Soaking in the rain, clouds and cool weather, I am happy to be back in the Pacific Northwest! Still a bit temporally out-of-sync with the whole sixteen hour difference, but otherwise intact.

Portland is a locale well known in Singapore, as was regularly confirmed in impromptu conversations.

This including one with the guy who takes orders at the Kampong Glam cafe, the tailor who tried to measure me up for a new suit, the taxi driver who drove me to the Night Safari.

All these fine Singaporean residents are keen on Portland, Oregon.

“Trailblazers, right? Great team!”

My own long belated photos are now yours for viewing on Flickr.

Strictly metaphorical is my claim on Fortean zoology— confirmed by my awe at known species fluttering around in the Jurong Birdpark yesterday.

Green pigeons are not so anomalous in the company of crowned, blue, green/white zone pigeons, in the vicinity of shimmering red birds, and birds with horn-like protrusions, birds that truly represent the dinosaur lineage.

Befriended a bevy of German students and we dined in Little India at a “veg place.” My hostel is currently teeming with exchange students from Germany, Sweden, Taiwan and elsewhere…all clamoring for long-term rentals.

Final days for free-form exploration. Some say Mount Faber is a quick climb to a fantastic view. Others insist it is a steep hike, no doubt a fantastic view, but I should really think twice about climbing it.

Sweetened ice tea, so sugary it hurts your teeth, is a sought after trait of such icy beverages in the Southern climes of the US of A. Perhaps this also explains the insanely sweet lemon tea I (tried) to drink yesterday.

A tiny lizard scrambles up the wall, the sky recedes to black through varying shades of magenta. Meanwhile, the bustling Bussorah street fair implodes before my eyes.

The Moroccan deli is pumping out some amazing music while the event crew comes in to dismantle the tents. Workers walk with ladders like legs outstretched, another man gracefully leaps between the rickety metal tent frames untying ropes.

None of this concerns the discussion of abstraction as relates to art, physics, blobsquatches and cheap beer concurrently unfolding betwixt two residents at Sleepy Sams B&B.

Yes, activities are winding down on this trek. Today is the Jurong Bird Park, eyes peeled for anomalous avian species.

“Cultural Analytics” was introduced to my vocabulary a few days ago, at the ISEA post-closing presentation by media theorist Lev Manovich. Manovich discusses this as an emerging mode of data-visualization. Geared towards mapping out movements, changes, art and ideas over time. A return to abstraction underpinned by deep set info-patterns that can be read like most other maps.

Regular visitors to this blog have surely been wondering “where are those pictures?” In lieu of my own perpetual photo-delays, and in keeping with ISEA themes, and riffing off Manovich’s moves towards tracking of global digital culture—an idea:

Perhaps Flickr streams from other attendants are in order?

This isn’t totally a cop out, and potentially provacative place-holder(s). Temporary connections betwixt and between my written POV and the visual mediations from a broader, nebulous networked ISEA experience. Open two browser windows. One with my descriptions, one with Flickr images from ISEA 2008. Alternately, totally non sequitur images could be used. Mix and match/mashup….Alright, it’s still a cop out or at least another stalling mechanism, but why should I try to lock down your interpretations of these texts anyways?

Nocturnal animals are promised in the tourist trappings of the “Night Safari.” Indeed, the hyenna, tapir and the mouse deer follow suit. Not the case for many creatures: lions are groggy and the wild pigs, completly zonked out.

Today, with new-found biologist friend Brian, an adventure to Pulau Ubin, an island park near Malaysia. Lunched at a beachside hawker pavilion on Tahu Goreng (tofu with spicy peanut sauce) and fresh coconut drink, then off to the island. The boat to the island only leaves when exactly 12 people are available. This peculiar process of measuring up to fuel costs has us waiting for almost an hour. Finally to the island where we rent bicycles and cruise the lush tropical forests.

Iguana-like lizards troll the park like squirrels, the pathways littered with fallen coconuts and durians. We learn later that these coconuts are enjoyed by the shy and covert wild-boar.

No sign of the Malaysian Bigfoot (yet), but gigantic wasps and stray dogs are plentiful.

Hit some sessions with super-exciting presentations intersecting ideas of database cinema and spatial montage. Perry Bard, NYC based I believe, is cobbling together a global re-creation of Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera! Shot-by-shot, results on Youtube. Check out her website

Later on, a project resurrecting the analog in company of new media digital devices. York University’s Future Cinema Lab presented 52 Card Psycho, using augmented reality to facilitate spatial remixes of Psycho (and other films) by way of a deck of cards. This short-hand description does no justice, but i highly recommend you check out their site.

In spirit of, and spirited by, these exciting spins on Database Narrative I take an alternate route home. Singapore is my database, and instead of making a beeline from the Bugis MRT (subway stop), I improvise and enter a labyrinthine market. Sipping on sweetened wheatgrass juice the color of emeralds, dodging the stench of durians and crouching to clear the low-hanging bananas I zigzag thru towards homebase.

Tonight Lev Manovich will give a presentation, perhaps riffing off of these variations on his Language of New Media texts

Chronology is overrated, and the humidity was underestimated. Here are few memorable moments from the last few days, the visual essay is just around the corner…

Overcast skies and mid-day rainstorm create a perverse sense of joy in me (close your eyes and you’re in portland)

Wandering into Little India, the lavish metropolis of downtown Singapore transforms into crammed alleys, seedy stores, tons of people and generous helpings of food. Artist run ‘post-museum/food#3 site features late-night djs and a man wrapped in plastic playing a circuit-bent contraption!

We’re bused to Nayang Technological University, where sloping building are roofed with grass lawns and grounds-keepers in golf shoes walk vertically with weedwackers to trim it. Here and elsewhere parallel presentations proceed.

The Blobsquatch goes off well though without but one inquiry from the crowd. My session mates are mapping bloodworm behaviors, tracking marmots and picturing ambiguous bacteria-forms as military architectures.

Many other presentations are taken in, ranging from Lawrence Lessig’s dynamic ideas on copyright and the creative commons, to Konrad Becker on “strategic reality’” and the ‘security economy’. Also Kael Greco on the pursuit of lost levels and glitch-geography in old gaming systems, the digital resurrection of dead celebrities from Lisa Bode, collaborative video productions cross-culturally and the emergence of animated documentary-form from several other ISEA folks

Cups of ‘kopi susu for 70cents at the corner cafe…a thick coffee with condensed milk, square inches of yam cake to sop it up. More retro-fit analysis to come, and pictures as promised. the tech-fiascoes are impressively frustrating in their persistence.

Waking up in my welcoming hostel “Sleepy Sams,” to the sound of tropical birds and occasional car alarms. Singapore is a confirmed metropolis! This hostel is on a pedestrian street with fabric shops, electronics, all sorts of cafes. A gigantic mosque just down the road.

Complimentary breakfast includes toast with coconut jam, turkish-style coffee and delicious hot magenta fruit slices! By the way, I’ve got pictures aplenty, and should have some images posted by tomorrow!

The tropical heat is intense and unrelenting. Thick muggy humidity. But everywhere is gushing with aircon, so I spent good time meandering in the lobbies, collecting pamphlets. Meeting up with my pal Jeff (also presenting at ISEA) we checked out the Singapore Art Museum. SAM is sort of like PS-1 in Queens, a gov’t building retrofit into a museum. A series of great exhibits, new work from Vietnam, and “Time Exposures” conceptual photo/film work from visiting artist Alain Fliescher. Cheap eats at a “hawker” center: vegetable bun and lime juice elixir for under $2! I double it up and head back into the heat. Jet lag was close at hand all day, then hit hard around 5pm, taking me out for the night. Tonight ISEA officially begins, so I’m glad to rested up.

Tomorrow I set forth for Singapore, flying there by way of Vancouver (BC) and Tokyo. Off to this year’s International Symposium on Electronic Art to spread the Blobsquatch gospel.

I’m looking forward to many of the activities set to unfold during the ISEA festival, with particular anticipation of Spektr! —a live audio-visual mapping of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the “neuro-media” installation Electric Retina presented by Jill Scott of the University of Zurich’s Institute of Zoology !

Singapore itself promises many adventures, least of which is the possibility of spotting some of the cryptids purported to roam these parts. Sure, there’s reports of the so-called “Malaysian Bigfoot,” but I’m particularly intrigued by the anomalous green pigeon species sighted in Singapore circa December ’07