

Maja says that Todor and his partner Stevie were interested in being associated partners in this EC project. Todor’s interest here lies in developing sensor networks.

Last few days:

• performance at Nadine with hand devices
• discussions with Nik and Maja about many things
• Peter’s surprise party
• arrival of Rachel and Joey; preparations for workshops
• auditor comes to the studio, Nik is in discussion with him

Maja says that FoAM could be in deep trouble over some accounting discrepancies; if the auditor, Regis, cannot make a good report, it jeopardises their prospects of funding from the Flemish Ministry and/or the EC next year. It appears that the spectre of Lyta and their paper trail (or rather, lack thereof) with Merlin is most problematic, though there are other discrepancies that, according to the auditor, would make a “boring person” in the tax office say that FoAM’s accounting was faulty. At lunch Maja and Nik were expressing their problems with Merlin; the auditor suggested that they request an invoice from the company declaring the outstanding amount payable; but Nik and Maja appeared to think that this would be next to impossible because of their strained relationship, and they felt that “Merlin wouldn’t go out of their way to help us.”

Nik’s description of what is being audited: how the informal arrangements correspond with the formal accounting framework. FoAM’s problem is that they work primarily through informal relationships and arrangements, Nik says.

The auditor goes to and fro between the computer room and the printer. Meanwhile, Lina, Rachel, and Joey make lunch; preparations are leisurely underway for the workshops, such as sourcing materials; I wash up; Peter and Hans leave. The rain streams down outside, unrelenting.

21:59

Clarification regarding the audit: FoAM are paying for him by the hour to “check how dirty their finances are.” They’ve hired him because to get an EC grant they need to have their accounts audited. Apparently he asked about some estimates at one point, and they said of course they estimated their budget. “But it’s in writing, of course,” he said. Whereupon Maja, who was sitting in the main studio while the auditor and Nik were in the computer room quickly wrote up the estimate and emailed it to Nik. The auditor said “Ah, this makes sense!” Nik thinks that most of the time is spent explaining why FoAM’s accounting works in such convoluted ways. Regis will come back next Thursday because there was much more work for him to do than he was expecting.

21:07

First day of the Soft-Wear workshops - presentations in Annemie’s studio. Last night setting up was my first time on the fourth floor - the space is beautifully set up.

A small group, the morning started with introductions by the participants in the form of short presentations. After lunch the four main presenters spoke. I was very tired and found very little to talk about with anyone. The majority of participants are coming to the workshop from a non-computing background, hoping to learn more about the digital side while in the workshop. The majority of the presenters were, however, deeply involved in the technological dimension of soft-wear.

Yesterday evening, Nik’s comments on FoAM’s status as an entity in the Belgian bureaucratic field. [Consultation with Dirk should clarify this further.] They have been in a unique position in the Belgian bureaucratic funding scheme of things since they were considered to be moving between being a “studio” to being an “arts centre” [find the Dutch terms that Nik used for these categories]. They will be put in the “transversal” category (which Dirk mentioned in his email) next year, which Nik suggests was invented especially for FoAM’s case.

Talks last night with the participants staying with Nik and Maja: Joey, Rachel, Cocky. Discussion of the Xin Wei case; he is “causing trouble,” according to Joey, in his new university position. Actually his situation is not so good, according to her: he was kicked out of Georgia Tech; his application to other universities was rejected, the only department that accepted him was Joey’s, which she now regrets.

Due to mosquito invasions, all the windows in the apartment were shut and citronella candles were burning for most of the evening, with the result that there was a thick haze of smoke when we went to bed; next morning we were spitting black mucus and I had a sore throat; the mosquitoes were undeterred.

• return of the auditor
• Maja continues to work on the EC proposal around the clock
• Soft-wear workshop; the people, their backgrounds and interests

This morning: Joey is taking a seminar on conductive fabric; the auditor is back at the printer, to and fro; the Foton characters work on their table; Lina is making a video of the talk; I sit here at the kitchen table, doodling at my laptop.

Ana’s story; tête-à-tête between Cocky and Rachel this morning about artistic meetings, relationships, and breakups - “it’s like a love relationship,” says Cocky.

Informal meeting this evening in Gent, which became a staff presentation in Rik’s [Pinxten] office, with Tim Ingold.

Vakgroep Vergelijkende cultuurwetenschappen, Gent University

General talk and discussion

• science is concerned with classification [of attributes], while anthropology could be more concerned with story and relational positioning; attribute - relation
• science “cuts things up at the joints” - it is like carpentry; anthropology could be like weaving
• one of Breughel’s paintings [probably “Children’s Games”] - wonderful rendition of social life; the individual activities are represented as drawn partially but not entirely in relationship with one another; this gives a good picture of the notion of social life as weaving
• in both painting and music, everything is suspended in movement
• “task” versus “work” - task-time vs work-time
• “build” vs “dwell”; but the terms “inhabit” and “habitation” are preferable
• Paul Oliver
• “inhabitant” knowledge rather than “local” knowledge, since communities are often not geographically static
• [Pinxten’s comment] “action habitat” because “habitat” on its own is too static
• environment or landscape?
• tangled organisms?
• developmental systems approach - allows us to transcend the nature-nurture debate
• perhaps dependent on our understanding of causation
• genetics vs geneticism

Anthropology of the Line

• paths versus places
• three ways by which sociality has been transformed: footwear, paving, and transport technology
• light, dextrous, barefoot movement changes into heavy, direct, and shodden transport
• locomotion is cognition
• feet-hands-mind
• linearity of writing
• Laurent, Gestures of Speech
• Graphism - radial rather than lineal
• lines - developed along with stories and gestures from ancient times
• unity of space, gesture and speech
• what is “linearity”?
• hence, two kinds of line: the gestural trace, and the point-to-point connector
• “linearity” is actually the transformation of one kind of line into the other
• Bergson, *Creative Evolution*
• art and architecture share biology’s reduction of the organism to its “code” or “plan”
• walking can be a practice of architecture…
• the generative potential of the line
• art and architecture as modes of creative investigation
• art as a set of investigative and exploratory practices
• anthropology WITH art and architecture, not treating them as objects
• lines from the past
• speech:song; language:music
• written word a form of written music…
• the surprising lack of histories of writing treated as musical notation
• comprehensive history of notation must be a history of the line
• line + surface - threads and traces
• weaving, embroidery, calligraphy
• dissolution of threads into traces
• line as something that moves and grows
• the point-to-point connector - writing dissociated from the calligrapher and scribe
• writing : drawing :: technology : art
• Paul Klee
• ap(point)ments vs walks - points are linked into an assembly
• dwelling in places……lines of habitation
• De Certeau
• logic of inversion - converting paths into boundaries - turn this inside out again to rediscover meaning in life
• interlaced trail of the lifeworld - a tissue - which literally means a surface constituted by a dense layer of intertwined lines
• relational field of interwoven lines, rather than connected points
• a person as an ever-ramified fungal mycelium (or rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense; Ingold prefers the idea of mycelium)

Five areas of research for an anthropology of the line:

• movement dynamics
• knowledge
• modes of description
• environment
• history

• wayfaring - growing roots
• lines of wayfare, lines of transport
• how are trails and roots enmeshed? How are the lines of wayfare become interpolated with the modes of transport?
• different modes of living
• James Gibson
• knowledge not so much built up but forged along lines - knowledge is movement: inhabitants move into knowledge “alongly”
• (scientific) project of classification severs relations - stories relate what classification divides
• graphism as writing?
• “text” - from weaving - “textile” - “textura”
• movement, “hanging around,” creates places - places are not containers - inhabitants are not “locals”
• knots and tangles in lines are what constitute “place”
• tangled roots, creepers, lianas - environment is a domain of entanglement
• ecology of life must be of threads and traces
• lines of transmission; plat rather than beads on a string - history as a transgenerational flow

Maja: evaluation of the what was good, ok, and bad in the workshop.

Mette: great knowledge; all materials are here and available; the length of the workshop - two days would have been entirely different, a week is a great luxury. Just a little too long for it to be this loose. Should have stuck to the meeting on the first day; no follow-up discussion.

Vali: a luxury; a privilege; how people experimented was a completely different way of working; dynamics of people working; confusing because I thought that we were going to discuss at first then work out from that - teamworking; but everyone went and experimented on their own, though then everyone merged back together again; confusing that we didn’t agree on it in advance, but it was also nice. Interesting to observe the process as much as learning with the stuff.

Teis: really nice to be free to touch everything and experiment; another approach to get a lot of things done, but an initial setup for some kind of goal to make all our minds more directed; not to limit what everyone can do, but to jump-start the workshop. I liked the atmosphere in general; very interesting, very intense; wanted to do everything but ended up doing nothing; need more time to read up, do it again.

Maja: but there will be follow-ups; everything will still be here.

Olu: disorientation in the first days; so much information; missed two lectures in which there was even more info; didn’t know what I should do; wanted to develop a system for controlling the lights but wanted to do more basic electronics; come back to this to be more practical.

Christoph: really enjoyed the whole workshop, thought it was really fun; was also disorientated; a big gap between theory and praxis; develop ideas that didn’t work out as you thought they would; by the end you get to a point where you find out what works. Have to choose in the few days available.

Disorientation inevitable; fall down, get dizzy, all a part of it.

Bart: my second workshop at FoAM; different from previous one; last time interesting psychological experiments with “group A” and “group B.” Communication about approach and methodology could be improved; concept about output - didn’t come to a final conclusion about this; the organic way we came together - we exchanged knowledge; most speakers were interesting, some were less relevant; the length was OK, but would like to continue and give it time to sink in and study the things we learned; the structure of problem-solving: I did this, I had these problems, then immediate feedback; a parallel project of knowledge enhancement, a Q&A at the end, and would also be an enrichment of the workshop.

Maja: people leaving all the time in the last workshop; in this workshop everyone stayed for the dinners, for the social bits.

Cocky: first time I touched electronics; I think now I’ll get into it. I’ll have to join one of these knitting clubs; no clue as to what it was going to be about; if there was more beforehand on what it was about, then I would have started thinking about electronics - but it might also have frightened you off to know more beforehand; worked well with 2.00 lunch, 8.00 dinner. Perhaps 11 am short discussion for a rhythm. But like everyone I’m absolutely inspired.

Rachel: huge amount of information to take in and then to start practically working with electronics was impressive; balance between theory and practice is a hard one; discussion about the larger context may have been more interesting; loose towards the end; an achievement to have a group of like-minded individuals together in one place.

Nik: good introductory talks, quite a lot of energy, everyone became really absorbed; good to see everything being really messy and all over the place; everyone has their own way to how they worked; balance between theory and practice; really missed how it all tied together, how all the parts worked together: an explicit goal perhaps needed?

Mette: mini test pieces not necessarily better than something more integrated; after a few days groups could have been worked out…

Vali: everyone wanted to explore and learn, but also wanted to be more integrated; perhaps a short period of small tests, for example everyone would learn how to make a soft switch, etc. Everyone would then get a better idea about what they wanted to do, then they could say that is what I would like to do for the rest of the workshop.

Mette: teaching and learning environment, a dedicated table for demos for example.

Bart: interested in knowledge management and knowledge curves; still unclear how the Xmedk idea is organised; how the knowledge is managed and processed.

Maja: actually not very well, because though we are doing it together, the topics are different, the approaches to the workshops different; some people following all the workshops; but we weren’t particularly trying to integrate workshops; too much work already managing our own workshops; but not enough money to fully organise the workshops as a whole. There will be a publication, but it would be best to design all the series together. Problems integrating with the collaborators.

Lina: missing some structure; liked the atmosphere, group dynamics; structure in terms of what people would like to make; directed to a more defined outcome; length of workshop could be longer with a specific outcome; also had interesting talks; liked the involvement of Maria, coming from a very different point of view.

Teis: a way to collate all the projects, perhaps define a location or space where your thing would end up to encourage people naturally to network without being too strict about grouping people at the beginning; define the space.

Rachel: finding a theme, something we could all agree on.

Vali: so many things we came up with might have been lost if we focussed on one thing.

Maja: different pieces were to be connected up; but this got lost.

Mette: my sense is that we were doing that; it wasn’t a negative thing, we were just massively different; sheep heart cast and rotting - I love it but I could never do it; some way to bridge these diversities.

Bart: writing wall where technical models could have been drawn; schematic cloud of object to see who was doing what, who could do what.

Mette: most worked with each other naturally, in a very nice way.

Maja: lots of these challenges are due to lack of clarity of structure between Rachel, Joey, and me; we had it all worked out on Monday but it started degrading, things got forgotten, and all of us were trying not to step into each other’s fields; everyone was very careful, trying not to be bossy; now we have a better idea; that’s the biggest issue, but easily solvable. Mistake with two of the speakers, but gave an idea of the emptiness of lots of this field, with lots of buzzwords, while a few people are doing something really interesting.

Nik: how did the presentations fit in with the hands-on work?

Maja: should have provided a context, about “why”; we planned to focus on a general context, then to play a little with the technology and discuss how you wanted to use the technology.

Vali: would there have been sufficient time to do it?

Maja: it was just to give you a taste of it; while you still have a little distance you can ask why…

Nik: …for example, what can be got by working with the technology as opposed to not working with technology.

Mette: another idea: how it belongs to the body, the domestic interior.

Maja: follow-up: what more would you like to learn? Where would you like to go? For example, power (electricity) issues; so much stuff here is so evil, so toxic, using so much electricity; finding more environmentally friendly technologies; integrating more traditional crafts; green energy; self-supporting, self-healing stuckers.

Bart: energy is still a big issue, throughout the workshops; ecological aspect.

Cocky: a greater variety of speakers.

Teis: some very practical speakers, some philosophical.

Mette: perhaps get someone from the military to talk.

Lyta List of things to do

• callibrate as many muscles as possible
• careful in how we reject them; explanation needed
• 8 muscles left?
• roof for Lyta…
• sticker next to keypad
• diffusing filters to break up the column of light effect
• 1 dead muscle already
• boards - more resistors?
  • fix 2 spare boards
• change membrane because small cut in it
• take documentation - parts list
• issues of Wolfsburg lighting design
• 17 Nov - can’t go because M in hospital 18th
• leave 18 Nov after hospital - if so, wouldn’t return for grand opening
• meeting with Mark!
• Lyta photos
• Nik can update website before opening
• Lyta List - send invites

Workshop

• 13-17 Dec
• 17th - end of all Xmedk stuff
• open lab idea with a bit more food stuff
• meeting 7 pm tonight - how to link the xmedk workshops?
• equipment
• 5-10 people best
• Teis is interested
  • will convince Mette!
• Peter (Code 31)
• Peter (Foton)
• Sophie
• Franziska (?)
• do they have their own computers?
• shared workspace: avoid “screen absorption” - all should work in twos at least

• previous workshop comparisons…
• techniques to teach off the computer screen: diagrams, sketches, etc. more sharing
• screen as adjunct rather than separation of these modes
• walk in forest - don’t tell them, just drag them to the forest when they turn up!
• Rasa to cook? - finances re soft-wear workshop
• environment that participants can change - images outside of their little screens
• two people/computer
• one or two computers hooked up to projector
• accommodation - previous workshop arranged by FoAM, paid by guests
• too much money spent on last workshop - this one must be more low-key
• what to do on the last Saturday?
• work out with Annemie + Code 31
• mailout
• publication - won’t happen if FoAM doesn’t take on editing
• Annemie doesn’t write, especially not English
• nor does Nadine!

Lunchtime Lecture

• Catherine
• Angelo [Vermeulen] - algae making sound installation; PhD in biology; crossover between art and biology
• texts + mailout
• Rasa to cook? - but we weren’t so happy with her re conceptual food
• if we could be more flexible about our concept of conceptual food…

3 DVDs

• Peter and Susanne’s DVD - have everything but will take some time; still don’t have music
• TRG DVD - simple!
• one mix for 10 minutes
• conceptual stuff, events - a mixture
• much more material therefore put movies on website?
• 10-minute DVD should focus on the mixed reality environment
• FoAM DVD

TRG Book

• try to do it this week!
• layout, consistency
• today we get the money!

Newsletter

• release it with the DVD?
• no, the DVD is more involved
• workshop participants were begging for some kind of brochure -
• spend more time on this
• must do it next year

Funding reports

• all January!
• minister of culture
• minister of media
• statutes!
• Margo re Foton statutes then adapt them

EC call for funding

• due 15 February - “cultural dynamics”
• minimum three partners
• Vali involved - decide what to do
• VAPOUR - 15 February also

VAF - xmedk workshop

• with Nadine and Okno?
• can we keep up this idea?

Website updates

• pictures!
• Sonokids, etc.

• accounting 2005
• Foton now taking everything from us; needs to be organised
• shopping, cleaning
• cleaning agenda - communication breakdown… Foton to organise cleaning
• fix toilet
• food situation - stay the same until end of year
• Foton contributing?
• own food vs. group food
• a flat food bill for Foton?
• smoking inside - no!
• heating? - paying for heating that isn’t turned on…
• setup RAID array…

Possible three activities for Feb/Mar/Apr

• Sonokids again
• Ostende - Cocky’s going
• Leuven - hyperbolic thing

It is no more than pretence to say that I’m doing “fieldwork,” since I feel there is no more field and no work in this context. My role, to myself, is merely that of an interested observer-participant… anthropological, literary, or whatever. But can I admit this to everyone? Yet it is clear to me that ironically, I would be a much better observer - and therefore even a better “fieldworker” - were I not shackled with the dead weight of a presumption of being an anthropological/social/ethnographic researcher… All of this is to say that the only thing I have ever sought is freedom, no less because I have tried to find this freedom within the confines of the adoption of a role as a kind of academic researcher. Such roles and categories cannot mean much to me, though often it seems that others consider that nothing is more important (cf. Mette and her incredulity at my lack of methodology). Enough! I can abide such confines. My notes should be called “journals” henceforth: scratch out “fieldnotes” and the presumptions implied.

13:27

I think the above reflects my ongoing weariness with this role… I just want to be an ordinary agent again, if anything studying something external to humans.

12:44

Discussions about FoAM Holland, Nat’s involvement, the financial problems; website politics: with Lina wanting a separate website from FoAM, Maja will be the only one here without her own website. Nik has his Rorschach website (which he hasn’t updated for about five years), Lina wants to have a website for her own work but still hosted on the FoAM server. Maja doesn’t understand why Lina wants her own website: there needs to be a core group who “are FoAM” and do that as their main thing, and nothing else.

I read a document I happened to see on Lina’s machine when I connected to upload the photos I took of Lyta, and Sonokids, an “internal strategic survey” with Rachael [only later did I realise this meant Rachael Tempest] as the interviewee. This led me to mention FoAM Holland and discuss it with Maja and Nik, and they proceeded basically to corroborate what I had read. At present, Maja confirms, there is no contact between the residual administrative division of FoAM Holland (consisting of Nat and the other person who turned up to the Soft-wear open lab in their overcoats, looking like detectives), and Cocky and Theun. She says that it needs to be “put to sleep,” which is a way of identifying the company legally as being non-operative and therefore tax-exempt. But this means that Cocky and Theun won’t be able to use the tax file number for their financial activities. Cocky and Theun need to become more involved in the accounting and administration of their side of activities.

Everyone has been joking about my sudden alcohol consumption. Peter and Lina joked that I’m “trying to understand FoAM from the drunken perspective.” Lina avows that it’s good, that I’m “beginning to enjoy.” Nik and Maja have been spending more time at home especially for dinner, as per Maja’s new regime. I have been often at the studio late, having dinner with Lina and Peter occasionally.

I have been sporadically previewing the extensive DV tapes made by Lina (and one by me). Appallingly, I notice many things even on this cursory perusal that I completely missed while the workshop was in progress.

But I was in another world during the workshop, especially the second half… And it was only then that I finally felt a desire to become entangled, if not the ability; I may have caught a glimpse into that “glue” to which they intermittently make reference. A glimpse into the potential beauty of this kind of collaborative entanglement, where the demarkation line between the personal and the professional is elided and the two are indistinguishable. (And this at precisely the time when the feeling is that the group (or at least Maja) wants to move away from such an all-encompassing lifestyle.) For the first time I came to actively wish for immersion in such a lifestyle, whereas before I had always held aloof and longed to be elsewhere. This is in the end also perhaps the only interesting research question for me to pursue.

So many things to be elaborated:

• Maja’s reflections that the Soft-wear workshop attracted a predominantly female demographic (though there were in fact three males in the workshop); how Nik’s workshop will, on the contrary, attract a predominantly male, “geek culture” demographic (and M’s suggestion for the planning of the menu to reflect this culture: pizza, pasta, and soft drinks).
• meeting with Dirk De Wit; the disparities between his views and those expressed by the team when I told them what he thought
• the end of the Soft-wear workshop; the other workshop with Akihiro in Okno - FoAM’s dissatisfaction with this and their hopes to make the next (Soft-ware) workshop reflect a different approach
• the continuing saga of Lyta; the return of Todor
• Antoine’s visit yesterday: “a new victim” (Maja); introduction to FoAM and the team’s reflections on his advent
• organisation of the next workshop: food, concept, structure, etc.
• Nik and Maja work on their backlog of tasks: making DVDs, organising workshops

18:46

Returned to Brussels Friday, 2 December. Cocky and Theun came with half the way on the train before transferring to Zeeland.

N, M and Catherine - the British girl presenting at FoAM that day - returned quite late from a dinner that became “five hours long.”

Maja: “Here’s the lost boy.”

Nik and Maja seem quite concerned over Cocky’s project and becoming overly involved in it. Late last night Cocky apparently emailed a fairly convoluted budget which Maja had to straighten out before forwarding to Sarah at Ostende. Discussion concerning the funding status of this project: what is to be funded by FoAM, by Cocky, by the Ostende people? Maja has been saying that FoAM can contribute €5,000, no more. Cocky is using her FoAM-allocated “research” budget to fund the project. The Ostende curator (as Maja referred to her) will support the project as well. But in any case, nothing may go ahead if the wind conditions in March next year are unpropitious. Nik expresses concern that Maja will inadvertently become involved in the project which was meant to be entirely FoAM Holland’s affair. They must take responsibility for its success or failure, he says, and learn how to budget properly. Concern over Cocky using her research budget for this project, the implications of this, how she perceives the situation and her funding relationship with FoAM (in Brussels). I wasn’t aware that they were taking it as seriously as this while I was in Amsterdam.

Upon returning from their one-day Brussels visit the previous week (I think it was Sunday 27 November), Cocky and Theun said that they could have discussed the project and their possible research in India in “five - no, three minutes over the phone.” The main event was Bloempje’s continued decline, and they felt that this was in fact the main benefit of visiting: to say goodbye to Bloempje. (Maja gave a detailed account of Bloempje’s last moments to me, including the burial in the pot with the small semi-bonsai tree.) Otherwise, Maja asked them if they had any definite objectives and they said they had none. They asked what Maja would be interested to gain from their Indian travels and Maja mentioned research into “ethnobotany,” but not much more. This was pretty much the extent of their meeting about research in India. But, as Theun noted, they are taking lots of technology (HDV recorder, minidisc recorder, etc.) with them to document stuff.

Discussing our lack of research methodology, Cocky said that she saw it as a virtue, that she told people she was going to India to do research and all that, but in fact she was going because she had the feeling she should be there, that something interesting might come up, and she likened this to my case - that there was some sense that I felt I should be with FoAM, but I wasn’t sure exactly how or why and nevertheless I somehow contrived to spend some time with them.

I inadvertently perceived the contrast between Cocky and Theun and FoAM Holland and the Brussels faction. Again I am almost incredulous that people with such different personalities and approaches are able to have anything to do with each other at all. Cocky and Theun are far more relaxed and casual about their activities, yet also committed in a certain way to being artists. Cocky describes the relationship as being an indirect feedback loop of inspiration (my twist on her words). She is not involved directly with FoAM BXL (and I think she said she prefers it this way), but is inspired by what they do to create her own offshoots. Conversely, FoAM BXL potentially stands to benefit from a kindred process of inspiration.

Theun described his involvement in the TRG project. They wanted him to come with them to Slovenia but he was wondering what his role was, what he would contribute. (We noted the likeness of our roles with FoAM: we both stand on the semi-periphery.) He joked that he was considered to help “calm everyone down.” His job was to calm everyone, even Lina. Because he was partially detached from the process of production, he could spend time thinking about the problem and then make suggestions. People would see the sense of these suggestions and take heed of them. He would deal with Lina by appearing to agree with everything she said at first, when she was agitated about it, but then later when she’d calmed down he would gently suggest that things could be done in such-and-such a way, and Lina would agree because she’d forgotten what her initial ideas were; unless she considered it very important, in which case she would not forget.

At first, Cocky said, he didn’t feel inclined to have anything to do with FoAM, he considered it to be Cocky’s thing. One time he was to show some of his drawings to Maja. He didn’t think to show them to anyone else, but when Pix happened to glance over his shoulder and see some of his drawings he immediately declared: “He’s one of us!”

Cocky and Theun’s friend whom they had over for lunch and who had just returned from Turkey. Cocky told her that when I first arrived in Brussels from Eastern Europe I thought it was “fourth world,” and she said “Brussels is the least bad - don’t mention the rest of Belgium…” Later, discussing how he met her (as a lodger in her house - I forget the nice Dutch term they used), Theun said she can become very “sharp.” We discussed this in relation to art critics, whom we both dislike. She apparently has a strong streak of art critic in her, though it has lessened now with her recent boyfriend. She considers herself an artist: she went to art school; but Theun was doubtful about these claims. He didn’t necessarily consider her to be an artist but an art critic, whereas he an Cocky made things, but didn’t care at all about discussing or analysing them.

The old woman from upstairs constantly calling out the name of her lost cat: “Knabbel… Knabbel…”

Cowboy-boot Jan, his Christmas tree installation he was going to call “The Morning after World War II.” Theun met him at art school; he was like a mentor to Theun, and was the only one on the committee to be interested in Theun’s work and keen to have him study there. They have stayed in contact since Theun left the academy. Jan loves Werner Herzog, describes him as a “martyr,” always seeking out the most difficult and tortured dimensions of human experience.

22:53

The very evening I come back, N and M return late to the apartment with Catherine, who chooses that moment to show her recent wedding photos: set in a grassy, English field. They had hired the paddock from a farmer who’d never let it to anyone else before; there was even some kind of arch construction of metal, though not admittedly any polyhedral domes. Beautiful green pastures; guys and girls all dressed up in suits or specially-made wedding dresses; old parents, grandparents; before, during and after shots, the respective stages of the wedding ceremony from the informal beginning to the event itself to the informal parties afterwards. N and M looked on with expressions of extreme boredom and weariness. They have seen it all before, almost a replicant. Yet they were working on Lyta at the time of 30 July, when the wedding took place. How strange… this wedding seems like it has taken place long after Rachel’s.

Why during my time here have I been exposed to so much English wedding propaganda, weddings in these “pastoral” places of which I see only the digitally encoded pixellated remnants on laptop presentations. It seems like yesterday that I was hearing about the mythical wedding in the pastoral highlands with the strange fundamentalists who were singing, incanting, laying hands almost rudely on the bride; and then viewing the photos at the workshop on one of those late evenings with everyone sitting round the dinner table. I remind myself that none of it has anything to do with me. I am a peripheral, transient observer who will dissolve back into antipodal remoteness in no time. Yet perhaps a tiny fragment of these people remains within me and even in spite of myself. Everything begins to blur into one strange message that I cannot decipher…

Even in Amsterdam I couldn't escape, Cocky showed me some more photos of Rachel’s wedding, I think I’d seen them before. She said she loves Rachel. She pointed out her former boyfriend, who was helping put up the geodesic domes, and another friend “who also loves her,” helping also. She recounted the time at Txoom when they were all working together and R and Hias met. At that time Hias already had a girlfriend, apparently she visited him on set once and she was “bad news”; and Hias and Rachel came together on “another one of those drunken nights.” There was another boy there, according to Cocky, who was interested in R; she herself wasn’t at all interested but took advantage of his attentions to get him to do tasks for her. At the wedding Cocky said she almost wanted to hit the fundamentalists who were laying their hands on Rachel; they were touching her so scandalously that it made Cocky angry; they were “spooky,” and inspired an uncanny and disconcerting mood (N and M also mentioned that it was “weird”). Hias’s wedding speech was terrible - he was mumbling, starting sentences and not completing them; Nik was almost in tears laughing, and someone in the audience eventually shouted out: “Just tell her you love her!”

Much of this we discussed one night while Theun was away in Zeeland, visiting his family. (I heard he was going to a football match but apparently he goes every weekend - it is more than just football, people from that region can’t get away from their homeland, they must forever return, according to Cocky.) I left late in the evening to buy some wine and ended up walking about forty minutes to get to the nearest night store. I was thinking we would only drink one bottle but I ended up getting quite drunk on the two I bought, and Cocky recounted her meeting with Theun and how they eventually became close. They first met at a place totally unrelated to FoAM. But then they met once more, at a FoAM event. Maja apparently noticed what was happening. Thus it would be fair to say that theirs is yet another FoAM matchmaking.

Buying a chocolate bar in a small store [Grasmarkt 81] with only one other customer present, the serving girl exclaims “It’s been kissed!” The twenty Euro note I gave her had lipstick marks on one edge. The other customer, an Indian, joked loudly: “It’s been kissed and you’re giving it away!? You have to keep it!” Rather banally I reply, “But the kiss wasn’t for me.” Whereupon he chuckles and repeats “it wasn’t for me, ha ha!” and the serving girl smiles. As I walked out he shouted “Better luck next time!”

A hint of mist in the gloomy light filtering in from outside the apartment. The kid who always ran around behind the wall humming, droning and shouting during summer and autumn no longer makes a sound; perhaps it’s the cold, perhaps he’s at school.

[27 Nov 2005 - Amsterdam]

A war-torn city, in ruins: but entirely stage-set. Every bomb crater numbered and catalogued; every collapsing wall meticulously designed, like a Disneyland. but it is not just a facade: each basement, every room has been carefully planned.

Last night Maja and Nik recounted stories of various events in the previous FoAM studio. The break-ins during Christmas. The overnight vigil of DVD watching to thwart any intruders the next Christmas. A policeman bursting into the studio midday Saturday and desperately pointing a revolver at Maja, who was at that moment walking out of the kitchen holding a cup of tea. Various agencies who, to deliver notification of the intention to repossess the belongings of the tenants because the bills hadn’t been paid, drilled holes in the door to ensure that the necessary document was delivered inside the dwelling and not left outside.

Nik mentioned that he recently dug up a very old file, transferred from floppy disk, that I would “either be very amused or very annoyed about.” It was something from “Mindsong Poems in the World of Gothic Alchemy.” Nik and I ruminated about old music interests.

I am spending little time in the studio during the day; it is very quiet here in any case, with Pink Lion Hans in Jamaica, Lina visiting her sister in Israel. Nik and Maja must be busy editing the last of the TRG papers; video editing for Peter and Susanne’s DVD, for the TRG DVD; and preparing for the Realtime workshop. Nik is working on an animated squid in Fluxus; he often stays up half the night working on this. Maja’s mother is coming during the workshop to visit because Maja’s brother, Goran, is participating. Her mother might be helping Rasa cook (but this is not as definite as Cocky made it out to be) and would also be certain to bring plenty more drenjina.

Yesterday and a little this evening I wandered Brussels and imbibed the “Plaisir d’hiver/Winter Pret” atmosphere. I can corroborate N and M’s observation that Brussels has an eccentric way of decorating the city, with sinister-looking elves, translucent columns flickering with blue-purplish neon light, a big dragon and a sometimes phantasmagoric and magical, other times crass light display in the Grand Place. The streets are somehow magically dark and gothic and everything seems appropriate to this time of year. An African was drinking in the Grand Place and shouting out: “Brusel is finished for these people! This city is finished! My area is Spain, my area is Portugal, my area is Germany, my area is Sweden. Brusel is finished! Fuck, don’t grin, do you want a fight? Brusel is finished!”

The art and discipline of annotating. Describing a discrete photo in the minimum number of words. In turn, taking a photo becomes an art in capturing a particular thought, about a scene, object, person, or event.

Today was a remarkably clear and sunny day, the sun always low in the sky, the air cold and fresh. I went for a walk, the smell of the parks and streets reminding me of Marbury, even of old houses my father used to live in.

Went out last night with Lina and Hans to Cafe Centrale where Peter was DJing. Lina had arrived back from Israel that morning, Hans and Margo had arrived back from Jamaica the day before. Peter, Lina and I had dinner in the studio beforehand, we got a bit drunk, then because P had to DJ from 11 to 3 at night and didn’t want to spend an extra four hours beforehand in a bar, he and Lina decided to watch a trashy B-grade movie [Dagon] in the studio. Hans came in later to join us and we convinced him to come out with us to the club.

The evening was unremarkable, I had a strange urge to dance but didn’t, hardly talked, the music always being too loud for me to talk, watched everyone and drank more.

Lina’s adventures all over Israel with her sister. Swimming in volcanic bogs and in the Dead Sea; swimming with dolphins.

Hans and Margo’s plans to buy land in Jamaica: Hans says there are not many employment options for foreigners on the island except to start up a guesthouse. He has a picture of himself sitting in a hammock with a cocktail in Jamaica when he gets older.

The other night at Nadine for the Openlab presentation: some fairly unremarkable installations, mainly a French-speaking crowd; Ferdinand thought it was not the usual Nadine crowd, and Maja thought this was because of the individual who organised the workshop [Yves Bernard]. (“People say that language doesn’t make a difference, but it does,” Maja commented.) Spoke briefly with Bart (Vandeput) about his installation. He was adamant that it was an experiment that involved the public merely as an input variable contributing to the experiment itself, rather than any kind of event made “for” a public. Then chairs started to be placed around the installation, a spectator-performance dynamic was thus irrevocably constituted; Bart was too busy working on various aspects of the installation itself to intervene and attempt to stop the audience forming. Apparently, few people dared actually to walk “into” the space of the experiment itself and this was only intensified when an audience was constructed. Cf. Xin Wei’s insistence that T-Garden was an experiment that utilised the public in some way as a variable solely for its own uses, any benefit to the participating public presumably being merely a by-product or side-effect.

What did I do during November? Absolutely nothing; the first half I wandered in the gardens and forests in Brussels; the second half I wandered the canals and arcades of Amsterdam. At least, through it all, I managed to almost entirely shake off my loathing of Brussels. (But the turning point was due entirely to the shift of my nostalgic yearning for the distant homeland and an escape from the Brussels prison to quite another nostalgic yearning.)

Booked Pollini ticket; small amount of shopping; stayed home for the rest of the day - extremely clear, a slight breeze, bright low sun - trying to read up about Scheme programming. Smoking. Realised when N and M came back that they had been working all day in the studio cleaning.

The night before, another discussion with N and M. They had been to the Mediatheque and brought back a whole collection of DVDs, chosen in the fifteen minutes while it was still open; a miscellany of titles vaguely involving animation, for the purpose of finding material to add a historical dimension to the Soft-ware workshop. Tonight they are in there watching them again.

(What would have happened if I had found my own apartment? None of these discussions would have taken place, nor some magical occurrences. But the “what if…” iteration could go on forever, and it would not markedly increase the value of my reflections. I can only accept how things have fallen out.)

Maja says that things are more tense than ever between Lina and her. She and Nik feel that Lina is taking a high-handed approach, that she thinks she’s “on top of everything” and is behaving arrogantly. Maja says that Lina seems to feel more comfortable with the Foton guys anyway and is becoming more and more distant from FoAM. But in fact Lina is “totally dependent” on FoAM, for financial support, the studio, etc. I mentioned the joking the other night when we went out between Hans, Margo and Lina about “unionising,” about “firing” Nik and Maja because they were working too hard. I took none of the connotations of this joking, either implicit or explicit, too seriously, and if anything thought it was more an ironic reflection on the comparative disparity between the workloads of those in the studio. On second thought, when I considered reporting to N and M, I realised they would probably see it in a different light (which they did). Again Maja mentions the feeling of antagonism that she feels her decision to spend less time at the studio is creating with Lina, and even with the Foton guys.

Yesterday, the start of the Fluxus workshop. Maja’s mother, Danica, and her brother Goran arrived the evening before at twelve. (My chronology is getting totally out of sync. It happened last time as well. It’s so much wine, the endless day in the studio, the lack of other contextual locative features…) The next morning, 13 December, the start of the workshop with a very small group, the only “outsider” being Angelo. The rest hadn’t arrived on time and came at various hours during the day; Julien and Alejo, then in the evening Dave Griffiths. Nik, Maja and Lina went to the station to meet him; for some reason they wanted to meet him all at once together at the station. Maja presented in the first part of the morning then after lunch Nik led the installfest. Rasa had come the night before to prepare the lunches, and she had come early this day as well. People left quite early after dinner. In this respect as in many others I can’t help comparing it to the previous workshop, how much more lively that one was. In this one, at lunch we tend to be fairly demure. Gradually we open up and discuss various software matters, installing, coding, and miscellaneous matters. But there is less of the intimacy of the last workshop - no one shows their wedding photos, for example… Maja sums it up by saying that it’s not “ecstatic” like the last one.

Dave works in a film production studio on 3D elements; he almost always uses object-oriented programming; for him, although this workshop is demanding, it is like “a breath of fresh air” to play with Fluxus (not being an object-oriented environment). He was inspired to do some research for this workshop into the history of abstract animation both before and during the computer era.

Today Dave did a presentation in the morning and a small one after lunch.

Another Kuruvica film tonight. Maja’s mother watches it while the others sit round the table, coding in an ambience of deep gravity. Maja and Goran are working on their squiggles and inputting the sensor data. At various moments Goran bursts out chuckling. Angelo has been playing a demo of Halo all day, he’s apparently given up on coding altogether. Julien left early, at about six this evening. Coding had got too much for him today, he said, and he mentioned the way they had several projection surfaces displaying distracting animation all the time; but “everyone seemed to like it.” Peter dropped out after the second day’s discussion with Dave. Maja officially declared him a “cotton wad” (in Croatian, or another language) this evening, and announced that she would tell him. The lunches and dinners feel quite awkward though as the week has progressed, it has become less so. Angelo insists in getting me into Call of Duty. He was supervising the installation process on my laptop previously; dissuaded by the eternity that the file was taking to unstuff, he has gone back to his computer to battle with Fluxus once more.

This morning snow was falling outside in sludgy patches, dissolving immediately when it touched the ground.

A sound system has been set up in the workshop space, so now we are constantly bombarded with noises as well as the three projection screens surrounding us. Endless chatter about updating the CVS, crashing, connecting the Fluxus input with Max or PE, and so forth. Maja’s mother prepares lunch; Rasa is doing dinner tonight. Lina is doing sundry tasks, occasionally looking in on the workshop space, then returning to her illustrating. Peter has not returned to the workshop, and indeed he has barely shown up in the studio in the past few days. How vexatious I find it all today, how it all seems to be a self-reinforcing show of tinkering for its own sake, fetishism that seems to a disenchanted witness to go round in pointless circles.

the Fluxus wrap-up and evaluation lunch in Tree and Leaf. Everyone present except knitting-needle-in-his-hairbob Julien and Foton Peter: Dave, Alejo, Lina, Nik, Maja, Angelo, and, at the beginning, Goran and Danica, who presently left because Goran became nauseous. First part of lunch we didn’t talk about the workshop much at all, then towards the end everyone briefly made a comment. It was really the first lunch with this particular constellation of individuals in which I felt the mood was not stilted, awkward and reserved. Throughout the week the mood on such “social” occasions as lunch and dinner had felt to me laborious, though it lifted now and then when people started breaking the ice and discussing software, programming, or other computer matters. By the end I was very glad to see the end of this workshop.

Later on Maja mentioned that “we’ve found an ally in Angelo…”

The night before, the “performance” cocktails with Pieter and Rasa, who drew moustaches, flowers, beauty spots and tears on everyone’s faces depending on how many cocktails they had. Stevie’s performance on the hurdy-gurdy with sensors attached to her arms and hands, while Dave did a live coding performance with Fluxus projected onto the usual wall of the studio. It ended the week in classic FoAM festivity, levity, drunkenness, and, after Stevie’s performance, atrocious music.

I had managed to avoid being questioned all week, but this evening I finally had to attempt an explanation to a number of the participants. Early in the evening around the computer benches I was talking to Dave about something to do with not persisting with Fluxus and so forth, and Maja said forthwith that I was in fact there to “observe,” that was my job. Dave said “really?” and I inwardly groaned at having to (mis)explain everything again, but he was genuinely interested and thought it was an important area, since programming is so much to do with people (which he also expressed in his presentation at the beginning of the workshop). He doesn’t know what he wants to do next year; he’s been working in the film industry in a production house using Maya, Shake, etc. for 3D CGI effects, and is quite sick of it. The good thing about his job is networking: you can meet people who after six months finally reveal what they do after hours, when they’re not working in the studio. On hearing that I was doing a PhD Dave said he was thinking of doing one as well, but the thought of so much study was also off-putting. He said he was interested in the implications of how for example blind people use computers.

Alejo asked me later, “just tell me, what are you doing here, why are you here? You’ve come all the way from Australia, it’s so far - so what are you doing here?” So I had to tell him as well.

Before that, the lugubrious “electrode fish” performance in Okno, by some people involved in Code 31 and which was previously shown at Nadine. Maja was urging us all to go up, since there had been complications with who would be doing what where, and it seems that the Code 31 guys had been hoping or expecting to have dinner in the FoAM studio, whereas Rasa had only planned on cooking dinner for the workshop group and had prepared snacks to go with the cocktails for the visitors to the open lab. Furthermore, apparently there was hardly any audience up there. Rob (van Kranenburg) had appeared a bit earlier, invited by Alejo (Maja made faces about the fact that he was coming), and was also present at the first bit of the performance in Okno. He thought it was “pathetic” and “pedantic,” he said later.

There was a girl with a camera on a tripod, Annemie with a DV camera, and one or two people who may or may not have been externals constituting an “audience.” The mood was stilted and downbeat. One of the Code 31 guys who I met before at the Soft-wear workshop wrap-up described the performance-experiment in Dutch, then a guy behind a computer and another behind a bass guitar started their mood-electro piece. People were constantly looking to the fish in the plastic bag in the aquarium, illumined in ultraviolet purple neon light, to see if anything was happening. A smell of burning toast started to permeate the loft, and at that point Rob wandered off. Presently Alejo also walked out, and I stayed until the end of the first part of the performance, at which point I was told that “the fish piece will start in five minutes.” I sidled out and went back down to FoAM, where the mood was cosy, dark, and very different from the one I had just left. I talked to Rob, noting that he left early. He said that they were so serious in the performance and then one of them started drinking beer. It was all so serious but then the guy started drinking beer like someone in any regular rock band, and this was too much for Rob. The only good thing about the performance was the strumming of an E chord. Big deal, anyone can get applause from strumming an E chord, he declared. He left before Stevie and Dave’s performance but said that it was “a really great space” they had created in the FoAM studio, to keep it up.

There was so much food that a lot was left over. I was being told off early in the evening for glutting myself, and afterwards I was admonished to be the studio’s vacuum cleaner. Ah, you can never win…

The evening before, got drunk in the apartment and did little all evening. Maja and Danica returned this evening. I had just returned from shopping. Nik and Goran were in the studio doing stuff on their computers. Maja said she was called by Annemie about the hyperbolic thing. There had been a meeting about this project while I was in Amsterdam. A curator in Leuven wanted something that was “interactive,” “hyperbolic,” and “collective.” Lina and Annemie were to be in charge of this project, since Maja would be in Australia when it was scheduled to take place. But still, everyone turns to Maja - for inspiration and administration. Annemie called Maja the night before, just as she was about to switch off her phone and enjoy some peace in the Ardennes with her family. Annemie insisted they meet “this evening,” or “next evening” about the hyperbolic thing, since Guy (Van Belle) had apparently had a new inspiration for it. Maja doesn’t want to work with Guy; he has a reputation for taking over entirely and insisting on his own vision, not listening to others (though he is an extremely lively, vivacious, and eccentric character even so, as N and M were saying on the train back from the Sonokids installation).

Maja and Danica’s accounts of the absurdities of the Balkan war and their struggles in that time. The forfeit of the family inheritance due to losing the papers, while everyone knew that it was rightfully their family’s; Maja’s scheme to escape with her friend, both of whom had just graduated two weeks before hostilities broke out and had the world as their oyster. They robbed their parent’s jewellery and headed for the last boat leaving for Italy, where Bois would rendezvous with them and transport them back to Holland where they had been studying; but they were refused entry on board, only tourists and foreigners were allowed on the boat, and there was no bargaining with the enormous armed guards, so Maja returned to her parent’s place and put back all the jewellery.

Tonight I continue to sip various Croatian cocktails while the others are out for dinner before the family leaves for Croatia next morning. Some of them are tinted a mysterious algae green, some a brilliant yellow; still others coloured a strange wan cyan (not a Croatian cocktail but absinth), and of course the familiar pinky crimson of the drenjina.

Yesterday evening the winter solstice.

Danica and Goran got up very early yesterday morning, at about six, because Danica was “panicking” about missing the bus. After Maja returned from dropping them off, everyone went back to sleep until 11 am. They had arrived back from the Ardennes just the evening before.

Nik was still trying to get his laptop working after it crashed during the last day of the Soft-ware workshop. We had something to eat at about three, then out of the blue Auriea and Michael came by to the studio. They stayed and we talked about a wide range of things, they started to say at about five that they should be going, kept on saying this for an hour and a half, then Maja noted that it was almost the solstice and we had to start celebrating, brought out some wine, and we stayed at the lunch table until about 12 pm, getting drunk again. Lowdjo Jo appeared some time around then and stayed for a while listening to the conversation, then started talking about DJ gigs, nightclubs, and strange encounters in Slovenia at TRG.…

[2005-12-23 16:03] … All of which is impossible to recapitulate fully. Much talk about Christianity, western philosophers including Derrida, Baudrillard, and so forth; language issues, the eccentricity of the Dutch idiom; the duplicities of the Windows operating system, the benefits of the Ubuntu operating system. Games, games research, games theory, a game in which the program got in the way of the character, the character being so well developed. Maja mentioned later, I think, that Michael and Auriea could be involved in game research with FoAM in the coming year(s). Auriea and Michael have apparently been asked by the Belgian National Bank to develop screensavers for the company’s thousands of computers. They joke about how the Bank wants something interesting but not too interesting.

Maja mentioned the discovery of cysts in her body, which “almost certainly” become cancerous, it is simply a matter of time. Maja said she thought she came through the Lyta experience unscathed, but it was not so. Auriea said that it is true that at some point, a line is crossed and a woman’s body is irrevocably changed.

FoAM receives Christmas cards from both Joe Ansel and, of all people, Merlin Systems.

Yesterday seemed to be uneventful to me, but there were several occurrences of which I was not immediately aware:

Maja returned to the apartment at midday (carrying the huge box of Australian wine Nik’s father had sent to the studio) extremely annoyed. She had just come back from an office in the “deep south” of Brussels to go through some bureaucratic matter with re-registering FoAM as an organisation, but the office turned her away because she didn’t have the right payment - she was missing €2.78. Later on, shopping in the supermarket, she couldn’t get a trolley and used a basket: it broke, everything went everywhere and everyone just looked blankly and didn’t try to help.

She received several emails from Xmedk workshop participants giving excuses why they hadn’t sent the write-ups Maja asked for in previous emails. (Joey gave the excuse that she had found a “Mayan boyfriend” and sent a photo of her in a swimsuit next to some bizarre figure covered in a feather costume.)

An issue with Foton came up, possibly quite serious, in relation to Foton’s role in the Grig project. Apparently Hans had submitted an independent proposal before he went to Jamaica which was lifted straight from the Grig proposal. He included a full text from the Grig proposal itself; furthermore, Maja said it was because of this that Hans’s proposal was accepted, since the evaluators could see from the Grig text that Foton’s proposal would have “long-lasting” value with spin-offs and follow-up projects. But Hans said nothing to Maja about this.

The real issue for Nik and Maja, though, is Foton’s interest in developing a working relationship with a certain Baptiste. I met this Baptiste when he turned up at Foton’s White Nights party. He was instrumental in having that event sponsored; he works for the City of Brussels council. He is also promoting a proprietary media system, “WOAW,” which can be used to project images on up to eight screens. The whole setup, both the software and the hardware, is designed to be used as a bundle which costs something in the order of €25,000. It cannot be used with third-party software. No one in FoAM wants anything to do with this system, nor with Baptiste. Hans said he “understood this and would take it into consideration” in his decision to become an associated partner with FoAM on the Grig project. Maja was much more interested in Hans’s ideas for research and there was mention of supporting him with €10,000 for this.

Despite this, however, Foton made no mention that they were submitting an independent proposal to work with Baptiste and “some other” obscure Dutch company who they’ve never worked with before. Nik says he would think that it is more in Foton’s interests not to alienate FoAM than to overreach themselves by working with Baptiste and the obscure Dutch company. Maja mentions other things: Peter’s dropping out of the Soft-ware workshop so early, without any real communication regarding this; the “16” project at Recyclart which mainly involved Rachel and FoAM, but was listed as a Foton project; the DVD projects also labelled as Foton projects and make no mention of FoAM. Making things more convoluted, Hans mentioned to Nik and Maja the day before that Foton had got “zero” funding from the Flemish Ministry for the next year; they were depressed about this and didn’t know how they would keep Foton going. Maja emphasises that they are happy for Foton to get the funding for their proposal, but still, “something in all this is wrong.”

We discussed further miscommunications, which Maja said she would have found curious if she hadn’t remembered what I said the other night about Cocky finding it difficult to understand N and M. (Actually I didn’t exactly say it like this but mentioned, in relation to my own difficulties in communicating with Lina, that to my surprise C and T found it easiest to talk with Lina.)

Cocky finally wrote from India, saying that the forest place they were staying and working at was really interesting, they were into researching native species and revegetating the landscape in a way that was sensitive to local conditions, and that FoAM could consider doing something similar. Maja had to point out that this was precisely what their Groworld project was about by cutting and pasting parts of the Groworld webpage. Nik and Maja are flabbergasted at how they can be so misunderstood by their own collaborators; Nik says they need a “PR department.” (Cf. Pix’s assertion long ago how N and M have a way of obfuscating things that is not really deliberate but congenital, and Pix continued to be involved in their projects precisely because he thought it was not intentional.) Mention of the difficulties in collaborating with Cocky and Lina in the TRG project, because they both had such strong ideas about their own interests.

The turbulence of the past after Starlab’s collapse, how that turbulence compares to the turbulence of Lyta and recent times. Nik likes to think that this turbulence has decreased each year, but Maja thinks otherwise. The early years were tumultuous in a positive way, while the period of Lyta’s production was turbulent in a negative way. It sounds like in the past things were turbulent but they had a common goal which gave the group a sense of coherence, which they have now lost. Nik agrees with this, but N and M debate the meaning of having a common goal.

Our conversations recapitulate and build on one another.

The orphan Christmas at FoAM, Christmas day. The strange affair of the Natalie Renard letters. We decided to use them as presents, not remotely considering the possibility that someone would actually know this “Natalie Renard” or the people mentioned in the letters. Jo was the lucky recipient in the lucky draw, but it quickly emerged that no less than *two* people in the room knew Natalie. One woman, who was living in Natalie’s old apartment; and another man, who was apparently Natalie’s lover six years ago. It was agreed that the whole episode was highly peculiar and mysterious. The group spent the rest of the evening in great mirth, sitting round reading out the atrocious prose of “Helge,” Natalie Renard’s desperate and pathetic correspondent.

The question of why the Ministry is happy to support an event where just “seven people get together and talk with each other” (as Nik sardonically observed) such as in the recent workshop. Maja says they will go along with it if they get funding for doing such activities, but it’s strange that such things are deemed worthwhile to support while others are not, and she doesn’t really see the logic. After all, they are interested in public engagement.

…Apropos of this, Hans just arrived in the studio and said that the Flemish Ministry did some kind of research and based on the results they contacted him saying that FoAM and Foton could not be collaborating together, since they were one and the same organisation with “identical people.” Nik doesn’t know how this could have come about and wonders what sort of research they could have done to get such an impression. The Ministry did this “research” after receiving Foton’s funding application.

Discussions last night: Nik’s concern that the next two years will become filled with other projects and activities, leaving no time for what he thinks is most necessary: to reflect on “what we’ve been doing for the last five years,” because if this is not done it would really all have been somewhat “pointless.” He envisages this as taking a year or more to do properly. Yet they have three DVDs to make before they leave in February, which they don’t think is enough time. But to put it off until they return would eat into the rest of their time in which Nik wants to spend in research and reflection.

Maja’s thoughts that the quality of Foton’s work - performances, events, etc. - in the last year or half-year has declined. She sees them as branching out into territory that they have no experience in. FoAM has experience in these mixed reality areas, but Foton are looking elsewhere for collaborators and support rather than to FoAM, which would be the logical option.

Maja met with Annemie, who is undergoing difficulties as the chief organiser of Okno, the umbrella organisation to Looking Glass, Code 31 and mXHz.org (i.e., the infamous Guy Van Belle). Annemie has been doing all the work for these organisations as well has her own, but they refuse to reimburse her, and although she has so far gone along with it, now she simply can’t manage financially any longer. She also has difficulties with Guy (aka mXHz), who had been her partner until September of last year.

N and M write the email to Merlin and send it in the afternoon. According to Maja the email is quite savage, but upon reading it I’m surprised by its mildness. Nik says that this is because when Merlin initiate a fracas, FoAM can point lawyers to this “perfectly reasonable” email as a backup when the vitriol starts to pour.

More food organisation for tomorrow’s new year’s eve party at Hans’s house; I spend more money on food than almost anything else…

This afternoon shopping with Maja, continuous snowfall, the streets covered in fluffy white icing sugar. Now a fine rain falls and the snow has turned to grey sludge.

15:29

By chance happened to be present at the sneak preview of Foton’s promotional DVD “Propaganda 1” last evening. Present were Peter, Susanne, Hans, and another woman ([Diana,] who was acting as their marketing agent, Maja later informed me), who sat in the lounge projection area and viewed the DVD straight through, then engaged in a lengthy commenting session. The guy [Max] actually designing the DVD, who has frequently been making an appearance at the studio, left before they had the screening (Maja wondered why and commented that it was an “interesting” way of working). They started in Dutch, but since Susanne was present and they also involved me a little in the discussion they switched to English for a while. Hans was saying the DVD should serve as their “business card,” perhaps as part of a more comprehensive “business card package.” It was meant to create an “image,” according to Peter, and its purpose would be served if it gave a little information but not too much, and stimulated the viewer to make further enquiries.

Debate about various abstract images in the DVDs and how they could detract from the message; Hans considered this to be a “fundamental debate” regarding the presentation of their work; there were two ways they could present themselves through images: the first approach would remain closely tied to “real,” tangible images throughout, while the second would work through abstract images without any immediately discernible reference to anything tangible. Debate about how much detail was necessary. Susanne thought that some of the still images that faded in and out added little to the impact of the DVD and made it unnecessarily long, while Peter mentioned repeatedly that programmers would want to see all the detail from multiple angles. They all agreed that a big problem was a lack of comprehensive footage. Hans mentioned the volume variations between the different titles. Peter said this was the first time he’d seen the whole DVD in one sitting. Before he would work on one title at a time in the sound studio with pauses between them.

Nik and Maja continue to work on the TRG articles, staying late into the day at the apartment editing and making endless “passes.” Maja mentioned some meetings next week to organise the production of some other publications. The curator for the proposed inflatable project at Ostende asked Maja to come up with another proposal by today. Maja declined, saying (with relief, since she sees no point in doing a project pulled out of the hat, though before she would have gone ahead) the people involved (Cocky and Lina) were away so nothing could be done. A reply came in from Merlin, which said they would “consider FoAM’s revised plan”; this meant getting in touch with their lawyers, N and M surmised. Since the 31st (really, since Christmas) they have had little time to work. After the Ardennes expedition we are all broke.

Further discussions last night about postmodernism, how it held out “promises that were never realised or fulfilled” [Maja]. It made sense to Maja for a while, coming from a country in which a socialist system was breaking down; then a few years later it didn’t and she’d moved on to other things. Mention of the mad postmodern theorist Nick Land and his obsession with snake symbols. Nik discusses Tibetan logic and why it didn’t evolve into a mathematical system from which computing languages could emerge, as did the Aristotelean branch of philosophy. How different our computing systems might be if Heraclitus instead of Aristotle had prevailed in the Western philosophical tradition, he reflects.

19:22

Helena and Sergio arrived 31 December from Bologna. We had been cooking all day, and not long after they arrived (their airline was repeatedly delayed) we set off for the new year’s party at Hans’s house. The last evening of the Plaisir d’hiver lights; but the light show in the Grand Place had already been shut down.

Helena and Maja were friends since kindergarten. They drifted apart in primary school, but stayed in touch sporadically. In high school they got back together and it was with Helena that Maja planned the dramatic escape from Croatia on the last boat. Sergio had worked as a party organiser up until he and Helena started their fashion label. He got sick of working so hard for people to have fun, people he realised he didn’t even like. Apparently he was involved in Italy with the group that were the first to fuse rave and industrial cultures in the late 80s. This group originally gathered in the UK but ended up in an Italian village [according to Nik].

The new year’s party at Hans’s place, a small gathering of partially familiar faces. It felt quite awkward and there didn’t seem to be much food except the five dishes Maja cooked that day. We drank and ate steadily throughout the evening. The New Zealand Asian girl who was friends with Susanne, visiting Brussels for a week. She summoned me over and we talked about this and that, then she asked me forthright why I hadn’t found “some Belgian girl.” She was working I think in graphic design or advertising, did a bachelor in sociology, had been living in London for the last year or so. London wasn’t so bad except for the recent terrorist attacks, she thought. A few noisy girls in the party yelling incomprehensibly in Dutch and jumping round, otherwise everyone was rather reserved.

Next night watching bad American documentaries (with the exception of “Urine Man”) and an Estonian film, a not very convincing attempt at a Baltic Bergman.

The next day, departure to the Ardennes, to the Chateau les Beaux Arts in Hoton. The others went in the car and I caught the train. It grew darker as the train clattered deeper into the country, and when I got out at a tiny obscure station called Marloie to transfer it was completely dark and cold. Uncanny silence and stillness of a Belgian country train station; like a ghost station, with few other passengers, complete night beyond the dimly illuminated platforms. I got an onward ticket from the station house and waited for the next departure to Hoton. It was an old train with only three carriages. Impossible to see the names of the stations that passed, but somehow I got off at the right place and N and M took me back to the chateau in what was an unexpectedly long drive from the station, deep through the Ardennes back country night.

The reception in the chateau with Lisa and Boudewijn, and the other couple. (The beautiful girl who reminded me of Natalia.) We stood and sat awkwardly for a time, discussing sundry topics while waiting for dinner, which Lisa had decided to make after all. Talked about music and composers with the hosts; one of the first topics was my namesake, whom they had not heard of. I have come across these kinds of “muso” people many times and though they mean well, their understanding and approach to music always feels contrived and inflated to me. Boudewijn was a botanist and discussed this occupation a little: he would not be sorry to see 95 per cent of all cyprus pines in the area (of the Ardennes) go, since they are not native and prevent other vegetation from growing by sterilising the soil.

Walks in the country near the chateau. The strange empty country town feeling, everything closed, deserted; occasionally some children playing in a car park. The descent of dusk, the endless cold, no dinner when we return to the chateau, we must drive to a nearby town to a restaurant.

• Peter’s enquiries into why Foton’s proposal was declined reveal that, basically, the Ministry didn’t read their proposal closely
• Maja writes a letter to the Ministry, because their conflation of Foton and FoAM has implications for FoAM’s reputation; the funding decisions and their rationale are published in government publications, on the Ministry’s website, and in a widely circulated local newspaper [Maja couldn’t specify which]
• the “five years of FoAM” DVD has been dropped from the agenda since there is now the Xmedk publication to finalise before they leave for Australia; Maja works on the last big text for the TRG publication; there is only an epilogue and something from Tim B to be done before it can be produced; Nik has the accounting for Lyta to do; and they also have to plan for a presentation at a Canberra university

Has it been worth all the effort over the last five years, Nik sighs rhetorically. Reading Maja’s article for the TRG book has made him despondent. It reflects for him the lack of development of the concepts behind the TRG project, and doesn’t include anything along the lines of a “how-to” for making an immersive environment. Maja says she couldn’t write it otherwise, because they did indeed merely skim off theories from several texts in fragments, trying to develop a mixed reality world as best they could in the timeframe they had. Mentions of whether Cocky and Lina understood anything to do with the conceptual dimension of the project. Maja says they could understand this dimension if it was made basic enough; then they would become interested and inspired. Nik asks her if she is proud of the project; which led to the question whether there were any mixed reality projects at all that were worthwhile. Maja mentions Whispers, Sensory Circus, and another mixed reality project; but none of these was so very good… The difficulty of collaboration or coordination on the level of the concept, as distinct from fabricating the materials, the space, and the media. Maja had spent the entire day rewriting the article and the epilogue. Nik was gloomy and morose (also about how long he feels it is taking him to make a ten-minute Fluxus animation for the Bent Object DVD). Both aver that the conceptual dimension, and exploring ideas of consciousness and reality, is what interests them most in this field; and both feel that this is exactly what has been insufficiently developed.

The interweaving of so many dimensions to such endeavours as building mixed reality environments. And in the end, is any of it worthwhile? What have they achieved? Why are they doing this stuff? Where is it going? If only they could find the time to work on a single project in greater depth. Would any of this make any difference to the final result though? Are they seeking the impossible? Is it delusion or idealism, or both? And so forth.

Meeting with Foton about the Bent Object DVD.

Maja is going to a meeting with the VAF tomorrow. The meeting is being held, ironically, at SABAM’s headquarters. It is the first time I’ve heard about this organisation that scours the country to collect royalties, and with whom Foton at least has apparently had plenty of dealings. (They are on Foton’s mailing list and however hard he tries, says Peter, he cannot isolate the email address that could be the “impostor.” It means that they know whenever Foton has a performance and send someone round to basically police the copyright status of the event or performance.) Strange stories about how they improvise and negotiate copyright fees on the spot, “like bartering in a common Moroccan market” according to Hans. Discussions regarding the criteria by which the VAF decides whether to fund a project.

[2006-01-11: They are indeed police-like and serve the same function as the RIAA does in America, it seems.]

Buds have been appearing on the barren winter trees since December, and now they are clearly visible.

Last night up until 4.30 am burning three DVDs. It was so pleasant walking home in the utterly deserted streets, the refreshing chill dry air in my lungs and on my face. I wished the streets were always that deserted.

Email from Merlin. N and M think it is outrageous and “totally divorced from reality” (in Nik’s words); Nik says he wanted this latest email in an interminable series of threads to at least set a reasonable basis for negotiation, and now Merlin has thrown this to the winds. Maja thinks this is a good email to forward to their lawyer. The things that N and M are most incredulous about: paying the same amount agreed on previously but instead of 300 muscles, receiving 100; instead of 8 control boards, 1; instead of continued support, cancellation of the contract. Discussion of this over dinner with Foton. Further attempts to second-guess Merlin’s tactics, mentality, and circumstances; for example, do they in fact have any subcontractors? More jokes about sabotaging the installation and making it look like an accident. Maja says she really doesn’t want anything to happen to Lyta now it’s installed; she thinks it’s nice and besides has caused so many people such a headache.

I not so sure about Merlin’s unreasonable email, as it left me with the impression that there were a number of points that could be defended (or at least developed into a defence) if it came to more serious procedures, whether or not the company is divorced from reality. But FoAM have more and longer experience in dealing with them. Again I wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better to cancel the project earlier. It seems anyway as though it could get just as bad now as if they had done this.

Nik has brought out all the old muscles and sorted them into piles according to what is wrong with them, in preparation to send them back to Merlin. The spectre of Lyta returns, as Hans jokes. In case they get no more muscles from Merlin, Nik wants to set aside those that have a better chance of being resurrected and not send them back.

16:36

A stressful morning in the shadow of the spectre of Lyta:

Nik is trying to draft the reply email to Merlin. N and M wanted to ask me what I thought of how they would respond. They will point out the discrepancy between buying 300 muscles at Merlin’s retail price (£69) and the amount Merlin is charging them for 100 muscles, 1 control board and the cancellation of the contract. FoAM has nothing to gain from the cancellation of the contract, so they are hoping to renegotiate this somehow. They don’t have high expectations but Nik wants to try “one more time” to convince them of a “rational” agreement.

A call from the company that delivered the foam for Lyta, saying that their driver hadn’t been paid. We have a written note that it was paid, but - no signature!

Lina will arrive tomorrow back from Lithuania; I had thought she would be back today.

Today the Foton guys hadn’t shown up by 3.30 pm. In previous days they’ve been in the studio by then, having dinner there and staying in late working. Occasional uproarious cackling erupts from their table as they listen to retro heavy metal music and make jokes. Susanne comes and goes on a different schedule.

Maja just explained to Nik and I why Foton weren’t in the studio today: they’ve just finished all their work of proposal writing so they’re taking a holiday.

23:51

Half an hour after sending the rather severe email to Merlin, in a completely unrelated yet serendipitously related incident, Phaeno sent an email about how Lyta was (not) faring and all the broken muscles they had.

Further developments of the idea to form a guild. Michael [Samyn] is becoming “revolutionary” and wants to write manifestoes. The idea is to start with just Annemie, Maja, and Michael and Auriea and develop a mission statement. Rather than trying to be a “democracy,” they would become an “adhocracy,” which is much closer to the way FoAM works anyway. The guild will start with these three (FoAM, Okno, and Tale of Tales), and then send their proposed statement to the other relevant Belgian new media organisations: Nadine, Constant, and so forth. They will also approach bigger Belgian media organisations. They will ask these groups for suggestions; if some don’t want to join, that’s fine; if some just want to nag, they will be ignored.

Maja says the mission statement can be summed up in the idea of “experimental media, art and technology.” The challenge is to define themselves amidst strong perceptions (in Belgium at least) that this kind of thing involves no substance or content, as distinct from video artists, for example, who can say they use video that will represent such-and-such. But FoAM’s work does not necessarily involve the representation of anything, and this means apparently that people perceive it and similar work to be vacuous. It was clear to Maja that because neither she nor Auriea were Flemish (Maja sounds distinctly Dutch to Flemish ears, and Auriea can’t speak Dutch fluently) they were not taken seriously in the VAF meeting. This is another reason why Maja thinks it would be good for Annemie to be the spokeswoman and chair of the proposed guild, though Maja knows that Annemie doesn’t really want to take on this role.

• physical format
• sourcing printers
• sourcing designers
• editing and proofing
• editorial and keynote articles: sourcing writers for these
• distribution

• ideas for a “digital culture” festival in 2006-7, which led to…
• mention of establishing a (semi)unified “guild” of digital/new media artists in Brussels

What will the publication consist of? Should it be more magazine-like or made to “endure”? This issue was mentioned early on, and had a bearing on most of the factors discussed.

Yves Bernard of Imal was the first to arrive, on time, at 12.30. He thought it would be impossible for him to have his material collected, edited and ready for the proposed April deadline. Getting impatient for the others to arrive, Maja called them and they were upstairs at Okno, and immediately came down. The meeting consisted of Nik and Maja, Annemie, Ferdinand and the other main Nadine guy [Trudo], and Yves. It was carried out mainly in English; frequently the Flemish-speaking component (which was everyone except Nik and Yves) would break into their own language. Sometimes Annemie translated into French for Yves. Only Gert, another person involved in the Xmedk workshops, was absent; he was apparently upstairs configuring a whole set of old Macintoshes. (Everyone’s going retro now, Maja commented, and cited the delivery of Nik’s second Quadra computer this morning. The Okno-Nadine contingent were avidly discussing the release of the new Intel-based Macintoshes at the Macworld expo yesterday.)

Discussion regarding the physical format of the publication. Annemie had brought a magazine as a starting point, the ¾ Revue Magazine, published in Slovakian. She picked this up at the last Transmediale festival. Debate about paper quality, thickness, weight, and size, the suitability for photographs and images. How big is the publication going to be, how many issues will be made. The issue of expenses of printing the cover. Expenses of printing in Belgium versus elsewhere. The possibility of printing in Slovakia; other possibilities are mentioned: for example Kibla (though this is not possible in reality, Maja thinks). N and M don’t know of any printers (or graphic designers) in Brussels or Belgium, but other attendees had a few suggestions.

Graphic design: finding someone capable. Again, possibilities are mentioned based on people’s established contacts. The Nadine people were asked if they could do it but they aver they don’t have the expertise for designing something on the scale of the ¾ Revue example. Expenses of hiring someone. Their budget is €5,000 (from VAF); some amount must be contributed independently by each of the organisations involved if they are to get this done. €1,500 is mentioned as a figure. Slovakia is again mentioned, and Nik notes the advantage of having both the printer and graphic designer in the same place. The graphic designer of ¾ would be suitable from the example of his work in that publication.

Distribution and the associated costs were noted but not elaborated to a great extent. Should it be distributed mainly at festivals such as Transmediale, or should it be in bookshops? What distribution loops would be appropriate? How would distribution influence the kind of publication it was? It would have to be made to last, for example about three years, if it were to be distributed in bookshops. Its use-by date would be very short if it were made in magazine-style. This brings up the issue of the Xmedk workshop participant contributions. It is felt that these should be well controlled or organised if the publication was meant for a long shelf life, since they would by nature be or a sketchy, unfinished character and therefore presumably not entirely appropriate in a finished product that was meant to last.

Finding someone to write the editorial or keynote article. Firstly they should be from outside of Belgium, Yves suggests, since this will give an “international flavour”; but at the same time they should have an understanding of the Belgian and Brussels (digital arts) scene, have read all the contributions to the publication, and be someone “famous.” A list of possible candidates is made with suggestions from round the table; the most favourable being the person who Nik knows (though only from a long time ago, Nik hastens to add) [Matt Fuller]. Certain candidates write in a highly theoretical vein and bring in all the postmodernists such as Deleuze and Guattari, Maja says, which is not entirely favourable; Nik’s friend on the other hand has practical experience which is a bonus for this kind of publication. Honor Harger is mentioned, among the other names I don’t know and don’t catch. All these people are busy though. Would it make a difference if they were paid? The suggestion that Guy Van Belle write the article was quickly dismissed, based on his complete failure as an editor for a previous Xmedk publication initiative in 2004.

The people on this list are slated to be followed up. The editorial (as distinct from the keynote article) can be done at the end by FoAM and all that needs to be done is to add a placeholder of half a page for it in the design, about 500 words.

Aside from the publication, the idea of having some kind of festival for the digital arts is mentioned. Yves notes that the digital arts scene in Belgium is only five years old, and it doesn’t have its own festival. The idea of bringing together all those working in this field, the logistics involved, whether to have an agenda or to have no agenda at all (which Nik laconically observes would be very Belgian: to have groups working in entirely separate ways brought together). Not installations, but rather talks, drinking, performances. Maja says FoAM would be interested in workshop-orientated activities, since they are now a Werkplaats and don’t want to become embroiled “for at least two years” in more productions or installations.

This leads to further discussion about establishing a “guild” of new media artists. Everyone is asking for it: other artists, the government, the media. They are complaining that there is no central place, authority, or organisation to which they can direct enquiries. In general, establishing such an organisation would bring the possibility of greater (mass, mainstream) media coverage also, since the media would have a point of reference. They agree that (mainstream) media coverage of digital arts is extremely poor to nonexistent in Belgium; television and newspapers ignore and avoid it.

Annemie mentions the La Bord [?] story that Maja told last night, about Els who accosted Annemie and Maja at the metro station on their way to the VAF meeting and shouted that Annemie hadn’t replied to her email, that she had copied the La Bord website, whose designer had spent hours on “every pixel.” Annemie responded saying that sorry but her site was generated by a script in seconds, and if Els didn’t like it she should just click “reload.”

The group plan to reconvene just before Maja and Nik’s departure, mid February, to finalise the above plans.

• spectre of Lyta: ongoing communication convolutions
• Vlaams funding issues
• Lina returns
• time is running out!
• Maja’s meeting with some kind of lobby group upstairs at Okno
• preview of some Bent Object DVD clips
• short meeting re Bent Object DVD jewel case design

Maja just left for Annemie’s to go to another meeting about lobbying for their cause. I think it’s a followup to a previous meeting about forming a guild and writing a manifesto, with Michael and Auriea and Annemie. Many jokes about forming a “united front”; Nik goes on about lobbying for “the extensive bureaucratisation of art,” and so forth.

Nik declares cynically that “I really don’t think we belong to a field,” in context of a discussion at lunch about the field of visual arts and how there are massive sales of paintings for high prices.

The prospective Sonokids II event is off, so Pix won’t be coming back to Brussels in the near future. He has told Maja, however, that he will be happy to go to Wolfsburg to diagnose Lyta. Maja concludes that he must have had a good holiday and is now more amenable. Lina is to have a meeting later this week about the hyperbolic thing.

An email reply yesterday from Merlin. We were actually making you an “offer,” Merlin said. Yes, we will repair the muscles. It sounds more reasonable but quite crazy, we all agree, since they are shifting position erratically. It was reportedly a long email in which Merlin went into detail about how they saw their relationship with FoAM. Maja says that some things just don’t seem right, she wants to read it more carefully and write up FoAM’s version of their relationship with Merlin to this point.

Half an hour later, Phaeno emailed again saying that 47 muscles had died and the installation was sitting with a big “out of order” sign on it (just like Pix predicted). One thing Maja noted about the Merlin email: Merlin said that Joe (Ansel) called them in January and cautioned them that FoAM was unreliable and they should pull out. Maja says that Joe asked her if he could contact Merlin directly, in order to get more muscles. Maja responded saying she would think about this, subsequently decided that FoAM should manage it solely, and wrote another email to Joe saying that he should not contact Merlin. Joe responded saying that too late, he’d called them, and Maja responded to this with an angry email, since Phaeno had no right to meddle in the business of FoAM’s subcontractors. Joe then responded with a reciprocally angry email and thus the group had been dreading their encounter this September with him at Phaeno. But Joe said in September he had only tried to renegotiate the muscle deal with Merlin. It’s a tangled tale indeed, and Maja is still concerned “if this should ever go to court” that they somehow get the record straight.

They have not yet received their funding for this year from the Flemish Ministry. In previous years it has come in very late, the middle of the year, once in October. It must not appear in the books that they are making a profit, so they have to juggle the accounting to appear that it is in minus at the end of each year. One year they got in trouble for demonstrating that they had seemingly made a profit. With the new system in place as of this year (the system that was also meant to solve the problem of delayed funding) they will be subject to a more stringent audit at the end of the financial year, perhaps as extreme as when the auditor (Regis) came to sort out their finances last year [in October during the Soft-wear workshop]. Changes to the internal management of allocating salaries: now they get paid for doing tasks that have been [or will be] more or less formally constituted and allocated to various individuals - which in practice means Nik, Maja and Lina. They’re all doing the same old stuff, it’s just that this is now more formally recognised and a relationship between activities and funds has been established.

Watched Maja’s preview sketches of her work for the Bent Object DVD as the lights in the square below the studio flickered on under a dim pink sky, which had completely cleared. Peter and Susanne watched with the graphic designer of the Foton DVD [Max]. They didn’t say much; the appearance of something “real” in the hallucinatory psychedelic washes of digital imagery, in this case Susanne’s face, was noted, and Maja said she was planning to fix it; Peter mentioned again the distinction between “real” and abstract imagery, as Foton had discussed on viewing the preview of the Propaganda 1 DVD the other evening. Before this, short discussion with Foton, FoAM, and the Foton DVD designer about the design of the DVD case. The designer was sitting in on the screenings to get a feel for what to design. Some material from Maja’s work was also transferred to his laptop so he could use it for screenshots. He speaks French; seems to understand English a little but doesn’t speak it too much.

After the lobby group meeting, a visit from the manager of the Brussels Fantastic Film Festival. I have never seen him before but he knew about FoAM and the studio and had been there before. He talked for about 20 minutes with Maja and Lina about the recent VAF meeting, the ludicrousness of Flemish funding policies and processes, how it was difficult to do anything in these conditions, how establishing a “bloc” would create solidarity and strength that the government wouldn’t be able to ignore. (Maja said that when she’d tried to voice an opinion in that meeting, she was told that “you’re all foreigners anyway so shut up!” (referring to FoAM). The Flemish side of things was meant to be known for its encouragement of internationalism - but not too much internationalism.)

Nik works on accounting, Maja continues editing, there is nothing too difficult at this stage apparently, but time is running out for them.

Cocky’s return from India; Lina talked to Theun yesterday, now she’s talking to Cocky. Lina’s idea of seedballing: something fast, we know how to do it, we know how much it costs. The curator wants something “more visible” than just a seedballing workshop, so Lina’s idea of making lycra spheres and weird shapes to do the workshop in.

Lina and Maja return from a meeting about the hyperbolic thing. The budget’s now been set; the curator there asked if FoAM could spend a month there in person, for a low budget. Maja: “She seems really upset.” Lina: “She’s not managing.”

Discussion of the hyperbolic thing between Lina and Maja.

Maja: Shouldn’t be targeting this just to the VAF.

What do we have in common? - Use of digital technologies

Michael: Interactivity - what the computer does best…

Maja: In the broad sense of the word. … But the computer doesn’t necessarily do this best.

Michael: Define something we have in common - a big thing that encapsulates for all eternity what we do.

Auriea: The core is digital, meaning that computers are something more than a medium or tool…

Annemie: Video that allows interaction…

Michael: The focus on the digital to tell a story…

Maja: Problem that our sector is ambiguous, but this is also good because we don’t close off possibilities.

Annemie: Anouk De Klerk

Auriea: She uses the computer to generate a video, therefore the computer is not an integral part of the presentation.

Maja: If we do have a text that explains what we mean, even if [Anouk] choses to sign it then who are we to refuse?

Annemie: Are we trying to separate ourselves from the video section or not?

Maja: I don’t think so; because then we should try to distinguish ourselves from the arts sides; we get money from other sources…

Annemie: We should be clear about our vision for the future re experimental/digital media. Ars Electronica etc. also show this video stuff. It’s confusing for people who don’t really know how it works…

Auriea: Networks - not just in computer networks…

Maja: You work together towards something, a mixture of Belgian and non-Belgian, sometimes a problem that it’s not “Flemish” enough… Most of our teams are international and whether it’s Flemish or not is not really relevant. It’s still a Flemish production because you are a Flemish organisation doing something in Belgium. Question marks.

Annemie: Budget - you must specify where your money is going. A money thing. If you are paying a Czech animator it is still considered a Flemish production.

Auriea: Get them to value an international collaboration; they always like it but not beforehand, always after! In other countries this is not a problem. This is not something unique; there’s other organisations and institutions that support this work internationally. We need lists of these to let them know that this will improve the international footing of Belgium.

Maja: Issue of “experimental.” They were saying they wanted to take experimental out. Define what we mean by experimental, and what is better and worse in experimental.

Annemie: It’s all video, the only difference is that they are presented in a different venue than the cinema. Feature films your in commercial circuit, even with auteurs; that’s feature film to them, everything else is experimental. Split of four divisions.

Auriea: A paper about what you mean by experimental, in order to judge they need to know more about it.

Annemie: Difference between digital media and regular video art - in one you experiment, one you don’t.

Michael: You have to experiment in new media. Looking for the potential in digital media.

Annemie: The video sector had the same problem 15 years ago as the digital sector has now.

Michael: We are in many cases building our own technologies; in video art there was a lot less focus on the technology.

Maja: The making of the technology is very important, not just [a side issue for us]…

Annemie: A meeting with these people with some presentations, explanations, also historical background.

Auriea: Give them a crash course in the context of what we are making.

Michael: Texts are often complex but the things are often quite simple; they get to see texts mostly; communication happens in interaction.

Auriea: They want those files, it’s not the best way to communicate what we are doing. No clear understanding of what we are making, they don’t get it.

Annemie: A problem in all commissions, not just in Belgium. They don’t give you money until it’s all finished and you can show them all the media.

Maja: They should do more studio visits, invite you to their meetings.

Auriea: We all work differently and it’s hard to put a blanket policy over all our work. [They should] work with us to discuss how the budget should be broken up in pieces; how we want to receive the money; their model is based on film production, not appropriate to our work.

Annemie: It’s different for all of us. They should communicate with all of us individually…

Maja: EU gives 50 per cent up front.

Annemie: These are details; we must think how we present ourselves; the international context; our vision; how we want to go forward, in Belgium but also in the international context. VAF did a study on the animation sector, in Belgium then put in an international context. We are putting our own money into this publication.

Maja: We could suggest that they must put a bit of effort into understanding this sector; but we can’t constantly be trying to educate them.

Nik: How do you make them want to engage, to make it easy and show how it will benefit them to work with us.

Maja: It’s our task to show them that it’s a living sector, that it’s exciting, that we’re not just fiddling round alone; that probably means organising something.

Annemie: If we present ourselves, explain what we are doing… A digital music performance, a responsive environment won’t be considered film. Careful about our presentation to the VAF, they will send us to the Kunstendecreet commission. The VAF might even love to lose us! We should present ourselves as extra value to the VAF.

Michael: Within VAF we are a small part, within Kunstendecreet we are nothing. We have to make the VAF love us!

Maja: We must invite them and shove it into their mouths with a big spoon.

Michael: Show them that we’re making things that make sense to a wider international community.

Maja: Same story with the Kunstendecreet - they don’t understand us either. I don’t think we can mix them [the Kunstendecreet and the VAF]. Two different histories that can perfectly coexist…

Annemie: Describing ourselves to the VAF - digital, let’s call it digital.

Michael: I don’t think we need to split it all apart but I don’t think we need to glue it all together either. They created this sector. Put film, animation and video in one category and put us in the other category, and give us the millions!

Maja: They tried to merge something that’s not mergeable, it’s not us who’s splitting it all up. [Our manifesto] should be wide enough to present to a variety of organisations. When we do have public things, we publicise it together. But who do we send this to?

Auriea: The VAF woman wants to do this; but then we get a VAF stamp on it.

Michael: We should use our technology to do this, where these things do it themselves!

Maja: If we want to have a good representation of this sector, a human would be useful. A lobbyist, PR relations, etc. Do we have enough information now to say who we are and what we want? What do we want?

Money!

Maja: Don’t ask for more money immediately!

Annemie: Ongoing work, will take some time, multiple meetings.

Elect someone for the WAF committee.

Individual artists, organisations? Easier to talk for an organisation; lots of individual artists are not interested.

Michael: Can an individual represent our work? I’m fine with [Annemie] representing, for example.

Maja: Two things: who is in this guild, and…

Annemie: The more people we represent, the better.

Auriea: The VAF judging committee.

Michael: A first act of the guild: to present people for the committee in common. Physical meeting, mailing list? Easy way to subscribe to something.

Auriea: The video artists will show up and talk about their irrelevant stuff…

Michael: Ignore them and use them for their numbers!

Maja: Someone to represent us, to lobby or put together a newsletter. This person will probably need to be paid. After all it’s a nasty job.

Michael: Have the VAF give us the money? Where do we get the money for this?

Nik realised just yesterday during accounting that Lyta was over budget another €6,000, making the total €16,000.

Michael and Auriea’s discussion with Lina about characters in their game: centaurs? yaks? Auriea and Michael: “Americans are incapable of grasping the deer face character. Others don’t have a problem with it; English, the French; just the Americans. A monster with hundreds of arms is OK; but a deer with a human face can’t be easily categorised by them.”

Cocky is excited to resurrect FoAM Holland, to regain access to their tax file number, etc., to reform and restructure it, Maja mentioned at lunch yesterday. The problem of Nat; question as to whether she’s on the board or not; and since she’s not, why invite her to any board meetings concerning FoAM Holland?

Lina discussing a project with Stevie re textile design for some dance performance.

There will be a meeting with Todor on Thursday re the upcoming project.

Maja’s meeting with Rob von Kranenburg, who is now interested in whirling dervishes, poetry readings, and finding your own space in forests. Says he is happy not to feel embarrassed about being interested in literature and poetry. Maja’s opinion of him improved after this meeting; for a start, he never mentioned “creative industries.”

Meeting about the “Guild,” with Maja, Lina, Nik, Annemie, Auriea and Michael; first in the FoAM studio, then in a Thai restaurant to meet with a producer in the animation industry.

Annemie invited the animation producer because she felt he had been through something similar to what they were facing now in the animation industry ten years ago. He discussed the need to form a “united front,” almost like a union, while respecting the different opinions held behind that front. The animation field had previously been riven by in-fighting and lack of cooperation and this needed to be overcome to mobilise a force that the government would respect and even “fear.” Having someone paid to lobby; a website targeted primarily at insiders of the field, etc., were ways in which this front was established and coordinated. Before they did this, the animation producer said, they had been basically the laughing stock of the government. Much of this was felt to correlate with what we had been discussing in our meeting for the prospective guild.

• meeting catalysed by last Friday
• Nik’s ongoing saga with the taxes
• Maja’s completion of various texts in a short time: the draft of the manifesto, the Subtle Technologies proposal
• the purge and reformation of FoAM Holland

Yesterday news was received from the last erstwhile member of the board of FoAM Holland that he wanted to resign. This means that the entire ancien régime of FoAM Holland has seceded quietly and painlessly and the *relance* will probably therefore be smooth, with Cocky apparently prepared to take on much of the administrative burden.

Meeting about the smoking issue with Hans, Peter, Maja, Lina, Nik yesterday at 6 pm around the kitchen table.

Peter said firstly that it would be a good idea if they could all meet each month; it needn’t be a long meeting and if there was nothing to say that was fine, but they should still meet for anything to be aired. Hans and Peter thought the incident last Friday was indicative of larger issues needing to be discussed. The meeting never became heated but was tense and strained, and a sense of estrangement between the two factions seemed to grow rather than come to a resolution by the end. Everything had been discussed but no one seemed satisfied; certainly the FoAM faction weren’t convinced; it seemed like we’d had the same meeting before, Nik said. Hans and Peter had the most to say while Maja mainly responded, Lina was vocal regarding the smoking and cleaning issues, and Nik said little but interjected wry comments and observations now and then. (“What a dysfunctional family we are,” said Nik previously.)

Hans talked about the issue of tolerating annoyances which, he stressed, were not problems, but part and parcel of sharing the studio environment. He came back to the notion of the “grey area” and that things couldn’t be black and white. He mentioned Lyta again and the annoyance that it caused, but stressed that he considered this part and parcel of sharing the studio. He asked again that he would like FoAM to respect the grey area and the idea of compromise and tolerance. Maja stressed that she asked them repeatedly if it was bothering them and they always said no, but if they said something FoAM could have made changes. Hans said that this wasn’t the point. It seemed that Maja was seeking some kind of categorical solution while Hans wanted the opposite.

They wanted to use the space for more public events, like they had originally intended. All the furniture was to have been put on wheels for this purpose, so that it could easily be pushed to the side when the space was used for public events. Nik was concerned that it could easily just turn into a soulless venue where they would have to “hose down the concrete each morning” after the place was trashed during the parties. Peter and Hans avowed that this was not at all their desire, but they also wanted to do events that were “less FoAM-like” now and then, not just “quiet” events like the Microfotones. Maja voiced a strong concern that the place was not set up for full-scale parties and such, and stressed how unhappy FoAM were about people coming into their computer room to snort cocaine in a previous Foton party in the studio when that room was marked clearly no entry. Lina’s computer setup was also disrupted. At the least, Lina and Maja wanted someone to be there who was “not entirely drunk” and could deal with situations that got out of hand. The need for fire extinguishers, locks for the off-limits areas, and insurance, which Peter said Foton already were covered for. Maja said that “everything we have” was in the studio, and if the studio went they would lose everything. Peter avowed that though he could understand this, for him if his sound studio were gutted and the stuff on their table were destroyed, it wouldn’t in the bigger scheme of things matter to him. Nik and Maja continued to look visibly unhappy about the prospect of hosting more public events in the studio. Hans said that he would prefer to discuss these matters outside of the studio, that they should all go and have a drink at a bar and air their problems, so as to maintain a “small utopia” in the studio.

Peter said that he and Hans thought FoAM were going inwards, retreating from the world and excluding it; the FoAM they knew before was “wide open like a sponge.” FoAM were pushing the world away and narrowing themselves into a smaller and smaller circle. The door to the studio is never open any longer to visitors; people who come from outside to the studio feel uncomfortable, as though there were some “weird atmosphere” in the studio, Hans and Peter averred.

The issue of cleaning: Peter continued to be adamant about not having a cleaner come in to clean his mess, or if one did come, he and Hans would clean with the person. They didn’t want to pay for it. Lina said that she gave up trying to ask Hans and Peter if and when they could clean. Apparently they agreed at the AGM that cleaning would happen after events, and when someone asked the group to clean. Apparently Peter said he didn’t like Lina’s communication and so after that she decided she wouldn’t try to ask them.

Smoking: Hans conceded that on the grounds of Maja’s health argument, he would from now on stop smoking in the studio entirely. Hans and Peter agreed to ask their visitors not to smoke, and declared they would stop smoking themselves in the studio. But they wanted to be able to smoke while FoAM were out of the studio, and said that they didn’t want to police their guests if those guests continued to light up after being asked by Hans or Peter. Nik mentioned later that this was “such a cop-out.”

Last Thursday there was a pollution alert in Brussels, in the motorways and in public transport, saying please consider not driving your car, thank you for using public transport, we also suggest you stay home. Yesterday the weather was warmer, overcast, and drizzly, with slight breezes to dissipate the noxious clouds of suffocating pollution that I could feel as early as Wednesday.

Visit of Bois yesterday; went out to eat pizza for lunch in the nearest pizza place on Dansaert [Da Mimo; now Da Vito?]. He is cantankerous as ever and discusses an assortment of bad news about the state of the world, Holland, and Belgium. Spectre of Lyta again; still no definitive word from either Phaeno or Merlin re muscles, expectations for fixing the installation, etc.

Further troubles about cleaning. FoAM thought it was to be this Saturday that they would clean; Hans thought it was the next. So the cleaning hasn’t been done and everyone is more annoyed.

Preview of Maja’s work on the Bent Object DVD last night. Susanne didn’t appear, so it was just Peter. He made comments on some of the figurative versus non-figurative elements; some of the transitions; and the appeal of having loose rather than tight, precisely beat-mapped synchronisation of visuals to the audio. Otherwise, no suggestions for major revisions. They hope to set up a render farm next week to harness the processing power of all the desktops in the studio so that the final rendering can be done on time, before N and M leave.

Nik continues to voice despair over the accounting, sighing at various moments that as it moves into the realm of pure abstraction it becomes exponentially more difficult and tedious.

Meeting re Lina’s research, but also sundry things that need to be done before and after N and M leave.

• defining roles of Nik, Maja and Lina more explicitly
• “research packages”
• defining Lina’s research: how does her orientation fit with FoAM’s overall programme, especially now? (She acknowledges her disinclination for research)
• fermion server crash yesterday
• instructions for Lina while N and M are away
• Lyta: forwarding Merlin’s email to Lina to forward to Bois, Todor, but not Pix
• outstanding money for reports, publications
• audit 10 Feb; but consistency concerns
• pre-payments of bills, etc.

Annemie, Trudo, Ferdinand, Maja, Lina, Michael, Auriea

• technology + art?
• experimental art?
• how to present ourselves?
• risk of being misunderstood
• VAF: they see links between film and video
• stress to the VAF at least that we’re media, not just video
• next week the question - who is part of it?!
• interactivity!
• we don’t want to exclude them [video artists], we just can’t represent them, they are a separate category
• individual artists
• we have a huge task to represent ourselves; video artists don’t need to do this
• do we leave the technology bit in or not?
• leave “technology” out for the VAF and decide whether to use it for other people
• why do we need a guild anyway?
• can’t we just sit in our rooms?
• Trudo says not anymore
• getting public respect is the most important for me [Michael]
• present what kind of structure? i.e. this is the guild, its aims, etc. - we need a representative
• this person should be paid
  • Bart?
  • Tom?
• who’s going to pay for this?
• we should all contribute something
• Dirk?
• he’s subsidised, which implies a dependence on the organisation subsidising him
• policy of VAF not to give money to orgs but only to individuals - but what about all the film organisations!
• even Tale of Tales had to establish a legal framework; the VAF expects them to have producers, etc.
• money from a documentary about experimental media artists!?
• the “Belgian” thing - we have to call it Flemish not Belgian
• but we should be a Belgian organisation, but represent ourselves as Flemish just to the VAF
• how to organise contacting, email lists, etc.?
• best to have people from outside
• Dirk de Wit will have a strong hand in the choice
• Maja lists a number of people who might be good for this committee
• but we haven’t talked with any of them
• look abroad, better to get us out of this bubble, more neutrality
• now we have to define the scope and tasks of the guild
• who we will invite
• members and scope - most important things
• lobby group starting from the lobby agencies then moving to the press, public, etc.
• scope is to get attention and exposure for what we do and how interesting it is and how good we all are!
• good PR person to chase up incorrect press representations, etc.
• there’s too many of us to be freaks anymore! we’re not just a sideshow anymore
• a task for Dirk De Wit - no, he’s there for the government
• what is he - he’s just organising workshops now
• Annemie understood from the email that it was meant to unite people

Before the above: Xmedk publication meeting.

[2006-02-22] Maja said after this day ended that it was disappointing in most respects. Annemie reacted strongly and in a way that surprised and even shocked Lina and Maja when she saw the quantity of Xmedk texts that we had assembled for the publication, saying that it was “just stupid” if Okno didn’t have a similar quantity of text. She continued to voice concern over our texts and suggested we would have to cut a lot out. Maja thought the guild meeting was basically a repeat of the last one with little or no new ground covered; it just went round in circles even though she kept on trying to move it on. And to cap it all, she finished the Bent Object DVD on the evening of that day, what amounted to months of work, and gave it to Peter to watch. He apparently took it home and Foton watched it, but when Maja phoned him to ask what he thought of it, he merely replied that it was good to listen to it on good speakers - not a single word of thanks. One small victory was that she and Lina convinced Vali to speak at the Mediakunst meeting in Gent on Friday. Vali had been very busy and it was uncertain whether she would be in Brussels at the time of the meeting, but Maja and Lina went to visit her in the morning and convinced her that she should speak on FoAM’s behalf.

Today, the guild meeting at VAF, headed by Dirk de Wit. I was expecting a small gathering not really much larger than those that have taken place in the FoAM studio over the last few weeks; but when Lina and I arrived there were about twenty people in the stuffy, hot room. (Apparently this was because Annemie was telling people who were present at the meeting held in Cocky’s inflatable last night in Gent about the guild.) It was rather strange and felt that suddenly this “guild” idea had emerged from the “underground” of the core revolutionaries into the light of day, and it was somehow eery seeing Maja’s guild text circulated around the whole group, a text that I had considered to be mainly internal and not meant for wider circulation even among those who might be “in the know.”

The meeting was all in Dutch. Michael and Auriea, Annemie, and Ferdinand and Trudo were the only other people I knew there besides Dirk. The meeting went for hours and was excruciatingly boring, especially since I had already sat in on the other meeting last Friday in Gent, but above all because, to my lasting shame, I will never understand this convoluted language. Therefore my main impression, however misinformed, was one of a bunch of artists engaged in endless debate about what boiled down to funding issues - an all-too-familiar hobby horse. First Dirk outlined the general (budgetary) situation facing “new media” artists in Belgium (since I assume that was what most of the people present were). Next, and by far the most tedious and drawn out, was round table proposals for people considered applicable or worthy to be elected for the committee of this guild.

When the meeting finally broke up we went back to the studio with Auriea, Michael, and Annemie, and a couple who had never been to the FoAM studio before, Kora and Thomas (of Workspace Unlimited). Kora told me they had been in Canada previously, and had returned to Belgium February last year. She was Belgian herself, but her family moved to Canada when she was eleven, and they have been going back and forth ever since. They moved back here most recently because their funding comes from Belgium. Kora said that in Canada things were generally much more open to new media, computers, experimentation. But in Belgium you could find these strange “pockets” of interesting stuff, like FoAM itself. Their line of work was, I think, creating 3D worlds, though I forget the specific applications.

Thomas talked at length about being very careful and strategic in how the guild presented itself and set about establishing connections with other players who would be of more or less strategic importance for its cause. We had to integrate with the “discourses” that the other players understood, he kept on saying. We should start off very humbly and only gradually seek to expand our reach and influence, otherwise we would risk the whole thing “blowing up in our faces.” He then went on to mention many things that had been discussed before in the comparatively intimate meetings of the founding members of the guild, like collaboration strategies with twikis, mailing lists, etc. (I presently recalled that I had seen these two at the Mediakunst conference in Gent.)

Lina has asked Pix to go to Wolfsburg in response to the recent email from Phaeno, which he has agreed to do, but reiterates how he feels he won’t be able to make a good defense for Lyta if the Phaeno staff ask about it, etc.

Last Friday, the Overleg Mediakunst conference in Gent, headed and organised by Dirk. All in Dutch of course, except for a presentation by a man from the EC who dealt with research proposals in the information technology sector. Vali drove Lina, Hans and I to Gent for this. It was too early for many of us, and Hans spent most of the time in the car dozing. It was drizzling for most of the day. Vali said while driving, as we were setting out: “I never knew I would be doing marketing for FoAM!” We got lost in Gent in the car, and afterwards while trying to find the conference room amidst the strange housing complex in which it was held.

Vali’s talk was short and not entirely convincing in the context, since it was pitched basically as saying “here we are, please feel free to contact us” whereas the focus of the conference was more about discussing participants’ work, aims and objectives. The text Maja provided for the booklet handed out at the conference was not included for some unspecified reason; I had prepared two sets of slideshows, one to play in the background of Vali’s presentation, the other to show informally to people if they were interested; neither was used; none of us really had an idea of what exactly to expect, and therefore we were ill-prepared and spent the conference mainly just looking on. Sense of considerable futility munching the spartan “broodjeslunch” in the hallway, wishing never to be at these things again. Yet the venue itself was beautiful in a dour way; wooden ceilings and floors, black and white tiled hallways, long corridors and strange, damp rooms.

Cocky’s visit; the inflatable meeting in Gent; her sporadic reflections on her Indian adventure

Yesterday we met with Annemie and Ferdinand about the Xmedk publication. Lina and I didn’t emphasise our opinion since we had emphatically decided we didn’t want a fight. (“All these artists doing nothing but fighting,” declared Lina.) Annemie was set on using the Belgian designer, Marthe, and Ferdinand agreed. Their point was that it would be easier to collaborate and “push” the designer if she was nearby, and coordinating a project though email with someone in another country would be a “nightmare.” Lina mentioned that FoAM is quite prepared for such collaborations since they usually work with a number of partners spread across Europe and overseas.

Lina had to organise a ticket to Vilnius over the phone with a travel agent in Antwerp. Then she went out to get some nuts for Lyta, which took a few hours. In the meantime Hans and Peter had come in and started cleaning, honouring Foton’s side of the contract we had decided upon in the meeting. Later though, Lina commented that they didn’t do a very thorough job, all the corners and under the tables were still filled with dust. Lina has been sick; yesterday she had a bad fever; she became stressed about all the work that was piling up. She dreads being sick while working on the hyperbolic thing. Today she said she was feeling much better. She’s coming in to the studio as late as possible to recover as soon as she can.

We have attempted to set to with the muscles, which arrived while we were eating a late lunch in the studio after the VAF meeting this Wednesday, 22 February. Yesterday we were still running round doing other things, and so nothing happened until today (or last night, when Lina stayed on in the studio to measure about 12 muscles). I connected everything, turned the compressor on, attached the air pipe, booted up the computer, connected the SMA valves to the board, and nothing happened. So we can’t do any more until we get the calibration setup working.

Just as well, since the fine weather has broken for two days now, even though it’s still very cold. There’s clouds of pollution when the air is still, but now and then a breeze blows up.

The monthly meeting with Foton. As it got dark outside the atmosphere of tension and animosity deepened. It felt that the souring of relations between FoAM and Foton going on over the last few months had reached a decisive point.

All of this coming after a day fraught with the darkening prospects of Lyta and myriad other concerns. (It was impressive how Lina managed to keep cool throughout these vicissitudes, and even if in the past I have thought her approach to be brusque, this time and in the past weeks I’ve managed to see another side of her. Is this because the others are away? Because we have no choice but to deal with this multitude of trials by joining forces? It seems that it’s been more or less the first time that we’ve talked freely in the studio for extended periods. I’m no longer as “frightened” of her as I used to be.)

There were three things to discuss: extra mattresses for a one-night event Foton were going to hold early in March; the “meat incident”; and a FoAM proposal to Foton regarding rent versus space use. By the time we got to this last point Hans was already on the verge of walking out, and quickly did so not long after Lina raised the FoAM proposal she, Nik and Maja had discussed previously (which I didn’t know of, since I was not present when they talked about it).

Hans brought up the meat incident. (Lina told me about this before: he’d walked off, sat in the car and, even while fully aware of Lina’s back problems, just waited there while she carried a number of heavy shopping bags to the car alone.) He started by saying that he was “surprised” by Lina’s reaction when he ventured to choose some meat when they were shopping in the supermarket. Lina had told him that it was FoAM’s policy to buy vegetarian food only. Peter and Hans professed not to be aware of this policy, and went on to stress the need to be “flexible” and the idea of “grey zones” again. Lina said that she thought they had all agreed on the idea of “basic foods” which also meant no meat, and that she was therefore surprised herself at Hans’s reaction. Hans felt that in this incident he was being chided by FoAM, that it was like having a mother slap him for being naughty. It’s a very small thing, they said, to select a single meat product in a whole basket of basic vegetarian food, especially while two of the vegetarian eaters are away from the studio. Do we want to go back to a situation where everyone buys their own food and has it labelled in the fridge? Peter mentioned that Recyclart had gone back to just such a policy, where everyone pays individually for their own food, and it was not making people very happy there. Lina continued to defend the rule on a principle of “fairness” while Hans and Peter continued to demand more flexibility.

The meat incident and the food issue led to the others: parties, smoking, etc. Peter said he thought that all these issues had been agreed upon in the last meeting; Foton thought that everyone was in agreement about being flexible, while Lina said flatly that no, FoAM weren’t happy with the outcome of that meeting. Peter then said that this should have been raised the next week after the meeting, not the next month. He said he wanted to hear about it right away. Lina reiterated that she was “confused about everything except the cleaning.” Why couldn’t they agree to an equally clear situation with the other issues, she said - why couldn’t there be an arrangement in which even the flexibility was clearly defined? Hans and Peter exchanged glances and became more exasperated.

Then Lina let drop the suggestion that Foton pay less rent for the studio, down to one quarter of the total. Hans asked what “the hidden agenda” was behind that. Lina said there was none, but went on to mention that in return Foton would do fewer public events. Presumably they felt it was a slap in the face, though Lina said that FoAM was suggesting it out of genuine concern for Foton’s financial status, and they reacted with “this proposal leaves a bitter taste in the back of my mouth” (Hans), “so you’re saying that Foton become handcuffed by FoAM,” “FoAM is basically buying Lebensraum” (Peter), “it’s clear that Foton are becoming more and more like guests in FoAM’s studio” (Hans). Not long afterwards Hans walked out.

After Hans left Peter then reiterated that, speaking not on behalf of Foton but personally, he felt that FoAM were shutting themselves off from the world. “What happened to you guys,” he asked. These were not the same people he knew one-and-a-half years ago. He thought that the problem lay not in the collective, but in the individual - with respect to shutting off the computer room while Foton held its events, for example, that Maja couldn’t let go, and her individual preferences were dictating the shape of the whole group. He said that he also has a huge amount of expensive equipment in his sound studio, but he doesn’t have the same distrust and it’s always unlocked when FoAM has had their own public events such as workshops. If FoAM didn’t want to deal with life in a collective, “I’m sorry but you guys should never have moved in with us two years ago.” It’s like a marriage, he reiterated. Working and living in a collective would always be difficult but there should be a general gradient of improvement amidst the ups and downs, which both he and Hans didn’t see happening. Lina said that what could have changed is that over the last few years they tried different things together, sometimes things worked, sometimes FoAM wanted something else, and through this process they came to a sense of what they wanted, how they felt about various conditions and activities.

Peter continued to bring up issues, such as why he got up and did the washing up on the night of the dinner (when all this broke out into the open with Hans walking out). He got up because it was “so damn tense at the table,” and the FoAM people were so uptight and nasty, that he wanted to get out of it.

Today, nothing but attempted troubleshooting over the phone with Nik then Pix. With Nik we finally got the calibration laptop online, at least, so that Pix could access it remotely. The rest of the day went by with Pix trying different things and me assisting where I could. The day ended fairly pessimistically, but then later in the evening Pix thought of something else but I had already gone home to the apartment. We’ve been emailing sporadically up until now.

Before Lina arrived in the studio, Susanne came in while I was juggling terminal windows, phones, and cables. She mentioned the meeting and that by the sound of what Hans and Peter had been saying afterwards, that it was “intense” to say the least. She and I are in a similar position, she says, as we are both third parties, don’t pay rent, and so forth, yet we both have some stake in the studio and are involved in various ways. We both agreed about many points, such as that perhaps FoAM and Foton are going in different directions and should consider breaking apart, except that it would be a pity, not least because Foton put so much work into building the sound studio, for example. (Lina also mentioned the sound studio, but thought about the matter in terms of FoAM moving out.) There has to be some kind of give and take, she said; why are public events worse than having Lyta in the studio for months on end, causing so much noise and probably constituting a much greater fire hazard than a public event would? Peter hasn’t come in since Monday, and Susanne mentioned he was sick.

The day before, Lina and I were still shaken from the “black Monday” and the meeting with Foton. The day went by on the phone to Pix, then on Skype; this ended when we couldn’t work out how to get Pix online and we postponed activities until hearing from Nik, which happened today. Hans walked in during the afternoon and Lina later said her “heart nearly jumped out of her throat.” He didn’t say much though, went about things as though it were “business as usual.” Later, after the Pix session, we had pizza. She is concerned about the work she must do for the hyperbolic thing, and today enlisted Cocky and Theun, who may come down on Sunday. Theun can stay the whole week and help, apparently. They called the studio today, after I spoke to my mother.

Monday night when Lina was walking home she passed a Moroccan gang. One of them raced out of a nearby bar and started chasing another one with a huge kitchen knife. Lina just walked by as fast as possible, hoping they would sort it out by themselves. What would happen if she were there and a murder happened, one sole witness?

She reiterated that she was left entirely confused about the Foton meeting. She wanted to make certain points, but realised that she herself didn’t know what she was talking about - why indeed do they buy so much cheese, for example? She didn’t want to have to wait for a monthly meeting to discuss things with Peter and Hans, and have it all blow up the way it did this Monday; things should be discussed as they arise, on a day-to-day basis. And Foton’s idea of a collective, of a “marriage” - “I don’t want to marry anyone,” she said. What kind of a collective is it when Hans is hardly ever there, just walks in and works at his desk sometimes and listens to music, and Peter usually locks himself in his sound studio and comes out like a zombie and doesn’t talk to anyone, she wondered. Peter mentioned, as a way of backing up his argument that FoAM was becoming increasingly closed off, that in the last three FoAM workshops “the same 25 people have come to every one, the same small crowd.” But it was Peter who walked out of the Soft-ware workshop; there were in fact different people at each of the workshops and Lina felt it was a good atmosphere. And as for public events, what are FoAM doing when they held TRG in Slovenia for example, with 500 people visiting a day? After that of course they don’t feel like having more public events during the year. They don’t want just anyone walking into the studio - and this needn’t be seen as “closing themselves off from the world.”

Discussions with Lina about Lyta, communication in FoAM, cooking, and a pagan in Lithuania whom Lina wrote an essay about, who had many ideas about gluing and cutting (anything glued on top of another thing should be avoided; things should be meshed or embedded together in all areas of life; the Christian religion is all about cutting, division, starting with the cross).

Some people from France (APO33) emailed Lina about meeting with FoAM. They might come today to visit and see what’s happening here, but Lina didn’t hear back from them. They are working with Nadine at the moment here in Brussels.

Yesterday Pix finally came up with the solution to the board problem, so for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening I was calibrating. Hans came and went at various times; the atmosphere was tense; Lina feels it too; but it worries her less now. Her flu is still lingering, she’s had it on and off for about three weeks now.

Cocky will be coming on Sunday to stay just for the day; Theun can stay on for longer to help with the hyperbolic thing.

Maja wants Lina to write an email to Phaeno today; Lina will do it tomorrow, since Todor emailed her saying he had a cold and it would be best to discuss things on Saturday. We are hoping Todor can still come to Wolfsburg, as Lina and I can only do the more mechanical stuff and only Todor will know what to do about some of the electronics problems. I suggested that at least with Lyta FoAM has managed it so that not everything has ground to a halt. But Lina said that even so, it’s always in the back of everyone’s minds, we are not really free, and this will continue for two years, after which time “we’ll be dead.” We talked about the inability of FoAM to know when to stop, or say no to a project. Lina understands that saying no or cancelling a project would feel like failure, which for Eastern Europeans is the worst. They are prepared to go through ice, glass, mud in order to get the job done. But failure isn’t necessarily bad and if a project is cancelled there is still much to learn for future work. But to admit “defeat” for East Europeans is anathema, and Lina says she understands how Maja feels.

Yesterday we discussed communication in FoAM. Pix has a point in his “nagging” (as everyone refers to it) about Lyta, she agrees. Since there was no evaluation meeting things have been left over, and they’ll continue to come up until we discuss it. Lina feels we need to have a strategy for when the various meetings occur and manoeuvre appropriately, since with Foton and Hans in the state they are in the research meeting scheduled for the end of March will be very uncomfortable. FoAM needs to meet alone; FoAM needs to meet with Foton; and the research meeting needs to be held. The sequential timing of these meetings will be important.

The two from APO33 visited; we talked for a few hours about the mutual interests of FoAM and this Nantes-based group. They discussed a project (“Ecos” or something see their website for details), which sounded essentially like a distributed laboratory based on ecological principles. They wanted to meet FoAM since they were in Brussels for several days for an informal collaboration with Nadine and Okno, and Julien saw FoAM’s website and was interested. They told us they would be setting up in a space on the island portion of a massive metropolis development spanning over 50 km between Nantes and a costal city in France. They were quite interesting and more relaxed than Lina and I were fearing, and wanted to keep in touch; Lina suggested they think about presenting their research and work at a FoAM lunchtime lecture later in the year.

Lina is talking about just forgetting the meeting she was thinking of having with Foton, because she quite simply doesn’t think she can handle it at the moment.

(Further talks with Lina about Lyta; an art project versus a commercial project; the lack of expertise in FoAM for it; the price of automobiles: €15-25,000 compared to the price of Lyta: €90,000.)

Phone call with Pix again last night; again he mentions that there’s been no de-briefing meeting regarding Lyta. This is because Nik and Maja consider it to be a low priority. The weird circumstances brought about by everyone talking behind each other’s backs; there is the sense, Pix describes, that it all has some “greater meaning,” so we go along with it and constantly have to think if we can say certain things to certain people. Not quite backstabbing, but injurious nonetheless. People need to say what they think openly for a change. Communication is always based on individual alliances rather than the group as a whole, and therefore any collaboration becomes fragmented between competing individuals’ interests.

• arrived with 87: minus 16 (dead when calibrating in studio) = 71 muscles
• dead muscles we are bringing back: 86 + 3 at phaeno = 89 (more dead muscles have been left in the dead draws; see below)
• changed membrane on wall 2; remaining membranes at Phaeno: 4; should send more membrane replacements ASAP
• swapped cables on wall 2 according to Pix’s suggestion: replaced cable 15 with cable 13, cable 14 with cable 12, etc.; skipped cable 4, continued from cable 3 to cable 0
• placed 3 dead draws in top 3 slots; not connected with cables
• mirrored the preceding setup in wall 1
• replaced (“dead”) draw 1 in wall 1 with a Phaeno draw numbered 8
• filled dead draws with dead muscles to plug the airflow; the “dead” Phaeno draw 8 in wall 1 has some good muscles
• dead muscles in dead rows = 48, with some good ones; total dead muscle count therefore around 130
• 1 cap broke off and was glued back on with the glue gun because we had no replacements here
• after all this, calibrated walls according to instructions
• dead muscles after calibration: 6 in wall 2
• the muscles in the 3 dead draws in each wall need to be replaced ASAP because they protrude and may damage the membrane
• replaced around 5 missing rubber pads that Pix mentioned
• should urge Merlin to send more muscles (200 at least) and more boards ASAP

Return from Wolfsburg; the endless exhausting trains; 15 hours working awkwardly in Phaeno with miscellaneous staff, the director, a security guard and other random “yokels” wandering past and often pausing to scrutinise us for an extended period. The hopelessness of working on something that will fail the next day. The sterile, clean hotel. The quiet and utterly dull town. Maja SMSed us at the very moment we stepped into Phaeno. She said she’d not been able to be online before. As it was, the technical director was absent when we were working so we didn’t need to have a cogent story to explain ourselves. Many conversations with Lina about FoAM not wanting to take responsibility for the project. Ulrich appeared now and then, but was very difficult to get hold of even with two contact numbers, and Lina sometimes had to call him up to five times to get his attention. He looked unhappy with a big furrow in his brow on the last morning when he checked our attempt to salvage the installation and asked why the muscles were breaking so much…

• the designer (Marthe) says the whole structure must be there from the beginning
• everything’s been done
• scrolling effect like on a website - because it’s about new media
• special referencing system - because referencing is significant in new media
• own pictures - taken from somewhere
• Vista and Caslon - “the new and the old”
• asked to start only when final material there

• she seemed not to understand that the material we gave was not the final stuff
• must ask, how much does the design interfere with the text?
• 2, 3 and 4 column system to suggest what kind of article the text is
• the texts are interesting to read
• why is “creativity” in so many colours? - too obvious, “childish”?
• date and time of interviews on every paragraph??
• impression of a magazine that changes, some things steady

Annemie

• too simple, not enough images, too much white
• overflow of text
• too much only text

Nik

• conscious decision to separate image and text so completely?

Marthe

• printing problems?
• white space, breathing space
• space to read as a “newbie”
• overload with too many images
• with partner, am more for white
• “openness and closedness”

Yves likes it: it’s consistent; white background is better because it won’t be as clear

Nik

• bringing the images and texts closer together - some articles there is a great scope to bring them together

Maja

• recurrent theme of blurring the boundary between media, become one thing, because we tried to do this in the workshops - text flows into the image and out again

Nik

• don’t worry so much about pulling back, more move forward and develop more

Lina

• question about the colour - big blocks of colour - e.g. pink-green-blue
• any logic behind the colour choice?

Maja

• likes the irregular white blocks
• page numbers?

• transformation from old fonts to new
• images, pull quotes - need to be suggested
• how many more empty pages?
• colophon must be made

Annemie

• short bios, credits - should be done ASAP
• bios more about positioning the people, not what they’ve done etc.
• credits and logos?
• different fonts?
• more interesting to know what the person’s doing: you can look up the details online

• Imal introduction suggested
• summary list of workshops
• Imal bios

• scheduling issues
• Yves’ texts

• the texts were final? no - big misunderstanding

Maja

• visual treatment should have come sooner

Nik

• which texts are final, which are not?
• refinements, not big changes!
• everyone was busy writing things so why not make small final changes?

Annemie

• how easy is it to change the place of things if they don’t fit well?
• content and ordering

Nik’s spreads - more for aesthetic discussion/comparison rather than complete treatment - but perhaps doesn’t add anything to the discussion

Marthe wants to avoid double work involved in preparing a sketch and preparing for print

design version sketches based on comments - first proposal and from there to final print

Annemie wants absolutely final deadline

• how long will it take to make a final treatment based on everyone’s comments? - Friday?
• do it on the same texts to lessen the workload?
• interleaving pictures with text - danger of going into one page we lose the overview…? fixing things together or contrasting? - ideally a mixture

Maja

• seeing the thing as a whole, with some accents
• some pages will be scrolled, some not

Lina

• through the visuals to unify
• the scrolling thing is a way to do this

the green - why chosen? some life missing [in Matt Fuller’s article]

Lina- visually it looks like something about medicine

Yves - general design grammar/principle for the whole treatment, then another proposal based on comments

Nik - don’t get so concerned about the overview that you lose track of the details and their relationship

general principles? - scrolling system; 2, 3, 4 columns; referential system; older medium vs new; media friction

too great a panoply of styles - sudden change from multicolumn to one column

with stories much more play with images and text

one-colour pages next to multicolumn pages: too rigid division

markup - what kind?

revise article order

Present: Hans, Lina, Maja, Nik, Peter, Alkan

[intended] timeframe: to 10:30

Public event stuff

• misunderstanding on both foam’s and foton’s side
• Maja can explain the misunderstanding but suggests we forget it

Hans - do you actually want us to do less public events?

Maja - main issue - parties - didn’t take foam’s concerns seriously - not happy with parties but will take the risk - as long as the space is secure

Peter - we’re not doing club nights, x-amount of parties in the space

Nik - takes only one party to get out of hand; we need locks on the doors

Lina - we’re going with this but not 100 per cent happy

Hans - thought that FoAM was asking us to do even less public events - last meeting left a feeling of complete rigidity

exhibition 18th May? - undecided

Food

Peter - impression of a history of not enough money to cover food costs; regular people pay for food but doesn’t have to be the same type or quality of food depending on who is present; would make things easier

Maja - what we do - a flat rate across the year; with fewer people less is spent; budget agreed in 2004; if we’re all here this is almost always not enough, but it evens out over the year

main problem - meat; foam agreed that we wouldn’t buy this, but if you want it you go shopping

Peter - never knew or thought that outside of workshops the vegetarian rule still applied

Maja - agreed on a food system of basic foods; why such a big problem?

Hans - between Lina and me shopping; Lina’s reaction that “foam doesn’t buy meat”

Peter - we [Hans and Peter] both forgot the meat rule

Lina - buying meat an issue of sharing

Maja - buy food that you can survive on and that is also enjoyable

Hans - thank you for shopping; suggest that we re-discuss the philosophy of food shopping

Nik - from foam’s perspective nothing changes, but no problem for Foton to buy their own meat

re Max -

Peter - Max is Foton; Foton pays

Hans - the core of Foton is getting bigger, now six people with the Foton stamp on their forehead, this is something good; frequency that these people are here is very different, but we still want to share; sometimes the feeling that they are strangers

Maja - whoever’s here can eat everything here

Peter - pay foam for the average of everyone who eats here, then after a while see if it works out

Nik - start with three (as it was when Jo was here)

Maja - accounting-wise, we can’t usually buy alcohol, so with public events we overbuy, and when it runs out we buy it with our own money

also -

• would like to buy less chemically-evil things; more organic stuff
• research it first and come back with a proposal in a few months

Sink

Peter - problem with sink; temporary solutions or permanent? permanent will cost!

• not whole piping system, but sink is urgent
• a good plumber?

Hans - can contact the plumber

Maja - we do have budget for maintenance

Heating

Peter - heating - demand the manager instal a separate counter - it’s his problem because it’s not legal; find out what the exact legal context is and write the manager a letter; huge heating bill

Maja - no heating bill since December; might come; talked to owner, he said it was’t his problem

Peter - I could write the letter

Maja - better to write the letter in french, I can’t do it; Anima Eterna are having the same problem

Maja to give Foton the contract

DVD projects

Peter - compilation DVD to showcase Brussels talent - is FoAM interested contributing artistically to this?

• list of artists
• deadline end of this year
• financing this - one scenario: going to VAF; can’t pay for old things, can only ask for funding for new things; one option an atelier call - not put out this year - not sure about experimental workshops; therefore no calls so far this year

Maja - must talk ourselves; opportunity to make a short animation

Peter - how long for manufacturing process - leads to Bent Object DVD

• if all goes well release date within a month - somewhere in May
• launch hasn’t been discussed - something small-scale but nice

Maja - would like to do this, left with feeling that Bent Object was a client, foam was a supplier, no sense of collaboration; wish for more involvement, feeling that Susanne didn’t really care; all done without any money; was hoping for something more

Peter - consciously or unconsciously thought this thing needs to be finished; made less a sense of collectiveness to creep in; after 1000 times of looking at it, it still amazes me; now distance, now we can talk about it

Hans - not involved but somewhat amazed on a human level re collaboration process

Maja - left feeling with no idea whether you were happy or not

Peter - my apologies that the enthusiasm was not communicated; the comment was the enthusiasm - bootleg version screening in Canberra - enthusiasm

Communication

Hans - don’t share non-work-related quality time together due to work stress, etc.; issue of communication

Maja - that’s why we want to try a different type of work, no fixed deadlines, research

Peter - conscious effort to communicate properly

Maja - constant feedback and communication needed; the little meetings were about getting connections - unbalanced from the beginning - establish the relative weights of the contributions; need time or money for a more iterative process - more of a joint project if everything in loose pieces; but that would be a different project

Meeting notes, agendas:

• meeting notes vs summaries - how do we remember all this? agenda - summaries vs. more comprehensive notes
• meetings are important
• meeting notes must include all decisions!
• Maja - the whole issue of the grey area - tell us what is bothering you - discuss problems before they become massive
• Hans - put everything on hold until Nik and Maja are back, they seem to be necessary
• Peter - definition of problem
• nuisance vs problems - grey area

…And following from this, long discussion re communication issues, human relations, what was said in previous meetings, iterative misunderstandings, etc. No outcome seemed apparent; adjournment

What has transpired here in the past few weeks can be summed up as follows: Lyta stuff, Xmedk stuff, Foton stuff, hyperbolic stuff, lots of stuff I’ve undoubtedly missed, and miscellaneous delusional stuff.

Today, discussions of future opportunities, workshops, presentations, etc. APO33 sent an email about a week-long event in Nantes later this year; discussions about whether to accept, whether “research” is being relegated to an afterthought again in the face of all these applied activities; etc.

To write with plainness, dullness, coldness, austerity. To let the life behind the words more easily emerge.

Spring rain, grey sky, drizzle, languid cold. I need to write at least one alternate account of the past few months.

Recounting backwards, last night we watched Lost Highway in the apartment on the home projector setup, drinking absinthe. Party noises came from next door, footsteps and voices coming and going.

Returning to the apartment that afternoon I ran into Vincent on the stairs; he said hello and invited me to the small party he was having next door to celebrate the opening of the “Loft.” I said I would tell Nik and Maja. An hour or so later Maja returned alone, leaving Nik in the studio still working on the Xmedk design. She was going to prepare dinner for when he returned in a few hours. I chopped some garlic and parsley and we chatted about various matters.

She said she hasn’t seen Nik this motivated about a project for a long time, years even. He’s not procrastinating, is staying in to work on it, no longer saying he doesn’t have time to do things and so would prefer to do nothing. The holiday must have done some good; she just hopes he can keep it up.

She mentioned Lina; She feels that Lina’s whole attitude has changed towards Nik and FoAM in general. She was very surprised and happy to see Nik and Lina establish a working relationship. They now listen and talk to each other. They can now agree about FoAM things more easily. Of course they now have a “common enemy” through the estrangement of Foton. In relation to this, I mentioned how I felt the glass wall had again descended between Lina and I; that communication capacity with Lina has now been transferred from me to Nik; that I certainly contributed to this state of affairs precisely because I was so fearful that it would happen this way. Maja thought this wasn’t the case, that the wall is not really there.

At one point the mewing of a cat could be heard, distant and plaintive, outside. Maja went out and gave it some ferret food and water, then came down with her cat allergy; the cat was extremely friendly and jumped all over us.

Nik was late. He returned in a state of excitement about various fonts, and saying he’d been working on cultivating an “illusion of collaboration” with the other publication participants. Nevertheless he was (as Maja said) in good spirits. At dinner we discussed mutual friends; Emily who is still in London and who was in Australia while they were this March. She’s not very happy or satisfied in London, keeps falling into affairs with married men, laments that she is 36 and the jobs she’s getting are going nowhere. Maja wondered what the problem with going back to Adelaide was. She thought that Emily was the sort of person to need a network of good friends around her. The idea that going back to Adelaide would signify “defeat,” also for Nik. He concedes that going back to Adelaide would not inspire him to “do anything” there, that they would have to go to another city. But they agree that if they went to Australia they would go for reasons other than “doing things.”

Yesterday morning, 14 April at 11 am, Xmedk publication meeting.

Ferdinand had just returned from some kind of holiday in a monastery-like place in a tiny village in France. It was one time when returning to Brussels felt irksome to him: so hectic, so polluted, etc. He was therefore a bit out of the loop, and he and Yves of Imal both wanted an explanation of the Marthe incident. At this point Annemie has swung away from her previous defence of Marthe and she mostly corroborated what Maja, Lina and Nik had to say about the Belgian designer. They more or less reiterated what they had said in the emails: that it was a time problem and an attitude problem. Discussions of the price issue, and how much Marthe should be reimbursed for her efforts so far: Annemie had suggested €400, but apparently Marthe had felt slighted by this; apparently also the email Maja sent had “offended” Marthe, said Annemie.

What continually arises as an annoyance to the FoAM contingent is the other collaborators’ inability to give a definite yes or no, or take any definite stand on most things. At the meeting this was again apparent, with Yves and Ferdinand at times drifting into their own discussions in French looking over the preliminary treatment Nik had pulled together for the meeting. They were saying they liked some things, other things were too “Foamy,” but they both thought that Marthe’s treatment was somehow better, though when asked they couldn’t say how; Ferdinand just said that while Nik’s was nice and “sweet” it didn’t make an overall strong impression, and he thought Marthe’s was more of an “artistic statement.” Yet he couldn’t say in exactly what way, nor how Nik could make his treatment more of a “statement.”

The longest discussion was about Yves’s concern that the summary list of workshops should have the organisation and the workshop leader accredited. This went against everyone else’s feeling that the whole point of the publication was emphasise the collaborative effort of all the organisations together, therefore to downplay the prominence of individual groups for the sake of the workshop series as a whole. But since Imal was not strictly involved in the Xmedk series, he seemed to feel it necessary to have Imal emphasised as an individual organisation. This came out in the discussion for the title of the publication also. Since “x-med-k” is meaningful only to the Flemish-speaking community (hinging on the word “kunst”), it probably should be changed. “X-Med-A” was proposed since it would be more inclusive by suggesting the word “art” rather than “kunst.” Other things brought up were quotes from two Belgian printers, arranging an ISBN number, deadlines, paper quality… most of which was left to FoAM to deal with.

Maja was drained after the meeting; Lina was distracted and stressed, apparently about her plane ticket to Lithuania, which actually arrived by courier the morning of this meeting. She was just about to go and pay an extra €75 to change her ticket because the ticket that had just arrived was supposed to have been lost in the postal system or something. I don’t understand the full convolutions of this saga but according to Lina, it is a good example of what can happen when Belgian and Lithuanian bureaucracies try to do something together. Vali and Doug were waiting in their car outside and we departed to Tree & Leaf for lunch; drinking wine at lunch again.

(…in one or another version of these notes…)

• attitudes towards Foton after the meeting; Foton’s return to talking terms with FoAM
• Tree & Leaf meetings
• dinner previous evening at apartment 13th
• brief talk with Hans on the 13th about life, leaving Belgium, debriefing about my “research,” his work at City Mind and having a fragmented working routine
• dinner at Tree and Leaf with Michael and Auriea; preview of latest version of Enchanted Forest; death of net-art proposal, subsequently not clarified (then dropped, apparently from what Auriea said in the Guild meeting?)
• future FoAM plans
• Hyperbolic thing
• Maja and Lina’s inconclusive kitchen table tete-à-tete yesterday (14th) about the Belgian Bank project, and the next round of Xmedk-like workshop calls
• Bent Object stuff; the jewel case cover design (and the unhappiness of Susanne and Peter with the designer’s work)
• Cocky and the Foton project with Baptiste
• ongoing dissatisfaction with “Belgians” and the “Belgian way” of doing things
• Faust’s birthday party

Ghastly clanging of Sunday Easter church bells this morning; the sky is leaden grey; the usual Brussels traffic congestion and pollution. This afternoon several police cars had again congested Jennartstraat, this time outside the Moroccan bar a few houses down from the apartment; several Moroccans standing round looking on.

Mulholland Drive last night on the home projector; more red wine and absinthe. Nik was becoming despondent late last night, looking through the layout over and over, with me and Maja looking over his shoulder, and today he was downright cynical, going on about the lack of pictures for many of the contributors’ texts, and complaining that he wanted to do a colophon, which Maja demands that he not do. He seems to have lost interest now and the design is no more than another thankless chore for him.

Brief discussions about Jack, his research in FoAM in 2004, his suggestions for professionalisation. Maja got an email from him; apparently he will be happy to come to Brussels and work with FoAM on their marketing strategies for interfacing with the corporate world. When he was with them last, he apparently gave some very focussed suggestions about improving the organisation, based on efficient research that lasted not much longer than a month. He proposed a number of options with associated strategies; the one that interested FoAM and also Jack himself was a “business ecologies” model, whereby rather than evolving a stratified hierarchical organisation within FoAM itself, FoAM look towards a decentralised “ecological” network of collaborators whose interests partially but not wholly overlapped. We saw that the Grig proposal could potentially work in that direction anyway. Jack also gave a number of managerial directives relating to basic matters such as accounting, grant applications, etc.

Nik and Maja are hoping that he will be able to devise strategies on all levels for interfacing with the corporate world, a direction that they had already considered as a priority for this year, since governmental funding has proved to be both fickle and labour-intensive. For interfacing with the corporate world you need to know how to present yourself in a particular way; you need to demonstrate your professionalism; in short, you need to know the rules of that game. No one in FoAM feels confident they know enough about that game, and this is where the hope in Jack comes in. Maja expressed doubt, however, over some of Jack’s advocations. It turns out that he liked Lina “a lot,” and this may have swayed his approach and judgement; apparently he had all sorts of ideas about sending her to business management courses and so forth. (Nik and Maja mentioned this before, but without this side of the story. When they talked about discussing the Jack proposal with Lina, Nik said it would just “open another can of worms.” “So there was something between Jack and Lina, then?” I enquired. “Rather it was something not between them,” Maja responded: “Lina decided she wanted nothing to do with him.”)

Was writing the above in the apartment as it grew dark, leaving the studio under the impression that Nik and Maja were going to eat there, while I would eat alone at home; a call from Maja at 9 pm, asking where I was and if I could bring two bottles of wine to the studio since Lina had decided to drink. I had drunk one bottle already, gradually and pleasantly getting drunk and hitting on all sorts of absurd notions. There were some painted eggs on the table when I arrived. Lina had brought them from Rasa’s house where she stayed the night before, where they apparently took Easter more seriously than the rest of us. Then an extended discussion of “aesthetics” and “Belgium” ensued. What was it that made FoAM’s style (Maja: “But we don’t have a style”; Lina: “No, we do”) so unacceptable to Belgians in general, whereas when they took this style elsewhere, even in Holland, it was appreciated more? The Modernist presumption of avoiding anything that might be considered “ornamental,” “fluffy,” was felt to be somehow significant to Belgian aesthetics, at least in relation to the other organisations’ comments on the Xmedk design.

Meeting Monday 17 April at 7 pm about the “Guild” with Annemie, Michael and Auriea, Elke, Chris, Ferdinand, Kora and Thomas (from Workspace Unlimited). The late afternoon sun slanted through the high arched windows of Annemie’s loft; then the deep blue twilight gloom falling across the rooftops, offset by a chrome ventilation shaft gleaming brightly. I had never met Elke and Chris before; apparently Chris called the meeting this time round, but he looked constantly disgruntled and often walked out to talk on his mobile towards the end. One could hardly blame him since the meeting mostly consisted of long, circular debates about strategies, mailing list etiquette, what the Guild should be called, what it represented. The only consolation for Maja and I was that Annemie made good houmous, and there was an endless supply of red wine ensuring that by the end of the evening we were completely drunk. Nothing seemed resolved by the end except a list of people to be proposed to the VAF next week as representatives. For the rest, any idea of defining a wider scope for the Guild was swallowed up in endless arguments about details, about how to curry favour with the VAF, about being extremely cautious so that the whole initiative doesn’t blow up in our faces (Thomas was going on about this again). Once more the benefit of having someone from the “outside” became a topic, but once more, nothing seemed to be resolved on this front; everyone seemed to passionately and vociferously debate in loops.

This meeting, coming after the whole Xmedk debacle, makes us further despondent about Belgium; Nik’s emails to the Xmedk partners have become increasingly terse, as though said through the teeth; Maja now doubts if taking over responsibility for the publication was a good idea; both she and Nik were unprepared for the strong reaction against Nik’s design approach and treatments so far; the request that he basically become an editor of the articles in addition strikes us all as hopelessly unprofessional.

Yesterday afternoon Peter, Susanne, and the designer of the Bent Object DVD cover, Max, were engaged in rather intense debates about the project; then Peter sat down with Max and in front of their computers engaged in an extended discussion in French about the design. At lunch yesterday we discussed with Peter the issue of collaboration in Belgium. His verdict was that there are historical and cultural reasons why such collaborative exercises are difficult here. People are brought up to think individually, for themselves and their near family. Furthermore, the strange dynamic of cutting those down who then try to organise something in spite of the inertia.

Yesterday went to the Hyperbolic discussion forum, organised by Dirk de Wit, with Annemie and Maja. Maja said afterwards it was a “typical Dirk-organised event.” There was little attention paid to moderation, and Dirk apparently had another conference to go to immediately afterwards so he was on the edge of his seat waiting for this one to be over. It was all in English, since there were a few speakers from Britain, and Dyna from Latvia, the hyperbolic mathematician. It was meant to be about strategies for collaboration. Discussions about software seemed to predominate. Afterwards drinks in the STUK bar with some of the forum speakers, including a speaker called Simon who was over from Wales and caught a ride back to Brussels with us, where he was staying. Much discussion between him, Maja and Annemie about education, new media culture, the way things are going, funding, economics, the pros and cons of being a small independent collective (or cooperative? Simon was making a contrast between the idea of collectives and cooperatives in his talk; follow this up online perhaps), survival strategies, etc. In retrospect I think there were some more interesting things being discussed than I gave the meeting credit for while I was there, but I was feeling fairly sick and worn out, even more bored than I am usually in these kinds of meetings.

Late meal at Tree and Leaf again, after driving through the spring dusk and dropping Simon at his accommodation, bright orange motorway lights glowing in the deep blue. Annemie mentioned that she would prefer 100 times to have Michael involved more in the Guild than Thomas, who both she and Maja thought was too full of slick corporate ideas. After dinner, until 2 am, Nik, Maja and Annemie discussed the design of Xmedk. Annemie seemed more enthusiastic this time and the discussion was felt to be productive by everyone.

Last night, meeting with Nitan, the mysterious friend of Maja’s who was involved with Starlab in the summer of 1997 (when it went by a different name) on a project designing software for a mobile device to guide users through a museum space (which sounds similar to the ideas under consideration in the ill-fated HASTEN meeting…). He’s in Brussels now liaising for pharmaceutical companies, something to do with a new drug for breast cancer, “definitely the dark side,” he says. But he has another project idea which involves going to Palestine as an activist, initiating workshops with the children there and teaching them how to use media tools to tell the stories of their lives, then putting these materials online or otherwise distributing them. He concedes it’s a tough and ambitious idea, a dangerous location, the situation there is worse than ever; hence the best time for such a project. He wants to run this initiative in a thoroughly pragmatic and businesslike way: this is where he sees other non-profit and charity organisations failing: because they get caught up in ideological and political impasses. Furthermore, he wants to ensure that mechanisms are in place to ensure the organisation can outlive himself, that it’s not based on one person’s drive and energy as the “weakest link in the chain,” in the sense that if that one person disappears the whole organisation collapses. I knew this would hit home with Nik and Maja, and after dinner walking home Nik indeed mentioned that he found these points noteworthy.

Nitan’s main concern now is getting a visa to Palestine, especially since he’s lived in Iran for over six years, though he never learnt Arabic because he was always in English-speaking communities; the language issue is another concern. He has thought many times about returning to India (he went back there last for a wedding in the Punjab), but he can find no reason good enough to justify returning. When Bush returned to power in America he was horrified and thought intensely about leaving America, but it just wasn’t practical.

The Starlab days, when Nitan was going every weekend to Paris or Amsterdam having fun and hanging out with Maja. He didn’t know what became of Starlab and Maja filled him in with the story of its bankruptcy and collapse, the survival of the FoAM members afterwards with the single-minded ambition to complete their project, living off nothing but Maja’s unemployment benefit “and adrenaline.” Starlab’s warped culture, which Nitan tried to discuss with Walter, who was also growing increasingly wonky with ideas of spawning a master race with all the women at the institution. Apparently there was this “big” Walter, the entrepreneur, financier and founder of the institute, and a “little” Walter, with whom Nitan was working and who, according to Maja, grew increasingly nasty towards the end, out of paranoia, envy, and inability to handle or coordinate the diverse research projects and departments of Starlab. Maja thought that Starlab’s collapse was due in large part to poor management and business organisation; distorted favouritism, employing people because they were girlfriends, family or just because they were good-looking; buying ridiculously expensive scientific laboratory equipment while a request to get a new laptop was denied. Nitan listened incredulously, shaking his head.

He mentioned working with an anthropologist on his PhD, said it was a rewarding and productive experience. We discussed ethnography, anthropology, and how these approaches and understandings are growing increasingly important in “media” circles.

Yesterday, email from the EC about the Grig proposal, requesting additional info and emendations to the budget. This is more work for Nik and Maja, but it’s also a good sign since it indicates that an interest has been taken in their proposal and it has probably passed the previous evaluation criteria. Now they are discussing the finer points of budget allocation in relation to the other organisations involved.

The auditor [Regis] came yesterday for another intensive examination and sorting out of FoAM’s finances, which Nik has been working on sporadically when he gets a chance amidst his “extreme design” routine. The auditor announced in the afternoon that he would have to return next Thursday, and not just “possibly” but “certainly” again on Friday. Mentioning that he missed about €14,000 in the TRG budget in his accounting, Nik acknowledges that this indicates a considerable problem in his accounting strategies…

Over the last several days seemingly nothing but proofreading the Xmedk texts. Foton’s workshop with a number of French-speaking individuals. Further debacles on the design/deadline/printing of Xmedk. Further laments over the Belgian way, especially Yves and his last-minute demands. Is Belgium a state of mind? Planning for Phaeno visit, more calibrating of muscles, etc.

Last night restaurant with Nitan, Michael and Auriea. Nitan’s return from Geneva, winding up his work in Brussels and Europe. Auriea and her “love-hate” relationship with Gent. She has been in Belgium for seven years. She mentioned an on-site gaming session of Endless Forest, but it will be taking place after I leave. (So will the Lyta meeting, and countless other threads.)

Lushness of spring foliage, flowers, something fresh (?!) in the air of Brussels.

Xmedk design. Received proofs. Maja delivers FoAM’s (annual?) report to the Vlaams Ministry building in person. It is the last day of the Foton workshop with the French-speaking crowd. Electronic and radiophonic sounds emerge from the main studio room as we sit here in the computer room, Maja proofing, Nik pushing pixels, me aggressively scavenging the FoAM archive in a bid to universally capture all information regarding everyone and everything here. (Apparently the workshop was organised by Recyclart and the participants were taking a particular university course. Recyclart apparently couldn’t follow through with the funding, however. Everyone wondered why Foton continued trying to work with Recyclart knowing that they repeatedly do this sort of thing.)

Networks: something like social geography, though I would have to study more to find out what this was. Networks based on personal ties, funding relationships, etc. Overlapping and mutually interpenetrating.

[20:04]

Lina returns, with a big pack full of Lithuanian stuff like cheese, meat, and alcohol…

…Which we proceeded to consume into the evening, hearing about her latest adventures in Lithuania. Weddings, meetings with designers and university professors, the sad state of affairs in relation to the state of the art over there. She said more on this in the research meeting.

Visits from Yves and Ferdinand about the publication.

In the morning Nik, Maja and Lina went to Tree and Leaf to see off Nitan, who has left for Gent and his subsequent tour of visits to friends scattered through Germany and Switzerland. Jo appeared in the evening, and we ended up drinking and eating in the studio. (Over the last week everyone’s gone back to eating dinner in the studio. Furthermore, every night we drink at least two bottles of red wine. I can recall only one day in the past week (or was that two?) in which I didn’t drink anything…) In the background, Susanne was meeting with some unknown people about something. Peter was occasionally present; but I haven’t seen Hans much at all in the last week.

Yves turned up first for the proofing session as agreed, seemed to accept of most of the graphical changes in front of the computer; proceeding to the kitchen table for proofreading, however, it turned out he had a number of editorial changes that he was insistent on. Maja managed to have him reword the first sentence of his “about Imal” article. Later on Annemie arrived and went through the proof, at the last minute deciding about capitalisation and other stylistic elements of her articles. Maja started to express annoyance.

Sometime in the last half-week, some guy from Nantes turned up in the afternoon and said he wanted to meet with FoAM because they “sounded nice.” He’d heard about them through APO33, with whom he and his collective are involved and will be doing something in the upcoming convention (“ECOS”) in Nantes this August, in which FoAM have been invited to participate. This dude handed us a booklet and some other propaganda. He was “touring” Brussels and meeting with like-minded organisations. His English wasn’t too good; he mentioned he hadn’t spoken it “for years.” Although she was busy, Maja took the time to talk to him and discuss various FoAM matters. He was thinking of going on a tour of Europe or something with his collective, and Maja mentioned that FoAM would possibly be doing the Fluxus workshop in Croatia at the time he mentioned.

Yesterday, drive to Amsterdam with Maja and Lina for the monthly FoAM research meeting. (Remember to reconstruct the discussion on aesthetics and collaboration brought up by Maja. For the rest, Maja will post the meeting notes she took.)

(Last night Hollywood horror movie with Lina after dinner in the studio.)

The meeting started with a kind of lunch in the front room of Cocky’s house. Many people were walking by and peering in at us. Pix turned up. The weather was cold and overcast in Amsterdam and detritus from the previous day’s Orange Parade was occasionally visible. Everyone sat around eating some small, fibrous, oily orange fruits for at least an hour, laughing and commenting at length on the weird characteristics of the fruit.

Maja brought up the topic of Belgian aesthetics and collaboration. Why is it so difficult to discuss aesthetic questions? Is it particular to Belgium or would this happen in other collaborations? She suggests that as technology became the focus during the postmodern 90s, but before that also, during modernism and deconstructivism (or was it some other movement?), it became taboo to discuss aesthetics at all. Later during dinner Nik said it was surprising that this taboo was especially (and ironically) present in the arts. Cocky said she thought the disagreements Maja described in the Xmedk collaboration sounded really strange. She said that form should function, as it did, for example, in the TRG production. Hearing this was quite funny in the context of our debates about the Marthe debacle and the issue of “Dutch design,” and Maja tried to emphasise that form may have partially followed function in the TRG environment but that it was inspired and consequently shaped by all sorts of things quite besides function. (They mentioned in passing a name of an artist or architect who seemed to be a major background inspiration because they all liked his work so much.)

Nik stayed behind to work on the final leg of the design. Annemie didn’t turn up; Ferdinand appeared later in the afternoon, after having read the editorial proof and made some corrections (he said he’d read it through twice, but he only managed one pass; we were incredulous anyway that he would be able to manage to read it through twice). Apparently Trudo has been following the entire email discussions and arguments and wants to put together an “annotated version” of the magazine, annotated with the emails.

• Mention about forgetting this round of VAF calls for Xmedk-like workshop applications, since the call, the other organisations, and the VAF itself are all in this matter so unrepresentative of FoAM’s interests this year.
• Comments about Foton meetings: why bother this time? Are Foton really interested? But now, Hans’s email re quality time in the space.

Strange and empty feeling hearing about FoAM’s plans for the coming months as usual, and immediately reminding myself that I will no longer be present. I can’t quite grasp the phase transition, the change of state I now face.

The solderer just arrived with the control boards for Lyta, duly soldered up. When Maja shares our laments over the installation with him, he goes “arrgh!” and raises his hands to his head in empathy for our plight.

The final prepress work on Xmedk (I should be calling it XmedA now) has degenerated into an odyssey of editing, proofreading, and aesthetico-political altercations. Nik has been fuming about the “willful ambiguity” in the Yves sentence. The rest of us dislike it as well but in the end we see it as a small matter, dwarfed by other problematic things in the book including Annemie’s “funding application” Okno texts. Most of the day Nik and Maja sat together going through it page by page, word by word in another extreme design (or rather, “extreme editing”) session. As the day wore on, Nik became cantankerous and Maja started pulling her hair out as the emails from Yves continued to appear. It was their wedding anniversary, and late in the evening they finally left to have dinner and possibly do something nice.

The day merely hardened the conviction that, in these contexts, aesthetics is nothing but politics carried out by other means.

Nik and his “fluffy gothic.”

Lina is in Gent today, presumably meeting with Michael and Auriea.

Maja asked me at lunch if I would be going to Wolfsburg with them, to which I had no objections, so I’m going. Further altercations with Yves. Annemie asked me to proof a text for a poster of the Okno Public01 festival later this month, in which the debate about aesthetics that people have been talking about will take place. (I resumed proofing this very late after we had returned from dinner; I was becoming more drunk on Lina’s “58 per cent not water” and finally sent Annemie the re-proofed version at about 11.30 pm.) Peter announced that he is finally “labelled” again, as an unemployed artist. Before he was not in any category.

I should try to recount the last moments in Wolfsburg; I was always about to, even in the Frankfurt airport, and on the Lufthansa then the Singapore flights, but to no avail, I just stared dumbly into the evening, distractedly watching the jets touch down in the deepening mauve.

Prompted by this evening’s re-reading the very first notes I made, over a year now in Riga. Those notes that I thought were of no importance, merely my “more intimate” jottings in preparation for the “real” fieldnotes in Brussels. Alas, a number of the details they record have already slipped my mind, what I’m always convinced will never happen, but always inevitably does. How much more so now, in recollecting the month just gone.