Monday, November 23, 2015

     Blog Post: November 22, 2015

ART GRAFITTI AND THE PHENOMEN
OLOGY OF HOW EACH OF US
IS CREATING AND LIVING AND INTERWEAVING  DESPITE
IN THE GENERATIVE NOTHING THE 
DEEP BLACK
THE SILENCE - THAT 

CAGEAN LAKE OF SILENCE 
WHICH IS
ART OF MUSIC - 
THAT GENTLE MAN - JOHN
SPEAKING OF SILENCE



Nothing retains its form.

The mind of snow –
the winter world –
knowing nothing
knows that it nothing knows

– it snows, it snows

------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------------------
To write, to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to
survive, to wrest a few precise or ambiguous scraps from the void as it grows:
to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark, or a few signs. 
________________________________________________________________________


Nothing retains its form.

The mind of snow –
the winter world –
knowing nothing
knows that it nothing knows

– it snows, it snows

----------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------
To write, to try meticulously 
to retain something, to cause 
something to
survive, to wrest a few precise 
or ambiguous 
scraps from the void as it grows:
to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a 
mark, or 
a few signs.
____________________________________________________________________






Taken together, the basic elements used to construct graffiti's imagery operate as a form of resistance. The creation of a graffiti identity through the circulation of a tag is both a form of camouflage and what identifies the writer as part of an underground culture.
The reconstruction of the proliferation of names that are meaningful only to those who participate in their diffusion all point to the fact that, like some contemporary art practices, the culture of graffiti writing rebels against established art forms an modes of communication.


...Writing any form of graffiti, whether it be political, personal or gang-related, responds to a variety of social needs. Expression through words, symbols and figures on city walls can be a reaction against
oppression, a mode of protest, an anonymous way to be heard, an act of personal or group empowerment, or a secret language...

... graffiti writing.......is most significantly connected to the pervasiveness of consumer culture.
Adding tags illegally into the official framework of a city relays a number of ideas.

First, it implies a desire to belong to a city's visual culture, which is theoretically inclusive, but in practical terms exclusive.

Second, it disrupts the corporate logic of naming by introducing unsanctioned, unknown
names into the cityscape. To this effect, it uses existing language as a basis of subversion.

Third it exposes a city's underbelly. The sanctioned names that circulate in the city-
scape represent companies that employ thousands of unnamed people.
By contrast, unauthorised tags represent real people.

Fourth, it reclaims a space for a more diverse public, essentially questioning the
notion of public space.




A writers subcultural status and identity are rooted in the adherence to and development of the stylistic principles of graffiti; writing. Moreover, style is what defines the conflict between writers and authorities, since graffiti as a style of expression clashes with and disrupts the otherwise controlled
aesthetics of the cityscape.
...creates a type of secret language that sustains the subculture, while elements of art and design vivify this language.

...use fading, shading, pulling...

Graffiti's connection with popular culture through icon appropriation suggests integral parallels between the graffiti World and the media saturated World.
Cities are filled with names that promote someone or something. Names, logos and signage of all kinds are naturalized within the cityscape and drive consumer culture. Advertisements in the public arena are in dialogue with each other and with us, the consumers.
Names are continually for notoriety. Shop names, brand names corporate names, celebrity names-all have become ubiquitous.





For graffiti writers, mixing their names into the fray is a logical extension of the dominant commercial ideology: if your name is recognized in the urban realm, then you are somebody.
Illegally adding your name to the public arena, of course, indicates that you are disrupting the system, rebelling against social norms and making your presence felt, albeit subversively.


For many, writing legally strips away the very reason for doing graffiti.



The graffiti subculture is a part of society, but also stands apart. In terms of its place of dissemination, its visual language and its substance as an alternative culture, it is firmly tied to mainstream cultures.
The subculture necessitates these ties in order to position and define itself beyond the parameters of the dominant order. Graffiti is at once physically accessible and functionally inaccessible to outsiders.
The fact that the general public makes contact with graffiti but has no direct path of entry into its meaning and purpose gives writers a sense of power. By creating a World of their own, neither easily penetrated by non-writers nor intended to be understood, writers can exclude mainstreem audiences from accessing their word, thus reinforcing the vitality of their World.
The knowledge that most people cannot read their graffiti positions writers as members
of an exclusive scene - a scene that is visible to everyone but insignificant to most.
Through the construct of the subculture, writers participate in an alternative way of experiencing the city....








...Blek Le Rat, the celebrated Godfather of the street stencil, began stencilling small rats on the streets of Paris in 1981.....
....Although Blek participates in gallery shows, his passion for working on the street has not diminished over the past thirty years as it allows him to communicate with a much broader audience.
As the artist explains:

"The problem with galleries is that 99% of urban artists we urban artists as a stepping stone into galleries. It is a fatal error because in galleries they're seen by 10 people, but the streets they're seen by 100,000 people. And that's the integrity of the artist's work: to be seen not to be sold or recognized in a museum but to be seen by the World."

re Blek Le Rat.

Poetic, quotidian, and always engaging, Blek's artworks are, in the simplest terms, explorations of Humanity.
His pseudonyms, itself an anagram of 'art' ('rat') suggests that, through accessible imagery, social issues can indeed be raised to the forefront of urban visual culture.
Committed to street art's potential as the future of art, Blek considers his social obligation to produce imagery with which people can identify.

...Most recently, the artist has devoted much of his practice to specific social issues such as homelessness. Pasting images such as homelessness in San Francisco (from 2006) in areas frequented by homeless people both raises awareness and symbolically provides the homeless with a temporary home.


there are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?



...Alan Sondheim





-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
________________________________________________________________

at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething

incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as

    


















---------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------

They became desperate as they faced the sea. Their quadrilateral lives were broken against the infinite curve of the horizon.

..And the houses matched the shape of the farms where they worked, quadrilaterals which stretched out one after the other. Their horizon was formed by those green parallelograms covered with banana trees in geometric rows set at equal distances, and the houses in the so-called yards were wooden oblongs,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To avoid possible boredom and the stain
Of too much intuition the whole scene
Is walled behind glass. "Too early,"
She says, "in the season." A hawk drifts by.
"Send everybody back to the city."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unforgettable nights... which of them all did she prefer? If they told her to erase one of them from her memory; if she had not lived it, which one of all those nights would she here left blank?
She could not tell, really, because they were all so deeply clear and at the same dark: clear for a zone of her conscious, and dark for her love, because she had touched blindly what is visible only in the
latitudes of the heart.


----------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
----------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------
Gulumbu Yunupingu (Australian Aboriginal Artist.)
---------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------
Australian Aboriginal Artist.


Gulumbu Yunupingu's life's work is a conceptual inquiry into the nature of existence and the limits of Human knowledge. For over a decade, Yunupingu has devoted herself almost exclusively to cataloguing the night sky, recording the Universe star in an unending masterwork comprising hundreds of objects.
She reconfigures the star motif into a performative inscription, drawing the aesthetic traditions and spiritual beliefs or her Gumatji people into a meditation on the ends of the Universe and what may lie beyond.


Y. applies natural pigments to hollow Eucalypt trunks and flattened sheets of bark, allowing the sculptural qualities of each piece to enliven the repetition of the star motif, Variations in colour and form evoke the variability as well as the beauty of the night skies across eastern Arnhem and, whose cloud cover is intermittently obscured by cloud cover or the smoke of bush fires.

Yunupingu's work is replete with metaphors and associations that intersect with these themes.
Hollow eucalypt trunks evoke Yolungu beliefs around death and the journey of the spirit.
Hollow trunks were historically prepared and used as vessels for the internment of Human remains and they retain their symbolism as ancestral canoes which carry the essence of the deceased to their spiritual homelands.

Gulumbu Yunupingu


... The night sky is a metaphor for both a Universal Humanity unified under a common sky and for the limits of Human knowledge....

... Yolngu regard some stars as manifestations of ancestral beings whose actions gave shape to the physical and cultural World of the people of the people of Eastern Arnham Land.

The stars themselves may symbolise spirits suspended in the ancestral realm, while a shooting star may herald a Human death.


(Science creates a parallel MYTH the Universe that is no more or less true


that this World belief of the Yolngu people.)


Is plunged in shade, this one
In self-esteem. But the center
Keeps collapsing and re-forming.
The couple at a picnic table



And he never intended to consult him; but nevers do have a way of arriving. He had an attack of malaria. A snake malaria that kept him frozen, his hands congealed, his hair like that of a dead man, his
teeth with the taste of bull bile, a stiffness in his joints....


...and in those vegetable tubes the small intertices were like those of the tail of his mermaid. They were like small honeycombs that wept acid water...

A waltz. She was breathing in the happiness of being loved by that man. Her happiness was greater than of any other woman who felt herself loved, because for her it was feeling herself being loved by an exceptional being....
...He loved her because she had noticed him when

who used to announce his wares with a long, strident, terribly tragic laugh;

___________________________________________________________


































~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


How did you come by it? asked Thomas accidentally or design?

The latter, said the Dead Father in my vastness, there was
a room for, necessity of, every kind of experience.
I therefore decided that mechanical experience was a part
of experience there was a room for, in my vastness.
I wanted to know what machines know.


It thinks itself too good for
These generalizations and is
moved on by them. The opposite side
(but its too early in the season for picnics)
Are traipsed across by the river's workings
To avoid possible boredom and the stain
Of too much intuition the whole scene
Is walled behind glass. "Too early,"
She says, "in the season." A hawk drifts by.
"Send everybody back to the city."

Qutline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given


Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything, that anything might be said):

*/Thanks to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*

My work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized my project as the relationship between abstract
structures and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing or
the text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said, the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design in Halifax.


1. Philosophical work pushed to the limits:

-gamespace edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit" these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves? Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors and objects that open elsewhere?

-client or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)

-altered motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)

-software-dependent, see economic exhaustion below (Different
software produces different results of course: what is the
typology of glitches?)

[situations where structure collapses:

-where structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where chaos dissolves into noise.)

-where the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that, for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later, the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the universe.)

How are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text? What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution of textuality?]


2. Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the blank is the site of introjection/projection.)

-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")

-recapitulation through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing, where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites. A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing survives the seething.)

-maps of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels 15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north: the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water - dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces, gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness _do?_.)


3. Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:

-multiverse (Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of communication with our own; there may always be limits
to cosmological observation.)

-economic exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going to be energy limits.)

-Planck constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate. The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote, a blank.)


4. Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace, then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and structuration is cultural work.


5. Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)

-playing 'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing in the first-third positions.)

-playing near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without reference or intervalic structure.)

-mimetic function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game, beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the phenomenology of the musical structure.)

-blank (The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever; infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening device, that too can be surpassed.)

(I think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which are available online.)


6. In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?


7. At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform information. The suites themselves are always
transforming; they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent, they might be considered closed circulations within
potential wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure, and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases. All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart; all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that anything might be said.


Alan Sondheim re his 'Meditation on the Internet'

... Scott Burnham said: 'The street is a huge cultural laboratory'
... Whether abhorred or adored, graffiti and street art provoke passionate debate, reflecting the prominent role they play in the cultural landscape and consciousness of a City... Graffiti and street art are exceptional, however, for three key reasons.
[First] as unsanctioned interventionist practices they challenge the art institution and commissioned public art, which both typically involve numerous decisions – maleen in a project from concept to fruition.

[Second] street art practices are guided by and guide a city's visual aesthetic in that
they both assimilate that environment and and recreate it.

[And finally] graffiti writers and street artists fundamentally question the ethos of
ownership through the process of creation and thus approach the city from an
alternative perspective.

Both graffiti and street art illuminate the city with signs of life. The walls streets,
billboards and all manner of structural details that make up a city are brought to life
with the addition of urban painting.


...The function of illegal urban art, and whether it should be supported or penalized, remains open for discussion however, one thing is certain, when it comes to contemporary international art movements, the writing is on the wall.


In essence, writing tags is a game wherein the entire city is a playing field.

... In the development of letter forms that are illegible, sometimes even to other writers, the graffiti culture has successfully constructed a visual language that, while performed in the cityscape, is reserved for and faces the subculture.









































While it may seem absurd that art practices grouped under the umbrella of urban or street art are illegal, it is also a driving force for its practitioners as it allows the artists to work in an unmediated manner.
Exercising actual freedom of expression enables artists to contest a city's corporate visual culture by either explicitly responding to it or creating new avenues of visual communication.

Regardless of the artist's intentions, producing art on the street in in itself a form of resistance to sanctified imagery and the notion of public space. In other words, the unauthorized visual alteration of city space is a type of rebellion against the capitalist construction of space.

An illegal mode of expression that subsists on the margins of a city's structure signals and invasion of 'public' space unsanctified art projects thus infuse the public sphere with moments of fracture, spaces of disruption and subjective users of territory, and together create alternative forms of urban visual culture.

Shepard Fairey (USA), Zevs (France) and Eine (UK) are among a number of artists interested in this dynamic of contestation.



Tarzan is a Huh.
And where was the other Huh the Silverback had seen?. There was no way of asking. Even if he could approach that great dark stranger-which he knew was impossible what good would come of it? Whatever was in that huge old head would stay there, there was no form of...
Poor Tarzan



In public art discourse, especially in terms of new genre public art, the issue of community representation and agreement is crucial.
[Community has been ignored, idealized, or regarded as fixed]

...instead of being recognized as fluid... The ambition ... of public art - to represent and interact with or speak to a specific community, in the hope of forging a meaningful relationship between artist and audience - has in some ways moved the discussion away from the work itself to accountability.

Public art discourse has thus been transformed into debates regarding aesthetics and design to social accountability, shifting the focus from the site itself to those who occupy it.

In pursuit of issue-based dialogue between artist and community, many questions may arise regarding how a group of individuals become a community.

Who determines these parameters? What role does each parameter play? What issues define the community?


At afternoon sleepy-time he continued to... escape... and came to know every inch...I don't mean he was familiar with it. That's an inadequate word. He had inside himself a parallel Universe, a sense-map of the valley, made by crossing strands of odour and temperature patterns and shade patterns and tastes and echolocations and between-leaf airways which had been gained by sticking his nose
right into the dirt of everything.

He had the landscape on his skin and hair in his hair. He ate that landscape and shitted it. Maybe his most sensitive instruments were his feet, they were hard and horny and caked with grime but which usually had a damper about then there was a moist layer where subtle information passed through from the Earth he trod and read through those feet as though it were a great book

...Now his name sounded like something you might use to describe a star...fascinating...distant...cold. Nothing could move that lump of feeling that weighed inside him, nothing could shift the image he had of those dark steady eyes putting him under such intense scrutiny.

Two dark thoughts. The brow of a gorilla is like a jutting cliff, the eyes are buried. Looking at you, a gorilla seems to give you total attention. It's a serious countenance as though you are being sternly
judged.

Tarzan is a Huh.
And where was the other Huh the Silverback had seen?. There was no way of asking. Even if he could approach that great dark stranger-which he knew was impossible what good would come of it? Whatever was in that huge old head would stay there, there was no form of...
Poor Tarzan


...It was inside his mind. In there something was turning, never ceasing. Gears humming. Somehow the very elements of the Universe had been coupled together to produce a busy energy, which was so startling to him.

The whirling of the Stars. He looked down at his chest and wondered for the first time what inside his skin.


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@














^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given


Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything, that anything might be said):

*/Thanks to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*

My work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized my project as the relationship between abstract
structures and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing or
the text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said, the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design in Halifax.


1. Philosophical work pushed to the limits:

-gamespace edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit" these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves? Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors and objects that open elsewhere?

-client or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)

-altered motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)

-software-dependent, see economic exhaustion below (Different
software produces different results of course: what is the
typology of glitches?)

[situations where structure collapses:

-where structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where chaos dissolves into noise.)

-where the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that, for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later, the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the universe.)

How are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text? What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution of textuality?]


2. Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the blank is the site of introjection/projection.)

-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")

-recapitulation through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing, where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites. A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing survives the seething.)

-maps of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels 15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north: the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water - dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces, gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness _do?_.)


3. Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:

-multiverse (Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of communication with our own; there may always be limits
to cosmological observation.)

-economic exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going to be energy limits.)

-Planck constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate. The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote, a blank.)


4. Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace, then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and structuration is cultural work.


5. Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)

-playing 'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing in the first-third positions.)

-playing near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without reference or intervalic structure.)

-mimetic function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game, beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the phenomenology of the musical structure.)

-blank (The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever; infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening device, that too can be surpassed.)

(I think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which are available online.)


6. In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?


7. At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform information. The suites themselves are always
transforming; they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent, they might be considered closed circulations within
potential wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure, and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases. All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart; all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that anything might be said.


Alan Sondheim


[Ibid.]


...I learned ... that the sun sings... he liked to think of the whales singing..., and the crickets in Africa which sit inside little bowls they have dug in the dust, sound shells, ...can be heard..., up to seven miles away... and so he was always listening to the faraway crickets - for whales, for the language of the
leaves.


On Beal street the cars cruised, wide and low like metal smiles.


...Vernon never really recovered. In time he found other women and, eventually, a new wife. But this was all just something to do.

Elvis gone and then Gladys, and that was the end of life. Tarzan saw that until it was pain to the point of death when they were lost.
He had allowed nothing like that.


))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

"He felt the touch of an angel?'

...Anyways, there was this one branch which was over to the side, he had to let goa hand to reach it, he tried, he just couldn't reach that thing... waiting to drop - an'

there's this voice in the air. Not in his head, he said. The voice was all around him. It was an everythin' voice that's what he said - it had everythin' in it, anger and promises and the whole history of the whole World an' it said, will you always look for me?...

...[he is able to reach a seemingly impossible distance + thus survive (ie avoid
falling from a tree.)]

...he became aware that there were angel places."
"Angel Places."


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Great wings, sweeping against the stars.
[From Alan Sondheim’s ‘Meditation on the Internet’]


Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given


Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is
inconceivable that it could be given, that it is inconceivable
that it might occur without contradiction, that it might say
anything, that anything might be said):

*/Thanks to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*

My work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement
or confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I
characterized my project as the relationship between abstract
structures and consciousness. I've always believed that
philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing or
the text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and
that language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this
said, the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done
with altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced
on a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design in Halifax.


1. Philosophical work pushed to the limits:

-gamespace edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and
behaviors affected, how does the physics change, how does one
"inhabit" these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries
themselves? Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of
behaviors and objects that open elsewhere?

-client or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays,
fields of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits:
what happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How
does avatar control become entangled with the gamespace
environment?)

-altered motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when
mocap alterations result in software overload, so that the
simulation breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes
immobile and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced
of enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)

-software-dependent, see economic exhaustion below (Different
software produces different results of course: what is the
typology of glitches?)

[situations where structure collapses:

-where structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where
there's no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic,
where chaos dissolves into noise.)

-where the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So
that, for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized
by particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge
elsewhere or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is
absorbed and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or
later, the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of
the universe.)

How are these experienced? Does experience always translate into
text? What is the textuality of experience? What is the
dissolution of textuality?]


2. Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a
state where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where
the blank is the site of introjection/projection.)

-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images
and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details
at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething
incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as
"mandala.")

-recapitulation through contouring (Noise reduction operations
on blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal
nothing, where the inchoate roams among and through protocol
suites. A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections;
nothing survives the seething.)

-maps of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's
Travels 15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far
north: the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and
water - dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is
described early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a
sense of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge
spaces, gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in
relation to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does
consciousness _do?_.)


3. Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:

-multiverse (Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out
of communication with our own; there may always be limits
to cosmological observation.)

-economic exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,
I think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between
economic surplus and fundamental particle research; for example,
particle accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits,
and it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The
universe might then be imagined to have an economic structure.
High-energy cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always
going to be energy limits.)

-Planck constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the
Planck length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear
obdurate. The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be
described by the game of extension. The description, I think,
even if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the
asymptote, a blank.)


4. Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of
Rhode Island, has a complex theology based on the broken
succession of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break,
the religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must
decide everything for himself or herself. One might choose to
become a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether.
It's up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no
inherent law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a
question of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of
the Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the
gamespace, then absorbed. Without theological legitimation,
there is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness
and structuration is cultural work.


5. Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)

-playing 'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace,
playing in the first-third positions.)

-playing near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function
(Fingering within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is
transformed to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound,
without reference or intervalic structure.)

-mimetic function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the
sound transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the
game, beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game
becomes a game of extension; the game of extension transforms
the phenomenology of the musical structure.)

-blank (The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure
becomes the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field
is reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers
approaches the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as
ever; infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends
towards higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus,
listening device, that too can be surpassed.)

(I think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done
with Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and
noise at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries
which are available online.)


6. In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game,
there are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and
extension beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or
noise without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the
energy of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in
terms of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is
always surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution.
How does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?


7. At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters
which process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters
operate within protocol suites, layers of organization that
transform information. The suites themselves are always
transforming; they loosely define the gamespace, and to this
extent, they might be considered closed circulations within
potential wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is
secure, and artifacts within the world are at best temporary
stases. All of this simultaneously fits together and falls
apart; all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any
case is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is
inconceivable that it might occur, that it might say anything,
that anything might be said.