You can download it over here (pdf, 5mb)
It's in Dutch with a summary in English and it's called:
Representation of a representation:
Vertaalslagen van de fragmentatie(r)evolutie
dinsdag 16 augustus 2011
Supportive Narrative
So, finally it's finished!
You can download it over here (pdf, 5mb)
It's in Dutch with a summary in English and it's called:
Representation of a representation:
Vertaalslagen van de fragmentatie(r)evolutie
You can download it over here (pdf, 5mb)
It's in Dutch with a summary in English and it's called:
Representation of a representation:
Vertaalslagen van de fragmentatie(r)evolutie
maandag 4 april 2011
Ganzfeld effect
Okay, I just did this test, as I wanted to see that when we experience wholeness with our senses, our brain puts that wholeness in to fragments still. I just used a blank paper as a mask, the buzzing sound of my computer as a background noise, a white halogen lamp above my head and simply laid down. Soon I began seeing things: patterns, geometrical forms, different colours, various shapes that almost became figurative, and it was all moving. So I figured it is an easy way to start hallucinating.
Last year I was in Unna, Germany, encountered this work by James Turrell, inspired by Ganzfeld and felt a little betrayed, because I wanted to make something like that; sometime before I got inspired by a snowy landscape. The work was very intruiging though. So today I started searching on how to create such an effect in different ways. I also encountered the work Zee by Kurt Hentschlaeger: a space full of dense fog with stroboscopic light. It was exposed on STRP a couple of years ago, and while I was there at the time, I remember it being closed for the day. Anyway, today I found out it all traces back to the Ganzfeld effect that I just experienced.
From Wiki:
Last year I was in Unna, Germany, encountered this work by James Turrell, inspired by Ganzfeld and felt a little betrayed, because I wanted to make something like that; sometime before I got inspired by a snowy landscape. The work was very intruiging though. So today I started searching on how to create such an effect in different ways. I also encountered the work Zee by Kurt Hentschlaeger: a space full of dense fog with stroboscopic light. It was exposed on STRP a couple of years ago, and while I was there at the time, I remember it being closed for the day. Anyway, today I found out it all traces back to the Ganzfeld effect that I just experienced.
From Wiki:
In the 1930s, research by psychologist Wolfgang Metzger established that when subjects gazed into a featureless field of vision they consistently hallucinated and their electroencephalograms changed.
The Ganzfeld effect is the result of the brain amplifying neural noise in order to look for the missing visual signals. The noise is interpreted in the higher visual cortex, and gives rise to hallucinations. This is similar to dream production because of the brain's state of sensory deprivation during sleep.
The Ganzfeld effect has been reported since ancient times. The adepts of Pythagoras retreated to pitch black caves to receive wisdom through their visions[2], known as the prisoner's cinema. Miners trapped by accidents in mines frequently reported hallucinations, visions and seeing ghosts when they were in the pitch dark for days. Arctic explorers seeing nothing but featureless landscape of white snow for a long time also reported hallucinations and an altered state of mind.
The effect is a component of a Ganzfeld experiment, a technique used in the field of parapsychology.
The artist James Turrell (partly inspired by clear blue skies) has created many such "Ganzfelds" throughout his oeuvre.
zondag 3 april 2011
De transparante samenleving?
Stukken uit "De transparante samenleving" van Gianni Vattimo.
Een alomvattend historisch verhaal als 'de geschiedenis' blijkt niet meer dan een ideologische illusie. Verschillende standpunten werden ingenomen. Modern-zijn wordt zo niet langer als richtinggevende waarde beschouwd. Het postmoderne denken deed daarmee van zich spreken.
Ontheemding blijkt de grond te vormen van de huidige esthetische ervaring. (Walter Benjamin typeert de contemporaine kunst aan de hand van de shockervaring.) De angstervaring is een ervaring van ontheemding. Het accent is op de voortdurende verandering komen te liggen.
De opkomst van de massamedie veroorzaakte een communicatieve chaos en een ontologische ontwrichting. Media waren doorslaggevend in het ontbinden van gecentreerde perspectieven (het verhaal van de geschiedenis, het geloof in de vooruitgang.) In het alomtegenwoordige mediatisering van het leven demonstreerden zij dat het bestaan van een enkelvoudige of werkelijke wereld niet meer dan een fabel was.
De postmoderne esthetische ervaring is er een van een gemeenschap die een onomkeerbare pluralisering heeft ondergaan en die zich in het ideaal van de heterotopie articuleert.
Het 'onstructureren' geeft gestalte aan een nieuwe ervaring van menselijkheid, een postmodern emancipatie-ideaal dat gebaseerd kan worden op een bewustzijn van pluraliteit. In een onophoudelijk proces van verwijzingen naar andere mogelijke werelden worden de grenzen van de leefwereld voortdurend verlegd. Het subject weet vanwege deze vermenigvuldiging van (leef)stijlen en de daarmee samenhandende esthetisering van de ervaring geconfronteerd met een werkelijkheid waarin er altijd meerdere interpretatieve keuzen zullen bestaan. Het subject ontwikkeld zich door de relativiteit en contingentie van een 'zwak denken'.
Het begrip postmodern heeft iets te maken met het feit dat de samenleving er nu een is met een wijd verbreide communicatie, de samenleving van de massamedia.
Het gevoel dat de moderniteit wezenlijk voorbij is. Moderniteit gaat uit van een algemeen perspectief, waarin, zoals ten tijde van de Verlichting, de menselijke geschiedenis gezien wordt als een voortgaand proces van emancipatie, als een steeds betere realisering van het menselijke ideaal. Enkel als er de geschiedenis is kan men spreken van vooruitgang.
Het blijkt niet langer mogelijk de geschiedenis als eenheid te beschouwen, hierdoor eindigt de moderniteit. Een dergelijke opvatting van de geschiedenis vereist het bestaan van een centrum waaromheen de gebeurtenissen verzameld en geordend zijn. De unitaire geschiedenis is een voorstelling van het verleden die de heersende groepen en sociale klassen hebben geconstrueerd. Slechts dat wat relevant schijnt is vanuit het verleden doorgegeven. Er is niet één geschiedenis, maar er zijn alleen beelden van het verleden vanuit verschillende gezichtspunten. Het is een illusie te denken dat er een hoger of allesomvatten gezichtspunt zou zijn dat in staat is alle andere in zich te verenigen.
Crisis van de idee van geschiedenis -> crisis van de idee van de vooruitgang. Als de menselijke gebeurtenissen geen unitair verloop hebben, dan kun je ze ook niet langer beschouwen als een gestage ontwikkeling naar een eindpunt, waarbij een rationeel plan voor innovatie, onderwijs en emancipatie wordt verwezenlijkt. De meeste Verlichtingsdenkers, Hegel, marx, de positivisten, historici van alle gezindten, beschouwden de verwezenlijking van de beschaving, de vorming van de West-Europese mens, als de zin van de geschiedenis.
Einde van het kolonialisme en het imperialisme is ook de communicatiemaatschappij een doorslaggevende factor geweest voor zowel de ontbinding van het geschiedsbegrip als voor het einde van de moderniteit.
De massamedia heeft de postmoderne maatschappij echter niet transparanter, zelfbewuster en meer verlicht gemaakt, maar eerder complex en zelfs chaotisch. Juist in deze relatieve 'chaos' ligt onze hoop op emancipatie.
Theodor Adorno voorspelde dat de radio een algemene homogenisering van de samenleving zou bewerkstelligen, en op haar beurt de vorming van dictaturen en totalitaire regimes zou toestaan en aanmoedigen. Wat er werkelijk gebeurde, ondanks de inspanningen van monopolies en grote kapitalistische ondernemingen, was dat radio, televisie en kranten elementen werden in een algehele explosie en proliferatie van 'Weltanschauungen', van wereldbeschouwingen. Het feit dat steeds meer subculturen het woord nemen, is een onmiskenbaar gevolg van de massamedia. Het Westen bevindt zich in een explosieven situatie, alsof een klaarblijkelijk niet te stuiten pluralisering iedere unitaire opvatting van de wereld en de geschiedenis onmogelijk maakt.
Daardoor is de massamedia-maatschappij het absolute tegendeel van de meer verlichte, meer opgevoede samenleving. Door de massamedia gegeven vrijheid aan zoveel culturen en Weltanschauungen heeft het juist het ideaal van de transparante samenleving verloochend. De toename van de mogelijkheden van informatie over talloze aspecten van de werkelijkheid maakt het steeds moelijker zich een enkelvoudige werkelijkheid voor te stellen. 'Uiteindelijk wordt de werkelijkheid een fabel' voorspelling aldus Nietzsche komt uit.
Werkelijkheid is voor ons eerder het resultaat van intersectie en contaminatie van de door de media verspreide veelheid van beelden, interpretaties en reconstructies, die onderling strijdig zijn en zonder een 'centrale' coordinatie.
In de maatschappij van de media wordt het ideaal van emancipatie dat gemodelleerd is naar een helder zelfbewustzijn, een volledig bewustzijn van iemand die weet hoe de wereld in elkaar zit vervangen door een een emancipatie-ideaal gebaseerd op oscillatie, pluraliteit en de definitieve uitholling van het 'realiteitsbeginsel' zelf. Emancipatie bestaat hier in ontheemding. Veelheid van lokale rationaliteiten: etnische, seksuele, religieuze, culturele of esthetische minderheden die uiteindelijk allemaal voor zichzelf spreken. De emanicipatoire betekenis van de bevrijding van verschillen en dialecten bestaat veeleer in de algemene ontheemding die hun oorspronkelijke ontdekking begeleidt. Als ik mijn dialect spreek in een wereld van dialecten, dan zal ik mij ervan bewust zijn dat dit niet de enige taal is, maar enkel een dialect te midden van vele andere. Nietzsche noemt dit het dromen terwijl je weet dat je droomt.
Dilthey denkt dat de ontmoeting met een kunstwerk (of het verkrijgen van historische kennis) een manier is om in de verbeelding andere vormen van bestaan te ervaren, andere levensvormen dan die waarin we in onze concrete alledaagsheid opgaan. Naarmate we ouder worden, vernauwt ieder van ons zijn levenshorizon, specialiseren we ons, en sluiten we ons op in een bepaalde sfeer van affecties, interesses en bekenden. De esthetische ervaring toont ons andere mogelijke werelden en maakt ons aldus bewust van de relativiteit en contingentie van de 'werkelijke' wereld waartoe we ons hebben beperkt.
In deze pluralistische wereld te leven betekent dat we de vrijheid ervaren als een voortdurend heen en weer gaan tussen erbij horen en ontheemding. Zo'n vrijheid is problematisch. Het kost moeite die oscillatie als vrijheid te begrijpen. We hebben individueel en maatschappelijk namelijk nog steeds een diep nostalgisch verlangen naar de gesloten horizonten die zowel bedreigend als geruststellend zijn. Het bestaan valt niet noodzakelijkherwijs samen met dat wat stabiel, vast en blijvend is, maar eerder van doen heeft met de gebeurtenis, de consensus, de dialoog, de interpretatie. Zij maken het ons mogelijk die ervaring van oscillatie in de postmoderne wereld als kans te zien voor een nieuwe menselijke bestaanswijze.
De intensivering van de communicatieverschijnselen en de toenemende verspreiding van informatie ind e huidige directe verslaggeving via televisie zijn niet zomaar enkele aspecten van de modernisering, maar zijn inz ekere zin het centrum en de diepste betekenis van dat proces. De maatschappij wordt gekenmerkt door de technologieen waarover zij beschikt (McLuhan).
In plaats van zelf-transparantie, is de maatschappij van de menswetenschappen en de veralgemeniseerde communicatie de kant uitgegtaan van wat we, althans algemeen genomen, het 'fabuleren van de wereld' zouden kunnen noemen. De wereldbeelden die we via de media en de menswetenschappen ontvangen, zij het op diverse niveaus, zijn niet zomaar verschillende interpretaties van een 'werkelijkheid' die hoe dan ook 'gegeven' is, maar maken de objectiviteit van deze wereld zelf uit. "Er zijn geen feiten, alleen maar interpretaties", aldus Nietzsche, die ook heeft geschreven dat "de ware wereld uiteindeiljk een fabel ging worden."
De wereld is niet zozeer object van mogelijke 'objectieve' kennis, als wel de plaats waar symbolische systemen geproduceerd worden.
De onmythologisering van de onmythologisering kunnen we beschouwen als de eigenlijke overgang van modern naar postmodern. Probeert de 'terugkeer' van de mythe terug te brengen in de samenleving.
Naderhand gevonden opsommings structuur
http://users.ugent.be/~wbossart/p/leessels/vatti.html
Een alomvattend historisch verhaal als 'de geschiedenis' blijkt niet meer dan een ideologische illusie. Verschillende standpunten werden ingenomen. Modern-zijn wordt zo niet langer als richtinggevende waarde beschouwd. Het postmoderne denken deed daarmee van zich spreken.
Ontheemding blijkt de grond te vormen van de huidige esthetische ervaring. (Walter Benjamin typeert de contemporaine kunst aan de hand van de shockervaring.) De angstervaring is een ervaring van ontheemding. Het accent is op de voortdurende verandering komen te liggen.
De opkomst van de massamedie veroorzaakte een communicatieve chaos en een ontologische ontwrichting. Media waren doorslaggevend in het ontbinden van gecentreerde perspectieven (het verhaal van de geschiedenis, het geloof in de vooruitgang.) In het alomtegenwoordige mediatisering van het leven demonstreerden zij dat het bestaan van een enkelvoudige of werkelijke wereld niet meer dan een fabel was.
De postmoderne esthetische ervaring is er een van een gemeenschap die een onomkeerbare pluralisering heeft ondergaan en die zich in het ideaal van de heterotopie articuleert.
Het 'onstructureren' geeft gestalte aan een nieuwe ervaring van menselijkheid, een postmodern emancipatie-ideaal dat gebaseerd kan worden op een bewustzijn van pluraliteit. In een onophoudelijk proces van verwijzingen naar andere mogelijke werelden worden de grenzen van de leefwereld voortdurend verlegd. Het subject weet vanwege deze vermenigvuldiging van (leef)stijlen en de daarmee samenhandende esthetisering van de ervaring geconfronteerd met een werkelijkheid waarin er altijd meerdere interpretatieve keuzen zullen bestaan. Het subject ontwikkeld zich door de relativiteit en contingentie van een 'zwak denken'.
Het begrip postmodern heeft iets te maken met het feit dat de samenleving er nu een is met een wijd verbreide communicatie, de samenleving van de massamedia.
Het gevoel dat de moderniteit wezenlijk voorbij is. Moderniteit gaat uit van een algemeen perspectief, waarin, zoals ten tijde van de Verlichting, de menselijke geschiedenis gezien wordt als een voortgaand proces van emancipatie, als een steeds betere realisering van het menselijke ideaal. Enkel als er de geschiedenis is kan men spreken van vooruitgang.
Het blijkt niet langer mogelijk de geschiedenis als eenheid te beschouwen, hierdoor eindigt de moderniteit. Een dergelijke opvatting van de geschiedenis vereist het bestaan van een centrum waaromheen de gebeurtenissen verzameld en geordend zijn. De unitaire geschiedenis is een voorstelling van het verleden die de heersende groepen en sociale klassen hebben geconstrueerd. Slechts dat wat relevant schijnt is vanuit het verleden doorgegeven. Er is niet één geschiedenis, maar er zijn alleen beelden van het verleden vanuit verschillende gezichtspunten. Het is een illusie te denken dat er een hoger of allesomvatten gezichtspunt zou zijn dat in staat is alle andere in zich te verenigen.
Crisis van de idee van geschiedenis -> crisis van de idee van de vooruitgang. Als de menselijke gebeurtenissen geen unitair verloop hebben, dan kun je ze ook niet langer beschouwen als een gestage ontwikkeling naar een eindpunt, waarbij een rationeel plan voor innovatie, onderwijs en emancipatie wordt verwezenlijkt. De meeste Verlichtingsdenkers, Hegel, marx, de positivisten, historici van alle gezindten, beschouwden de verwezenlijking van de beschaving, de vorming van de West-Europese mens, als de zin van de geschiedenis.
Einde van het kolonialisme en het imperialisme is ook de communicatiemaatschappij een doorslaggevende factor geweest voor zowel de ontbinding van het geschiedsbegrip als voor het einde van de moderniteit.
De massamedia heeft de postmoderne maatschappij echter niet transparanter, zelfbewuster en meer verlicht gemaakt, maar eerder complex en zelfs chaotisch. Juist in deze relatieve 'chaos' ligt onze hoop op emancipatie.
Theodor Adorno voorspelde dat de radio een algemene homogenisering van de samenleving zou bewerkstelligen, en op haar beurt de vorming van dictaturen en totalitaire regimes zou toestaan en aanmoedigen. Wat er werkelijk gebeurde, ondanks de inspanningen van monopolies en grote kapitalistische ondernemingen, was dat radio, televisie en kranten elementen werden in een algehele explosie en proliferatie van 'Weltanschauungen', van wereldbeschouwingen. Het feit dat steeds meer subculturen het woord nemen, is een onmiskenbaar gevolg van de massamedia. Het Westen bevindt zich in een explosieven situatie, alsof een klaarblijkelijk niet te stuiten pluralisering iedere unitaire opvatting van de wereld en de geschiedenis onmogelijk maakt.
Daardoor is de massamedia-maatschappij het absolute tegendeel van de meer verlichte, meer opgevoede samenleving. Door de massamedia gegeven vrijheid aan zoveel culturen en Weltanschauungen heeft het juist het ideaal van de transparante samenleving verloochend. De toename van de mogelijkheden van informatie over talloze aspecten van de werkelijkheid maakt het steeds moelijker zich een enkelvoudige werkelijkheid voor te stellen. 'Uiteindelijk wordt de werkelijkheid een fabel' voorspelling aldus Nietzsche komt uit.
Werkelijkheid is voor ons eerder het resultaat van intersectie en contaminatie van de door de media verspreide veelheid van beelden, interpretaties en reconstructies, die onderling strijdig zijn en zonder een 'centrale' coordinatie.
In de maatschappij van de media wordt het ideaal van emancipatie dat gemodelleerd is naar een helder zelfbewustzijn, een volledig bewustzijn van iemand die weet hoe de wereld in elkaar zit vervangen door een een emancipatie-ideaal gebaseerd op oscillatie, pluraliteit en de definitieve uitholling van het 'realiteitsbeginsel' zelf. Emancipatie bestaat hier in ontheemding. Veelheid van lokale rationaliteiten: etnische, seksuele, religieuze, culturele of esthetische minderheden die uiteindelijk allemaal voor zichzelf spreken. De emanicipatoire betekenis van de bevrijding van verschillen en dialecten bestaat veeleer in de algemene ontheemding die hun oorspronkelijke ontdekking begeleidt. Als ik mijn dialect spreek in een wereld van dialecten, dan zal ik mij ervan bewust zijn dat dit niet de enige taal is, maar enkel een dialect te midden van vele andere. Nietzsche noemt dit het dromen terwijl je weet dat je droomt.
Dilthey denkt dat de ontmoeting met een kunstwerk (of het verkrijgen van historische kennis) een manier is om in de verbeelding andere vormen van bestaan te ervaren, andere levensvormen dan die waarin we in onze concrete alledaagsheid opgaan. Naarmate we ouder worden, vernauwt ieder van ons zijn levenshorizon, specialiseren we ons, en sluiten we ons op in een bepaalde sfeer van affecties, interesses en bekenden. De esthetische ervaring toont ons andere mogelijke werelden en maakt ons aldus bewust van de relativiteit en contingentie van de 'werkelijke' wereld waartoe we ons hebben beperkt.
In deze pluralistische wereld te leven betekent dat we de vrijheid ervaren als een voortdurend heen en weer gaan tussen erbij horen en ontheemding. Zo'n vrijheid is problematisch. Het kost moeite die oscillatie als vrijheid te begrijpen. We hebben individueel en maatschappelijk namelijk nog steeds een diep nostalgisch verlangen naar de gesloten horizonten die zowel bedreigend als geruststellend zijn. Het bestaan valt niet noodzakelijkherwijs samen met dat wat stabiel, vast en blijvend is, maar eerder van doen heeft met de gebeurtenis, de consensus, de dialoog, de interpretatie. Zij maken het ons mogelijk die ervaring van oscillatie in de postmoderne wereld als kans te zien voor een nieuwe menselijke bestaanswijze.
De intensivering van de communicatieverschijnselen en de toenemende verspreiding van informatie ind e huidige directe verslaggeving via televisie zijn niet zomaar enkele aspecten van de modernisering, maar zijn inz ekere zin het centrum en de diepste betekenis van dat proces. De maatschappij wordt gekenmerkt door de technologieen waarover zij beschikt (McLuhan).
In plaats van zelf-transparantie, is de maatschappij van de menswetenschappen en de veralgemeniseerde communicatie de kant uitgegtaan van wat we, althans algemeen genomen, het 'fabuleren van de wereld' zouden kunnen noemen. De wereldbeelden die we via de media en de menswetenschappen ontvangen, zij het op diverse niveaus, zijn niet zomaar verschillende interpretaties van een 'werkelijkheid' die hoe dan ook 'gegeven' is, maar maken de objectiviteit van deze wereld zelf uit. "Er zijn geen feiten, alleen maar interpretaties", aldus Nietzsche, die ook heeft geschreven dat "de ware wereld uiteindeiljk een fabel ging worden."
De wereld is niet zozeer object van mogelijke 'objectieve' kennis, als wel de plaats waar symbolische systemen geproduceerd worden.
De onmythologisering van de onmythologisering kunnen we beschouwen als de eigenlijke overgang van modern naar postmodern. Probeert de 'terugkeer' van de mythe terug te brengen in de samenleving.
Naderhand gevonden opsommings structuur
http://users.ugent.be/~wbossart/p/leessels/vatti.html
donderdag 31 maart 2011
Understanding media
Yesterday I read the first chapter Medium is the Message and selected some things I found interesting.
Understanding Media
The "medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.
The "content" of any medium blinds us to the charachter of the medium.
Electrical light is a medium without "content". p9 UM The extensions of man, McLuhan
Cubism announced that the medium is the message. p13
Oral and intuitive oriental culture <-> Rational (uniform, continuous, segmential), visual European patterns of experience. p16
As we become more aware of the effects of technology on psychic formation and manifestation, we are losing all confidence in our right to assign guilt. p17
Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. The "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. ... The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception. p19
We become what we behold. p20
Cotton and oil, like radio and tv, become "fixed charges" on the entire psychic life of the community. p22
"No one can shield himself from such an influence". CG Jung on Romans and slaves. Contributions to analytical psychology, London, 1928
________
The term media event is an indication that in a postmodern world we can no longer rely on a stable relationship or clear distinction between a "real" event and its mediated representation. John Fiske, Media Matters
Understanding Media
The "medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.
The "content" of any medium blinds us to the charachter of the medium.
Electrical light is a medium without "content". p9 UM The extensions of man, McLuhan
Cubism announced that the medium is the message. p13
Oral and intuitive oriental culture <-> Rational (uniform, continuous, segmential), visual European patterns of experience. p16
As we become more aware of the effects of technology on psychic formation and manifestation, we are losing all confidence in our right to assign guilt. p17
Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. The "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. ... The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception. p19
We become what we behold. p20
Cotton and oil, like radio and tv, become "fixed charges" on the entire psychic life of the community. p22
"No one can shield himself from such an influence". CG Jung on Romans and slaves. Contributions to analytical psychology, London, 1928
________
The term media event is an indication that in a postmodern world we can no longer rely on a stable relationship or clear distinction between a "real" event and its mediated representation. John Fiske, Media Matters
dinsdag 29 maart 2011
Tree of knowledge v2
Today I blew off the speck of dust from my good old 3ds max 5.1, dug up my 3d skills and put it to good work.
So I already had this idea of a transparent glass mold of a tree as a reaction on the metaphor of the tree of knowledge, that follows a hierarchical structure. Instead of the rhizome I thought of a mold, without the actual tree. A hollow split tree, because the source of knowledge is lacking in Postmodern life. It is fragmented as well, as it is possible to see multiple trees at once from every point of view. With two of them it makes it easy to imagine that you can to put the mold together to form your own knowledge, your own view on the world, your own perspective, your own solid tree.
It would be nice if I could realize a small scale version, but for now I have to do it with these:
So I already had this idea of a transparent glass mold of a tree as a reaction on the metaphor of the tree of knowledge, that follows a hierarchical structure. Instead of the rhizome I thought of a mold, without the actual tree. A hollow split tree, because the source of knowledge is lacking in Postmodern life. It is fragmented as well, as it is possible to see multiple trees at once from every point of view. With two of them it makes it easy to imagine that you can to put the mold together to form your own knowledge, your own view on the world, your own perspective, your own solid tree.
It would be nice if I could realize a small scale version, but for now I have to do it with these:
maandag 28 maart 2011
The blind men and the elephant
American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) based this poem on a fable that was told in India many years ago. It is a good warning about how our sensory perceptions can lead to some serious misinterpretations; especially, when the investigations of the component parts of a whole, and their relations in making up the whole, are inadequate and lack co-ordination. The underlying principle is that reality is based on one’s perspective.
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approach'd the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he,
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL.
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
woensdag 23 maart 2011
Question
What kinds of narrative techniques exist in conveying the idea that the individual's interpretation of reality becomes fragmented due to the increasing presence of technologically mediated representations of reality and the increasing role it plays in their lives?
Does the individual's interpretation of reality become fragmented due to the increasing presence of technologically mediated representations of reality?
Operationalization
Interpretation of reality = measured in cognitive maps or mental models: a representation of external reality or explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world.
My vision of reality
Reality is dependent on interpretation. It is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. Reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. What appears to us is a multitude of overlapping and conflicting perspectives. There is not one true reality. We can only experience reality fragmentary. The increasing presence and the increasing role technologically mediated representations of reality play in our lives increases the fragmentary experience of reality.
Fragmentation = the end of (hi)story, no single metanarrative can explain social reality as a whole. Rhizome, the opposite of the metaphor 'the tree of knowledge' indicating that knowledge has been organized by systematic and hierarchical principles, is a model of non-hierarchical lines that connect with others in random, unregulated relationships.
Narrative techniques
themes:
pastiche
surface appearance
decentring of the subject
metafiction or hypermediacy (self referentiality/reflexivity)
techniques:
collage
stream of consciousness
cut-up
Technologically mediated representations:
simulations (causing hyperreality)
overwhelming flux of images, codes and models
undermining the reference of the image to reality
Does the individual's interpretation of reality become fragmented due to the increasing presence of technologically mediated representations of reality?
Operationalization
Interpretation of reality = measured in cognitive maps or mental models: a representation of external reality or explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world.
My vision of reality
Reality is dependent on interpretation. It is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. Reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. What appears to us is a multitude of overlapping and conflicting perspectives. There is not one true reality. We can only experience reality fragmentary. The increasing presence and the increasing role technologically mediated representations of reality play in our lives increases the fragmentary experience of reality.
Fragmentation = the end of (hi)story, no single metanarrative can explain social reality as a whole. Rhizome, the opposite of the metaphor 'the tree of knowledge' indicating that knowledge has been organized by systematic and hierarchical principles, is a model of non-hierarchical lines that connect with others in random, unregulated relationships.
Narrative techniques
themes:
pastiche
surface appearance
decentring of the subject
metafiction or hypermediacy (self referentiality/reflexivity)
techniques:
collage
stream of consciousness
cut-up
Technologically mediated representations:
simulations (causing hyperreality)
overwhelming flux of images, codes and models
undermining the reference of the image to reality
dinsdag 22 maart 2011
Pastiche
"Although we create the technologies, they also create us." McLuhan, Understanding Media.
The contemporary individual becomes a 'made' entity, a postmodern pastiche of different styles.
Pastiche is a 'blank parody' or 'speech in a dead language... but without any of the pafody's ulterior motives, instead amputated of the satiric impulse. F. Jameson
Kroker & Kroker on 'disappearing bodies' The body dissolves into a stream of floating parts, a 'body-without-organs'(Deleuze), which reveals that it has been processed by the media, and that we experience our bodies only as 'fantastic simulacra of body rhetorics.'
The posthuman body enters the world: a techno-body, a screen, a hybridised version of pluralities: a cyborg, a hybrid, a body-without-organs, a virtual body, a body in-process. p251 Beginning Postmodernism
Relevant artists: Stelarc and Orlan.
According to Nicholas Abercrombie on postmodernism in television p228
- we no longer live in reality, but in images or representations of reality. A collapse of image and reality
- contemporary societies are about creating an image, refining a look, presenting a style, a 'surface appearance'
- no respect for authenticity anymore. Pastiche, amalgations of different styles genres and elements make their way.
- self referentiality
- not following conventions of realism and narrative
- postmodern culture is fragmented, bits do not add up to a whole
Jameson proposes 'an aesthetic of cognitive mapping' as a remedy. It is a reorientation of our experience of time and space in an era where the opportunity to place ourselves into a definable time-space location has become systematically challenged.
Kaplan has a more optimistic view. She says that the elision of "boundaries toward a heteroglossia('different-speech-ness') that calls into question moribund pieties of a now archaic humanism." Rocking around the clock p 148
The contemporary individual becomes a 'made' entity, a postmodern pastiche of different styles.
Pastiche is a 'blank parody' or 'speech in a dead language... but without any of the pafody's ulterior motives, instead amputated of the satiric impulse. F. Jameson
Kroker & Kroker on 'disappearing bodies' The body dissolves into a stream of floating parts, a 'body-without-organs'(Deleuze), which reveals that it has been processed by the media, and that we experience our bodies only as 'fantastic simulacra of body rhetorics.'
The posthuman body enters the world: a techno-body, a screen, a hybridised version of pluralities: a cyborg, a hybrid, a body-without-organs, a virtual body, a body in-process. p251 Beginning Postmodernism
Relevant artists: Stelarc and Orlan.
According to Nicholas Abercrombie on postmodernism in television p228
- we no longer live in reality, but in images or representations of reality. A collapse of image and reality
- contemporary societies are about creating an image, refining a look, presenting a style, a 'surface appearance'
- no respect for authenticity anymore. Pastiche, amalgations of different styles genres and elements make their way.
- self referentiality
- not following conventions of realism and narrative
- postmodern culture is fragmented, bits do not add up to a whole
Jameson proposes 'an aesthetic of cognitive mapping' as a remedy. It is a reorientation of our experience of time and space in an era where the opportunity to place ourselves into a definable time-space location has become systematically challenged.
Kaplan has a more optimistic view. She says that the elision of "boundaries toward a heteroglossia('different-speech-ness') that calls into question moribund pieties of a now archaic humanism." Rocking around the clock p 148
maandag 21 maart 2011
Simulations replacing reality
Author DeLillo takes a quintessentially postmodern idea, that simulacra (or simulations) have replaced reality, and applies it throughout White Noise. The most obvious example is with the simulated evacuation, SIMUVAC; although the first run-through is for an actual emergency, SIMUVAC views it as practice for an actual simulation. In other words, its status as a simulation takes precedence over its use for a real emergency. On its second, simulated use, the people behind SIMUVAC continue to worry over its use in simulation, not in reality. The other major scene involving the dominance of simulacra is when Jack and Murray visit what signs call "the most photographed barn" in America. As Murray notes, people pay more attention to the signs than to the actual barn; they are wrapped in the simulated idea more than in the real barn. Another instance of simulation versus reality is when the family sees Babette on TV. At first they are frightened, but soon realize what is happening; only Wilder, not yet schooled in the way of simulacra, continues to believe it is really Babette and cries by the TV.
donderdag 17 maart 2011
Interpretation is everything
Postmodernism: a general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.
Glossary index
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html
Concept reminder
What is the work is about
Why should it be made
What is the goal
What is the method
Plan
Phases
Recourses
Planning
Glossary index
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html
Concept reminder
What is the work is about
Why should it be made
What is the goal
What is the method
Plan
Phases
Recourses
Planning
maandag 14 maart 2011
Map–territory relation
In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999 .
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory. (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)
"Perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves" Magritte
From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999 .
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory. (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)
"Perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves" Magritte
The infernal desire machines of Dr Hoffman
Postmodern novels all share one major preoccupation namely ontology: the nature of being. 'What is a world? What kind of worlds are there? What happens when different kind of worlds are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between world are violated.' Brian McHale, Postmodern fiction p10
The infernal desire machines of Dr Hoffman by Angela Carter is such a novel.
Doctor Hoffman is an evil, sadistic scientist akin to Doctor Faustus. The doctor is the antagonist and diabolical adversary of the novel. He masters physics and surpasses his teacher, the proprietor; he later uses this ability to create a new form of reality where nothing is bound by time or the normal rules of physics. With help from his colleague Mendoza, he discovers that “eroto-energy” can power his desire machines with omnipotent and everlasting energy. He uses his desire machines to fuel energy into his new reality. - Wiki
Dr Hoffman might be an allegory to Marcuse, the 1960's philosopher or the surrealists. We may see in Dr Hoffman the nightmarish synthesis of repressive desublination and the society of the spectacle.
Susan Rubin Suleiman - Risking who one is: Encounters with Art & Literature p133
Doctor Hoffman’s illusion inducing machines create the same effect as today’s newspapers, magazines, websites, and television broadcasts. The mass media constantly effects peoples thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. Throughout the novel, Carter asks the reader to define what is real versus what is an illusion. Hoffman’s machines keep “projecting representations on the world.” In the modern world, “technology makes the reign of the images possible” (Suleiman 111) and Carter is wary of images for they can be mere illusions. - Wiki
Questions about technology can not be divorced from questions about ideology and values. - Carter p135
Fate of surrealist imagination
"The laws of our desire are dice without leisure." Robert Desnos
Surrealism advocates this idea of ceaseless motion. The nomad & vegabond is the hero, the fixed subject its worst dream.
What is the fate of Surrealist imagination in the sociey of the spectacle?
At best "la révolution Surréaliste" becomes a private passion, not a means to change the world.
Protagonist Desiderio, the public smiling man with a hero's statue in the town square, dreams every night of his lost Albertina, and writes his delirious memoirs in dedication to her. Meanwhile, life goes on as usual, dominated by the Minister's (Desiderio's boss) computers and clocks that all run on time. p136
The infernal desire machines of Dr Hoffman by Angela Carter is such a novel.
Doctor Hoffman is an evil, sadistic scientist akin to Doctor Faustus. The doctor is the antagonist and diabolical adversary of the novel. He masters physics and surpasses his teacher, the proprietor; he later uses this ability to create a new form of reality where nothing is bound by time or the normal rules of physics. With help from his colleague Mendoza, he discovers that “eroto-energy” can power his desire machines with omnipotent and everlasting energy. He uses his desire machines to fuel energy into his new reality. - Wiki
Dr Hoffman might be an allegory to Marcuse, the 1960's philosopher or the surrealists. We may see in Dr Hoffman the nightmarish synthesis of repressive desublination and the society of the spectacle.
Susan Rubin Suleiman - Risking who one is: Encounters with Art & Literature p133
Doctor Hoffman’s illusion inducing machines create the same effect as today’s newspapers, magazines, websites, and television broadcasts. The mass media constantly effects peoples thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. Throughout the novel, Carter asks the reader to define what is real versus what is an illusion. Hoffman’s machines keep “projecting representations on the world.” In the modern world, “technology makes the reign of the images possible” (Suleiman 111) and Carter is wary of images for they can be mere illusions. - Wiki
Questions about technology can not be divorced from questions about ideology and values. - Carter p135
Fate of surrealist imagination
"The laws of our desire are dice without leisure." Robert Desnos
Surrealism advocates this idea of ceaseless motion. The nomad & vegabond is the hero, the fixed subject its worst dream.
What is the fate of Surrealist imagination in the sociey of the spectacle?
At best "la révolution Surréaliste" becomes a private passion, not a means to change the world.
Protagonist Desiderio, the public smiling man with a hero's statue in the town square, dreams every night of his lost Albertina, and writes his delirious memoirs in dedication to her. Meanwhile, life goes on as usual, dominated by the Minister's (Desiderio's boss) computers and clocks that all run on time. p136
Commodity -> Spectacle -> Simulacrum
Commodity
In a capitalist society commodity production is the purpose of society and maximization of profit is the purpose of commodity production. - Marx
Spectacle
The spectacle is a tool of pacifization and depolitization. Comparable to a "permanent opium war". The spectacle spreads itself through leisure and consumption, services and entertainment. It distracts the subject from the most urgent task of real life: recovering the concrete totality of human activity through social transformation. - Debord
"The commodity has attained the total occupation of social life."
p47 Baudrillard, a critical reader
Where the image determines and overtakes reality, life is no longer lived directly and actively. The spectacle escalates abstraction to the point where we no longer live in the world per se - "inhaling and exhaling all the powers of nature" (Marx) - but in an abstract image of the world. "Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation" (Debord), one which secures the false consciousness of enriched alienation. p47
Simulacrum
Political economy is no longer the foundation. Instead we live in a "hyperreality" of simulations in which images, spectacles, and the play of signs replace the logic of production and class conflict as key constituents of contemporary societies. p7
The proliferation of images, information, signs, overshadows production. -Baudrillard
Modern vs Postmodern
- Modern societies are organized around production and the consumption of commodities.
- Postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs.
- Modernity operates with logic of representation in which ideas represent reality and truth, concepts that are key postulates of modern theory.
- Postmodern society explodes this epistemology by creating a situation in which subjects lose contact with the real and themselves and fragment and dissolve.
Consequences
Individuals are confronted with an overwhelming flux of images, codes and models, any of which may shape an individual's thought or behavior. p8
Debord emphasizes the super reification of image objects as a massive unreality, an inversion of reality and illusion.
The fundamental goal of the Situationist praxis was to reconstruct society and everyday life to overcome division and fragmentation in the spectacle. p60
In a capitalist society commodity production is the purpose of society and maximization of profit is the purpose of commodity production. - Marx
Spectacle
The spectacle is a tool of pacifization and depolitization. Comparable to a "permanent opium war". The spectacle spreads itself through leisure and consumption, services and entertainment. It distracts the subject from the most urgent task of real life: recovering the concrete totality of human activity through social transformation. - Debord
"The commodity has attained the total occupation of social life."
p47 Baudrillard, a critical reader
Where the image determines and overtakes reality, life is no longer lived directly and actively. The spectacle escalates abstraction to the point where we no longer live in the world per se - "inhaling and exhaling all the powers of nature" (Marx) - but in an abstract image of the world. "Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation" (Debord), one which secures the false consciousness of enriched alienation. p47
Simulacrum
Political economy is no longer the foundation. Instead we live in a "hyperreality" of simulations in which images, spectacles, and the play of signs replace the logic of production and class conflict as key constituents of contemporary societies. p7
The proliferation of images, information, signs, overshadows production. -Baudrillard
Modern vs Postmodern
- Modern societies are organized around production and the consumption of commodities.
- Postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs.
- Modernity operates with logic of representation in which ideas represent reality and truth, concepts that are key postulates of modern theory.
- Postmodern society explodes this epistemology by creating a situation in which subjects lose contact with the real and themselves and fragment and dissolve.
Consequences
Individuals are confronted with an overwhelming flux of images, codes and models, any of which may shape an individual's thought or behavior. p8
Debord emphasizes the super reification of image objects as a massive unreality, an inversion of reality and illusion.
The fundamental goal of the Situationist praxis was to reconstruct society and everyday life to overcome division and fragmentation in the spectacle. p60
donderdag 3 maart 2011
Mediated unreality
We create our cultural and private worlds meaning through communicated presentations of realities "out there". By presenting endless portrayals of realities in its content, mass communications provide experiences from which we collectively shape our meanings. p31 Communicating unreality
Morgan & Shanahan (cultivation theory)
"If media content shapes our attitudes and cultivates our images of the world, it seems plausible that different media would shape different attitudes."
Loss of both 'reality and 'ideology' as grounding bases for images is another facet of the loss of the 'grand narrative'. A key consequence of this loss is the fragmentation of experience and its images. Postmodern culture is a fragmented culture, the fragments come together for the occasion and are not organized into stable coherent groupings by an external principle. p58 Communicating unreality
There is no unmediated acces to the real, and that it is the only through representations that we know the world. p170 Beginning Postmodernism
Most of the images are reconstructed realities. They often distort the "true" reality, poorly represent it, focus only on certain dimensions of the "real" situation or redefine it for their audiences. The meanings that are communicated depend on an interaction between the text and the reader. These meanings are dynamic, context-dependent and dependent on interpretation.
The audiences rely on mediated unreality and often accept it as "the world out there". p359 Communicating unreality
This is illustrated in the "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato:
Morgan & Shanahan (cultivation theory)
"If media content shapes our attitudes and cultivates our images of the world, it seems plausible that different media would shape different attitudes."
Loss of both 'reality and 'ideology' as grounding bases for images is another facet of the loss of the 'grand narrative'. A key consequence of this loss is the fragmentation of experience and its images. Postmodern culture is a fragmented culture, the fragments come together for the occasion and are not organized into stable coherent groupings by an external principle. p58 Communicating unreality
"There is no difference between image and reality"
John Fiske - Postmodernism and television
There is no unmediated acces to the real, and that it is the only through representations that we know the world. p170 Beginning Postmodernism
Most of the images are reconstructed realities. They often distort the "true" reality, poorly represent it, focus only on certain dimensions of the "real" situation or redefine it for their audiences. The meanings that are communicated depend on an interaction between the text and the reader. These meanings are dynamic, context-dependent and dependent on interpretation.
The audiences rely on mediated unreality and often accept it as "the world out there". p359 Communicating unreality
This is illustrated in the "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato:
Essence of the project
Met alsmaar opkomende informatiesystemen en visuele lagen over de 'echte' tastbare wereld, wordt het lastiger om de laag erachter nog waar te nemen. Mensen komen terecht en gaan leven in een hyperreality (Baudrillard): de beelden die ze te zien krijgen vormen de originele betekenis en beleving om naar een andere realiteit. Informatie verpakt in digitale media wordt steeds toegankelijker en dominanter, zowel binnenshuis als in publieke ruimtes, waardoor er steeds meer versplinteringen in de realiteit ontstaan. De veelvoud van digitale media zorgt voor onsamenhangende reeksen van informatie welke er weer voor zorgen dat mensen worstelen met concepten, en relaties tussen, verschillende realiteiten. Deze informatiestromen hebben invloed op en worden onderdeel van mensen zelf. Er ontstaan "schizofrene" ervaringen: het verlies van contact met de echte omgeving en desintegratie van de authentieke persoonlijkheid, het verlies van identiteit.
Collage helpt ons weer te re-integreren met onze wereld. Het dient ervoor om het missende terug te brengen en de orde te herstellen in een gefragmenteerde realiteit. Het houdt zich bezig met de vraag wat de aard van de realiteit nou werkelijk is. In de meerlagige wereld en de wereld die zo bewust is van meerdere perspectieven, ideologieën en van de betekenis van signalen en beelden, is het collage dat het ons mogelijk maakt te reflecteren op de complexiteit van het leven en te genieten van zijn mysterie.
Frederic Jameson in Post Modernism & Consumer Society: "Schizophrenic experience (following Jacques Lacan): An experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence." p4 Collage critical views.
As Jameson explains, the schizophrenic suffers from a "breakdown of the signifying chain" in his/her use of language until "the schizophrenic is reduced to an experience of pure material signifiers, or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelated presents in time."
Collage helpt ons weer te re-integreren met onze wereld. Het dient ervoor om het missende terug te brengen en de orde te herstellen in een gefragmenteerde realiteit. Het houdt zich bezig met de vraag wat de aard van de realiteit nou werkelijk is. In de meerlagige wereld en de wereld die zo bewust is van meerdere perspectieven, ideologieën en van de betekenis van signalen en beelden, is het collage dat het ons mogelijk maakt te reflecteren op de complexiteit van het leven en te genieten van zijn mysterie.
Random quote "Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery."
Federico García Lorca
donderdag 17 februari 2011
Kite
Yesterday I encountered this work called 'Kite' by Robin Rhodes in Kunsthal Rotterdam and found it fascinating.
The work includes a video component (which is hard to identify in the photograph) that displays the sky behind the imaginary kite. In this case the sky of New Orleans. Rhodes takes us back to the carefree times that preceded the flooding caused by hurricane Katrina.
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer
Excerpt of 'A kite is a victim' by Leonard Cohen
Multiple versions of reality
Not an easy read, but very inspiring and in line with the direction I'm heading in.
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is written in multiple first-person narratives. Every new section is a new version of reality, particularly noticeable when the narratives overlap and cover the same event two different ways. The novel reminds us of the inherent subjectivity in any story, memory, or narrative. There are no "facts" in this novel, only opinions. Narratives toward the end of the story push the envelope even further, asking if terms like "sane" or "crazy" can ever be objectively defined, or if actions can ever be categorized clearly as one or the other.
Faulkner's text clearly manifests various cubist techniques -- collage, flattening, multiple perspectives, fragmentation, and passage of planes. Structurally, As I Lay Dying is a literary collage of fifty-nine fragmented chapters.
Further reading
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is written in multiple first-person narratives. Every new section is a new version of reality, particularly noticeable when the narratives overlap and cover the same event two different ways. The novel reminds us of the inherent subjectivity in any story, memory, or narrative. There are no "facts" in this novel, only opinions. Narratives toward the end of the story push the envelope even further, asking if terms like "sane" or "crazy" can ever be objectively defined, or if actions can ever be categorized clearly as one or the other.
Faulkner's text clearly manifests various cubist techniques -- collage, flattening, multiple perspectives, fragmentation, and passage of planes. Structurally, As I Lay Dying is a literary collage of fifty-nine fragmented chapters.
Further reading
dinsdag 15 februari 2011
Vacance anthropique
Made by Chloé Poizat.
"Ancient" nature combined with modern man.
The anthropic principle is the philosophical argument that observations of the physical universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Anthropism is the doctrine or opinion that man is essentially different from, and contrasted with, everything else in nature, and the end for which the natural world was made. The series makes us look funny and out of place.
Preservation of nature
Ubiquitous by Naoko Ito. Jar and tree.
The magic of bringing two unrelated things together to create something new.
donderdag 10 februari 2011
A closer look at art & collage
I would like to emphasis the role of art in changing social consciousness since it is directed outwards. "Only through art can we get outside ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours." Proust again. Getting to know this view of the universe is like learning a new language. When you think outside yourself you get to know yourself better, you get a different perspective. As Goethe put it: "Those who know nothing of foreign languages, know nothing of their own."
"The artist is at the same time a political being, constantly alive to heartrending, fiery or happy events, to which he responds in every way. How would it be possible to feel no interest in other people and by virtue of an ivory indifference to detach yourself from the life which they so copiously bring you? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy." p 141 Picasso to state that he is not apolitical. He wanted to move on from trompe l'oeil to trompe l'esprit: art has to capture the spirit of the artist. But the artist cannot sidestep the symbolic meaning of objects, nor can his audience, or can he?
Joseph Cornell - Untitled (Hotel Eden) c.1945
As for collage, the identity of an object is suspended between it’s practical reality, the thing itself and the conceptual whole in which it is set. Collage invites the spectator to respond with a multiple consciousness in which forms, objects and images are interchangeable. The hierarchy of categories is disrupted, like a mixture of realities belonging to different orders. It is about reordering the universe. Collage is like a visual rhapsody, a collection of pieces that have one spirit and one scope, but which are not directly related to each other. Marked materials gain connotations which unmarked materials lack. P 82
Collage is the visual vocabulary in the age of mechanical reproduction by Walter Benjamin. Works of art can become works of art when reordered in collage and especially in digital collage.
You can see that collage has become a metaphysical principle beyond mere technique.
Tristan Tzara called collage "the most poetic and most revolutionary moment in the history of painting." In which he tries to explain that physical matter becomes poetry, haptic poetry.
Collage reflects the absurdity of representing things and images in a universe of forces and energies. It is an illusion producing process, you cannot get to the origin, the pieces have lost their identities. A collage is like practicing the aesthetics of mystification by creating a myth and a hyperreality. It ultimately becomes a simulacrum: "a simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." Beaudrillard.
Collage is a way of changing social consciousness by reordering realities. It is quite a postmodern technique as it advocates that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. Collage represents or is such a construct and it is anything but a narrative constructed in a sequential fashion.
This seems to call out for participation in art. To be continued.
"The artist is at the same time a political being, constantly alive to heartrending, fiery or happy events, to which he responds in every way. How would it be possible to feel no interest in other people and by virtue of an ivory indifference to detach yourself from the life which they so copiously bring you? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy." p 141 Picasso to state that he is not apolitical. He wanted to move on from trompe l'oeil to trompe l'esprit: art has to capture the spirit of the artist. But the artist cannot sidestep the symbolic meaning of objects, nor can his audience, or can he?
Joseph Cornell - Untitled (Hotel Eden) c.1945
As for collage, the identity of an object is suspended between it’s practical reality, the thing itself and the conceptual whole in which it is set. Collage invites the spectator to respond with a multiple consciousness in which forms, objects and images are interchangeable. The hierarchy of categories is disrupted, like a mixture of realities belonging to different orders. It is about reordering the universe. Collage is like a visual rhapsody, a collection of pieces that have one spirit and one scope, but which are not directly related to each other. Marked materials gain connotations which unmarked materials lack. P 82
Collage is the visual vocabulary in the age of mechanical reproduction by Walter Benjamin. Works of art can become works of art when reordered in collage and especially in digital collage.
You can see that collage has become a metaphysical principle beyond mere technique.
Tristan Tzara called collage "the most poetic and most revolutionary moment in the history of painting." In which he tries to explain that physical matter becomes poetry, haptic poetry.
Collage reflects the absurdity of representing things and images in a universe of forces and energies. It is an illusion producing process, you cannot get to the origin, the pieces have lost their identities. A collage is like practicing the aesthetics of mystification by creating a myth and a hyperreality. It ultimately becomes a simulacrum: "a simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." Beaudrillard.
Collage is a way of changing social consciousness by reordering realities. It is quite a postmodern technique as it advocates that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. Collage represents or is such a construct and it is anything but a narrative constructed in a sequential fashion.
"Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes on the moon... Instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many world as there are original artists-more different from each other than those which revolve in space."
Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé (Paris: Gallimard, Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1923-27) p. 491; translated by Justin O'Brien in tThe Maxims of Proust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), p. 176.
This seems to call out for participation in art. To be continued.
donderdag 3 februari 2011
Expanding consciousness
So I watched Mulholland Drive the other night, a movie directed by David Lynch, well known for his mindboggling structured narratives. This movie is no exception. The story itself is interesting enough to keep you watching, and in the end keep you analyzing. The thing that is most interesting about it is that it provokes a superb tension Hitchcock would be proud of and what causes this tension is the provocation of curiosity. Curiosity causes a certain tension. What feeds the curiosity is the mystery. Now this curiosity is directed by Lynch in a fine balanced manner: mainly it is stretched out over a period of time without stretching it for too long. The mystery is at a certain distance, not too close and not completely out of reach. Lynch gives hints here and there but never truly unfolds the story or the mystery, and this is what makes his work so strong. Even after you finish watching you are still curious and this keeps you thinking.
Today I watched some of his interviews and he really is an inspirational person. He even talks about this bowl or sphere of consciousness while using the right hand gestures. The same sphere I wrote about in my last post. Lynch is saying that everyone has a certain size of a sphere and by making it grow it will lead you to reaching your full potential. One of the advantages is that you are able to catch ideas that lie at a deeper level. The way he goes about expanding his sphere is by Transcendental Meditation (TM), by turning and diving inwards, not outwards. He truly experiences it as a way that leads to bliss, enlightment, unity and oneness, as a connection with the ether, and believes it is a way that can lead to world peace. He even set up the David Lynch foundation for consciousness-based education and world peace with the message "change begins within".
I believe there must be other ways of by expanding your consciousness. We experience new things in our waking life every day, while some are more life changing than the other, they sure can have an impact on ourselves. Exchanging ideas for example. When two spheres touch upon eachother don't they leave their traces? I suspect it is a matter of preference between directing your consciousness inward or outward, although both are valuable. I think it is a matter of finding a balance between the two. Now art is a way of getting something out in the world. It is directed outwards, not inwards like TM is. TM seems antithetical to the outward social activism and the social movements in trying to establish peace. But as Lynch says TM is going for the root of the problem, not the level of the problem itself. I'd say they both do their part in a different way, they are all about spreading awareness. At least we now have something to think about, same goes for Mulholland Drive...
Today I watched some of his interviews and he really is an inspirational person. He even talks about this bowl or sphere of consciousness while using the right hand gestures. The same sphere I wrote about in my last post. Lynch is saying that everyone has a certain size of a sphere and by making it grow it will lead you to reaching your full potential. One of the advantages is that you are able to catch ideas that lie at a deeper level. The way he goes about expanding his sphere is by Transcendental Meditation (TM), by turning and diving inwards, not outwards. He truly experiences it as a way that leads to bliss, enlightment, unity and oneness, as a connection with the ether, and believes it is a way that can lead to world peace. He even set up the David Lynch foundation for consciousness-based education and world peace with the message "change begins within".
I believe there must be other ways of by expanding your consciousness. We experience new things in our waking life every day, while some are more life changing than the other, they sure can have an impact on ourselves. Exchanging ideas for example. When two spheres touch upon eachother don't they leave their traces? I suspect it is a matter of preference between directing your consciousness inward or outward, although both are valuable. I think it is a matter of finding a balance between the two. Now art is a way of getting something out in the world. It is directed outwards, not inwards like TM is. TM seems antithetical to the outward social activism and the social movements in trying to establish peace. But as Lynch says TM is going for the root of the problem, not the level of the problem itself. I'd say they both do their part in a different way, they are all about spreading awareness. At least we now have something to think about, same goes for Mulholland Drive...
woensdag 2 februari 2011
New eyes
The real voyage of discovery...
consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,
in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of a hundred others,
in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.
Marcel Proust
I heartily agree with the quote and would like to expend my research question on it. Big question comes forward: how? It has a rather broad subject, there are lots of ways to actually change your views on something. But for me it comes down to symbolic ways of leaving something behind and starting anew, by changing your past you control your future, a transformation of some sort. There are abstract ways to do so as well as figurative ways. The most abstract way of doing so has to be the black square by Malevich: "In my desperate struggle to liberate art from the ballast of the world of objects, I took refuge in the form of the square." The square being the symbol of earthbound matter, of the body and physical reality.
M.L. von Franz explains that the circle (or sphere) is the symbol of the self representing the totality of the psyche in all its aspects, including the relationship between man and the whole of nature. A sphere points to its ultimate wholeness. Even Plato described the psyche as a sphere. Reflecting upon your own sphere didn't exist for the primitive man, they just got along with the things they used to do. Now we are in an age of rationalism and we tend to try to understand the things we do. Reflecting upon you own- or someone elses sphere leads to understanding, and ultimately, your own sphere starts to grow. This is the real voyage of discovery.
Paul Klee made a drawing called "limits of understanding" where he places the sphere or circle above a complex structure of ladders and lines. C. Jung pointed out that a symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt. This is the purpose of the drawing.
Since symbols are universally recognisable, they loose their personal meaning when they're outside a personal context. Symbols are in the public domain and a means of connecting people, not setting me apart from you.
So we have the symbol itself, a heavy loaded sign. This sign is a means of symbolizing transformation, I might call this a ritual of bridging differences, in "seeing the universe with the eyes of another", leading to universal understanding and becoming the sphere that is the world, being part of a new whole.
woensdag 26 januari 2011
Creating a narrative when there is none?
Two years ago I picked up the graphic novel/artist book Une Semaine de Bonté (a week of kindess, 1934) by Max Ernst and it's still an intruiging book.
It comprises 182 collages that appears to follow some sort of storyline. It seems there are some images missing in between every collage. The reader is confronted to think of steps and events to fill in the gap, to fill in the details. Every time you 'read' the book it's possible to think of a different storyline. The static images become dynamic, it's meaning changes from time to time.
Two things happen:
1. Every single image is multi-interpretable, because there are multiple answers to the question: "What is going on in this image?"
2. The collection of images composed in a structural manner imposes a narrative. Because of the lack of a structure between one image and the other the narrative becomes multi-interpretable.
Another example is the movie Last Year in Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, a somewhat incomprehensible movie featuring a confusing montage technique that actually suits the storyline. A man meets a woman and tells her he is certain he met her before last year and even tells her they had a passionate affair together, while she can't remember and refuses to believe so. The montage is done in a complex manner with a lot of flashback as if it is trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find truth.
Last Year in Marienbad turns the "hot" medium that is the film into a "cool" one such as the graphic novel, for the reason the movie requires active conscious participation to extract value.
It comprises 182 collages that appears to follow some sort of storyline. It seems there are some images missing in between every collage. The reader is confronted to think of steps and events to fill in the gap, to fill in the details. Every time you 'read' the book it's possible to think of a different storyline. The static images become dynamic, it's meaning changes from time to time.
Two things happen:
1. Every single image is multi-interpretable, because there are multiple answers to the question: "What is going on in this image?"
2. The collection of images composed in a structural manner imposes a narrative. Because of the lack of a structure between one image and the other the narrative becomes multi-interpretable.
Another example is the movie Last Year in Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, a somewhat incomprehensible movie featuring a confusing montage technique that actually suits the storyline. A man meets a woman and tells her he is certain he met her before last year and even tells her they had a passionate affair together, while she can't remember and refuses to believe so. The montage is done in a complex manner with a lot of flashback as if it is trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find truth.
Last Year in Marienbad turns the "hot" medium that is the film into a "cool" one such as the graphic novel, for the reason the movie requires active conscious participation to extract value.
dinsdag 25 januari 2011
Moments
Continuing on stream of consciousness, this video is a perfect example of putting and bombarding images and thoughts into the viewers' head. It also reminds me of the part of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway quoted in the link I put up in the last post:
"In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June."
This montage technique is also used in the videoclip Hurt by Johnny Cash, reaching it's climax towards the end.
So it seems that there clearly is a connection between the literary stream of consciousness technique and the movie montage technique used in the video above. There's also a strong connection between montage and collage.
As with movie montage, a collage is a montage and a construction as well, all packed inside one image. Being very layered, it's trying to tell plenty, literally and figuratively. Isn't that the power of collage? Or is being compact not always an advantage? At least collage can very well be used as a way of transferring stream of consciousness in a similar way to a movie montage.
So now we already have three mediums that can be used as a technique for adressing stream of consciousness:
1. Literature, by writing words.
2. Video, by editing moving images.
3. Collage, by assembling static images.
The difference and only problem that I see is that the literary technique could be seen as far superior, being mostly one on one. Since most people tend to think in words, it's easiest to just write the immediate thoughts down on paper. It's easy to loose the essence of the original thoughts when you start to think it over. To quote Hank from the movie Naked Lunch:
"See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin."
Besides, it's probably hard to find the perfect images carrying the essence of the original thoughts. This is where manipulation and compromise comes in, and in this case I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, because when you are addressing an audience, it's not as much about the writers' original thoughts as it is about the reader/viewers' interpretation. When the manipulation is done well, it doesn't matter to the audience, only to the writer for deceiving his or hers authenticity.
"In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June."
This montage technique is also used in the videoclip Hurt by Johnny Cash, reaching it's climax towards the end.
So it seems that there clearly is a connection between the literary stream of consciousness technique and the movie montage technique used in the video above. There's also a strong connection between montage and collage.
As with movie montage, a collage is a montage and a construction as well, all packed inside one image. Being very layered, it's trying to tell plenty, literally and figuratively. Isn't that the power of collage? Or is being compact not always an advantage? At least collage can very well be used as a way of transferring stream of consciousness in a similar way to a movie montage.
So now we already have three mediums that can be used as a technique for adressing stream of consciousness:
1. Literature, by writing words.
2. Video, by editing moving images.
3. Collage, by assembling static images.
The difference and only problem that I see is that the literary technique could be seen as far superior, being mostly one on one. Since most people tend to think in words, it's easiest to just write the immediate thoughts down on paper. It's easy to loose the essence of the original thoughts when you start to think it over. To quote Hank from the movie Naked Lunch:
"See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin."
Besides, it's probably hard to find the perfect images carrying the essence of the original thoughts. This is where manipulation and compromise comes in, and in this case I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, because when you are addressing an audience, it's not as much about the writers' original thoughts as it is about the reader/viewers' interpretation. When the manipulation is done well, it doesn't matter to the audience, only to the writer for deceiving his or hers authenticity.
Stream of consciousness
Stream of consciousness info link
What about stream of consciousness in images rather than words?
When this literary technique is used skillfully, it imitates the way the human brain processes images and puts them into words. The reader literally takes a look inside the characters' head. So we have thoughts painted in images by putting thoughts into words and images recalled in the reader's head and interpreted by the reader.
But what if you immediately start out with images, instead of just using words? Would it make the experience of a stream of consciousness even stronger? And what if you could see your own stream of consciousness real time in images. Besides possibly being scary, wouldn't it influence your stream of consciousness? Creating some sort of dialogue?
Am picking up As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner tomorrow!
What about stream of consciousness in images rather than words?
When this literary technique is used skillfully, it imitates the way the human brain processes images and puts them into words. The reader literally takes a look inside the characters' head. So we have thoughts painted in images by putting thoughts into words and images recalled in the reader's head and interpreted by the reader.
But what if you immediately start out with images, instead of just using words? Would it make the experience of a stream of consciousness even stronger? And what if you could see your own stream of consciousness real time in images. Besides possibly being scary, wouldn't it influence your stream of consciousness? Creating some sort of dialogue?
Am picking up As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner tomorrow!
The mysterious
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
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