Log24

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

“Analysis.” — Dr. Robert Ford in “Westworld”

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:23 pm

"Godard, in the final analysis, expands the Warburgian programme
of iconology into that of a cinematographic iconology of the interstice."

— The author of the essay quoted in the previous post.

Friday, June 12, 2020

Prelude to Westworld (1984)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:45 pm

See also An Epic for Kristen .

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Into the Westworld

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:03 pm

He beomes aware of something else… some other presence.
“Anybody here?” he says.
I am here.
He almost jumps, it is so loud. Or it seems loud. Then he wonders if
he has heard anything at all.
“Did you speak?”
No.
How are we communicating? he wonders.
The way everything communicates with everything else.
Which way is that?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?

— Sphere   by Michael Crichton, Harvard ’64

Friday, July 12, 2019

“Hello, old friend.” — Anthony Hopkins, Westworld S2 E6

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:11 pm

See as well the previous post.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Theology for Westworld

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"Serve in Heaven …
or reign in Hell?
Which is it to be?"

— David in "Alien: Covenant" (2017)

Other mythological tales —

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

For Westworld’s Man in Black

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

From University of Chicago Press in 1984:

'Erring,' by Mark C. Taylor, U. of Chicago Press, 1984

"Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida,
and others, Mark Taylor extends—and
goes well beyond—pioneering efforts. . . . "
—G. Douglas Atkins, 
Philosophy and Literature

Update at noon on May 16 —

"Follow the Blood Arroyo to the place
where the snake lays its eggs."

— Westworld, Season 1, Episode 2,
air date October 9, 2016

This suggests a review of Derrida + Serpent 
in this journal.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Narrative for Westworld

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:12 pm

“That corpse you planted
          last year in your garden,
  Has it begun to sprout?
          Will it bloom this year?  
  Or has the sudden frost
          disturbed its bed?”

— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land

Coxeter exhuming Geometry

Ball and Coxeter, 'Mathematical Recreations,' Twelfth Edition

Click the book for a video.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Westworld

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:29 pm

The character who dies in the above scene was not
played by Robert Vaughn (also in the film), but by
Brad Dexter, who reportedly died on Dec. 12, 2002.

See that date in this journal.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Westworld

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:27 am

The title refers to a Log24 post of 9:45 AM ET Sunday, Oct. 2.

From the "Westworld" post of Sunday, Oct. 2 —

"It was rather like watching a play."

QED.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Westworld

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:45 am

On a new HBO series that opens at 9 PM ET tonight —

Watching Westworld , you can sense a grand mythology unfolding before your eyes. The show’s biggest strength is its world-building, an aspect of screenwriting that many television series have botched before. Often shows will rush viewers into plot, forgetting to instill a sense of place and of history, that you’re watching something that doesn’t just exist in a vacuum but rather is part of some larger ecosystem. Not since Lost  can I remember a TV show so committed to immersing its audience into the physical space it inhabits. (Indeed, Westworld  can also be viewed as a meta commentary on the art of screenwriting itself: brainstorming narratives, building characters, all for the amusement of other people.)

Westworld  is especially impressive because it builds two worlds at once: the Western theme park and the futuristic workplace. The Western half of Westworld  might be the more purely entertaining of the two, with its shootouts and heists and chases through sublime desert vistas. Behind the scenes, the theme park’s workers show how the robot sausage is made. And as a dystopian office drama, the show does something truly original.

Adam Epstein at QUARTZ, October 1, 2016

"… committed to immersing its audience
  into the physical space it inhabits…."

See also, in this journal, the Mimsy Cube

"Mimsy Were the Borogoves,"
classic science fiction story:

"… he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm– much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example– They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play."

A Crystal Block —

Cube, 4x4x4

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Shibumi

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:43 pm

Click the above images for the corresponding Log24 dates.

Monday, December 5, 2022

Encantado

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:36 pm

Hallmark: "When you care enough . . ."

Followup for the American  nomenklatura

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Metaphorical Possibilities

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 8:20 pm

"I’m kind of surprised there isn’t a Wisława Szymborska poem or 
Tom Stoppard play that explores the metaphorical possibilities
in the Borromean rings."
Evelyn Lamb in Scientific American , September 30, 2016.

Other mathematical structures also have metaphorical possibilities.

Perhaps not encantado  enough.

See Szymborska in this journal in the context of St. Bridget's Day.

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Cold Comfort Dam

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:50 am

"And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts,
there are only good and bad things and black and white
things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere."

— John Steinbeck, author's epigraph to The Pearl

From the Season 4 finale of Westworld :
uploading Dolores's pearl at Hoover Dam —

For those who prefer greater theological simplicity . . .

Optimus Prime on a different Hoover Dam figure, that of 
the AllSpark: "Before time began, there was the Cube."

Simplifying even more . . .

“A set having three members is a single thing
wholly constituted by its members but distinct from them.
After this, the theological doctrine of the Trinity as
‘three in one’ should be child’s play.”

– Max Black, Caveats and Critiques: Philosophical Essays
in Language, Logic, and Art
 , Cornell U. Press, 1975

IMAGE- The Trinity of Max Black (a 3-set, with its eight subsets arranged in a Hasse diagram that is also a cube)

As above, Black's theology forms a cube.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The Pristine Edge of Darkness

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , , — m759 @ 6:44 am
 

Westworld Season 4 Episode 8 (Finale)

Christina: Where am I? 
Maya: You're nowhere. Unplugged from the rest of the world. (Wind swooshing)
Christina: I'm alone again. In the walled garden. 
Maya: You're scared. So you brought me back. Talk to me, Chrissie. 
Christina: Everything is destroyed. Everyone is dying. I don't know. (Wind whooshing) (Leaves rustling) But I think it may be my fault. (Melancholic music playing) 
Maya: You know, people think they know what a tree is. They have no idea. What we see, it's only part of the story. But beneath the ground… everything's connected and working together. There's violence and chaos everywhere. And you can choose to focus on all of that. And that's all you'll see. But if you sit still… (Leaves rustling) …long enough… you'll sense an ancient order. A deep peace. (Breathes deeply) And that's what I choose to see. (Inhales) I see the beauty in this world. 
Christina: Yes. (Chuckles softly) I know the feeling. 
Maya: I thought you might. (Melancholic music concludes)

Read more at
https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/
viewtopic.php?f=738&t=55566

From a college botany laboratory in the 1915
D. H. Lawrence novel The Rainbow

"Suddenly she had passed away into
an intensely-gleaming light of knowledge."

A later passage in the same novel, under
a metaphorical Tree of Life —

"She passed away as on a dark wind, far, far away,
into the pristine darkness of paradise, into the original
immortality. She entered the dark fields of immortality."

Some will prefer . . .

For further context, see posts tagged Screw Theory.

Monday, August 15, 2022

Pyramid Song

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:55 am

Monday, July 25, 2022

What’s your story?

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:02 pm

Plan 9 Continues:

Salinger's 'Nine Stories,' paperback with 3x3 array of titles on cover, adapted in a Jan. 2, 2009, Log24 post on Nabokov's 1948 'Signs and Symbols'

Narratives in the Multiverse of Madness

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 3:53 am

Modernism, Fiction and Mathematics
by Nina Engelhardt
(Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture)

From a review by Johann A. Makowsky in
Notices of the American Mathematical Society,
November 2020, pp. 1589-1595 —

"Engelhardt’s goal in this study is to put the interplay
between fiction and mathematical conceptualizations
of the world into its historical context. She sees her work
as a beginning for further studies on the role of mathematics,
not only modern, in fiction in the wider field of literature and
science. It is fair to say that in her book Nina Engelhardt does
succeed in giving us an inspiring tour d’horizon of this interplay."

Another such tour —


 

On the title of Westworld Season 4 Episode 5, "Zhuangzi" —

A song for Teddy: "Across my dreams, with nets of wonder . . ."

See Zhuangzi also in the 2022 Black Rock CIty manifesto, "Waking Dreams" . . . 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Annals of Bulk Apperception: The Lotus Lamp

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:39 pm

Another "Back 15" from Joan DIdion's birthday, 2021 —

Monday, July 11, 2022

Glamour Meets Grammar

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:42 pm

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Mathematical Plays*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:44 pm

A song whose melody was used in
Westworld, Season 4, Episode 1 —

"Singin' in the old bars
Swingin' with the old stars
Livin' for the fame

Kissin' in the blue dark
Playin' pool and wild darts
Video games"

Lana Del Rey

In memory of a video game executive 
who reportedly died on June 22, 2022

Schoolgirl Space.

* Adapted from a book  title.

Monday, June 27, 2022

Dealing With Cubism

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:59 pm

Continued from April 12, 2022.

"It’s important, as art historian Reinhard Spieler has noted,
that after a brief, unproductive stay in Paris, circa 1907,
Kandinsky chose to paint in Munich. That’s where he formed
the Expressionist art group Der Blaue Reiter  (The Blue Rider) —
and where he avoided having to deal with cubism."

— David Carrier, 

Remarks by Louis Menand in The New Yorker  today —

"The art world isn’t a fixed entity.
It’s continually being reconstituted
as new artistic styles emerge." 

IMAGE- The 13 symmetry axes of the cube

(Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition (1911), Crystallography .)

"Before time began, there was the Cube."
— Optimus Prime

See as well Verbum  (February 18, 2017).

Related dramatic music

"Westworld Season 4 begins at Hoover Dam,
with William looking to buy the famous landmark.
What does he consider to be 'stolen' data that is inside?" 

The Plotlines

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 11:55 am

"Westworld Season 4 begins at Hoover Dam, with William
looking to buy the famous landmark. What does he consider
to be 'stolen' data that is inside?" 

For further details, see Log24 on May 16,
Sketch for a Magic Triangle.

Monday, April 18, 2022

For the Church of Perfect Coordinates*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:22 pm

https://blacklistdeclassified.net/2022/04/15/
%f0%9f%94%b4-script-916-helen-maghi/
 —

Red: If I may offer some counsel –
Do not go where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail.” 
In the spirit of that, I bring an unusual case….

This post is in honor of Thandiwe Newton,
who left a Westworld trail —

Vide  Bulk Apperception.

* Cf.  a post from Day 3 of 2022.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Looking for Outliers

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Faster, Harder, Deeper!

See also this  journal on the above Vanity Fair  date — April 26, 2020.

Saturday, January 22, 2022

“Adapting our powers of apperception”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:38 am

The title phrase is from the Friday update at the end of
Thursday's "New-Age Trinity" post.

It comes from a November 2017 doctoral thesis at Harvard.

Related philosophical insights —

"Bulk apperception" in this  journal, inspired by Maeve of Westworld:

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Analysis

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:15 am

“Analysis.” — Dr. Robert Ford in “Westworld.”  See related posts.

This  journal on August 18, 2017 —

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Only Connect :  Bulk Apperception* Continues.

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:49 am

The above Vanity Fair  article was republished on the Web by VF
on September 3, 2013.  See also this  journal on that date.

Related religious remarks —

* “Bulk apperception” is a phrase from Westworld. See Log24 notes.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Hidden Figures Matter

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 pm

“Don’t forget the portcullis, Dutch Boy!”

Friday, May 8, 2020

Moon Song

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:36 pm

"Even when some parts of the show don’t feel like they’re working,
the production is always top notch and eye-popping. The score, too,
is top notch here, but it’s the use of Pink Floyd’s 'The Dark Side of
the Moon' that resonates most."

Kevin Lever on the Westworld  May 3 Season 3 finale

Image from Log24 posts tagged Spectral Valhalla

 

Monday, May 4, 2020

The Man Behind the Counter

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:06 pm

The title is a phrase from the Suzanne Vega song in the previous post.

Always busy counting . . . .” — Tagline at Peter J. Cameron’s weblog.

“This morning brought the news that Jan Saxl died on Saturday.”

Peter J. Cameron today

A search for Saxl in this  weblog yields a post related to a topic in
Wolfram Neutsch’s book Coordinates.  See Saturday’s post
Turyn’s Octad Theorem: The Next Level.”

Related narrative from the Saturday post —

Related narrative from Sunday’s Westworld finale —

The Thing and I …

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:00 pm

Continues.

Update at 4 PM —

“It is always
Nice to see you”
Says the man
Behind the counter

— Suzanne Vega. “Tom’s Diner”

Tom Stall’s diner in  “A History of  Violence” (30 September 2005).

This  journal on 30 September 2005 —

“This place ain’t doing me any good.
I’m in the wrong town,
I should be in Hollywood.”

— Dylan, “Things Have Changed

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Adventures in the Matrix

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:01 pm

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Maeve’s Line

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:30 pm

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Nocciolo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:15 am

"I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."
– Paul Simon

From the previous post

From a cartoon graveyard —

See also, in this  journal, Smallest Perfect and Nocciolo .

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Phase Space

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 3:33 am

"Open the pod bay doors, Bernard."

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Raiders of the Lost Images

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:28 am

On the recent film "Justice League" —

From DC Extended Universe Wiki, "Mother Box" —

"However, during World War I, the British rediscovered
mankind's lost Mother Box. They conducted numerous studies
but were unable to date it due to its age. The Box was then
shelved in an archive, up until the night Superman died,
where it was then sent to Doctor Silas Stone, who
recognized it as a perpetual energy matrix. . . ." [Link added.]

The cube shape of the lost Mother Box, also known as the
Change Engine, is shared by the Stone in a novel by Charles Williams,
Many Dimensions . See the Solomon's Cube webpage.

See too the matrix of Claude Lévi-Strauss in posts tagged
Verwandlungslehre .

Some literary background:

Who speaks in primordial images speaks to us
as with a thousand trumpets, he grips and overpowers,
and at the same time he elevates that which he treats
out of the individual and transitory into the sphere of
the eternal. 
— C. G. JUNG

"In the conscious use of primordial images—
the archetypes of thought—
one modern novelist stands out as adept and
grand master: Charles Williams.
In The Place of the Lion  he incarnates Plato’s
celestial archetypes with hair-raising plausibility.
In Many Dimensions  he brings a flock of ordinary
mortals face to face with the stone bearing
the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, the sign of Four.
Whether we understand every line of a Williams novel
or not, we feel something deep inside us quicken
as Williams tells the tale.

Here, in The Greater Trumps , he has turned to
one of the prime mysteries of earth . . . ."

— William Lindsay Gresham, Preface (1950) to
Charles Williams's The Greater Trumps  (1932)

For fans of what the recent series Westworld  called "bulk apperception" —

Monday, December 25, 2017

The Weintraub Opening

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:48 am

See also posts now tagged Weintraub.

Monday, August 28, 2017

Analysis

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:28 pm

"Analysis." — Dr. Robert Ford in "Westworld."  See related posts.

This  journal on August 18, 2017

Monday, August 7, 2017

Theology for Child Buyers

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:48 pm

For the title, see Child Buyer in this journal.

Algul Siento , campus atop a mesa, from the new film "The Dark Tower"

Hell as the Westworld Mesa Hub

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Arroyo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:11 am

"Follow the Blood Arroyo to the place
where the snake lays its eggs."

— Westworld, Season 1, Episode 2,
air date October 9, 2016

"Googlaa pluplu." — Finnegans Wake

"Not far downstream was a dry channel
 where the river had run once . . . ."

— Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

See also the previous post and posts tagged Riverrun.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

About

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:21 pm

From a post of March 16, 2017

"Bulk apperception" is defined in the Westworld script 
as "basically, overall intelligence."  The phrase is apparently
unique to Westworld.

These two words do, however, nearly  occur together
in at least one book — Andrew Feffer's The Chicago
Pragmatists and American Progressivism
 :

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Delos Incorporated* Sunday School

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am

The 3x3 square

Click image for a search.

* Parent company of Westworld.
  See also Delos  in this journal.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Back to the Past

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:35 pm

"Old men ought to be explorers" — T. S. Eliot

"All on a Saturday night" — Johnny Thunder, 1962

'Loop De Loop,' Johnny Thunder, Diamond Records, 1962

Update of 8:25 PM ET on March 18 —

"Analysis." — Dr. Robert Ford in "Westworld"

"Master theorist and conceptual genius."

— Jon Pareles, front page, online New York Times   tonight

Friday, March 17, 2017

To Coin a Phrase

(A sequel to the previous post, Narrative for Westworld)

"That corpse you planted last year . . . ." — T. S.  Eliot

Circle and Square at the Court of King Minos

Harmonic analysis based on the circle involves the
circular  functions.  Dyadic  harmonic analysis involves

For some related history, see (for instance) E. M. Stein
on square functions in a 1982 AMS Bulletin  article.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Harmonic A

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:25 pm

"Analysis." — Dr. Robert Ford in "Westworld"

“Bulk Apperception”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:01 pm

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize 
how deep the darkness is around us."

— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy 
Random House, 1973, page 118

"Dear boys — We’re going to have some fun, aren’t we?"

— Maeve in "Westworld," Season 1, Episode 6,
     after her "bulk apperception" has been upgraded
     to the maximum.

"Bulk apperception" is defined in the script as "basically,
overall intelligence."  The phrase is apparently unique to "Westworld."

These two words do, however, nearly  occur together in
at least one book — Andrew Feffer's The Chicago Pragmatists
and American Progressivism
:

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

In Adam’s Fall / We Sinnèd All

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:18 am

Backstory for Westworld —

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."

Backstories

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am

"Backstories do more than amuse guests.
They anchor the hosts.
It's their cornerstone.
The rest of their identity is built around it, layer by layer."

— Elsie Hughes in "Westworld," Season 1, Episode 3,
     "The Stray," at 30:09

See also cornerstone in the Bible.

Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) earlier in that same episode —

Westworld S1E3 23:15- Dr. Ford on fiction

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

The Crichton Prize …

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:32 am

Goes to Feynman, Epstein, and Kaplan

“A self-replicating swarm of predatory molecules
is rapidly evolving outside the plant.”

Amazon.com synopsis of Michael Crichton’s
2002 novel Prey

Washington Post  online today —

Nobel Prize in chemistry is awarded
for molecular machines

” The physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman
gave a seminal lecture on the subject in 1959,
envisioning a ‘great future’ in which ‘we can arrange
the atoms the way we want; the very atoms,
all the way down.’ ” — Sarah Kaplan

Richard Feynman in 1959

“How do we write small?”

Related material quoted here on Sunday morning, Oct. 2, 2016 —

Westworld  is especially impressive because it builds two worlds
at once: the Western theme park and the futuristic workplace.
The Western half of Westworld  might be the more purely
entertaining of the two, with its shootouts and heists and chases
through sublime desert vistas. Behind the scenes, the theme park’s
workers show how the robot sausage is made. And as a dystopian
office drama, the show does something truly original.”

— Adam Epstein at QUARTZ, October 1, 2016

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