[T]here is a way that those cultural influences flow through all the people who do any kind of serious work anyway. So you can’t really tell: When I get it from J.G. Ballard, does that mean I got it from de Chirico, because Ballard couldn’t have done it without him? If you’ve got it going on, it all flows together.
31 December 2010
If you've got it going on, it all flows together.
20 December 2010
We live among Palimpsests
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| Archimedes' Palimpsest |
Finally, we can't even conceive of a continuum of time. Every fragment exists by itself, and that's why we live among palimpsests, because finally all the work should fit into one whole, and express an entire perfect action, as Aristotle says, and it's impossible now, it's impossible, because of the breakage, there are pieces everywhere . . .
Seeing is like painting
Andy Clark, Being there: putting brain, body, and world together again:
Seeing, according to Noë (2004), is like painting. Painting is an ongoing process in which the eye probes the scene, then flicks back to the canvass, then back to the scene, and so on in a dense cycle of active exploration and partial, iterated cognitive uptake. It is this cycle of situated, world-engaging activity that constitutes the act of painting. Seeing (and more generally, perceiving) is likewise constituted, Noë claims, by a process of active exploration in which the sense organs repeatedly probe the world, delivering partial and restricted information on a need-to-know basis. This cycle of situated, world-engaging, whole animal activity is the locus, on Noë’s account, of genuine cognitive interest, at least for perceptual experience. According to such a view, “Perception is not something that happens to us or in us, it is something we do” (Noë 2004, 1). Let’s call this the Strong Sensorimotor Model (SSM) of perceptual experience.
Velasquez, Las Meninas
The SSM does not merely claim that you need an active body as a platform for perceiving. Rather, the interesting claim is that skillful bodily action and perception are in some sense intimately entangled or intermingled. The starting point here is the correct and important observation that perception is active:
Think of a blind person tap-tapping his or her way around a cluttered space, perceiving that space by touch, not all at once, but through time, by skilful probing and movement. This is, or at least ought to be, our paradigm of what perceiving is. (Noë 2004, 1)
Expanding on this, Noë adds that
all perception is touch-like in this way: perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession of bodily skills. What we perceive is determined by what we do (or what we know how to do); it is determined by what we are ready to do . . . we enact our perceptual experience: we act it out. (2004, 1, emphasis in original)
An important implication of this, according to Noë, is that appeals to internal representations (if such there be) cannot tell the whole story either for painting or for seeing:
The causally sufficient substrate of the production of the picture is surely not the internal states of the painter, but rather the dynamic pattern of engagement among the painter, the scene and the canvass. Why not say the same thing about seeing? Seeing, on this approach, would depend on brain, body and world. (2004, 223)
Recovering Lost Knowledge
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| Fragment of a previously unknown epic poem by Simonides about the Greeks’ victory against the Persians at Plataea |
The aim of this site is to experiment tools and devise methods for representing fragments of lost works, i.e. ancient texts that have survived only through quotations preserved by other authors.
Print collections of fragmentary texts are collections of textual excerpts drawn from many different sources and arranged according to various criteria, such as chronological order or thematic disposition. The length of these excerpts can be significantly different from one edition to another and depends on the editor’s choice. The aim of a digital collection of fragmentary texts is to go beyond the limits of print collections and express fragmentary sources in a more dynamic and interconnected way.
10 December 2010
20 November 2010
06 November 2010
Sometimes fragments tell more of the story.
From the Cleveland Museum of Art :
At approximately 1:00 am on March 24, 1970, a bomb irreparably damaged the Cleveland Museum's version of Rodin's The Thinker. The bomb itself had been placed on a pedestal that supported the enlargement and had the power of about three sticks of dynamite.
At approximately 1:00 am on March 24, 1970, a bomb irreparably damaged the Cleveland Museum's version of Rodin's The Thinker. The bomb itself had been placed on a pedestal that supported the enlargement and had the power of about three sticks of dynamite.No one was injured in the subsequent blast, but the statue's base and lower legs were destroyed. The remaining sections of the cast were blown backward to form a 'plume' at the base, and the entire statue was knocked to the ground. It was reported that this attack was undertaken by a radical political group, perhaps as a commentary on the continuing military action in Vietnam or the elitism of the American government.
Regardless, no one was ever arrested or charged with the destruction. However, the incident highlighted several conservation issues related directly to artistic intent. Since the piece was so dramatically damaged, the Museum was unsure how to proceed. One idea was to create an entirely new cast to replace the damaged work. Another idea was to restore the sculpture by recasting elements of Rodin's original. Finally, however, it was decided that the statue should not be repaired, but placed outside the Museum in its damaged condition.
05 November 2010
02 November 2010
Nothing comes from Nothing
Paul Crowe, reviewing Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation:
Greek philosophers said nothing comes from nothing, a new idea, actually a new anything, is simply a rearrangement or unique new combination of things that already exist. When you think of it that way, coming up with new ideas isn’t about having that mysterious “creative” ability, it might be more about a willingness to try lots of new combinations to see what might work, and, hey, anyone can do that, you just need desire and effort.
30 October 2010
Leila Foti Sharma: Joyful Collision
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| Leila Foti Sharma, Joyful Collision |
Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.
23 October 2010
The realities we experience our realities we compile ourselves as editors.
Robert Anton Wilson:
The only "realities" (plural) that we actually experience and can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced realities, existential realities -- realities involving ourselves as editors -- and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating, evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mahler.
Everyone has to pick from the same selection of goods as everyone else.
Selling Out:
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| Barbara Kruger |
In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now, people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and predict what the counter culture is into and have it on the shelves in the cool stores right as it becomes popular. . . .
Today, everyone is a consumer, and has to pick from the same selection of goods as everyone else, and because of this people now define their personalities on how good their taste is, or how clever, or how obscure, or how ironic their choices are.
11 October 2010
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