testing…
reading art and photography by aaron scharf – it’s astonishing how much hypocrasy painters have brought to their relationship with photography. how often snobbery is the dominent reasoning in using photography, and the understanding of photography. and i’m sure it is still true today. few painters seem to have been able to see past two dimensions & mimicry (mimicry with expression).
this is interesting: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/narratology/janbaetens2.htm
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
William Blake.
…realism seems neither here nor there, realisms make more sense – variants on a conceptual world. photography is conceptual, depending on how it is used: mimetic visual art is a notional process reliant on the confirmation of constructed values translated into imagery.
iconoclasm, spectacle, neurosis & nostalgia easily feed – or trickle out. these being subjects sufficiently noisy to inspire the garrulousness of ‘meaning’.
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!
Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog”
The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain though intention and attention. We are already familiar with the idea of fields extending beyond the material objects in which they are rooted: for example magnetic fields extend beyond the surfaces of magnets; the earth’s gravitational field extends far beyond the surface of the earth, keeping the moon in its orbit; and the fields of a cell phone stretch out far beyond the phone itself. Likewise the fields of our minds extend far beyond our brains.
Dr. Robert Sheldrake, biologist & author, http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html
& not confined to the head but also the body(?)
questions – how does the body transform itself in movement, how do we perceive the transformation?
[we are an aspect of the environment]
My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians. … Considering modern data, it is likely that many of the fakirs of the past, who are now known as saints, did, or to some degree did, perform the miracles that have been attributed to them. Miracles, or stunts, that were in accord with the dominant power of the period were fostered, and miracles that conflicted with, or that did not contribute to, the glory of the Church, were discouraged, or were savagely suppressed. There could be no development of mechanical, chemical, or electric miracles —
And that, in the succeeding age of Materialism — or call it the Industrial Era — there is the same state of subservience to a dominant, so that young men are trained to the glory of the job, and dream and invent in fields that are likely to interest stockholders, and are schooled into thinking that all magics, except their own industrial magics, are fakes, superstitions, or newspaper yarns.
Charles Fort, in Wild Talents (1932).
it has been a while since i have used a quote from charles fort.
it has been drummed into me again that the work i do is research. i say drummed in. the more i have to write applications the more i have to figure out different languages for where this research is taking me.
maybe i will write a book.
…he sunk down, & flow’d among her filmy woof,….
In gnawing pain drawn out by her lov’d fingers, every nerve
She counted, every vein & lacteal, threading them among
Her woof of terror.
William Blake, the story of Tharmus.
the story of how spirit is held down by flesh. flesh and rationality.
CHRIS MORRIS: I hate Sebastian Coe!
The Day Today, Episode 1.
this is rewarding if you can get past how annoying some of it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAJnAJNvHAw&feature=g-vrec
Clearly bear in mind: what is called “mind” [shin] is the mountains, river, lands, and the sun, the moon and the stars. However, if you carry this statement one step further, it becomes inadequate. If (on the other hand) you stop short of it, it becomes excessive. The mind qua mountains, rivers, and lands is mountains, rivers and lands.
Dōgen.
and on a sheet of paper, marks are put down. the body is not a corpse, nor a receptacle, but a sieve. or like a sieve.
thank you to Ali Baybutt and Magda Tuka for letting me sit in at their workshop.
o 