Coral Reef: 'The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs' Machinima, Categories & Resources at scottmacleod.com/papers.htm

I made yesterday a 14 minute Machinima - a video of an interactive virtual world - which I'm calling "The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator" here: scottmacleod.com/papers.htm


Aphilo Scott MacLeod The Making of Virtual Harbin Introduction

https://youtu.be/3nhvcHw54GE

I listed it this way on my papers' web page:

MacLeod, Scott. 2009. The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator. blip.tv/file/2053061 (14 minutes).


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See, related:

Wilderness Bliss: Prehistory of virtual Harbin in Second Life, Ethnographic Machinima

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/08/wilderness-bliss-prehistory-of-virtual.html

Green Sturgeon: "The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator," The blip.tv version of this video has been removed so I'm posting here the Youtube URL, Just emailed my actual / virtual Harbin Hot Springs proposal and first chapter to a great academic press, How to be at Harbin virtually from our bath tubs, and deeply? Excited to begin my second Harbin book, Google Earth has been deprecated and so could become the basis for an entire virtual world for everyone ... from those who build architecturally with AUTO CAD to STEM-oriented researchers to anthropologists working in the field, in which a virtual Harbin as ethnographic field site for actual / virtual comparison would be a part

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2015/01/green-sturgeon-making-of-virtual-harbin.html



*

Here are the current categories on my resources page {scottmacleod.com/papers.htm}:


Machinima

Poetry

World University & School (2008)

{Open} University Course Taught in Second Life

Letters

Video Talks on the Information Technology Revolution

Sound Productions

Chapter

Essay

Anthropology papers at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Anthropology papers at U.C. Berkeley

Video ~ Shakespeare


**

Here are the current resources, that I've listed on scottmacleod.com/papers.htm thus far, and which I just re-organized today, as well as added to:



Academe


Machinima

MacLeod, Scott. 2009. The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator. http://blip.tv/file/2053061. (14 minutes).



Poetry

MacLeod, Scott. 2008 - 2009. Haiku-ish and Other Loving, Hippie Poetry. scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/poetry Also click on 'Poetry' label here: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com



World University & School (2008)

World University & School
worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University

A Global, Virtual, Open, Free-to-Students,
(Potentially Credit- & Degree-Granting), Multilingual University & School,
with Great Universities as Key Players,
using a Wikipedia with MIT OCW model,
for the Developing World and Everyone

Add your lesson, course or class here now
(with your webcam, record what you'd like to teach and
post it to youtube.com, -
or you can start taking Open MIT Classes Today)

Here's the open Facebook group:
facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141



{Open} University Course Taught in Second Life

Society and Information Technology
in Second Life

What is information technology, broadly conceived? How did it develop? Who did it? What has been the process of diffusion into the economy and society? How and why did the Network Society take shape?


January 9 - July 30, 2008
Wednesday Evenings -1900-2100 ET, 1600-1800 SLT / Pacific Time
in Second Life on Berkman Island in the Meeting Area
slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/113/47/25
(not on Harvard's faculty)

~ Come and Participate ~

socinfotech.pbwiki.com
(class transcripts are online)



Society and Information Technology in Second Life
August 29 - December 12, 2007
(class transcripts are online)
Wednesday evenings, 1900 - 2100 ET, 1600-1800 SLT
On Berkman Island in Second Life: tinyurl.com/6l3lst
(not on Harvard's faculty)

socinfotech.pbwiki.com



Society and Information Technology Course
June 5 - July 24, 2007
Tuesday evenings, 7 - 9 pm ET (4-6 SLT)
Online only on Berkman Island in Second Life

At-Large Participation Welcome - Come and Participate



Letters

Loving Bliss Letters

Friends' Dalton Letter :)
scottmacleod.com/daltonletter.htm

Loving Bliss and Practices to Elicit This
scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissPractices.htm

Loving Bliss as Friends
scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissFriends.htm

Eudaimonia is Flow and Bliss
scottmacleod.com/EudaimoniaFlow.htm

Guidelines for Practicing Loving Bliss vis-à-vis
Practicing a Musical Instrument
scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm


Energy Autonomy Concept Letter

Energy Autonomy Concept ~ & Abundance by Design Letter. 2008. scottmacleod.com/EnergyAutonomy.htm



Video Talks on the Information Technology Revolution

MacLeod, Scott. In production. 8 Globalization of Finance and Information Technology.

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 7 The New Economy and Information Technology: Production. July 6, 2007. Google Video (28 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8284046650475418585&hl=en

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 6 The Internet and Social Political Environments. July 4, 2007. Google Video (31 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4181897840986649552

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 5 Sociability, the Internet and Empirical Data in the mid-late 1990s: Communities and Individualization. July 3, 2007. Google Video (32 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1643941818365401458

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 4 Internet History. June 29, 2007. Google Video (48 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3214353275146773046

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 3 The Information Revolution and Social Transformations. Posted online: June 24, 2007. Google Video (18 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8420437169658839723

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 2 Social History of the Internet. Posted online: June 17, 2007. Google Video (32 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-620843116698445726

MacLeod, Scott. 2007. 1 The Information Technology Revolution - History and Geography. Posted online: June 11, 2007. Google Video (43 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4491079746692966741






MacLeod, Scott. 2007. Internet History and the Hacker Ethos. Posted online: March 14, 2007. Google Video (13 mins.):
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3343089838845057911&hl=en



Sound Productions

MacLeod III, Scott Gordon K. 2006. "PM Alasdair Gillies: Carnegie Mellon University Pipes and Drums' Band Tunes, 2006." Recorded and produced online: www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/pipeband/sounds.html



Chapter

NOW AVAILABLE (as of Nov. 30 2006) at amazon books in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France & Japan, but not in the Spanish-speaking world or China.

MacLeod, Scott Gordon K. 2006. "Digital Spatial Representations: New Communication Processes and 'Middle Eastern' UNESCO World Heritage Sites Online" in 'Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change and Transformation.' Edited by Rami Farouk Daher, University of Jordan. Tourism and Cultural Change Series, #9, edited by Mike Robinson of Sheffield Hallam University, England, and Dr. Alison Phipps of Glasgow University. Channel View Publications. ISBN: 1845410505.



Essay

MacLeod, Scott Gordon K. 2006. An Empathic Argument for Developing Cuttyhunk Island, and Video to Conserve it: Developing the West End of Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts? Harvard University. blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberonepodcast/2006/11/06/cuttyhunk-island-ma-2

written for: CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion course. (On Berkman Island in Second Life). Harvard University. Autumn 2006.
blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/



Anthropology papers at the University of California, Santa Barbara

MacLeod, Scott. February 3, 2003. James Clifford's "The Predicament of Culture"

MacLeod, Scott. December 9, 2002. George C. Williams’ “Adaptation and Natural Selection” Précis (in PDF format)

MacLeod, Scott. December 30, 2002. Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” Précis (in PDF format)

MacLeod, Scott. November 11, 2002. Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” Précis (in PDF format)

MacLeod, Scott. May 24, 2002. Social Processes which Shape the Significance of Objects

MacLeod, Scott. May 20, 2002. Who Can Speak for Whom?

MacLeod, Scott. April 22, 2002. Taos Pueblo and the UNESCO World Heritage Designation

MacLeod, Scott. April 15, 2002. Anthropology, Representation and Reality In online UNESCO World Heritage Sites

MacLeod, Scott. April 08, 2002. UNESCO World Heritage Sites Online: The "Field Site" in a Global Context

MacLeod, Scott. November 28, 2001. Interpretative Anthropology and Symbol Formation

MacLeod, Scott. November 26, 2001. Science and Interpretative Anthropology

MacLeod, Scott. November 5, 2001. Epistemology and Anthropology

MacLeod, Scott. October 26, 2001. Durkheim’s Functionalism and Agency

MacLeod, Scott. October 17, 2001. Anthropology? The Boasian Revolution and Culture as Unique Phenomena

MacLeod, Scott. October 10, 2001. Boas and the Logic and Sociology of Scientific Inquiry



Anthropology papers at U.C. Berkeley

MacLeod, Scott Gordon K. 2001. Gazing at the Box: Tourism in the Context of the Internet and Globalization (Internetity). Accessed online March 17, 2009. scottmacleod.com/anth250v.htm.

MacLeod, Scott Gordon K. 2001. Science in Malinowski, Bateson and Sociocultural Anthropology. Accessed online March 17, 2009. scottmacleod.com/anth250x.htm.

MacLeod, Scott Gordon K. 2000. Consumption of the WWW for Medical Information: What U.C. Berkeley Students Make of It. Accessed online March 17, 2009. scottmacleod.com/Anth250x-6.htm.



Video ~ Shakespeare

MacLeod, Scott (Producer, Director, Bagpiper). 1999. Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, (Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow . . .). Online video. Acted by Scott MacLeod, Marc Dupuis and Dorota Ploch. San Francisco, California: http://scottmacleod.com/scottmacleod.com/Main.html.




Scott MacLeod's Academic CV


{scottmacleod.com/papers.htm}


home scottmacleod.com



copyright Scott MacLeod 1998 - 2009
comments and conversation welcome
scott@scottmacleod.com

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef

...

Sea Urchins: Contact Improv Ocean Floor Creatures, Loving Bliss, Space

Last night at Contact Improv, people began like sea urchins and creatures on a warm, colorful, ocean floor, moving in the currents. As people moved more freely in the current, they came to touch others around them, which began a dance between them. It's a beautiful scene.

A basis for eliciting loving bliss? Not yet, that I see, as I see it, but people really enjoy contact.


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space


**

and do-nothing freedom ...


***

and the Harbin pools ... MMmmm ....

Cambria Orchid: Normalize Loving Bliss

How to normalize loving bliss?

I see people I've met, who have grown up in India, who experience a quite friendly and trusting sense of reality, as well as generate it, as if the ideas 'in the air' there have an effect. I've had similar experiences with people from Tibet. How does code shape people?

How would one do this with loving bliss?

Octopi: Training, Guidelines for Practicing Musical Instrument, Relaxation Response

Training can be invaluable for

~ eliciting the relaxation response {viz. meditation ~ it's helpful to keep ahimsa ~ nonharming ~ in mind}

~ different kinds of 'runner's highs'

~ developing 'flow'

~ building stamina

~ learning technique

~ developing physical fitness and strength when practicing ...



Vis-à-vis these ~

Guidelines for Practicing a Musical Instrument



Friends,

Here are 12 Guidelines for Practicing a Musical Instrument

By Wynton Marsalis and Yo-Yo Ma



INSPIRATION

1 Seek out private instruction.

2 Write out a schedule, a plan with goals. (Choose pieces you enjoy playing – S.M.).
Yo-yo Ma says, never make a sound without hearing it first; hear it in your mind.

3 Set goals to chart development.

4 Concentrate when you practice.
Yo-yo says join feelings into your music when you feel bad, to integrate your feelings with your mind and body.

5 Relax and practice slowly.

6 Practice hard parts longer.

7 Practice expressively.
Be serious – invest yourself expressively.

8 Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Learn from your mistakes.

9 Don’t show off.

10 Think for yourself.
Don’t become a robot, but don’t dismiss what you’re taught.

11 Be optimistic.
Nothing sounds worse than pessimism coming through a horn.

12 Look for connections. (Make the social aspect of practicing regenerative - S.M.)
Music washes away the dust of everyday life from your feet.


Enjoy,
Scott

scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingMusicalInstrument.htm


*

Relaxation Response ... http://relaxationresponse.org/steps/ is nice to return while 'training,' and while playing itself ...



**

How to train for loving bliss? :)



***

Here's a start:)


Guidelines for practicing loving bliss vis-à-vis practicing a musical instrument



Articulating 12 Guidelines for Practicing a Musical Instrument (by Marsalis and Ma) with developing how to practice loving bliss

Friends,

Here are some practices to elicit loving bliss with which I'm beginning to articulate these 12 'how-to' guidelines below:). And here are what I think is love in some of its best senses. In the following ideas and explorations of how we might 'practice' loving bliss, as we would practice a musical instrument, I assume our bodyminds are like musical instruments. {Feel free to print, below, and add to this}. As I'm presently thinking about this, I'd love your thoughts about this ~ scott@scottmacleod.com.


INSPIRATION

~ Keep the 'vision' of making music in your mind

~ Make eliciting loving bliss, as practice, enjoyable (omega-3 fatty acids, 1000 mg flax seed oil, 3 times per day, as a basis?)



1 Seek out private instruction.

> ... for modeling and teaching qualities of loving bliss
> With whom?
> Might interactive media via the Internet help give shape to this, without private instruction?

2 Write out a schedule, a plan with goals. (Choose pieces you enjoy playing – S.M.).
Yo-yo Ma says, never make a sound without hearing it first; hear it in your mind.

> Are there 'loving bliss' musical pieces?
> What are the skills of loving bliss?
> Develop techniques of loving bliss, such as 'tuning,' expressiveness, breathing, relaxing, eliciting, remembering

> Questions vis-a-vis 'flow: the psychology of optimal experience' - choose learning situations for this
> Reading and engaging 'loving bliss in its best senses'


3 Set goals to chart development.

> These qualities of brain neurophysiology, then those qualities of brain neurophysiology?
> Engage a teacher for this goal charting
> Use a technology (what machines exist now that measure, or provide biofeedback about, loving bliss?)
> Use language, as a kind of technology
> Use your own inner sense of loving bliss 'response,' and then build on this
> Synthesize arts like Watsu {water shiatsu} with loving bliss, to develop ways to chart development


4 Concentrate when you practice.
Yo-yo says join feelings into your music when you feel bad, to integrate your feelings with your mind and body.

> Use feelings to integrate you as a musical instrument when you feel bad, then ~>
> Relax into the relaxation response
> Elicit the 'bubbling up' phase of loving bliss


> While listening to music
> While dancing
> While exploring positive emotions
> While eliciting loving bliss with a friend


5 Relax and practice slowly.

> Relaxation response, breathing, eliciting, 'practices to elicit loving bliss,' with your mind releasing
> Find pools of warm water to practice eliciting loving bliss, with ease and focus
> Find a friend to do this with


6 Practice hard parts longer.

> Go into, or release richly into, loving bliss?
> For transcendent & heightened experiences of loving bliss, focus on these often, and with depth

7 Practice expressively.
Be serious – invest yourself expressively.

> Let go into loving bliss fulsomely, imaginatively, exploratorily
> Bring emotion and 'oomph' to this practice
> Engage music (especially classical) as reference experiences


8 Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Learn from your mistakes.

> Focus, after not concentrating, - and care for yourself, while generating loving bliss


9 Don’t show off.

> A kind of Taoist approach {masking the brightness - (Feng and English 1975: #4)}?
> Don't put your loving bliss on display
> And also let your loving bliss shine out, especially when regenerative, and with friends who are also exploring this


10 Think for yourself.
Don’t become a robot, but don’t dismiss what you’re taught.

> Innovate vis-à-vis eliciting loving bliss
> Learn loving bliss techniques, as if learning Watsu (water shiatsu}, and with focus
> Don't repeat loving bliss 'techniques' by rote (e.g. by listening to Mozart's "Magic Flute" or dancing to elicit loving bliss ~> cultivate loving bliss with relaxed intention)
> I think all of the above have quite explicit biochemical, neurophysiological correlates, that, when known, we might begin to orchestrate profoundly, - keep thinking


11 Be optimistic.
Nothing sounds worse than pessimism coming through a horn.

> Cultivate optimism with loving bliss - it might be difficult not to


12 Look for connections. (Make the social aspect of practicing regenerative - S.M.)
Music washes away the dust of everyday life from your feet.

> Orient your mind to connecting with

* your own neurophysiology of loving bliss
* to other people~friends who are exploring this
* to innovating vis-à-vis generating loving bliss

> Explore doing this in multiple networks in your life (including playing musical instruments together:)
> Let's create a remarkable & profound language and culture for this


Warm regards,
Scott


scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm


MMmmmm, music .... :)

Comet: World University and School, Great Free Educational Software

Here is great, free software which I'm posting to World University and School's Educational Software page. This list includes animation software, as well as an office suite.

Let's add to this list :) worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software

Contents


1 Educational Software

1.1 Biology Educational Software
1.2 Programming Languages' Educational Software
1.3 Vocabulary Learning Software

2 Software Tools

2.1 Animation and Machinima-Making Software
2.2 Blogging tools
2.3 Operating Systems
2.4 Productivity Office Suite
2.5 Screen Capture-and-Share Software
2.6 Social Media Classroom
2.7 Stream Video into Second Life and Open Sim
2.8 Survey Software
2.9 Translation Software
2.10 Video-Streaming Software for Your Mobile Phone
2.11 Virtual Worlds as Fora, Classrooms, Building Sites, Design Sites, Art Studios, etc.
2.12 Wiki Software



Educational Software

* Add, try or write free, open educational software



Biology Educational Software

Immune Attack: an educational video game that introduces basic concepts of human immunology to high school and entry-level college students http://fas.org/immuneattack/ Made by Federation of American Scientists High School / College


Programming Languages' Educational Software

MIT's Scratch: A Programming Language for Everyone http://scratch.mit.edu/ Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab Teaching Language for Programming


Vocabulary Learning Software

Free Rice http://www.freerice.com/ non-credit, so far Browser Give free rice to hungry people by playing a simple game that increases your knowledge. Used with great success in correction facility in Jamaica. English



Software Tools


Animation and Machinima-Making Software

Moviestorm http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/ Complete Movie-Making Package for Animations


Blogging tools

Blogger.com http://blogger.com made by Google free blogging tool, integrates with other, free Google technologies All ages

WordPress http://wordpress.com made by Wordpress free blogging tools All ages


Operating Systems

Sugar Learning Environment http://www.sugarlabs.org Sugar Labs the Open Source Software that runs on the XO - One Laptop per Child


Productivity Office Suite

Open Office http://download.openoffice.org/ Open Office Free and Open Productivity Suite with word processor, spreadsheet, slideshow, etc. All ages


Screen Capture-and-Share Software

Jing Project http://www.jingproject.com Jing Make Machinimas, and Snap a picture of your screen, record video of onscreen action, share instantly over the web, IM, email


Social Media Classroom

Social Media Classroom http://socialmediaclassroom.com/index.php/ Howard Rheingold Classroom and Collaboratory Software All ages


Stream Video into Second Life and Open Sim

Veodia http://www.veodia.com Veodia Agile video that puts your work in motion


Survey Software

Survey Monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com Survey Monkey a simple way to create surveys All ages


Translation Software

Google Translator http://translate.google.com/translate_t# Google limited languages


Video-Streaming Software for Your Mobile Phone

Qik Mobile Live Video Sharing Software http://qik.com Qik Share live video from your phone


Virtual Worlds as Fora, Classrooms, Building Sites, Design Sites, Art Studios, etc.

Second Life http://secondlife.com Linden Lab free to use, teen and adult grid, pay to build, currency for buying and selling

Open Simulator http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page Open Sim free, open source virtual world software


Wiki Software

Wikia's Wikis http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia Wikia Free wiki software All ages


Let's add to this list.

These are examples of non-market information production.

Valley of Flowers: Mother Tongue, Nontheist Friends, Loving Bliss Musical Scores

Tongue mother ~ reverse, ~ or stick out your tongue at your mother, with affection ... :)

Mother tongue ...

~


Bliss, ~ from middle English origins

Ecstasy, ~ from old French and ancient Greek origins ...

Love, ~ from old English

O, English, how you continue to spread around the world ... curious entity, this language ...


*

How to elicit loving bliss {think ecstasy (MDMA), naturally}, when and as we want it ... besides continuing to focus on bliss, and writing about it?


**

I started exploring the relaxation response this morning while standing ... lots of possible opportunities with restorative yoga poses, and in all yoga poses, to cultivate the relaxation response ...


***

How to articulate further how a nontheist Quaker relaxation response, or nontheist friends' relaxation response, or, for that matter, how a nontheist friends' loving bliss response, would work? ...

How to examine and elicit this in terms of human bodyminds, as biological systems {think MDMA + ... }


****

But MDMA has also a sensual side to it, in addition to its affective euphoric side ...

I continue to wonder whether Bonobo narratives {very little violence, and a lot of sexuality} might be part of human experience which culture somehow limited, but which are cultivatable, culturally ...

And in the context of nontheist friends?


*****

Biology, and Bonobo chimp narratives over common chimp narratives (some violence, and war), vis-à-vis homo sapien narratives ... given a kind of narrative relativism over evolutionary history ... seem like sensible ways of making sense of the world.


******

What's the {musical} score for loving bliss? With friends? Listen to music which makes you blissful, as your friend on the telephone is listening to music where they are, which makes him or her blissful ... and converse with each other, with the intention of eliciting bliss, explicitly, in relation to the music you're hearing? Yes ... score ... especially vis-a-vis Guidelines for Practicing Loving Bliss vis-à-vis Practicing a Musical Instrument


*******

Relaxation response ... MMMmmmmm ...

Leonotis Leonorus: Hawaiian Music and 'Space,' Talking, Peace and Pacifism

Hawaiian music, in a Hawaiian 'space,' in northern California? (at 'Bad Ass Coffee' near Santa Rosa) ... changes 'energy' ... Aloha ... Music and place - aspects of 'culture' I'm interested in - have effects in fascinating ways ...


*

Talking can be so valuable, but the psychoanalytic tradition, which valorizes a certain kind of talking ... how does this work? How is this a developing 'culture?' A friend mentioned how a senior psychoanalytic practitioner (a M.D.) was playing a Mozart recital, as a fundraiser, recently. Is this an example of 'flow' experiences that people who have engaged in psychoanalysis can engage in?

Talk, talk, talk with a therapist, as well as your community, if you need to ... Choose the best interlocutors ...

It's the articulation of language with a relatively neutral other that is one significant aspect of how it helps ...


**

Here are some organizations which have worked on peace, social justice and pacificist issues for a long time now:

The AFSC (http://AFSC.org), which started in 1917 as a way to support conscientious objectors, and FCNL (http://FCNL.org) which started in the 30s with a focus on peace and legislation, are two examples. Each organization is an interesting, ongoing example of Friends' concerns for peace, pacifism, as well as pragmatic action.

Rose-Lipped Trumpet Lichen: Counterculture in Europe?, Harbin Beginnings, Hippies Creating Love

Where is counterculture in Europe, say, in France, today? In Club Med? Probably not, although students, long hairs, hippies, revolutionaries, artists, bohemians, artisans, activists, organic farmers, builders, Peace-niks, academics, teachers, writers, meditators and others might have visited Club Med in the 60s a lot, especially those around the world ... {Probably in Paris, though ...}

And is Club Med - two words - with its possibly 200 sites, 'placeless?'


One of the things that makes Harbin different from Club Med is its beginnings - in the period I'm interested in, starting in 1972, - so, its emergence with counterculture. And does Harbin's continuation as a hot springs' retreat center business give a location, or place, to ongoing hippie counterculture, whereas counterculture isn't that much 'in the air' in many other places?

Might we even begin to do kinship studies at Harbin, which reflect anthropological studies of tribes historically, thus partly defining group, as well as anthropology as a discipline? Why not? Hippies hearkened to Native American traditions, for example, and I've heard Harbin residents call Harbin a tribe.

Does Harbin's continuation signal a kind of ongoing emergence of a new kind of group - hippies - and their sustainability, - in this one place, for one? There are actually a fair number of related places around the U.S. (and possibly around the world), that are somewhat countercultural, and which may also think of themselves as independent from one another 'culturally,' but in which I see a lot of similarities. Is Club Med loosely part of this?

And why doesn't Harbin expand, as Club Med has? I think it would keep its je ne sais quoi.

I hope to begin by making virtual Harbin very similar to real Harbin, including ...


*

Hippies can create a kind of liminality and communitas in most interesting ways. I wonder whom among 'counterculture' has elicited loving bliss {think ecstasy - MDMA} over a lifetime, when and as they want. I suspect there are some individuals, whom I haven't heard of, who have done this. Who are they? How to do this?


How do hippies create love? They tend to put it out there ... :)

Dillenia Suffruticosa: Language as Virtual?, 'Play Machinima Law,' Virtual Language?

Is 'virtuality' one connotation of language, in remonstration to the sense that Erving Goffman construed language - as entirely situated?

I can certainly see language, in all its remarkableness, as a sophisticated system which most closely approximates many conceptions I have of the word 'virtual.' It's very difficult for me to 'locate' language - to 'place' it. In what ways would these conceptions differ?


*

I'm heading to a "Play Machinima Law" conference taking place tomorrow at Stanford University, organized by Stanford University Librarian, and Professor, Henry Lowood, (which I heard about from Stanford Law Professor, soon to be Harvard Professor, Lawrence Lessig).

Artists bring digital media together from different sources to make amazing, new creations and representations, thus transforming the law (another information technology?) due to developments in digital technologies. And lawyers innovate with the law.

See Creative Commons Law, for example: History of Creative Commons' Law


**

How might this kind of digital virtuality relate to new ways of understanding language?

Zinnia: Harbin Transforms Space and Time, Now, Clothing-Optionalness

Does Harbin, and especially its pools, also transform space and time to 'here' and 'now,' in the counter-cultural milieu of Harbin?


*

The focus on 'now' emerges from the 1960s and 70s, as well as spiritual traditions of the East, in particular {and Heart Consciousness Church}. This focus on 'now' is in Ishvara's book "Oneness in Living," and in other Harbin writings, as well. This 'now' focus is also more 'in the air,' in my experience, at Harbin, than, for example, in the San Francisco Bay Area.


**

Harbin's clothing-optionalness (also emerging from the 1960s in unique ways, and for unique reasons - as a form of protest against wearing clothes, and an expression of freedom) makes attraction significant there, bringing people into the present in still a different way.

Blue Bell Tunicate: Modes of Thinking, World University Community, Loving Bliss ~ Independently

Modes of thinking beyond writing and categorization ... are many ... and as individualistic as bodyminds?

History and comparative modalities, with a focus on context, have a long history in anthropological inquiry, and ethnography is an extensive, remarkable and unique body of writings. In what ways, within this historical context, will new modes of anthropological thinking emerge?

{I just received in the mail, from the amazing Amazon.com online bookstore, Michael Niman's "People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia" (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press 1997), - an ethnography of the Rainbow Gathering}.


*

World University and School ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com ~ is as open as 'edit this page,' - like Wikipedia.

How to develop a community for WUaS, like Wikipedia's?


**

It can be hard to think independently, or 'see' beyond one's milieu, the contemporary, or current social context.


***

How to develop a conversation about loving bliss, naturally vis-a-vis neurophysiology, but which generates this neurochemistry, for those who are interested?

Coming deeply inside especially vis-a-vis the 'relaxation response' can help facilitate loving bliss for me at other times. There's a relationship between deeply releasing, and the neurochemistry of bliss.

{And the Harbin pools facilitate the relaxation response richly for me}.

Sea Turtles: Discourse, Language, Contact Improv & Resources

Discourse (social context) and language seem to create, or give form to, some of the options we have in the day-to-day. Today's discourse, with the internet, is very broad, in the aftermath of the 1960s, especially, and, of course, including the Enlightenment and the industrial revolutions, loosely, forward.

Discourse is an extraordinarily far-reaching word, but rarely, in my experience, do people think about its significant implications. And so much of our experience of discourse is shaped by language, which we can use to shape 'discourse,' through speech acts {agency}.


*

At a recent Contact Improv jam, the woman I was dancing with and I found a lot! of freedom moving together, and very intimately. The music was great, and unusually up-tempo for contact, and this, in part opened creative movement possibilities together. {Dancing together was fun:}.

I then danced with two other folks, also dynamically. MMmmm. :)


**

Even with opportunities for great contact improv {and the possibility to develop loving bliss contact improv}, which occur at specific times and places, I'm still curious how to access loving bliss when and as we want, neurophysiologically and naturally, for example in the day-to-day.


***

How to generate resources richly, when and as one wants them?

World University and School may make intellectual resources possible to large numbers of people.

This may in turn help people find the work they want, or might enjoy, thus leading to financial resources, especially if they can teach about this, by adding, for example, to World University and School, ~ if this might be enjoyable for them.

Elephant Seals: Ethnography of the Internet Books & Webnographers.org

Here's a recent list of books concerning internet ethnography on Webnographers.org. These books offer fascinating research into, and context for, some of the changes brought about by the information technology revolution. (For the record, I posted the majority of these books and categories to the nascent Webnographer.org's wiki books' page - [editable web pages]). Like other wikis, we can all edit and add content here, too.



Webnographers: Resources for Virtual Ethnography

== Cultural Geography ==

Saxenian, AnnaLee. 2006. The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Saxenian, AnnaLee. 1994. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

== Cultural History ==

Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

== Digital Divide and Internet Ethnography ==


== Ethnography ==

Cerwonka, Allaine and Liisa Malkki. 2007. Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (eds.). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

== Ethnographies Relating to the Internet ==


== Free Software Culture ==

Kelty, Christopher M. 2008. [http://twobits.net/ Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software]. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

== Future of the Internet ==

Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. [http://futureoftheinternet.org/download The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It]. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

== Hacker Culture ==

Himanen. Pekka. 2001. The Hacker Ethic and Spirit of the Information Age. (Prologue by Linus Torvalds; Epilogue by Manuel Castells). New York: Random House.

== Information Technology and Nonmarket Information Production ==

Benkler, Yochai. 2007. [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom]. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

== Linguistics and Virtual Ethnography ==

== Media Studies ==

Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. 2005 (2002). [http://www.amazon.com/Social-History-Media-Gutenberg-Internet/dp/0745635121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819688&sr=1-1 A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet, 2nd ed]. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gitlin, Todd. 2003 (1980). [http://www.amazon.com/Whole-World-Watching-Unmaking-Preface/dp/0520239326/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819735&sr=1-3 The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left, 2nd ed]. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[[henry jenkins | Jenkins, Henry]]. 2008. [http://www.amazon.com/Convergence-Culture-Collide-Revised-Afterword/dp/0814742955/ref=pd_sim_b_4 Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide]. New York: NYU Press.

Lessig, Lawrence. 2006. Code 2.0. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Lessig, Lawrence. 2005. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York, NY: Penguin.

Lessig. Lawrence. 2008. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Penguin Press HC.

Levinson, Paul. 1999. [http://www.amazon.com/Digital-McLuhan-Guide-Information-Millennium/dp/0415249910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819782&sr=1-1 Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium]. New York: Routledge.

Levinson, Paul. 1998. [http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Edge-Natural-Information-Revolution/dp/0415197724/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819841&sr=1-2 The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution]. New York: Routledge.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1962. [http://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Galaxy-Making-Typographic-Man/dp/0802060412/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819961&sr=1-14 The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man]. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0262631598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233819880&sr=1-1 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man]. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Meyrowitz, Joshua. 1985. [http://www.amazon.com/No-Sense-Place-Electronic-Behavior/dp/019504231X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233820002&sr=1-1 No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior]. New York: Oxford University Press.

Spigel, Lynn. 1992. [http://www.amazon.com/Make-Room-TV-Television-Postwar/dp/0226769674/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233820033&sr=1-1 Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thompson, John. 1995. [http://www.amazon.com/Media-Modernity-Social-Theory/dp/0804726795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233820075&sr=1-1 Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media]. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

== Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications ==

Packer, Randall and Jordan, Ken (eds.). 2001. Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York: W.W. Norton.

== Network Society ==

Castells, Manuel. 2003. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. (Vol. 1 - 2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, Manuel. 2004. The Power of Identity. (Vol. 2 - 2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, Manuel. 2000. The End of Millenium. (Vol. 3 - 2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Stalder, Felix. 2006. Manuel Castells: The Theory of the Network Society. Cambridge: Polity.

== Open Source Information Technology==

Raymond, Eric. S. 2000. [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary]. (First presented at the Linux Kongress in 1997). O'Reilly Media.

== Programming Languages and Ethnography ==

== Social Change and Virtual Ethnography ==

Dutton, William H. 1999. Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

== Social Implications of Information Technology ==

Shirky, Clay. [http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536/ref=pd_sim_b_2 Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations]. Penguin Press, 2008.

== Social Networking ==

Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, [[danah boyd]], Rachel Cody, Becky Herr, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martinez, C.J. Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp. 2008. [http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media]. E-Book. Researchers at the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley have been conducting ethnographic research on kids' informal learning with digital media since 2005. This is what they found.

Ryan Jenny. 2008. [http://www.thevirtualcampfire.org The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking]. E-Book. Anthropologist [[Jenny Ryan]] explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between human and machine, public and private, voyeurism and exhibitionism, the history of media and our digitized future. Woven throughout are the stories and experiences of those who engage with these sites regularly and ritualistically, the generation of "digital natives" whose tales attest to the often strange and uncomfortable ways online social networking sites have come to be embedded in the everyday lives of American youth.

== TCP/IP and Ethnography ==


== The 'Virtual' vis-à-vis Internet Ethnography ==


== Virtual Archives and Ethnography ==

Fabian, Johannes. 2008. Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

== Virtual Communities ==

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. [http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/ The Virtual Community]. Written at the dawn of the cyberculture, The Virtual Community explores the heart of the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (more commonly known as the WELL}. Part ethnography, part history, part journalism and part philosophy, [[Howard Rheingold]]'s engaging seminal work is a must-read for those interested in online communities.

== Virtual Ethnography ==

Boellstorf, Tom. 2008. [http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Age-Second-Life-Anthropologist/dp/0691135282/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233822027&sr=1-1 Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human]. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

[[ christine hine | Hine, Christine]]. 2005. [http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Methods-Christine-Hine/dp/1845200853/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233820859&sr=1-2 Virtual Methods]. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Hine. Christine. 2000. [http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Ethnography-Christine-M-Hine/dp/0761958959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233820859&sr=1-1 Virtual Ethnography]. London: Sage Publications.

Miller, Daniel and Don Slater. 2000. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg.

== Virtual Ethnography and Globalization, Governmentality and Neo-Liberalism ==


== Virtual Ethnography of the Law ==

[http://creativecommons.org/about/history/ History of Creative Commons' Law]

== Virtual Worlds ==

Malaby, Thomas M. 2009. Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Pearce, Celia. 2009. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

== Webnographies ==

http://www.webnographers.org/index.php?title=Books


*

Elephant seals on the beach: http://www.pointreyesweekend.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/elephant_seals.jpg

Could this photo and 'lifestyle' be a 'metaphor' for Harbin? :) These elephant seals are nude, obviously.


**

I think my Harbin ethnography, tentatively entitled something like "Harbin Hot Springs: An Ethnography of Hippies, Healing, Counterculture, and Clothing-Optional Virtual Harbin," will be a part of these.

Getting into OpenSim, changing settings

1

Once you have set up open sim vis-a-vis Second Life,

Right click on Second Life in Applications (on the Mac)

Click on 'Contents'

Click on 'Resources'

Click on arguments.txt

Enter (in many cases):
-loginuri http://localhost:9000


2

open the Region Files

(I may need to change "external host" to 127.0.0.1 address - for local host - from 75.2.130.117 (for Canyon?))


3

Then in bin (most of the OpenSim files), (which you've already successfully installed)

click on sim.command

and you should be running the world



4

Then open the Second Life client (which will now be running OpenSim)

enter username and password for OpenSim (which can different from the Second Life one)

And it should work ...

(April 20, 2009)







Regions didn't connect in new version of SL

opened Second Life Release Candidate ...


(Posting this on September 15, 2018, 9 years about I created the draft above in blogger.com on April 20, 2009. Today 9/20/18, I also published this blog post - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/09/labrador-retrievers-characters-like.html - dating from April 2009 too).

Antelope: Virtual Harbin, Second Life, Anthropology

Hi,

Greetings from Canyon, near Berkeley. After getting more accurate on-the-ground measurements for the Harbin gate house on Saturday at Harbin itself, I removed recently the walls from the building I had started on Antelope Island in Second Life. As you know, I had put this up as a preliminary Harbin gate house, from which to teleport to an as-yet-undetermined virtual 'location,' an anthropological field site, - but didn't have the building's proportions correct. I hope to make progress on this project this week, with a meeting on Tuesday.

I'm writing to ask whether I might build virtual Harbin (potentially the equivalent of 1700 acres, or at least Harbin's Mainside and Domes area - possibly 50 acres) on Antelope, perhaps in the sky, for example (like the Gardens of Bliss's multiple levels' sim in Second Life), teleporting to it from a Harbin Gate House from near the main, virtual camp. I'm happy to put this gatehouse elsewhere on the virtual camp, if better. I also have 4 virtual Harbin regions in OpenSim presently. OpenSim has been quite buggy, but perhaps that has changed now. I'm in the process of checking about this. If it's as buggy as it was, I'm only interested in working with OpenSim as a kind of demo, and I'll wait for new versions to catch up with Second Life. (I also don't have a computer which is always connected to the internet, which is important for hosting a vritual island from your own hard drive). I'm essentially interested in getting the basics of virtual Harbin up and running soon, and potentially with DEMs (data elevation maps available for free at http://seamless.usgs.gov), with which I haven't yet worked. Coll may be of assistance with this.

Thanks,
Scott

http://scottmacleod.com

Heart Nebula: Colored Hair with Flowers, The 'New,' Daily Contact Jam at Harbin?

A woman with colored hair, and flowers in her hair, moved in front of me through the warm pool today on her tiptoes, and looked like some unusual species of bird flitting by on a familiar course (probably to get to the steps:). A new species of pool life? She smiled as she passed by, and I later noticed her body was nearly covered by tattoos. Harbin is very colorful: this young woman had very large tattoos her body, multi-colored hair, and her hair had colored flowers in it. :)

She just puttered by like a bird, smiling a little.


*

I'm curious about my ongoing interest in the 'new' and innovation, which I seem to be exploring in this blog. To think through new possibilities, and new ways of thinking about things is stimulating and exciting, which is why I do it. It's a form of engagement with the world which is creative and opening for me.


**

Ongoing Contact Improv jams at Harbin could take place in the Temple in the afternoon around one for a few hours, when and if the Temple is free, schedule-wise. A Harbin friend and resident suggested a 'leader' for these would be a good idea. And I think, too, that a teacher for these would help structure and focus it. Another friend suggested I talk with the workshops' coordinator. I'd love to be able to attend a Harbin contact jam, especially on weekend afternoons.

Sun Dome: Sun Deck at Harbin, Contact Improv All the Time, Redaction

People started hanging out on the sun deck at Harbin this morning around 9:15, mostly naked. It's the first time I've been there this year when the weather has been warm enough this early in the day so that it feels like summer. I suspect that at least since 1972 people have hung out nude all day long on the sun deck in the summer. It's like the day smiles, and everybody becomes happy and relaxed up in the Harbin pool area.


*

I wonder if Harbin might create a space for ongoing Contact Improv, open all the time like the Harbin pools, where people could just meet and do Contact Improv together, whenever. Harbin holds unconditional dances on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, and occasionally on other evenings, where some people do contact. For contact improv to work all the time at Harbin, enough people would have to jam in this space much of the time.


**

Time to redact on the sun deck ... and the pools ... :)

Clear Mountain Lake: 'High' When Bagpiping, Flow, Self-Generated Feedback Loop

Sometimes I get to a kind of 'high' when bagpiping ~ when my playing is 'rocking,' that is, when I'm playing well ~ as if series of sounds, or, lines of code, create 'flow: the psychology of optimal experience' experiences. It's the hearing what I'm playing in the 'now,' as a kind of immediate feedback loop to my bodymind through sound, which is what creates this kind of 'high.' And because I'm doing it, it's like a closed-loop self-generated 'flow' experience, so, potentially, I can modulate, create and shape these 'flow' and bliss experiences, depending on which tunes I play, how I play them, and whether I begin to improvise, or not. {... Sounds like computer sounds are getting me high. ... Isn't this what a symphony composition is?:}

I'm writing about this, because I think this way of thinking and playing offers modes for, and engages potential conversations about, human-created enjoyment, where people might begin to cultivate flow and bliss in each person's unique way, ~ with awareness and intention, through practice. In my experience, playing an instrument offers more potential avenues to self-generated flow than, for example, playing a musical recording (which can also lead to rich 'flow').

I think eliciting this bliss also confirms my belief that we have agency and choice in life.


~

Duncan Johnstone's piping compositions have a je ne sais quoi ~ and a rollicking beauty {... like a specific, elephant seal's calls?}

Many of his tunes are simply great. The Scottish Bagpipe has only 9 notes, but Duncan, as well as wee Donald MacLeod, for example, did something pretty uniquely wonderful with these few notes, and within the idiom of bagpiping, which also expresses a wonderful aspect of the Scottish character.


*

How to articulate these 'flow' experience processes above with loving bliss?

And metaphorically - when music isn't playing (no recording is audible) - how to elicit, {agency-wise}, loving bliss?


**

Music in Contact Improv is a great metaphor ...

Find music (specific recordings) which elicits loving bliss f0r yourself ...

Remember this when contact jamming in silence {and/or while listening to recordings} ...

then loving bliss contact jamming with others can emerge ...

then jam with people one loves and who love you ...


And MMmmm ... the beginning of growing loving bliss Contact Improv :)

Red Ruffed Lemur: Learning, Alice, Contact Improv to Bliss

What can we learn about learning from articulating anthropological interpretations of learning, with knowledge about learning in other primates, from primate research? What might we generalize?

For example, see Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's TED Talk: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man:

~ ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

Learning is a fascinating, primate phenomenon. In humans it allows for so much change, neurally or neurophysiologically, in the course of a lifetime. In other primates, it makes possible new skills, among other things.

Here's an example of learned behavior: Orangutan Hunting Fish with a Spear

And linguistically?

One generalization: chimpanzees, gorillas, (and probably orangutans), can learn sign language, and, probably, icons on computers, and humans can learn non-mother tongue languages.


So, bringing a focus on behavior together with a focus on language might yield new knowledge to build on existing fascinating knowledge and interpretations to date.

Why not engage bonobo-wiki-virtual-world-graphy as a new method to investigate further?

Or higher-primate-wiki-virtual-world-graphy?


~

{Nice photo: Red Ruffed Lemur ~ http://el.trekearth.com/gallery/photo465455.htm}


*

While walking in the Haight-Ashbury today, I saw Alice from Wonderland, in a beautiful white and blue dress coming up the street. Behind her was a white rabbit who was handing out postage stamps. Sitting very lightly at the end of a leafy, tree branch in lotus pose was the Mad Hatter, not the Cheshire Cat, saying "lick the stamps, put them on leaves, and post them to the sun." So I did.

I imagine such possibilities might have been richly explored in the 1960s and 70s in the Haight, but are less 'in the air' these days.


An anthropology of imagination?


**

Contact Improv in the evening ... I think it's the movement combined with the touch which are so liberating, but how to elicit 'full on' bliss, when and as one wants it, isn't yet obvious to me, especially improvisationally.

Barrel Cactus Flowers: Loving Bliss Contact Improv

Loving Bliss Contact Improv ...

How would this work, where 'loving' has to do with

inward and outward, indirect and straightforward realizations of love in its best sense - empathy; delight; sympathy; centered caring; tenderness; sensitivity; ineffable ecstasy ...

{see scottmacleod.com/daltonletter.htm}

and 'bliss' has to do with a kind of affective euphoria neurophysiology, for example, see scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/04/african-lion-like-cat-in-sun-modernity.html


And contact improv is a form of dance and jamming, where you follow the point of contact between two or more people, through touch and movement, and explore what unfolds ...

~

A form ~~~

Indonesian Orchid: What's the URL for the class you teach?, World University and School Wiki Course Schedule

What's the web address (URL) for the class you teach?

Does it teach people how to do something?

Let's post it ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com


*

Your teaching a class would be great.

Besides having found students myself for classes I was teaching in Second Life, I haven't thought through how to use World University and School to let students know about upcoming courses,

~ besides an email list (which is in the works),

~ a possible WUaS wiki class calendar, and

~ by sending people a notice through the Facebook group -

facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141

- which I'd be more than happy to do, if you wanted to hold a course.


It would be the first interactive course taught through the Creative Commons, open source World University and School.


I'd like to attend.

Luminous Flowers: Hippies Were Wildly Creative, Ethnography of Contact Improv?, Methodological Articulation Betw Anthropology & Primatology, & Creatio

The 1960s and early 1970s were wildly creative, and often outlandishly so. Those times give me hope for cultural processes and innovation again ahead.

People, then, were very proactive and innovative in so many ways. How to re-write racism? Organize, do civil disobedience, and re-examine academic and societal 'literatures.' And Barack is president. How to stop war? Protest, develop nonviolence techniques, and engage the media. And wars, since, have had far fewer casualities. How to envision society anew? They just did it, and worked for change for the better.

And hippies were - way - 'all over the map.' They created and explored in so many ways imaginable, and in all facets of life. There's an aspect of the 1960s which is intensely libertarian, individualistic, and anarchistic, and counterculture included these, adapting these strands of American (and European ... ) life from earlier decades. {India seems to give form to great aspects of counterculture through Hinduism's fundamental tolerance and spiritual 'practices' which facilitate this and colorful creativity}. Counterculture and New Age thinking drew a lot from India, but also from all over, ~ way.


*

In what ways is the ethnography of contact improv roly-poly participant observation? How might one develop this methodologically?

And does contact improv, originating in 1972, represent an interesting expression of the ongoing inventiveness which counterculture represents, where every moment of dance might be seen as innovative in the 'now?'


**

I'm curious to explore further the relatively unexplored methodological articulations between anthropology and primatology. Both have very long histories of fieldwork, as method. I think both disciplines have a lot to learn from each other, let alone re-articulate and redefine understandings of higher primates. !


***

I like to connect {bond} with people, not information, and yet these information technologies are compelling and fascinating, and I spend a fair amount of time with them. {The internet is amazing}.

I suspect that homo sapiens, for millions of years, were more troopbonding-oriented (viz. John Money 1988: 117) than Orangutans, for example, whom I've read are quite solitary, as well as intelligent.



****

I'd love to live in a Flax Seed World of Omega-3s where Everyone Has Omega Bodyminds.


*****

As a metaphor, is Harbin Hot Springs a life boat, culturally?


******

So Harbin's experience of gravity is rewritten a little in the warm pool, - an example of conceiving anew, counterculturally.

And the Harbin pools are a wonderful complement to the experiences of creativity in life {in California} that contact improv, for example, make possible.


*******

How to cultivate the creative aspects of hippie ways toward new forms of beauty, and a better society today, when countercultural processes appear less evident 'in the air?'


********

And 'writing counterculture' allows for an ongoing exploration of creativity vis-a-vis the 1960s and early 70s, in remarkably open-ended ways ...


*********

MMmmm ... writing, ~ and the relaxation response in the Harbin pools in a few days, but contact improv this evening ... :)

African Lion: Like a Cat in the Sun, Modernity, Bodymind Contra-dance Bliss

Like a cat in the sun, I fell asleep so comfortably in ever~so~warm sun on the Harbin sleeping deck Sunday morning around 9:00, for an hour or so, after spending around an hour in the pools before that. I was so relaxed, and a little sleepy from sleeping on the deck the previous two nights. Our ancestors (homo sapiens) in Africa probably slept when they wanted and, at times for multiple generations, lived a very relaxed life, naturally, in abundant parkland or forest. {In Congo-like forests?}

~ Morphing into a comfort zone ... in modernity (vis-a-vis 'The Enlightenment' and the industrial revolutions forward, loosely) ...


*

From contra-dance music to classical, chamber music and back & forth. ... I'd love to hear a very skilled contra-dance band cum classical chamber music group play seemlessly, and in richly imaginative ways, between the two forms, weaving them together ... :)))

And I'd love to dance this, as well. ... And to develop a musical form from this ...


**

For bliss ...

In a contra-dance,
follow a line of music
{a single, musical instrument's voice}
in your bodymind ...
Let go with this ...
Focus {receive} fully, and in a very relaxed way ...
Feel the music ...
Spin on the side of the line ...
Give weight, look your partner in the eye,
and smile at each other when swinging ...
Grow warmth and affection in the dance ...
Pick great contra-bands to listen
and dance to ...
like "The Figments."Develop a conversation between musicians and dancers ...
And develop your ears for this ...
The benefits of joyous movement with contra-dance ...
the vigor {important:} of bodymind movement,
with the joy of the music
can transmute niggling discontent,
{omega-3s ~ flax seed oil, -
1000 milligrams, 3-4 times a day, can also help},
and grow loving bliss neurophysiology,
leading to healthy well-being.
For me, contra-dance is as close as it gets to being a technology for bliss {a kind of 'flow' experience}, but not loving bliss as much. And lots of people were beaming yesterday evening; this contra dance seemed to be a group experience of 'bliss' for many.

~

This band was great last night in Marin:Special Dance: The Figments, fresh from Dance Awakening (a contra-weekend at Harbin Hot Springs). Special Day/Time. $10 members/$12 non-members

Caller:
Lynn Ackerson

Band:
The Figments
Ethan Hazzard-Watkins (fiddle)
Anna Patton (clarinet)
Owen Morrison (guitar, foot)
Will Patton (bass, mandolin)


The Figments

I liked a @YouTube video https://t.co/Qpjc39PgM1 Scout House Contradance with The Figments 1/7/11

— WorldUnivandSch (@WorldUnivAndSch) November 24, 2018

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1066212428361285632

I liked a @YouTube video https://t.co/IjTAuponrw The Figments at the Santa Barbara Contra Dance 1/5/14

— WorldUnivandSch (@WorldUnivAndSch) November 24, 2018

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1066212079026270208

***

How would one study contra-dance 'bliss' neurophysiology scientifically and rigorously, in terms of affective euphoria?


****

To Contact Improv this evening ...

*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

...

Salticids on eggs: No Frost, Metaphorical Relativism, Public Transportation to Middletown, Harbin in the 70s and 80s, Bagpiping at Harbin's Easter Egg Hunt

No Frost


No frost
on the sleeping deck
last night
at Harbin :) ~
and the day
was so beautiful.


*

Metaphorical {and Narrative} Relativism

I'm curious about a kind of metaphorical relativism emerging in some ways from cultural relativism (Franz Boas) and linguistic relativism (Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf) in the beginnings of anthropology in the 20th century. Simply put, cultural relativism suggests that all cultures are relative, and claims to superiority of any one are explicitly called into question. Linguistic relativism explicitly examines the role that language plays in understanding, again questioning any claims to superiority, for one over another, suggesting instead that languages are different (Hopi and English, for example) and make fundamentally different understandings of the world possible.

Both Stanford Professor Richard Rorty and, possibly, University of Pennsylvania philosopher Elisabeth Camp may touch on related questions.

I see metaphorical relativism (a term I may be coining), in anthropology, as continuing to bring questions of relativism to spheres of metaphors relating to identity production.

I find hippie and virtual world metaphors {as well as those from nature} fascinating ... :)



**

I used to take Greyhound bus lines to Middletown, California, to get to Harbin Hot Springs in the mid-1990s. I posted a Harbin visitor's pass of mine to this blog a while ago, from 1995 {scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2008/12/poem-green-tortoise-pass.html}. I may have first visited Harbin in 1993 or 1994. I'm not sure exactly when Greyhound stopped passing through Middletown, California, but it may have been in 1997.

Now there's a Harbin ride board on yahoo groups.


***

I'm very interested in exploring the 1970s at Harbin. Ishvara is the only resident still living at Harbin who has been there since then (1972). And yet that's a time when Harbin was probably as wild as we might imagine, emerging from the 1960s. I speculate that characterizing Harbin as its own unique, ongoing kind of Rainbow Gathering, 365 days a year, in that decade, is a better characterization than most others, - until I can talk with folks who were there then.

Just as I was leaving Harbin today, I talked with someone who has been there since 1981. He's been at Harbin for longer than most people. Re-reading what he's written may open avenues for further conversation, - which is so cool. All of the longest-time Harbin residents have been there since the early 1980s. With my interest in counterculture vis-a-vis Harbin, and having lived in the 1960s and 1970s, it's fascinating to me how few Harbin visitors I've met who remember that time. And while this makes Harbin in the 1970s remote vis-a-vis my ethnographic inquiries, it also makes me to find and talk with people who were there at that time.



****

After playing my bagpipes during the Harbin Easter egg hunt, as well as piping up to the pools today {hippies seem to love parades:}, I talked with a Harbin resident who suggested reading "Golf in the Kingdom" {of Fife, Scotland}, which he compared glowingly to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in its luminosity, for him. I later noticed that Michael Murphy, who, significantly, gave form to Esalen, with its many parallels with Harbin, wrote this book. :) (Esalen may still largely be Murphy's business). A lot of people traveled back and forth between Harbin and Esalen (see Kripal's "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion") in the 1960s and '70s. Hippies can be very anti-religious and funny about seeing religion as a kind of hoax, the opium of the people, a tool of oppression, etc. ...

(Scott Macleod Bagpiping at Easter Harbin Hot Springs with wizard and Easter Bunny

photo: Harbin Hot Spring's Easter 2005 (Scott MacLeod and Eric R.) photo credit ?)

*****

But something happens in the Harbin warm pool which is very harmonizing and enjoyable, akin to the relaxation response - https://web.archive.org/web/20100210223158/http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/ (was: relaxation response), ~ see, too: https://www.massgeneral.org/wellness/news/the-relaxation-response

 ~ and wonderful, too.

*

https://web.archive.org/web/20170207083745/http://www.richard-seaman.com/Arthropods/Indonesia/Highlights/BeautifulSalticidOnEggs.jpg

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Arthropods/Indonesia/Highlights/BeautifulSalticidOnEggs.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider

...

Frost: Waters, Rewriting Gravity At Harbin, Hippie Youth

Frost

There was frost
on the sleeping deck
this morning
when I awoke
at Harbin.

The waters were so
warm and nice
after the cold
of the morning.


*

Harbin, especially the warm pools, does interesting things with gravity. Beyond water making bodyminds feel lighter, Harbin's warm water, and particularly its beautiful, warm pool, its clothing-optionalness and the milieu in general create a kind of inner buoyancy, in my experience. Its roots in counterculture which inform Harbin's milieu rewrites a kind of metaphorical gravity, too. Things in counterculture were somehow reversed, turned upside down, seen differently, - this includes, for me, gravity at Harbin.


**

Counterculture continues to fascinate me in the way that it shapes bodyminds. I have a teenage friend at Harbin who has really long hair, hasn't gone to school that much, and is really alternative in the way he sees and thinks about things. This way of being has just emerged in the fabric of his life in California, and because his parents, I think, are really understanding, and gave space for this way of being. I don't see that many young people in California growing up these days as hippy kids, although the youth movement in the 1960s and 70s found epi-centeredness in California. And many kids in California and on the west coast of the U.S. seem to be familiar with hippie ways.


***

There's so much to learn and think about at Harbin, it's time to make headway with writing, so I can explore more new things. It's a complex place with a pretty long history in its current form.


****

Time, too, to build virtual Harbin.

* 

http://blog.54ka.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/winter_landscape_ii_by_54ka.jpg

...

Azaelea: About Ecstasy, Loving Bliss, World University With Bagpiping Tutorials

About ecstasy ~ click on the label 'ecstasy {MDMA}' to the right here at scott-macleod.blogspot.com for ideas about, thoughts about, and experiential approaches to loving bliss ~

I'm curious about your experiences with loving bliss? Write them below.

*

Also see scottmacleod.com/links.htm

**

Bagpipe Tutorials on World University and School

I just added free, online Bagpipe Tutorials - how to play the Bagpipe - to World University & School ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Music#Subjects ~

and to my Bagpiping page ~ scottmacleod.com/piping.htm

***

Laughter for healing ...

Benefits of Laughter Yoga with John Cleese on youtube:
youtube.com/watch?v=yXEfjVnYkqM


****

Add content to World University and School :) ~

worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University

Open and free, - like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware

Root Systems: Teach Something Using QIK.COM By Recording Streaming Video On Your Cell Phone

World University & School ~

Teach something using qik.com, by recording streaming video on your cell phone, posting this video to their QIK website (like youtube), and link what you teach to worlduniversity.wikia.com.


*

Using phone-video-internet devices will open the internet to One Laptop per Child countries, for example. This should work for people who are illiterate, too. :) It may also work for other primates for inter-species communication {bonobo-wiki-virtual-world-graphy?}.

And the World University and School Wiki will facilitate people-to-people teaching and learning opportunities.


**

The internet is 'now,' - a real time, world-wide, communication network.


***

Teach sweet, loving bliss :)

{naturally, with ecstasy ~ MDMA ~ as a reference experience}

Stone: World University and School as Object of Anthropological Inquiry

World University and School as Object of Anthropological Inquiry

What are its contours? And as process?


*

I think anthropology, especially with Foucault, hasn't really engaged seriously the idea of 'object' of study, even though its role as an academic discipline, in the university, may make people its object, in the societal process of knowledge generation. But anthropology as a thinking process has always troubled this idea of objectivity and object of knowledge, in a variety of ways, for a long time.


**

But to conceive of WUaS as a subject for anthropological inquiry, from near its inception, is fascinating, - especially since I'm one key participant-observer-maker. ...

Another book :)


***

But let's make WUaS flourish first ...

Circle: Contact Improv as 'Crazy,' Labrador Personalities, Counterculture

If you look at folks doing contact improv from a slight distance, you might think they're all crazy, that a contact jam could be an insane asylum, {a little like in the film "The King of Hearts"}, or a very curious circus {or a troop of Bonobos?:}, or something that would happen at the Rainbow Gathering, or children in a family playing roly-poly bears.

Making Contact:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUNfM-n_Soo

*

I think contact improv makes the people who do it very happy. It creates a space for our lab personalities {labrador retriever - coded-for genetically - as a breed, - like a species}, in a loose sense. Dance, exploration of freedom, good will, physical contact, the 'now,' and the benefits of movement and intimacy all merge and come together to shape something ongoingly new. {Is this a form of troopbonding? viz. John Money's "Concepts of Determinism" 1988}.


**

And contact improv took form in the early 1970s (with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, et al., starting at Oberlin College), in the milieu of the 196os.


***

And people keep doing contact improv because they like it {even though contact improv isn't that widespread, - due to 'culture'? - although dance in general has always engaged the body, and dancers, in the west, have seemed to me to be more open physically than many other people, over centuries ...}.


****

{Someone brought pop-bubble wrap to a jam I recently went to :)}

Double Rainbow: Haight-Ashbury, Hippy-Wiki-Virtual-World-Graphy, Rainbow

How to find folks in the Haight who were here in the 1960s, might like to talk about it, and might also have media they'd like to share on a Wiki.


Scott:

Hey from the Haight :) Don't quite know how to begin my hippy-wiki-virtual-world-graphy ... How do I network into the community who was here in the 1960s, likes to talk about it, and might also have media?


Gen:

hello!

i'd check out tribe.net

san fran based hippie soc networking site

Scott:

What's new in your world?

Great suggestion ..


Gen:

trying to catch up after spending all of last week visiting UC!

are you on tribe?

Scott:

sounds fun, and warm ... are you going to Rainbow

yea, but don't visit very often at all

Gen:

when is it again?

summer plans are beginning to percolate...

Scott:

July 1-7 in NM



Gen:

es possible!

that's a long time

Scott:

it kind of starts 3 weeks before that, too, when folks party and set up, I guess

it was a lot! of fun last year - my first time

they're getting good at picking the site i think -

find a place to stay in SD when you move?

Scott:

http://invite.tribe.net

Gen:
⁃ ?

not yet, probably not til this summer will we start looking

are you inviting me to tribe?


Gen:
i've been on tribe fo years!

it was 1 of the fieldsites for the virtual campfire

find me - strawberrydelight

as always

Scott:

cool ... I'll start looking around a little


Gen:

i'm sure you will find the population you seek!

join tribes and cross-post once you have a bunch

Scott:

cool, ~ tribe

*

From the Haight to India {Kerala?}, ~ writing ethnography ...


**

Folks, a couple, who look pretty hip walk into Cole Valley Cafe. He has long hair, and could sing in a rock band. Another couple walk in and, attractive with slightly froozled hair, look like they've enjoyed a lot of good intimacy together; they have a passion and a connectedness.


Three or four other people, who are close to living on the street, come in, for various reasons - colorful, interesting, - one looking to make eye contact again and again, slightly aggressively, but also who looks a little unpredictable. I avoid his gaze. Who are the folks here who have taken a lot of drugs in the course of their lives?

The music in this cafe is great rock and roll, and the cafe is close to Haight street itself.

Now who likes to talk about counterculture, and who has been here a long time.

The Grateful Dead are playing over the sound system now.


***

Last night, in Fairfax, there were a fair number of hippies in Bookbeat, before the contact jam. It's pretty cool ...