Thank You

For kids of my generation, Mr. Rogers was a daily staple of television viewing.  Glued to the tube,  Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood represented everything wholesome and innocent about America.  Knitted sweaters, clean-cut hair – no matter what decade of the broadcast, he was a legacy of the fifties aesthetic; a man who was neatly Brylcreemed and…

Of course, there are many brilliant observations made by Stuart Hall – but one of my favourites is his description of the early days of the Centre for Cultural Studies. To me, it reveals a lot  – his enthusiasm for the present, a desire to promote an open exchange of ideas and an unconventional and…

Ada Lovelace Pledge 2010 A few but not all of the women I admire: Laurie Anderson, Femke Snelting, Maryanne Amacher, Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone , Donna Haraway, Ruth Catlow, Karin Spaink, Josephine Bosma, Steina Vasulka, Charlotte Moorman, Annie Abrahams, Olia Lialina, Rita Raley, Katherine Hayles, Kate Pullinger , Caitlin Fisher, Amanda Steggell, Ellen Røed, Michelle…

What a loss. For me, definitely a female icon. Here is an article about her in The Wire, Expressway to Your Skull. Thank you for teaching the art of noise and reverberation.

 “Don’t fight forces, use them.” A pragmatic utopianist – from geodesic domes to automobiles, to globes, Fuller was a universal talent with a fantastically quirky mind. Thanks for observing that life requires attention to design, even if we want to live it simply.

Michel de Certeau, the heroic lies in the unnoticed… a gentle scholar, wonderful generalist (as opposed to a specialist) and a Jesuit priest.  His book, The Practice of Everyday Life, has influenced my work as an artist and teacher in innumerable ways. My favourite quote: “Sly as a fox and twice as quick: there are countless ways…

Allucquere Rosanne Stone aka Sandy Stone: border-bender on numerous fronts – technologies, bodies, communication, identity, gender, art, theory, fact and fiction.  Where preconceptions and conventions rule, Stone is there testing and stretching the boundaries.  Her book, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, is a work I return to again and…

Magpie, a bird that often sits outside my window. One is for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, four for a birth.  Silver wrappers, shiney plastic, twigs and string, you’re an opportunist and true alchemist. Thanks for extoling the virtues of relentless scavenging and believing that there are treasures to be found amongst the detritus.

The Nettime mailing list was always a bit of a thorn in my side due to the prevalence if not dominance of male voices. That said, I’ve met people through the list that I would have never encountered otherwise. In the mid-nineties, Nettime was my primer to net(worked)-culture, a school of hard knocks. Through it,…

Soft, air, stone, hands embrace that space in between.  Thanks for highlighting the intensity of the senses, and all that’s beyond words.