ART WARS Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Posted 6/29/2004 at 11:22 PM |
Part II: Badcoc
A Visual Meditation for the Feast of St. Peter
For further details on this structure, see Magic Squares, Finite Planes, Visualizing GL(2, p) For a more literary approach Balanchine's Birthday (Jan. 9, 2003), To appreciate fully this last entry Posted 6/29/2004 at 2:22 PM |
Gameplayers of Zen
"The void, the ineffable, the sublime, "The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless." --
Yasunari Kawabata, Nobel lecture, 1968 Posted 6/27/2004 at 7:11 PM |
x Posted 6/27/2004 at 12:25 AM |
Deep Game The entry Ado of June 25, 2004 contains a link to an earlier entry, A Form, continued, of June 5, 2004. This in turn contains a link to a site by Wolfgang Wildgen which contains the following: "Historically, we may say that the consequence of Bruno's parallel work on cosmology and artificial memory is a new model of semantic fields which was so radical in its time that the first modern followers (although ignorant of this tradition) are the Von-Neumann automata and the neural net systems of the 1980s (cf. Wildgen 1998: 39, 237f)." Wildgen, W. 1998. Das kosmische Gedächtnis. Kosmologie, Semiotik und Gedächtniskunst im Werke von Giordano Bruno. Frankfurt/Bern: Lang. For an applet illustrating the above remarks, see Gedächtniskunst: Figure B Note that the reference to "forerunners" in fig. B occurs in a journal entry of June 12, 2002. See also the reference to a journal entry of the following day, June 13, 2002, in last Tuesday's Dirty Trick. "... a grid, and a flow-- that is the essence of terza rima...." -- Poetry, Computers, and Dante's Inferno For some related remarks on the muses and epic poetry, see a paper on Walter Benjamin: "Here the memory (Gedächtnis) means 'the epic faculty par excellence.' " (Benjamin, Der Erzähler, 1936: in Gesammelte Schriften, 1991, II.2, 453) -- Benjamin on Experience, Narrative, and History (pdf) One possible connection to the muses is, as noted in a link in yesterday's Ado, via George Balanchine. An apt link to epic poetry (aside from the reference to Dante above) is, via the June 12, 2002, entry, to the epic The Gameplayers of Zan (the third reference in fig. B above). The applet linked below fig. A very nicely illustrates the "structured chaos" of a space described by automata theory. For a literary approach to such a space, see the Gameplayers entry. For the benefit of art critic Robert Hughes, who recently made a distinction between "fast art" and "slow art," the Campbell applet has a convenient speed control.
Posted 6/26/2004 at 3:03 AM |
for some background. Related material: A Form (May 22, 2004), Posted 6/25/2004 at 2:00 PM |
Dirty Trick Some quotations in memory of philosopher Stuart Hampshire, who died on June 13, 2004. From the Hampshire obituary in The Guardian:
From a log24 entry on the day before Hampshire's death:
Whether Hampshire is now in Hell, the reader may surmise. Some evidence in Hampshire's favor: His review of On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry, in The New York Review of Books of November 18, 1999. Note particularly his remarks on Fred Astaire, and the links to Astaire and the Four Last Things in an earlier entry of June 12, which was, as noted above, the day before Hampshire's death. As for the day of death itself, consider the following
remark with which Hampshire concludes his review of
Scarry's book: "But one must occasionally fly the flag, and the flag, incorrigibly, is beauty." In this connection, see the entry of the Sunday Hampshire died, Spider Web, as well as entries on the harrowing of hell -- Holy Saturday, Posted 6/22/2004 at 9:00 AM |
Ishtar Wannabe Reuters, Los Angeles, June 17, 2004 09:09 PM ET-- Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has adopted the Hebrew name Esther. I personally feel that a more deserving candidate for such a flattering name change would be Piper Laurie (nee Rosetta Jacobs). See an entry of Dec. 30, 2002, on Miss Laurie:
Posted 6/17/2004 at 11:00 PM |
Bloomsday at 100 Posted 6/16/2004 at 12:00 PM |
Kierkegaard on death: "I have thought too much about death not to know that he cannot
speak earnestly about death who does not know how to employ (for
awakening, please note) the subtlety and all the profound waggery which
lies in death. Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal
is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that capacity
for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached
from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but
together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be,
utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all
captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death." -- Works of Love, For more on "the thought of the eternal," see the discussion of the number 373 in Directions Out and Outside the World, both of 4/26/04. "... as an inscription over the graveyard gate one could place 'No compulsion here' or 'With us there is no compulsion.' " -- Works of Love, We went three and four afternoons a week, sat on folding chairs in the darkened Quonset hut which served as a theater, and it was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell a girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, 'at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.' As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear. ... When John Wayne spoke, there was no mistaking his intentions; he had a sexual authority so strong that even a child could perceive it. And in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities, he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed ever but in any case existed no more: a place where a man could move free. could make his own code and live by it; a world in which, if a man did what he had to do, he could one day take the girl and go riding through the draw and find himself home free, not in a hospital with something wrong inside, not in a high bed with the flowers and the drugs and the forced smiles, but there at the bend in the bright river, the cottonwoods shimmering in the early morning sun." -- Joan Didion, "He is home now. He is free." -- Ron Reagan, Friday, June 11, 2004 "Beware, therefore, of the dead! Beware of his kindness;
beware of his definiteness, beware of his strength; beware of his
pride! But if you love him, then remember him lovingly, and learn
from him, precisely as one who is dead, learn the kindness in thought,
the definiteness in expression, the strength in unchangeableness, the
pride in life which you would not be able to learn as well from any
human being, even the most highly gifted." -- Works of Love, Posted 6/15/2004 at 4:00 PM |
Thanks to JadedFey Posted 6/13/2004 at 6:23 PM |
Don Giovanni, Part II (See entries of June 8, 2004, Ingmar Bergman long ago
Ingmar Bergman Commentary by Jack Kerouac, "So what do we all do in this life which comes on so
much like an empty voidness yet warns us that we will die in pain,
decay, old age, "... listen to the
words of Pablo, the servant of Don Juan, who is summoned from the
underworld in 'The Devil's Eye,' Bergman's little-known comedy of 1960.
Pablo seduces the wife of a minister, and then, sorrowful and sated,
falling to his knees, he addresses her thus:
Posted 6/12/2004 at 6:12 PM |
-- "They All Laughed,"
See also Posted 6/12/2004 at 3:31 PM |
Posted 6/11/2004 at 11:00 AM |
Dark Music
Illustrated Paul Klee From today's
Critics in Mozart’s age |
Anomaly
Posted 6/8/2004 at 3:31 PM |
The X Factor
On OSS veteran Charles Hostler,
an unsung D-Day hero, now sung: "He was trained by the British MI6 intelligence agency for an operation known as X2 - or 'double cross.' " -- Beth Gardiner, AP, June 6, 2004
Posted 6/6/2004 at 4:30 PM |
Posted 6/6/2004 at 1:29 PM |
Parallelisms "I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another." (Nabokov, Speak, Memory) From a review of On the Composition of Images, Signs
& Ideas, by Giordano Bruno:
From an interview with Vladimir Nabokov published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. VIII, no. 2, Spring 1967:
Posted 6/6/2004 at 1:28 PM |
A Form, by Wolfgang Wildgen and incontinued... Some cognitive uses of the 3x3 square are discussed in From Lullus to Cognitive Semantics: The Evolution of a Theory of Semantic Fields Another Page in the Foundation of Semiotics: A Book Review of On the Composition of Images, Signs & Ideas, by Giordano Bruno... by Mihai Nadin "We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn't merely sensational, that doesn't get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn't falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media. For no spiritually authentic art can beat mass media at their own game." -- Robert Hughes, speech of June 2, 2004 Whether the 3x3 square grid is fast art or slow art, truly or falsely iconic, perhaps depends upon the eye of the beholder. For a meditation on the related 4x4 square grid as "art that holds time," see Time Fold. Posted 6/5/2004 at 11:11 AM |
Feel lucky? Well, do you? This entry was inspired by the following... 2. The page, excerpts from which are shown above, that you get if you put lucky (no quote marks) into Google and press the "I'm feeling lucky" button. 3. My own entries of May 31 on Language Games and of June 1 on language and history, Seize the Day and One Brief Shining Moment. 4. The related June 1 entry of Loren Webster, Carpe Diem, on the Marilyn Monroe rose. Images from Carpe and Shining are combined below: 5. The fact that the "day" to be
seized in Language Games is numbered 22, and that on day 22 of November
1963, the following died:
C. S. Lewis
John F. Kennedy Aldous Huxley. 6. The fact that November 22 is the feast of Cecilia, patron saint of music. 7. Yesterday's entry about the alignment of stars, combined with the alignment of Venus with Apollo (i. e., the sun) scheduled for June 8. All of the above suggest the following readings from unholy scripture: A. The "long twilight struggle" speech of JFK B. "The Platters were singing 'Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,' and then it started to happen. The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver's-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information." -- Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis, August 2000 Pocket Books paperback, page 437 C. "I will show you, he thought, the war for us to die in, lady. Sully your kind suffering child's eyes with it. Live burials beside slow rivers. A pile of ears for a pile of arms. The crisps of North Vietnamese drivers chained to their burned trucks.... Why, he wondered, is she smiling at me?" -- Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf hardcover, 1981, page 299 Posted 6/4/2004 at 11:22 AM |
STAR WARS
Not even the most powerful In a related story.... The Good Bad Boy "Today, many people have the illusion that they know who Pinocchio is.
They think that he is a wooden marionette who becomes a human boy; that
he was swallowed by a huge fish; and that when he told lies his nose
grew longer. These people are right, but often in a very limited way.
They know Pinocchio only from the sentimentalized and simplified Disney
cartoon, or the condensed versions of his story that are thought more
suitable for children. The original novel by Carlo Collodi, which today
survives mainly in scholarly editions, is much longer, far more complex
and interesting, and also much darker." -- The New York Review of Books, June 24, 2004 Posted 6/3/2004 at 3:17 PM |
One Brief Shining Moment
William Manchester, author of the JFK book with the above title, died today at 82. Posted 6/1/2004 at 8:23 PM |
Seize the Day From a March 31 entry -- A Jesuit cites Quine: "To be is to be the value of a variable." -- Willard Van Orman Quine, cited by Joseph T. Clark, S. J., in Conventional Logic and Modern Logic For example, the variable "[Day]"
in the Crystal Software program EasyPattern Helper supposedly helps to find any valid day number, 1-31, within a date, by first translating "[Day]" into the regular expression (?:(?:0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])). But it turns out that this expression fails
to find the day "22" -- at least during a trial run in the EasyPattern
Helper search window. The following seems apt: "A tongue-in-cheek comment by programmers is worth
thinking about: 'Sometimes you have a programming problem
and it seems like the best solution is to use regular
expressions; now you have two problems.' Regular
expressions are amazingly powerful and deeply expressive.
That is the very reason writing them is just as error-prone
as writing any other complex programming code." -- David Mertz, Learning to Use Regular Expressions The following irregular expression also seems apt: &3#!+*^$#!! Posted 6/1/2004 at 3:31 PM |