beauty amidst the rubble?
a while back i had a project dropped in my lap which called for the design of a group of military style embroidered insignias. tonight i was looking through my art archives on the old computer here and came across a bunch of the reference materials i used. i’ve gotta say, these little pieces of latter day heraldry always get my design juices flowing. there is something so gritty and gorgeous about them. (it’s a small irony that the rich history of military imagery lost out to a cheap yellow ribbon when it came to “supporting the troops.”) anyhow, see below for a small selection.
utisz
some time back while searching for information on anamorphosis (with generally crumby results) i came upon the homepage of hungarian artist and designer istvan orotz. some of his work does indeed incorporate anamorphosis which is why google dutifully deposited me on his doorstep. beyond that though there are many etchings, illustrations, posters, and even some very cool animations to soak up. most of his work incorporates illusion and visual trickery of some kind, like his book of “hidden skulls.” the wonderful thing, from my point of view, is the style he chooses to work in, not letting the shadows of escher and dali keep him from doing what he digs. pretty cool.
the u.n. isn’t in new york by accident, y’know
I found a great page a couple weeks ago via mefi called the hidden history of the united nations, which is a real public service. The United Nations didn’t start after the war: “The “United Nations” had been the official name for the coalition fighting the axis powers since January 1942, when Roosevelt and Churchill had led twenty-six nations, including the Soviet Union and China, in a ‘Declaration by United Nations’. ” So what do you think eisenhower would have said to the chickenhawks who denigrate the U.N. whose color he wore on his very shoulder while he fought the nazis for the soul of the west? This page is a must-read, and strong riposte anytime you find yourself talking to someone who wants to be rid of the U.N. And if they say, well, it’s not the u.n. it should be, or used to be, or some such mush: fix them with a gimlet eye and ask “whose fault is that?” repeat, louder and louder, until they flee to the Führerbunker.
conversations on the plurality of worlds
been wanting to post about this fellow for a long while but the internet is oddly lacking in english translations of his works and i only recently received a copy of his best known title Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, or conversations of the plurality of worlds. his name was bernard le bovier de fontenelle and his book, published in 1686, is remarkable, in retrospect perhaps less for its content than its function upon publication. this book holds the admirable distinction of being one of the first books of popularized science ever published, which is to say, a book of scientific ideas aimed directly at “the average reader” rather than “natural philosophers” written in a language and manner they could easily understand.
from the university of hong kong’s fascinating search for extraterrestrial intelligence page:
“The book was unusual in that it was the first time that scientific knowledge had been written for the public in a common language and in a manner to encourage the reader to enjoy the process of learning. Hitherto, all scientific knowledge had been written only for other scientists and usually in some classical language. Newton, for example, was at that time busy composing his monumental work Principia Mathematica philosophiae naturalis (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) - in Latin, of course.”
and what scientific ideas exactly was this book offering up to the public? this is a second reason this book is remarkable. owing a great deal to the previous work of Copernicus (the heliocentric theory of the solar system) and Descartes (particularly his theory of vortex motion of the planets to counteract Newton’s idea of gravity), his work rebutted the idea of a centre to the universe and speculated in great detail on the habitation and multitudes of other planets. now take that in for a second… this book was published in 1686 as i’ve said. that’s less than a century after giordano bruno was burned at the stake for “desacrilizing” the earth by suggesting the possibility of multiple inhabited worlds. only 50 years after galileo had lost his freedom and had been placed under permanent house arrest for writing on “daring astronomical theories.”
as nina rattner gelbart puts it in the 1990 edition’s introduction:
“while much of fontenelle sounds matter-of-fact to us—his talk of boundless universe, his speculation on intelligent and extragalactic life, his discussion of space travel—we have to remember that publishing his book three centuries ago was risky business. the ideas he was bandying about were bold, controversial, even forbidden. as they had been scarcely known to the average reader before he explained and disseminated them, these astonishing ideas suddenly became all the rage.”
fontenelle himself seemed aware of the dangers and tried to pre-empt negative judgment from the religious quarters with a few choice words in his own preface to the book:
“it only remains for me to speak to the one group of people, who will perhaps be the most difficult to satisfy; not that i haven’t given them very good arguments, but rather that they may, if they wish, refuse any good arguments. these are the scrupulous people who think there is a danger in respect to religion in placing inhabitants e;sewhere than on earth. i respect even the most excessive sensibilities people have on the matter of religion, and i would have respected religion to the point of wishing not to offend it in a public work, even if it were contrary to my own opinion. but what may be surprising to you is that religion simply has nothing to do with this system, in which an infinity of worlds with inhabitants. it’s only necessary to sort out a little error of imagination.
when i say to you that that the moon is inhabited, you picture to yourself men made like us, and if you’re a bit of a theologian, you’re instanatly full of qualms. the descendants of adam have not spread to the moon, nor sent colonies there. therefore the men in the moon are not sons of adam. well, it would be embarassing to theology if there were men anywhere not descended from him, it’s not necessary to say any more about it; all imaginable difficulties boil down to that, and the terms that must be employed in any longer explication are too serious and dignified to be placed in a book as unserious as this. perhaps i could respond soundly enough if i undertook it, but certainly i have no need to respond. it rests entirely upon the men in the moon, but it’s you who are putting men on the moon. i put no men there at all: i put inhabitants there who are not like men in any way.”
fontenelle not only managed to avoid the usual persecution but in fact his book became an instant best seller of the day and went on to be translated into no less than 10 languages. perhaps it was the way he structured the book which helped it avoid censor (the book takes the form of a succession of casual evening conversations) or perhaps it was the the intentionally abstract and theoretical tone of the ideas themselves. as sylvia engdahl puts it in the wonderful new mythology of the space age “the ideas had less impact on culture than they have today. In the first place, they were abstract beliefs, a matter of principle rather than speculation about the future. It did not occur to anyone that travel between solar systems might become possible. It was assumed that mortals from one solar system could never have knowledge of the others, except perhaps in an afterlife. In the second place, although plurality of worlds was discussed by “natural philosophers”—they weren’t called “scientists” until the 19th century, when Whewell coined the word—it was not expected that science could ever learn anything about the subject, nor, for that matter, offer evidence for it.”
the reason for the volume’s wild popularity is less a mystery and accounts for yet another remarkable aspect of the book. the “casual evening conversations” are not had in a study between stuffy learned men but between a charming philosopher and his hostess, a marquise, in the evenings as they stroll through her moonlit gardens. as paula findlen of stanford university describes this change from the norm in her essay becoming a scientist: gender and knowledge in 18th c. Italy “No longer a man of the university, a scholastic master surrounded by male disciples, Fontenelle’s philosopher was a charming seducer of women, a wit who made science comprehensible by cultural analogy. His knowledge was no social liability that removed him from ordinary conversation, but the very reason that he held the attention of an aristocratic Marquise for several days and nights, as he educated her in the mysteries of the post-Copernican, Cartesian universe.” in short just exactly the kind of thing high society was likely to eat up. but fontenelle took this arrangement a step further-
in a time when women were not expected to know much of anything “scientific” fontenelle creates as his “straight man” a society lady who was not strolling in the moonlight to be seduced but to “encourage women through the example of a woman.” this was no small thing at the time and fontenelle was quick to tell his female readers that the abilities of his imaginary woman philosopher did not exceed their own capacity to learn. Quite the opposite.
again from his preface:
i’ve placed a woman in these conversations who is being instructed, one who has never heard a syllable of such things. i thought this fiction would serve to make the work more enticing, and to encourage women through the example of a woman who, having nothing of an extraordinary character, without ever exceeding the limitations of a person who has no knowledge of science, never fails to understand what’s said to her, and arranges in her mind, without confusion, vortices and worlds. why would any woman accept inferiority to this imaginary marquise, who only conceives of those things of which she can’t help but conceive.”
he goes on in that vein for a while. so whether it was clever recognition of an untapped market, a sincere desire to educate women and give them a fictional role model in the sciences, or to goad the men who would surely read the book into a more careful consideration we can not know. the effect however was to achieve all three. this book helped to popularize the ideas of a plurality of worlds (which we have recently firmly established as truth), extraterrestrials, and space travel, in a time when such ideas were totally revolutionary and thus primed the public in some degree for ideas which would follow (like those put forth in christiaan huygens wonderful, posthumously published cosmotheoros for example.)
in any case conversations on the plurailty of worlds made such a big impression on peoples imagination that, according to one source, “not long after, at the time of the death of newton, vast amounts of sentimental poetry about other solar systems appeared in literary magazines, much of it by women and some based on the theme of newton’s soul viewing other solar systems on the way to heaven. people were as eager to visit them as we are today, but could imagine only one potential opportunity, a time after death when the soul “unbounded in its ken, from prison free / Will clearly view what here we darkly see / Those planetary worlds, and thousands more / Now veil’d from human sight, it shall explore.” (Robert Gambol, “Beauties of the Universe,” 1732.)” according to others these same ideas heavily influenced what we now call the baroque in art and theater.
these are no small accomplishments to be connected with for a man who was lampooned by voltaire and to this day is considered only moderately noteworthy. wikipedia even says as much in an entry: “He has no claim to be regarded as a genius; but, as SainteBeuve has said, he well deserves a place “dans la classe des esprits infiniment distiugués”—distinguished, however, it ought to be added by intelligence rather than by intellect, and less by the power of saying much than by the power of saying a little well.”
popularizing science is a task which 300 years later, in our age of stunning technology and torrents of information, continues to be necessary. if only fontenelle were around today to apply his particular talent to the task of re-popularizing evolution or pounding the importance of stem cell research into peoples skulls. i for one think fontenelle is a fascinating character and a very interesting footnote to history.
in that this book is no where to be found on the web in english consider this post a sort of preface or nonist “press release” to our readers. i fully intend to set about transcribing the volume, episodically, for your reading pleasure. only not now, not today. i’ve typed enough. if you’re interest is peaked and you’d like to pick up conversations on the plurality of worlds the 1990 edition is available at amazon. in the mean time why not check out extraterrestrial life and our world view at the turn of the millennium by Steven J. Dick which is a nice recap of ideas and trends which have lead to our current views on the same subjects. enjoy, and more fontenelle to come! adieu.
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the home of lost, forgotten, and lonely sentences
considering how popular tom buckner’s “six word novel” post seemed to be (norway, finland, i’m looking at you) i thought i’d share a site with you all i’ve been keeping to myself. it’s called scrine. it’s run by Keith from wordshadows and it’s a community weblog on which anyone is invited to post, only thing is, you must agree to post no more than a single sentence at a time. at its best the result can be a page full of obtuse aphorisms and acute observations. i’ve posted a few sentences and it’s refreshing. give it a look.
my artistic blind spot
cause 1- art is utterly subjective. that is a nail i hammer at endlessly. i’ve built my house with it in some respects; a house that will stand or crumble on its strength or weakness. cause 2- i am an artist. as such i view art as any craftsman must view the trade he has chosen with a critical albeit biased eye. where as an audience member may be transported and delighted by a performance of a play, a playwright watching that same performance might take only the slightest notice of the scenery and indeed the actors, being too busy analyzing the language, the pacing, and the technical aspects of the staging. i think it’s this way for everyone within their own professions. combine these two points and the effect-
confidence in my gut reactions to artwork. art is subjective, i know a little about it, have seen a lot of it, and made a lot of it, so i can trust in my own opinions. i am not a professional critic so have no need or desire to convince anyone else of anything. likewise no one else is likely to convince me of anything, no matter how many words are mobilized into tightly formatted paragraphs, if my gut does not agree. this is a comfortable position. i could close my eyes and fall backward into the arms of my opinions with implicit trust.
all boring and of no interest to you, i know, but what you might find interesting is the secondary effect this has all had on my artistic sight- a distinct and rather large (in these days and times) blind spot where my recognition and appreciation of kitsch should be. kitsch, in terms of fine art, simply does not register in my mind as it is meant to. my subjectivity, gut reactions, and a critical eye miss the point entirely instead picking a piece of kitsch apart into its components of concept and craft, making value judgments on each, summing up, then placing the piece of work into one of my two mental art bins: good or bad (like or dislike if you prefer). kitsch as an artistic category effectively does not exist.
ah, but it does exist doesn’t it? does not just exist as a blade of grass does but sprawls over culture like a vast grassland we are invited to graze from between chuckles. what is it exactly? keane and elvis on velvet? how is it defined?
from dennis dutton’s dictionary of art entry on the subject:
Kitsch (from German- pretentious trash. dialect, kitschen- to smear. verkitschen- to make cheaply, to cheapen).
“Kitsch” has sometimes been used to refer to virtually any form of popular art or entertainment, especially when sentimental. But though much popular art is cheap and crude, it is at least direct and unpretentious. On the other hand, a persistent theme in the history of the usage of “kitsch,” going back to the word’s mid-European origins, is pretentiousness, especially in reference to objects that ape whatever is conventionally viewed as high art. kitsch differs from merely popular forms in its insistence on being taken seriously as art. Kitsch can thus be defined as a kind of pseudo-art which has an essential attribute of borrowing or parasitism, and whose essential function is to flatter, soothe, and reassure its viewer and consumer.
that’s just one mans opinion but some heavy hitters have taken on the meaning of kitsch in their time. Theodor Adorno (“people want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously”.) and Hermann Broch (“kitsch is a highly considerate mirror that allows contemporary man to recognize himself in the counterfeit image it throws back at him and to confess his own lies with a delight which is to a certain extent sincere”) both took cracks at it. as did milan kundera (“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”). clement greenberg sunk his teeth into kitsch long before there was a modernism to champion in an essay (which supposedly was his breakthrough) called avant garde and kitsch.
so if kitsch is so deserving of our consideration (read -in the opinion of the guys above- our malice and distrust) why am i blind to it?
i suppose i have a tendency to be overly earnest. perhaps my sense of humor when it comes to fine art is lacking. but i just don’t see art that way. i don’t look to art as an amusement. my wink and elbow jab receptors are not fired up when i’m in a museum or gallery. art which is meant to be ironic, amusing, clever, or in celebration of its own “badness” does not register as it is meant to but instead, after the quick process outlined above, often gets dumped unceremoniously into the “bad” bin. certain pieces, for instance jeff koons’ michael jackson and bubbles, get begrudging respect simply because they are well executed objects. work like that of artist like john currin gets neatly separated into paintings which are impressively painted, or evocative, and those which are not, (at his recent retrospective at the whitney i passed by the topless bea arthur rather quickly) all intentional kitsch value is lost.
this may seem a minor thing. “you just don’t like kitsch” etc. which, in terms of fine art, i might be inclined to agree with. that is until you take into account an artist like odd nerdrum, the real reason i’m writing this now. i was thinking of posting about nerdrum because i haven’t heard anything about him in a long while. i started googling around to see what was out there and realized that in viewing his work in the past i’d evidently missed the point completely. the word which shows up more than any other in relation to nerdrum is kitsch. this came as no small surprise and made me realize this blind spot of mine existed.
nerdrum’s work, if you are not familiar with it, is created in the manner of “the old masters” (he mixes and grinds his own pigments, stretches his canvas, and uses live models exclusively) with emphasis on chiaroscuro, and are not only exclusively figurative but very often allegorical as well. they are filled with agony, disease, violence; some show necrophilia, hermaphroditism, coprophilia, etc. often there is a sense you’re witnessing some cult ceremony. in short they are beautiful paintings of a kind and of subjects you don’t see too often anymore. at least that’s what my gut has told me.
admittedly there are moments when, in relation the the art of our time, you find yourself drawing comparisons to fantasy novel covers rather than caravaggio when looking at his work. with this kind of subject matter it’s hard not to! but full blown kitsch? his are scenes concerned with “old” subjects painted in an “old” style so… perhaps yes. perhaps it’s all a jab in the ribs and i was too dense to realize it?
nerdrum himself has this to say:
“let us for a minute look at what is lacking contemporary art. What do we miss? I see four things: 1. The open, trustful face, 2. The sensual skin, 3. Golden sunsets, and 4. The longing for eternity. Taken together, these values add up to kitsch—whether we like it or not.
The concept of Kitsch, in the derogatory sense of cheap decoration, came into use a hundred years ago when the new Modernism clashed with the old European culture—the stagnant and regressive world. Most people in the art world seem to believe that if 17th-century Rembrandt had lived today, he would have been a Jackson Pollock or a conceptual artist. I don’t. People develop according to their own needs. I don’t believe that all talented people bow to their times and follow the Zeitgeist. Rembrandt was dictated by his gift for drawing, just as Puccini was dictated by his melodic repository. A modern atonal composer is a completely different person. He is not as strongly controlled by his own destiny, and is free enough to experiment. Rembrandt would hardly have painted his 17th-centry Dutch interiors today, but the same eyes would have been there, the same darkness and the same sensual skin. As strange as his heartfeltness and entire being was to his own times, so it would seem to us. Even his most timeless pictures would be considered kitsch if they had been painted today.
Today, the solid superstructure Art has become an overwhelming force, unparalleled in history. It protects all kinds of intellectual scribble, while a beautifully drawn nude can be criticized to pieces, because a work like this lacks a respectful superstructure.
The great misconception of the modernists is that they have demanded everything that a classical figurative painter can not give them—constant renewal, exciting experiments and compliance with contemporary styles, etc. A painter using the old master style is sensual. His aim is to become engrossed in his work and skillfully render life’s eternal moments without prejudice. But in doing this, he is not protected by his time. He has to compete with the best ever created in all times. This is a heavy burden to bear, which becomes heavier when his striving is ignored or een laughed at. When additionally he claims to be an artist, he is of course placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. Because he is in a false situation, all he does is wrong.
Kitsch must be separated from art. A kitsch painter works toward different goals than the artist. I know that kitsch is a difficult word, but being strictly pragmatic, it is the only thing which can give the sensual form of expression a superstructure of its own, something which can in its turn restore the shine to a beautiful work. Maybe then can the others—the modernists—gain respect for such a work, when it honestly presents itself for what it is, and does not come disguised as art.”
so what do we make of that? sounds more like the embracing of a label placed from without. he’s saying, i think x and y are missing from modern and contemporary art and if the inclusion of those things make me kitsch then i’m kitsch and so be it! it does not sound at all like he is winking at all. unless of course the whole thing, the chiaroscuro, the pigment grinding, the allegory, as well as the earnestness are all part of the joke and my blind spot does not allow me to see it?
i have never viewed nerdrum’s work as kitsch. the craft and skill involved don’t allow for it with my particular internal mechanisms. perhaps i have missed an important aspect of his work and by extension much work being made out there in the great big art world. having such a massive, un-hip, blind spot is a bit embarrassing i guess, but i am an ernest type which can’t be helped, and i suppose i’m quite happy in the end to judge fine art by gut and leave my kitsch to t-shirts and brooklyn hipster hairstyles and old record covers where i can enjoy it. i’ll just go on thinking jeff koons is a hack and odd nerdrum can paint his ass off, blind spot and deeper meanings be damned.
incidentally if you’d like to see more of nerdrum’s work try odd nerdrum.com or here, here, here, and here. mr h. at giornale nuovo also has a post on the subject from back in 03.
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new worlds atlas
came across (via presurfer) this nifty bit of nasa data noodling called the new worlds atlas. it’s a continuously updated database of all planets that have been discovered around stars other than the sun. you can zoom and rotate and move about the 3d map seeing where all of these extrasolar planets are in relation to us and each other in a heliocentric model with little ol’ sol in the center. good fun. they also offer a cool planet finding roadmap pdf among other goodies. check out the the extrasolar planets encyclopaedia for further info.
the foxtrot!
dancing, anywhere other than in your own livingroom at 2am with an empty bottle of peach schnapps, can be a difficult proposition for people. for some folks (mainly folks with one of those pesky y chromosomes) the very thought of dancing can induce sweating, excuseus lameus, and ulcers. there are occasions, however, when a bit of rug cutting is all but mandatory- say you’re on a hot date with ginger rogers, at your own wedding, or out at night in europe! what do you do then? fear not left footed clods and stone faced stoics! we care about you here at the nonist and as such we now offer you tutelage in that hippest most cutting edge of all modern dances, the foxtrot.
first the tiniest bit of history:
The origin of the Foxtrot dates back to 1913 when the popular music of the time was ragtime, a fast, bouncy straightforward predecessor to jazz. The name `foxtrot’ is said to come from Harry Fox, a vaudevillian actor and dancer. The prevailing social dances at the time were the wild animal dances that were being tamed by Irene and Vernon Castle’s new Castlewalk, derived from the two-step. Harry Fox’s `trot’ or the foxtrot, combined one-steps (quicks) with two-steps (slows, or walks) plus some hops and turns. In its original incarnation, it was actually fairly complicated. However, the concept of combining quick and slow steps paved the way for the Foxtrot to become the foundation of many partner dances. As popular music changed in the following years, so did the dance. By the mid-30s the Foxtrot evolved into the smooth and fluid dance seen on dance floors today. -by iska ziver.
now some very simple instructions from the book how to dance, by robert e. parson. originally published in 1947:
the foxtrot
once the dancer is able to define with precise movement the difference between progressive and sideward-close, the arrangement of varied combinations suitable for the foxtrot becomes a matter of fixing in one’s mind a pattern consisting of a predetermined number of progressive steps to be followed with a sideward-close. such arrangements may contain dips, pivots, left and right turns, cross steps, etc. these are all derivations of the basic progressive and sideward-close movements.
the combinations described (in the diagrams below) are but a few of the many that are applicable to music played in 4/4 time. once the knack of applying the basic principles outlined in the foregoing has been achieved, other combinations will suggest themselves.
ok, got it so far? “sure, piece of cake!” good, here are the diagrams (click all for full size version)
there! easy as that. a blind two-toed sloth with glittery bits of goldshlagger in his teeth could do it. now fire up some of these fine popular songs…
jazz de luxe-fox trot
charleston-fox trot
black bottom stomp-fox trot
fire! (an “alarming” novelty) fox trot
and get to it!
hey, no need to thank us.
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the tyranny of choice
came across this article over at reason called Consumer Vertigo which mulls over the idea that we as consumers in a capitalist society of the 21st century have too many choices. “americans are facing a crisis of choice. we’re increasingly unhappy, riddled with anxiety and regret, because we have so much freedom to decide what to do with our money and our lives. some choice may be good, but we’ve gone over the limit. choices proliferate beyond our capacity to handle them. abundant choice is not something human beings are biologically evolved to cope with. at this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”
i have to admit, i’ve had thoughts along these lines many times. in terms of clothes for instance- i’ve often felt common issue grey heather cult duds would ease many minds. in terms of products in general the sheer amount of “stuff” really does seem ridiculous. downright wasteful to be honest. who needs all this crap? i can’t help but worry, against all evidence to the contrary, that humanity’s precious supply of bullshitium, the fuel on which every product is launched, be it new air freshener delivery system or new political candidate, might be getting dangerously low! what i’m trying to say is against my capitalist training i can sympathize with the viewpoint that there is simply too much and that the overabundance does not do us any good.
i can imagine a world with less. no problem! though in my imaginings the products which remain are the ones i use. there’s the rub. since i choose “product set x” everything outside of that set naturally seems superfluous. a bunch of visual noise i could just as easily do without. on the flip side i have to assume that there are enough people buying sets a-w ,y, and z (they are still on sale even though i do not purchase them after all) to keep them in demand. i further have to assume that if all the products i consider useless crap were suddenly removed there would be millions of people with unfamiliar and unusual enough aftertastes in their mouths as to be very unhappy. heaven forbid! also there’s the tiny little matter of all the “new and improved” crap creators having to find another line of work. at this point i guess there is no turning back. well… not until the apocalypse that is! then we will have only a very few brands of football shoulder pads and leather jackets to wear while searching the deserts for gas.
as for the particular viewpoints of the article i do have to take issue with the sentence that reads “we’re increasingly unhappy, riddled with anxiety and regret, because we have so much freedom to decide what to do with our money and our lives.” for two reasons- first: i’m not sure the crippling anxiety and regret of the world can be chalked up to over abundance. the bullshit that’s part and parcel of brand and advertising overkill is galling sure (i have a theory about this which i’ll delve into another time). the physicality of all that crap is daunting, absolutely. the buyers remorse which will eventually warrant a pharmaceutical product line all it’s own is unfortunate, yes. the pervasive idea that there simply “must be something better” to be had (and not only is it out there but we deserve it by golly!) which, though appropriate for muffler sales also seeps like a ground toxin into every other cranny of life, is dangerous to individual happiness, certainly, but on the list of reasons we humans are miserable and hopelessly screwed-up i can’t say i think over abundance ought to rate very high. second: not sure the we have so much freedom to decide bit is even true.
all that being said when i was a kid and faced with the choice between one particular g.i.joe figure over another, say a choice between snake eyes and storm shadow, i’d inevitably get so frustrated at having to choose i’d blurt out “forget it! i don’t want either!” and huff and puff my way straight out of toys r’ us. there is a lesson there, but whether it has to do with the choices available or the mentality of the churlish chooser i’d rather not say.
what says our merry band of revolutionaries and capitalist swine?
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six word novel
Other day, I was reading a new utne reader, and there were (natch) a couple of articles worth mentioning here at the nonist. One article concerned six word novels written by famous scribes. Since that issue is so phresh, google did not return any result for me to link (in fact, one version of my search was bit of a googlewhack {returning only one result} concerning flash fiction, or very short stories). Anyway, Hemingway, as I recall, wrote this six-word novel:
For Sale: baby shoes. never used.
So: do any of you nonists have a six word novel you’ve been slaving over, that you may wish to share with the rest of us? Here’s a few of mine:
Clown car, burning. Forty dead? Fifty?
OH christ, my balls! Fucking vultures!
Saudi king. Drag queen. Forbidden fruit.
Antihero. Antichrist. Antimatter. Car chase. Anticlimax.
“Adolf, liebchen: horny?” ” Nein! Raping Poland!’
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graphis annual ‘59 part 2
here we present part 2 (part 1 here) of our on going showcase of graphis annuals. here is more from charles rosner’s intro to the graphis annual for 1959: it is felt in creative circles that a great deal of originality and imagination is hampered by the power excercised by the results of research. there is no getting away from the wide-spread use and influence of these methods, but it might be timely to put on record here the apt remark of doyle dane bernbach, the successful advertising agent: ‘advertising isn’t a science, it’s persuasion. and persuasion is an art.’ even then the same complaints! below you will find a second helping of work. enjoy.
state machine: the magnetic pull of cash
came across this very well done web app (via futurismic) which helps visualize the way money influences politics, specifically the connections and magnetic force exerted between u.s. senators and their contributors. some interesting patterns emerge and some odd confluences of interest as well.
from the site:
this is a dynamic visualization of the relationship of the members of the u.s. senate to different sources of campaign funding each green + represents a source of lobbyist funding in washington. the size of the + indicates the relative amount of funding that sector has input into the political process. the collage of dots are representations of u.s. senators. their coloring reflects party affiliation, while their size indicates the amount of money they have accumulated in their campaign funds…
in this simulation, the senators are attracted to the lobbyist groups based on the amount of money their campaign has received from that source. by moving one of the funding + around the screen, you can see how much force it exerts on each senator.
interesting. if you click on the control panel link you can see the data for each senator in more detail as well as introduce more variables. for instance in the screen captures below i added christian coalition affiliation into the mix, represented by the orange outlines around senator dots.
plotted between pharmaceuticals/health products—oil & gas—human rights. (that one dot straying out toward human rights is ted kennedy if you were curious)
plotted between lobbyists—securities & investment—environment.
plotted between insurance—oil & gas—non-profit organizations.
go ahead and check it out for yourself. see who you’re senator is beholden to. some of the mixtures struck me as odd. i was also surprised how small certain contributors were in context of the rest, like tobacco for instance. i tried plotting against tobacco, beer & wine, and guns but came up empty. find that hard to believe.
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the virtual fossil museum
“the fossil museum is a virtual museum in the truest sense, having neither physical building nor specimen drawers. Its mission is to foster interest in science, generally, and in the life sciences and fossil collecting, particularly. the museum provides an ever-expanding resource presenting fossils across geological time in multiple contexts of geological history, the tree of life, paleobiology and evolution.” many beautiful, fascinating, (and some admittedly creepy) images to be seen here. also lots of solid contextualized info for your web digging pleasure. beware! hours can be lost here. (via pharyngula)
a music man seduced into carpentry
that’s how harry partch -composer, microtonal theorist, instrument-builder, hobo, man of letters, and iconoclast- once described himself. a newsweek citation puts it this way: “harry partch is an american visionary and stubborn individualist… he has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. his music is also influenced by african polyrhythms, ancient greek modes, bits of babylonia, and the american diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.”
admission, i’d never heard of partch until today when i came across a site devoted to his instruments (more on that later). looking further i found he was a really interesting fellow.
partch, yeats, and being a hobo- from wikipedia:
partch was born in Oakland, California. Both his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. He learned to play the clarinet, harmonium, and guitar as a child. He began to compose at an early age using the chromatic scale normal in western music, but burned all his early works after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the imperfections of that particular system of musical tuning.
Interested in the potential musicality of speech, Partch worked out his first extended scales to notate the inflections of the speaking voice. He built his adapted viola to demonstrate the concept. He then secured a grant, which allowed him to go to London to study the history of tuning systems. While there, he met the poet W. B. Yeats with the intention of gaining his permission to write an opera based on his translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. He took another instrument he had built, an adapted guitar, to the meeting, and accompanied himself in one of his own songs on it. Yeats was enthusiastic, saying “a play done entirely in this way, with this wonderful instrument, and with this type of music, might really be sensational”, and giving Partch’s idea his blessing.
Partch set about building more instruments to realize his opera with. However, his grant money ran out, and, back in the United States, he began to live as a hobo, traveling around on trains and taking casual work where he could find it. He continued in this way for ten years, writing about his experiences in journals that were later collected together under the title bitter music. They frequently include snatches of overheard speech notated on musical staves according to the pitches used by the speaker. This technique was to become a standard approach to vocal parts in Partch’s work.
partch and the 12-tone equal tempered tuning system- from frank perry:
The 12-tone equal tempered tuning system has been around for about 300 years in the Western world but is scientifically an impure system of pitch relationships. In other words, notes have been ‘adjusted’ or put out of tune from the pure intervals of the harmonic series. This is borne out by the fact of much non-western music having different pitch relationships to the 12-tone system and, of course, much so-called ethnic music has been around since the dawn of time. One of the most ancient scales exists in Javanese gamelan. In the Paris fair of 1898 composers such as Debussy were strongly influenced by these strange oriental scales and tuning systems. However, this wasn’t the first encounter by a westerner of such tuning systems. In 1580, for instance, Sir Francis Drake logged in his diary that the music of this land ‘was of a very strange kind, yet the sound was pleasant and delightful.’
Partch is perhaps best known for his innovative so-called 43-tone-to-the-octave scale structure. Partch realized that Western music since Gregorian chant was completely out of tune and set about devising a scale system based on the overtones of a vibrating string or column of air. He calls this system Monophony, as all the musical principles relate to ONE tone (i.e. the first eleven partials of the harmonic series). Partch spent 12 years researching the science and musical theories which led him to this system beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC) through Ptolemy (2nd cent. BC), Rameau (17th cent.) up to Riemann (19th/20th cent.) and concludes that Monophony reveals the falsification of the present 12-tone tempered scale and is not necessarily requisite to a practical music system, and that the basis of all musical materials lies in the understanding of the intervals that have true relationships i.e. those whose vibrations are expressed by small numbers.
(also from frank perry) partch had this to say about creativity-
“The creative person shows himself naked, and the more vigorous his creative act the more naked he appears - sometimes wholly vulnerable. yet always invulnerable in the sense of his own integrity. I am now 69 as this is being said, and I’ve been doing my own thing for more than five and a half decades. This thing began with truth, and truth does exist. For some hundreds of years, the truth of Just Intonation, which is defined in any good music dictionary, has been hidden. One could almost say maliciously. because truth always threatens the ruling hierarchy, or they think so. Nor does the spiritual, corporeal nature of man fare any better. We are reduced to specialties: a theatre of dialogue without music, and a concert of music without drama. Basic mutilations of ancient concept. My music is visual; it is corporeal, aural, and visual.
The creative man will rise above, he will transcend the mutilations. for every deeply sincere offering there is a corresponding deep and sincere hunger. Not the European chauvinism of New York, nor the mindless caterwauling of Hollywood recording studios, nor the “we-sell-music-by- the-yard,” mood-music people, can suppress either the sincere offering or the sincere hunger. True creativity is present. It is here, because man is here, in his true, deep, self. Unmutilated.”
all interesting stuff but what i really wanted to share was this american mavericks link where you can not only listen to the sounds some of instruments made but “play” them yourself with a mouse and keyboard. includes links to sound files of music as well as explanations and talks by the man himself. good stuff.
for more music and writing from / by harry partch check out the following:
view a bunch of his instruments in this slideshow at wnyc.org, or listen to their studio 360 segment on partch.
corporeal meadows. partch’s proper home on the internet. much writing and many sounds to be explored.
record label innova recordings offers a multimedia biography of partch called the enclosures. their site offers many free samples to listen to.
evenings on the roof with yeats includes interviews and a complete performance of “The Bewitched”, a dance satire.
also
the partch reverberations
the quality of vitality
the dreamer
the sound projector
enpsychlopedia
enjoy.
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x[n+1]=x[n]^p-c and other experiments in film
i’m not a filmaker and i’m no longer a taker of hallucinogens so more often than not experimental films are not my bag (there are exceptions of course) but i thought some of you out there might be interested in thorsten fleisch’s work. the thumb is from his film gestalt. explanation- “four-dimensional quaternions are visualized by projecting variables of the formula x[n+1]=x[n]^p-c into three-dimensional space. instead of modeling objects or scenes of human imagination the realm of mathematics is explored.” i believe the sound is also derived from the formula. pretty cool. (see below for more)
bloodlust “an attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. it shows the filmmaker’s blood as seen / heard by the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. he affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used for a maximum of variety.”
friendly fire “burned filmstrips meet light and invade the screen with structures of residue, ashes, flames and destruction. new landscapes appear in a state of disintegration by fire. the former carrier of conserved imagery is now in full bloom of organic splendor. the lifeless filmstrips have been resurrected.”
kronos “the mystery of the crystals under closer examination. what is it that makes them possess magic powers as claimed by mystics of all ages? through growing crystals directly on film their mystical qualities shine straight to the screen. unfiltered, only aided by light which gracefully breaks its rays into rich visual textures.”
skinflick “three different levels of skin working with film / film working with skin - fingerprints on clear leader - carefully arranged successive skin prints - snapshots of light-painted skin becoming leather. the images are accompanied by soundscapes using aural skin scans performed by the cartridge of a phono-player.”
as pretentious as some of that sounds (at least to my artist statement hating ears) i can’t argue with someone wanting to noodle around and figure out “what would happen if…” experimenting is fun. also in each case the films yield some very nice frames. you can check them out at fleischfilm along with some others. (via mefi)
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context for our beloved chaos
new york city has perhaps the most varied skyscraper “family” in the world. All prevailing design styles from the late 19th century to date are represented there - as well as several buildings that have either become cornerstones in skyscraper design, or have been notable for their sheer size, stimulating imagination even more. from the intro over at great gridlock’s new york skyscrapers one hundred years of high-rises. it’s a fantastic site. images and historic detail for each of a few hundred different buildings. browse by era, neighborhood, architect, or particular building. greater context for our beloved chaos, yours for the browsing.
caprices and the disasters of war
saw a documentary last night on francisco goya. i went to art school, i took art history classes, and yet somehow his etchings caught me by surprise. perhaps i was not paying proper attention back then, perhaps i was into some other trendy crap at the time (david carson anyone?), perhaps the goya lessons did not go beyond saturn devouring his son, or perhaps it’s just another example of my awful memory, but i must say goya’s etchings blew me away. you’re all familiar with the sleep of reason produces monsters but if you’ve got the time or are unfamiliar check out the caprices and the disasters of war. the scans are a bit blurry / dark but i think you’ll get the gist.
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