Issue # 3
Feral Technology.
Technology Gone Wild
“Renegade unmanned drone wandered skies
near nation’s capital” read the August 26th,
2010 headline on Yahoo News. The story explained,
“The drone, a Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Navy Fire
Scout, is supposed to have a failsafe system that
directs it to land safely if it loses its communication
link with the controller on the ground. That obviously
didn’t happen on the drone’s Aug. 2 flight, and it
made a beeline from Naval Air Station Patuxent River
in southern Maryland, where it was being tested,
toward Washington. It was roughly 40 miles from the
capital before the Navy regained control.” Where did
the drone “think” it was going? What was it “plan-
ning” to do?
More and more, humanity’s technological offspring is
coming of age and being given its independence. How-
ever, our sentient electronic progeny is growing up
to look more like Skynet than Robby the Robot. GPS,
facial recognition software and CCTV coordinate and
catalog our moves through the physical hive, while
the World Wide Web and social networking create the
hive mind. Robots manufacture our goods and run
our warehouses. The latest new car models feature
automatic parallel parking and braking, and next
years models will feature automatic lane changing.
So far, our artificial intelligence has not chosen to un-
leash the “Terminator” scenario like Skynet. Steven
Levy, in the Dec. 2010 issue of Wired wrote, “In its
earlier days, artificial intelligence was weighted with
controversy and grave doubt, as humanists feared
the ramifications of thinking machines. Now the
machines are embedded in our lives, and those fears
seem irrelevant.”
Technology appears to still be reliant on humans,
particularly to supply its voracious need for energy.
If humans suddenly disappeared, technology could
not run for long on autopilot without humans to feed
it electrons. Recent images of Chernobyl show us a
1980’s Soviet city in the Ukraine, abandoned after a
nuclear power plant disaster. The buildings are si-
lent, the machinery quietly rusting and returning to
the earth, the streets occupied only by reindeer and
fox. But imagine a modern computerized city, aban-
doned by humans because of a disaster, it’s power-
grid humming along, it’s CCTV cameras cataloging
the movements of the animals that now inhabit it.
How would those animals use the heat and light?
What sort of evolution would take place?
For now, it is up to humans to unleash the potential
in technology. In many cases, doing so in ways not
intended by “Authorities” appears to be humanities
best hope for the advancement of civilization. It is
not the authorized use of technology that moving us
forward, but rather its abuse.
The actions of Wikileaks and the hacker collective
Anonymous provide reasons for hope. Wikileaks has
done more to shine light on the real workings of the
power elite than any news outlet since Watergate.
When the world’s oligarchs set out to silence Wikile-
aks, Anonymous set about attacking the nervous
system of their money machine. Meanwhile, colum-
nist Dan Savage is re-loading his 2004 Google-based
attack against Rick Santorum, the radical anti-gay
rights Republican presidential hopeful. Thanks to
Savage’s creative use search-engine technology, the
top Google search result for “Santorum” is now “ 1.
The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is some-
times the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick San-
torum” (go ahead and google it for yourself! Remem-
ber, by doing so, you help solidify the ranking of that
definition.) While more and more people are satisfied
to fall into the societal hypnosis and cultural Stock-
holm syndrome of mass media and consumer culture,
these digital revolutionaries are fighting a very real
war on the battlefield of the “New Reality”.
In the developing world, mobile technology is becom-
ing the dominant agent of change. Villagers across
the globe are using mobile phones to transform their
economic and political lives. Without grid power,
creative uses of scavenged power supplies provide
battery charging. Cheap solar cells, peddle-powered
generators and home-built wind turbines are all being
used to supply “juice”.
Much credit has recently been given to social net-
working tools like Facebook and Twitter for the pro-
democracy protests in the Middle East, but it is the
creative use of those tools that has made those ac-
tions possible. Anonymous was preparing to reverse-
engineer the revolution to use fax technology. If that
didn’t work, it would have been Xerox copiers or ditto
machines, or...?
In this issue:
In this issue of OBSOLETE! we explore the relation-
ships between humans, their technology and “The
Wild”. We wonder what happens to technology when
it becomes cast-off, or when it is repurposed. What
happens in that territory when good economic times Exclusive Interview:
swell and push technology into the wilderness and
what is left behind when that tide recedes? Cory Doctorow
Feral Technology. Technology that has escaped from
domestication and adapted to the wild. Technology Post Human Technology:
that has found a new use for itself. Technology that
has escaped extinction by lurking around the indus- Kaltek
trial wasteland at the edge of town.
Hoodoo:
Open Source Religion
In 1942, Isaac Asimov authored the How To Use $180 And Social
“Three Laws of Robotics” Media To Travel The Coun-
try For A Year
1. A robot may not injure a human being or,
through inaction, allow a human being to
come to harm. New Work By: Alissa Bader,
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by Tim Beckett, Amy & Shane Bugbee,
human beings, except where such orders
would conflict with the First Law.
Ray Cathode, MaryAnn McCarra-
3. A robot must protect its own existence as Fitzpatrick, Wister D. Lamb III,
long as such protection does not conflict Sean Madden, W. Joe Hoppe, Qojak
with the First or Second Law.
cover art by Stephen Sweny
 Contributors
Alissa Bader has dedicated herself to spending a lifetime hanging out
with those people her mother once warned her about. Alissa also purchased
her first package of bacon, ever, last May. She lives and works in Denver,
Colorado.
Tim Beckett grew up in western Canada, primarily Uranium City,
Saskatchewan and Edmonton, Alberta. He fled to Montreal at age 19 and
has lived in London and New York ever since. He has been employed as a
tree-planter, TV researcher, housepainter, web developer and pretty much
anything else he can get. He is working on a novel ‘Uranium City Return’
about going back to his now nearly empty hometown. He is currently
managing editor of Sensitive Skin Magazine, and can be reached at www.
tim-beckett.com
Amy Bugbee was born in a part of Chicagoland that was built by Al
Capone. Calumet City was the original Sin City before Vegas came along.
She was raised by a fireman and a librarian, so she is morbid and well read.
For nearly 15 years she has been married to the biggest trouble maker in
the underground, Shane Bugbee, and the two of them have been wreaking
havoc ever since. She is a writer, photographer, and baker who lives on the
Washington Coast with her husband, dog, and turtle.
Shane Bugbee: “I’ve done a lot over many years and have survived.
Recently I was told that I’m intense and a loose cannon. Quite often folks are
afraid of me, and for good reason. Presently wrapping up a book and film
that combines the year my wife and I spent on the road with the head trip
that is being run out of a small minnesota town for siding with school shoot-
ers and being friends with anton lavey. Our upcoming book will be in stores
this November... it is called, Politics,Art,Religion,Revolution: the suffering
and celebration of life in America. http://www.ayaeratthewheel.com
my personal website is: shanebugbee.com
and MoonLit. Anthologized in: “Blood Beats in Four Square Miles.” Read-
ings at: The Back Fence, ABC NoRio, Centerfold Coffeehouse, AC-BAW Arts
Center, Mount Vernon Public Library, Lola’s Teahouse, and Blue Door Gal-
lery. She lives with her husband and three boys in Mount Vernon, NY.
W. Joe Hoppe grew up the rust belt city of Jackson, Michigan but
has lived in Austin, TX for the last twenty years with artist Polly Monear
and their son Max. He has published one book-length collection of poetry,
_Galvanized_ (www.daltonpublishing.com). Along with teaching English and
Creative Writing at Austin Community College, he enjoys writing and wrench-
ing on old Mopars. W. Joe’s 1971 Dodge Truck runs on sweet lady propane--
hopefully you’ll read all about that in a future issue of OBSOLETE!
Wister D Lamb III is a (photoshop) stooge for the media priests. Living
in North Houston, TX, Working in high fashion and low advertising in NY for
19 years, he has recently escaped into the realm of achieving feral otherness
with his personal friends profile pics on FaceBook. His piece is from a series
of about 200 people he actually knows personally. The ongoing feud with his
own personal demons has accrued into other psych-oriented works viewable
at GenericPlacebo.com.
Sean Madden darkly surrealistic paintings and drawings have been
exhibited and published throughout the US, Canada, Australia and the
UK. His work is reminiscent of the underground comics scene he was
influenced by as a juvenile delinquent on the streets of Buffalo, New York
in the 60’s and 70’s. For years he provided pen and ink illustrations for
horror and sci-fi publishers. Currently, he provides illustrations for the
Vancouver- based urban clothing company Die Constant (www.dieconstant.
com), and exhibits with a growing list of galleries and private collectors. He
has recently published a partly autobiographical compilation of his pen and
ink works entitled “Beyond the Sun: The Insane Pen and Ink Art of Sean
Madden.” A free 30-page sample of the book (PDF) can be seen at his website
at: www.clownvomit.org/bts.html. Sean can be reached at his website: www.
clownvomit.org
“Darius “Qojak” Carr is an artist living in Tama, Iowa. Darius writes,
makes art, tattoos and takes photographs when he is not trying to make a
living working at the casino on the Meskwaki settlement. Check him out at:
www.qojak.com
Stephen Sweny is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and Pratt In-
stitute and a veteran illustrator. Steve’s work has been featured in The New
York Times, National Lampoon, Forbes, GQ and many other publications. He
is represented by Donna Rosen artists.
The OBSOLETE! Team is:
Rich Dana: Editor, Publisher, Anarch-Syndicalist Scout Master
Blair Gauntt: Art Director, Illustrator, Resident Charlie Callas Scholar
Eric Houts: Contributing Editor, Punctuation Czar, Indispensable Niggler
Contact:
OBSOLETE!, PO Box 72, Victor, IA, 52347 - obmag@feral-tech.com

Ray Cathode is an artist/illustrator living on the rocky coast of the

great state of Maine (U.S.A.). He studied under Karl Ferdinand Braun, then
later on at the Academy of Carlo Pittore. His earlier output of art was very
academian; then after a tragic accident severely damaged his drawing hand,
his art took on a darker quality that is cruder in execution, yet richer in
meaning. He is currently hidden deep beneath the snow, in his underground
studio, churning out strange images with his mighty vorpal pen.

MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick was born in the Bronx in 1967.

She holds a B.A. in English from Manhattan College. Published in: Make
Room for Dada, Mount Vernon Inquirer, Mount Vernon Today, Westchester
Times Tribune, Mount Vernon Independent, Contemporary Literary Horizon,
How To Use $180 And Social Media
To Travel The Country For A Year
by Amy Bugbee
photos: ayearatthewheel.com
My husband Shane and I set out
on a yearlong road trip with $180
in our pockets. We had no savings
account, no credit cards, no back
up. Our only safety net was the In-
ternet. With our dog and turtle in
the back seat of our Chevy Blazer,
we left with a few blankets, a bag
of baking gear, a suitcase full of
clothes. Most importantly, one lap-
top computer, an HD Video cam-
era and a donated digital audio
recorder. The recorder was given
to us by a supporter we met at a
podcasting meeting we found on
Meetup.com, so we were already
putting social media to the test.
A journey like this is not for every-
one, but for the adventurous few
who dare, it is possible to survive
for a full year on the road using
nothing but technology-- and a
little elbow grease. Our plan was
to use the Internet to find work,
shelter and conversation. In addi-
tion, we planned to give people an
outlet to speak their minds in short videos we
were posting on our website, therefore bringing
more voices to the Internet, and promote any
businesses willing to help us out.
The first rule of the road was craigslist.com. This
is where we found the most work and the most
support. Second was our “friends” on Myspace,
Facebook and Twitter. I even used Ebay to auc-
tion my cookie baking service around Christmas
and had a great time whipping up cookies all
afternoon for a nice lady in the Chicago suburbs.
We posted a donation button and offered “Buy
A Day” or “Buy A Sticker” on the car. A surpris-
ing amount of people donated and one sweet gal
even sent Cheyenne some dog bones off of our
amazon.com wish list.
We also contacted other bloggers, vloggers, and
various internet personalities that might be
willing to barter some promotion. This garnered
mixed results. Some were helpful and some
were not-- and don’t even get me started on the
supposed “Podfather” Adam Curry! We really
wanted to use couchsurfing.com. Unfortunately,
two people with a dog and a turtle was a bit
more than most folks wanted on their sofa. It
would probably work much better for
a single traveler than our hoard.
We contacted a variety of businesses
and offered to promote their gear if
they would send us samples. To this
end we acquired shoes, clothing,
baking mixes and even a waterproof
laptop case from Otterbox.com.
Along the road other
needs popped up, like
car repairs, dog sit-
ting and food. Typi-
cally with a quick
web search and few
emails everything
was taken care of. In
exchange for their
services we made
video commercials
and posted them
online. Once when we
were nearly starving
in St. Louis, we called
a local BBQ stand
and asked to come in and film
an episode of our internet TV
show. The owner pumped us full
of delicious meat and side dishes
and then sent us off with a case
of BBQ sauce and probably half
a pig. We felt a little guilty about
the royal treatment we’d re-
ceived, but in the end the man
was thrilled with the business
our online video brought him, and he still emails
us to this day!
To work our way across the USA we used the
“Gigs” section of Craigslist. That’s where people
post for temporary odd jobs such as raking
leaves or help moving and many of the people
we worked for were supportive of our project
and offered us food, shelter, gas, and even dog-
gie vitamins. In the course of our trip I worked
cleaning houses, mowing lawns and even spent
a day at a gun show. Shane fixed plumbing in
Knoxville, and we both worked
as ranch hands in New Mexico
and bottled rum in New Or-
leans. The other Craigslist
section we used with great
success was “Barter”. There we
posted “Will Trade Wife” or “Will
Trade Husband”. These were
for non-sexual trades of labor,
cookie baking and fix it help.
Most people found these posts
amusing and it lessened the fear
of allowing strangers in one’s
home. Perhaps our most impor-
tant Craigslist barter of all was
in Portland, Oregon when we
traded our Chevy Blazer for an
old RV, in which I am currently
writing this article.
For places to stay, we usually
posted in the “Community”
Section under “Local News”,
“General” or “Politics”. Since
our road trip was following the
election year, we would ask if
anyone out there had an interest
in being a part of an internet TV
show about the election. We also
stayed with many online pals.
It was exciting to meet many of
our “friends” in person for the
first time and many of the people
we met hooked us up with their
friends all across the country.
On the days we had no money and
no place to go, technology helped
us in another way. We would find
a Kinko’s that was open 24 hours
and take turns working and nap-
ping in the truck. Kinko’s is a gi-
ant corporation built on computer
technology. It is a great hub for
small business owners to appear
more legit via telecommunica-
tions, teleconferencing and digital
copying and they seemed rather
used to weirdoes milling about at
all hours of the night. We could
sit there for hours editing on our
laptop or surfing the web for our
next stop.
Technology is an ever-evolving
matter, so one must also be will-
ing to adapt to the changes. Much
of what we began the year with changed drasti-
cally over the months. Our website upgraded
three times, changing to Word Press templates
that adapted to the crossover from more blogs
to vlogs. The way in which we uploaded our vid-
eos changed too. We began the year using lulu.tv,
who was paying us a small amount per month
to post videos. After a few months they dropped
out due to funding issues and we began manu-
ally posting on several websites, including Blip,
Revver, and YouTube. About halfway through
our trip we discovered Tube Mogul, which auto-
matically placed our videos on every website we
chose with just one click.
During the year we also brought technology to
other people. We set up an old chum in Chicago
with streaming radio, convinced a gal in Missis-
sippi to do a regular blog and got tons of friends
to join various social and video networking sites.
The rum distillery we worked at, bottling the
best Cajun Spice Rum in the world, is now doing
their own internet TV show. Even some of the
subjects from our videos hooked up together
from across town and across the country.
In the end, we made it the entire year by utiliz-
ing technology and the Internet. We lived below
the poverty line for certain, but the dog and
turtle didn’t seem to notice and Shane actually
put on a few pounds from all the great meals
we shared with fine people. It brought us all a
lot closer together, and we have a world of new
friends from sea to shining sea, most of whom
we manage to keep up with through email and
social networks. It just goes to prove that there
is nothing more broadening than travel and
nothing so grand as technology.
Now it’s your turn to get going!
Photos:
Top: Sofabed in Lubbok TX.
Left: Shane, Amy and Cheyenne outside the “New” RV.
Right: Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.
Bottom: Revolutionary John Sinclair in New Orleans.
The tailings field is the first thing you see of the Lorado
mine site, appearing abruptly out of the forest, a undulat-
ing rust red plain like a section of Mars dropped whole
onto the Earth. I pull up on the quad, turn off the motor
and walk out on the field. I’ve been touring these sites for
the past couple of days, part of getting to know the area
around town after being south for nearly 20 years. I used
to come out to Lorado, all the abandoned mines around
here, usually with my old man, I want to see if it measured
up to memory after all these years.
The mill is gone now, ‘decomissioned’ thirty-odd years
after the mine shut down in 1959, all that’s left is the long
metal pipe, propped up on wooden stilts so looks like the
spine of some long-extinct Stegosaurus, until at the bot-
tom of the field, near the lake, it collapses into the sand.
The sand is fine, almost as fine as flour, and my boots sink a
half-inch or more with each step. I stop at the edge of Nero
Lake. White effluent covers the shoreline. The water is per-
fectly clear and you can see the tailings running right out
into the lake bottom, fifty or hundred feet. A single wizened
tree, maybe three feet tall pokes up just next to the tailings
field, the only living thing around the lake - every other
bush or tree is a brittle bone white. Murphy, the old pros-
pector who lives ten or so kilometers down the road, says
the tree has been the same height for thirty years.
“The Tree of Youth,” I said, and we laughed. He described how, when the
wind blows off Beaverlodge Lake, the mammoth lake just beyond Nero,
great sheets of red dust lift off the tailings field and spread over the plain
where the mill stood and into the neighboring valley and we laughed about
that too. If you’ve lived around the uranium industry long enough, you
learn to laugh at these things.
I turn and look back at the hill behind the field, trying to remember exactly
how the mill was placed. The mill was long enough to clear a city block,
and at least ten stories high, a monolith of white tarpaper, chimney stacks
with rows of sliding wooden doors along the bottom, huge chutes leading to
another great monolith cube that housed the ramping system. Inside were
enormous wooden vats, and levels of crushers, boilers, and piping mazes,
joined by catwalks and precarious metal stairs. Stepping inside, you felt
you’d entered some great metal cathedral. Owls nested under the ceiling
beams, and you could hear them hooting up in the rafters, an eerie, melan-
choly sound that seemed out of place amidst the smell of diesel, grime, the
bite of sulfur.
The town and mill fascinated me as a kid. Larado was the third biggest
mine in the area, just far enough from the main town, Uranium City, to
have its own mill. The town site was nestled in a little valley, with the stee-
ple-shaped minehead looking out from a hill behind the town, and consist-
ed of a network of bunkhouses, cook shacks, a hockey and curling rink, a
commissary, and ranch houses back in the woods for management. Lorado
was one of a dozen mines that had sprung up around Uranium City in those
heady days, when the British and American nuclear weapons programs
bought all the Canadian uranium they could. Maybe five hundred people,
almost all men, lived in Lorado at its peak, and the town was important
enough to warrant its own point on the map, one of only three points north
of the ocean-like sweep of Lake Athabasca. Lorado had its own hockey
team, the Senators, and in 1958 they won the divisional cup, playing as far
away as Yellowknife. Murphy, who drove a cab in those heady days, said
he’d ferry miners to and from the Uranium City bars, and deliver bottles to
the bunkhouses, making the thirty-kilometer journey as much as a dozen
times a day.
Coming here must have felt like arriving on another planet. The only road
to the south was the ice road across Lake Athabasca, three hours to the
opposite shore, then another ten or fifteen to the nearest town, open six
weeks on a good year. Outside of that time, everything from lumber to
machinery, food to miners had to be flown or barged in, and even by jetliner
it was five hours to this barren land of bedrock hills, diamond lakes, six
month winters and the long dark nights from November through February.
When the mine closed, the owners dumped the waste from the mill across
the road and let it spill into Nero Lake, poisoning it forever. Pretty much
everyone did this then – the thinking was, it came from the land, why
wouldn’t it go back to the land, though they must have noticed something
was amiss when everything touched by the tailings died. Along with re-
fined uranium, Lorado produced the sulfuric acid used to leach uranium
from pitchblende ore; the tailings beneath my feet are a mix of leads, sul-
furic acids, yellowcake and radium. Not, as legend would have you believe,
lethal enough to kill you on the spot, or even in a few days or weeks. But
you wouldn’t want to build a cabin here.
We lived in Uranium City a couple of times so I might have been through
here when I was a child, but the period I remember I most was when we
moved back after a couple of years in the south. I was eleven or twelve,
old enough for places like this to capture my imagination. The other aban-
doned mines were mostly just single mine heads, tall and steeple-shaped,
with a few buildings and bunkhouses to the side, but Lorado was like a real
town, the mill its heart. There was something slightly sinister and alien
about the mill, isolated by necessity from the town. I imagine this was
part of its fascination. Wind and scavengers had torn away sections of the
tarpaper covering, so one could see the catwalks, boilers and vats inside
displayed like organs beneath flesh in one of those medical models of the
human body we saw in science class. Hulking pieces of machinery lay on
the plain around the mill, as if scattered by mortar fire.
As a geologist, my old man had a natural interest in mines, yet his fascina-
tion went beyond the professional: alone or with the family, he toured ev-
ery abandoned mine in the area, spending hours going through the empty
buildings, examining the machinery, the structures, the layout of town or
mine. I never learned the source of his
Poetry
interest: it was one of many things I never understood about him. Much
later, looking back, I thought he might have been following a premonition of
W. Joe Hoppe
sorts: a few years after we moved back, the surviving mine shut its doors
and everyone in Uranium City, including my old man, was out of work. We
moved down south for good, and he was never quite the same. Fundamen-
Twelve Second Quarter Mile
tally, he was a Northerner, happiest in the bush, despite his education not
so different from guys like Murphy. Sometimes I still get caught inside
that gap between my hands
The mine buildings fascinated me as well, though for different reasons. and my head
For me, the mines were part of the landscape: when I first encountered inabilities to cut a straight line
them, I hardly saw them as man-made. I’d grown up seeing structures like bore holes that are evenly spaced
this, sometimes still functional, often abandoned, perched on top of some paint without runs
barren hill or next to some forbidding lake, always a little fantastic and lay down any kind of weld
otherworldly. By the time the old man took me to Lorado, I’d begun read-
I hang undercover
ing science fiction: Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books, Robert Heinlein,
w/ hotrod buddies, mechanics
Arthur C. Clarke, and having just moved back North, even the land seemed craftsmen, sculptors and visionaries
fantastic, not quite of this earth. It wasn’t just the remoteness, or even the whose thoughts flesh out
barrenness, but the way the lichen covering the bedrock turned pink in the into metal capable
rain, the northern lights cascaded across the night sky from fall through of 120 mph on the drag strip
late winter, the age of those bedrock hills, a billion years, taking them right
back to the dawn of life. The abandoned mine heads seemed like outposts These words so simple and forgiving
left by an alien civilization, Lorado like the remnants of an alien city, com- my poems routinely dropped
plete with a factory that had once possessed some mysterious function. chopped and channeled
The red tailings field only reinforced that impression: the aliens had creat- lowered and louvered and
ed their own landscape here on Earth. I felt that if I could learn how these sectioned and scalloped
faster than my fingers
mysterious structures functioned, I too could transport myself into space.
though not so quick as my thoughts
Later, when I accepted that the mines had been built by man, I remained How can I make them roar
fascinated by both the abandoned mines and Lorado. Once, me and my to shake windows
friends went out to the mill for a pit party, and watching the midnight sum- smoke and peal
mer sun reflect off Nero Lake, drinking beer around a fire made from cast out burning rubber clouds
off lengths of wood from the mill. I’d think of that point on the map, the shoot flames into the darkness
empty buildings behind it, and wonder what Lorado would have become if
the Crash hadn’t happened, if it wouldn’t have evolved into a sister town to Or even convey
Uranium City. the time spent accumulating
just the right accoutrements
grinding sanding sweet shaping
Even then, scavengers had taken so much timber and whatever else they
tripping over my tongue
could carry off, that the buildings were beginning to collapse. This is when and onto this paper
Murphy had moved out to the country and started building his compound, every tool I’ve ever gathered
eventually ending up with winter and summer cabins, a half-dozen cabins in constant attempt
for his kids when they came back to visit, a smokehouse, sauna and green- to wrench this thing free
house – all built with timber, windowpanes and whatever else he could find
from town and mine. Then, a few years ago, the government finally got
around to demolishing the mine head and the mill, and dragged off what-
ever was left of the town. Not even the foundations remain. All that is left
is this tailings field, leaching slowly into the earth and the surrounding
groundwater. Chipping Paint
Lately
It’s hard to understand the mentality behind this tailings field now. No focus comes
one really understood low-level radiation at the time, or the limits of the at the business end
environment, even one as remote as this. Murphy told me that in the 60’s, of a single edged razor
people would come out from Uranium City to play golf. The country around
town was too hilly and rocky for a golf course, and the tailings field with its Pushed by safe gloved hands
smooth rolling hills seemed a natural. They came out for a couple of weeks, along imperfections
tracking all that flour-fine sand into their vehicles and into their houses in the tailgate
until by the late 60’s more was known about the dangers and someone of my old pick-up truck
said, you know, maybe this isn’t such a great idea.
Cracks get widened
into snow shovel gaps
Yet to me, the site still has an odd kind of beauty. Government and indus-
to slide up and over
try are both trying to figure out how to clean up sites like this, but uranium this adamant blade
tailings recovery – and tailings recovery – is a new technology, just as
uranium mining was a new technology back in the 50’s. If they ever do re- A sharp edged tsunami
move this tailings field, I know I’ll be just a little bit sorry. It is all that’s left pushed by my thumb
of that point on the map, one of the few legacies, along with a few 50’s era erodes coast lines
buildings in Uranium City itself, of that first great Cold War rush, and of the of turquoise paint
world of my childhood. When it’s gone, the aliens will have nothing to come
back to, and that on the map will have no further reason for its existence. A really good run
goes inches at a time
curling up a candy coat
brittle in its wake

Or trimly chipping
around stamped metal letters
D-O-D-G-E
short lines excised
w/o room for momentum

Underneath--
rough rust, shining steel
When I’m lucky and gentle
the placid grey of primer
pink bondo
shows up unexpected

But then I start looking at the clock

dreaming of smooth and shining paint
cool greenblue and bright white

Beyond the task at hand

it’s time to leave
when you’re no longer there

Hacking the New Bohemianism:
The Cory Doctorow Interview
If you don’t know who Cory Doctorow is, you may
be living under a rock. Of course, we here at
OBSOLETE! applaud anyone who chooses the
“Sub Silicis” lifestyle. Those of you who choose
to spend time in the digital realm, however,
have much to thank Mr. Doctorow for.
The Canadian science fiction writer and
journalist is an editor of Boing Boing. He is
a leading advocate for liberalizing copyright
laws and has worked on copyright issues
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His
novels, including Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom, Little Brother and Makers are all
available as free downloads under a Creative
Commons license.
Doctorow’s 2009 book Makers is a wonderful
story of Feral Technology, a vision of post-scar-
city Amerika where hardware hackers battle
the Disney empire for the last scraps of the
withered economy, and the resources they mine
are the detritus of consumer culture.
Cory sat down for an interview at ICON 35 in Ce-
dar Rapids, IA, where he was the special guest au-
thor. We spoke as he prepared shots of espresso in
his motel room with an amazing portable handheld
espresso maker.
------------------
OM: I see that you have a book in your room.
What’s your feeling about print media? Does it
have a future other than nostalgia?
CD: Long-form narrative is particularly well suited
to books, because books have no other purpose
than to have words in them. There is no tempta-
tion to do something else. Reading long-form nar-
rative off a screen, I find that I’m always tempted
to “alt tab” and see if I’ve got any email. Or, you
know, to see if anyone is putting a lemon in his
nose on youtube. Even the dedicated e-book read-
ers tend to, because of future creep, acquire other
networked features. The Kindle’s got games, the
ipad has email and so on. They are poorly suited to
read long-form narrative on. On the other hand,
e-book versions of the narrative combined with
physical possession of the book is intensely compli-
mentary. If you really enjoy a book, you can loan
it to a friend without totally losing possession of it.
Likewise, the downsides of an electronic book can
be overcome by the upside of having lots and lots
of them in one place.
I think that bodes well for the long-term survival
of the book. Especially now, when combined with
network text. It can be instantiated very close to
its demand, both in time and in space. The number
of places that a book can be generated out of noth-
ing but a digital file is increasing and having seen
some
of the
Espres-
so Book
Machines
I’ve been
really im-
pressed with
them. That
creates a pos-
sibility-space for
books to spring into
existence when you
want them. They are
not very expensive-
even the print-on-demand
books. This way, even if
demand is very thin, you can
deliver the physical book. The
beauty of the networked text is
that even if that audience is very
geographically dispersed, the network
text connects those people- it allows them the
find each other.
I think that blended story of the e-book and the
physical book is a powerful one, in the way I don’t
find in other cases, like CDs and mp3s, for ex-
ample. I have yet to see the huge advantage that
CDs have over mp3s. I’m such a low-fi person, that
I don’t really hear the difference. My friends who
are musicians, though, tell me that when you make
music to be born into the mp3 format you make
very different artistic choices. It’s hard
to justify giving over a large portion of your home
to the storage of CDs or DVDs when all of that mu-
sic could be stored on a single hard drive.
OM: How do feel about the resurgence of vinyl?
CD: I don’t know if you saw that Brian Eno inter-
view this week about how digital technology is
changing how we listen to music. Vinyl’s charac-
teristics changed the way you experienced music.
Vinyl required that you stop what you are doing
every twenty minutes, which is really different
from a CD or an mp3. It also requires a certain
amount of reverence because it’s so fragile.
OM: That brings up how I feel about the under-
ground newspaper. Also the way we watch movies.
I remember seeing “The Man Who Fell To Earth”
in a church basement in Detroit in 1982. It was a
very communal experience. Our “tribe” all went
to this place and watched a scratchy print and
passed joints. Watching DVDs at home seems like
a very insular experience. Listening to vinyl is a
physical act. Reading an underground newspaper
is a physical act. It gets your fingers black.
CD: I don’t think that I totally agree that watching
movies at home needs to be solitary. The 0-Day
pirate trading scenes, no matter what you think of
them ethically, that is an intensely social experi-
ence. Also, with delayed fertility, my wife and I
are part of a cohort who is having kids in their
late 30’s and our social networks are falling
apart. They stay together digitally. My
wife worked at the BBC on a thing called
“Social Schedule.” As more and more of
the BBC offerings are going on line,
this allows you and your friends
to set a time to watch, for
example, the latest episode
of the East Enders, and
there is an IM window at
the bottom of the screen,
so that you and six of
your friends can
come together
socially. The
technol-
ogy can be
isolating,
but it
doesn’t
have to
be.
OM: It’s a
different social
experience.
It lacks the
physical space.
But I admit, as much as
I want people to experience
this paper physically, I have to use
a blog and Facebook to promote it.
CD: Sure, the demand is spread out geographi-
cally. In 1962, putting out the Village Voice, ev-
eryone who wants to read it is in the Village. It’s
pretty straightforward to get it to them.
OM: In No Map of These Territories William Gib-
son talks about how bohemias develop in “back-
waters”. Bob Dylan could not have become Bob
Dylan if he hadn’t seen Elvis on TV while growing
up in Hibbing Minnesota. The Village was a kind
of backwater in New York City. Can those backwa-
ters exist virtually?
CD: I just did an hour on stage talking with Gibson
about bohemias. “The street finds its own use for
things” (from Gibson’s 1982 cyberpunk clas-
sic Burning Chrome) is an optimistic aphorism
for the durability of bohemias. It was coined in
1982 as a kind of brave statement against the
commodification of bohemia that he had already
lived through. Yorkville in Toronto, which is
the old hippie squat dropout neighborhood that
Gibson moved to when he left the states, was a
posh shopping district by 1982. I think Gibson
had already seen the commodification of punk
rock and so on. When I interviewed him in 1992,
he said that punk took two years to hit the High
Street, and grunge took only 6 months. So I asked
him- what does he think? Are online subcultures
resistant to it? Could an ad agency figure out
how to co-opt Anonymous (the hacker group)
and 4Chan? Are they like the “Up Against The
Wall Motherfuckers”- so transgressive that they
couldn’t possibly be co-opted? He sounded like he
thought that the age of the geographic bohemia is
over. We were joking that you will never find an
“Emo Quarter” in a city.
OM: Emo isn’t bohemian anyway, right? It was
just born out of the commodification of punk?
CD: I’ll show you a lot of Emos who will tell you
that they feel pretty genuine in their alienation....
OM: Yeah, I know. When I was a hardcore punk in
the 80’s, the older guys who had hung with the
MC5 told us we had nothing new to offer, too.
CD: There’s always this lapsarian business that
our rebellion was proper rebellion and your rebel-
lion is just...I mean, punk was born commodified.
(Malcolm) McClaren was not a counter culture
anarchist. He just thought, “Wow, you guys are in-
teresting looking and loud and take lot’s of drugs-
how can I get rich off of that?”

OM: When I read Makers, I thought that maybe

you were making the case that there might be the
possibility of a new regionalism- a new geographic
bohemianism brought on by economic decline.

CD: Economic decline certainly tends to give rise to

bohemian movements. When there are no jobs, you
have no choice but to be a penniless artist. When
unemployment hits 21%, which some people argue
it really has in the United States, the stigma of be-
ing unemployed disappears. Sitting around a cafe
all day is actually a pretty reasonable thing to do.
A lot of my favorite cities in terms of culture don’t
have a lot going on economically, like Portland- no
jobs, but great coffee, and movies, and free public
transit and schools and everyone is really engaged
in crafting. Because there isn’t much of economy
there, there isn’t the same rat-race that there is in
San Francisco.

OM: Last Question- something has been bugging

me ever since I read Makers, which I loved. I
started feeling about it the way some libertarian-
types describe how they felt when they read Atlas
Shrugged.

CD: A good book to read... as long as it’s not the

only book you ever read.

OM: I don’t want to draw too close of a comparison,

because Makers isn’t a piece of hackly-written
crap, and it’s not a right-wing polemic.

CD: But it is a polemic.

OM: Knowing your penchant for riffing on literary

“You are Here” by Ray Cathode
themes, did you give any thought to that?

CD: Actually, one of my dirty little secrets is that

I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged and I read The
Fountainhead later in life, well beyond the age that
you need to first encounter Ayn Rand to really
appreciate it. So Makers wasn’t a conscious piss-
take on Atlas Shrugged. But there is a lot of kind
of twice-brewed Randian tea that goes around in
science fiction, so I would definitely have gotten a
bit of Rand out of reading other writers who read
Rand and incorporated her into their work. But
like a lot of science fiction, Makers is a polemical
book. It’s always a little tough, though, if someone
comes up and says they loved your book almost as
much as The Fountainhead.
John Scalzi wrote a pretty good piece explaining
why people like Rand as well as they do, and what
we can learn from Rand as writers is to make our
work resonate that well with our readers. As far
as I can tell, her prose is somewhat under-rated,
precisely because it is so obviously effective.
OM: Well, I blame Neil Pert for the popularity of
Ayn Rand.
CD: From Rush? Why?
OM: He loved Rand. 2112 was just her novel An-
them set to music!
CD: Shit, I forgot about that. Your right! And he’s
a Torontonian, too!
Expressing Freely
Shane Bugbee...
I live in violence. . . I come from violence. I understand it well. it
isn’t the art, the book, the film or the speech that’s the problem…
never could a video game reproduce the violence I have in my head. . . .
no matter how hard they try.
if I could put the violence in my head to film. . . I bet it would make
the most violent think twice.
and then, the mother I always wanted will reach out from behind the
thrift store counter, she can feel my pain. . . and shes compelled to
give me a warm touch and a kind word. . . . she’s all that stops me from
killing every last one of you.
true free expression isn’t always nice and peaceful, sometimes it’s
vile. . .and violent even. the fact that ‘the man’ gives us a right to
speech is the same fact that they are controlling your speech. did you
really think you had a right to total free expression?? of course
speech and expression are controlled, if they were not, the illusion
of our society ceases to exist. think about what rules the squirrel or
crow follows, think about the snakes expression. . .rules and total
expression are like oil and water, they don’t go together.
the lack of total expression is the biggest perversion of our animal…
it festers and produces pedophiles and explains wildlife game hunters
and bad facial hair.
further restricting expression will only make things worse.
unfortunate things happen, random acts of violence happen, funny thing
is… it’s usually this kind of violence that brings up this sort of
discourse.

we’re in a country where we are free to hate if we want to and for

OM: We’ve got The Canadians to blame.
CD: It’s true. We are to blame for everything.
that matter, we’re free to paint targets on the face of politicians,
and entertainers, and whoever we want. . . you don’t like that, you want
nice pictures painted? plant more flowers! the artist, the
commentator, feed off of their view, what they see, how they feel. . .
same goes for people. . . you want nice citizens, do more for them to
feel nice and ultimately be nice.

if it were true that violent films or video games produced, let’s say,
school shooters, there would be a lot more shooting going on. . . violent
video games sell in the millions, and millions and billions have been
to violent films and have read violent books and yet, there haven’t
been millions of crazy incidents. . . quite the contrary. . . it seems
that if you feed kids violent video games it soothes aggression and
they become pudgy and pasty wage slaves.

don’t blame the message, it’s not the words. . . it isn’t the
entertainment. it’s the crazy. if it wasn’t the book, film, music,
words, art, expression, it would have been the color of tie the
weatherman was wearing, or the shoes the bus driver was in.

we have a hearing problem, not a free speech issue. we have a not

willing to understand the others issue, issue. it has zero to do with
speech.
 Poetry
MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick

Break Room
this day we mark, not so
different from all the
rest, yet it has candles, and
cake, and plastic goblets
of cheap champagne so harsh
it burns the throat, the
cake a slab of flour, butter,
sugar, eggs overlaid with
thickwhite cream graced with
fragile roses crushed by a
spork (no forks being
available) in the dim dark
of the break room, the
sad coffee-colored carpet
fraying under our feet and
she lifts her glass, yes, before
returning to struggle with the
copier, thrusting her hands
deep into the warmth of
the machinery to retrieve the
paper folded, fanlike, between
the rollers

Three Roads Converge

three roads converge, the
triple-faced masks stare
down (gas, food, lodging) and she, her hounds
to heel, holds a torch aloft,
small moon of light suspended
to illuminate three roads, torn
rough brown of paper, wrinkled deeply, that once
wrapped flowers)

and has she found some shade of

self again? retrieved, like
a blue wool balaclava from the
bottom of the box: found (amongst all
the clobber of chilren’s things, some
marked with names, more
without, the scarves twisting
into accidental knots)
....

landmarks on the map are

not to scale - legends for schools,
public parks, houses of worship,
all in primary colors, the filaments of
railway lines snaking, sinuous,
off the four corners of the page
....

so lost in thought, coming to the

findings, finally, at the bottom of
a jewelry box, broken glimmerings of
metal, found after all these
years, the necklace, too, of green
stones she thought lost, how he played
with the clasp that final night
....

flotsam, jetsam, the effluvia of

all our days lost, found, lost
again, pendulum moving back and
forth, the tick-tock of sun/moon
evermore
On the end of a gritty industrial block in
one of the grittiest parts of Denver is a
warehouse where there are thousands of
bikes. And not just whole bikes. There is a
whole wall lined with nothing but stacks of
DERAILER
BICYCLE
bicycle rims and tires. There's another
section loaded with handlebars and forks.
And in a corner, there's a giant three-tiered

COLLECTIVE
bin full of just about every sort of random
bolt or clamp imaginable. Alissa Bader Photo Essay

This is the Derailer Bicycle Collective, which has

existed in several incarnations around Denver over
the past few years. The Collective prides itself on
providing volunteer bicycle repair and maintenance
classes to the community. But the most unique part
of Derailer is their free “Build-a-Bike” program.
Show up early during shop hours on a Thursday (or
on a Tuesday, if you are female or transgendered),
sort through the piles of bicycles and bicycle parts,
and a volunteer with assist you with building your
own personalized form of transportation.

When I stopped by the shop, it was clean-up day.

Through the busy-ness I got the chance to speak
with Paul, one of the volunteers. He proudly showed
off one of Derailer's latest donations, a bright
orange bike with the Orange Crush logo. “We get
donations all through the year, but recently, we've
gotten even more. We always need more volun-
teers.” He took me on a quick tour of the place, first
through the huge selection of bicycles of all sizes
outside, then into the warehouse itself. “We have
every tool you can think of here, even one of those
tools you use to bend the fork back into place.

“There are lots of other bike

collectives throughout the coun-
try,” Paul continued. “We're
happy to have one going in
Denver. Denver's a real bicycle-
friendly city, and it's important to
have these kinds of places going
to serve the community.”

http://www.derailerbicyclecollective.org
Feral Refacementalization
by Wister D Lamb III
 Hoodoo: Open Source Religion
Thanks to American popular music, many people
have heard the terms “hoodoo,” “juju” and “mojo,”
but few understand what they really mean. For
modern, white, middle class R&B and blues fans,
they conjure up exotic images of the Deep South,
some shadowy world of African-American spiri-
tuality that they don’t really “get.” Movie fans
don’t know what “mojo” is, but thanks to Austin
Powers, they know they want it. Throughout the
history of American popular media, stereotypes
abound, ranging from the comical witch-
doctor act of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
to “Tia Dalma”, the black-toothed,
dreadlocked swamp priestess in
“Pirates of the Caribbean 2”.
But what is hoodoo, really?
In a world of hierarchical
and regimented spiri-
tual dogma, hoodoo is a
feral cat. It lives wild
on the outskirts of
American religious
culture, thriving
and propagating
out of sight, right
in the back yard of
organized religion.
Organized reli-
gion might catch a
glimpse of it from
the corner of its eye.
Organized religion
might fear hoodoo.
Hoodoo might even
live in the same house,
as organized religion
- it might let organized
religion stroke its tail, but
it will never wear its collar.
Hoodoo is free.
Hoodoo is not Voodoo. Voodoo is
an organized religion. Voodoo and its
variants practiced in Haiti and in Loui-
siana, are descended from the West African
Vodun religion. Hoodoo, on the other hand, is an
amalgam of African and European folk magic
traditions, not a religion, per se. Hoodoo can be
a noun or a verb. You can “do” hoodoo or “make”
hoodoo.
The iconoclastic writer and folklorist Zora Neale
Hurston wrote extensively on hoodoo. Even with
her deep understanding of hoodoo, Hurston her-
self mischaracterized hoodoo as being synony-
mous with Voodoo in her 1935 classic Mules and
Men:
“Hoodoo, or Voodoo, as pronounced by the whites, is
burning with a flame in America, with all the intensity
of a suppressed religion. It has its thousands of secret
adherents. It It adapts itself like Christianity to its locale,
reclaiming some of its borrowed characteristics to itself,
such as fire-worship as signified in the Christian church
by the altar and the candles and the belief in the power of
water to sanctify as in baptism.
Belief in magic is older than writing. So nobody knows
how it started.
The way we tell it, hoodoo started way back there before
everything. Six days of magic spells and mighty words and
the world with its elements above and below was made.
And now God is leaning back taking a seventh day rest.
When the eighth day comes around. He’ll start to making
new again.”
As Hurston states, nobody does know the true origin gious operating system, and it can add func-
of hoodoo. There is even debate about the etymol- tionality not normally allowed by religious
ogy. Some say it is derived from the word “hu’du’ba” programmers. One church, priest or practitioner
(magical retribution), which was brought to America does not own it. Hoodoo can co-exist along side
by African slaves of the Hausa tribe. Others claim Voodoo, Catholicism, Protestant beliefs or other
that it is Irish origin- from the Gaelic Uath Dubh (pro- folk traditions. It is a religious “hack”- a tool to
nounced h-ú_ doo)- meaning a malevolent being or modify the source code of religion and make it
unlucky person. Perhaps it is a primordial sound, like work for the spiritual hacker. Hoodoo practitio-
Om, a verbalization of something common to human ners save prayers to God for big-picture matters
experience, transcending etymological pigeonhole- of salvation. Day-to-day matters of love, luck and
ing. finances are all matters for direct spiritual action
through spell casting, spiritual cleansing and
Some historical facts are “rootwork”.
known about hoodoo. The
combination of African A December 28th, 2010, article in the Wall Street
and European folk Journal brought attention to the recent rebirth
magic was born on in interest in hoodoo, which they attribute par-
the plantations tially to tough economic times and partially to
of the Antebel- the rise of Internet retailing. The article points
lum South and out that...“Today’s hoodoo revival is again being
later grew and driven primarily by white retailers, and that has
spread among some blacks criticizing the commercialization of
sharecrop- ancient rituals for a quick profit. “ Historically
pers and the though, internet marketing is just an extension of
rural poor. the mail-order curio business that supplied prac-
Later, as the titioners on the early 20th century.
U.S. became
industrial- Hoodoo is an interesting combination of ancient
ized, hoodoo traditions and modern technology. The revival
took
on a
more
urban
flavor
and
became
more com-
mercialized.
According to
Hoodoo in The-
ory and Practice
by Catherine Yron-
wode (pronounced
“Ironwood”), many of the
Old Testament and Hebrew
mystical elements were mingled into
hoodoo by the Jewish-owned chemists whose
mail order beauty and healthcare businesses
served the black community. “Cat” Yronwode,
who also owns and operates “Lucky Mojo Cu-
rio Company” writes: “... the agents who sold
these items for manufacturer-distributors like
Valmor-King, Lucky Heart, Hi-Hat and so forth
were usually part-time beauticians and hoodoo
root workers. They would come to your house
to fix your hair (selling you the cosmetics and
hair preparations they had bought wholesale)
and they would also do psychic consultations
and perform rootwork and conjuration, using
the curios available from the same sources.
They kept a stock of goods on hand, but they
also carried their company’s retail cosmetics
catalogues and curio catalogues with them, and
you could order both types of products through
them and have the items drop-shipped directly
to your home. “ This also explains some of the
traditional importance of the beauty parlor and
barber shops in black and immigrant communi-
ties.
For some, hoodoo might be seen as a spiritual
pyramid scheme, but in some ways, hoodoo is
analogous to open source software- it is a spiri-
tual program that shares common source code but is has some echoes of the “New Age” craze of the
not proprietary. It can be adapted to run on any reli- 80’s and 90’s, but the multi-cultural roots and
blue-collar heritage give it decidedly more dy-
namic character and sense of humor than the
crystals and chimes bourgeois-Zen set. It’s
rituals reflect it’s heritage- sweeping and scrub-
bing floors, growing and harvesting wild plants,
preparing charms, known as “mojo hands” or
“gris-gris”.
One of the most important elements of hoodoo,
like any magical system, is that of personal
empowerment through ritual. These rituals,
although rooted in tradition, are an art and the
practitioners are artists who attempt to take
direct action on their spiritual lives. Critics and
skeptics may laugh at the idea of burning candles
or carrying a “High-John” root to attract money
or using magnetic toy Scotty-dogs in a love spell.
However, humans live in a semantic and symbolic
space, and the reality tunnel of the individual is
defined by their belief. One individual may feel
better about their life when they buy “Fair Trade”
coffee, another may feel safer with a gun in their
house. Humans are fetishistic by nature, whether
the “Toby” is a crucifix or an iphone.
As technology pushes humans into a more and
more Korzybskian realm where the map becomes
reality than the territory becomes something
conceptual, hoodoo seems more real than ever.
In a wooded area outside of Forestville, CA., Cat
Yronwode and her crew at Lucky Mojo keep the
tradition alive. In strip-malls and bodegas, beauty
parlors and back yards, rootworkers and con-
jurors are hacking reality with all of the human
senses.
Post-Human Technology: KalTek
Kal Spelletich was born and raised in Davenport
Iowa, recently named “America’s Worst Place to
Live.” He started working at his father’s construc-
tion company when still a child. Shortly after being
given a chemistry set at the age of nine, he started
blowing up stuff, experimenting with electricity,
fire, alchemy and constructing tree houses and
boats to launch on the Mississippi river. Kal ran
away from home at the age of 15 and started squat-
ting abandoned buildings and living on the streets.
He worked as a dishwasher, cook, carpenter, auto
mechanic, day laborer, plumber, salesman, teacher,
union factory work-
er, stagehand, fix it
guy. Discovered art
through a camera.
He somehow put
himself through col-
lege and graduate
school.
Kal founded See-
men, an interactive
machine art perfor-
mance collective,
in 1988. Kal has
collaborated with
Survival Research
Labs and countless
others from rock
bands to scientists,
politicians, NASA,
Hollywood televi-
sion and filmmakers.
He curates art exhibits and is involved in politi-
cal activism. He works on the waterfront of San
Francisco scouring junkyards and dumpsters for
industrial items whose technology can be reap-
plied. Exploring the boundaries between fear,
control and exhilaration by giving audience mem-
bers the opportunity to operate and control some
downright dangerous machinery. His work has
terrified and thrilled tens of thousands of people all
over the planet, gotten him in trouble with the law
and thrown out of galleries. People have cried, he
Advertise in OBSOLETE!
Ad Rates Available at: http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/
has been threatened with violence and lawsuits and his ly spot-welding robots begin burning sonnets into
work has been banned. For 28 years he has been ex- the sides of washing machines....
perimenting with interfacing humans and technology
to put people in touch with intense real life experiences KS: Exactly! this soul virus should be installed in
and to empower them. Kal’s work is always interactive, all hardware, Maybe like the STUX virus, only re-
requiring a participant to enter or operate the piece, flective and observant of its surroundings. Kitchen
often against their instincts of self-preservation. appliances strike up a sonata, construction equip-
He sometimes teaches at Universities, lectures, pres-
ents workshops and exhibits around the world. And
Kaltek University.
OM: Can technology or art ex-
ist without human beings?
KS: HAHA!
Well, i suppose so. In some
shapes or forms that we
may not necessarily consid-
er as technology or art. But
in some ways, these human
beings that you speak of do
have a way to shape tech-
nology and art in interest-
ing ways, say, a psychologi-
cal way.
OM:Yes, the shape of tech-
nology and art IS the result ment on Sundays performs a ballet, complete with
of human psychology. I’m backhoe Pirouet’s.
wondering, if society were
to become sufficiently auto- Of course i first thought of it being malicious, but
mated and suddenly there why not use this virus as a positive thing. For, what
was a plague that wiped out is capital without poetry? Fascism and totalitari-
humanity, what kind of tech- anism.
nology would the robots come up with if left to their
own devices? Would they make art? OM: Are you installing the soul virus in your work?
KS: Hopefully we would have programmed in some sort KS:No...well, i have not figured out how to yet. But I
of random/poetry/visionary thinking into the robots think we are onto something here. Maybe when the
and technology, maybe it could be a bug or computer program can “learn” later in its life it could start
virus? What would this work look like?? performing using this virus.
OM: maybe a failsafe program that would activate if Kal is currently doing a residency in Prague, Czech
it went unattended long enough. It would release the Republic. Follow his work at: https://kaltek.word-
“soul virus” into the system. Man is gone, and sudden- press.com/
-----Get the word out-----
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