feeding the mysteron

More than blogging

2008-05-24T15:15:00.002+01:00

After putting the pieces together my website is finally up and running. I realised that I would eventually need such a website to organise static pages and create a fixed web presence for me. Blogging is useful for news and running commentary on a regular basis, but its inability to serve categorised content beyond the use of tags and dates means that I would need to combine it with something more to reach a wider audience.

The site is still growing and while it is of an easily consumable volume it is the perfect time to bookmark it and have a look. Have fun!

Beautiful in Beaufort West

2008-03-13T20:39:00.007Z

It is roughly impossible to translate poetry and retain all the qualities and nuances that make it special. Language is too closely aligned with cultural references and the feelings they evoke to permit aspirations of anything more than a best effort. To capture some of the original sense is already an achievement, and yet I feel that my latest attempt has been better than most.

Gert Vlok Nel is well-known in Afrikaans circles for his poetic folk-songs in the compilation "Om Beaufort-Wes se beautiful woorde te verlaat" ("To leave the beautiful words of Beaufort West"). He was already a winner of the prestigious Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection of poetry in 1995 for his earlier work "Om te lewe is onnatuurlik" ("To live is unnatural"), but it was the troubadour songs of "Om Beaufort-wes se beautiful woorde te verlaat" that captured people's imagination.

"Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" (a song title not to be confused with the title of the compilation) is a key moment in the sequence of songs and very tempting to try and represent. But as with all of Nel's work it poses the additional problem of English mixed into the Afrikaans in a colloquial tone and, something not possible to convey directly. I've stuck with a straightforward translation that maintains the original rhythm, much of the rhyme and hopefully some of the sense of a love lost but not forgotten.

Beautiful in Beaufort West

And you were beautiful in Beaufort West
and I was so awed and awfully in love with you
and you and I kissed on graves and trains
and in the backseats of Ford Fairlanes
and now you and your man are both computer analysts
and last winter you tried to cut both your wrists
and now you write to me:
you can no longer sleep, no longer laugh
no longer do things for yourself
never ever kiss me again

And your pretty words were so pretty and cute
while you smoked those menthol cigarettes
and those sweet sweet things you said to me
while you lay sweat sweat in my arms
and I've forgotten the exact words you spoke
I just remember the smoke and the sweat and Beaufort West
and your naked body under a cool summer cotton dress
no longer sleep, no longer laugh
no longer do things for each other
never kiss each other again

And maybe it's like a story from the Sunday Times
but one evening you suddenly pushed me away
and in the rear view mirror you looked at yourself
and said "maybe I should have a happier face"
that night I could not fall asleep
I felt how my heart ripped loose from my chest
and like a rowboat drifted on down the stream
I could no longer sleep, no longer laugh
no longer do things right
never ever kiss you again

And the last reminiscence about which I sing
is the night you and I rode on the milk train on and on into the night
until the other side of the ding dong gong
when the breakfast waiter passed us by
and that was my wake-up call my love
you said love me please
but I had dreamt we went and lived in Beaufort West
and I could no longer sleep, no longer laugh
no longer do something like that
never ever kiss you again

Singularity programming design

2008-01-26T16:10:00.001Z

Scope

Having touched on the possibility, both in terms of its theory and very briefly its application, of singularity programming as an alternative programming model, we now focus on the kind of design it would embody.

Platform games

Facebook took the world by storm in 2007 and was voted favourite technology by many leading technology readers. Was it just a gimmick? A fad? Marc Andreessen, respected software engineer, entrepeneur, and co-founder of Ning, lauded Facebook's adoption of an API model. "My personal opinion is that the new Facebook Platform is a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry", he stated unequivocally on his blog.

In his analysis of Facebook's success, Andreessen cites the advantages of a platform over an application, including the "walled gardens" of closed solutions that have been knocked off the playing field by the openness of the web.

It seems that it should almost go without saying, but apparently it takes someone with Andreessen's clout and standing to put one and one together: solutions that have been fully crystallised by developers fare less well than those that can be reprogrammed. Platforms, in other words, are flexible to users' needs and input.

This distinction is not dissimilar to the evolution of unusual states we discussed before. An "event handling" program has the potential to deal with unusual data or events in a way that is mostly hardcoded. As a result, perturbations that vary too much from the anticipated will either be rejected outright or alternatively push the system to an unusable state with no differentiation of function possible in that new state.

But what if "unusual data" is not a rogue Denial of Service attack, but instead represented users' varying needs?

Design class

In cellular activity prior to individuation and the formation of tissue and organs, cells are considered pluripotent. In other words they have the ability to be any one of several cell types. In fully individuated humans there are 254 different types of cells. Jellyfish have about three.

During experiments the researcher and theorist Stuart Kauffman found that the process of induction, i.e. when cell collectives suppress or enhance cellular differentiation in other collectives via signals, there are "recurrent patterns of gene activity within these networks, patterns which exhibit the kind of homeostatic stability associated with attractors" (DeLanda, p. 65). Those attractors, he concluded, represent consistent cell types.

Object orientation is only one of several models available to the computer scientist, but it is particularly suited to our theory. Objects are like cells in the sense that they hide certain kinds of information (as cells would contain the cytoplasm or nucleus that in turn contains the chromosomes and DNA) that are nevertheless vitally important to their eventual, activated functionality.

If we extend our analogy of cells at the level of pluripotent collectives to the layer of possibility in a pre-formed system (please note: I am using the term pre-formed in the sense of "unformed but will eventually be formed" not in the sense of "already formed prior usage"), we have the corresponding notion of signals that could determine the type of cell available to the collective for tissue building or, in the case of a system, the kinds of input that could determine the type of object available for component building.

It is a bit like the problem of cross-cutting concerns that have annoyed developers for years. Some kinds of functionality do not have a core function (logging is the classic example) but nevertheless requires implementation across the majority of classes (objects) which themselves are meant to solve the problem of a separation of concerns. Input data that try to find a matching pattern in a pre-formed system cut across all classes (pre-formed objects).

But cross-cutting concerns are already well defined problems, whereas the problems to be dealt with at the pre-formed object level are not well defined yet. In our example an undefined perturbation to the system is precisely the cause of variation and diversity at the next level: the component level. Until the data has found a way to fit itself in available classes (not necessarily in a complete way) the differentiated class cannot emerge. Likewise, in its evolutionary form, a new class may emerge that instantiates clusters of objects and a component that is ultimately rejected. It is therefore expected to be an evolutionary process.

By focusing on differentiation - i.e. the evolution of a system from its classes designed by a separation of concerns to differentiated (instantiated) objects to components through to a fully realised and differentiated product - the availability of unrealised objects that have the ability to change state according to unpremeditated signals (data or events) are neglected.

Faceless

If Facebook is truly a leap forward for the internet it is immensely exciting to speculate what it could be if not just external programmers but also users had the ability to contribute radically to the platform. It is in part the satisfaction of users' diverse needs to play and interact with objects and people in the environment that drives the thriving communities of Second Life and World of Warcraft.

In the singularity programming environment this level of interaction is envisaged as part of an evolving dialogue initiated by signals to a pre-formed layer of digital object possibility where classes enhance and suppress information to form new types of objects. These objects then cluster together to structure novel components and building blocks to respond to the information contained in the user's signal.

What is singularity programming?

2008-01-23T23:48:00.000Z

Singularity programming is a radical form of design (not just coding) that takes its inspiration from the mathematical concepts of manifolds and singularities.

The question is asked

In principle the question is asked: how would a program look that responded to an information system whose steady state has undergone the equivalent of a phase transition in physics?

Singularity basics

It is tempting to plough ahead without an understanding of singularity basics, but that would leave the reader with little benefit from this exploration. Therefore it is valuable to touch upon a few core concepts that nevertheless have deep application, but require a bit of mental abstraction.

The term singularity is familiar in the context of manifolds in differential geometry, but it is used to describe several different (albeit related) topics. In particular I am using the term singularity in the classic Riemannian sense and its more famous extension in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Riemann's is also the version referenced by Manuel DeLanda when he expands the notion of manifolds and singularities to describe physical processes. He posits that the intrinsic structure of a manifold can describe the evolution of such processes over time.

We are interested in the singularities that are topological points and thereby define a steady state. They have an influence on the behaviour of trajectories, and therefore on the physical system itself. A singularity, in this sense, often acts as an attractor within the manifold. Any trajectory, as long as its origin lies within the basin of attraction, will have as its end point this attractor singularity.

Thus we could also have spoken of attractor programming or steady state programming rather than singularity programming, were it not for the notion of a phase transition associated with the symmetry-breaking bifurcation of one singularity to another. (A symmetry-breaking bifurcation, in short, implies that the system has changed state and its new stable state is represented by a different singularity.)

To use a simple example we may think of water. When it is a liquid its state can be described by a certain singularity in a manifold. It may lose temperature, or gain temperature – whether through kinetic or heat energy – but essentially it remains water. However, when this type of energy is consistently applied to the water it may become a gas. At this point it undergoes a phase transition, and stabilises around a new state (gas). Both these states would be represented by two different singularities within the manifold.

Meanwhile back at the digital manifold

I want to use these terms as metaphors in a digital space, the space defined by system calls, applications and user spaces in the operating system, memory and storage systems of a computer.

For starters let's imagine a smoothly running system – business as usual – evolving through two singularities in the manifold. First phase: total inertia. Bootup? First phase transition. Loaded Windows? One stable state is reached. Or was it Linux instead? A different stable state. Perturbed by applications? Hmmm ... but if you close them again, the system returns to the typical stable state of Windows, or Linux, and so remains around the same singularity.

This gets us going in the right direction, but for the purposes of typical programming the example is a bit too broad. Most of us who develop aren't system hackers – we write user space software.

Nevertheless, we already have some correlating ideas. Programs, or certain types of data, perturb the system and push the system around the basin of attraction of a particular singularity. It generally continues to stabilise around that singularity, but occasionally a large memory leak or a kernel panic can lead to a phase transition in the system. And let's be honest, in most systems this phase transition is rather fatal to the user. The infamous Blue Screen of Death is a memorable case in point.

This hints at the paradigm I am suggesting: a form of programming that caters for such a new state. But ... what exactly is singularity programming then?

It is not error handling

To begin with, we may start with something it is not - namely traditional error handling. At, for example, the assigning of values to a variable in a C++ or Java program I, as a programmer, might notice that the value could cause an anomaly through division by zero. To handle this exception - which is a kind of error - I write an error handler. In effect, we are using a logical form of redirection that continues in the same domain - it originates and remains within the basin of attraction, in other words.

Any well-written piece of software should trigger an error handler in such a situation. The error handler diverts the flow from disaster and the program continues its execution. It's the equivalent of the program saying: "Oh by the way, this is the problem that just arose, but you don't need to take it too seriously, just let me get on with things ...".

However the state of the system is not radically changed by this logical redirection, and hence we cannot speak of error handling as singularity programming. In fact we might say that the goal of error handling is to keep the system in its present state, which is to say the program does not want the system to change its state and reach a new singularity.

I give up, are you going to tell me what singularity programming is?

Let's look at our example of a stable system again, and imagine that it is a firewall. A simple firewall may accept internet (untrusted) data at secure ports, inspect the packets, and pass the packets to a local network via another port. Packet load may vary, but the firewall can normally continue these operations with no disruption and little noticeable change in resource usage for months on end. Often the system wouldn't even need a reboot. It's a simple system that remains relatively stable during its lifetime.

Briefly take one step back in order to satisfy our analogy. The firewall system reached its present state after the connection, installation, configuration and implementation of hardware, network, operating system, and crucial operations software. We may have attempted different tactics during any of these processes, but eventually we would have a stable, running system whose state is represented by an attractor singularity in our imaginary firewall manifold.

Now imagine that the system is perturbed by unusual volumes and types of data, for instance during a Denial of Service attack. In simple terms, the system becomes overloaded using all of its resources to cope - or at least those focusing on typical functions.

To make things worse, certain types of attack can deliberately alter the configuration of the firewall to allow more access, then disable some processes, and ultimately allow a flow of untrusted data to pass through. Under these circumstances normal data will be processed and inspected very slowly, or not at all.

It might well be impossible for normal operations to resume even when the attack ends. In such a case the system administrator would have to intervene, reconfiguring or reinstalling as the case may be.

In summary, a Denial of Service attack could push the system into a new state whereby, even if the attack halts, the state gravitates to its new singularity (no doubt a faulty one, in the eyes of the system owner).

If we tried error handling, it would involve shutting down port access when certain parameters have been exceeded, alerting operators about the excessive activity, and activating processes that can protect sensitive areas of the system. Error handling may therefore save the current state of the system, and allow normal operations to proceed.

Singularity programming, on the other hand, would allow the system to be flooded and attempt to operate under the new state. Thus it is not a system of error-prevention, but instead encourages unusual states as a necessary evolution of the system.

When the system has unusual numbers of data packets pouring in and it does not enable error handling, we could imagine a new form of program being triggered. The Singularity Program could decide to open more ports and activate processes that are hungry for this abundant data. A projector of data on a screen, for instance.

Although I am not advocating any particular use for singularity programming at this stage - I want to present the theory of its possibility - we might reflect, momentarily, on an analogous situation in an economy. When an abundance of goods or services arrives in a market the price might go down, but instead of rejecting the goods a portion of the market might transform them, since they are so readily available, into other. more valuable goods.

quiet in their chairs

2007-12-26T00:04:00.000Z

when everyone is quiet in their chairs
and mental activity covers your mind
like a sheet of glass
you think "i worked so hard today,
i've become a beautiful artifact"

Emotional Entity and the Lady in White

2007-12-02T22:54:00.000Z

I slide my hand into the Emotional Entity as if to verify that it is real. There is a brief jabbing sensation just below my lower left rib. The Emotional Entity has a rich texture, a rusty brown colour, and I let my hand slide in and probe it at will. It is of a paradoxical substance, watery when I move, but more substantial, like a blanket, when I probe and feel. I have no idea where it leads to, or what it is connected to, but it has been here for days.

A tingling sensation arises gradually in my hand. Then it is in both hands, and as if in answer to a conductor's call, the glands throughout my body start to open and tingle in a surging symphony.

The Lady in Light appears. I can never tell whether she is standing in a clearing, or next to a river, perhaps it is the sea: the light approaches her like waves rolling in from the sea. I never see her face, which is turned away from me, and which I am not at all sure about. I do not know why she appears to me. Everything is light, billowing white and yellow, so bright that I almost have to shield my sight. Almost.

Nothing ever really changes either. The rippling waves of light are always there, an endless energy. And she stands there, protected from me, unknown to me really, the fringes of her dark hair partly covered by a cap, lifting and sometimes whipping in the wind. That is how I know she is outside, because of the wind. Or is it the power of the waves that generates the movement in the air? Again, I am not sure. Her coat is pulled tightly around her, and draping over it, held against her body, is a kind of shawl being tugged by the wind. Even when it feels as if I am moving, she remains at the same angle from me, I never get to see her face.

Sometimes when I look at her for long enough I start noticing that the waves do not come closer. They are more like clouds of vapour or steam that expend themselves. She guides them imperceptibly, shaping them into patterns. Despite their size they evolve quickly and without heaviness, before dissipating.

When she disappears again, like now, I am always surprised. The memory remains, and the sensation, and the light on my face.

The Emotional Entity has gone as well. Or at least, it has changed. But I think it is gone. When I move my hand the air around it is thin, thinner than water, and colourless like water. Clear and fresh, like the air at the top of a mountain.

Lilith's Brood (a.k.a. Xenogenesis) by Octavia E. Butler

2007-11-27T23:09:00.000Z

Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood (formerly Xenogenesis) is a sophisticated novel featuring human relations re-imagined after a catastrophic war. This short analysis is not intended to give the game away by revealing all the plot details, but rather to serve as a compass for the conceptual complexities the reader is likely to encounter.

Let me begin by saying what the novel is not: Xenogenesis is not a scientific treatise of the future. We are given subjective views from the viewpoints of the main characters and we are often bewildered and confused about the nature of this reality, just like the main characters. It is also neither a utopia nor a dystopia. It is not a soap opera. It does not defend mainstream values. It is not comfortable.

Did you follow that? It is not comfortable.

Now that that is out of the way, we can focus on the main guiding forces in this fabulous but never easily digested novel.

What if someone offered you a highly desirable life beyond your imagination: promises of riches and personal achievement beyond your dreams. What if this offer came at the price of an exchange in which you have to offer up yourself in daily sacrifice in a kind of Faustian bargain? Would you do it? No really, would you?

Now what if this offer applies to things you did not necessarily want, nor dreamed of, but that you know is actually good for you. It's like an ideal world, but not in the personal sense: in other words it is something you have to learn to appreciate, and eventually can. Like committing yourself to a religion you know for a fact to be true, or to a partner you know to be unfailingly loyal and satisfying. But a commitment that at the same time would come at the cost of other pleasures and freedoms.

So what if this - admittedly good - situation, also comes at the cost of your soul, your essence - not to be given up, but to be controlled by another, perhaps owned by another. And what if - yes, that's another if - in this process, you are also betraying everyone you ever knew and ever held dear. Committing yourself to something that would forever render you despised or hated in the hearts of those you used to call your own.

And yet what if, if you do not go through with it, if you do not choose this good thing, you and all your children may possibly forever be doomed. What would you do? Would you choose it? Or would you risk your future in favour of a reasonable, admirable personal pride and dignity?

What if ... what if ..
What if you have to choose?

Welcome to the world of Lilith's Brood, where people are placed in situations where the only choices are severe, and there are no comfortable alternatives. Where moral dilemmas and severe existential challenges have to be faced. Where you are between a rock and a hard place.

Meet Lilith, whose world is turned upside down when she realises she has been "rescued" by the Oankali (an alien race) after humans nearly wiped themselves out in endless wars, and the "benevolent" Oankali managed to pick up a few remaining survivors who are now their new trading partners: genetic trading partners, that is; and the Oankali are so powerful, they don't really have to ask ...

But all the same, they are giving her a choice: Lilith is offered a chance to pioneer humans' new life. Understandably, she'd rather not. But unlike the Faustian devil, the Oankali are both Satan and God, both the seducers and the benevolent givers and protectors. They also need them (a truly interpersonal axis), the Oankali are dependent on the bargain. It is a world beyond good and evil, the choices are tough, and mediating and negotiating relationships between humans and Oankali is no mean feat.

Without giving any more away (as this is not an exhaustive analysis of the novel) suffice it to say that the novel offers wonderful scope for interpretation, and I hope that by offering a glimpse into its structural mechanism I have helped the reader on her way to unravelling the story's interesting evolution.

PS.

Octavia E. Butler was a multiple Hugo and Nebula award winner, and receiver of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. She passed away suddenly in 2006.

Manuel DeLanda - Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy

2007-10-28T23:05:00.000Z

My newfound enthusiasm for Manuel DeLanda's thought could take me further. I am currently reading Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy in which he certainly tests the reader's ability to string together sets of abstract mathematical and philosophical constructs! but dishes out the rewards in equal measure. I've just about mastered chapter 1, in which he lays the groundwork for what's to come.

In a refreshing break from postmodernist epistemologies ranging from the solipsistic to the "reality is basically unknowable" kind, DeLanda couches Deleuze's realist ontology in terms understandable not only to philosophers, but also to scientists. No easy task. But thanks to his efforts, I am for the first time convinced that there is some light for a realist ontology in science . It is an area that, ever since Nietzsche said: "There are no facts, only interpretations", has looked very shaky.

Having said that, it would be easy to fall into the same old dichotomy of the subject vs. the object - but it is quite tempting to see Nietzsche's contributions, rising as they did initially out of an historical exploration of culture (The Birth of Tragedy), as an enormous mirror held up to humankind while he chants into our ears: "See, this is who you really are, you have been waiting for me all this time to show you." The first psychologist indeed, as he himself noted. The limits of a a certain kind of knowledge, i.e. knowledge mediated by humans - Kant's categories go suck. Where that would clip into this realist ontology to give us closure I have no clue at present - perhaps we would have to look at both from each other's perspective first - but whereas I am sure how Nietzsche's legacy can be traced to the postmodernist temperament, it is less clear to me in the case of Deleuze. In short, I don't know him well enough yet.

It has taken someone like Deleuze to re-establish realism by giving it a philosophical foundation that does not crumble when the first, familiar shots are fired from the other camp, and here DeLanda makes its relevance understandable for me.

I look forward to more!

Some interesting articles by DeLanda are available at the Institute for New Culture Technologies, have a look here. I read through this one and highlighted some sentences using Diigo. In it he fleshes out the importance of dynamical processes (a historical process as opposed to an essence - the crux of his new materialist ontology) in relation to economic markets.

It is worth pointing out that some of the ideas following from the math, such as a stable state fluctuating around the attractor, including the notion of perturbations that knock a trajectory out of its basin of influence, are quite reminiscent of concepts in systems theory and cybernetics which I once discussed here.

Sigur Ros - Glosoli

2007-09-16T20:25:00.000+01:00

I do believe this band will become hyped and then overhyped, which is a real shame because the music and the Icelandic atmosphere in the music video have a bit of authentic magic. Music lovers, do yourself the favour.

Appreciative shoppers

2007-09-08T21:38:00.000+01:00

Appreciative shoppers! go to WillingDates dot com
let your longing slide out on the checkout stack prom
eye anyone with freedom (there's no maintainenance)
and hand them any topics - none can silence their interest!
Our supplies are scheduled and endlessly issued
upon your steely barter. Have some Moet Chandelier
and give plentiful attention, keep them willing, and dear
oh! and mingle in your own time with the other guests here:
they're improved, real people - with experiences to share!

Relationship peace

2007-09-02T19:55:00.000+01:00

The 11th illustrated heart in Today magazine partners Ramon
with the Posh Bible's Mary-Ann Matignon
and those glad pages sadden me as if I've withstood
and sustained a year, not once, th'exquisite figure of your Good.
Mary I avoid thinking I’m against what he hopes
now They base the upoming show on you EXACTLY like you hoped.
These last days I do whatever, renew, almost crazily flaking
the changes in me, in you; I needed only us two, bubbling around, forsaking
not swooning. Ramon's face seems afraid, and with reason
he should miss the silence and that’s persuasion
rather to be AMAZING with your reality
to joke, qualitate time, foolishness and intimacy;
remind him just please if he isn't sorted and at ease
he will be finished when he waaay most happy
one night really craves a smooch. But I already there admit
this week’s marriage school lesson for me is the pits:
Lies destroy the silence of our lips.

Catwalk queen

2007-09-02T13:24:00.000+01:00

lastly, the snobbish, adorable creator in the cast
addressing every elegance spewing style fast
though this appeal in polls is seen as exotic
the human gracing it probably enough to seem erotic
and word has gotten round for giving them their applause
you still went along, excited by the fuzz,
and in the park decided to center on Che
with a ready style experience to Photo it for Today;
the fiery Dolce bag in the vibrant cool evening
was endearingly edgy, but you couldn't get in
just essentially expert every which ready way
as her pretty lil style rejected your illusion.

Lavatory love

2007-09-01T21:13:00.000+01:00

I am perfect while those choice five impatient
nuts never unearth our love-laying stations
a bedsend before dreaming me in sleep, and sharing
no cares that took place as conceit and you roughen me
but I survive in the lightning and fly almost woodmansee
through your bathroom tricks telling them it's because he
trustingly reads friendly hands yet really du
you failed to pee? I usher in the Q.
then I shop to emphasize our hands but
I really demand tongue to threaten the impossible rut
you don t halt them twice and I strongly bully
you to go hunting but you don t trouble them fully
just attain nowhere the bathrooms worth and conflict
a hand washing waist because we tightened my tits
with nerve gestures to just impress that Im actually
looking for something hot and more fashionably
making it despite sth safer for the economy appearing to burn
You absorb whatever and just interrupt my hand washing turn
of course laughing hands into a maneuver of complex
utterings on Tuesday; warm me if I crow spirit
inches of plain lovely life that is probably
enough to steal the freeze weirdly horribly
with a logical rage that needs cast of indiri-diri
temper a hard juice despite involuntary
strokes in my intimacy.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

2007-08-12T20:55:00.000+01:00

The whole of Weber's thesis can be summarised in his own words:

One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born -that is what this discussion has sought to demonstrate - from the spirit of Christian asceticism. - p. 123

The same central idea is repeated numerous times, and it is to his great credit (and must be one of the reasons why it is regarded as such a classic text) that the argument never strays. It is clear, brief and yet cuts through the confusion of modern culture to reveal a possible vein of lifeblood importance connecting us to the past.

Weber alludes to the complexity of the forces involved, and makes it clear that no easy causal relationship exists between economic circumstances and the dynamics of the Reformation. He further clarifies that we should not confuse his thesis with an attempt to deduce capitalism from the Reformation – many of the founding fathers would jig in their tombs if they suspected the consequences of their ambitions.

But it is not to be understood that we expect to find any of the founders or representatives of these religious movements considering the promotion of what we have called the spirit of capitalism as in any sense the end of his life-work ... The salvation of the soul and that alone was the centre of their life and work ... We shall thus have to admit that the cultural consequences of the Reformation were to a great extent, perhaps in the particular aspects with which we are dealing predominantly, unforeseen and even unwished for results of the labours of the reformers ... we have no intention whatever of maintaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism (in the provisional sense of the term explained above) could only have arisen as the result of certain effects of the Reformation, or even that capitalism as an economic system is a creation of the Reformation. In itself, the fact that certain important forms of capitalistic business organization are known to be considerably older than the Reformation is a sufficient refutation of such a claim. - p. 48-9

He outlines his aim as more modest.

we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. Furthermore, what concrete aspects of our capitalistic culture can be traced to them? - p. 49

It is thus clear that his thesis forms a subset of capitalism rather than an explanation of the origins of capitalism. Certain qualities of capitalism and the overall expansion of capitalism is at stake.

What are those qualities? The “rational conduct on the basis of a calling” objectively describes the ethos internalised by religious subjects and applied in the secular field of economics. The calling is central to his thesis. He holds that as a result of the Reformation

at least one thing was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfilment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. - p. 40

The essential ingredient of this ethos is found in Calvinism, in the genius invention of predestination. According to predestination only the chosen ones will be saved – and they are chosen even before they are born. Christ had died only for the elect. Calvin held that one should have faith in God and that should be enough. Weber rightly deduces that there must have been ”a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual” (p. 60) - it was nigh intolerable to live in such ignorance of one's state of grace yet try to make the best of it in life.

So although Calvin considered himself saved, his followers had to find ways to make their state of grace more tangible. Evidence of their electedness. Profound secular industriousness – and success therein – was the surprising effect.

On the one hand it is held to be an absolute duty to consider oneself chosen ... On the other hand, in order to attain that self-confidence intense worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. - p.66 -7

Coupled with the notion that “the world exists for the glorification of God and for that purpose alone” (p. 64) you have a recipe for intense secular activity. This activity was a manifestation of God's will in the individual's life.

But this rational individual did not spend his money on luxuries - indeed, this was considered sinful. In fact, riches were seen as an inevitable by-product and not to be utilised for personal pleasure. This ascetic tendency was carried over from the medieval mystics.

the difference of the Calvinistic from the medieval asceticism is evident. It consisted in the disappearance of the evangelical recommendation and the accompanying transformation of asceticism to activity within the world ... The drain of asceticism from everyday worldly life had been stopped by a dam, and those passionately spiritual natures which had formerly supplied the highest type of monk were now forced to pursue their ascetic ideals within mundane occupations ... By founding its ethic in the doctrine of predestination, it substituted for the spiritual aristocracy of monks outside of and above the world the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of God within the world p. 73-5

Clearly, by focusing all that rational religious passion in the world, some excellence should result. And Weber early on observes that those who succeeded in capitalism were often protestants – it is as if their natures were more suitable to capitalism.

Eventually, as serious Christianity went the way of the dinosaurs in much of Europe, the spirit of protestantism remained in the practical hardworking, rational person who regarded the accumulation – rather than the use – of wealth a worthy end in itself without necessarily considering the accompanying glamour and pleasure that comes with spending it on every available luxury.

the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness. - p. 119

Weber's fascinating thesis has challenged numerous thinkers since its publication in 1905 - has it stimulated you?

Cut-ups 2

2007-07-09T23:28:00.000+01:00

My cut-ups, now done using version 1 of a simple but working bit of perl code.

Shelley's Ozymandias comes out all strange and yet familiar ... but what if Shelley and Shakespeare wrestled? The result is unexpected:

course untrimm'd: But thy not fade Nor lose possession desert....Near them, on the sand, Half time thou growest: So long Of that colossal a Summer's day? Thou winds do shake the darling buds Kings, Look on my Works, shall Death brag thou wanderest in these words appear: My beside remains. Round the decay short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of eternal Summer shall command, Tell that its sculptor well from fair sometime hath all too sneer of cold those passions read as men can breathe, So long lives this, and this compare thee to an antique land, Wreck, boundless and bare art more lovely and heaven shines, And oft' is his of that fair thou owest; Nor gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair stone Stand in the declines, By chance or nature's changing or eyes can see, his shade, When and trunkless legs of hand that mocked Which yet survive, them, and the heart that name is Ozymandias, King of stamped on these lifeless things, The And wrinkled lip, and gives life to visage lies, whose frown, of May, And Summer's lease sunk a shattered ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing The lone and level sands stretch far away." Shall I I met a traveller from more temperate: Rough fed; And on the pedestal, Who said--"Two vast in eternal lines to

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my ($index, $cut, $count, $phrasecut) = 0;
my (@allfields, @allcuts) = {};

srand (time ^ $$ ^ unpack "%L*", `ps axww | gzip`);

while (<>) {
chomp();
@fields = split(/ /,$_);
foreach(@fields) {
$allfields[$index] = $_;
$index++;
}
}

$index = 0;

$cut = int(rand(4)) + 3;

foreach(@allfields) {
$allcuts[$index] .= $_." ";
$count++;
if($count == $cut) {
$index++;
$cut = int(rand(4)) + 3;
$count = 0;
}
}

while($index > 0) {
$phrasecut = int(rand($index));
print $allcuts[$phrasecut];
splice (@allcuts,$phrasecut,1);
$index--;
}

exit 0;

This code is covered by the GPL

Anti-search

2007-07-09T23:18:00.000+01:00

'"Search Your Name" is a search engine that is in fact, an anti-search engine. The results collected from this search engine look completely authentic but are not. The work plays with the idea that it's very difficult to ensure that the information we find on the Internet everyday is truly authentic.' - from the official blurb

So how did I suddenly get the characteristics of Zinedine Zidane? Amazing.

Other works by 8gg are also of interest.

Cut-ups

2007-06-24T23:20:00.000+01:00

Cut-ups were re-invented (after Tristan Tzara in the 1920s) by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gyson during the 1950s as a method of effecting the spontaneity of creativity. Burroughs made a literary living from his enthusiasm for cut-ups and they are extensively in evidence in many of his works - including the notorious Naked Lunch.

Whereas Burroughs had a typewriter and scissors (although an early program with Ian Sommerville already tried to optimise the process), current technology affords another level of randomisation and re-arrangement not possible without enormous effort using paper. Flip through to the Lazarus Corporation to make your own. With a bit of ad hoc editing I managed the following update to the Pater Noster ...:

Done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
give us our mother, which art in heaven,
thine is the kingdom, the power, and the trespass against us.
and lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
as thy trespasses come hallowed thy kingdom
we forgive them.
that our will be for glory,
for ever and ever. amen.
this day our daily bread.
and forgive us

Cao Weihong

2007-06-23T22:22:00.000+01:00

"The figures represent traditional Chinese concepts of beauty, presenting ladies with small hands, feet and mouths, but these traditional aspects are combined with the artist's own, special, almost modern way of painting them." -review of Cao Weihong's work at Absolute Arts

You can also see more of Weihong's work at Art Scene China

instead of waving

2007-06-21T23:29:00.000+01:00

the sound of a fullstop
steps out of the scream
she's keeping
so deeply
when she drops to the floor

and they bring her some water
and the boy says: "bring more"

I step forward and open
my eyes, I try not to cry

instead of waving
I said goodbye

Catfishing

2007-06-01T22:23:00.000+01:00

A strangely addictive game that kills the time.

Paul Virilio: The Information Bomb

2007-05-30T21:56:00.000+01:00

I relate, with both excitement and reserve, my reading of Paul Virilio's The information bomb a short (but forceful) cultural commentary on “speed, politics, and information technology”. I say reading, but it's a bit like a nicotine headrush with more rewards.

Let me start with the end (because here we agree, and I am able to clarify using my own description):

The warfare of tomorrow – and here it will be comparable with the 'desk murders' of yesteryear – will not be so much an affair of desks as of laboratories – of laboratories with their doors flung wide to the radiant future of transgenic species, supposedly better adapted to the pollution of a small planet held in suspension in the ether of telecommunications - p. 145

This point is crucial, because it implies that every single one of us reading this post are not suited to the future of humanity Virilio is concerned about. At least not in our present form ...

But he identifies an essential point: given the interactive and electronic, digital nature of telecommunications and telepresence, our ability to participate in this network will become more important that our “physical” - that is to say, local – skill and ability. In my own view, our brains will probably become direct interfaces to the network, plugged in whichever way - and our bodies ... well, the site of simulated pleasures perhaps, and possibly a burden. Possibly, our network-linked consciousness and bodies, or bodily extensions, will be decoupled.

I am digressing, but this is essential to Virilio's concern that we have run up against the limits of time as we are entering “the era of the sudden industrialisation of the end, the all-out globalization of the havoc wreaked by progress in which subtly, gradually, we as individuals are the real site of a new war":

the very last 'fortress' is no longer the Europe of the EEC so much as the living human being – that isolated 'human planet', which has at all costs to be invaded or captured through the industrialization of living matter - p. 144

And as the site of this war, we will ultimately be surpassed as our mythical fantasy to survive our own techno-creations is driven by this dual catch-22 prong of desiring “progress” and “survival” at the same time. We have become victims of our own ideology:

the man without qualities, the primate of the new times, will have to disappear – just as the 'savage' had to disappear in the past to avoid cluttering up a small planet – and give way to the last model of humanity, the transhuman - p. 136

The “transgenic” mentioned earlier can now be seen as Virilio's identification of a eugenics with the purpose of eclipsing present humanity completely.

***

Virilio takes exactly a 100 pages to reach the point where he definitively announces his first main thesis, but the value of this delay lies in understanding the context of his thoughts. In particular, he reckons Francis Fukuyama was 'soft' in his announcement of the end of history.

He invokes Stefan Zweig as a spokesperson for the desire of an early 20th century youthful generation to overthrow the “responsible” attitudes of the old guard in favour of a culture that is always at play. In short the Father (culture) is bypassed for the game that is made possible through technology. Hence in the present “time”, when this goal is increasingly being achieved, youth is treasured over and above experience, and everybody seeks to remain young and playful even in advancing years – it's a form of eternal youth:

'No future' – the great hetacombs of industrial wars and revolutions finally answered the prayers of an entire younger generation, since they had the twofold merit of destroying its (moral, cultural, and social) past, and sparing it the shadow cast by a future seen as the irremediable coming of a hated old age - p. 98

But the perfection of this ideal, Virilio seems to imply, will take the future away from us. Not a real future (for time has already become diffused into an eternal now) but the point at which we will simply be replaced by the automatons more suitable to this state of play – which is ultimately a cybernetic space of constant feedback and control:

technologies would inevitably advance alone,leaving behind them a humanity without a future, assuming definitively pre-pubescent airs - p. 100

Virilio calls this ideal the Peter Pan ideal – “the stage of the child stubbornly determined to escape its own future” (p. 94). Unfortunately, technology will simply advance at the expense of this eternal infant.

But Virilio's main point may be political rather than cultural. The new warfare is identified as the replacement for the nuclear warfare of the Cold War. He relates localised radioactivity in the “old” warfare to information interactivity in the new warfare:

The 'information war' will soon be based, then, on global interactivity, just as the war of atomic energy was based on local radioactivity - p. 141

Just as the threat of the Y2K problem in information systems loomed over the whole world, so a future accident / attack will affect the globalised information system at a systemic level:

with the interconnectedness of the Internet prefiguring the imminent launch of the cyberbomb - the future information superhighways ... [sic] We are faced, in other words, with a phenomenon which may possibly occur everywhere simultaneously - p. 134

And to emphasise the political dimension of the information bomb, Virilio identifies the US (who developed ARPANET and gradually improved its information arsenal and control over it) as the entity responsible for this warfare. In particular he mentions president bill Clinton in relation to the chaos of cybercrime, “a chaos he himself has organized, together with his vice-president, prime mover of the future information superhighways” (p. 135).

I hope you found this brief introduction to Virilio useful (particularly in relation to The information bomb).

morning cigarettes

2007-05-18T23:14:00.001+01:00

Cliche, cliche, i know - my goodness is there anything new under the sun?!

MORNING CIGARETTES

she slow-inhales her cigarette
waiting for the morning sun
to heat her hands - later her head.
she remembers when Rob sat there
in the rosewood chair,
his mysterious air and brown coat
all Sherlock Holmes and brooding flair.
that day their smoke
flowed thickly through,
like breathing hot Lyle's syrup.

the sunlight floods the room.

Jim takes off his shirt

she
lights
another
cigarette

The History of Advertising Trust

2007-05-18T23:03:00.000+01:00

Stumbled across the History of Advertising Trust via a feature on BBC (popup warning).

This picture of kids wielding shovels that turn out to be ... giant toothbrushes! is in fact an ad for Royal Vinolia Toothpaste.

Secret Attic

2007-05-09T21:36:00.000+01:00

I am happy to announce (and rather surprised) that a story I recently submitted to the Secret Attic's monthly competition made it to the final 30 stories! In effect it is also included in their April booklet.

It's funny to look at your story again through the eyes of a certain credibility lent it by this type of feedback, trying to perceive the same quality that may have attracted the judges. I'm not sure whether my subsequent rereading was successful ...!

At any rate, rather than paying Secret Attic £4.70 for the booklet just to see my story, feel free to ask me for a copy (wink).

Ascii prison

2007-05-07T02:12:00.000+01:00

More ascii exploration. A moving humanoid ascii molecule expires through spontaneous character combustion before giving way to an ominous wave of hashes ...

And enjoy the Diary of Dreams tune - Reign of Chaos!

Ascii prison on Vimeo

No more a-roving / Dead Letter

2007-05-06T23:53:00.000+01:00

This clip plays to the intro of Diary of Dreams' Dead Letter - you should turn up the volume so you can hear the words. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did in making it!

No more a-roving / Dead Letter on Vimeo

Vimeo

2007-05-05T22:38:00.000+01:00

On a quest I discovered vimeo, where users at least expect you to show authentic material. Unlike on tube lube where anything goes, including loads and loads of Real Rubbish (tm).

Some experimental video artists are sharing or linking their work from here - well worth checking out. One guy whose prolific output contains some catchy gems is Itin, also over at http://web.futureofthebook.org/itinplace/ - I particularly liked his Slaughter House Five Memorium

To be a Barista

2007-04-25T00:00:00.000+01:00

Laura: Helloooo, can I help?
Non-descript man: mhlnvhlv hoo teeba
Laura: Pardon ... you want, tea?
Nondescript man: (shakes head decisively) uhm-uhm! vhlv hooo (sighs) hmmm vlvhoo
Laura: Oh god, I remember you now, still can't talk can you? Can you point?!
Nondescript man: (mumbles) mba timtaww rbblermurk uffhvlnvhoo hmmm maylayzee hinhin
Laura: Listen luv I don't have all day and customers are waiting can you point to what you want or get out of the way? (raises her voice) Rita can you help this man! (exasperated) Next please!! can I help?
Man 2nd in line: It's fine you can help him first.
Laura: But ...
Man 2nd in line: No really I don't mind waiting.
Rita: (shouts from the pantry) Laura! I'm busy can you just hold the till a bit longer?
Laura:(to back) I'm going mad here! (to nondescript man) Can you speak up please!
Nondescript man: hoonv
Laura: God, is that *tape* across your mouth?
Nondescript man: hin hin vlvn hoo
Laura: That's it GRRRRRTS (ripping sound as it comes off)
Now open your mouth ... oh god is that, oh no, I think I'm going to vomit.
Nondescript man: I ... I ... I ... I miss you will you please come home?
Laura: Good god Peter, don't you have any self-respect?
Man 2nd in line: Can I have a latte please?
Nondescript man: Haha, but I've finally made up my mind Laura! I want to be a barista.

Remixed Kitty

2007-04-14T21:24:00.000+01:00

Remixed Kitty! Definitely need sound.

Reconstructing the Kitty on the Couch

2007-04-02T23:16:00.001+01:00

an alphanumeric analogy

2007-04-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

A passionate dialogue between two arch-enemies of the Oomla (an imaginary humanoid race favouring simplicity for emotional expression) paraphrased in alphanumeric characters:

The last five minutes of Ingo's life ... long live Ingo!

2007-03-29T23:39:00.000+01:00

Little more than the following is known about the last five minutes of Ingo's life. The hangman tied the noose about his head. During this process the crowd started taunting him, with many shouting the slogans of his captors. Then his close friend Hegard, who was also present, began singing the Pater Noster in Latin in a resonating tenor:

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum.

At first this served to make the jeers of Ingo's adversaries even louder. Their insults poked at Ingo like verbal knives. But soon the elegance and endurance of Hegard's voice affected their concentration and some turned their attention towards him instead. One, who recognised Hegard as the author of the infamous and influential tract On the Benefits of Free Information, tried to turn this energy to the crowd's advantage by further provoking Ingo, shouting that his friend will die too and he should come and save him. None of this had any visible effect on Ingo, who simply observed the crowd with a critical air.

But for Hegard this proved to be a fatal attitude. Seeing that their attempts only enhanced Ingo's apparent superiority, the populous crowded in on Hegard and beat him aggressively. Ingo still did not say a word. Hegard, suffering many blows to his body and to his head, sank to the ground and eventually stopped moving. Like a fateful twin, Ingo's death was also his.

Hegard's silence seemed to soothe the crowd and the authorities did not intervene. The trapdoor opened soundlessly, and when Ingo's body swung from the stiffened rope, his face still appeared to be smiling at them, quietly mocking their vengefulness.

I too was present among the crowd that day. But unlike many others I preferred to observe rather than to participate. Ingo was serene, unreachable. I was fortunate to be the first to intercept these, Hegard's thoughts, from the internether, because he was expiring fast. Hegard composed them in his final moments, perhaps even imagining Ingo's death in advance. Officially, Hegard died afterwards in a vehicle crash. I've lost all later memories of the event.

Yes, I remember now! I was there too, outside, watching the execution on an electron spread. Ingo looked like a messiah, radiant. They tampered with the light for later transmissions. Have I really kept this image hidden for 156 years? Your body is probably visible somewhere...

Dear friends! This is dangerous and your memories have alerted the Netherin!

Efface yourselves! Disperse! Disperse! Disp

These thoughts were detected in the nether at exactly g19jzb. They were successfully captured and frozen in this wave media for forensic purposes. Thought traces were poisoned but the poison trail ended and the sources remain unknown. Seven suspects have been named. Complete information is in the investigation file.

PS: The thoughts contravene the constitutional guidelines for the proper usage of energy particles and are recommended for permanent distortion.

The Netherin

Performance simulation

2007-03-24T00:27:00.000Z

There are still those who debate the problem of "presence" in performance and slide into the seductive solution of a duality of simulation and live performance, as if liveness implies an authenticity or a simulation of a different order than its reproduced form.

It is not for me to demonstrate the similarity between presence and simulated presence. I will stand by the notion that in terms of perception they are nearly equal, bar the emotional enthusiasm we supply to the perception of a live performance, and the possible psychological effect of interaction with a "good" or a "bad" audience that the performer may thrive on or be crushed by.

Instead I am interested in the implication of performance as a simulation. If we accept that film as a medium is merely structurally different (I use the term loosely) from live theater, then surely the following enaction is interesting rather than disruptive or intrusive (real/illusory become false dichotomies):

Suppose a movie is playing in a movie theater, but instead of the actors on-screen the camera occasionally focuses on members of the audience (this location is necessary insofar as the suspension of disbelief must be within easy grasp of a novice to this new form of theater-film). The movie content will be manipulated for this same reason. Perhaps a new horror in which horrible scenes happen in dark music halls and cinema theaters. That is adequate.

In the next instance, actors in the audience act out what is happening on the screen. The audience is expected to know that they are actors once this starts happening.

According to the laws of film, viewers have now looked at representations of their selves presently located on the film. The present has become simulated. (Film mirrors some imagineable part of the simulating mind, and once the mind has been led to believe the action is taking place in the theater itself, their body has become participant to their viewing experience).

Next the screen may become transparent to reveal actors in the background as another audience (this screen can move into the ceiling so that actors move freely but should come back down for the finale explained further down). Then they may act out something altogether incomprehensible, such as a seance in which a candle is placed on a screen and the horrible scene of earlier is played out on another screen behind them.

This act should have a quiet or dark beauty to it. It has to be captivating. (And the film-performance should be cheap - £2 to see.)

Whatever simple plot plays itself out in the meantime is immaterial. Perhaps everything can happen in 15 minutes, from beginning to end.

As a finale the initial scene should be repeated on the top half of the transparent screen that the actor audience will be looking at, facing the real audience, so that both the actor audience and the real audience can see everything on the transparent display. At the same time, the scene can be played again - the murder, the sex in the cinema, whatever it is. It may culminate in a romantic embrace. A curtain falling can be embellished by credits rolling on the curtain itself via whatever projector.

The end.

PS: It is, theoretically, enough for me to imagine the countless gestures and rehearsals I observe daily in the theater of life when recurring roles play out the dailogues of the doctor, the lawyer, the housewife, the professional housewife, the novel role, the rebel, the plotter, the silent plotter, the possible terrorist, and all the ensuing confusion and suggestion it leaves me with. Not to mention the countless texts of interpretation running through my head outside the notion of a specified role - the unroled, unscheduled thoughts, etc. The theater of life as a simulation of my memory of life and my expectation of life, and my ability to live (my role to live).

ascii exploration

2007-03-15T22:56:00.000Z

The banality

2007-03-14T21:33:00.000Z

He: I take it we're baking
She: What
He: We're baking. I take it we're baking
She: We can bake

She: Take out the one from yesterday
He: Is it ready
She: What
He: Is it ready
She: What is ready?
He: Can I add the tomatoes?

He: What's this
She: Don't know
He: You're not even looking
She: What is it
He: Don't know. It's a bread crumb
She: Can we cook?

He cooks. She cooks. It is impossible not to be overwhelmed by the smell of vinegar that slams into your nostrils like a nervous infant.
Their activity is synchronised like two clocks buzzing their alarms at once.

It is thinkable that they may talk to each other in a language that is not reproducible by these ascii characters, or this printable media, but it is unimaginable that their actions, their sounds, their intentions can have been anything different.

Take hunger for instance, even a dog understands that.

She: The boy is hungry.
He: Why do you have to call him "the boy"? It is human, after all.
She: Don't be annoyed.
He: You are starting to sound just like them.
She: You are annoyed.
He: I am not annoyed.
She: I know. Gosh, I wonder what it would feel like.
He: Yes, and to have sex.
She: The meal is done.
He: I'll dish up and take it. You go and turn yourself off to save energy, I will join you soon.
She: Together in absence. As always.
He: Don't get clever ...

Story of the future

2007-03-05T22:53:00.000Z

It is the year 2007. A man finds himself busy in the space that is as familiar to him as his home where he lives with his wife and his two children. Unlike his home (which he has nearly fully paid for), he does not own this space and he is not even fully in charge of this space. But there he is, busy as usual, performing the same minute gestures with his hand, straightening his back, tilting his head in order to think, peering ahead of him purposefully despite the knowledge that his wife and children miss him.

Around him the metallic, intersecting partitions form a deliberate web of gateways and blockages for the orderly positioned group of people who, like him, have come to blend the thoughts from their other lives (“my real life”, he thinks) with the visions and gestures that constitute this office. This man, who in these respects is no different from the others around him (although his name displays on several framed certificates of distinction, ordered in a rectangle near him) carries a significance – an awareness – that goes beyond him. And in this he suddenly has the potential to survive his own consciousness.

He ponders the possibility that the actions he performs will “reverberate in eternity” like those of Odysseus and Achilles whose brave energy influenced untold generations. All those that still silently strive to emulate them.

He has to admit that his actions will not be emulated because they are heroic, or even original. He concludes that he will be emulated because of an inevitability, that is to say, because he is aligned with the future. “This thought”, he reminisces, “may have been someone else's delusion of grandeur once. Now it is mine.” Certainly no one else noticed his new ownership. His gestures didn't change, nor did those of the people standing around in the corridor, or those of his neighbour in the same cubicle - a younger, more energetic man whom he has actively avoided lately.

But he has one last chance to ponder his immortality while his neighbour mumbles to him with a nervous grin. Then he loses his thought amidst the realisation that his selfish neighbour has connived the cunning move that will cost him his ambition and also the love of his wife.

From Starbucks to Starbucks: one traveller's account in a globalising world

2007-02-14T22:42:00.000Z

“Sometimes he fought for his native country, sometimes against it” - Jorge Luis Borges, A biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz

Hong Kong: 22 January 2007

Barely slept in the night. Barely – perhaps half an hour somewhere. I remember a dream with a small shark upside down in a bucket. It was still alive somehow, even though the water formed only a thin layer at the bottom of the bowl.

Since we cannot sleep we get up early, and have breakfast in the hotel. An English breakfast for the first time in days ... I can't help being satisfied.

We get out and walk around, first going to a traditional market across the road. Java Road Market, just in North Point. The top floor is a veg and fruiterers market, the bottom level is full of live (and dead) fish and stock. I see chickens in cages, eels in water-filled crates, a woman who shyly refuses a picture. I suddenly feel like a trespasser.

We wander further, find a stall / shop that sells cheap DVDs. I buy a few titles in Mandarin. In a corner some packaged Japanese porn. I buy one. [amused and disappointed, I later find out it is blurred and censored!].

[...]

In an abstract world that resembles London two people are making their way into a train. The man looks relaxed, confident, his tie is slightly loosened. Three fashionable and pretty girls to his right, copied from an MTV for Boss Blinded Mice. The second person ... looks like the Queen. I ask her for the way to Piccadilly or anyone with a foreign accent. She looks at me funny. “Are you thinking of a comeback darling?”, I say, “because I just asked you a simple question.” But of course I say it in broken Mandarin and it sounds fragile and complicated like those intricate square Chinese characters I cannot yet write and the coach retains its silence as I make my way to the A-Z puzzle of London, condensing my anger into an active search.

Taipei: 24 January 2007

Although I have seen few Westerners, nearly every public notice has an accompanying English description. I assume that Taiwan is readying itself for globalisation, even though the reality does not yet meet that expectation.

So far, people in service places understand me. For instance I am having a light lunch in Ikari Coffee (a Taiwanese designed cafe with a uniquely metropolitan and rather Western feel – a second generation Starbucks) – very good coffee and a great snack – and the girl at the counter spoke in English to me. We didn't exchange anything sophisticated, but she had no problems with the simple phrases I threw at her:
“Can I have this one?”
“I come downstairs?”

And she answered appropriately to the point:
“Latte?”
“When the light goes on ...”
“Yes.”

A lot to compare between Hong Kong and Taipei:
^ HK is slightly denser
^ HK is chunky, Taipei is more evenly spread
^ Shop banners are horizontal in HK, vertical in Taipei
^ Taipei is slightly cleaner, and there is less obvious poverty
^ Taipei people seem generally educated to well-educated, HK is more varied
^ In general HK shows more extremes

[...]

I look at photographs and think “perhaps the memories of times lived intensely are more real than the life I lead in the present”. Familiar faces stare at me, faces I am already getting to know better in two dimensions than I ever did in real life. I look endlessly at the images of places I may never see again.

A craving for coffee stimulates my brain and I take a train and enter the city randomly.

Taipei: January 2007

I learn how to point at things and say: “this one” “that one”
I amuse my audiences with correctly pronounced renditions of “zhege” “nage” and “wo xiang yao mai kafei”

Somewhere on the main road I manage an entirely non-English conversation with a local.
“bu hao yi se, qingwen, Gugong, yao ze ma qu?” and I get the corresponding descriptive reply. He speaks no English whatsoever. While he responds he must be noticing my puzzled expression because he points to the traffic lights, raising three fingers: three traffic lights on, turn to the left! I feel a rising sense of achievement. Am I gradually passing through the linguistic and cultural looking-glass?

But somehow I never reach my destination: other conversations, other delays, not the fault of the directions given to me. Maybe travelling is also a circle.

[...]

Lost in the labyrinth I find my first beacon: Caffe Nero in Piccadilly - the window to all worlds. I survey my surroundings, in the meantime absorbed by the gravity of this phrase. “But not every world sees every other world”, I ponder philosophically as I observe a group of antipodeans loudly proclaiming their identity without even the slightest hint of irony or invitation.

My companion complains about the service. Then about the coffee. I move my pen and attempt to write a haiku. It's too long. Then it becomes something else altogether as I realise I'd rather
plunge my penis 17 times into
my companion than become so
culturally neutered on the page.

I touch my companion's thigh, and the lush vanilla skin on her hip, and she lets me.

Taipei

2007-02-14T22:40:00.000Z

Thanks go to Paco for his unfailing advice and tireless help throughout my stay. He is pioneering the spirit of flamenco in Taiwan, and his studio is going from strength to strength!

Here are images of a few noteworthy impressions.

A performer in action at the studio.

The studio has both a professional and an authentically Spanish atmosphere.

Skating under the bridge

Due to a lack of space in Taipei, public spaces are fully utilised. This area under a bridge is used for skating. On the opposite side (not shown) the same area is used for dancing.

Flat screens at the metro

Flat screens adorn the walls of metro stations, and passengers waiting for the train to arrive have the opportunity to watch ads on the far wall, or trailers and changing ads on the smaller screen nearby. Static advertising, good-bye! Of course, some Londoners may prefer to see the Da Vinci Code scrolled at a readable speed across the screen ... But perhaps another, shorter graphic literary form could be invented for this recurring non-space.

Taipei 101

Currently the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101 is undoubtedly impressive! Brand name department stores and classy restaurants fill the first few floors.

Diagonal crossings

Thank god for diagonal crossings ... now why didn't we think of that? Not to mention the large red counter accompanying the little green man at every traffic light, telling you how may seconds are left to cross - very useful!!

Night markets: A kind of night life.

Lukang

2007-02-14T22:39:00.000Z

Thanks to Yu-Chen for showing me Taichung and the Taoist mysteries of Lukang!

"During the Qing Dynasty, the depth of Lukang's harbour and its proximity to Fujian province on mainland China made Lukang an important trading port. During Lukang's heyday from 1785 to 1845, Lukang's population reached 200,000. Lukang was Taiwan's second largest city after current Tainan and was larger than Bangka (now a district of Taipei), then the island's third-largest city." - Wikipedia

Coffee for sale in Lukang

Prayers at the famous Matzu temple in Lukang

The original poster of an iconic film?

Observed in a Taiwanese style retro cafe in Lukang, this poster of Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon caught my eye. Sadly, the flash was too bright and this is the only other photo I took.

Kaohsiung

2007-02-14T22:38:00.000Z

According to Wikipedia, Kaohsiung is one of the world's four largest ports. It is also Taiwan's second largest city, after Taipei. Heavily polluted, it is not uncommon to see people wearing face masks. And the density of scooters per square meter of tar probably exceeds that of Taipei!

Night view of the city across Love River.

Street lamps have a seagull design. It's a seaside city, after all ...

A view of the countryside, outside Kaohsiung

Rice paddy. So that's what they look like!

Dragon pagoda and Tsuoying Lotus Pond

It's like a jetty with lanterns!

Kwang-chung

Dizzy mirror

2007-01-01T17:09:00.000Z

through pools of piling darkness
arkness
barkness
a arf narc lark dog dies
dim dries
where why who wants what lies
in dizzy mirrors deeper than the sky

Through the pool of darkness

2007-01-01T16:24:00.000Z

Through the pool of darkness
John Grim lifts his hands
shattered candles, broken cross
and a moan swells from the lands
- a forlorn, inconsolable sadness.

Blood haloes limply around his hands
mocking love once locked inside
his body hidden by the night
like a prayer stifled in silence
for a life that knew no light
now dying to meet the dawn.

Cheap fix

2006-12-27T22:49:00.000Z

ah yo! it a fine day innit
the drizzle a bit, ya cunt!
got mush fer brain, fuckin idiot
can't drive, how ya b'n

Lizzy alrigh comin la'ah?
hear about the bodies
in the subway, Christmas? wast'ah!
trippin weird at Lolly's

dead blokes from two floors
stoned blokes, ya got it?
nuthin doin me, there's more
ten for the fix, dude, have it.

what's that, where u goin?
dun get heavy ur goin down
God is laughing dude, moanin
there's Lizzy, let's together now!

crown of suffering

2006-12-19T22:26:00.000Z

as sure as these spikes on my forehead
crown the suffering not dead
so i recoil from
my persistent nude embarrassment
you must look away to hear my subtle instruments

slowly will the holes in my soul
the spikes in my heart
and the shape of my face
start to whistle like bagpipes

to to to ro ton to to ro ton to to!

Selfmoordpoging

2006-12-08T22:13:00.000Z

dis vrees wat nou my drif beseer
die boog wat eens deur mag bekoor
en meesterloos die lot se oor
na vryliker idees wou keer
pyl innerlik en pyn al meer

nag na nag van spannings-angs
die vroeer lewenslus verslyt
asem vergryp uit kille pyp
en liefde reeds verys waarlangs
verdoem tot 'n verslae vangs

ek yl en geleidelik aggressief
met smart en eindeloos gegrief
die lotspel lok met doodsplesier
stom spartels van my lewensspier
vir oulaas nog die lewe lief

Remorse

2006-11-27T23:01:00.000Z

Gripped by an impenetrable sadness
near the drawbridge, John Grim retches
cold lies the sweat upon his forehead
old at heart he enters the ancient church
sombre shadows surrounding the altar
as crows enclose the woeful's flesh
and dire, ringing ghost-octaves
of organ strains in the chapel nave
swirl in his mourning eyes, his tortured soul.

Hid in his black robe the bloody blade
that cleft her ripened beauty, cold and pale.

An abandoned passion

2006-11-25T23:32:00.000Z

Gripped by an impenetrable sadness
near the drawbridge, John Grim retches
cold lies the sweat upon his forehead
old at heart he enters the ancient church
and the shadows at the altar
as crows enclose a death
and the melancholy ghost-song
that fills the empty church
and the handle in his monk's robe
of the silver, bloodied blade
remind him of her lovely face
and pale breasts, now breathless, by the moat.

Rocky and the New Rebels

2006-09-20T22:48:00.000+01:00

He had the idea to start a group called Rocky and the New Rebels. It was just an idea that came to him one day, like others that rubbed against his brain and then flung themselves out into the world like a magician’s pigeons. In fact, his brain was a veritable volcano of rebellious ideas. For instance, while he was working at McDonald’s he would sometimes greet his customers with subersively mangled idioms. To one he would say “the early turd catches the worm” and to another “a fool and her fanny are soon fucked” and once “the tenner is mightier than the turd” when a young sales professional paid for his Big Mac with a ten pound note.

It’s not that he actually intended to change the world or tried to kick against some regime or his parents or society. In some ways he was too happy for that. And it’s not that he was simply eccentric either. You could say his rebellion was against reality itself, against the inability of his surroundings to be impressive and satisfying in and of themselves. Of course, all rebels pay a price – James Dean died young and so did Sylvia Plath, and Ali got Parkinson’s. The curse is different for each one. In Rocky’s case his reality started to fulfill his wishes by turning his fears into reality.

The first time it happened he was talking on his mobile. It sounded like a breaking signal, a crackling hum in his ears. When he cut off the connection and dialled again his mother picked up, but this time a giant fly the size of his fist was sitting on his mobile’s arial, fluttering its wings. He dropped the phone immediately. Even greater was his surprise when the fly spoke to him: “Fly with me, fuckface”, it said. Then it took off with a buzz and swivelled out the window in a wavelike motion. Rocky was totally startled and ran next door to his friendly Swedish neighbour Katrina.

Katrina had just been fingering herself and was in no mood to eject from her fantasy of meeting the handsome yoga coach in a warm, bubbly jacuzzi at the gym. As a result Rocky was greeted by a rather dour-faced girl who barely responded to his story of a giant fly on his mobile.

“Come in”, she said, “I am just about to make some coffee.” Although Rocky was a pretty ordinary-looking bloke, she wondered whether he could somehow compensate for the intrusion upon her private pleasures. “I wish I could meet a giant fly right now …” she thought, but didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to be in my new group, Rocky and The New Rebels?”, he asked Katrina when they’d settled down with a cup of coffee on the sofa. “I just thought about it today.” He rifled his fingers through his gelled hair and, for a moment, felt like someone he’d seen on TV once. The feeling passed and Katrina said: “Is it a band or something?” “Yea, kind of, except we write stories.”

“OK”, she said.

Then it happened again. Katrina turned into a huge, hairy gorilla. First her face blurred and became woolly, then her whole body started to look more muscular and furry. The gorilla got up from its seat, slurped the last of the coffee in an animalistic way, then proceeded to bear upon Rocky like a hungry predator. Rocky was way too petrified to move. He had once learned in a self-growth book that you should face your fears before you can move on and develop personally. He hung onto this thought as the gorilla, who turned out to be astonishingly female, shoved him to the ground and unbuttoned his trousers to have sex with him.

"Is this rebellious, or just plain rude?", he wondered before his mind got swept into a swirl of brusque urges and occasional pleasures.

quitting him

2006-09-08T21:02:00.001+01:00

hosed-down, hosed-down, quitting him
chamfered places pleases him
what concrete cleaned-up crate a herm
dare frame chamfered another time?

who waits and pales and farrow crates
then switches off the pump-iron?
what upstanding here elsewhere?
red work my head light there?

who's hosed-down brightly burning him?
whose concrete chamfered pleases him?
what concrete cleans up crates aherm
and dares to frame a fearful time?

who waits and pales at farrow crates?
whose words switch off, disintegrate?

Words written at the lake in Verulamium Park in St. Albans

2006-08-30T07:26:00.000+01:00

Sitting here by the lake
the cool breeze chilling
our ability to remain for long;
in my mind nevertheless
like aspirin in a glass
the recent strains
are dissolving to nothing
within its peaceful atmosphere
(or, perhaps, are becoming
more transparent);
and somewhere the sound
of the word "geese" and
the idea "goose" are
also dissolving as I
hear them bleating
as if for the first time
by this modest lake
harbouring them
without intrusion

Modern Living / Neurotica

2006-07-16T22:53:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness for Mr. Hoogerbrugge, who takes the sour side of living seriously! Do you believe that it's possible to hear music through the mutilation of your face? In anima 97 "Rash" he would have us try out what it may be like. Using his own likeness. If he were not so ready to deface (or is that efface?) himself, I would say he has a case of Narcissis Musicis.

Or one of my favourites 98 "Prelude", where Mr Hoogerbrugge's face is masked to sinister effect, his mouth covered while it sings a wordless song.

The fact that these animations were created between 1999 and 2001 is testament to some creativity ahead of its time. I am also reminded quite a bit of Red Meat.

Other snippets to check out are (by number only): 15, 26, 32, 35, 40, 57, 73.

Stumble Upon

2006-07-01T15:05:00.000+01:00

One of the great ideas for netizens: StumbleUpon. Definitely one of the more interesting trends I've come across - and above all: useful. So what is the idea? Discover unexpected web pages on your topic of choice.

First download the toolbar. You will be asked to select your topics of interest (choose what you will - Games, Film, Self-help, what have you) Now you will notice a new toolbar with several icons - the one you are most interested in is the one on the left: "Stumble!" Just click there and you will be transported to a webpage that someone in the community recommended, of one of the categories you chose. Just to the right of that icon you can find the categories icon - either let it randomly select the category for you (All), or specify the category you want.

The other side of the coin is that you can also tag pages for other people. So suppose you have a favourite page about dance culture you'd like to share - simply give it a tag (tag textbox) and confirm it by clicking the tag icon. It's as simple as that.

And in addition you can keep track of your favourite stumbles by clicking on the "I like it!" icon and later view them on your StumbleUpon userpage - just click on the "pages" icon to get there.

There's a community growing around this, but it gets my vote and I hope it continues to expand. It's rare that I find a net trend as useful as this one - now whenever I have a free moment I find myself stumbling upon new web pages. Explore the internet!

Have fun!!

Earth

2006-06-26T00:17:00.000+01:00

Here is a website giving essential information regarding the state of the earth.

or New Media Art

2006-05-29T19:30:00.000+01:00

The Taschen "New Media Art" put me on a couple of new angles to Internet Art or New Media Art as they call it (although the label as a reference to the employment of "emerging media technologies" seems on the one hand of its time only - why appropriate the term when other media will come along sooner or later?).

So we have hacktivist artists who combine political activism with art. See Borderxing Guide and then data visualisationists who make data patterns more visual, eg. in the project Umbrella.net.

But there are also those who explore the world of technology and its relation to traditional art and media more thoroughly, and it is some of these projects that I find the most interesting.

First in line we have Life Sharing - an anagrammatical play on file sharing - by 0100101110101101.org. Eva and Franco Mattes shared the content of their computer online using the Linux Debian OS and opened up a whole can of worms: the notion that privacy in the contemporary information era is becoming an outdated concept (and what will replace it? Perhaps, as Donna Haraway says in her A Cyborg Manifesto, a hybridised cyborg citizenship!). It is not purely for show either - it is true sharing, everything can be downloaded the same way that software can be shared in the open source community. It problematises the notion of sharing and who can use it, since we are all aware that our identities are floating around the databases of large corporations. How visible are we really? Can our identities be constructed into profiles that are as defined as Eva and Franco allow?

For every old school gamer (which includes me - I haven't played a contemporary game in years, but how can I ever forget the joys of Software Projects' Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, or Gremlin Graphics' Bounder and Trailblazer?) Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds evokes the nostalgia inherent in the almost iconic familiarity of clouds in Super Mario Bros. He hacked away to edit out the rest of the onscreen digital presences, leaving only the clouds.

And finally, for a more intellectual experience one may go and look at the excellent The Intruder, brainchild of Natalie Bookchin. It explores the line between narration in the traditional literary sense, using a short story of Jorge Luis Borges, and information media by weaving the story - a misogynistic plot wherein two brothers mistreat and eventually murder a sexually enslaved woman - into a simple computer game wherein the different stages engage the user to participate in the story by moving it forward whenever certain game actions are successful. The game is very simple but the concept is adequately realised. I found the voice over quite atmospheric.

The possibilities opened up by these commentaries are quite vast. Imagine the subversion possible in online games such as World of Warcraft! Creatures that criticise the violence or the quests themselves - annoying online consciences that spread their thoughts by constructing protests or hacking the very network fabric that holds the game together.

Never let me go and stay connected

2006-05-03T23:27:00.000+01:00

I finished reading Never Let Me Go on Monday and my clearest memory is the perception of the main characters' dilemma - their sheltered upbringing, then their gradual acceptance of their sad fate - as analogous to the fate of people in society in general. Those of us brought up in above average families in terms of education and economic wealth, and a measure of love, tend not to lack some cherished dreams and fantasies lingering from childhood into adulthood. But what a shock adulthood can be for so many! Expending your energies for the sake of others who are shut off from you by the barriers and burdens of bureaucracy, in order to earn a living. This, it occured to me, is what was meant by the concept of a donation.

Of course I don't pretend that the analogy holds up all the way, perhaps I am too self-centred and my own life's anomalies prevent me from imagining Ishiguro's characters living the way he wants us to believe they did. They are me, and I am not a clone. Although it is just as true that in the bureaucratic world I am replaceable like practically anyone else. New age self-growth remedies aside, no amount of self-promotion will ever cause that annoying reminder of bottom-line factuality to stay away.

On a different note I was thinking of the fundamental connectedness of everything and everyone and wanted to remind you that this highly spiritual concept does not you shouldn't disconnect from time to time. But ideally, hey, I think the connection is the healthiest thing one earth! What can be better for your emotional, physical, and mental health than having the harmonious companionship and support of your entire being?

Has Internet Art been forgotten? Not at all! It has transported itself through time and will reappear in soon. xxx

Angelically

2006-04-17T22:01:00.000+01:00

Does it pay off to experiment? Of course it does! It's just not always obvious. People seem to think that experimentation without a clearly defined form or intent is just improvisation and exercise - and they may not be entirely wrong - but there is also the converse problem of looking at something that appears to be novel and a little too accidental to be of any significance, but may in fact have some guiding hypothesis embedded in its structure that is not obvious to the superficial reader.

In the following two stanzas I have thrown together words and phrases that sound similar and sometimes pleasing to the ear, but they also conjure up meanings when read to the end. To put it differently, what started as rhyming nonsense ended up creating an atmosphere. Isn't that interesting in itself?

Callous sandal quay
salad candalee
love lost, listless thistle thee
lilt the still-loved sea

ill and Linda Lee
did India link darkly
"go now" so dearly she
angelically from me

Agatha Appears

2006-03-03T00:14:00.000Z

I know, it seems like I am throwing bones - but I am just SO busy! Well, here is something that has an OLD feel to it. You know, like those old ZX Spectrum games. Who these days would believe that 48k could give so much pleasure?

It's almost like that - cool, but since time has passed now it somehow leaves you wanting a bit more sophistication.

Agatha Appears.

The actors even share a bit of pop philosophy, like characters in a John Wyndham novel.

- You know, Agatha,
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]
Internet is not computers, applications, scripts
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]
it's not tech, but new world, new philosophy
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]
new way of thinking, to understand the net u must be inside
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]
u should come through it u must be in it ...
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]
- New world? I want to try!
[_1______ ]#[__1______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]#[__2______ ]

Action, interaction, art!

2006-02-13T22:21:00.000Z

"I am interested in creating products, but by rethinking the notion of a product as a transformation of actions not as a transformation of material" - Tino Sehgal

Last night at the ICA Cecilia urged me to go and see the Tino Sehgal exhibition. "It's still open?!", I asked, since we had arrived after 6pm and I was sure we'd missed our window (blame overland trains only every half hour from South East London to central ...). Well we went and it was indeed fascinating - being led around the ICA building, up and down winding stairways, into spacious rooms with no furniture, to be asked if I have dreams and what is progress? Ultimately we went around in a circle, but I guess it is about the process - and being, suddenly, left alone at the end in medias res as if nothing ever happened.

But I am also thinking about internet art these days and what distinguishes it from other art forms. We have music, the visual arts, literature, film, and a host of genres in between. But the internet is a just-hyped artistic phenomenon, why should anyone care except to look at the enthusiasm as just another dotcom dream?

So here I have been set upon an exploration, knowing that at the inception there is so much possibility and yet so little has been defined. Do we perceive the internet as a series of user actions, and interactions? Do we start art by the simplest representation - not of images on the internet, god forbid, but of these very interactions. As a playwright's drama captures some essence of the human drama, so, perhaps internet art captures something of the interactive information intenities that take place every day.

But does it?

Judged by such early forms as Alex's supposed iconic web look, it's still early days. And what else do we have? Well watch this space, I am onto it!

For those unable to get hold of a copy of Rachel Greene's (very promising so far) Internet Art, you are lucky because someone else is reading it for you. That's me. But in French, and my French is not so hot - don't ask, we were in Paris the other day and of course who wouldn't buy some iconic text at the Centre Pompidou when you are there? Even if it takes an hour to translate a single page ...

But for starters, have a look at Jodi.org, and also at 404.jodi.org

The thing to do at the latter is click on one of the numbers and at the new place start interacting by having your entered sentences' words stripped of all consonants or vowels, as the case may be. Funky stuff.

Iconic internet art?

2006-01-19T21:36:00.000Z

Ever since I saw this article and the corresponding caption "An iconic image of internet art?" next to a snapshot of Alex Tew's web page I have been wondering about the emergence of an artistic landscape on the internet. If the internet is a city - or at least its streets and byways and pedestrian walkways, then perhaps it is something like Martin Scorsese's depiction of New York avenues at night.

Or maybe I'm getting carried away. Although I hope someone will get that far ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4585026.stm

I looked up some of the other web pages since Alex's is currently down, to see if the images continue to appear interesting. Here are two - one from Million Penny Home Page and another from Million Pixel Page.

Million Penny Home Page

Million Pixel Page

Is it possible for art to exist in an image that was not created by an artist, and if so what does that say about art - that the beauty of it lies in the eye of the beholder or in the vision of the creator?

But at the same time it is reminiscent of Tristan Tzara's dada advice on writing a poem:

"To Make a Dadaist Poem:

Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

Tristan Tzara"

Is there a better metaphor? Perhaps this iconic image is not so novel after all, and digital Dada has finally hit the mainstream.

Resolution! dance performances

2006-01-11T01:33:00.000Z

Went to see three dance pieces as part of Resolution! at The Place on Friday (6 January). As a relative newcomer to the contemporary dance scene I am still finding my way but in the company of the much more experienced Sabrina and Matthew I got to place my perceptions in better perspectives.

Resolution! is an annual launch pad (this the 17th one) for new choreographic talent and although there is an application process the criteria for admission appears to be in the region of the experimental and interesting and therefore one shouldn't be too sure what to expect. Resolution! is to dance what resonancefm is to music radio (yes, do check it out!).

Of the evening's performances the second by Lunacy Nicked was probably the most accomplished, but each had its own distinctive flavour and personally I enjoyed all of them.

The first, For Better, For Worse by Helix Dance had as its theme the relationship between a man and a woman in their twenties - focusing specifically on the emotional turmoil they experience while in relationship. At the start two cut-out cardboard figures are apparent on the centre-stage, holding hands. These are the silhouettes of a man and a woman and generally show where the relationship is at emotionally - together or not, or trying to move closer or apart.

From the beginning the tension is apparent as the guy tries to move his figure away and the girl indicates "no, here!" forcing him to bring it back next to her. During the first part we become acquainted with them as they relate, in words, some of their experiences to the audience - the descriptions are often comic. This self-reflective aspect of the piece - talking to the audience - becomes even more apparent later as they continue to stop each other with "is it my part now? what was I supposed to say?". The device is not original but it is probably more interesting than a straight delivery. I will soon mention one moment that made it worthwhile to use this device.

The second scene focuses on the relationship and the dance intensifies - they are dancing in tandem with one another but the cut-out figures are no longer together and it is therefore clear that they are slightly at odds while they manoeuver around the stage. It is during the second scene that the girl suddenly falls away from the guy and says something like: "I know that we said that this is forever and that I want to be with you always but now I ...". She stops. The typical emotional subtext is that she is afraid to say the worst, namely what she is thinking, but she could also be provoking his emotions, putting him onto a different but otherwise expected script within their emotional relationship context. Here the dance is therefore a bit like a script - something that could be open-ended, but somehow has to work within confined boundaries, known boundaries. The dancers communicate to each other according to what they know and respond - prefer to respond - in ways familiar to them; much like the dancers also have to communicate to the audience in a way that is at least somewhat familiar to them - but with some openendedness to leave room for imagination and innovation.

The guy's response is "you want to throttle me then". But he could just as well have kept quiet - and she could then have said: "But I want to try new things now, I feel we have come to the end." His response puts them at odds again, they are having an argument, but the intensity is something they experience together - it is still an attempt to draw closer.

In the third scene they have drawn apart in order to search and experience their own emotions and inner life. Their dances are no longer in tandem with one another, instead they are dancing by themselves - experiencing individual intensities and reactions, but connected to the other (as is apparent by frequent glances to the partner).

The third scene ends when, after the guy has placed his cut-out figure in front, left of the stage, the girl eventually joins him there with her figure after her own inner searching. They are back together again. However the very last action is that they hug and kiss in the middle of the stage and then become aware of themselves as dancers again and request a "fade to black". The directorial awareness is therefore an important part of the piece - however it is not explored in great depth or to really good effect.

The second piece, Lunacy Nicked by Ear Me In, was the most accomplished - the 3 dancers were all excellent and what distinguished this piece from the other two was its ability to project to the audience. The viewer never felt cut off from the presence of the dancers. M noted that the dancers have a theater background in addition to a dance background, and that certainly explains a lot.

There are basicaly three girls in 3 different situations throughout the performance. At the last they are apparently quite drunk in some bar. The main aspects that seemed exploratory to me was the constant use of familiar gestures in that environment (drinking, giggling, acting stupid and drunk) and secondly the use of an audio voice-over that sounded a lot like TV sports commentary ("and here we have Nikki, doing a cartwheel!" "and now Lucy leaves the spotlight ..."). M explained that they are connected to Integrated Dance Company and therefore it is partly to engage an audience who may be visually impaired - but I also felt it is an interesting blurring of media boundaries. Nevertheless, in the last instance, I missed something to stir the emotions - which I found in the first piece where music was used to very good effect.

The last piece, Grain by SLAPDASH, was definitely the least audience-friendly - a real exploratory piece. There were two dancers and two musicians (playing what looked like a violin and a cello respectively). They started at different corners of the stage and then the musicians tried to cue the dancers (in a very slow start - they restarted about 5 times and it just seemed to lose the audience's interest eventually) as if to get them to dance in sync.

The reality is that, apart from some visual symmetry in their positions their actual movements and music were not synchronised with one another at all - intentionally. Furthermore the dances were neither symbolic nor gestural - to me personally they seemed abstract albeit flowing. The same can be said for the music - the players played in time to each other and the dancers, but their was no sense of melody at all. The music was not recognisable in any sort of way. If the ending reminded me of a rapid neo-flamenco finale with its rising intensity that was probably just to give the piece a sense of reaching a relative destination.

Nevertheless, as with all the other pieces, the audience clapped a lot at the end. And I was left with a good feeling that dancers and choreographers are encouraged so enthusiastically to continue exploring and experimenting - even though not all of it is audience friendly or even highly successful.

The lasting impression about Grain is that it tries to communicate on an ideas level and does so in part by distancing itself completely from familiar meanings in the individual movements and sounds. It may well be that someone else could have deciphered more but this much was apparent to me. Taking it for what it is I was interested, but felt that they too suffered from the first piece's lack of projection to the audience. To communicate properly to your audience your presence should be unmistakable in the viewer's mind. They seemed rather tentative to me at first, and only gradually shone with more confidence and freedom.

Artlessness I

2006-01-04T21:59:00.000Z

flexible easy to use integrated

men's suit event
women's cinema

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an unfulfilled need amidst
an otherwise overflowing infonity

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The controversy surrounding AllPeers

2006-01-03T22:41:00.000Z

There has been something of a storm over the new hyped peer-to-peer software over at www.allpeers.com. And it hasn't even been released yet, it's still in beta.

From what I can gather so far it is:

1. P2P using a BitTorrent client
2. fully integrated with Firefox
3. media file oriented, so you get to share all your media files with selected peers
4. open source
5. and free "as in beer"

I find it hard to believe the authors' contention that no legal issues can be raised, especially since their discussion of the issues do not make much reference to technical legal details. At any rate at this moment it remains controversial.

You can also read more over at their blog.

And since I've been studying current developments in psychology

2006-01-02T01:47:00.000Z

As much as I enjoyed 33 x Around The Sun I am, in the last instance, discouraged by the looney atmosphere of the mental hospital. At the risk of sounding like a member of the PC entertainment police it seems a bit stereotyped to put a bunch of people in this setup without considering the advances that have been made in the field of mental health. It does not really harm the exploration of consciousness though because the institutional framework is merely a backdrop for the main themes. At most it would have been refreshing to see a more progressive milieu.

33 x Around The Sun

2005-12-22T19:57:00.000Z

As an independent, experimental movie, 33 Times Around the Sun from British director John Hardwick starts off in a way that hardly allows one to predict its considerable value. At first, strange characters appear next to the road in the middle of the night interacting with the main character - 'H'. As I was watching these eccentricities I felt sure I would file this movie under "quirky". But later the repetition of elements (the surreal cop car that pops up from time to time, and the film crew) start to give the impression that there may be deeper themes at work. It is only by the end of the movie, however, that the film shows it has larger ambitions. A point of closure is reached that brings the main character's drama into its real setting and the rather clever nature of the script comes into its own. In addition there are also themes that raise the film from the merely surreal to metaphor, such as its commentary on filmmaking and the place it has in the consciousness of the main character.

In order to make some sense of this surprisingly interesting movie I gathered a few ideas together. To lay the groundwork - and from here on there are spoilers galore so it's only for those who have seen the movie, or have nothing better to read :-p - by the end we find out that the main character has most probably just been wandering around the hospital interating with other inmates. It is not an abandoned hospital, as it seems at the start when he wakes up, but instead is full of interesting and colourful characters (well, other inmates, and a few official people like the security personnel and the nurse/doctor/therapist).

Starting with the last scene, when he looks out of the window and the camera cuts to the dog (his companion during parts of the movie), one is given the impression that he longs to be outside - outside the hospital - and that is where his mind wanders off to when the other "disturbed" people in this supposedly mental institution appears along the streets and near houses and in a takeout coffee bar during the first part of the film. It may be that he had a dog once, and when he is outside he imagines he is still with his dog, and perhaps it is his real dog waiting outside for him; but it also represents his mute, loyal spirit trying to roam and be free, but always returning to his confinement - to a part of him that is trapped and locked up.

So the second part of the movie is spent inside the hospital, to where he - notably - returns through the strange cubicle after he hides the gun in a hole inside the cubicle. When he exits the cubicle he is surprised to find himself in the hospital - "back to reality" - and immediately asks the two familiar-looking janitors if they've seen his dog. They don't and "it's against the rules" to bring dogs there. They put him in a wheelchair and push him around - clearly they view him as an inmate who has lost his marbles.

But most of the movie - the first part - is spent on the streets. And this is where we meet the characters who make up important parts of his consciousness. We meet the movie directors (director and assistant, and other assistants), and it is through the movie theme that we have a sense of him rehearsing something: something real of his past, but through other faces, disguises and uncertain events ("first positions please!"). We meet Ruth Spencer, a girl who recognises him but whom he cannot claim as a girlfriend to other people. The same figure/actress is also his nurse/doctor in the hospital, and a more professional personality during some of the movie-making scenes. And there is the mad professor-character who talks to him about Einstein in the coffee bar.

These introductions tell us a few things, the most important of which may be the love he feels for Ruth. Is she a girl he really loved and sometimes visited (before he was confined to the hospital), who loved tea and for whom he would buy tea from the coffee bar a few streets away? Some sequences recur such as the music she dances to when he clearly feels an adoration for her - the music repeats later when he does the "final act" scene, walking down the street. On the bench he also touches her hair, playfully, and picks a flea from her hair (which speaks, strangely enough). Later this moment is captured on the first photograph taken by the same character/acttress when she is part of the movie-making team - perhaps his therapist this time, directing him through his mind, helping him to remember and make peace.

Ruth - and the therapist by transference - represents the light that keeps him going. In his search through his mind and the hospital, she is what makes it possible for him to go on day after day.

There is a mysterious neon police car that bumps and spills the tea he meant to take to Ruth. When he returns to Ruth's place he finds that she is gone, as if the police car somehow intervened to remove her from his evening. This could hint at the police's later role in disrupting his life forever by shooting him - a story that is enacted during the so-called "Final Act" scene. Like other characters, the two policemen turn out to be the security personnel at the hospital.

The "Final Act" scene brings the movie theme forward - the assistant director says: "you are the reason we are here". This is his movie, the trip through his consciousness was directed for his own sake. Perhaps the therapist is leading him through his mind, and perhaps getting other people from the hospital to act in one another's dramas is part of a therapeutic process that we are not told about, but whatever the case - the main character is suddenly totally aware that he is on cue. And to emphasise this we see the black and red markers at his feet. We see his back, he turns around, and then he starts walking down the street. He is on his way and he is going to do something - he the "hitherto unknown assassin" (the markers are later echoed in the dance scene, where there are numerous markers for him to dance on before the other performers/actors join him). Having seen the earlier scene where a man is shot in front of him, and later followed by the comments from the director, we as viewers are in a position to understand that he is the person who killed that man.

The camera crew follows him down the street as he walks down, (fake) gun in his hand. The very same music that played during the Ruth Spencer scene when she dances now plays again. Like the photograph, this links his reenaction to the love he feels for Ruth Spencer - presumably through the nurse/therapist who caringly guides him through his mind. The loving therapist/professional/nurse suddenly says, as he gets to the bottom of the street, "no let him go". She tries to encourage him here and this transference of his love for Ruth to the therapist/director is crucial to foster a caring relationship between him and the nurse/therapist.

When he turns around the crew has disappeared. In a sense it's as if she has led him to this point and now wants him to go off on his own, unscripted and undirected, and explore and perhaps break out of the repetition of the trauma-loop that he keeps enacting in his mind.

It would appear that the act he committed was to kill someone ("did he deserve to die?" he asks the movie director via the therapist/professional, and she interprets back for him as a go-between, softening the message). This is played once, and then when the movie crew appears it is repeated - that's when he realises he is in a movie. Shortly thereafter he is summoned for the "final act".

This trauma makes him doubt his own moral character. It happens later as well when he asks the nurse "Am I a bad man?" and she says "You are what you decide to be". Once again she is encouraging him to break free from his trauma and become whole.

To emphasise how important this theme of encouragement from the female character's side appears to be I will briefly backtrack: just before the "final act" she takes his picure and the photograph does not show him at that moment but instead in the tender moment when he is with Ruth on the bench taking the flea from her hair. The "Final act" sequence then plays out with him eventually walking down the street and the therapist/director saying "no let him go". After that he seems to play out another part that is very traumatic - the police find him and shoot him. This is probably one of the events that led to his breakdown and him being committed to the mental hospital. The movie then cuts back to the scene where she takes his picture, but this time it is the real picture and - significantly - she says: "We will keep doing it until we get it right". She is full of encouragment and support, she will help see him through this.

During the "Final Act" scene the therapist/director encourages him to "walk off the set" of this movie - to find his freedom again. But up to now the only freedom he finds, outside in the streets, is roaming through the mental spaces of his old hell that he keeps living through every day. Orpheus' hell, with the therapist (formerly his love for Ruth) his Eurydice.

Nevertheless the movie is left open-ended in a meaningful echo of the idea that the main character should "walk off the set" of his own movie to find his freedom. I point to the very last scene in the movie when the dog - a part of his spirit - is shown standing on the sidewalk outside the hospital. The dog wanders off and actually WALKS OUT OF THE CAMERA FRAME. Does he find freedom, or merely the same hell again? We don't know but for as long as the friendly female nurse/therapist is there, there is evidently hope.

Update:

The work of Jacob Moreno, brought to my attention while I was reading up on Family Therapy, quite closely resembles what I imagine the therapist/director female lead in the movie may have been trying to do with her client and subject the lead male actor. Moreno created what he called psychodrama in a fusion of drama and therapy. The very interpersonal situations that gave rise to the client's problems are recreated in these psychodrama sessions. It even uses a stage, and other clients of the therapist (read: patients) usually fill the roles of important people in the person's life. The description does not say whether other figures at the point of trauma will necessarily be included in the drama - although this would only make sense - but since the description is written from the point of view of family therapy, this angle may have been omitted from the description.

Selfishness and self-interest

2005-12-10T19:38:00.000Z

Selfishness and self-interest

Dictionary.com defines selfishness as being "concerned chiefly or only with oneself".

It is my contention that selfishness, if it is to be a useful analytical concept, should take into account the possibility of being applied to a social unit other than the individual. That is to say it may pertain to the collective consciousness of a nation, a group, or a couple as the case may be. Its usage in this case would be similar to the notion of self-interest and one may have to regard the traditional view of selfishness as an extreme measurement of self-interest in general, but more likely as an indication of a consciousness that is dissonant with the estimating consciousness.

Francisco Varela states that “there is mind in every unity engaged in conversation-like actions, however spatially distributed or shortlived” and calls this a “conversational domain”.

Following this it may be more accurate to say that self-interest is realized only through this shared consciousness – even though it may manifest apparently monadically in an individual.

The myth of the homunculus

2005-11-23T17:29:00.000Z

Is this guy just playing catch-up or is 1992 a good date for this realisation breaking through to the mainstream? Many psychologists would probably agree with Deci and Ryan's work that we do not possess a "true inner self", but at best we have "some patterns of thought, feeling, and action that grow and flourish independently of external pressures ... seen as reflecting a kind of true inner self" (Roy F. Baumeister on the theory of Deci and Ryan (1987 and 1991)).

The postmodern view would be more inclined to say that we create ourselves, that we are created in relation to others, and that our collective subjective and intersubjective understandings about ourselves form a loose collective of who we are. As individuals, natch ...

If I were one of Araki's lovers and had my photograph pinned up at the Barbican for all and sundry to see I might consider myself lucky at this unexpected fame, the side-effect of our love affair. I may even have engineered our coitus for that reason ... On the other hand I may be angry, looking back, at being so shamelessly used for art, fun though it was. Whose name will be remembered?

Of course, it's possible he just paid them all - now there's a thought!

But the demeaning truth wouldn't take away the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed 3 hours spent perusing the 4000 odd photographs exhibited on two floors. And it wasn't just the subject matter. I mean, I do like looking at naked women stylishly photographed, but then that wasn't the point now was it?
::quickly move on to the next sentence::
S patiently explained to me how Araki's themes are typical of a certain period of Japanese culture in the 20th century - the residue of male warrior-spirit and the complementary submissive female beautiful object, a medium for sex and reproduction. The maltreatment and abuse of the female body expresses that male stance.

... in some cases the camera abuses the subject in another way, it photographs her while she is unable to look into the lens - for instance when she is sleeping, or looking into the distance, or trying to look up but is at too awkward an angle to do so properly.

And apparently Japanese culture appears polite and smooth on the surface, but underneath exists these dark aggressions and transgressions. Big-time.

Now we know why that Japanese Anime-style porn always seemed a bit weird.

Less Than Zero

2005-11-04T08:19:00.000Z

Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis' debut novel.

At less than 200 pages you might expect a quick read and that, eventually, is the effect. Page on page of the same teenage boredom in L.A., vacuous afternoons and spacey acid-filled nights. Trendy hedonism laced with drugs and anorexia. Kids who have not yet come of age O.D. at any of an endless stream of parties. A 12 year-old girl gets mouth-fucked while in a drug-induced stupor. A 19-year old's body is discovered in an alley-way - to the amusement of party-goers around town.

Welcome to the world of Bret Easton Ellis, kids, where children die young and used up, and the rest have nothing to do except circulate bad memories like a constant bad trip.

It may be a debut novel, but there is little to find fault with in this novel (unless you'r eprudish of course) - if it was any more sophisticated it may have come across as too pretentious. It's just right, although I dare say BEE's later stuff must be even more interesting. This is my first outing with him.

Page 35-6 have a back-flash that sort of represents the mindset of this crowd - the pretty boys and girls with nothing to do in particular:

During the end of my senior year one day, I didn't go to school. Instead I drove out to Palm Springs alone and listened to a lot of old tapes I used to like but didn't much anymore, and I stopped at a McDonald's in Sunland for a Coke and then drove out to the desert and parked in front of the old house. I didn't like the new one that the family had bought; wel, it was okay, but it wasn't like the old house. The old house was empty and the outside looked really scummy and unkempt and there were weeds and a television aerial that had fallen off the roof and empty trashcans were lying on what used to be the front lawn. The pool was drained and all these memories rushed back to me and I had to sit down in my school uniform on the steps of the empty pool and cry. I remembered all the Friday nights driving in and the Sunday nights leaving and afternoons spent playing cards on the chaise longues out by the pool wih my grandmother. But those memories seemed faded compared to empty beer cans that were scattered all over the dead lawn and the windows that were all smashed and broken. My aunt had tried to sell the house, but I guess she got sentimental and no longer wanted to. My father had wanted to sell it and was really bitter that no one had done so. But they stopped talking about it and the house lay between them and was never brought up anymore. I didn't go out to Palm Springs that day to look around or see the house because I wanted to miss school or anything. I guess I went out there because I wanted to remember the way things were. I don't know.

"I don't know"

That sums up the narrator's mindset from start to finish.

At the end his (ex)-girlfriend Blair shows a brief interlude of character and resolve:

She's sitting alone and she turns her head towards the breeze and that one moment suggests to me a move on her part of some sort of confidence, or some sort of courage and I'm envious

.
.
.

'I don't know if any other person I've been with has been really there, either ... but at least they tried.'
I finger the menu; put my cigarette out.
'You never did. Other people made an effort and you just ... It was just beyond you.' She takes another sip of her wine. 'You were never there. I felt sorry for you for a little while but then I found it hard to. You're a beautiful boy, Clay, but that's about it.'

.
.
.

She takes of f her sunglasses and finally says, 'I'll see you later, Clay.' She gets up.
'Where are you going?' I suddenly don't want to leave Blair here. I almost want to take her back with me.
'Have to meet someone for lunch.'
'But what about us?'
'What about us?' She stands there for a moment, waiting. I keep staring at the billboard until it begins to blur and when my vision becomes clearer I watch as Blair's car glides out of the parking lot and becomes lost in the haze of traffic on Sunset.

So you read this and think to yourself: "Great, someone brings a glimmer of hope into this listless mess!"

Except on the next page - Clay is about to leave for New Hampshire, for college, this was his summer break - you read:

Blair calls me the night before I leave.
'Don't go', she says.
'I'll only be gone a couple of months.'
'That's a long time.'
'There's always summer.'
'That's a long time.'
'I'll be back. It's not that long.'
'Shit, Clay.'
'You've got to believe me.'
'I don't'
'You have to.'
'You're lying.'
'No, I'm not.'

A day in Islington

2005-10-16T17:19:00.000+01:00

The Candid Arts Trust promotes arts and helps create a network of artists who sometimes exhibit there or is otherwise connected to the CAT. I spent an afternoon in Islington to go and visit the Photography, Illustration, Print Making and Graphics exhibition of the Islington Art & Design Fair at the Candid Galleries in Torrens street - just behind Angel tube station.

Well, I got sidetracked first. Thanks to years of neglect and other sinister reasons the Northern Line is completely out of action at the moment which meant I had to walk all the way from King's Cross station - or take a bus, but I felt too frisky for that - to get there. So halfway there I come across the Crafts Council. Who can resist? I popped in to find the finalists for the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2005: Metal featuring in the exhibition rooms. Among a paticularly long line of increasingly impractical and unconventional spoon designs I found - yes! - a cotton spoon. Clearly this was about artistic design rather than practical kitchen utensils. I was glad I came :-)

The French-speaking woman to my right couldn't explain the nature of the exhibition very well but there was another unusual lady drifting around looking officious all in black. Except for the girlish ponytail that is. Turns out she is security and she neatly guided me to the brochure at the entrance. She is also a photographer. Whatever.

Me: You know you remind me of someone?
She: Uh, no - who?
Me: A moviestar ... what's her name again? Oh yes, Polyanna!
She: Who's that?
Me: Uhmm, well she's not an actress, she's a character in an old movie. She's always smiling and jumping around. a very friendly girl. I think it's the ponytail that made me think of her.
She: No, I don't know her.

And she was honest. I guess that's a pretty old movie nowadays after all. Right, moving on ...

Oh, and the receptionist spoke faster than anyone I've met in the last I don't know how many weeks or months. Some people get so good at their jobs that every conversation seems predictable. Except when you start asking them about their favourite type of restaurant, haha. I think she doesn't get out much.

The IADF turned out to be pretty interesting. There were loads of artists and photographers - some professional some amateur - exhibiting their stuff. I remember one dude explaining that the naked woman peering from the noir confines of a boudoir photograph was actually from a brothel in Wales, for real.

And then there were the very colourful paintings of Yoshiko Tsuruta, and of Ferney Manrique. Ferney is a designer by day, but has a sizeable collection of paintings and drawings - an amateur artist with a passionate interest in his hobby.

Beautiful photographs by award-winning photographers Peter Greenhalf and Janet Pollard. They manage to make black-and-white look classic and delicate at the same time. Lots of landscapes, especially beaches.

Rebecca, another photographer who took beaches as her theme produced a very different package. Focusing on beach candy shops or empty merry-go-rounds during the out-of-season period, the unexpected stillness and absence of life sets up a naughty desolation and abandonment in otherwise ordinary-looking scenes.

Other artists such as Dawn Gray and Bea Lopez, who exhibited in the same corner, had different themes again. Dawn has stayed some years in Japan and works in what is a little-used medium these days: woodcuts. Japanese motifs of birds and trees permeate the brown landscape. Bea photographs flowers and plants up close and personal.

That was good fun. The CAT also has a fabulous cafe frequented by artists, spiritualists, and otherwise interesting and friendly people. An Indian Yogi came over to explain the West's misunderstanding of Indian philosophy, in particular as respresented in that other dictionary of Eastern philosophy, The Matrix.

In the evening we went to go and see Souvaris at the Buffalo Bar near Highbury and Islington tube station.

It's weekend!

2005-10-09T23:52:00.000+01:00

Damn it's over already.

Almost done with Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy. So far it reads like a postmodern homage to Poe (and probably Stevenson as well). But a certain Poe in particular - not the Poe of the House of Usher or any number of stories about longing and a beautiful woman who dies. Not that Poe - rather the Poe in Man of the Crowd and William Wilson, and the theme of playing detective in Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter - a genre Poe singlehandedly invented ("stories of ratiocination" as they were known then).

The detective style is totally different - none of the embellished utterances of C. Auguste Dupin type investigations - but the theme is there. It seems to be about narrative and its relation to identity - literary identity in particular. A detective in search of a character, characters in search of an author, authors in search of purpose - perspectival recursion and narrative self-reference as each detective starts doubting his detective task and the purpose behind it as he discovers someone who could almost have been his double. The discontinuity of identity and the elusiveness of self.

It's all very clever of course.

S and I went to the ICA yesterday and saw 4 - a Russian movie described by one New York Times reviewer as "as close to the experience of an actual nightmare as anything I've seen on the screen". Quotes aside, I was surprised to find very little information on it anywhere on the web. That's a shame really. It is terribly bleak and without any glimmer of hope in its ceaseless sequences of dehumanised individuals and meaningless human encounters, enhanced by ominous and relentless sounds accompanying characters' seemingly simple actions. But that is all the more reason I expect reviewers to exclaim that, surely, modern Russia does not look like this!!

Who knows - the people sitting slightly behind us sounded Russian, and generally laughed or reacted as characters spoke rather than when they would have finished reading the subtitles like us other schmucks, but unfortunately they left so quickly that I never got to ask their take on it.

In the movie everything unravels. No human interaction retains anything but the most basic bond and no one offers redemption. Even suicide is offered as a meaningless way out - something pathetic and without consequence.

It's as depressing as it sounds. It's a carefully constructed movie works. Perhaps the last hour could have been reduced to 45 minutes. I saw one too many scenes with old ladies eating greasy food as if they are celebrating the success of a hunt. They are not - someone died, and they ate a lot, and then a pig died and they stuffed themselves again until they fell over from drowsiness.

Today the tedious ordeal of buses to central London as weekend engineering works continue to make rail services unavailable in this neck of the woods. Ongoing installments of this story until Crhistmas. I'm sure there is a rant left in me, if only I could find the will ::sigh::

Magic at the movies

2005-10-03T21:22:00.000+01:00

Haha, this girl stands in front of Empire movie theatre with a questionnaire in her hand, obviously targeting passersby but it would seem she's keeping too much of a low profile to catch many. Regardless.

Me: Hey what notes did you take about me? I saw you! Are you a spy?
She (looking a bit bewildered): No! It's a survey
Me: I am supposed to believe you? You look a bit suspicious you know.
She: No really ... it's about movies. haha, yea I am spy, I was watching you.
Me: Hmmm, are you sure ... where is your special spy gear?
She: It's invisible!

Oi.

Me: Well that's lucky 'cause I am a spy as well. But how come you don't know the special spy word?
She: Uhmm - it's oyster.
Me: No, that's wrong! You are probably waiting for another spy.

Her fellow footworker arrived. A pretty one, but boy what a slow talker. She claimed it was from a hangover but somehow I wasn't convinced ... It's a travesty sometimes.

Land of the Dead turns out to be quite good. If you ask me it's a satire :-o Yes. The faceless masses will rise up and squash the privileged pale faces. Now where have I seen that before? Oh, Metropolis. And then there are the suckers getting disemboweled for their flesh. Satire for us horror lovers who don't really get out to see Oscar material. Whatever. Rock on Romero.

If this isn't funny then it sure is sad

2005-09-13T19:46:00.000+01:00

Today I walk down the street and see two girls approaching from afar on the other side of the street. I decide to switch sides so I can cross paths with them. They look sternly ahead but as we are about to pass one another one of them ventures to glance up, looking me in the eyes. The surprised look on her face when I give her a broad smile! She half-smiles and raises her eye-brows, but she seems rather bewlidered and soon swings her focus in front of her with a look as if thinking: "Oh god, did he really smile at me?" Hey sweetie, it happens, but I'll be honest I wasn't just being friendly.

Gosh, I guess it's sad when you need validation.

On a lighter note, What a Carve Up! is proving to be a pretty funny and a pretty good book. Its faults are also its strengths - it was becoming too very English to take seriously, almost a parody of itself. But I've been vamped by a Kubrickian gothic pathos (crunch that) suddenly showing its pale, suffering face here in the last 100 pages.

Primer

2005-08-25T23:46:00.000+01:00

“No one would say that what they were doing was complicated. It wouldn't even be considered new. Except maybe in the geological sense. They took from their surroundings what was needed... and made of it something more.”

Primer. The last time I had this much fun trying to figure out a movie was with Memento and Mulholland Drive. Oh, and Donnie Darko as well I guess, but to keep my head out of the teenage angst gutter I will stick with the former two.

It’s way more convoluted than Memento though. Way way more (picture rolling green hills stretching into the distance and the sun shifting slowly behind a frisky white cloud beyond them, and you’ll have some idea of what I mean).

Luckily, I have a clue. A few clues to be precise. Unfortunately I will have to wait for it to come out on DVD to watch it enough to confirm my theories. For anybody interested enough to read up to this point, plot spoiler warning (that’s a big red banner with a black skull and cross bones on a treasure chest for the visually minded).

Right on then, there are two pivotal scenes in this movie. I’ve figured out the one, because it contains many clues. I’m still stuck on the other because it’s just too opaque.

Prelude PS: Apart from reading the voice-over on a thread over at primermovie.com, and as a point of pride, I haven't actually checked up on any of the theories in circulation yet.

First big clue scene: the explanation of how the time box works. If you enter at one end of the cycle and exit before the series of cycles completes, then you can create a double existence and keep it through the time travelling going on. Something like that. The point is that there is a precise moment when an exit point is possible (there are two ends, an A end and a B end, enter at the A end, exit at the B end) and this time cycle allows them to exist as doubles in the same world as their originals so that two sets of people exist at the same time. Eventually the originals will exit the loop and be rich, and the doubles will be lost in time because the loop catches up with the other entity in the loop. When? After “around 1300” times.

So this is the first premise – during the short week of time travelling, these two guys are aiming to do the whole shebang around 1300 times. On-screen we only see it happening about 4 or 5 times, but I am assuming this math is important. That means they are gradually timing the shifts of sleeping in the box and going back to sleep in little increments. And getting rich in the meantime, because they get to know the perfect shares to buy, the way to bet on sports games, etc.

Much of the movie becomes understandable when you grasp this and what their goal is: to make money and exit the cycle of loops at a specific mathematical moment when they will be in sync with their doubles so that they can continue existing normally again. Seen from the start it becomes understandable that from a certain point onwards (presumably the point when Abe wakes up when called by Aaron, while lying on the floor in his room) we are seeing things happening in cycle. We see Aaron exiting at the airport twice, and I am still considering the possibility that a real exit happened here somehow - but my reasoning sort of goes against this possibility. Read on.

Something else is happening at the same time. Each is starting to maximise his own gains and trying to see what he can get away with. The scene where Aaron throws the idea of going back in time and doing something anti-social (Aaron jokes about punching his boss on the nose) creates a seed that grows into mistrust and suspicion as each starts thinking of ways to out-do the other. Aaron does something with Thomas Granger (I will get back to this shortly) and Abe creates the failsafe machine.

The second major scene – perhaps the pivotal scene – is in fact one we never see: the night when Aaron’s perfect moment is reverse engineered. We see parts of it of course, but not exactly what happens. This is the key to the outcome, and one I am still groping towards. What we do know is that Thomas Granger has become a double thanks to Aaron somehow (well, we don’t know for sure it's thanks to Aaron, but I here assume it is due to something he pulled on the night of the party – the “perfect moment”). And also that he is now a vegetable apparently after an encounter with Aaron – at the point of him becoming a vegetable something strange is happening because Aaron claims to have slipped when Abe finds him on the ground near TG as well. Something fishy about that. What I reckon has happened is that Aaron and his double switch places at this point. Maybe the perfect reverse engineering has something to do about getting Thomas Granger out of the way through the shotgun debacle - but why it became necessary to make him a double as well I'm not sure. At any rate, for Aaron to get out of Abe's eye-sight just long enough to switch places was perhaps the aim of the situation.

My premise is that the voice-over Aaron is in fact the double speaking to a new double. Therefore I conclude that Aaron has out-thought his double meaning the act of switching places was properly predicted. In the last scene he appears to want to persuade Abe to come with him, but clearly their friendship is over and Abe stays. I at first thought this is an exit point, but I've changed my mind and now think it isn't - see the next paragraph.

Things have gone wrong in two ways: Aaron has somehow switched (maybe twice) with his double, and further Abe has created a failsafe and hence further doubles. It's possible he also switched at some point (the scene where he meets Aaron in the park sitting on the bench the second time is indicative - Abe doesn't have an earpiece and appears clueless about the dialogue - but this may simply be Aaron entering the double's world). I suspect the exit out of the loop is now haywire, and what's more it can't be fixed because the break-up of friendship is happening in the timeframe of the first set (the real present), and so becomes recursive and fragments everything.

If Aaron in fact successfully exited (or perhaps even if he didn't!) one may surmise that he has pre-meditated a winning streak for himself. In the context of the voice-over being from one Aaron to the next, this would make sense.

The voice-over is very helpful. Aaron is the one speaking. Or to be more precise, Aaron’s double. Who is he talking to? The new double. The game is becoming more and more insidious because the vicious cycle of mistrust can only go one way now: further and further away from trust. The recursion is happening in a kind of inner spiral of time that breeds more doubles and, one imagines, ever more elaborate tricks on either side to gain something in the truly vicious cycle.

But as I say, it seems that Aaron has worked out a foregone conclusion - the friendship break-up just emphasises it doubly - and Abe's threat not to contact the others is in vain. The movie - or rather, the voice-over - is that last necessary communication. Also recursive of course.

The heart is deceitful above all things

2005-08-05T00:04:00.000+01:00

Moviegoers are divided into two camps about this film, those who love it and those who hate it. Before and after watching it at the ICA tonight I spoke to one of the crew there - he hated it. I was preparing for the worst yet came out loving it. As I knew I would.

If you haven't heard, Asia Argento is siren daughter of film-maker Dario Argento, who gave us such flambulant horror classics as Suspiria. Now Asia has been making movies for a while already, but this one appears to be destined for a longer shelf-life. This is no Dario masterpiece, but the experimental flair makes this movie much more enjoyable than the dreary plot would have you believe.

And morbid it is, as we are introduced to young Jeremiah who has to live through such ordeals as a whipping from his mother's boyfriend, a rape by her dumped ex-hubby, drug abuse and, eventually, a hand-to-mouth life on the streets while his mother tries to make a buck through prostitution. The subject matter is significantly more malignant than I am describing it, but I wouldn't want to give it all away to my faithful readers.

Sigh - I was thinking “Dear Hot Asia ...” something or another. But the truth is she also acted pretty well – I was thoroughly convinced of her as a white trash junkie throughout (well OK, during the first couple of scenes I was getting used to the film-making style and she looked like a non-act – fact).

Did I mention she also directed the movie? Come here, you white-hot bitch!

So one night I get really, really drunk at the pub

2005-07-18T21:12:00.000+01:00

So one night I get really, really drunk at the pub. Barry and Liam (names changed to protect their identities, ahem!) are playing a game of pool and I'm gliding my chin lower and lower down the side of the pint glass, ready to fall asleep with my head on top of a postmodern blotch of ash and sticky beer and crisp crumbs. I've seen it a million times - Barry lets Liam believe he can beat him, and just near the end Barry makes a stunning comeback. Liam is such a sucker for punishment. If I'm not mistaken they were actually trying to impress two hotties sitting near the door and looking available. But I'm assuming all of this because, as I was saying, another tune from Keane or Coldplay and I would have been snoring on wood.

Unfortunately I was not to be rescued in this way. A guy whose name I may never remember stops next to me to rest the two beer-filled glasses he is carrying, and decides to stick around. He is verily the ugliest bloke I've seen all night, but to his credit he has a female companion - the soon-to-be-consumer of the other beer. His comment as he looks at me is funny and polite, because I joke back and he laughs. I think he was saying something about me being short of beer, in an ironic way obviously. I'm not in the mood but I muster the strength to start a slurring conversation and he says something about Arsenal and Vieira. Who cares, I'm not a big fan of Arsenal.

I digress, his companion matches his absence of physical charms but I can see they are not really in love or too frisky with each other. They are together tonight because they couldn't find other people to be with on a Friday night, and have that vague everpresent hope that something will come off between them but neither have the courage to make it happen. I'm starting to wish I'd fallen asleep. She's so overweight that her shirt has lifted all the way to her breasts, and although her face has some grace in it her heaving movements distract you from the feelings they may ignite.

But here's the moral of a beer story: when you are drunk, better to stay drunk than to suddenly sober up; it's dangerous like that sickness you get while diving and you come back up to the surface too quickly. A rush of air to the head or something. I go take a leak - one of those long leaks that never seem to end, although you somehow never tire of watching that little ray of liquid meeting the deeper surface - and when I come back I have this funny thought. This poor, friendly idiot has a companion, I'm feeling a bit lonely and this disgustingly overweight woman has suddenly got me very excited with the bulges of fatty flesh billowing around her way small body harness. I suddenly feel stone cold sober, but wisely decide not to let it show too much.

Well folks, I'm sad and sorry to say that I lowered myself to the level of a sleazebag and promptly proceeded to beat the fella to his evening's prize. In a nice way obviously, although to him it must have seemed intolerably cruel. I started chatting to her and she was actually really sweet. When she smiled she had lovely white teeth, and I imagined kissing them while I smiled back at her, and then she smiled back and I could feel the heat going on between us. I learned that she is a nurse and pretended that I am a medical doctor. Incredible since I was so drunk, but I think I pulled it off, although she started talking about muscle wounds and I realised no Latin words were coming to mind and I started improvising procedure, like Frank in "Catch Me If You can".

She didn't doubt me one second, and I made as if I noticed something on her arm - it was just a little scar - and inspected it commenting on certain dangers about old scars. Now my touch was slow - I could tell she wasn't used to being touched and felt a bit uncomfortable, but also somewhat thrilled. She was sweating a bit more in her face and got that funny glow that dawns when embarrassment and desire meet. I knew I was in. Now realise that companion number one was still there, but I had successfully taken the conversation out of his reach. He was confused and fuming a little, but in an impotent way. But get this, in a coup I got him to laugh at my expense, and promptly offered us a toast. Burt and Liam had been watching me with some amusement but were bickering and playing pool against a team now, so I was free to proceed with my conniving aims.

I went to the bar and returned with double shots of tequila. No getting out of our little acquaintance now, was my message. Schmuigi Companioni (or whatever his real name was) suddenly decided, after infinitely delaying his bottoms up, that it was time to relieve himself and I seized my chance prompting [sic] Sally to the tabled area outside at the back. I touched her softly on the shoulder as if to hold her back, at which she looked at me - and I said: "I want to kiss you", and leaned into her and kissed her. A long kiss, even longer than Luigi's leak (if that's what he was doing) took. She liked it - we both liked it - and there was a good feeling going on.

But when he returned and saw us outside, something in the atmosphere changed. I think she spotted him and was afraid or felt guilty - I'm not sure. He didn't do anything, he just stood there looking at us for a bit and then minded his own business, but for some reason I drew back, noticed her near-graceful face and decided that is how I wanted to remember her. I abandoned her there, simply saying: "You are beautiful", then went back in and begged Liam to take us home.

A London pilgrimage

2005-07-11T00:03:00.000+01:00

I am sitting here in Caffe Nero in Piccadilly across from Waterstones ("Europe's largest book store") doing what any spirited coffeeshop visitor does - drinking coffee or a smoothie - in my case both.

My pilgrimage started with a 17:32 WAGN service out of Hatfield, arriving at King's Cross around 18:10. It was the slow train, and I hadn't been to London since the bombings. But the first thing I noticed happened earlier at the ticket booth in Hatfield. In response to my question: "What sort of service is running between King's Cross and Hatfield today?" the guy behind the glass's answer was a curt "A normal Sunday service is operating sir." That in fact was one of the few normal things about my train ride today. For one, the waiting area on the platform was practically empty. Is it always this empty on a Sunday afternoon? It is funny how all of a sudden everything takes on a new significance. Soon after - I barely had time to read the first stanza of a poem in my Blake's Complete Writings - the same guy of the ticket booth comes and says hi. He chats a bit, smoking his cigarette. "You live in Hatfield?", I ask "Yea, yea" "Me too" "What was it like on Thursday, were the services affected" Turns out services from Finsbury Park still went on every half hour during the day. People wanting to travel to London got sent home though. No trains at all going in then on Thursday? I didn't ask, but I guess not.

As the train appeared on the furthest curve of the length of track he excused himself, stubbing the cigarette with his foot after it hopped once on the platform. Here was another novelty - he'd come outside with a purpose: he and another rail worker now positioned themselves on either side of the train as the passengers embarked and disembarked. Security has been stepped up! I felt comforted.

The notice board clearly stated that Underground services at King's Cross are closed, but that the Piccadilly Line is running from Finsbury Park. Lo and behold, not only is the train pretty empty but the bulk of people get off the carriage at Finsbury Park. This is almost eerie, but not as eerie as the emptiness at King's Cross. It's surreal. One of the busiest stations in London - busy even on a Sunday - still moving with people but with a distinct lack of something. I'm suddenly aware of the large white space above the doorway where, if you look, you would see platform 9 3/4 of Harry Potter. Indeed I do look back to see a few people striking a pose with a trolley, for a picture. But still, the usual activity at the edges of my awareness is subdued. I am aware of empty spaces. I persevere with a friendly face as I walk around and find a reciprocated sense of heightened awareness all around me. Here and there I sense a bit of tension as well. Later at the makeshift memorial I can see the deference in the eyes of the officials standing around. They've seen a lot of sadness today.

I make a quick stop at the memorial - a notice directs people to put their floral contributions in the "garden" next to the station. There's plenty of television crew and some reporters around. Determined to place my own bunch of flowers there my quest for a floral ode starts. Up Gray's Inn Road and then back and on down Euston Road , up and down a side road, eventually as far as Euston where at Marks & Spencer to my surprise I find a bunch of lilies in a glass vase, among others. I was almost convinced everything in the area was going to be sold out.

Armed with my prize I walk back all the way to King's Cross, still donning my friendly countenance. This time I draw a few looks, and it is as if people are wearing their emotions more thinly veiled than usual. I pick up a bit of friendliness, a bit of "oh I don't want to be reminded", and more tension. At regular intervals the pictures of missing people with their names and some details and a number to call are posted against the buildings and the portable walkway walls. They become familiar to me, ordinary people smiling at the camera. I've seen their faces on the web as well.

The memorial area is full of flowers, full of diverse messages of hope, support, condolence, and defiance. I place my vase toward one wall, then change its position as the slant bothers me. I am kindly asked not to take pictures inside the memorial. Fair enough, I should know better.

This picture shows King's Cross from Gray's Inn Road. The memorial is to the right of the building (slightly left of middle in the picture), where people are congregating.

Finally the last leg of my pilgrimage. I need to catch a tube train, and do something normal. That is why I'm here in the West End, now at Leicester Square across from The Hippodrome having dinner. The train definitely seems emptier than usual, and it's alsoas if some passengers are more aware than usual. But not all. The bloke opposite me hangs his head back and closes his eyes - out like a candle until he suddenly gets up two stops down. In the same isle another, younger chap simply looks morose. Intense, but typically gruff. You can get away with that at 21, the fallout of sheer physical energy can still get you to the next stage.

Here in the West End it is slightly quieter than usual, but it's not just that: there is something in the air. Many people act completely normally but I also notice a reflection of that tension I sensed elsewhere - a faint nervousness that would usually be disguised amidst idle chatter and more confident shop talk. There is too little depth in the bustle tonight. It is not the numbers, they are only somewhat less than I would expect - it is more like a playful presence has retreated behind a brave but slightly wary reserve. That startling awareness of empty space is the experience of an unexpected collective mental vacuum. Are people emotionally reaching out, seeking anonymous closeness when the usual habit is to ignore others? This is London, and that habit is a general trademark ... so the strangeness is perhaps only a lifting of the veil.

But maybe the point is moot, because they are here after all, and so am I. And around us at Haymarket Lillywhite's and Piccadilly, at Leicester Square and across Charing Cross Road up all the way to Covent Garden the ageing buildings rise in huge granite like silent guardians, reflecting the last light of day. They remember much more than I will ever know.

London bombings

2005-07-07T19:37:00.000+01:00

Shocked by the London bombings - just terrible. So far 37 people reported dead at 4 blasts - 1 bus explosion and 3 on the Underground. All around central London.

Since I stay and work slightly outside of London it didn't affect me directly, but friends and people I know who were in London were. The lack of public transport was a major source of confusion and chaos, but by mid afternoon this problem seems to have subsided somehow. No Underground until further notice, and bus services only in partial operations by late afternoon.

Anyway, much better reports available here, here and here.

Love & blessings.

The Fall reframed

2005-06-29T22:09:00.000+01:00

Ishmael reframes the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden from a Leaver viewpoint, declaring that the story as it is known in Genesis makes no sense when viewed from the Taker viewpoint. The story in Genesis supposes that pre-agriculture was paradise and the agricultural revolution precipitated expulsion from the Garden, preventing a Taker from having been its original author. Recap on the background and some of the terms here.

Ishmael lets the narrator imagine the gods bickering about how to rule the earth. Their dilemma rests on the fact that no matter how they try to divide the food (should the lion live and the deer die? or the frog live and the fly dies, but then the frog must die when the stork comes along - oh dear!) without committing both good and evil acts. Then they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and suddenly realise that that is the right way: some days the frog can live, and other days it must die. It's what we call an ecosystem, but remember we're trying to explain the Fall.

Then one day Adam appeared on the scene and the gods were worried: "He is almost like ourselves, what if he should be tempted to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, impatient for the time that he will be ready to eat from The Tree of Life? There is no telling what the knowledge could do to him, because he is not a god himself." And a bit of knoweldge is a dangerous thing it would seem, because they conjecture that Adam (the human race, that is) will employ the knowledge in its own service, i.e. to live well, grow exponentially in population, and slowly kill all the rest of nature to feed its expanding numbers.

And if any say, "Let's put off the burdens of the criminal life and live in the hands if the gods once again," I will kill them, for what they say is evil. And if any say, "Let's turn aside from our misery and search for that other tree," I will kill them, for what they say is evil ... And to the people of this land I will say, "Grow, for this is good," and they will grow.

To reiterate, the story is nonsensical in Taker mythology - a mystery - because the knowledge given by Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is beneficial to man. Why would it be forbidden?

But when you look at the story from a Leaver point of view - from the point of view of the little tribes bordering the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where agriculture is said to have originated - then it starts to make more sense. What these tribes saw was a people who needed more and more land and killed or converted their neighbours (to the agricultural revolution). And wat they thought, these tribes, is "why on earth would anyone want to give up this way of life for such a burdensome, loathsome, cursed form of living as agriculture?". And so they dreamt up the story of the fall whereby man took the power of the gods, the power of life and death, good and evil, into his own hands (and stuffed it up by being completely selfish), only to be deny itself The Good Life.

And so you see that this explanation is pure genius and puts a lot of things into perspective - like how Adam is not the mythological First Man, only the First Man in Taker culture. And Eve, whose name means life, symbolises fertility and population expansion. To add further weight to the agriculture argument, the story of Cain and Abel is the story of two brothers - agriculturalist people and neighbouring Semitic herders. And the gods accept Abel's offering, not Cain's agricultural offering. Clearly the gods are on the side of a Leaver culture!

What Ishmael does not point out, but what occurred to me, is the traditional puritan notion that the Evil in the Garden is connected with sex (the snake plays a symbolic role). Following Ishmael's reframe one might want to comment that population growth, rather than sex per se, is the evil. Then again, we now know that religion has as much to do with mind control as with keeping society together.

Your future

2005-06-15T21:36:00.000+01:00

In your eyes I saw the sadness
and disappointment sinking deep,
in your beautiful face a listless
trace of anger, and lack of sleep.

Your pain was already approaching me
where it hid in a far place
but it drained there where I couldn't see
in the shadows in your face.

I felt strange - so close, yet excluded
when I heard your fearful voice
telling me about the future
where you live someone else's choice.

Ishmael: beyond The Matrix

2005-06-11T20:22:00.000+01:00

Unless you have been reading anthropology for a long time (and I haven't) Daniel Quinn's Ishmael can leave you completely surprised. And even if you have, this novel has every appearance of being a golden thread of concerns many anthroplogists should have been thinking about for decades. I cannot comment on whether they have, but Ishmael is so lucidly written and its message so clearly articulated that there is no question about the importance of its contents. Here is not some new method on how to improve your life, or become a better person - this is about something that concerns all of us on earth, and that everyone should know about.

It would be futile to condense all of what the novel does so admirably in 260 odd pages in one or two posts. Instead I will attempt to highlight one noteworthy topic covered - the recontextualisation of the story of the fall in the book of Genesis in the Bible. To do so it is of some use to explain the setting of the novel.

The novel is largely a dialogue of ideas - literally a dialogue. The narrator, an unspecified person who appears to do some sort of freelance journalism for a living seems to have been searching for someone who can teach him (or her - I can't recall the novel ever specifiying the gender of the narrator; so funny that with the constraint in English of having to genderise a referent, gender is suddenly important! there are languages in which gender differentiation is unimportant in this way) about things he suspects are wrong in the world. It seems to be a case that of "when the student is ready the master appears" because he meets a teacher who starts teaching him about ... captivity

Now, incidentally - and to energise the reader's attention with something more generally accessible - this was also the topic of that entertaining trilogy The Matrix. Remember, in the first movie Neo learns that all humans are living in the Matrix - but they don't know it. The world as they know it is the Matrix. It is almost like a simulation, something that could have been designed by someone - which indeed it was, as we find out in the second installment - by The Architect.

The Teacher (Ishmael) teaches the apprentice about the nature of captivity as well - a prison that one could conceive of as a kind of Matrix, and which we are all living in (enacting) without quite knowing that we are a captive audience and entirely captured participants:

Ishmael: I'm telling you this because the people of your culture are in much the same situation. Like the people of Nazi Germany, they are the captives of a story.

But perhaps this is where the analogy of The Matrix has fulfilled its purpose, because Ishmael succeeds where The Matrix does not venture - nor could have, as its roots are in the ultra-postmodernist ideas that are dismantling civilisation's realities and cherished belief systems, but fixed on this unstable set of continuously imploding constructs. In short, The Matrix's premises (if people cared to look) should make people deeply uncomfortable because no certainties or objective vaues are given to replace them.

As in the novel I will briefly set out some of the terms that are frequently used. First up is the notion of Takers and Leavers. Takers make up most of homo sapiens sapiens. They include everyone who has gone along wth the agricultural revolution started around 10000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. Life as most of us know it is entirely dependent on agriculture to allow permanent settlement and population growth. These are some of the basic premises in the story of the Takers. The Leavers on the other hand do not experience consistent population growth - their numbers being held in check by the eco-system they are a part of, just like any species' - and consist of many of the peoples who lived for 3 million years until the agricultural revolution, when things began to change. Today there are few Leavers left - the bushmen in South Africa and the Navajo in North America are some.

Other terms that require explanation by way of definition are:
Story: loosely defined as a story describing man's role in the world and his relationship to the gods.
To enact: in this context enaction means to live in such a way that the story of man as he is related to the rest of the world and to the gods becomes a reality
culture: in Ishmael's words, "culture is a people enacting a story" - i.e. it is the ongoing activity of people enacting their story

Darkness within

2005-06-07T21:42:00.000+01:00

the window recedes
from this interior's darkness

the space retreats
into interior darkness

beneath blue skies
a man doffs his mask

his eyes are fire
as he hides the mask

the mask concealed
a deep inner darkness

the window recedes
and shatters in darkness

Dear friend

2005-06-06T21:38:00.000+01:00

We are both ready, and tonight in your eyes
I've come to realise
I can read my own thoughts, and they say:
What if you're the one?

My mind is cold however, chiseled by anxiety
I never knew just how much I relied
on your easy acceptance

Now I look for an escape, another tune
a rhythm or thought
where I won't have to risk you
This is my song. Chalk screeches across a board
A pig squeals

I lean over and our lips meet
and your lips part and I kiss you

The beauty of Marina is like ...

2005-05-31T23:10:00.000+01:00

This is what I wrote her, in the hope of securing a date or some conversation - it was accompanied by an appropriate note of course. She is from a country in Eastern Europe, a particular country whose citizens I now understand to prize their freedom more than almost anything else. But I didn't know where she was from until I'd almost finished writing it - didn't even know her name until then.

Groping for patterns, for meaning, for something that fits I seize on the apparent connection between freedom and rejection, the fluidity of beauty and the association with the city. London, I realise, I associate with nothing so much as freedom - a generalised freedom of existence and of mobility, inasmuch as it is possible within a civilisation. Ironically I suppose. But above all the anonymity, the ability to dissolve completely and yet exist so splendidly.

To be honest, I’m not sure what sort of girl would show any kind of interest in a guy who tries to woo her in this way. That is not to say I don’t think there aren’t any, God forbid I should become so cynical. Perhaps therein lies the answer to the question who or what it is that I am looking for: for such a person as would be interested - or for freedom. Perhaps both.

Yes, sometimes I take myself a little seriously. So, on a lighter note ... Eh, yes, and fwiw and to protect her identity, her name isn’t really Marina.

To Marina

Marina, your beauty is to me
like night-time London's West End streets
that speak and rattle restlessly
through Soho's shadows steeped in unrequited sleep;
down Regent Street at Christmas
where the city sings its venal neon hymns -
and between lattes a shopper hears
forgotten fears, and a broken promise murmuring.
Your beauty is on the Underground
in shaven chins and silences of worshippers
who sway and pray in those cathedrals now
as havens, then transitions. Some disappear.
Marina, although you come from far
I see your beauty where you are.

A weekend in Bristol

2005-05-30T18:12:00.000+01:00

After more than one and a half hours on the train we pass Bath, which is picturesque with its old buildings lining the view on both sides of the railway. This pleasure is over all too quickly though and in another 15 minutes or so we arrive at Bristol’s Temple Meads station.

Neither of us has been here before – we have directions to Bristol Backpackers on printed out sheets of paper, information about a few sights to see such as the harbour and Clifton Village, and that is about it. We make our way around Temple Circus and move up Victoria Street when the drizzle turns into rain. I’m too lazy to get out my umbrella. We walk on, cross Bristol Bridge and unwittingly catch our first glimpse of the Floating Harbour. Aye, I was sure the harbour was where the river Avon meets the river Severn about 10 miles outside of Bristol.

Anyway, we find Baldwin Street and eventually St Stephen's street and start looking for the Latino Bar which the directions indicate is across from the hostel. We see the hostel’s banner long before the bar, tucked away at another entrance without much of a signboard outside. We check in, meeting Andrew from New Zealand. I recognise him from his picture on the wall where the current rotating reception workforce has photos. It’s all very efficient and at 14 pounds a night I am still impressed – if you’re just looking for a place to lay your head at night while you get around Bristol you can’t really go wrong with this. There are 6 beds in our room.

We want to go to the harbour, which Andrew tells us is just 5 minutes walk away. Yes, it probably is the little river we spotted on Bristol Bridge … Back on the street M suggests we follow the slant, because the harbour is likely to be at the lowest point. He turns out to be dead right. We have our second glimpse of Bristol's West End and the Bristol Hippodrome near the Centre Promenade, and from there we can see the harbour – man it’s close.

I spot the new Watershed Centre off to the right. In front of us at the quay some boat rides on the ferries are being advertised. I walk closer and a guy seems to appear from nowhere, selling the rides. You can do 40 minute and 1 hour boat rides, all the way to Hotwells and other places. He’s friendly and I ask him about the area. M eyes out the crepes at a nearby stand. I want to try the Mud Dock so I try to convince him that we shouldn’t let the immediacy of our digestive desires deter us from the ultimate aim of experiencing Bristol food in style. Whether he thinks I’m having him on or not I have no idea, but we start looking around for the elusive Mud Dock.

We veer off the docks past the Wildwalk and go to the Tourist Information Centre looking for information on things to do in the evening (we find nothing of interest there). Back at the water a waitress at one of the restaurants overlooking the quay points us in the right direction and we head off across Pero’s Bridge ...

Musician on Pero's Bridge

... to the other side, to Queen’s Square and down to the docks again where the Mud Dock building overlooks the water and the boats in the harbour. It’s too windy to sit outside, but the interior – it’s a bicycle shop downstairs and several bikes are suspended in mid-air or propped near the ceiling as decoration – is interesting and trendy. We stay. The food is good too – and not too pricey if you’re used to London!

View of the harbour from Mud Dock

On our way back we pop into the Architecture Centre. It is rather less than I expected, but does tell a bit about the history of buildings in the city and about several council schemes that have been thwarted over the years that would have impaired or destroyed some of Bristol’s architectural heritage. I’m impressed by that, if not by the “exhibition”.

We pass by Bristol Cathedral and the College Green, where lots of teenagers with black or purple hair, black clothes, silver body piercings and dark eyeliner sit around in groups. I’m amused and half wonder whether I could get acquainted with one of them to find out more about this subculture in Bristol, but our presence seems to arouse no interest in any of them and I am guessing that two tourists in respectable-looking jeans and tops are just too ordinary to hold their attention. I also speculate that this relegates us to the category against which they define themselves, but I don’t have a chance to find out whether this hypothesis is correct because we go off to peer inside Bristol Cathedral where a choir is practicing.

Outside again we pass Bristol Central Library and follow a small street to cross Queen's Parade and enter the park surrounding Brandon Hill. Giovanni Caboto (or John Cabot, as he is known to Bristolians) set sail from Bristol in the ship the Matthew, on May 2 1497 and discovered Newfoundland while looking for a passage to the East. The Cabot Tower on top of Brandon Hill preserves his memory and is visible from various places around the Old City area. We go all the way to Cabot Tower and up Cabot Tower. I have it on good authority from M that there are 81 steps to the first landing and 26 steps more to the second landing. The first landing is extremely windy and my slight fear of heights is provoked at the thought of being swept off (which is unlikely, it is quite enclosed). The second landing is less windy for some reason. Both offer fantastic views of the city.

View of Bristol from Cabot Tower

We head back to the city centre via Charlotte Street and in the hostel I go and lie down for a bit - a dangerous thing as I almost fall asleep! M goes off to look for a Sainsbury's, and lures me into a sitting position with a Jaffa Cake when he returns. He's been as far as the Broadmead Shopping centre to find his necessities.

We go down to the bar area to get a beer. Two guys are playing chess on the bar counter, others are playing cards at a table and a larger group of people chat at a second table. One of the guys at the counter starts grumbling that it’s a shame I’m wasting £1.50 on a beer when you can have two litres of cider from the supermarket for £1.80, pointing to his brew in a see-through bottle. I amiably agree and decide not to linger. We go back to the lobby and sit ourselves down on some of the sofas. Over at the TV some people are watching Troy. A girl from Malaysia sits down and starts talking to us. She studies architecture in London. I invite her to join us for our evening out when we will investigate the live music scene in Bristol.

The wind has it that live music is not very popular on a Saturday night. There are loads of clubs but all offer DJs playing music – nothing live. One person we ask suggests trying a place off Corn street. We run into the queue outside the Walkabout in Corn street before E finds out that the place we are looking for is close by in Clare Street. The Tantric Jazz Bar. They’re full but after pressing the bouncer a few times he relents and finds us a spot. Lovely atmosphere. One guy plays the keyboard and the other a double bass – the string instrument, not the fish. Occasionally a woman joins them to sing.

Back at the hostel we go to the bar. E goes off on her own and I start talking to two girls from Chile. They’re both very friendly. One teaches me a few phrases in Spanish. I can say “chica bonnita”, which means “pretty girl”. Oh, and “hello” and “how are you”, of course.

I drink too much, after another Jack Daniels and Coke I go to my room to find most of my roommates fast asleep. It must be some time after two. I am so considerate, I take my suitcase all the way to the bathroom before opening it to get my toothbrush and finish up. After unlocking my luggage, I carefully put the keys back in my jeans. I start preparing to wear my sleep gear. The jeans slip off easily enough, the said all-purpose party garment is then carefully placed amidst other soft clothes to preserve its texture and a new sleep-garment is pulled from its position inside the suitcase (I would have said space, but the handling of the suitcase tends to cause resettling of elements). I neatly bury all other evidence of the day in the suitcase and without any hesitation proceed to lock the suitcase. Now didn’t I leave my keys inside my jeans? Because I sure as hell don’t see them anywhere on me …

And so the realisation dawns on me that I will probably have to bust open the lock somehow the next morning, at the very least, in order to get to my luggage. Dang! And with that thought repeating itself in various scenarios ranging from aggressive suitcase battering to the abuse of cutting pliers on a titanium lock, I fall asleep.

Clearly, I am not at peace. By 07:40 I am down in the lobby/reception area where all is quiet – very quiet. In fact it is so disturbingly quiet that one of the bar’s clients from the previous night is still sleeping peacefully on the couch. I recall that he was looking set for a severe hangover by the time I left so maybe noise wouldn’t wake him anyhow. Whatever the case may be, I soon find out that reception will only be available after nine. I go to the kitchen to make coffee. Two other early risers - staff members – have come to make coffee as well. I start talking to a girl from Australia who offers some inspiring conversation. She has done some interesting things, one of which was to study Buddhism in Cambodia for 6 months.

Some time after nine reception opens. Reception partied until after 5, and it shows. But she is very helpful. Whereas I was sure nothing less than violence to the lock would open my luggage, she starts applying a hairpin to it. I catch on and take over so she can get on with her duties. Within 5 minutes my suitcase is open. Hurrah! So what use is the lock then …?

I shower, get dressed, take my laundry down to reception and wait for M to come down. After handing in my luggage for safekeeping we head off to the harbour to get some crepes for breakfast. The ferryman from yesterday spots us and comes over for a quick chat.

We decide to go to Clifton Village and to the famous suspension bridge. You can walk most of the way next to the river, which proves to be as good as taking the ferry. We see the ss Great Britain and the Matthew on the other side of the river near Hotwells.

The Matthew

When we reach the Avon Gorge we are greeted with great views from below of the buildings along the Gorge on the Eastern side, including the famous Avon Gorge Hotel, and of course of the Suspension Bridge. A little path through the trees up the hill takes us all the way to the gates of the suspension bridge and more great views. And we had to walk across the bridge, of course 

The Suspension Bridge

Avon Gorge Hotel

The rest of the day passes all too quickly. Near the suspension bridge is the observatory and Camera Obscura. We try it out – the Camera Obscura that is – and for such an old piece of technology it is surprisingly entertaining. In a dark room the camera obscura basically projects images of the surrounding areas onto a concave surface. So you are watching the environment in real time, enlarged and projected, in the dark. It’s quite cool. Outside again I notice some people rehearsing a play and we decide to watch them for a bit. They’re doing stories from the Brothers Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The actors seem pleased that we are showing an interest, but since their play will only be later in the week this is all we’ll get to see.

We take the route back through Clifton Village. Clifton Village has a remarkably seaside holiday type atmosphere. It is difficult to put your finger on where it comes from, but there is definitely something about the area – something very relaxed. Closer to the City Centre we go around the other side of Brandon hill and stop over at the City Museum and Art Gallery near the University of Bristol Wills Memorial Building (one of the taller constructions in the surrounding area). The art collection exhibits, amongst others, the works of artists who have lived in Bristol over the years. Some names I remember are Francis Danby, Rolinda Sharples, William West, Samuel Jackson and Samuel Colman, and contemporary artists like Beryl Cooke. There is enough variety to keep the exhibition interesting and we end up staying for more than one and a half hours.

Just before we reach the hostel I notice some more graffiti against a colourfully painted empty structure. Banksy uses stencils – could this be some of his, or is it just someone who also uses stencils? (I noticed another stencilled anti-war graffiti artwork against the building on the corner of Park Road and University Road).

Finally it’s back to fetch our luggage and go to Temple Meads Station. It’s been an enjoyable two days – and wouldn’t you know it, I’ve seen something of the place where the famous Bristol Sound originated in the early 90’s. Well!

On platform 15 a train stops for a bit. The brakes whistle as they are relaxed and the doors disengage. A few people get off, pushing through the crowds that are breaking up in clusters at both ends of the coaches. We enter coach C, quibbling briefly over a window seat before settling in. The train pulls away at exactly 17:10 and 10 seconds. We’re on our way back to London.

Shameless self-promotion or adaptive creativity?

2005-05-25T22:25:00.000+01:00

"...those whom society considers as artists, and who, in deferring to society's point of view, subscribe to it, have two distinct activities. One is creation itself and the other is the business of promoting that creation... the result is that they are burdened with an onerous activity that leaves them very little time for creation itself. This activity detracts to such an extent from creation proper that their works ultimately become no more than a pretext for their promotional enterprise and are produced as a function of its requirements. This is the mechanism by which social art moves away from real artistic creation and becomes, in fact, opposed to it."

These words of Jean Dubuffet are quoted in the Artesian magazine I bought when at the Raw Arts Festival, by the editor. It is easy to see why an emphasis on non-commercial art would be supportive of raw arts, the emphasis being on creativity and creation. And yet I couldn't help but feel that it is something of a false dichotomy to overemphasise it. There is a famous anecdote about a gallery where both Turner and Constable were going to exhibit. Not only that but a certain painting of each would be displayed hanging next to the other.

Turner saw that Constable's work was more striking than his, overshadowed his. In an unusual move he took a bit of bright-coloured paint and painted something into his picture - purely to attract attention. Now, history is on the side of Turner, because he's been hailed as Britain's finest. But to me it is a symptom of adaptive creativity.

Shameless self-promotion or adaptive creativity? You decide.

The weekend

2005-05-22T20:18:00.000+01:00

Well it's been a busy weekend. As I'm sitting here in a coffee bar in Charing Cross Road I reflect that it's been a varied one as well.

The highlight definitely was the May Martini Mixer party organised by Network Canada, held at Canada House on Trafalgar Square. The theme was espionage and from James Bond to Austin Powers to the golden girl from Goldfinger people looked the part. Everybody I talked to - and there were quite a few - was either interesting or beautiful, and in a few cases both. What a wonderful way to spend the evening! I have to say that the openness of the organisation (the party was accessible to anyone who cared to book online at Network Canada's website - and it was very popular, tickets were sold out a few days before already) really added to the flavour of the evening. People from countries as different as Australia and Finland, South Africa and Germany, the USA and Russia were present. And I take my hat off (yes, I was wearing a disarmingly large secret agent hat) for the organisers, who managed the party.

I'd been to Islington earlier in the day, where the Candid Arts Trust have an arts exhibit location just behind Angel tube station. A show on Resonance 104.4fm alerted me to an exhibition of outsider and raw art there - the so-called Raw Arts Festival. Now I have to admit that the terms are all new to me, but generally they seem to refer to art created by people who have had no formal training and/or simply do not follow establsihed artistic methods. I'm hard pressed to describe just what I saw there because it was all quite diverse - one guy, Ben Reche, created drawings in ink (and oil?) that are each highly detailed and very dense, black ink, with lots of little figures and shapes making up a slightly organic, slightly fractal whole. What amazed me was the level of detail in each painting - it's a series of ten, and took him 3 years to complete. They describe a spiritual journey.

It is tempting to ascribe some general meaning to, for instance, the term outsider art but I get the impression that the artists themselves do not see themselves as part of such a category. One lady in particular, when I asked her what it means, said: "I have no idea." Then a bit later I found out she is Liz Parkinson, quite a prominent artist whose works were also exhibited there!

One theme that came up a lot was spirituality - I generalise a bit, but several artists painted figures that have spiritual or visionary meanings for the artists, oh, and there were lots of eyes floating around in some paintings :-) What I personally liked best about the works I saw was the general lack of pretense. For some the artwork is as necessary a creation to communicate with the world as speaking might be. This compulsion is familiar to me - creation as necessity.

Unfortunately the exhibition ended yesterday, but I would recommend giving the place a visit anyway - even if only to have a sandwich or a coffee at the Café (right next door) which has a wonderfully friendly atmosphere and is clearly frequented by other culture vultures. And the prices are very reasonable.

Today I decided to give the Kuba installations at the old sorting office in 21-31 New Oxford street a visit. The installations, recommended by a guest at the Martini Mixer last night, are the creations of the artist Kutlug Ataman who takes people's lives as his topic and record them visually and in their own words.

I know nothing of the milieu really, but apparently Kuba started as a community of people in Istanbul lodged in “safe houses” during a dangerous period. The name Kuba is arbitrary, and one featured person in the installations said it came from a TV series or a movie. Life was tough for these people and their parents, but they've survived and now some are telling their stories. There were 40 installations in all and I only got around to viewing about 6 or so. The most arresting was the women (one just a girl) who described unhappy family circumstances, arranged marriages, and lifelong suffering when they are on their own, friendless, loveless and without the support of a husband but several children to look after. Another installation was more uplifting, a guy who has lots of ambition and who fights against the confines of his situation. He doesn't seem to mind the place where he lives, rather he tries to rise above its limitations through his self-belief.

I would have added pictures to give the text an added dimension, but I was kindly rebuked for trying to take pictures and upon enquiry was referred to Art Angel. Copyright issues.

One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit is the building in which the installations have been placed (apparently finding unusual settings for art installations is an Art Angel trademark - see their website). The old sorting office has been empty for over ten years, completely derelict, most rooms and halls boarded and locked, and over the years a number of people have probably squatted there. There is a lot of graffiti. I was able to photograph some of the interesting evidence of building disuse en route.

View from the street

Cover me, I'm going in!

At the groundfloor lifts

Get rid of all white space

Blending in with the graffiti - or is it disregard?

Another lift! But it doesn't go ...

The abandoned landing

Almost there

vlog: the freedom of trees

2005-05-17T06:30:00.000+01:00

Fun with trees and fingers, and here it is my first vlog post.
Click on the image to view.

the freedom of trees

Cybernetics and the birth of family therapy

2005-05-15T14:45:00.000+01:00

Which brings us to ecosystemic theory in psychology and its links with cybernetics. There were numerous well-known pioneers involved in the development of cybernetics - Nobert Wiener, John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, Von Foerster, Maturana, Gregory Bateson, and numerous others. The field of scientific cybernetics, practically founded by Wiener through publication of his seminal work in 1948, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, became one important branch of the burgeoning frontier of cybernetics. The scientific branch looked at control in machines, finding most of its early data in the focuses of war - notably guided missiles.

The concern with control is manifest in the word cybernetics itself. In Greek it means helmsman - the one who steers a ship. Cybernetics is concerned with self-regulation - how systems can be regulated through another system, or by itself.
The possible application of cybernetics to the social sciences, the second branch of cybernetics, was understood early on by Bateson, who many family therapists (i.e. those psychologists or counsellors working within the framework of ecosystemic theory) regard as the intellectual founder of systems theory.

To appreciate the birth of cybernetics in the social sciences - and how it is linked to the development of similar ideas in science and biology - it is worth observing that many of the important early names already mentioned were present in a now famous series of interdisciplinary conferences (the Macy conferences, because they were sponsored by the Josiah Macy Foundation). Many of the attendees were at that time the leading mathematicians, scientists, engineers and social scientists.

A lot of the discussion there focused on feedback mechanisms, an exciting new way to understand how systems are able to maintain stability despite: by introducing historical information into the system. In a much later interview Bateson recalls how at first the talk was all about positive feedback (not a value judgement - it means that the system acknowledges that a change has taken place), but it wasn't clear how the system could keep on incorporating change without blowing out - and then the concept of negative feedback was introduced to describe how a system maintains status quo. In essence these concepts were exciting because they provided a framework (which was completely new at the time) to formulate a way to change the future behaviour of a system through a change in feedback information.

Although Norbert Wiener also started reconceptualising psychological concepts in the new language of information processing, Bateson started investigating how families maintain stability and thereby casting his work in terms that have since become familiar to family therapsists. But Bateson was always more interested in the epistemological concerns, which he developed in his most famous work Steps to an Ecology of Mind and later Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, and finally also Angels' Fear, co-authored with Mary Catherine Bateson, his daughter. He remained outside the practical applications of his work in therapy, leaving it to others to continue that and to extend it into what has since become knwon as the field of family therapy.

Loving Linda

2005-05-09T22:06:00.000+01:00

He is a man of beautifyingly
her wisdom and the more
she grows and does unknowingly
breathing blood, then sensuously upons
all suddenly she rewards.

But oh man the guilt
I've hid in her bower
insidiousing her
this cruel twisted power

and I'm thinking: "Linda, oh my god, Linda"

Oooh radio, radio

2005-05-08T22:50:00.000+01:00

Londonist recommends listening to resonancefm - and frankly, so do I.

Something original online

2005-05-01T19:17:00.000+01:00

I've been searching the web looking for suitably original online art (in any media) that does not fall into the mainstream and isn't boring. Apart from one or two slightly (too) bizarre, but not necessarily uninteresting, underground offerings, I also found sites that have substance or cool entertainment value.

undergroundfilm.org, a non-profit organisation, endeavours to give creative filmmakers an online audience. It is trying to amass a digital film library and makes much of their material directly available to the online public. Some interesting work - a lot of it you will probably not be able to find anywhere else.

Diesel U Music, both a competition and a platform, has the stated intention of finding original rather than merely marketable music. Whether they succeed is for the listener to judge, but they do showcase plenty of streamable tracks on their website to allow you to join the experience.

Electrica's Kung-Fu Mixer is great fun for Bruce Lee fans like me - it allows you to orchestrate action sequences by recording ready-made samples using the keyboard. I was quite proud of my final product, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to save and distribute recorded sequences or I'd have presented it here. Great fun. (thanx to the ICA website for this one).

Banksy is a graffiti artist who has photographed some of his escapades and posted them online. And here is a more faithful chronicler than the artist himself.

I'm Green!

2005-04-28T20:18:00.000+01:00

Ok, so if I could vote apparently I should vote for the Green party.

Who should I vote for? v2

	Labour 25
Conservative -15
	Liberal Democrat 28
UK Independence Party -4
	Green 30

You should vote: Green

The Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Tarnation

2005-04-28T13:17:00.000+01:00

Although it was a visceral experience one of my first thoughts was "only in America". It seemed like a stylised Jerry Springer story, too exhibitionist and too much the product of a needy individual, a form of individualised therapy rather than Serious Art (tm).

But I usually know to trust my later recollections as much as my first reaction. Setting aside my prejudices the movie - an autobiographical documentary - has come back to me again and again. The images, and some of the feeling as well.

Jonathan Caouette started capturing his life on film while he was still a child. His own footage is shown against a backdrop of history that we see unfolding in all its horror between onscreen text and pictures from family archives. His mother, who was a beautiful child model, fell from an open window at a young age and became paralysed. Her parents (his grandparents - and you get to meet them) started suspecting the paralysis is psychological and on a neighbour's advice sent her for shock therapy. She recovered control of her limbs at some stage, although probably not thanks to the shock therapy, and continues her modelling career. Later she is (mis)diagnosed with schizophrenia. Evenually, according to the documentary, her personality was altered beyond recognition. Caouette blames over 200 shock treatments in just two years.

We also learn about Jonathan's early years, which were very traumatic. Jonathan's father leaves early on, and because his mother has her problems to deal with he is left in foster care, where he is abused. Later he is reconciled with his mother. She tries to run away (with him) to Chicago. This outing turns sour too when she is raped, with Jonathan a dumbstruck witness. It is too much for her and she returns to Houston where they live with her parents. Jonathan is barely 6 years old at this point.

Then there is drugs, and his homosexuality which he declares early on. We learn about his depersonalisation disorder, the dysfunctional family life, his attempts to get into a gay club at age 13 by dressing up as a goth girl, his attempts to commit suicide.

One of the most striking scenes is where he, as an 11-year old, dresses up and monologues abused women. It is done with what seems like a mature perception way beyond his years, but the emotional content of his own turmoil is clearly also channelled there in the obssessive gestures and repetitive sentences.

If the subject matter is disturbing, so is the delivery - and that really is why the film should be seen. Apparently it was edited and put together using iMovie (Apple Macintosh software). But it's the willful, operatic look at this sordid life, held together by the immense love he feels for his mother, whose condition worsens in front of our eyes, that makes this such a strong experience. There is a sequence where Renee's child model life is described how it happily continues when in the meantime she is receiving shock treatment on a regular basis. The visual overlays, repetition and distortion of images, and the sound compound to something horrifying.

Thematically the movie has numerous psychoanalytic overtones. In an interesting scene taking place later, just between him and the camera, Jonathan says that his mother lives inside him, and that she is behind his eyes. You get a sense that his persona replaces his mother's dysfunctional one and if you are of the opinion that his homosexuality is a strategy rather than a natural tendency, this will look like evidence. In this scene you may also have a fleeting glimpse of something that could make you suspect that his celluloid story is a very coloured view of everything. It is not an objection to the film.

At any rate, it is all these elements combined with the unconventional techniques used to present them that make this worth watching. It's an underground film whose time has come. But be prepared, it is not entertainment in any ordinary sense.

The communist manifesto

2005-04-24T19:01:00.000+01:00

After reading The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, I come away with nothing so much as the sense that it is interesting, still relevant, but clearly situated at a particular stage of European history. In actual fact the inclusion of several later prefaces, written by Engels, along with the manifesto suggests at once how the central idea may be summarised, and describes its relation to its time. I quote from the preface to the English edition of 1888:

“... in every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which nowadays a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat - cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class - the bourgeoisie - without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction and class struggles.” (p.65-6)

This is in line with Marx’s formulation in reaction to Hegel, that it is the material and social conditions of society that determines consciousness, and not the other way around:

“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” (p. 30)

There is certainly evidence for the influence of social relations and the cultural and class milieu on our state in life and the ideas that we hold, and few theories about the nature of humans and human psychology would think of excluding the social environment these days. On the other hand there are also plenty of instances in which people have risen above their situation, and this does not fit neatly in Marx’s formulation. Aaron Swartz has a short but thought-provoking post on this topic.

Communism has the general proletariat’s interests – and only their interests – at heart, and aims to abolish all bourgeois property. Bourgeois property is seen as the condition that perpetuates oppression:

“The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property … wage labour … creates capital, i.e. that kind of property which exploits wage labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation” (p. 22-3)

Freud, incidentally, didn’t think much of Marx’s view of humanity. Marx sees humans as inherently good, but corrupted by society and so if the instruments of oppression can be done away with people would live naturally and at peace with one another. Freud’s view of human nature is considerably more complicated, but leans towards the view that people need to dominate because of the aggressive (Thanatos) drive which is the subject of Civilisation and its Discontents:

“With abolition of private property the human love of aggression is robbed of one of its tools … No change has been made in the disparities of power and influence that aggression exploits in pursuit of its ends … Aggression was not created by property; it prevailed with almost no restriction in primitive times” (p. 63)

And as regards the so-called struggle against inequalities:

“nature, by her highly unequal endowment of individuals with physical attributes and mental abilities, has introduced injustices that cannot be remedied” (p. 63)

These different views about the basic nature of humanity are reminiscent of the differences between Rousseau and Hobbes.

One journey to find the value of art

2005-04-21T21:13:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 20 April 2005

Sitting on the train at King's Cross, waiting for the train to pull away. A few noisy kids in the seats in front of me.

Six hours ago I was on the train from Hatfield. I had a funny thought then, how I should have missed the train because it leaves at 17:23, and I only entered the ticket office at 17:26. Since I had to be at the Tate Britain at 18:30 there was no way I'd be on time if I had to wait for the next one.

The temptation to attribute some meaning to my good fortune was considerable, and I did just that, thinking that it was meant to be, it was done for me. I liked that, it being a completely self-serving notion of course. Stopping short of contemplating just how that could have happened, such as a supernatural intelligence's plan for me, I indulged my New Age belief without trying to pinpoint it, and retraced it, observing to myself how, if I should enquire, I would probably find that the commuter train is on average quite often 7 minutes late and my meaning has a statistical incidence that makes its significance suspect.

And so, pleased at having it both ways almost at the same time I continued reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle on the way to meet C and attend a discussion at the Tate Britain to find an answer to the pressing question: "What is the value of art?".

They were a panel of three, and Robert Boyce facilitated. The original person couldn't make it so his slightly uninformed comments are understandable. He didn't give many. I have no idea what the official reason for the discussion was as C organised the outing, but there was certainly a promotional aspect to it - both Matthew Kieran and John Carey are recently published authors and their books were for sale afterwards.

They are introduced, and the first thing to notice is the difference in age: Matthew is in his thirties and has a trendy image, and forever leans to one side in his chair. He is lecturer in philosophy at Leeds University. John is a lot older - but mentally razor-sharp - and Merton professor of literature at Oxford university.

Each got a turn to give their view on the subject, and explain his book's thesis. Matthew, whose favourite phrases are "in a certain kind of way" and "as it were", talked about Vermeer and Gillian Waring's photos and Michelangelo's Mary, and tried to emphasise the continuity between traditional art and contemporary art. His main point may be summarised as there being better and worse reasons to value art, and that there are, as it were, objective values, in a certain kind of way. He is also interested in the originality of the masters. He talked about Holbein's Ambassadors, where a skull emerges when you look at the painting from one perspective, implying how changing one's perspective can change meaning, for instance revealing that death lurks in the midst of important people.

John Carey on the other hand takes a slightly more pessimistic view. He started by mentioning possible reasons people might value art: a feeling of superiority over others is one (after all, people depend on differences for their individual selfhood); or, following Boudier (?) it may simply be a matter of taste because in life "you choose everything"; or in the vein of D.L. Williams who wrote The Mind in the Cave, it's about separating oneself from other people. He reasoned that Homo Sapiens tried to differentiate itself from Neanderthals by eg. graphics and wearing certain accessories or clothes - and eventually subjugated them and killed them all. Or something like that.

Then there is the question of rapture or ecstacy - many people have done research on this in relation to artistic experience and concluded that it's certainly not unique to artistic experience. For instance Marghanita Laski in Ecstacy and Bill Buford in Among the Thugs. This already raises the question whether artistic experience can necessarily be a morally good thing, but he answers it more fully. In the 19th century the answer would have been yes, but these days few people seem to agree. The Kreitlers in Psychology of the Arts concluded that there is no reason to think that behaviour can be changed by art. For good measure John mentioned that Hitler was a great art patron who accumulated possibly the largest collection of art in history. Is art a sign of civilisation then? To some it seems like a monument to privilege and social inequality.

For John the question boils down to a matter of taste. He considers the alternatives - perhaps an external supernatural agent can evaluate it, God for instance. Or neuroscience can reveal its value as it maps experiences to brain areas. Finally interpersonal comparison - "my judgement is better than yours" - could account for it. But none of these reasons he finds convincing.

There were several questions from the floor (C asked one) after the initial bit of debate between them, but all in all I felt the discussion was too short. Afterwards a number of people I talked to thought that when it was stopped it was merely for intermission. But there was the book signing then and as we both were taken in by the evening I bought Matthew's Revealing art and C bought John's What good are the arts?. I tried to get mine signed but it took ages as there was such a swirl of girls constantly hovering around Matthew that I almost didn't get my gap.

And then the evening suddenly got good. What on earth made me think of turning down the offer of joining everyone at the pub?! Well I didn't abstain in the end, and it's all thanks to a newfound friend that C made who convinced me not to go off looking for a restaurant instead. Oh what a pleasure to meet people who enjoy talking about literature, philosophy! Many of the people seem somehow connected to Matthew, knowing him from somewhere. He is clearly highly intelligent, but this is another unique skill. I immediately saw that he is in fact a bit of a celebrity.

But what a lovely, surprising evening ... isn't it ever so tempting again to recall that I almost missed my train, almost non-started off the evening, and therefore it was meant to be? Like art this thought may be little more than self-indulgence - or it is simply beneficial for my well-being. A more logical investigation quickly reveals the quicksand under that satisfying belief.

I'm now going to stop here but not before stating that although I thought John's arguments were more congruent and concise than Matthew's (Matthew improvises very well, but not everybody followed his philosophy style arguments, and he didn't always bring them together) his is a very relativistic view that leaves open too much. It's the postmodernist view, and it's very vulnerable. Not wrong as such, but vulnerable. Matthew's reasonable values may or may not be better, he wasn't specific enough.

The truth about religion

2005-04-19T21:48:00.000+01:00

I can't imagine why it wasn't obvious to me before: religion serves to control the minds of people and enslave them to society. Rousseau is right, and I have him to thank for this insight. That's the cloud that fogs your mind when you are born and raised into a community where the most radical questioning of religion still focuses on doctrine. Duh!

So I spent the latter half of my first 18 or 19 years kicking against the institution of religion, but it's taken me another 10 years to realise why religion exists at all.

It is worth noting, too, that Christian religion in particular has another deceptive method: the fear of God. Ever wondered about that expression, "putting the fear of God into someone"? Well that sort of mixes cause and effect into truth.

The principle is best illustrated with Pascal's famous wager. From the perspective of eternity our lives are but like a drop of water in the sea. Considering the consequences isn't it better to believe in God, just in case he exists? The argument seemed entirely reasonable to him, but from my understanding to concede the point admits to fear of God. That is to say, the vicious cycle of fear claims even the reasonable sceptic.

Having said that agnosticism remains in my view the only feasible logical position: it is impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of God scientifically. But I firmly believe in entertaining and accommodating numerous beliefs, including Christianity. Those are the fruits of many years, people, so eat, weep, and be happy.

more Taxi Driver

2005-04-12T20:52:00.000+01:00

After looking at a few reviews of Taxi Driver I noticed two things - I missed a few facts, for instance that Travis was in Vietnam. That one means he is not a recent foreigner ... perhaps his parents were immigrants? Whatever, he's "alientated", same thing just about. More importantly, all the reviews talk about how "controversial" the movie is, failing to notice a simple fact: Travis is in a sense very conservative. He cares about Iris because what she does is no-good, and he wants to save her; the woman he is in love with is aligned with the would-be president and represents civility - even though he does not know that this is why he is in love with her rather than with someone from his own economic class.

These are the words that reveal his ambition: "All my life needed was a sense of direction, a sense of someplace to go. I do not believe one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, but should become a person like other people." That's it. And he goes through hell to achieve that. Although he ironically becomes a taxi driver, i.e. he becomes his job just like Wizard says everyone does, he actually realises his ambition through caring and real desires and wants, not through watered down ideas - or as seems to be the case with Wizard and the other cabbies, without having any ambition. At the end he has parts of his life both in heaven and hell.

Ultimately the question I find is: how would an alienated guy in that situation, with a disposition to rise and be more than he is but without any obvious connections or know-how in life, act and behave, on condition he maintains integrity? An honest answer is: by resorting to violence. I was in two minds whether his negative views of scum and women are at the root of this problem, but after remembering that he was going to kill Palantine as well I decided no, that's not it.

So the question shouldn't be "Is he psychotic?" (these days called "antisocial personlity disorder" - but undeterminable anyway if you want to go the clinical route, because there's too little information), but rather how do people manage not to behave this way? He has nowhere to pump his energy into, and as society turns his back on him his good intentions become aggression. Simple really.

Civilisation and its discontents

2005-04-11T20:18:00.000+01:00

To my mind one of the wisest things Freud does in Civilisation and its Discontents is to question the famous (religious) precept: "Love thy neighbour as thyself", using the simple notion of the economy of the libido (it is not unlimited). He does it in such an accessible manner that, because it's not the point he drives at, its importance almost passes you by: your friends and family demand your love, by giving it to everyone equally you are diminishing its value. It is easy to understand - and reminds me of something else I read once, which was in fact a great help: "a friend to all is a friend to none."

A more difficult question to answer (and he does not do so in CAID, but I think he does elsewhere) is why some people's actions and thoughts should benefit humanity at large. Why is it possible for a Mother Theresa or a Gandhi or a Van Gogh to move and speak to people far, far removed from them?

Some may say that we are touched through symbolic thought, but that is a very partial explanation. I read something about mirror neurons the other day - apparently people who are themselves good dancers bring the parts of their brains that are active during dancing, into play when they watch other people dancing. These people like Jesus and Miro - who are special people, lest we forget - manage to communicate what most are aware of in themselves but find largely inexpressible. They thereby bring it into consciousness in a way akin to the static dancers' experience of watching others dancing.

I watched Taxi Driver yesterday - finally, for so many years I used to check out the VHS cover and determine that "I have to see this some time" - and it is just brilliant. It amplifies issues that just cannot be presented without the gifts of the people behind this movie - and I think Scorsese in particular.

At any rate, it's a very controversial movie as well, and I couldn't help wondering about Travis' aggression in the movie. You know, he is "authentic" with his instinctual tendencies (he takes Betsy to a soft porn movie for a date! :-), but when Betsy snubs him he suddenly shows this aggressive side that you think "Wow! this guy is a bit dangerous!", but then you also know exactly how he feels, and one of my favourite comic scenes is when another cabbie, whom he looks to for some fatherly advice, gives him some of the most useless advice known to man. And Travis has the good Grace to grin and say: "That's probably the dumbest thing I ever heard."

Thing is, I couldn't help thinking of Freud later - you know, since I read CAID recently - and thought: yeah, Travis' Eros drive was thwarted; now he has all this pent up energy and feels society has turned its back on him nevermind that he is doing what he can for the would-be president. Steps in the Thanatos drive, the theme of CAID, and rather than turning it inward (earlier in the movie he states his intention to be a good, normal person "like other people", and disapproves of what he calls "morbid self-attention") he starts turning it (his aggression) outward - and, of course, eventually towards the "scum" of New York that he so hates. The movie, really, seems like a coming-of-age story - but not in individualistic terms: it's not a boy's dream to become a man, but a foreigner's dream to become accepted in the society he has come to live in (new York, America), i.e. to become a citizen.

So the last sequence where he gives Betsy a lift for free is about the fact that they are now equal. What she represented to him at first (society, doing one's duty, being a citizen) he has now attained himself (ironically, he has "become his job", just like the other cabbie said, but he has also gained dignity).

PS: If that conclusion sounds slightly stale, bear in mind that this is New York, 1975. Oh, to be 26! and living in New York! in 1975 ..!

Slowmotional

2005-04-10T13:45:00.001+01:00

slowmotionslowmo slowmono Momo
slowmotional
q-oh kaylslowslide
slide
slide
slide
slowslide at lowtideslowslide
slide
slide
slide
slowslide at lowtide
t i d e
t i d e my name is Momo
t i d e
tide
goes
q-oh kayl lowslowmoslide
wi d e
widewide wide wide
q-oh wow slolo my name
my name is Momo laylow
every ball of fleece
an internal masterpiece
every ball of fleece
kayl kalaylow say so
so slowmo mono
slowmotional

filotka, filotka

2005-04-09T23:48:00.000+01:00

gravel on vinylrabid eyes blue blood tower tit
grey aural sibylreal sunrise fluent simplicit
zrfzrfzrf ftk
vee tayk gheray gherav gheral gheroul
a bird's eye view that's full
run with a line of sunshine to fall
foll
filot
flot
flotka
filotka
kay-oll
a bird's eye view
Take my hand, my friend, my knife
take my life life life life life
l i f e
l i f e
l i f e
l i f e
l i
a peaceful screw
follfoll
filot
flot
flotka
filotka, filotka

Housekeeping

2005-04-07T22:40:00.000+01:00

Added a few photos to the two Paris posts, and fixed up yesterday's entry. It approaches what I wanted to say with it now.