Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info
Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the DaZiBao (Rio) process Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest since 1995, continually updated ever since. Now available for broader distribution and comments in this blog - enjoy, and come again !
15 Apr 2012 @ 15:51
100 years ago the Titanic hit the iceberg because many things "went wrong". They were also ignoring the invisible and "circumstances" connected in the deep, trying to break records.
In terminology research we say: Ambiguity and vagueness in our terms, our subject-areas are worse than fog. If you have no sight you drive slower, but believing you know when we do not, or believing you can fully manage or control technological risks is a sure ticket to chaos, destruction. Fights and suffering are on the way ...
But let us talk now about how to make a difference! How to take the issue as a challenge to make a paradigm change, think different, even puposefully ex-zentric eccentric. I later care about positions around and beyond the center, maybe even in other schemas and cultures, so watch my metaphor is not the plate or the table, but something highly complex and multi-dimensional. (You want an idea what I mean? check the paper on metaphors and interface design and viewpoint transportation systems from 1994. [link] So how do we comprehend and present such complex issues?
see [More] [link]More >
31 Mar 2012 @ 19:30
Exciting days in Berlin about the Future of Knowledge Sharing Wikimedia Conference 2012 Major step we were hoping for already more than 20 years ago: bridging repositories in different languages and reducing redundancies, avoiding confusion and wrong or varying statements.
We tried with meta-information and meta-data since the late 80ies: -- UNEP_HEM harmonization - (pls. check also: Multi-lingual access refs ) and [link], and the topics make me recall the work of John O'Connor and What is going on in Information Processing? Worldbank 1994, where the question was what approaches were "in the air" for a World Press Center or for worldwide data harmonization.
I fee the approach towards Wikidata is "right-on" - what I feel missing is Wikicontexts, shared '''context''' and '''shared global embodied Covenants'''. [link] (maybe check superframes/signs and frames of references/cognitive panorama. [link] I will mingle tomorrow to see what is happening at the BarCamp and who is ready and open to listen and co-create. So come-back later
PS: I tried with NEW ENCYCOPEDISTS [link] recalling the call of Robert Jungk some time ago. Maybe start with Anthony Judge an his "Kairos" page: [link] or the Systems Encyclopedia links above.
For me teh linkage between concepts / data and their context is essential and we need to explore it ! - negotiating meaning. Data like values are on the edge to be meaningless when out of context! - So you see this are my 5 Cents for '''Wikicontext''' !!
For more see [More] below. More >
19 Mar 2012 @ 16:31
Brain Painting - next week Brain Dancing is on ! I already covered "Pingo Ergo Sum" last week, so please scroll down to Febr. 1st. [link] At the weekend we had the opening of the exhibition and new and old ideas & realizations came up like a déjà vu.
Questions were not only about imagination and images and models, but who paints and sets the frames? Who creates and shares frames of references?, and why? What is outside of the ego-tunnel? and are there "others, us and they" having also "ego-tunnels" or share commons? See delibertation of shared "messes".
- See basic questions in the age imaging technologies and scopic media, radical constructivism and discussions of the virtual in colaborative environments and maybe some old theses and questions: 9 Points for Discussion.
I took with me an old booklet, 25 years old: "The Pixel Revolution. How the Computer Creates Graphics". [link] It is from an Encyclopedia of Information Processing. I will add more on the Encyclopedia of IBM, the author Professor Rüdiger Hartwig and early days of vector and raster graphics further down.... check [More]: More >
Today is a special day for me, we looked not only into terminology research and preserving languages, diversity of terms (see knowledge organisation) but also cultural and natural diversity.
But this was not enough today, it was being approached by young interviewers with a simple question: Are you “whatever”? I asked now?, in the morning? As I am in-between, and it always depends, not only on my and others times and contexts, but often also on who is asking and his/her assumptions and objectives. So I refused to answer: YES or NO – which they insisted upon.
I left by telling them: Meaning is a spectrum in shades or a spectrum of in-between word, lines, situations,…
Why this long introduction?
I feel we are pressed into nominalistic thinking into opposites and labels and their respective frames or boxes. And the work of Warfield has much to do with going beyond words and definitions we cherish but nobody has a clue.....
And I was “pulled” into this recently by the agony of the “Introverts” versus the “Extroverts”, or the creatives in the group by the creatives insisting on their space and solitude to be a “well” or “source”.
Here this about this new book: [link] we have to discuss her NEW GROUPTHING further down.... see [More] More >
3 Feb 2012 @ 14:04
As a side event after the RADIUS OF ART symposium we have just finalized this Public Event on Friday next week in coop with the Open-Forum of PNW at the HomeBaseLAB in Berlin.
Global Arts Corps' mission is to offer innovative strategies for communities in conflict to process the past in order to thrive in the future. The Corps brings together world-class artists from opposite sides of civil, religious, and racial conflict, who, together, create theatrical productions that tour the world's conflict zones to advance the cause of reconciliation.
See also THEATER WITHOUT BORDERS: and check-out Todds background:
TODD LESTER founded freeDimensional (fD) and Creative Resistance Fund (CRFund) which work with residencies in over 80 countries to host culture workers in dire situations. Currently, he serves on the boards of residencies in India, Germany, and Mexico and recently wrote desk studies for FREEMUSE/SIDA and Res Artis/Fonds BKVB on the residency sectors in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, West Africa, North Africa, Middle East, Central America and South America. This Winter, he is convening a workshop for the Heinrich Boell Stiftung on 'Conditions that put Artists in Danger' for its February 2012 Radius of Art conference and for TPAM Yokohama giving a keynote talk on residency and new forms of sharing in the wake of the 2011 earthquake in March.
He recently assumed the role of Executive Director for Global Arts Corps. Before that, he consulted for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Fonds BKVB, Lambent Foundation, Arts Collaboratory, and the Astraea Lesbian Justice Foundation. Todd holds a Masters of Public Administration from Rutgers University and is a graduate of the Refugee Studies Centre's Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford University. Todd received the Peace Corps Fund Award for his work starting freeDimensional; was named 'Architect of the Future' by the Waldzell Institute in 2008; and serves as a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute where he is the focal point on issues of art and policy. More >
1 Feb 2012 @ 10:49
Please read and support this crowd-funding initiative:
To get started here a good description of the project [link]
I just learned about Angela Jansen doing a very special project bridging arts and communication with very special needs and gifts.
Angela is a good friend and a very special artist working now on mental mobility and artistic expressions. Please see if you like the project, maybe even can can support it via StartNext !
Here you find a keynote of Angela in Turin: (Slides and video clips) and this is her new website:
6 Jan 2012 @ 21:25
50 years celebrations of public media: DEUTSCHLANDFUNK - The Place of the Political in a Digital Mediaworld
German Radio celebrates 50th anniverary, teaming up with the bpb soon celebrating its 60th. So a "seasoned" exercise with lots of "expertiose" around and with a very timely theme !! - The Place of the Political in a Digital Mediaworld
But, too bad, heavy storm over Germany and no way to get this morning early 6+ hours to Cologne. Instead I hope to get most out of the Podcasts and Radio deliveries, check the tweets, and instead of F2F link to some people later. So please excuse my "2nd hand reporting" this time - but I feel that not only the title is soo exciting, but the topic as this was dear to me already long ago, so here a little "expertise" to check from where I am speaking: and some details at [More] below: More >
5 Jan 2012 @ 20:27
Friday Jan 6th, exactly 100 years ago Alfred Wegener broke those days scientific porcelain in Frankfurt by what we call today a paradigm shift, a view which basically changed the way to see the world (years later). In this case the view of what we consider Planet Earth. He did so by combining the knowledge from all fields and not getting stuck in the old fixed and narrow picture sciences. The name of his theory? Continental drift (Kontinentalverschiebung) proposing 40 years before its general acceptance that continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. If you consider how long it takes to reach the people revisit the story Al Gore tells in his film about the Inconvenient Truth that his teacher in the 60th was not ahead of the times.... Well there are many more "inconvenient truths" - not only these days...
I feel we will have to dig right there in our "house of science" this year. I can only recommend to check out also: Wilhelm Ripl in this blog last May who sees us focussing on selected compartment or limited fields of science when we do Climate Sciences, and this impulse for an Institute for Internet and Society where we were try (keeping in mind Humboldt and Ritter) to go beyond pigeonholing and fencing not only of living things, but ideas !
Cousteau remembered he never encountered walls in nature, but in the minds of some people. Proposed here are virtual grids and frames, think about a "meridian" or latitudes, something to find your way even in "vague" areas, think about data-noise and -"fog". See [More] below: More >
21 Dec 2011 @ 00:00
Our Udo Lindenberg: Uns Udo, unser Udo...
In the HAMBURGER BAHNHOF. in Berlin last night. A Primadonna and Maestro - written from the perspective of a critical fan and contemporary "follower"...
Times pass bye - I had my kick last night in the curated exhibition !
Not again as yesteday and the day before one "leaving us" but Udo alife in retrospect - a person with shared tracks "on the road". Incredible. In the early 70ies he only rocked in Onkel PÖ in Eppendorf....
He had no place for rehersal these days.... - A "nobody" ... Well I had a neighbour playing her Querflute (German transverse flute) in his band, and I was in charge of our AULA in our Students Home HAUS BAUHÜTTE. So no big deal to convince the Kuratorium....
All this flashed into my mind last night when revisiting UDO 40 years ago, or so - so long before PANKOW....
Later I globetrotted to check out the "New World" - and he continued on his track on stage with the Panik-Orchestra - he stayed "as is" very successful - I moved and changed globetrotting first places, later issues...
Udo - all too often was too stoned when I saw him - but so is life. We had more time in 2000 at EXPO 2000 in Hannover - and we sang some unsung songs ....
Today him feartured alife in an exhibition that is quite something.
Definitely: AFTER THE HORIZON - THERE IS ANOTHER DAY. Hinterm Horizont gehts weiter....
strange times those days - sooo much freedom we had those days - and so strange things we did when we were young, when the skies were more open and the ranges more free, as we innocently justed moved on...
This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PERSONAL BLOG an ARTISTIC and PERFORMATIVE MEDIA INTERVENTION !
The Log links to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. My favorite stories in the WHOLENESS SEMINAR include:
BELA BANATHY: "GENESIS
OF GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY" and "IVAN HAVEL: Longing for Unified Knowledge" where a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early foundations General Systems, mumbling "this is not my field" or where Ivan M. Havel expresses his search for other kinds of knowledge.
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, bricoleers??? - career designeer, .... Some even "hank" which I disliked or Story which I liked very much !!
I have no single answer as I feel we need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life ! in spectra and fields in multiple embodied spaces.
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!
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15 Apr 2012 @ 15:51
31 Mar 2012 @ 19:30
19 Mar 2012 @ 16:31
21 Feb 2012 @ 19:46
3 Feb 2012 @ 14:04
1 Feb 2012 @ 10:49
6 Jan 2012 @ 21:25
5 Jan 2012 @ 20:27
21 Dec 2011 @ 00:00