I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, waiting; with the desire to pass through the Battery Tunnel so I could live in the real world. Last week, leaving the library, the sun had set and hundreds of Canadian geese flew over my head, commuting to their over-night destinations, honking, eager to move on. I stood in the street, laughing up at their 15 minute fly-by while people walked past me, unaware of me or my geese. After the last formation, I walked to my car, happy.
1. How does a tiny seed become a gigantic tree? Clearly there is a lot more stuff in the tree than in the seed, so where did all that stuff come from? It’s not from the soil….* scientific answers below...
2. Why does the ocean look blue? Even on cloudy days? It’s not from reflecting the sky….**
How do we know the things we know? We are not empty vessels, even as children. We have ideas; mental models persist as we age and we look for evidence to reinforce our misperceptions. If we articulate our models, talk about our perceptions, we have the opportunity to discover our mistakes. *Fiddling* with things of our world complements learning.
There are over 3000 words in the English language to describe 5 -7 core emotions (these are mine: ecstasy, terror, disgust, despair, surprise).
1. List all the emotions you experienced today.
2. List all the emotions you can think of describing.
3. How many are positive?
Packet 5 topics:
The fine line between predictable and probable
The Butterfly Effect + Chaos Theory
What is arbitrary and what is essential?
Does a painting’s meaning lie in its origin or destination?
“Water cannot be stopped in order to grasp the river, reality collapses.”
Opening my Own Abyss
Palimpsest
Mythomorphic: it must have the form of which it speaks
Summing up G1
11
The fine line between predictable and probable.
Tiny bits of matter do not behave in the same way as big chunks of matter. Based on everyday experience, we have an intuitive understanding of how a couch in the living room behaves; at least before animated Disney movies. There are different fundamentals for small matter. Atoms (molecules, or electrons, etc.) are never completely still and if we attempt to fix their position they escape. Particles are not like billiard balls with fixed velocity, but are more like (tiny) clouds that jitter and move, so we cannot measure their momentum.
Quantum mechanics uses equations to model how probability evolves over time. This produces `waves' of probability densities not unlike the waves on the surface of the ocean. The wave-like nature means that a particle’s existence is spread out, like a probability “field”. The location of a particle at the peak of the wave is only a likelihood, not a prediction.
Everything that exists has a wave aspect. Everything also has a particle aspect. One cannot model what the particle does between observations of the particle. One can only model how the probability of observing it changes over time. These probabilities also have a wave-like character. Every particle interacts with other particles as if it were located at a single point in space, a uniform evolution. These are quantum “jumps”; there is no “in between” as energy is transferred in quantum packets instead of being continuous.
The ''collapse'' of the wave function: Before observing a particle, it could be located at anywhere the wave function is not zero. After observing it, the particle is known to be within a much smaller region of space. The wave function has collapsed. Of course there cannot be a physical wave function that collapses because this would violate special relativity (no object can travel faster than the speed of light, but I’m not getting into that!). However the wave function does at times seem to be a physical entity because wave functions from two particles can interfere with each other just as physical waves do.
Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox, and an example of the weirdness of quantum theory. Devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, it illustrates the wave function of a quantum event where the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. In the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place; the wave function will collapse into one of two states.
A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If a Geiger counter detects radiation then the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. Quantum mechanics suggests that after a while the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.
If you travel for two hours at 50 miles an hour, you will go one hundred miles. We can measure the time with a clock and the distance with the odometer on your car. Instead quantum mechanics gives the probability that we will make a given measurement.
Probabilities occur all the time in science, because we almost never know everything we need to make a completely accurate prediction. For example, if you want to make a trip of a hundred miles, you cannot know ahead of time exactly how long it will take. You might run into a traffic jam. You can only give an estimated time. In quantum mechanics probabilities are different. They are not considered to result from our limited understanding of the universe, but to be fundamental. In the quantum mechanical model there is nothing to force a real event to happen. This is very confusing, because what we observe is always real events.
Niels Bohr proposed a solution to create the events we all observe. He assumed that conscious observation caused events. He thought there was an aspect of the world described by the evolution of probabilities in quantum mechanics, and an aspect of the world that we observe. Whenever we look in the box or make a measurement, we get some definite result and not just a probability. Bohr's idea is called the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Interpretations do not make predictions that differ from the probability evolution described by quantum mechanics. They are an attempt to give a philosophical explanation of how specific measurements come about. Because one cannot test them experimentally, physicists cannot reach agreement about them. Thus there are several different interpretations, and there is no way to know if any of them are correct.
Future exploration investigates the model of Buddhism + QM…
The Butterfly Effect + Chaos Theory according to the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/06/08/the_meaning_of_the_butterfly/?page=full
“…The butterfly effect is a deceptively simple insight extracted from a complex modern field. As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"
In the paper, Lorenz claimed the large effects of tiny atmospheric events pose both a practical problem, by limiting long-term weather forecasts, and a philosophical one, by preventing us from isolating specific causes of later conditions. The "innumerable" interconnections of nature, Lorenz noted, mean a butterfly's flap could cause a tornado - or, for all we know, could prevent one. Similarly, should we make even a tiny alteration to nature, "we shall never know what would have happened if we had not disturbed it," since subsequent changes are too complex and entangled to restore a previous state.
…Moreover, Lorenz also discovered stricter limits on our knowledge, proving that even models of physical systems with a few precisely known variables, like a heated gas swirling in a box, can produce endlessly unpredictable and non-repeating effects. This is a founding idea of chaos theory, whose advocates sometimes say Lorenz helped dispel the Newtonian idea of a wholly predictable universe. "Lorenz went beyond the butterfly," says Kerry Emanuel, a professor in the department of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT. "To say that certain systems are not predictable, no matter how precise you make the initial conditions, is a profound statement." Instead of a vision of science in which any prediction is possible, as long as we have enough information, Lorenz's work suggested that our ability to analyze and predict the workings of the world is inherently limited.
…That we imagine the butterfly effect would explain things in everyday life, however, reveals more than an overeager impulse to validate ideas through science. It speaks to our larger expectation that the world should be comprehensible - that everything happens for a reason, and that we can pinpoint all those reasons, however small they may be. But nature itself defies this expectation. It is probability, not certain cause and effect, that now dictates how scientists understand many systems, from subatomic particles to storms. "People grasp that small things can make a big difference," Emanuel says. "But they make errors about the physical world. People want to attach a specific cause to events, and can't accept the randomness of the world.”
I’m interested in the convergence of science and spirituality. We cannot depend on Reason alone; we may be only rationalizing our own wishes. We cannot depend on Scriptures alone; we may tend to become dogmatic. We cannot depend on Experience alone; we may be visualizing our own dreams. All three are necessary. Spiritual perceptions seem fantastical and fundamental matter described by science are equally mysterious: the complexities of the Quantum Mechanical world, superstring theory, the World of Ten dimensions. Science and Spiritual Reality require different instruments of knowledge; that which is beyond reason is not necessarily unreasonable.
What is arbitrary and what is essential?
I have been asked why I’m investigating physics instead of painting pictures. Indeed, I was grateful that my college art education veered away from higher math or sciences. My only involvement was a few dates with a Cooper Union mechanical engineering major; I gave him a nosebleed punking out on the dance floor and there was a little bit of make-out chemistry. I am mostly intrigued by this science because I do NOT grasp it in a way that I can explain the theories—if you meet me for coffee tomorrow, I’ll be unable to articulate what I’ve written here without my notes. It is a naïve wonder and there is a feeling present, about NOT grasping this science, that wants to be part of my art work.
Does a painting’s meaning lie in its origin or destination?
Reading traditional Japanese poetry is the swift stimulation of experiencing events which have stirred another human being. While its structure is brief and specific, our response to Japanese poetry is complex. These poems remind us—in all times and places— of our connections, our equivalence, and of how deeply we identify with the environment we live in. The elements of metaphor are simply set, elementary and clean, usually in a juxtaposition of images tied together. A semester of reading haiku, renga, haikai, haibun, tanka, contemporary versions, and poetry of various aboriginal cultures has shuttled me currently to bricolage.
Claude Levi-Strauss’s definition of bricolage as a “science of the concrete”, describes an attitude of the material world; the bricoleur speaks not only with things, but through things.
If interested, here's an excerpt from Levi-Strauss, Claude,The Savage Mind, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 1966 [1962] http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html
“In its old sense the verb 'bricoler' applied to ball games and billiards, to hunting, shooting and riding. It was however always used with reference to some extraneous movement: a ball rebounding, a dog straying or a horse swerving from its direct course to avoid an obstacle. And in our own time the 'bricoleur' is still someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman. The characteristic feature of mythical thought is that it expresses itself by means of a heterogeneous repertoire which, even if extensive, is nevertheless limited. It has to use this repertoire, however, whatever the task in hand because it has nothing else at its disposal. Mythical thought is therefore a kind of intellectual 'bricolage' - which explains the relation which can be perceived between the two.
Like 'bricolage' on the technical plane, mythical reflection can reach brilliant unforeseen results on the intellectual plane. Conversely, attention has often been drawn to the mytho-poetical nature of 'bricolage' on the plane of so-called 'raw' or 'naive' art, in architectural follies like the villa of Cheval the postman or the stage sets of Georges Melies, or, again, in the case immortalized by Dickens in Great Expectations but no doubt originally inspired by observation, of Mr. Wemmick's suburban 'castle' with its miniature drawbridge, its cannon firing at nine o'clock, its bed of salad and cucumbers, thanks to which its occupants could withstand a siege if necessary ...
The analogy is worth pursuing since it helps us to see the real relations between the two types of scientific knowledge we have distinguished. The 'bricoleur' is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with 'whatever is at hand', that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions. The set of the 'bricoleur's' means cannot therefore be defined in terms of a project (which would presuppose besides, that, as in the case of the engineer, there were, at least in theory, as many sets of tools and materials or 'instrumental sets', as there are different kinds of projects). It is to be defined only by its potential use or, putting this another way and in the language of the 'bricoleur' himself, because the elements are collected or retained on the principle that 'they may always come in handy'. Such elements are specialized up to a point, sufficiently for the 'bricoleur' not to need the equipment and knowledge of all trades and professions, but not enough for each of them to have only one definite and determinate use. They each represent a set of actual and possible relations; they are 'operators' but they can be used for any operations of the same type.
…Signs resemble images in being concrete entities but they resemble concepts in their powers of reference. Neither concepts nor signs relate exclusively to themselves; either may be substituted for something else. Concepts, however, have an unlimited capacity in this respect, while signs have not. The example of the 'bricoleur' helps to bring out the differences and similarities. Consider him at work and excited by his project. His first practical step is retrospective. He has to turn back to an already existent set made up of tools and materials, to consider or reconsider what it contains and, finally and above all, to engage in a sort of dialogue with it and, before choosing between them, to index the possible answers which the whole set can offer to his problem. He interrogates all the heterogeneous objects of which his treasury is composed to discover what each of them could 'signify' and so contribute to the definition of a set which has yet to materialize but which will ultimately differ from the instrumental set only in the internal disposition of its parts. A particular cube of oak could be a wedge to make up for the inadequate length of a plank of pine or it could be a pedestal - which would allow the grain and polish of the old wood to show to advantage. In one case it will serve as extension, in the other as material. But the possibilities always remain limited by the particular history of each piece and by those of its features which are already determined by the use for which it was originally intended or the modifications it has undergone for other purposes. The elements which the 'bricoleur' collects and uses are 'pre-constrained' like the constitutive units of myth, the possible combinations of which are restricted by the fact that they are drawn from the language where they already possess a sense which sets a limit on their freedom of manoeuvre. And the decision as to what to put in each place also depends on the possibility of putting a different element there instead, so that each choice which is made will involve a complete reorganization of the structure, which will never be the same as one vaguely imagined nor as some other which might have been preferred to it.
The engineer no doubt also cross-examines his resources. The existence of an 'interlocutor' is in his case due to the fact that his means, power and knowledge are never unlimited and that in this negative form he meets resistance with which he has to come to terms. It might be said that the engineer questions the universe, while the 'bricoleur' addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over from human endeavours, that is, only a sub-set of the culture. Again, Information Theory shows that it is possible, and often useful, to reduce the physicists' approaches to a sort of dialogue with nature. This would make the distinction we are trying to draw less clearcut. There remains however a difference even if one takes into account the fact that the scientist never carries on a dialogue with nature pure and simple but rather with a particular relationship between nature and culture definable in terms of his particular period and civilization and the material means at his disposal. He is no more able than the 'bricoleur' to do whatever he wishes when he is presented with a given task. He too has to begin by making a catalogue of a previously determined set consisting of theoretical and practical knowledge, of technical means, which restrict the possible solutions.”
Levi-Strauss’s bricolage led me briefly through his anthropological structuralism which led me to realize the existence of his first of four Mythologies, The Raw and The Cooked, through Derrida from "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, pp 278-294:
“There is no unity or absolute source of the myth. The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which are elusive, unactualizable, and nonexistent in the first place. Everything begins with the structure, the configuration, the relationship.”
“Water cannot be stopped in order to grasp the river, reality collapses.”
This quote attributed to Jaques Hoarau in the History of Structuralism: 1967-Present, by Francois Dosse and Deborah Glassman, Univerisity of Minnesota Press, 1997.
In Zeno’s Paradox, the Tortoise lays out his logic that Achilles would never win the race because with the Tortoise’s 10 meter lead, he will always be a little further ahead whenever Achilles reaches the point of the Tortoise’s last position. Surrendering to the Tortoise’s argument and his presumption that the Tortoise had the sharper wits, Achilles concedes the race. That is how I feel after reading Derrida. And quantum mechanics theory. QM: What one can understand is the structure of the mathematical theory and how experimental techniques are used to test the predictions of the model. Derrida: Our account of reality is defined by how we describe it. The process of showing all the things that influence a particular description of a particular part of reality -- or even, in some cases, DEFINE that reality, changes the way we understand the concept we started with.
Opening my Own Abyss
“Art can be reached following the three ways of word, concept and thing or signified, signifier, referent or some opposition between presence and representation.” I might read Derrida’s Truth in Painting next semester.
Palimpsest
The Brazilian-Portuguese term ‘gambiarra’ is usually translated into English as ‘making do’. One of the original meanings referred to a branch of lights used as temporary lighting. It is a word that often denotes the illegal electric hookups in Brazilian shanty towns and, more broadly, describes the ingenious ways in which the Brazilian poor use discarded junk to build tools, shelters and solve household problems. It’s wider significance has not been lost on the visual art scene; the upsurge of interest in Latin American art in the last ten years, has become a hot commodity. The result is a site of conflict in the contrast between the buying audience and the roots of the work. I chose two Brazilian artists of this genre:
Alexandre da Cunha uses and re-uses everyday utilitarian objects, strips them of their original use/value and combines them to create new structures. da Cunha’s intention is to load his objects with references to high-modernist art through structure, pattern and motif. Brancusi columns made of gardenware, busts constructed from mop heads submit the history and techniques of high art with an air of dollar store aesthetic.
According to da Cunha, “what is important to note, though, and this also relates to the idea of cannibalization, is that everything we take in is digested in a very specifically Brazilian way. I am altering most of the objects I use, so they are not readymades in the classic Duchampian sense. They are for the most part fairly universal, but they also carry the specific context of where they come from—a particular aesthetics and history.” (Alexandre da Cunha in conversation with Jens Hoffman, CCA Wattis)
For many years, Vik Muniz created paintings from chocolate, wire, thread, sugar, dust and tomato sauce. Playing with our impulse to morph clouds into objects, Muniz’s 'Equivalents' series remakes images of clouds from cotton wool, engaging Alfred Steiglitz's famous cloud photography. Stieglitz photographed clouds from 1922 into the thirties, which he termed Equivalents. Infused by Kandinsky's ideas that colors, shapes, and lines reflect the "vibrations of the soul", Stieglitz emphasized pure abstraction, adhering to the modern ideas of equivalence, holding that abstract forms, lines, and colors could represent corresponding inner states, emotions and ideas.
Using junk and scrap (old fridges, tires, bottles, industrial waste, car doors, nuts and bolts), Muniz creates giant collage-like images which he then photographs from on high in his Brazilian studio space. Muniz outlines the importance of materiality in his own artist's manifesto:
"Basically, we artists make art so we can evidence the materialization of an idea, to test it in the material world, only in the end to transform it back into actual visual stimuli, making a connection between ourselves and the world we live in" (Vik Muniz, Reflex: a Vik Muniz Primer, 2005, Aperture Foundation, page 22)
What it is about art that initially attracts us, substance? Or image? For me, both should be present over the long haul of sustaining my interest, but it’s not necessary for image or substance to attract me in a prescribed order. However, I think both of these artists are elevated by artspeak (and the market is celebrating). Alexandre da Cunha’s work is boring, heavy-handed metaphor with sloppy assemblage masquerading as humility or primitivism. Initially, Vik Muniz’s work is clever and he’s attempting irony; his pieces remind me not to take myself—and the game of art—so damned seriously. Once I get beyond his clever concept, his series become a boxed set of velvet Elvis paintings of different poses. The concept doesn’t offer anything new beyond the first effort; I already heard the joke, got the punchline and it’s just not worth repeating.
Mythomorphic: it must have the form of which it speaks
My exploration of Japanese poetry brought me to haiga, influencing the formal esthetics of some of my visual poems. Haiga is haiku painting, originating in seventeenth-century Japan and used to decorate scrolls, albums, screens, and fans. Hai refers to the poem or haiku and ga means painting. There are three elements in haiga: an ink-brush or watercolor painting, a poem or poems, and calligraphy. The form is characterized by a spontaneous rendering of ordinary events—very much in the haiku spirit—as well as by simple subjects, loose and fluid brushstrokes, one or two colors for added visual interest, and plenty of white space. In haiga, “simplicity” has meaning only in relation to complexity. Haiga does not suggest more with less, but rather emphasizes what is (poetically) important, what is overlooked by the common view.
Expanding the concept of linked verse renga, is graphic renga, a collaborative, internet-based performance art in which an image is exchanged over the Internet, each participant changing it and then passing it on http://www.renga.com/. Graphic renga typically involves only images, but there are variants using haiga. I’m thinking of this as a basis for my practicum. Each participant must:
1) Alter the image by adding something new to it, cutting out part of it and pasting it into a new image, or substantively altering the image so that it becomes a new art work. Something must be kept from the received image, and it must be clearly visible though it's okay to make viewers work a little to spot it.
2) Compose a new haiku for the new image. The resulting text/image combination should qualify as a haiga, while also employing a modified form of linking and shifting by retaining one word from the previous haiku and avoiding back linking (the repetition of words and themes previously used).
Summing up G1
Japanese poetry, bricolage and gambiarra have been the primary contexts and concepts within my practice, paintings and visual poems this semester. My materials are the vernacular + Sabi: rustic patina, worn beauty, a desolateness that is quietness without loneliness. My aesthetic is Mono no aware (物の哀れ): the experience of encountering things (mono) and being touched by them (aware) to participate in the wholeness of life, lyricism, irony and narrative. In moving forward, I’d like to push the work deeper, rather than wider.
11
We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use.
Tao Te Ching Written by Lao-tzu
From a translation by S. Mitchell
Now, if it weren’t for all of this critical discourse-cultural-political-social-context-personal theory-rigorous exploration-artist statement-degree criteria-articulation, I’d just tell you I’m having a fucking blast making art that is vibrating with intensity while I’m in the studio practicing being unthinking and empty!
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