WEIRD! (pdf)
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
This is a link to a paper which explores how the fact that the majority of scientific studies are often carried out on WEIRD people may lead to results that do not apply to the great portion of humanity that is not WEIRD.
August 29, 2010
Asteriod orbits plus discovery dates
I like the impression given by this video - that these asteroids are coming into existence as we discover them.
~AND~
My favorite missions:
KEPLER - searches for planets like Earth.
SETI Quest - allows you to code or otherwise design pattern recognition devices and search their radio telescope data for evidence of alien life.
August 28, 2010
Souvenirs for Invisible City Audio Tours
I have been working on a project about MacArthur BART Station for the Invisible City Audio Tour of the area entitled "Heliography," which you can download onto your mpthree playing device and enjoy while taking an informative and edjucational walking tour. Check out the tour website! No, really do - some very cool people have put a lot of work into making it.
The art project I've been working on consists of two parts. First is a 16 minute video, a preview of which is below.
The video will be on display at (websiteless?) "Keys that Fit" Space near the 23rd St Gallery conglomeration in Oakland.
I have also made a couple dozen "souvenirs" that, along with souvenirs by many other visual artists, will be displayed and sold at the MacArthur BART Station stop of the tour next Friday, September 3 from 5 PM until dark (around 8 PM).
This project involved me spending one day riding the BART from 4:20 AM until after midnight to get the shots I needed, and digging through mounds of horrifically gross gutter trash looking for hidden treasure. Which I found. Well, my claim is that this trash is now treasure. But come judge for yourselves...
<^> click to enlarge <^>
The objects that appear in these glasstop bins are the same that appear in the video.
So, please put next Friday's event on your calendar! Hope to see you there!
The art project I've been working on consists of two parts. First is a 16 minute video, a preview of which is below.
The video will be on display at (websiteless?) "Keys that Fit" Space near the 23rd St Gallery conglomeration in Oakland.
I have also made a couple dozen "souvenirs" that, along with souvenirs by many other visual artists, will be displayed and sold at the MacArthur BART Station stop of the tour next Friday, September 3 from 5 PM until dark (around 8 PM).
This project involved me spending one day riding the BART from 4:20 AM until after midnight to get the shots I needed, and digging through mounds of horrifically gross gutter trash looking for hidden treasure. Which I found. Well, my claim is that this trash is now treasure. But come judge for yourselves...
<^> click to enlarge <^>
The objects that appear in these glasstop bins are the same that appear in the video.
So, please put next Friday's event on your calendar! Hope to see you there!
August 27, 2010
August 26, 2010
Inside of vegetables
It's frustrating when you see that someone else has made something beautiful the way that you want to, but can't.
MRIs of vegetables.
I guess this just goes to show - you can't never see a poem as lovely as a tree or a cucumber. But these people are trying.
MRIs of vegetables.
I guess this just goes to show - you can't never see a poem as lovely as a tree or a cucumber. But these people are trying.
August 24, 2010
Nanotechnology - a word
My attempts to understand the role words play in the metaphysics of science continue. Follow along and read this critique of Nanotech by Scott Locklin.
Note that this essay could be interpreted as a critique about language. The argument is basically that nanotechnology is a buzzword associated with a sci-fi fantasy which is perpetuated in investor's minds as a way to source funding for work that would be otherwise indistinguishable from traditional chemistry and physics. The economic implications of poetics.
An artist must strive to become aware of the motivation for his interest in his subject of interest. Locklin seems interested in this as a way to improve science - to warn investors and scientists to avoid a subject that may be a waste of money and time. My motivation is to learn how truths are accepted when verifiable but independently meaningless experimental results are stitched together by a theory to add to the sum of human knowledge. To understand mind. Again, art parallels but does not directly contribute to goal oriented activity.
Note that I do not claim to be an expert in this area and can neither endorse nor discourage this viewpoint. Cause I'm too dumb! At least a quick read of the wikipedia entry on nanotech seems to support the basics of Locklin's arguement.
Note that this essay could be interpreted as a critique about language. The argument is basically that nanotechnology is a buzzword associated with a sci-fi fantasy which is perpetuated in investor's minds as a way to source funding for work that would be otherwise indistinguishable from traditional chemistry and physics. The economic implications of poetics.
An artist must strive to become aware of the motivation for his interest in his subject of interest. Locklin seems interested in this as a way to improve science - to warn investors and scientists to avoid a subject that may be a waste of money and time. My motivation is to learn how truths are accepted when verifiable but independently meaningless experimental results are stitched together by a theory to add to the sum of human knowledge. To understand mind. Again, art parallels but does not directly contribute to goal oriented activity.
Note that I do not claim to be an expert in this area and can neither endorse nor discourage this viewpoint. Cause I'm too dumb! At least a quick read of the wikipedia entry on nanotech seems to support the basics of Locklin's arguement.
August 23, 2010
Hakim Bey Decoheres
Hakim Bey, one of the most influential anarchist/utopian thinkers of the past generation and the author of the Temporary Autonomous Zone has written something that may relate to my quest to understand what the hell the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge people are actually saying (without reading a BOOK or actually trying). Interesting in that his claims are much more modest than one would expect, considering the polarizing topic; social implications of quantum theory.
Hakim Bey - Quantum Mechanics
Hakim Bey - Quantum Mechanics
impossible otherification
Studies of Weasels in the Wild* show that if you are reading this blog you have a slightly higher than usual chance of being the first human to contact extraterrestrial intelligence. That being so, you should probably at least scan this document.
AND
Listen to this COOL track:
AND
Listen to this COOL track:
August 22, 2010
ongoing acute ontology crisis
Text field.
Cleaning mildew from the back porch and the shower. Why is it wet and pink the shower, and dry and black on the porch?
Why does it take so much energy and willpower to do the simplest things? I have suffered from a form of acute paranoia ever since I remember. I am a great believer in the actual truth of "the unconscious mind." There is something in me that edits out thoughts constantly, burying them in misdirection and static. This high energy static feeds the infernal voice engine that never shuts up, hovering over a black hole, stitches in the fabric go zzzzzt KER-PoOoOoOoW!
This brand of soap scum remover is a total rip-off. No scrub my ass! It's all about the elbow grease. Spotty infection, evidence of my neglect, the down-tuned, corrosive manifestation of the great dark editor upstairs. How can we escape the universal lazy arm laser eye? Make advertisements that advertise against advertising!
Here is why it is pink in the shower. Not mold, a bacteria, Serratia Marcescens.
What is the difference between uninformed thought and a mind that has access to "facts" instantly? Does being able to look something up discourage the active fantasy life, the ability of the mind to wander through pleasurable tunnels? It is this that is the most interesting question about how the mind has changed in these times. Wikipedia, and to an extent other sources of data such as documentary/instructional videos, image search, search engines - they are not the things at the envelope of new technology at all anymore - more like the foundations of all the changes that are currently happening. But in the historical scale of things, having such immediate access to "facts" is brand-new, and our culture, our art, has not understood/absorbed...
I will study minds that are a product of the net in a state of acute disconnection from the net - at an artificially-edited moment when the hunger for "facts" is strongly-felt, and frustrated. It is my home that this will be a late portrait of humanity, a portrait in thought-clouds of a wildly reeling massmind before the uprushing moment of complete connection, absorption, and sublimation.
The above paragraph is about the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge slash Animated Gif project. Poetry with footnotes, flights of fancy with GPS radio contact full body monitoring neuroscan zappers.
Molecule, atom, subatomic particles, quarks, strings. Nonono! The myth is of the hierarchy because this is what fits our baboon machinery, but the reality is an interdependent web of facts. Learning is a practice, instruction is an art. I wish to instruct. The documentary is the art of facts. The "facts" are out there in the world, but they are understood by out monkeyminds through metaphor, through grooming, through words, through pictures. Feynman says that words make us think that we know, but says his understanding goes beyond words. This is an interesting challenge to science, an almost mystical claim. I want to focus on the beautiful words. Show the images which are useful but not representational. Use two paths to two goals - the path of poetry and the path of art --- to the goal of showing the truth about the world and the goal of showing how we create the truth about the world.
Show earlier version; absorb, question, discuss, sketch, expand, edit, argue, wonder. The subterfuge of the hierarchy, the building of knowledge.
Cleaning mildew from the back porch and the shower. Why is it wet and pink the shower, and dry and black on the porch?
Why does it take so much energy and willpower to do the simplest things? I have suffered from a form of acute paranoia ever since I remember. I am a great believer in the actual truth of "the unconscious mind." There is something in me that edits out thoughts constantly, burying them in misdirection and static. This high energy static feeds the infernal voice engine that never shuts up, hovering over a black hole, stitches in the fabric go zzzzzt KER-PoOoOoOoW!
This brand of soap scum remover is a total rip-off. No scrub my ass! It's all about the elbow grease. Spotty infection, evidence of my neglect, the down-tuned, corrosive manifestation of the great dark editor upstairs. How can we escape the universal lazy arm laser eye? Make advertisements that advertise against advertising!
Here is why it is pink in the shower. Not mold, a bacteria, Serratia Marcescens.
What is the difference between uninformed thought and a mind that has access to "facts" instantly? Does being able to look something up discourage the active fantasy life, the ability of the mind to wander through pleasurable tunnels? It is this that is the most interesting question about how the mind has changed in these times. Wikipedia, and to an extent other sources of data such as documentary/instructional videos, image search, search engines - they are not the things at the envelope of new technology at all anymore - more like the foundations of all the changes that are currently happening. But in the historical scale of things, having such immediate access to "facts" is brand-new, and our culture, our art, has not understood/absorbed...
I will study minds that are a product of the net in a state of acute disconnection from the net - at an artificially-edited moment when the hunger for "facts" is strongly-felt, and frustrated. It is my home that this will be a late portrait of humanity, a portrait in thought-clouds of a wildly reeling massmind before the uprushing moment of complete connection, absorption, and sublimation.
The above paragraph is about the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge slash Animated Gif project. Poetry with footnotes, flights of fancy with GPS radio contact full body monitoring neuroscan zappers.
Molecule, atom, subatomic particles, quarks, strings. Nonono! The myth is of the hierarchy because this is what fits our baboon machinery, but the reality is an interdependent web of facts. Learning is a practice, instruction is an art. I wish to instruct. The documentary is the art of facts. The "facts" are out there in the world, but they are understood by out monkeyminds through metaphor, through grooming, through words, through pictures. Feynman says that words make us think that we know, but says his understanding goes beyond words. This is an interesting challenge to science, an almost mystical claim. I want to focus on the beautiful words. Show the images which are useful but not representational. Use two paths to two goals - the path of poetry and the path of art --- to the goal of showing the truth about the world and the goal of showing how we create the truth about the world.
Show earlier version; absorb, question, discuss, sketch, expand, edit, argue, wonder. The subterfuge of the hierarchy, the building of knowledge.
August 21, 2010
On understanding
Physics, my friend, is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And common sense? It is that which is understood by an intelligence using senses no different from those of a baboon. Such an intelligence wishes to know the world in terms that apply to its terrestrial, biological niche. But the world—outside that niche, that incubator of sapient apes—has properties that one cannot take in hand, see, sniff, gnaw, listen to, and in this way appropriate.
pp 90
pp 90
Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem
I've been reading Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem, of Poland. Lem is the author of "Solaris," the Tarkovsky film of which is one of my favorites (the remake is something too). This was published in 1989, which means that it concludes the very last chapter of socialist sci-fi from behind the iron curtain.
This tradition is important because it represents the largest pool of alternative views of what role science could play in society and in the life of the spirit - alternative to the ascendant western capitalist view which needs to be rethought (although, due to the insidious, everpresent viewpoints of fundamentalist neocon cryptofascists, I always feel the need to insert that caveat that rethinking doesn't mean tearing up and throwing away). Not that this book explores this idea directly, but the FEELING of these imaginative hypotheticals of future/technology/alien as projected from 1988 Poland are very different from the American hypotheticals I grew up with.
Fiasco starts out pretty slow. Real slow. It really begins with Lem's fantastic descriptions of Titan landscapes, which explore the nature of... nature. Like Solaris, it explores an anthropomorphized alien world as a pretext for exploring possibilities of the alien spirit, mixing the fear of the unknown with the fascination of the new. (Vivomorphism? - 0 hits)
The Roembden Crater had cracked, once, at the northeast on its large circle. Then a glacier of frozen gas crept through the gap. In the following millennia, the glacier retreated, leaving on that furrowed terrain mineral deposits—the delight and vexation of the crystallographers and other, no less dumbfounded scientists. It was indeed a sight to see. The pilot (now operator of a strider) faced a sloping plain ringed by distant mountains and strewn with... with what, exactly? It was as if the gates of unearthly museums had been flung open and the remains of decrepit monsters had been dumped in a cascade of bones. Or were these the aborted, insane blueprints for monsters, each one more fantastic than the last? The shattered fragments of creatures that only some accident had kept from participating in the cycles of life? He saw enormous ribs, or they could have been the skeletons of spiders whose tibiae eagerly gripped blood-speckled, bulbous eggs; mandibles that clung to each other with crystal fangs; the platelike vertebrae of spinal columns, as if spilled out in coin rolls from the bodies of prehistoric reptiles after their decay.
This eerie scene was best viewed, in all its wealth, from the height of the Digla. The area near Roembden was called, by the people there, the Cemetery—and in fact the landscape seemed a battlefield of ancient struggles, a burial ground that was an exuberant tangle of rotting skeletons. Parvis saw the smooth surfaces of joints that could have emerged from the carcass of some mountainous monstrosity. One could even make out on them the reddish, bloodclotted places where the tendons had been attached. Nearby were draped skin coverings, with bits of hair that the wind gently combed and lay in changing waves. Through the mist loomed more many-storied arthropods, gnawing through one another even in death. From faceted, mirrorlike blocks thrusted antlers, also gleaming, among a spill of femurs and skulls of a dirty-white color. He saw this, realizing that the images that arose in his brain, the macabre associations, were only an illusion, a trick of the eyes shocked by the strangeness. If he dug methodically in his memory, he would probably remember which compounds yielded—in a billion-year chemistry—precisely these forms that, stained with hematites, impersonated bloody bones, or that went beyond the modest accomplishments of terrestrial asbestos to create an iridescent fluff as of the most delicate fleece. But such sober analysis would have no effect on what the eyes saw.
For the very reason that here nothing served a purpose—not ever, not to anyone—and that here no guillotine of evolution was in play, amputating from every genotype whatever did not contribute to survival, nature, constrained neither by the life she bore nor by the death she inflicted, could achieve liberation, displaying a prodigality characteristic of herself, a limitless wastefulness, a brute magnificence that was useless, an eternal power of creation without a goal, without a need, without a meaning. This truth, gradually penetrating the observer, was more unsettling than the impression that he was witness to a cosmic mimicry of death, or that these were in fact the mortal remains of unknown beings that lay beneath the stormy horizon. So one had to turn upside down one's natural way of thinking, which was capable of going only in one direction: these shapes were similar to bones, ribs, skulls, and fangs not because they had once served life—they never had—but only because the skeletons of terrestrial vertebrates, and their fur, and the chitinous armor of the insects, and the shells of the mollusks all possessed the same architectonics, the same symmetry and grace, since Nature could produce this just as well where neither life nor life's purposefulness had ever existed, or ever would.
I had to sign up for this book themed social site called scribd to read this book. I don't understand the site yet, but a bunch of people are "following" me on it. Whoever came up with THAT terminology has never had to deal with acute paranoia, that's for sure.
I'm not DONE reading this book yet - so wait for part 2. In the meantime, since you've already seen Tarkovsky's "Solaris," I'm pleased to point out that "Сталкер", my personal favorite, is on youtube in its entirety;
What is it that is exciting about this school of thought? Can you put your finger on it?
This tradition is important because it represents the largest pool of alternative views of what role science could play in society and in the life of the spirit - alternative to the ascendant western capitalist view which needs to be rethought (although, due to the insidious, everpresent viewpoints of fundamentalist neocon cryptofascists, I always feel the need to insert that caveat that rethinking doesn't mean tearing up and throwing away). Not that this book explores this idea directly, but the FEELING of these imaginative hypotheticals of future/technology/alien as projected from 1988 Poland are very different from the American hypotheticals I grew up with.
Fiasco starts out pretty slow. Real slow. It really begins with Lem's fantastic descriptions of Titan landscapes, which explore the nature of... nature. Like Solaris, it explores an anthropomorphized alien world as a pretext for exploring possibilities of the alien spirit, mixing the fear of the unknown with the fascination of the new. (Vivomorphism? - 0 hits)
The Roembden Crater had cracked, once, at the northeast on its large circle. Then a glacier of frozen gas crept through the gap. In the following millennia, the glacier retreated, leaving on that furrowed terrain mineral deposits—the delight and vexation of the crystallographers and other, no less dumbfounded scientists. It was indeed a sight to see. The pilot (now operator of a strider) faced a sloping plain ringed by distant mountains and strewn with... with what, exactly? It was as if the gates of unearthly museums had been flung open and the remains of decrepit monsters had been dumped in a cascade of bones. Or were these the aborted, insane blueprints for monsters, each one more fantastic than the last? The shattered fragments of creatures that only some accident had kept from participating in the cycles of life? He saw enormous ribs, or they could have been the skeletons of spiders whose tibiae eagerly gripped blood-speckled, bulbous eggs; mandibles that clung to each other with crystal fangs; the platelike vertebrae of spinal columns, as if spilled out in coin rolls from the bodies of prehistoric reptiles after their decay.
This eerie scene was best viewed, in all its wealth, from the height of the Digla. The area near Roembden was called, by the people there, the Cemetery—and in fact the landscape seemed a battlefield of ancient struggles, a burial ground that was an exuberant tangle of rotting skeletons. Parvis saw the smooth surfaces of joints that could have emerged from the carcass of some mountainous monstrosity. One could even make out on them the reddish, bloodclotted places where the tendons had been attached. Nearby were draped skin coverings, with bits of hair that the wind gently combed and lay in changing waves. Through the mist loomed more many-storied arthropods, gnawing through one another even in death. From faceted, mirrorlike blocks thrusted antlers, also gleaming, among a spill of femurs and skulls of a dirty-white color. He saw this, realizing that the images that arose in his brain, the macabre associations, were only an illusion, a trick of the eyes shocked by the strangeness. If he dug methodically in his memory, he would probably remember which compounds yielded—in a billion-year chemistry—precisely these forms that, stained with hematites, impersonated bloody bones, or that went beyond the modest accomplishments of terrestrial asbestos to create an iridescent fluff as of the most delicate fleece. But such sober analysis would have no effect on what the eyes saw.
For the very reason that here nothing served a purpose—not ever, not to anyone—and that here no guillotine of evolution was in play, amputating from every genotype whatever did not contribute to survival, nature, constrained neither by the life she bore nor by the death she inflicted, could achieve liberation, displaying a prodigality characteristic of herself, a limitless wastefulness, a brute magnificence that was useless, an eternal power of creation without a goal, without a need, without a meaning. This truth, gradually penetrating the observer, was more unsettling than the impression that he was witness to a cosmic mimicry of death, or that these were in fact the mortal remains of unknown beings that lay beneath the stormy horizon. So one had to turn upside down one's natural way of thinking, which was capable of going only in one direction: these shapes were similar to bones, ribs, skulls, and fangs not because they had once served life—they never had—but only because the skeletons of terrestrial vertebrates, and their fur, and the chitinous armor of the insects, and the shells of the mollusks all possessed the same architectonics, the same symmetry and grace, since Nature could produce this just as well where neither life nor life's purposefulness had ever existed, or ever would.
I had to sign up for this book themed social site called scribd to read this book. I don't understand the site yet, but a bunch of people are "following" me on it. Whoever came up with THAT terminology has never had to deal with acute paranoia, that's for sure.
I'm not DONE reading this book yet - so wait for part 2. In the meantime, since you've already seen Tarkovsky's "Solaris," I'm pleased to point out that "Сталкер", my personal favorite, is on youtube in its entirety;
What is it that is exciting about this school of thought? Can you put your finger on it?
August 19, 2010
Henry's co-inky-dink.
Henry, from Post Extended Pizza Network dot notreally, posted a video;
This really really looks like the video I'm making for Rose's show that I shot last X-mas of my family's hands. The video that was represented but not exemplified by "AND THE FAR SIDE IS JUST SO AWESOME":
I never will understand why this video just doesn't TAKE OFF!
Anyway - I've been thinking about this hands idea for so long I forgot I didn't just OWN them.
Here's what I do for a living; I just set up my laptop so that I could put my hands under it so I could PLAY ALONG with the Gestures video. To see what it felt like. I could tell you, and maybe I will, but not for free.
I'm interested in flirting with the so called rubber hand illusion, as explained here. Hmmmmm...
I'm so ob-sest with the video I've been working on!
Gestures from João Machado on Vimeo.
This really really looks like the video I'm making for Rose's show that I shot last X-mas of my family's hands. The video that was represented but not exemplified by "AND THE FAR SIDE IS JUST SO AWESOME":
I never will understand why this video just doesn't TAKE OFF!
Anyway - I've been thinking about this hands idea for so long I forgot I didn't just OWN them.
Here's what I do for a living; I just set up my laptop so that I could put my hands under it so I could PLAY ALONG with the Gestures video. To see what it felt like. I could tell you, and maybe I will, but not for free.
I'm interested in flirting with the so called rubber hand illusion, as explained here. Hmmmmm...
I'm so ob-sest with the video I've been working on!
A video jig. A video show.
It took me a whole day to prepare this jig for a shot I needed. It worked, but it was a wittle wobbly... Can you tell what's going on here?
As explained in a previous post I've been thinking about how to present little humble objects.
OK - Here's the next clue: I used it to get the following shot:
I've been working on this video for a show I'm going to be in - an audio tour of Oakland. Here's the link:
Invisible Cities Audio Tour.
The video for the show is going to have this shot in it, but it's ENTIRELY DIFFERENT...
The opening is on Friday, September 3rd in the evening. Get out at the MacArthur BART, enjoy the audio tour and buy some souvenirs!
As explained in a previous post I've been thinking about how to present little humble objects.
OK - Here's the next clue: I used it to get the following shot:
I've been working on this video for a show I'm going to be in - an audio tour of Oakland. Here's the link:
Invisible Cities Audio Tour.
The video for the show is going to have this shot in it, but it's ENTIRELY DIFFERENT...
The opening is on Friday, September 3rd in the evening. Get out at the MacArthur BART, enjoy the audio tour and buy some souvenirs!
Sum Skadoodles
These aren't brilliant - I'm presenting them for their normalcy - as a record. Sketching is a process of seeing into. I can see into these, but they aren't ready to present yet, so they might not be that much fun to see into for you. That's why I'm presenting them - to make a point. Same old story...
<^> Clik to make big <^>
August 16, 2010
Philosophy of Science
Funny.
In the post below on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) I included an excellent movie about Richard Feynman (I'm sure you watched it, imaginary witnesses - you have all the time in the world...).
I have been reading about the Philosophy of Science as a way of contextualizing the SSK readings I've been doing. I came across the following Feynman quote - "Philosophy of Science is about as useful to scientists as Ornithology is to birds."
This is both right and wrong. I'm not done my reading yet, so I can't explain how. I will never be able to EXPLAIN with words because I'm not smart in that kind of way. But I think I understand in some way and I want to make work about it. So even if I don't understand, well, I'm still DOING something, still CREATING something.
As is typical, I am discovering in my readings that I am only interested in certain parts of the Philosophy of Science. Now, maybe it's just that nobody has made any content that communicates the ideas in a way I can understand, but I only jive to the parts of PoS that abut my interest in cognitive linguistics and ontology in general.
Why do I do so much research? Why do I read so much? I don't really understand or remember that much. Is it just an excuse not to make work? Is it just my form of escape? Does all this reading have a negative effect on my artwork? Am I becoming to analytical? Is all this nervous electrical activity really doing anything but frying my heart and making me into a mechanical monster? Or, let's be honest - I'd LIKE to think that the ideas show up in the work. But in all honesty, maybe all this reading does not have much of an effect on the work and is just bullshit I put out there to make people believe I know what I'm talking about, when I'm really just interested in pretty shapes and color and movement and spacing out and drawing and generally not dealing with reality?
In any case, I had a bit of a frustration today with some video footage I shot. It's too dark, basically, and I won't admit it to myself. Or rather, I'm trying to use the darkness as a THING by using the color corrector and time remapping as tools to communicate something about the significance of these objects I'm working with. I was experimenting with a certain look and I was into it, and then suddenly I wasn't. You know how it is. Suddenly it stopped being fun and just seemed like a big chore. Maybe my spirit is just beat. It sees something and starts singing, and then I sometimes forget the words. Sometimes I think it doesn't matter - even if I forget the exact words, something of the melody and feel are imparted in the work. But this is a world in which one does get tired, does grow older. The actions of the self are such a crude, low-fidelity kind of tool.
Jeez I sound like a jerk.
That's cool. Nobody reads this blog. Anyway, I've been watching this video. Or rather I should say that this video represents one node of return in my research which includes all kinds of things my computer can fetch me while I sit here going crazy. I guess this video is interesting, or maybe it's a complete waste of time. I can't fucking watch it all the way through, but I think it would be cool if I could, and if I could think strait, which I can't.
In the post below on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) I included an excellent movie about Richard Feynman (I'm sure you watched it, imaginary witnesses - you have all the time in the world...).
I have been reading about the Philosophy of Science as a way of contextualizing the SSK readings I've been doing. I came across the following Feynman quote - "Philosophy of Science is about as useful to scientists as Ornithology is to birds."
This is both right and wrong. I'm not done my reading yet, so I can't explain how. I will never be able to EXPLAIN with words because I'm not smart in that kind of way. But I think I understand in some way and I want to make work about it. So even if I don't understand, well, I'm still DOING something, still CREATING something.
As is typical, I am discovering in my readings that I am only interested in certain parts of the Philosophy of Science. Now, maybe it's just that nobody has made any content that communicates the ideas in a way I can understand, but I only jive to the parts of PoS that abut my interest in cognitive linguistics and ontology in general.
Why do I do so much research? Why do I read so much? I don't really understand or remember that much. Is it just an excuse not to make work? Is it just my form of escape? Does all this reading have a negative effect on my artwork? Am I becoming to analytical? Is all this nervous electrical activity really doing anything but frying my heart and making me into a mechanical monster? Or, let's be honest - I'd LIKE to think that the ideas show up in the work. But in all honesty, maybe all this reading does not have much of an effect on the work and is just bullshit I put out there to make people believe I know what I'm talking about, when I'm really just interested in pretty shapes and color and movement and spacing out and drawing and generally not dealing with reality?
In any case, I had a bit of a frustration today with some video footage I shot. It's too dark, basically, and I won't admit it to myself. Or rather, I'm trying to use the darkness as a THING by using the color corrector and time remapping as tools to communicate something about the significance of these objects I'm working with. I was experimenting with a certain look and I was into it, and then suddenly I wasn't. You know how it is. Suddenly it stopped being fun and just seemed like a big chore. Maybe my spirit is just beat. It sees something and starts singing, and then I sometimes forget the words. Sometimes I think it doesn't matter - even if I forget the exact words, something of the melody and feel are imparted in the work. But this is a world in which one does get tired, does grow older. The actions of the self are such a crude, low-fidelity kind of tool.
Jeez I sound like a jerk.
That's cool. Nobody reads this blog. Anyway, I've been watching this video. Or rather I should say that this video represents one node of return in my research which includes all kinds of things my computer can fetch me while I sit here going crazy. I guess this video is interesting, or maybe it's a complete waste of time. I can't fucking watch it all the way through, but I think it would be cool if I could, and if I could think strait, which I can't.
August 15, 2010
August 14, 2010
Self-Archaeology, slight return
I have been spending more than the usual amount of time searching for treasure trash in the streets recently, as part of an art project I'm working on. More on that later (a LOT more), but WAIT, invisible audience! Before you are bored away, let me explain why trash is fascinating. The image below is from the NYTimes Science section - it's a key piece of evidence in a new theory that humans evolved the ability to use tools hundred of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. And what is it? Caveman fast food detritus - a bone with some scratches on it. Sometimes, when I'm feeling vertiginous, I feel as though every humble object that is altered, touched, or even enters one's field is endowed with endless significance. A feeling that fades, thank god, because how could one ever FUNCTION? But this state of consciousness is actualized through the filter of fossilization. This bone functions as a tenuous connection to beings who lived and died and were swallowed by time.
That makes me think of a project that I've never really shown, but that I keep coming back to. In fact, now that I think about it, both projects I am working on these days are direct descendants of these images. So check it out:
Self Archaeology.
^ klik 2 makk BIG ^
That makes me think of a project that I've never really shown, but that I keep coming back to. In fact, now that I think about it, both projects I am working on these days are direct descendants of these images. So check it out:
Self Archaeology.
^ klik 2 makk BIG ^
August 12, 2010
August 11, 2010
The enemy of greatness
One slippery evening in Beijing I encountered an artist I'd previously met named Saint Clair Cemin. Earlier, as a joke, he'd told me that he made art about - something ridiculous like "snoring" or something. So I approached him and said something like, "So tell me about "snoring." And he was like, "what?" And I was like, "You said you made art about snoring." And he was like, "No no. I make art about... THE UNIVERSE." Here you have to imagine that his voice got all Carl Sagany, with added reverb, while he painted an invisible arc across the starry night sky with his outstretched hand. Nice magic, Saint Clair!
I am thinking of a project that has been lying in the back of my "to do" closet for some time, and probably will for a while longer. I am fascinated by particle physics because it is the hardest of hard sciences, and yet also represents a delicately constructed card house of theoretical interpretation of data that leads to some conclusions that are rather counter-intuitive. Yet it shares with the not-so-hard science of artmaking the aspiration to describe the mysteries of the universe.
The way that science is taught in school shares very little with the process of doing science. Doing science is a process of playfully exploring the world, of intuiting beyond the limits of knowledge and then experimenting to prove or disprove this intuitive knowledge. I see this as very similar to the process of making art. The way science is often taught (despite the very cool emphasis on lab work) is authoritarian and teaches you not to challenge your assumptions. Of course, science feels as though it needs to be on the defensive these days - to counter the ignorant and corrosive ideas of religious fundamentalists and credulous new age mumbo jumbo (the category in which I think I may be unjustly placed).
I am fascinated with science videos. If I am accused of being hypnotized by "woo," my reply is that the majority of science videos make clear efforts to make science appear like a new age religion of sorts. The dramatic and fruity dialogue, the psychedelic colors of the CG imagery, the ever cheesier sci-fi synth washes... All this combined with an authoritarian tone. Yuck!
I would like to make a video where I talk to physicists about how to visualize the subatomic world. The video would be a record of how the visualizations were arrived at. The interest is that creating an objective image of the subatomic is an impossible task - just as art is an impossible task. Our ways of seeing break down at these scales, as do our concrete theoretical interpretations. The discussion would therefore reflect subjective decisions and include unknowns and unknowables. This would therefore be as much a video about art as physics. Just as, in truth, these estranged topics are intertwined.
THIS is the kind of video I am fighting against - a great example of authoritarian modernism - the opposite of science.
OMG - this narration and delivery is ridiculous;
In the following video Richard Feynman agrees with me. 10 part documentary worth watching sometime.
Of course all this relates to the current project with sciency images, but it is something different. In the current project, as exemplified by the video below, I am actually flirting with the new-agey subtext in these images, as a way to critically engage with it. A process of deconstruction. Whereas I feel like the video I am here imagining would be a process of rebuilding.
I am thinking of a project that has been lying in the back of my "to do" closet for some time, and probably will for a while longer. I am fascinated by particle physics because it is the hardest of hard sciences, and yet also represents a delicately constructed card house of theoretical interpretation of data that leads to some conclusions that are rather counter-intuitive. Yet it shares with the not-so-hard science of artmaking the aspiration to describe the mysteries of the universe.
The way that science is taught in school shares very little with the process of doing science. Doing science is a process of playfully exploring the world, of intuiting beyond the limits of knowledge and then experimenting to prove or disprove this intuitive knowledge. I see this as very similar to the process of making art. The way science is often taught (despite the very cool emphasis on lab work) is authoritarian and teaches you not to challenge your assumptions. Of course, science feels as though it needs to be on the defensive these days - to counter the ignorant and corrosive ideas of religious fundamentalists and credulous new age mumbo jumbo (the category in which I think I may be unjustly placed).
I am fascinated with science videos. If I am accused of being hypnotized by "woo," my reply is that the majority of science videos make clear efforts to make science appear like a new age religion of sorts. The dramatic and fruity dialogue, the psychedelic colors of the CG imagery, the ever cheesier sci-fi synth washes... All this combined with an authoritarian tone. Yuck!
I would like to make a video where I talk to physicists about how to visualize the subatomic world. The video would be a record of how the visualizations were arrived at. The interest is that creating an objective image of the subatomic is an impossible task - just as art is an impossible task. Our ways of seeing break down at these scales, as do our concrete theoretical interpretations. The discussion would therefore reflect subjective decisions and include unknowns and unknowables. This would therefore be as much a video about art as physics. Just as, in truth, these estranged topics are intertwined.
THIS is the kind of video I am fighting against - a great example of authoritarian modernism - the opposite of science.
OMG - this narration and delivery is ridiculous;
In the following video Richard Feynman agrees with me. 10 part documentary worth watching sometime.
Of course all this relates to the current project with sciency images, but it is something different. In the current project, as exemplified by the video below, I am actually flirting with the new-agey subtext in these images, as a way to critically engage with it. A process of deconstruction. Whereas I feel like the video I am here imagining would be a process of rebuilding.
August 1, 2010
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
As evinced by this previous post, I am making a piece with animated images of scientific models and diagrams. Much of this project comes from my fascination with the beauty of these forms - I always allow myself to yield to the persuasive power of form. But one cannot spend months working with forms and not start to build up a theoretical framework to explain why one is spending one's time with these particular forms.
I have been having trouble blogging about this topic partially because it is so important to me, and partially because I am in the middle of creating this project. My research is unfinished, my conclusions not yet (and hopefully never) fully drawn. Even the form of the final work is still very much open and changeable. So it seems that every time I sit down that I write a completely different set of ideas, an unfinished and wandering essay. I am resolved to share these wanderings, which will perhaps show an evolution of the theoretical framework behind this project.
I should offer a host of caveats, excuses and escape hatches for myself. I cannot say for certain which comes first in the creation of a project - the vision or the reason for making it. Indeed, there is no hard beginning to a project - I recall discussions with my father I had as a child that inspired fantasies which may only now be coming to fruition. Even the specific process of collecting animated gif images for this project could be traced back a decade or more. I also reserve the right to say contradictory and sometimes unintelligent things about my own work which I may later disown and later regain. I want to reject all authority over the interpretation of the finished work while still maintaining that the research I am presenting is relevant.
Now that you have been warned, I will state that one major way I have been framing my approach to this topic is by exploring the discipline of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK). I am not prepared to sum up this topic here, but you can refer to the following;
Here is a playlist of videos on youtube that are related to SSK.
Here is the wikipedia article on SSK.
I am putting myself in a very weak position by posting a playlist that incorporates more than its fair share of hokey new age spiritualism. I say this because saying that SSK is controversial is an understatement - it is a topic that probes an open wound in Western thought and has a bitter history. However, artists, unlike philosophers, scientists and cultural theorists, are not interested in creating unassailable arguments and watertight theories. The fact that we operate in a world where art objects have become tokens that theorists can use in their elaborate mind games allows artists new freedoms; instead of conceiving of an art object as a positive expression of a philosophy or as a statement of the artist's opinion we can create a work that functions as a question. A work positively conceived as a token for a productive mind game should function as a foil to test ideas out on, a field in which a new game can be played. Such an object has the strength of submission, the power of the ying rather than the yang, the soft blade of grass that weathers the storm that topples the rigid oak.
SSK is a ripe field for exploration through the creation of art objects because it is an unresolved battlefield, a scarred landscape in which the words of the partisans tend to perpetuate entrenched views. By making a work that explores this issue I aim to open up a new area of play, an area that, while not unconnected to the history of the issue, offers the possibility of a fresh way of thinking.
A big fat boast that! One aspect of thinking about why one makes work is a process of building oneself up, creating grandiose reasons to continue to work in the face of the yawning void of meaninglessness. But I claim this void to be my partner in the process of creation. If I could provide a URL that answered all my questions, if I could even write a pithy essay explaining why these images fascinate me, then I put forth that there would be no reason to create the work. Art is an exploration of ideas that may not even count as ideas, motivated by as-yet unnamed emotions on the brink of despair. Part of the fascination of following the laborious route of theory is the joy of shrugging it all off and returning home to the physical pleasure of the senses, of being entranced by seeing.
I have been having trouble blogging about this topic partially because it is so important to me, and partially because I am in the middle of creating this project. My research is unfinished, my conclusions not yet (and hopefully never) fully drawn. Even the form of the final work is still very much open and changeable. So it seems that every time I sit down that I write a completely different set of ideas, an unfinished and wandering essay. I am resolved to share these wanderings, which will perhaps show an evolution of the theoretical framework behind this project.
I should offer a host of caveats, excuses and escape hatches for myself. I cannot say for certain which comes first in the creation of a project - the vision or the reason for making it. Indeed, there is no hard beginning to a project - I recall discussions with my father I had as a child that inspired fantasies which may only now be coming to fruition. Even the specific process of collecting animated gif images for this project could be traced back a decade or more. I also reserve the right to say contradictory and sometimes unintelligent things about my own work which I may later disown and later regain. I want to reject all authority over the interpretation of the finished work while still maintaining that the research I am presenting is relevant.
Now that you have been warned, I will state that one major way I have been framing my approach to this topic is by exploring the discipline of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK). I am not prepared to sum up this topic here, but you can refer to the following;
Here is a playlist of videos on youtube that are related to SSK.
Here is the wikipedia article on SSK.
I am putting myself in a very weak position by posting a playlist that incorporates more than its fair share of hokey new age spiritualism. I say this because saying that SSK is controversial is an understatement - it is a topic that probes an open wound in Western thought and has a bitter history. However, artists, unlike philosophers, scientists and cultural theorists, are not interested in creating unassailable arguments and watertight theories. The fact that we operate in a world where art objects have become tokens that theorists can use in their elaborate mind games allows artists new freedoms; instead of conceiving of an art object as a positive expression of a philosophy or as a statement of the artist's opinion we can create a work that functions as a question. A work positively conceived as a token for a productive mind game should function as a foil to test ideas out on, a field in which a new game can be played. Such an object has the strength of submission, the power of the ying rather than the yang, the soft blade of grass that weathers the storm that topples the rigid oak.
SSK is a ripe field for exploration through the creation of art objects because it is an unresolved battlefield, a scarred landscape in which the words of the partisans tend to perpetuate entrenched views. By making a work that explores this issue I aim to open up a new area of play, an area that, while not unconnected to the history of the issue, offers the possibility of a fresh way of thinking.
A big fat boast that! One aspect of thinking about why one makes work is a process of building oneself up, creating grandiose reasons to continue to work in the face of the yawning void of meaninglessness. But I claim this void to be my partner in the process of creation. If I could provide a URL that answered all my questions, if I could even write a pithy essay explaining why these images fascinate me, then I put forth that there would be no reason to create the work. Art is an exploration of ideas that may not even count as ideas, motivated by as-yet unnamed emotions on the brink of despair. Part of the fascination of following the laborious route of theory is the joy of shrugging it all off and returning home to the physical pleasure of the senses, of being entranced by seeing.
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