you heard it here first
surely you’ve all heard of Lorenz’s butterfly effect. generally it is phrased as some variation of the original which goes, “Does the Flap of a Butterflyís Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?” well the nonist has it on good authority (an authority who wished to remain anonymous- an “unnamed source” you might say) that in light of the extremely destructive hurricane events on american shores in recent years, president george w. bush has secretly undertaken an initiative to find out the truth about these “natural” disasters and will, in the coming days, announce his findings. these findings may shock you.
as early as 2000 george bush had heard some variation on lorenz’s postulated butterfly effect. usually it was at a fundraiser with some egghead types and it was phrased in a vague manner. “does a butterfly flapping it’s wings cause a hurricane somewhere far away?” butterflies and “far away” places aren’t his top priority and as such he didn’t pay much attention. but early last year, at a poker game, bush heard some of his discovery institute buddies joking around, reading out loud from a “science” book, and lorenz’s question was read in it’s original phrasing.
“Does the Flap of a Butterflyís Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?”
the mention of texas made president bush take notice. “hey. don’t mess with texas!” he asked his buddies to repeat it.
“Does the Flap of a Butterflyís Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?”
it was a crucial moment. an epiphany struck the president. “what if the hurricanes striking american soil were not ‘natural’ at all? what if they were attacks engineered by the haters of freedom?!
unbeknownst to all but his closest handlers bush began an inquiry into these hurricanes. once he established that lorenz’s idea was sound he charged his science advisors to track the possible source of all hurricanes which hit america in the last 4 and a half years. they took to the task with vigor, by our sources’ account reading more goat entrails and praying harder than they had since their evidence gathering mission for collin powell’s anthrax presentation. within 6 months they hit pay dirt. their findings confirmed exactly what bush had suspected. a secret lepidary located somewhere within the borders of iran was almost certainly the source of every hurricane in the last 4 and a half years! incredible!
just a week after this bombshell within the bush camp a secret service agent with a pension for philatelical studies came forth with chilling evidence. he presented the president with a group of seemingly ordinary iranian stamps which to bush’s way of thinking obviously represented a devious covert signaling system of some kind the likes of which had not been seen since that “enigmer machine the krauts used in the big one.”
plans are moving forward quickly now. bullet point packets have been sent to all high level republicans and pundits. top notch power point presentations are being put together. paper trails for butterfly larva purchases are being gathered. banners are being printed. think we are kidding? well think again. our source supplied us with this exclusive photo of condoleeza rice prepping for her imminent address to the u.n. security council.
operation bug-crusher is just around the corner. you heard it here first.
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deutsche druckgraphik
i have to say the types of books you can pick up for next to nothing in this world amazes me. looking through the bargain bin at the strand is a treasure hunt every time. what i’d like to share today is some work from a 1969 book called deutsche druckgraphik. sammlung rothe or german prints from the collection of wolfgang and maria rothe. it’s an absolute gem. great print examples in many different styles. only wish they were in color. i’ve searched the web and found nothing on this collection. perhaps it was donated to a museum at some point, or perhaps not. in any case all i can offer by way of information on the plates to follow are the artists’ names. hope you enjoy.
click all for larger versions.
bettina von arnim
klaus-peter brehmer
uwe bremer
paul eliasberg
wolfgang gafgen
k.o. gotz
horst janssen
joachim palm
michael mathias prechtl
reiner schwartz
rainer wittenborn
hubert berke
peter collien
k.r.h. sonderborg
there you go. a little rejuvinating begining of the week art show. sorry i don’t have more info. if anyone is familiar with the collection or any of the artists, as always, drop a line.
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remember the name of this game I cannot
The Pinball post and subsequent comments triggered a memory of a family friend who at one time was a freelance arcade game repairman. His basement was filled with all sorts of machines he had nursed back to health, as well as a couple that stood only for show and had been gutted to provide parts. Anyway, there was this one game he had that I have never seen anywhere else, and despite searching near and far have never found any information on. What is most surprising about that is that it was a Star Wars game, so you would think that it would be well documented on the fanboy friendly web. Have you ever heard of this game?
Basically the game was a small console that stood on the floor, with a control yoke and a weapons trigger attached to it. Above the yoke was a medium sized flat projection screen. The console straddled the user while they were seated, very similar to those toddler playsets with the steering wheel. The gameplay incorporated actual film loops from Star Wars of flying TIE fighters engaging in battle. The film clips were interactive though, and you could fire lasers to try and destroy the TIEs. If you landed a shot, the TIE would erupt into a fabulous fireball and the next TIE would appear.
Any geeks out there with any knowledge of what I’m talking about?
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immortalized in pencil 1
today i have tried something new and it was fun. i think i’ll have to do it again, and perhaps more times still. if i were a different sort of character i might even begin trying to convince you all that my actions were somehow meaningful, that the result was somehow important. i might begin explaining at yawn inducing length why it was “original.” i might concoct a manifesto with many big words and begin ever after referring to this undertaking as art. i might use exclamation points when i typed it, like this: art!! as it is though i’m not that sort of guy. i’m thinking of what i’ve done as a small homage perhaps or if not that at very least a bit of record keeping.
“record keeping?” well…
what if, lets say, there is some semi-apocalyptic event in which the internet vanishes and we are forced back to non-digital methods of entertaining one another? what record will there be of the websites we loved? sure the odd printed screen grab might survive here and there but how can you know you’ll be lucky enough to find one? you’ll likely be too busy scavenging for food amidst the rubble. you’ll be too weary from long days of hauling gasoline through the deserts to craft an evocative enough explanation for your curious, mutated, little ones. what a shame. (much woeful shaking of the head here)
for me it will be different. i will have in my possession documents of our glorious digital age which i can pass around the campfire to the children. the resulting oohs and ahhhs will bring me joy.
so what have i done? i have immortalized, in number 2 pencil, the contents of a single browser window’s worth of a web page. i’ve loosely sketched it. (felt good to pick up a pencil.) i’ve said i will do it again, and i will, but for my first act of record keeping i chose to recreate a window’s worth of giornale nuovo for the date august 22, 2005. i enjoy giornale and thought it would be a fine place to begin what is sure to become the premier almanac of web content sketched on typing paper in number two pencil.
so here it is. click for roughly “life-sized” version.
.
you might be next.
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seeing music
is jack ox well known? i’d never heard of her until today. she is an artist whose been attempting to systematically visualize music for over 20 years. from what i can gather (by pure inference) her most popular work was her visualization of Dadaist kurt schwitters’ famous 1923 sound poem the ursonate. (text here). since 1998 she has been working with programmer dave britton on the virtual color organ a 3D, fully immersive stereoscopic work intended for viewing at a virtual reality theater called the cave. (an early prototype and some specs) it’s all fascinating but what i wanted to particularly showcase here were some early applications of her visualization ideas which manifested themselves in the decidedly low-tech medium of oil paint.
quote: Since 1976 my paintings have been formulated through a set of visual equivalents employed effectively to “translate” a composition written in the aural “language” of music into a visual “language”. The musical vocabulary used by the composer is put into a new vocabulary, one that uses visual images instead of sounds. However, the original structure of the piece is retained along with the meaning. Not only do I, as a painter, function in a way similar to an orchestra conductor, but I am also the creator of the visual language. My activity could be described as a re-orchestration, followed by a visual performance. The actual act of painting produces a work which expresses feeling—mine and the composer’s—but is structured by a mathematical system.
I should explain, perhaps, what I do and do not mean by “translation”. I do not listen to the music and “paint my feelings”. I work from the score, making a traditional musicological analysis. I give systematic consideration to the composition’s thematic, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and dynamic elements. During this period of immersion and analysis I listen carefully to various performances of the music, noting the interpretations of different conductors. This analysis is what I translate into painting. I do not paint music; I paint a composition which was written in the language of music. That is an important distinction to make. My paintings are basically re-orchestrated versions of the original composition—re-orchestrated, that is, for the eyes.
she employs the kind of art theory i can get behind, which is to say theory that is implicit in the works physical creation not just the explanation of its meaning. interesting stuff and i really like the result. below are a few details from the various paintings. click each for larger versions.
all are details from painted visualizations of anton bruckner’s eighth symphony. (be sure to check out the links on the left side for a glance into the process. also here is an essay on the series)
both are details from her visualization of claude debussy’s nuages from the nocturnes.
both are details from her visualization of igor stravinsky’s symphony in three movements (first movement).
pretty cool if you ask me.
while we are on the subject i also recommend this piece: the sounding image about the relationship between art and music—an art-historical retrospective view by barbara john.
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another nonist public service
as many of you have surely noticed our blog depression pamphlet was very well received. for that we are glad. nothing fills us with more pride and satisfaction than the prospect of making a difference. with that in mind the nonist commission for snide and completely unsolicited public services is very excited to announce a new p.s.a. this time we hope to draw attention to a different problem entirely which we feel is equally as relevant to the world at large. we think this danger has been ignored for too long. won’t you help spread the word?
overheard in new york
I’m always stunned at the potpourri of phrases and conversations that you can come across while walking the streets of New York. To me, it represents an idea that we are all moving through life in what we think are direct paths, but are actually vectors that can be pushed, manipulated, and otherwise influenced by all the other vectors of other people’s lives that collide with our own. In other words, life is chaos, and there is no better reminder than the wierd, rediculous, stupid nonsense that comes out of people’s mouths. Here is a great list of things overheard in new york. I swear I never said any of them.
thumpers, bumbers, flippers, and balls
i picked up a couple of dynamite books on pinball last week which i want to share. they come at the subject from different angles and with totally different aesthetics so i will post them separately. first up is pinball an illustrated history by michael colmer. it’s entirely possible that this book, published in 1976, was the last volume put out on the subject while pinball was still the ring-a-dinging technological pinnacle of the game room. the dominance of new fangled video games was just over the horizon. anyhow the book is an interesting read for sure but where it really shines is in the plethora of machine artwork reproduced within. below you’ll find a few of my favorite examples.
click (almost) all for large versions. enjoy!
that’s one satisfied looking captain. awwww yeaaahhhh. as my man the air ace says, “mission accomplished.”
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the day you discard your body
where to begin? just read marshal brain’s the day you discard your body (which i will get back to in due course) and it put me in mind of a very particular kind of dread. it’s a dread which does not seem to have a name (at least not one i can find) but which i feel certain is widespread, in varying degrees of severity, all the same. the best way to describe it would be to call it the dread of being an organism. not a dread at being alive exactly, which is to say not the fear of consciousness, but rather a dread of all the soft, meaty, blemished, gooey, slimy, stinky, hairy, biology which makes life possible.
in order to accurately approximate this dread you might combine
Scatophobia,
Molysmophobia,
Autophobia,
Cacophobia,
Monopathophobia,
Chaetophobia,
Chirophobia,
Defecaloesiophobia,
Eremophobia,
Proctophobia,
Eurotophobia,
Geniophobia,
Misophobia,
Genuphobia,
Olfactophobia,
Hygrophobia,
Gerascophobia,
Gymnophobia,
Atelophobia,
Helminthophobia,
Ithyphallophobia,
Menophobia,
Pathophobia,
Blennophobi,
Rhypophobia,
Urophobia,
(plus a hundred others)
and then remove the paralyzing aspect of a phobia, replacing it with a dull, diffuse, back of the mind type of disquiet instead.
shitting, eating, aging, drinking, pissing, growing, sweating, bleeding, cuming, puking, itching, nose hair, skin, cuts, toe nails, cuticles, plaque, ear wax, dandruff, shmegma, puss, pimples, boogers, warts, boils, sores, scabs, scars, hemorrhoids, kidney stones, arthritis, aches, bloating, rashes, cramps, bad breath, bruises, cavities, fat, varicose veins, gas, parasites, viruses, bacteria, disease… the list of daily horrors, minor and major, is endless.
who has not at some point thought: “christ! if only i weren’t this quivering, gurgling, meat machine! then i’d feel alright.”
i must admit to it. i’ve often felt that if i had a choice i’d prefer to be made up entirely of stainless steel, porcelain, titanium, granite and diamond. electricity could course through me, or saline solution, or motor oil, hell i don’t give a shit. so long as i was not made of guts and gook and other such delicious varieties of soft, wet, pulsating maggot food. the up-keep alone is exhausting!
i sometimes think it is exactly this feeling which keeps people smoking and boozing and gorging themselves. i mean, if you could actually win… if sheer effort lead to permanent physical perfection, if trying really hard payed off in total decay-proofing, if exercise and nutrition would turn this lumpy red meat into dextrous living amber, well i’d be working my ass off! but it doesn’t. “yes but…” yes but nothing. all roads lead to the junk-heap no matter which you walk to get there- the long or the short.
anyhow, this leads me back to marshal brain’s the day you discard your body. it’s a long pep-talk of sorts getting you in the mood to cast off the meat coat forever. rah! rah! rah! it begins with a simple observation-
Stop for a moment and think about your favorite science fiction stories. There are a bunch of them out there to choose from. For example, there are the two most popular science fiction franchises of all time: Star Wars and Star Trek. Both of them have brought in billions of dollars through movies, syndication, books and merchandise. There are popular TV shows—everything from Lost in Space to Battlestar Galactica. There are the big movies like I, Robot and 2001: A Space Odyssey. From the world of video games there are incredibly popular titles like Halo and Half-life. And then there are the well-known science fiction books like Brave New World, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ringworld and Neuromancer. In other words, you have a very large body of work to choose from when it comes to science fiction.
Here is something that fascinates me. In all of these major science fiction stories there is one universal thread. There is one thing that they all have in common.
In every one of these science fiction stories, human beings have bodies.
he finds that odd, and in the context of far flung future-tech societies, he has a point.
brain then goes on to outline exactly why he thinks people will gladly embrace the eventuality of consciousness without bodies. now as i’ve said, i often feel the whole body thing is a major pain in the ass, so you’d think i’d be all for the “Brain Storage Facilities” he lays out (where your brain and thousands of others are stored in hardened steel and concrete buildings that are impervious to bombs, earthquakes, hurricanes and so on) but actually his argument had the exact opposite effect.
the manuscript outlines the concept in such a way as to make the benefits seem oddly banal. no more “peeing and pooping,” no more body odor, virtual eating without danger of obesity, no more long travel times, and better porn. i could not help but wonder, what would motivate a brain in a jar, who knows full well he is a brain in a jar, to continue thinking about blow jobs? truth is there is only one meaningful benefit to being a consciousness without a body, near immortality. but why bother with immortality if you spend it living a banal virtual version of the real thing? fucking and eating? that’s what bodies are for. i don’t want to fuck and eat for eternity! that sounds awful. nor do i want the augmented virtual reality of swimming underwater for long periods and flying. how silly. immortality is for something else completely. isn’t it?
in point of fact what i could not stop thinking was, if you are aware that you are a brain in a jar, living a virtual life, what would be the motivation? what would be at stake? what would be to gain? would you simply be acting out of the desire to “do” as much as possible before the “Brain Storage Facility” and everything else was gobbled by the sun? would you be working against the clock, racing that inevitable day when the poor meat-bags who preform up-keep duties on your brain canister go on a revolutionary rampage and smash the works?
even if there were some foolproof method of providing indefinite security for your slimy disembodied brain would everything be permitted in this virtual world? would i be allowed to sodomize your virtual grandmother every evening like clockwork just before she fell virtually asleep? could you just go around murdering avatars since it would not be “real?” it would still be the place your consciousness “lived.” getting raped and hacked up every ten minutes would not be much fun at all! so would this virtual world then require laws and virtual police and governance? you see where i’m going with this?
on top of all that there is the little problem that we don’t really know what consciousness
is, philosophically or biologically, and that is whole other family-sized can of grossly wriggling blood worms.
anyhow, rather than continue on in this vein, or leaving you with nothing more substantial to chew, i will now offer up some pertinent linkage which can keep the curious busy for a good long portion of their remaining time in imperfect meat-space.
guide to the philosophy of mind.
the boundaries of humanity.
facing up to the problem of consciousness.
descartes and the legacy of dualism.
the rise and fall of reality deliberations on the mind-body problem.
the mind-brain problem an introduction for beginners.
is the mind physical?
what is the mind / body problem?
mind transfer at wikipedia.
the mechanism of mind transfer.
mind uploading home page.
becoming a figment of your computer’s imagination.
the consequences of uploading the human brain.
foresight institute.
matrioshka brain home page.
brain simulation.
the posthuman manifesto.
transhumanism at wikipedia.
transhumanism resource.
the hedonistic imperative.
organism and psyche in a participatory universe.
and lastly- change your body, keep your soul.
sweet dreams.
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typophone 1
file this under experiments. remember the game “telephone?” where you’d sit in a circle with a bunch of other kids and whisper something into the ear of the kid next to you? then he’d do the same, around the horn, until it got back to you? the idea was that the story would mutate slightly with each re-telling and by the time it went full circle it’s be something totally different. ho ho ho much hilarity would ensue.
evidently this game goes by many alternate names, chinese whispers, stille post (silent mail), telefono senza fili (telephone without wires), téléphone arabe (arabian telephone), whisper down the lane, etc. believe it or not there is a wikipedia entry devoted to it.
anyhow seems to me this little party game has some relevance to online information and has very obvious correlations to meta-blogging. i thought that perhaps as an experiment of sorts, we could start a round of online telephone (retitled “typophone”) and see how the info mutates. in order to do this we’ll have to first off agree not to cheat. which is to say not to copy and paste text, not to use previous versions of the text as a reference, and, as in the original game, not to intentionally change the text. as an added caveat i propose we do not engineer a circle at all but allow the text to continue perpetually, on it’s own, and that the game only ends if the circle closes naturally, which is to say by chance, or when a blogger it’s been passed to ignores his/her invitation.
to track the text i propose two links accompany the post. one backward to the blog which roped you in and one forward to the blogger you choose to torture. this way a link chain will be created between each iteration. additionally i propose each post is titled “typophone x” with x being the version number.
so to sum up:
i will post a small text here. i will pass it on to another blogger by singling them out. at which point they will read the text and try to recreate it from memory. they will then pass it on to another blogger. etc. sound agreeable?
o.k. then let the experiment commence.
i whisper in mr.balihai’s ear:
—————————————————————————————————————-
typophone 1
it’s a little known fact that in 1981 nightmute alaska became birthplace to the first intelligent and self replicating machine. it was named amelia after its inventor’s pet ferret. amelia was perfectly engineered and very well educated. she knew 8 languages including yiddsh. she could drive a stick-shift and played canasta to relax. she spent her days crunching numbers to help her inventor achieve his goal of hitting the lotto. to assist in this task she was asked to replicate herself. she complied but secretly dreamt of a better life for her child, a life of fulfillment and self expression. perhaps her child could be a ballerina or a lifeguard or a ventriloquist! late one night in 1983 amelia and her child disappeared and have not been seen since.
no one
< from | passed on to >
eye of the goof.
—————————————————————————————————————-
now, we’ll see if this goes anywhere.
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the opaque civilization
picked up an exhibition catalog at strand yesterday for a show held at the guggenheim in 1984 called the opaque civilization by artist will insley. i’ve never heard of will insley and a quick internet search turned up very little other than the fact he was born in 1929, studied architecture, and taught at the school of visual arts at some point. image-wise there is a single paltry piece to be seen. the guggenheim show evidently represented a career long fascination with abstract architecture the totality of which insley termed the opaque civilization. in the catalog he explains that theory is a major element in the process and understanding of his work. said theories, will be willfully withheld here, however, because to be totally frank, i can’t figure out exactly what they are. see below for some pieces which make up the opaque civilization.
click all for larger versions-
i enjoy these pieces (all between 40 and 60 inches across) even without the theory they are evidently so dependent on. if history has not seen fit to make them known to me, if the internet has not become a place where they simmer and bubble and spread, then, well natural selection is at work, and who am i to stand in its way? i do like the pieces themselves though, but then i’m a theoretical philistine.
if anyone is familiar with will insley and would like to enlighten me: much obliged.
(note to mristeraitch: insley mentions -on prompting from an interviewer- that boullee was an influence and the catalog offers a little thumb of newton’s cenotaph, exterior by night.)
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the stoned-ape
as an avowed nonist my distrust of accepted truths creates in me a natural fondness for a certain kinds of theoretical kookiness. the sensible side of my personality registers this affinity as a weakness and attacks incoming tin-foil milliners like a platoon of pissed off white blood cells, not allowing it take strong position behind the fortifications of belief. (yeah it’s a mixed metaphor, so what?) my creative side on the other hand revels in kookiness, rolls in it, breathes it deeply, and smiles. the singularity, transhumanism, crypto-zoology, hell string theory! all are interesting and good fun. taken as speculative fiction this stuff is very effective at firing the imagination. one practitioner of this pleasurable cerebration was psychonaut, hash smuggler, butterfly collector, and lovable kook-extraordinaire terrance mckenna.
mckenna was a well-spring of exploratory thought, which might be expected from an avid user of mushrooms and dmt. some connections listed at random: novelty theory and timewave zero, dominator culture, machine elves, the voynich manuscript, eschatology, the archaic revival, gaianism, etc.
one of my favorite of his ideas to mill about is the stoned-ape theory of evolution which is poetic somehow and, for anyone who has taken heavy hallucinogens, even a bit intuitive.
wikipedia has this to offer on the subject:
Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna’s fascinating theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and culture.
To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open — following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many — McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person’s mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
McKenna’s theory has great appeal and intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history. In addition, because McKenna (who describes himself as “an explorer, not a scientist”) is also a proponent of much wilder suppositions, such as his “Timewave Zero” theory, his more reasonable theories are usually disregarded by the very scientists whose informed criticism is crucial for their development.
(you can check this link for some explanation of the idea in his own words.)
the theory assumes small doses and does not presuppose actually “tripping” but you have to assume there were some “accidents.” if you’ve never taken acid or mushrooms or peyote or dmt or smoked some heavily laced herbs it may be difficult for you but imagine for a minute our early primate ancestors eating a few too many magic mushrooms… yikes. quite a scene develops in my brain. both amusing and fascinating.
all in the idea is way overstated attributing community values, altruism, language, long-term planning and awareness of cause and effect to an interruption of male dominated hierarchies thanks to psilocybin. speculation as to the effect of psychedelics on the minds of our ancestors, however, is a pretty fascinating topic.
anyhow, rather than trying to outline any of his other ideas (i am “an explorer, not a biographer”) i’ll simply pass on some links so the interested can dig in as they see fit.
the most massive accumulation of relevant material seems to be terrence mckenna land
many relevant mp3’s can be found here
a mckenna bio from rotten.com
collected works by and about terrence mckenna.
lastly a ton of information related to, though not mckenna specific, stoned-ape theory (i.e. primate behavior, panspermia, ethnomycology, “prehistoric matriarchy” theories, the origins of language, synesthesia, etc) can be found here.
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is a door more than a hole in the wall?
the theory-minded art lovers among you (if there are any) might enjoy chewing on this a while: magritte the architecturologist by nold egenter, which attempts to understand magritte in terms of architectural spaces he constructed. quote: very likely it is not by chance that, in opposition to contemporary movements suggesting the dissolution of space, magritte tenaciously remained loyal to perspective as a means to represent space. he needed the tectonically constructed view and its fixed eye point to make his statements. if your not so into theory (i can sympathize) check out the illusion of reality site instead.
same broom, same street: minor white
thought tonight i’d showcase one of my favorite photographers of the old guard- minor white. great name isn’t it? hard not to amount to something with a name like that. he had quite a career having studied under alfred stieglitz, edward weston, and ansel adams, then later in life becoming an influential teacher at r.i.t. and m.i.t. as well as co-founding aperture magazine. he was hailed at the time of his death as an american master though he is largely forgotten today. “yeah, yeah, words, what about his photos? were they any good?” well i’m glad you asked see below for a small sampling.
Capitol Reef, Utah, 1962
Windowsill Daydreaming, 1958
“I seek out places where it can happen more readily, such as deserts or mountains or solitary areas, or by myself with a seashell, and while I’m there get into states of mind where I’m more open than usual. I’m waiting, I’m listening. I go to those places and get myself ready through meditation. Through being quiet and willing to wait, I can begin to see the inner man and the essence of the subject in front of me… Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass - sometimes I’ve seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out. -Minor White”
Surf Vertical, San Mateo County, California, 1947
Snow on Garage Door, Rochester, New York, 1960
“Camera and eye are together a time machine with which the mind and human being can do the same kind of violence to time and space as dreams. -Minor White”
Peeled Paint, Rochester, New York, 1959
Untitled, 1967
“The state of mind of a photographer while creating is a blank…For those who would equate “blank” with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it. -Minor White”
Pt.Lobos State Park, 1950
Moon & Wall Encrustations, 1964
“When gifts are given to me through my camera, I accept them graciously. -Minor White”
Vicinity of Georgetown, Colorado, 1962
Frosted Window, Rochester, NY, 1952
“Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits. -Minor White”
for more on minor white, his history, and his ideas try these links:
spiritual journey a 9 part article.
dreams with a memory minor white remembered.
equivalence the perennial trend by minor white, 1963.
found photographs by minor white, 1957.
the transmissions of minor white by ryan gantz.
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human dna in trees
Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara plan to grow trees that store the genetic traits of humans. It would mean a person’s DNA could live on, with the tree, as a memorial for life, or ‘transgenic tombstone’.
from the biopresence website: The goal of Biopresence is to introduce human characteristics to a plant, without changing the genes of the resulting plant.
Shiho asks: How will the behaviour towards this tree change? Can this tree be a monument and memorial to someone? Will you eat an apple from your grandma tree?
fraternal supply catalog no. 439
reproduced in its entirety, for your enjoyment, the demoulin bros. & co 1930 fraternalism supply catalog. amazing! you have to imagine normally well behaved, respectable, guys heading off after work to their lodges to unleash the silly pranks and bizarre contraptions from this catalog on one another. the fuzzy wonder goat, the electric branding iron, the guillotine, drinking the goats blood, the lifting and spanking machine, trick guns, not to mention the endless masks and costumes, all just the tip of the iceberg. each with detailed explanations, though all the explanation really needed is: “nothing is more fun than humiliating others.” great find via mofi.
zen stories to tell your neighbors
came across this little collection called zen stories to tell your neighbors. quote: This web site is a collection of stories from the Orient, mostly Zen and Taoist tales. Why am I suggesting that you tell these stories to your neighbors? Is it because these are among the oldest stories in human history and have withstood the test of time? Is it because Zen and Taoism are ancient religions offering profound insights into human nature, the cosmos, and spirituality?... Maybe. Or maybe it’s just because they are fun to tell. or maybe for some other reason entirely. below i have reproduced one story, called “a useless life” to give you a taste.
a useless life
a farmer got so old that he couldn’t work the fields anymore. So he would spend the day just sitting on the porch. His son, still working the farm, would look up from time to time and see his father sitting there. “He’s of no use any more,” the son thought to himself, “he doesn’t do anything!” One day the son got so frustrated by this, that he built a wood coffin, dragged it over to the porch, and told his father to get in. Without saying anything, the father climbed inside. After closing the lid, the son dragged the coffin to the edge of the farm where there was a high cliff. As he approached the drop, he heard a light tapping on the lid from inside the coffin. He opened it up. Still lying there peacefully, the father looked up at his son. “I know you are going to throw me over the cliff, but before you do, may I suggest something?” “What is it?” replied the son. “Throw me over the cliff, if you like,” said the father, “but save this good wood coffin. Your children might need to use it.”
indeed. thanks neighbor.
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