Blog Post: November 22, 2015
ART GRAFITTI AND THE PHENOMEN
OLOGY OF HOW EACH OF US
IS CREATING AND LIVING AND INTERWEAVING DESPITE
IN THE GENERATIVE NOTHING THE
DEEP BLACK
THE SILENCE - THAT
CAGEAN LAKE OF SILENCE
WHICH IS
ART OF MUSIC -
THAT GENTLE MAN - JOHN
SPEAKING OF SILENCE
Nothing retains its form.
The mind of
snow –
the winter
world –
knowing
nothing
knows that it
nothing knows
– it snows, it
snows
------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
To write, to try meticulously to
retain something, to cause something to
survive, to wrest a few precise or
ambiguous scraps from the void as it grows:
to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a
mark, or a few signs.
________________________________________________________________________
Nothing retains its form.
The mind of
snow –
the winter
world –
knowing
nothing
knows that it
nothing knows
– it snows, it
snows
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
To write, to try meticulously
to
retain something, to cause
something to
survive, to wrest a few precise
or
ambiguous
scraps from the void as it grows:
to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a
mark, or
a few signs.
____________________________________________________________________
Taken together, the basic elements
used to construct graffiti's imagery operate as a form of resistance.
The creation of a graffiti identity through the circulation of a tag
is both a form of camouflage and what identifies the writer as part
of an underground culture.
The reconstruction of the
proliferation of names that are meaningful only to those who
participate in their diffusion all point to the fact that, like some
contemporary art practices, the culture of graffiti writing rebels
against established art forms an modes of communication.
...Writing any form of graffiti,
whether it be political, personal or gang-related, responds to a
variety of social needs. Expression through words, symbols and
figures on city walls can be a reaction against
oppression, a mode of protest, an
anonymous way to be heard, an act of personal or group empowerment,
or a secret language...
... graffiti writing.......is most
significantly connected to the pervasiveness of consumer culture.
Adding tags illegally into the
official framework of a city relays a number of ideas.
First, it implies a desire to belong to
a city's visual culture, which is theoretically inclusive, but in
practical terms exclusive.
Second, it disrupts the corporate logic
of naming by introducing unsanctioned, unknown
names into the cityscape. To this
effect, it uses existing language as a basis of subversion.
Third it exposes a city's underbelly.
The sanctioned names that circulate in the city-
scape represent companies that employ
thousands of unnamed people.
By contrast, unauthorised tags
represent real people.
Fourth, it reclaims a space for a more
diverse public, essentially questioning the
notion of public space.
A writers subcultural status and
identity are rooted in the adherence to and development of the
stylistic principles of graffiti; writing. Moreover, style is what
defines the conflict between writers and authorities, since graffiti
as a style of expression clashes with and disrupts the otherwise
controlled
aesthetics of the cityscape.
...creates a type of secret language
that sustains the subculture, while elements of art and design
vivify this language.
...use fading, shading, pulling...
Graffiti's connection with popular
culture through icon appropriation suggests integral parallels
between the graffiti World and the media saturated World.
Cities are filled with names that
promote someone or something. Names, logos and signage of all kinds
are naturalized within the cityscape and drive consumer culture.
Advertisements in the public arena are in dialogue with each other
and with us, the consumers.
Names are continually for notoriety.
Shop names, brand names corporate names, celebrity names-all have
become ubiquitous.
For graffiti writers, mixing their
names into the fray is a logical extension of the dominant commercial
ideology: if your name is recognized in the urban realm, then you are
somebody.
Illegally adding your name to the
public arena, of course, indicates that you are disrupting the
system, rebelling against social norms and making your presence felt,
albeit subversively.
For many, writing legally strips
away the very reason for doing graffiti.
The graffiti subculture is a part of
society, but also stands apart. In terms of its place of
dissemination, its visual language and its substance as an
alternative culture, it is firmly tied to mainstream cultures.
The subculture necessitates these ties
in order to position and define itself beyond the parameters of the
dominant order. Graffiti is at once physically accessible and
functionally inaccessible to outsiders.
The fact that the general public
makes contact with graffiti but has no direct path of entry into its
meaning and purpose gives writers a sense of power. By creating a
World of their own, neither easily penetrated by non-writers nor
intended to be understood, writers can exclude mainstreem audiences
from accessing their word, thus reinforcing the vitality of their
World.
The knowledge that most people
cannot read their graffiti positions writers as members
of an exclusive scene - a scene that is
visible to everyone but insignificant to most.
Through the construct of the
subculture, writers participate in an alternative way of experiencing
the city....
...Blek Le Rat, the celebrated
Godfather of the street stencil, began stencilling small rats on the
streets of Paris in 1981.....
....Although Blek participates in
gallery shows, his passion for working on the street has not
diminished over the past thirty years as it allows him to communicate
with a much broader audience.
As the artist explains:
"The problem with galleries is
that 99% of urban artists we urban artists as a stepping stone into
galleries. It is a fatal error because in galleries they're seen by
10 people, but the streets they're seen by 100,000 people. And that's
the integrity of the artist's work: to be seen not to be sold or
recognized in a museum but to be seen by the World."
re Blek Le Rat.
Poetic, quotidian, and always
engaging, Blek's artworks are, in the simplest terms, explorations of
Humanity.
His pseudonyms, itself an anagram
of 'art' ('rat') suggests that, through accessible imagery, social
issues can indeed be raised to the forefront of urban visual culture.
Committed to street art's potential
as the future of art, Blek considers his social obligation to produce
imagery with which people can identify.
...Most recently, the artist has devoted much of his practice to
specific social issues such as homelessness. Pasting images such as
homelessness in San Francisco (from 2006) in areas frequented by
homeless people both raises awareness and symbolically provides the
homeless with a temporary home.
there
are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension
beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise
without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy
of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms
of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always
surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How
does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?
...Alan Sondheim
-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
________________________________________________________________
at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
----------------------------------------------
--------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
They became desperate as they faced
the sea. Their quadrilateral lives were broken against the infinite
curve of the horizon.
..And the houses matched the shape
of the farms where they worked, quadrilaterals which stretched out
one after the other. Their horizon was formed by those green
parallelograms covered with banana trees in geometric rows set at
equal distances, and the houses in the so-called yards were wooden
oblongs,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To avoid possible boredom and the stain
Of too much intuition the whole scene
Is walled behind glass. "Too early,"
She says, "in the season." A hawk drifts by.
"Send everybody back to the city."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unforgettable nights... which of them
all did she prefer? If they told her to erase one of them from her
memory; if she had not lived it, which one of all those nights would
she here left blank?
She could not tell, really, because
they were all so deeply clear and at the same dark: clear for a zone
of her conscious, and dark for her love, because she had touched
blindly what is visible only in the
latitudes of the heart.
-----------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
-----------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
Gulumbu Yunupingu (Australian Aboriginal Artist.)
----------------------------------------------
--------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Australian Aboriginal Artist.
Gulumbu Yunupingu's life's work
is a conceptual inquiry into the nature of existence and the limits
of Human knowledge. For over a decade, Yunupingu has devoted herself
almost exclusively to cataloguing the night sky, recording the
Universe star in an unending masterwork comprising hundreds of
objects.
She reconfigures the star motif
into a performative inscription, drawing the aesthetic traditions and
spiritual beliefs or her Gumatji people into a meditation on the ends
of the Universe and what may lie beyond.
Y.
applies natural pigments to hollow Eucalypt trunks and flattened
sheets of bark, allowing the sculptural qualities of each piece to
enliven the repetition of the star motif, Variations in colour and
form evoke the variability as well as the beauty of the night skies
across eastern Arnhem and, whose cloud cover is intermittently
obscured by cloud cover or the smoke of bush fires.
Yunupingu's work is replete with
metaphors and associations that intersect with these themes.
Hollow
eucalypt trunks evoke Yolungu beliefs around death and the journey of
the spirit.
Hollow trunks were historically
prepared and used as vessels for the internment of Human remains and
they retain their symbolism as ancestral canoes which carry the
essence of the deceased to their spiritual homelands.
Gulumbu Yunupingu
... The night sky is a
metaphor for both a Universal Humanity unified under a common sky and
for the limits of Human knowledge....
... Yolngu regard some stars as
manifestations of ancestral beings whose actions gave shape to the
physical and cultural World of the people of the people of Eastern
Arnham Land.
The stars themselves may
symbolise spirits suspended in the ancestral realm, while a shooting
star may herald a Human death.
(Science creates a parallel
MYTH the Universe that is no more or less true
that this World belief of the
Yolngu people.)
Is plunged in shade,
this one
In self-esteem. But
the center
Keeps collapsing and
re-forming.
The couple at a
picnic table
And he never intended to consult him;
but nevers do have a way of arriving. He had an attack of malaria. A
snake malaria that kept him frozen, his hands congealed, his hair
like that of a dead man, his
teeth with the taste of bull bile, a
stiffness in his joints....
...and in those vegetable tubes the
small intertices were like those of the tail of his mermaid. They
were like small honeycombs that wept acid water...
A waltz. She was breathing in the
happiness of being loved by that man. Her happiness was greater than
of any other woman who felt herself loved, because for her it was
feeling herself being loved by an exceptional being....
...He loved her because she had
noticed him when
who used to announce his wares with
a long, strident, terribly tragic laugh;
___________________________________________________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How did you come by it? asked
Thomas accidentally or design?
The latter, said the Dead Father
in my vastness, there was
a room for, necessity of, every
kind of experience.
I therefore decided that
mechanical experience was a part
of experience there was a room
for, in my vastness.
I wanted to know what machines
know.
It thinks itself too
good for
These
generalizations and is
moved on by them.
The opposite side
(but its too early
in the season for picnics)
Are traipsed across
by the river's workings
To avoid possible
boredom and the stain
Of too much
intuition the whole scene
Is walled behind
glass. "Too early,"
She says, "in
the season." A hawk drifts by.
"Send everybody
back to the city."
Qutline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given
Outline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable
that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that
it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything,
that anything might be said):
*/Thanks
to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*
My
work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or
confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized
my project as the relationship between abstract
structures
and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy
can be effected through modes other than writing or
the
text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that
language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said,
the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with
altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on
a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design
in Halifax.
1.
Philosophical work pushed to the limits:
-gamespace
edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the
limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors
affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit"
these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves?
Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors
and objects that open elsewhere?
-client
or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields
of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what
happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does
avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)
-altered
motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap
alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation
breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile
and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of
enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)
-software-dependent,
see economic exhaustion below (Different
software
produces different results of course: what is the
typology
of glitches?)
[situations
where structure collapses:
-where
structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's
no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where
chaos dissolves into noise.)
-where
the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that,
for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by
particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere
or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed
and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later,
the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the
universe.)
How
are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text?
What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution
of textuality?]
2.
Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state
where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the
blank is the site of introjection/projection.)
-blizzard
whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and
videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at
the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable
of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")
-recapitulation
through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on
blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing,
where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites.
A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing
survives the seething.)
-maps
of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels
15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north:
the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water
- dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described
early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense
of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces,
gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation
to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness
_do?_.)
3.
Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:
-multiverse
(Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of
communication with our own; there may always be limits
to
cosmological observation.)
-economic
exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I
think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic
surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle
accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and
it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe
might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy
cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going
to be energy limits.)
-Planck
constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck
length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate.
The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described
by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even
if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote,
a blank.)
4.
Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode
Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession
of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the
religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide
everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become
a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's
up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent
law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question
of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the
Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace,
then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there
is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and
structuration is cultural work.
5.
Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)
-playing
'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing
in the first-third positions.)
-playing
near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering
within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed
to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without
reference or intervalic structure.)
-mimetic
function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound
transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game,
beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes
a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the
phenomenology of the musical structure.)
-blank
(The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes
the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is
reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches
the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever;
infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards
higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening
device, that too can be surpassed.)
(I
think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with
Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise
at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which
are available online.)
6.
In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there
are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension
beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise
without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy
of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms
of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always
surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How
does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?
7.
At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which
process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate
within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform
information. The suites themselves are always
transforming;
they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent,
they might be considered closed circulations within
potential
wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure,
and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases.
All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart;
all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case
is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable
that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that
anything might be said.
Alan
Sondheim re his 'Meditation on the Internet'
... Scott Burnham said: 'The street
is a huge cultural laboratory'
... Whether abhorred or adored,
graffiti and street art provoke passionate debate, reflecting the
prominent role they play in the cultural landscape and consciousness
of a City... Graffiti and street art are exceptional, however, for
three key reasons.
[First] as
unsanctioned interventionist practices they challenge the art
institution and commissioned public art, which both typically
involve numerous decisions – maleen in a project from concept to
fruition.
[Second] street art practices are
guided by and guide a city's visual aesthetic in that
they both assimilate that environment
and and recreate it.
[And finally] graffiti writers and
street artists fundamentally question the ethos of
ownership through the process of
creation and thus approach the city from an
alternative perspective.
Both graffiti and street art
illuminate the city with signs of life. The walls streets,
billboards and all manner of
structural details that make up a city are brought to life
with the addition of urban painting.
...The function of illegal urban art,
and whether it should be supported or penalized, remains open for
discussion however, one thing is certain, when it comes to
contemporary international art movements, the writing is on the wall.
In essence, writing tags is a game
wherein the entire city is a playing field.
... In the development of letter forms
that are illegible, sometimes even to other writers, the graffiti
culture has successfully constructed a visual language that, while
performed in the cityscape, is reserved for and faces the subculture.
While it may seem absurd that art
practices grouped under the umbrella of urban or street art are
illegal, it is also a driving force for its practitioners as it
allows the artists to work in an unmediated manner.
Exercising actual freedom of
expression enables artists to contest a city's corporate visual
culture by either explicitly responding to it or creating new avenues
of visual communication.
Regardless of the artist's
intentions, producing art on the street in in itself a form of
resistance to sanctified imagery and the notion of public space. In
other words, the unauthorized visual alteration of city space is a
type of rebellion against the capitalist construction of space.
An illegal mode of expression that
subsists on the margins of a city's structure signals and invasion of
'public' space unsanctified art projects thus infuse the public
sphere with moments of fracture, spaces of disruption and subjective
users of territory, and together create alternative forms of urban
visual culture.
Shepard Fairey (USA), Zevs (France)
and Eine (UK) are among a number of artists interested in this
dynamic of contestation.
Tarzan is a Huh.
And where was the other Huh the
Silverback had seen?. There was no way of asking. Even if he could
approach that great dark stranger-which he knew was impossible what
good would come of it? Whatever was in that huge old head would stay
there, there was no form of...
Poor Tarzan
In public art discourse, especially
in terms of new genre public art, the issue of community
representation and agreement is crucial.
[Community has been ignored,
idealized, or regarded as fixed]
...instead of being recognized as
fluid... The ambition ... of public art - to represent and interact
with or speak to a specific community, in the hope of forging a
meaningful relationship between artist and audience - has in some
ways moved the discussion away from the work itself to
accountability.
Public art discourse has thus been
transformed into debates regarding aesthetics and design to social
accountability, shifting the focus from the site itself to those who
occupy it.
In pursuit of issue-based dialogue
between artist and community, many questions may arise regarding how
a group of individuals become a community.
Who determines these parameters?
What role does each parameter play? What issues define the community?
At afternoon sleepy-time he
continued to... escape... and came to know every inch...I don't mean
he was familiar with it. That's an inadequate word. He had inside
himself a parallel Universe, a sense-map of the valley, made by
crossing strands of odour and temperature patterns and shade patterns
and tastes and echolocations and between-leaf airways which had been
gained by sticking his nose
right into the dirt of everything.
He had the landscape on his skin and
hair in his hair. He ate that landscape and shitted it. Maybe his
most sensitive instruments were his feet, they were hard and horny
and caked with grime but which usually had a damper about then there
was a moist layer where subtle information passed through from the
Earth he trod and read through those feet as though it were a great
book
...Now his name sounded like something
you might use to describe a star...fascinating...distant...cold.
Nothing could move that lump of feeling that weighed inside him,
nothing could shift the image he had of those dark steady eyes
putting him under such intense scrutiny.
Two dark thoughts. The brow of a
gorilla is like a jutting cliff, the eyes are buried. Looking at you,
a gorilla seems to give you total attention. It's a serious
countenance as though you are being sternly
judged.
Tarzan is a Huh.
And where was the other Huh the
Silverback had seen?. There was no way of asking. Even if he could
approach that great dark stranger-which he knew was impossible what
good would come of it? Whatever was in that huge old head would stay
there, there was no form of...
Poor Tarzan
...It was inside his mind. In there
something was turning, never ceasing. Gears humming. Somehow the very
elements of the Universe had been coupled together to produce a busy
energy, which was so startling to him.
The whirling of the Stars. He looked
down at his chest and wondered for the first time what inside his
skin.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Outline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given
Outline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable
that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that
it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything,
that anything might be said):
*/Thanks
to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*
My
work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or
confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized
my project as the relationship between abstract
structures
and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy
can be effected through modes other than writing or
the
text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that
language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said,
the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with
altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on
a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design
in Halifax.
1.
Philosophical work pushed to the limits:
-gamespace
edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the
limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors
affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit"
these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves?
Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors
and objects that open elsewhere?
-client
or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields
of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what
happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does
avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)
-altered
motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap
alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation
breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile
and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of
enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)
-software-dependent,
see economic exhaustion below (Different
software
produces different results of course: what is the
typology
of glitches?)
[situations
where structure collapses:
-where
structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's
no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where
chaos dissolves into noise.)
-where
the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that,
for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by
particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere
or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed
and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later,
the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the
universe.)
How
are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text?
What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution
of textuality?]
2.
Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state
where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the
blank is the site of introjection/projection.)
-blizzard
whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and
videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at
the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable
of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")
-recapitulation
through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on
blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing,
where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites.
A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing
survives the seething.)
-maps
of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels
15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north:
the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water
- dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described
early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense
of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces,
gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation
to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness
_do?_.)
3.
Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:
-multiverse
(Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of
communication with our own; there may always be limits
to
cosmological observation.)
-economic
exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I
think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic
surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle
accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and
it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe
might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy
cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going
to be energy limits.)
-Planck
constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck
length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate.
The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described
by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even
if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote,
a blank.)
4.
Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode
Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession
of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the
religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide
everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become
a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's
up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent
law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question
of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the
Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace,
then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there
is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and
structuration is cultural work.
5.
Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)
-playing
'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing
in the first-third positions.)
-playing
near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering
within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed
to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without
reference or intervalic structure.)
-mimetic
function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound
transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game,
beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes
a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the
phenomenology of the musical structure.)
-blank
(The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes
the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is
reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches
the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever;
infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards
higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening
device, that too can be surpassed.)
(I
think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with
Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise
at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which
are available online.)
6.
In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there
are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension
beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise
without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy
of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms
of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always
surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How
does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?
7.
At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which
process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate
within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform
information. The suites themselves are always
transforming;
they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent,
they might be considered closed circulations within
potential
wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure,
and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases.
All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart;
all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case
is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable
that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that
anything might be said.
Alan Sondheim
[Ibid.]
...I learned ... that the sun sings...
he liked to think of the whales singing..., and the crickets in
Africa which sit inside little bowls they have dug in the dust, sound
shells, ...can be heard..., up to seven miles away... and so he was
always listening to the faraway crickets - for whales, for the
language of the
leaves.
On Beal street the cars cruised,
wide and low like metal smiles.
...Vernon never really recovered.
In time he found other women and, eventually, a new wife. But this
was all just something to do.
Elvis gone and then Gladys, and that
was the end of life. Tarzan saw that until it was pain to the point
of death when they were lost.
He had allowed nothing like that.
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
"He felt the touch of an
angel?'
...Anyways, there was this one branch
which was over to the side, he had to let goa hand to reach it, he
tried, he just couldn't reach that thing... waiting to drop - an'
there's this voice in the air. Not
in his head, he said. The voice was all around him. It was an
everythin' voice that's what he said - it had everythin' in it, anger
and promises and the whole history of the whole World an' it said,
will you always look for me?...
...[he is able to reach a seemingly
impossible distance + thus survive (ie avoid
falling from a tree.)]
...he became aware that there were
angel places."
"Angel Places."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great wings, sweeping against the
stars.
[From
Alan Sondheim’s ‘Meditation on the Internet’]
Outline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given
Outline
for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable
that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that
it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything,
that anything might be said):
*/Thanks
to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*
My
work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or
confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized
my project as the relationship between abstract
structures
and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy
can be effected through modes other than writing or
the
text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that
language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said,
the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with
altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on
a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design
in Halifax.
1.
Philosophical work pushed to the limits:
-gamespace
edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the
limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors
affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit"
these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves?
Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors
and objects that open elsewhere?
-client
or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields
of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what
happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does
avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)
-altered
motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap
alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation
breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile
and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of
enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)
-software-dependent,
see economic exhaustion below (Different
software
produces different results of course: what is the
typology
of glitches?)
[situations
where structure collapses:
-where
structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's
no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where
chaos dissolves into noise.)
-where
the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that,
for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by
particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere
or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed
and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later,
the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the
universe.)
How
are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text?
What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution
of textuality?]
2.
Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state
where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the
blank is the site of introjection/projection.)
-blizzard
whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and
videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at
the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable
of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")
-recapitulation
through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on
blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing,
where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites.
A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing
survives the seething.)
-maps
of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels
15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north:
the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water
- dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described
early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense
of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces,
gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation
to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness
_do?_.)
3.
Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:
-multiverse
(Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of
communication with our own; there may always be limits
to
cosmological observation.)
-economic
exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I
think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic
surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle
accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and
it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe
might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy
cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going
to be energy limits.)
-Planck
constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck
length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate.
The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described
by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even
if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote,
a blank.)
4.
Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode
Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession
of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the
religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide
everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become
a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's
up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent
law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question
of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the
Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace,
then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there
is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and
structuration is cultural work.
5.
Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)
-playing
'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing
in the first-third positions.)
-playing
near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering
within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed
to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without
reference or intervalic structure.)
-mimetic
function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound
transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game,
beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes
a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the
phenomenology of the musical structure.)
-blank
(The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes
the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is
reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches
the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever;
infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards
higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening
device, that too can be surpassed.)
(I
think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with
Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise
at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which
are available online.)
6.
In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there
are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension
beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise
without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy
of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms
of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always
surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How
does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?
7.
At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which
process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate
within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform
information. The suites themselves are always
transforming;
they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent,
they might be considered closed circulations within
potential
wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure,
and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases.
All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart;
all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case
is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable
that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that
anything might be said.
