Camminando...

I am realizing how much walking is part of my connecting with the world. And NYC streets offers one of the most exciting views...

Here a few pix from my stroll last night to the usual vernissages hopping

Mid way of the walk: Times Square, as usual

Nendo at Brenda Friedman

AlmagulMenlibayeva"Kurban" at PriskaC Juschka

JeremyEarhart at Goff + Rosenthal

Maya Onoda at Magnan

Is "Wealthy Intellectual" an Oxymoron?

The question arised from a 3 minutes conversation with a friend, during the school drop-off of our daughters.
This casually asked question provoked a series of very important questions (for me) about my work and how my work intersect with life; it is probably one of the most important dilemmas shared by many of us:

How to make a living by creating culture?

Do you have answers?

PLACES | Times Square in New York | The Place where everything becomes a spectacle

I love walking, often 10 miles a day; it helps to make sense of the world. Walking in New York is one of my favourite it makes me appreciate the everchanging the everchanging urban and human landscape.
Here a few moments from my stroll yesterday on my way from Chelsea to the MOMA

FUTURISM | 100th Anniversary

100 years ago, on February 20 1909, the Manifesto of Futurism, by Filippo Marinetti was published in Le Figaro.

Happy 100th Anniversary!

From the exhibition at MOMA, New York

Places: the "Ashram"

Yesterday I spent my annual day at Kripalu, a former ashram which has recently become a crossover between an ashram and a spa. The atmosphere has changed: from a gathering of spiritual minded people practicing meditation and yoga to a more mainstream yet progressive and liberal crowd, focused on fitness, healthy lifestyle and often, life changes. Prices have doubled and the food from strictly vegetarian now includes some meat. Yet the wonderful atmosphere of compassion, tolerance and open-mindness still remains.
The first time I went there, in 2002, I was mainly looking to spend a day practicing yoga and meditation, escaping from my stressful daily routine. And I left energized, with a sense of peacefulness and hope.
On the stairwell there are photographs of Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and even Einstein. The building is ugly (a former high school), lacking proportions and a relationship with the beautiful natural surroundings ---a lake in the rolling hills of the Berkshires. The dining room is quite unattractive too, but the food extremely tasty and healthy, based on organic ingredients and flavored by many different spices. Kindness, simplicity and quiet are omnipresent. People smile at each other, talking softly; when they don't participate to the many different activities ---yoga, dance, workshops, snowshoeing, hiking --- they read or meditate. A positive energy and calm take place and remains for a few days even after I return to the non-sense and madness of NYC
Every time I go there I think: can we make the world a better place? Yes, we can!

un concetto, un'idea....

Un'idea, un concetto, un'idea
finche' resta un'idea e' soltanto un'astrazione
se potessi mangiare un'idea
avrei fatto la mia rivoluzione.
Giorgio Gaber

Giorgio's lyrics should be a constant reminder.
But ideas are essential. Actions without ideas can lead to disastrous effects.

Logic + Ethics - 1

7 Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
7 Su cio' di cui non si puo' parlare, si deve tacere
Ludwig Wittgenstein "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1921)


This morning I woke up with memories of propositions from the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", one of the most important texts I always referred to in different stages of my life, in different contexts.

Metaphor has always been part of my way of thinking and perhaps, even living...What really stayed in the back of my mind is how proposition 7 of the Tractatus explains so much of the mess in our life...not just about meta-physics, but also about we relates to each other. Lack of communication creates confusion and misunderstanding ---and it is not about religion. It is about interpersonal communications in general. And unfortunately has become the dominating business model, increasing profit by not communicating clearly the terms of the agreement.

Well I will be better continuing with my day, since I do not make a living by thinking, but...is logic merging into ethics? :-)

Geography, Politics and Religions of Cyberspace

My latest experience with web host providers and domain transfers, beside raising my blood pressure (which is usually luckily low thanks to vegetarianism, and daily "cardio-yoga" practice) has been, on the positive, side quite fascinating.
It has been like finally trying to understand and visualize ---my brain needs to translate everything in images and diagrams--- the world of cyberspace. And creating metaphors and extablishing parallels between the physical and the virtual worlds has been quite amuzing.
In cyberspace we can find nations (the web host providers are the rulers), citizens (everybody with internet connection) and the web sites "owners" probably analogous to whoever provides public services in the physical world. The web site owners rent space at the server provided by the host providers, and pay "taxes" to the domain registrars. Above all there is the equivalent of religious authority, whatever cannot be explained in a rational way, the lords or regulators above all. Those you are even afraid of mentioning the name...DNS!!!!! wiki defines them as "a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide"

So far nothing terrible exciting. It becomes uncredibly cool when the metaphor is transformed into reality and you try to imagine (and for me to visualize) what happens when you transfer from one host provider to the next. "Physically" you transfer your files, billions of bytes, from on one server to the other. Quite easy to understand so far. And you transfer the domain name.
This is where the magic happens! This is the Neverland of Cyberspace! Your billions of bytes are parked in two servers. But when you enter the name of your site during the transfer, time stands still and the screen is blank! I am mesmerized by watching with happening with spaceink.net as I write.

The blank screen is like...the passage from purgatory to hell or paradise, the sleep-wake cycle , the emptiness of buddhism, the void of the mind in zen meditation, almost a mystical experience. In the world of cyberspace you are just a blank space: your thoughts which you materialized in text, images, and sounds are dematerializing again, waiting for the magical moment of the DNS to reappear and be reborn.

Welcome to cyberspace!