Drive on

Tue, Dec 18, 2007  Permanent link
Categories: 18, !, $

RSS for this post

Perception Through / Language / Thru Perception

Note: This is a post I had originally intended on finishing last month, but after weeks of being distracted by other things, I've now decided to post it as-is... hopefully to be expanded and cleaned up at some point in the future.

The Rosetta Disk

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.

The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group ... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

~ Steven Pinker, Rules of Language ~

In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) (also known as the "linguistic relativity hypothesis") postulates a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. Although known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, it was an underlying axiom of linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his colleague and student Benjamin Whorf.


~ + + ~

Toki Pona

Toki Pona was created by Sonja Elen Kisa. As a language enthusiast, world traveller, intercultural communicator, explorer of spirituality and consciousness, queer woman, and survivor of depression and anxiety, Sonja was naturally inclined to unify her unique life experiences and perspective into a creative project she could share. The idea of a simple pidgin-like language based on universal human experience slowly evolved in her mind.

Toki Pona is a minimal language that focuses on the good things in life.
It has been designed to express the most, using the least.
The entire language has only 14 basic sounds and 118 words.
The grammar, although different from English, is very regular and easy to learn.

( Learn, Official Site )

~ + ~

And for the more experimentally-minded, see Sonja's...

Oou: The Insane Language

Design Goals

• Make you go out of your mind
• Produce multiple meanings and weird homonymic insights
• Alienating, intoxicated effect
• Go against expected conventions of language yet be fully function as a language
• Explore the connections between reality and surreality, meaning and nonsense
• Virtually impossible to understand one another: acts of communication become trippy idea-art
• Sentence meaning flows with your state of consciousness

~ + ~


Lojban & Loglan

Lojban symbol

Lojban is a constructed language. It was originally called Loglan by project founder Dr. James Cooke Brown, who started the language development in 1955. Loglan/Lojban has been built over four decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters, led since 1987 by The Logical Language Group.

The following are the main features of Lojban:

• Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
• Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
• Lojban grammar is based on the principles of logic.
• Lojban has an unambiguous grammar.
• Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words.
• Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
• Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
• Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception.
• Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
• Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.

the structure words of Lojban

( Learn, Q&A, The proposed fourth tense of Lojban )

~ + ~

What sets humankind apart from other animals is language. Certainly many species communicate, and some do it in a very sophisticated way...think of wolves and dolphins. The important difference with human language is that it can be written down, allowing us to communicate across time as well as space.

There is a linguistic theory—known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—that the structure of a human language sets limits on the thinking of those who speak it; hence a language could even place constraints on the development of the cultures that use it. If this hypothesis is correct, then a language that could lift those constraints, by reducing them to a minimum, ought thereby to release its speakers' minds from their ancient linguistic bonds, and that should have a profound effect, both on individual thinking and on the development of human cultures.

~ Alex Leith, What Is Loglan? ~

Loglan inventor Dr. James Cooke Brown with fellow Loglanists Robert A. McIvor and Alex Leith
Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr. James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning it would think in a different way if the hypothesis were true. Loglan is the first among, and the main inspiration for, the languages known as logical languages, which also includes Lojban and Ceqli.

Dr. Brown founded The Loglan Institute to develop the language and other applications of it. He always considered the language an incomplete research project, and although he released many papers about its design, he continued to claim legal restrictions on its use. Because of this, a group of his followers later formed The Logical Language Group to create the language Lojban along the same principles, but with the intention to make it freely available and encourage its use as a real language.

( Learn, Official Site )

~ + + ~

[T]he background linguistic system (in other words,grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit. and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees....

From this fact proceeds what I have called the 'linguistic relativity principle', which means, in informal terms, that users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers, but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.

~ Steven Pinker, Rules of Language ~

~ + ~

Daniel Everett and the Pirahã

Tooí and Dan Everett; Taken by Martin Schoeller
Discovered by phonetic expert Professor Dan Everett of Manchester University in 1977, the Pirahã tribe of Brazil have perhaps the most unusual language among the nearly 6000 found on earth.

Free from concepts of time, color, or specific quantity, the mind of the Pirahã people appears to have been frozen in time—representing man in a simpler state...

The language of the Pirahãs is extreme: it is limited to 8 consonants for men, seven for women, and only three vowels. It does not contain concepts for counting or simple arithmetic—Everett notes that the Pirahã convey varying amounts through approximation.

The crucial thing is that the Pirahã have not borrowed any numbers—and they want to learn to count. They asked me to give them classes in Brazilian numbers, so for eight months I spent an hour every night trying to teach them how to count. And it never got anywhere, except for a few of the children. Some of the children learned to do reasonably well, but as soon as anybody started to perform well, they were sent away from the classes. It was just a fun time to eat popcorn and watch me write things on the board. So I don't think that the fact that they lack numbers is attributable to the linguistic determinism associated with Benjamin Lee Whorf, i.e. that language determines our thought—I don't really think that goes very far. It also doesn't explain their lack of color words, the simplest kinship system that's ever been documented, the lack of recursion, and the lack of quantifiers, and all of these other properties. Gordon has no explanation for the lack of these things, and he will just say, "I have no explanation, that's all a coincidence".

~ DE, Recursion And Human Thought: Why The Pirahã Don't Have Numbers

Perhaps most intriguing, Everett found that the Pirahãs don’t use recursive phrases. In other words, they don’t insert phrases within each other to combine different ideas to form a single sentence. Everett thoroughly tested about 20 Pirahãs, and found that none of them used a recursive clause. According to Everett, the Pirahã only talk and think in terms of direct experience. The kind of referencing that occurs in recursive phrases just isn’t a part of their thinking.

“[For the Pirahã] sentences…cannot be uttered acceptably in the absence of a particular pair of animals or instructions about a specific animal to a specific hunter. In other words, when such sentences are used, they are describing specific experiences, not generalizing across experiences. It is of course more difficult to say that something does not exist than to show that it does exist, but… in the context of my nearly three decades of regular research on Pirahã, it leads me to the conclusion that there is no strong evidence for the existence of quantifiers in Pirahã,” writes Everett in his 2005 paper for Current Anthropology, ‘Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã.’

If there were a finite language, because of the lack of recursion, that wouldn't mean that it wasn't spoken by normal humans, nor would it mean that it wasn't a very rich source of communication. But if you lived in an environment in which culture restricted the topics that you talked about, and not only just your general environmental limitations on the topics you talked about, but if there were a value in the culture that said, don't talk about topics that go beyond, say, immediate experience—in other words, don't talk about anything that you haven't seen or that hasn't been told to you by an eyewitness—this would severely limit what you could talk about. If that's the case, then that language might be finite, but it wouldn't be a poor language; it could be a very rich language. The fact that it's finite doesn't mean it's not a very rich language. And if that's the case, then you would look for evidence that this language lacked recursion.

So in the case of Pirahã, the language I've worked with the longest of the 24 languages I've worked with in the Amazon, for about 30 years, Pirahã doesn't have expressions like "John's brother's house". You can say "John's house", you can say "John's brother", but if you want to say "John's brother's house", you have to say "John has a brother. This brother has a house". They have to say it in separate sentences.

~ DE, Recursion And Human Thought: Why The Pirahã Don't Have Numbers

Bernardo, a Pirahã leader, asks lumberjacks to leave the area. André Toral, 1998
According to Everett, the deceptively simple language of the Pirahãs is not an indicator of a mental failing— curiously, the tribe sees all other languages to be quite ridiculous. While their language may seem simple from our perspective, Everett says that they just use different means to convey concepts and emotions. He states that the Pirahã have a complex verbal morphology and system of accents that give the language its expressive color.

“The Pirahã people communicate almost as much by singing, whistling, and humming as they do using consonants and vowels,” he writes.

Another surprising fact is the absence of myth, ritual, symbolism or any other anthropological characteristic that relates the Pirahãs with other cultures throughout history. For the Pirahã, there does not exist any creator God, or moment of creation; nothing was ever created because it always existed. Their concept and experience of time reduces it to the absolute present. In fact, there are no members of the community interested in tracking the records of grandparents, much less older ancestors. To the Pirahã, once something is outside of direct experience, it ceases to exist. They don’t even seem to have any storytelling.

~ Leonardo Vintiñi, Epoch Times Article ~


( Recursion Discussion, Further Reading, Pirahã Photos, Multimedia, Daniel Everett )

Wed, Nov 5, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: ç

RSS for this post

¿?¿?¿?¿? Cryptological Conundrums ¿?¿?¿?¿? — Voynich Manuscript + Codex Seraphinianus —
Project: The Total Library

Sometimes the most fascinating books are the ones we cannot read. Here are two illustrated texts which have eluded and confounded those who have sought to decipher them (but then, perhaps that is the point). One is thought to have been written several hundred years ago, whose author is only speculated; the other was written only a few decades ago, whose author is both known and still living.

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book written in an indecipherable text. It is thought to have been written between 1450 and 1520. The author, script and language of the manuscript remain unknown... Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decrypt a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply an elaborate hoax — a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols.

( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 )


~ + ~
The Codex Seraphinianus

The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a thus-far undeciphered alphabetic writing.

Visionary or Hallucinatory Encyclopedia?

( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 )

~ + ~

¿ Dig Deeper ?

— undeciphered writing systems —
— ciphertexts —
— James Hampton —


! This was originally inspired by Mr. Blank Dog's Voynich MS post ¡

Wed, Oct 15, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: $, Δ, *, ç
Sent to project: The Total Library

RSS for this post

(((((((((((((((( Václav Pajkrt / Projekt: 0 )))))))))))))))))

Projekt: 0 - Lonely Sun; found here
Fascinating visual (and musical) works by Václav Pajkrt! The above image, entitled "Growth of cubic bacteria", took first place in the NVArt: Amazing Creations competition held earlier this year:

He says his goal was to connect his experience from 3D graphics with some interesting mathematical shapes. Inspiration for his scenes comes from macro-worlds and from fascinating views from scan electron microscope.

{ Artistic, Photographic, Musical }




via Vandit @ FLYLYF

Thu, Sep 18, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: ♪, $

RSS for this post

DOU: Oleg Duryagin & The Post-Human Identity
Project: The great enhancement debate

I have always been interested in human individuality and self-expression... The persons presented in my works lack individuality: the eyebrows and the eyelashes are removed, the skin is smoothed... Visually I am inspired by culture of fashion and surrealists. I often shock people. I try to create the my personal aesthetics of the works, I try to combine reality with artificiality.

~ Oleg Duryagin ~

DOU is the portfolio of young Russian photographer Oleg Duryagin. He works mostly on the human figure, and, in particular, the human face. This is the object of meticulous investigation and transformation for Duryagin, since his aim is to question post-human identity. All that is flesh goes through a kind of digital metamorphosis; it is erased, smoothed, and rendered to extreme precision. The finished portraits look very sculptural, non-human, surreal, inanimate, and in many cases, you can see a transparency of the porcelain skin underlining the fragility of every portrait…

~ Paintalicious post via Alberto Cerriteño ~











{ Art Limited Portfolio, Aidan Gallery }

Sun, Sep 14, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: $, Δ
Sent to project: The great enhancement debate

RSS for this post

...Où Allons Nous? — ...Where Are We Going?

Human society needs to aspire to an integration of its material, spiritual and ecological elements. Current technologies, processes and means tend to separate these facets rather than connect them. Nature uses the sun's energy to create interdependent systems in which complexity and diversity imply sustainability. In contrast, industrialized society extracts energy for systems designed to reduce natural complexity. The challenge for humanity is to develop human design processes which enable us to remain in the natural context. Almost every phase of the design, manufacturing, and construction processes requires reconsideration. Linear systems of thought, or short-term programs which justify ignorant, indifferent, or arrogant means are not farsighted enough to serve the future of the interaction between humanity and nature. We must employ both current knowledge and ancient wisdom in our efforts to conceive and realize the physical transformation, care and maintenance of the Earth.

~ William McDonough, The Hanover Principles ~
Michael Wolf - Hong Kong: The Front Door/The Back Door Image #6
Over the past few years, many wonderful projects have emerged from talented individuals with a healthy interest in the relationships between humanity, nature, and technology, and ultimately, their implications for the future of this world. People from all aspects of society are becoming increasingly involved in the struggle against global desolation/devastation. Using photography as their primary medium, Chris Jordan, Michael Wolf, and Edward Burtynsky have created works which have left me with a mixture of fascination and concern, awe and disgust. I have attempted to use common threads between their works to illustrate a story about sustainability, consumerism, and civilization, with the United States and China as its main characters.

I must briefly mention that I was surprised to find that Burtynsky's work has only recently surfaced here, and not in member posts, but in our gallery. I implore those unfamiliar with him to watch Manufactured Landscapes, a wonderful cinematic exploration of his work (and another essential documentary). He is also on the board of directors over at WorldChanging (to which Régine Debatty contributes!) and recently spoke at the Long Now Foundation, proposing a 10,000 year gallery.

In order to keep my page from becoming more cluttered than it already is, I've decided to separate the rest of this post from my Personal Cargo. Furthermore, I've split what was previously one giant post into a series of posts. Click any of the following links to continue...

I. Refreshments - The story of stuff
II. Take - Manufacturing Landscapes
III. Make - Where does it come from?
IV. Waste - Where does it go?
V. Overpopulate - Hong Kong shows us the future
VI. Build To Destroy - Three Gorges Dam
VII. Grave & Cradle - What next?

Sat, Sep 13, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: !, $, ^

RSS for this post

+++++++++ The Beckoning Of Lovely ++++++++

BACKSTORY: It all started with this film “17 things i made.” At the end of the film, viewers were invited to come make a cool 18th thing with me here in Chicago (at Millennium Park) on 8/8/08 at 8:08 pm.

{ Who Is Amy }

Mon, Sep 8, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: !, $

RSS for this post

hold your breath, make a wish, count to three...

^ a work by Amandine Urruty
I should be back with fresh posts soon! In the meantime, you can listen to the muxtape I made if you'd like (wait, nevermind, the RIAA says you can't). And while that's playing, I recommend either relaxing with closed eyes or, if you want to keep them open, you should peruse vi.sualize.us, FFFFOUND!, or our very own gallery. Later on, watch The Story of Stuff if you haven't seen it and read about the true origins of The Nonsense Nine.

Wed, Jul 30, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: ♪, $, Δ

RSS for this post

////////////////// Documentary Showcase \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I'd now like to take the time to bring to your attention two deeply moving and intellectually stimulating documentaries which deserve far more exposure. Although the films deal with very different subjects, I would recommend both as absolutely essential viewing for all.

First is a film which I had the opportunity to see during its theatrical release in Canada, nearly a year before its shockingly limited play in US theatres (despite winning numerous international film awards). I watch a lot of documentaries, but its rare that I come across one which presents information and ideas which truly challenge my mentality. The director (and first-time filmmaker), Rob Stewart, opened my eyes to a refreshingly different view not only of sharks, but of sustainability as a whole. We all need to be more aware of the impact humans are having on the environment. Sharkwater is a milestone effort in raising this awareness.'


For filmmaker Rob Stewart, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth.

Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.


Why save sharks? What makes them so important?

Species evolving in the oceans over the last 400 million years, have been shaped by their
predators, the sharks, giving rise to schooling behavior, camouflage, speed, size and
communication. They have survived five major extinctions and now they are being fished
out. Many countries have no sharks left because they are being illegally harvested for
their fins and poachers are now fishing sharks from other countries, countries that depend
on sharks for food. But no one wants to save sharks, people are afraid of them.

Do specials proclaiming it the “summer of the shark” because of attacks and the
JAWS perception upset you?

It really pisses me off. You understand where they’re coming from because a dangerous
shark makes money and sells papers. If they tell you a shark is beautiful and perfect and
wonderful and won’t attack you that’s only going to make news once. But if they tell you
“Shark attack. Shark attack.” That’s news every time. It’s ridiculous, but you know they
are doing it just to play off people’s fears. The reality is totally different. Half the time it
is a small shark that accidentally bites someone’s foot. You could have gotten the same
injury from stepping on a piece of glass. It’s crazy how the media approaches it and
they’ve given sharks such a bad rap. It’s ludicrous because so few people get bit.

interview with Rob Stewart (PDF)


My greatest environmental fear is that the oceans will continue to be ignored until it’s too late. There are 2.5 billion years of evolution in the oceans, and a mere 500 million or so on land. When life evolved in the ocean, the atmosphere was very hot, full of carbon dioxide. Plants in the ocean evolved, and started sequestering carbon, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, releasing oxygen, and the planet began to cool. Over hundreds of millions of years, much of the carbon that was removed from the atmosphere was stored as oil and natural gas reserves in the Earth’s crust. Now we’re bringing that carbon out again and releasing it back into the atmosphere. We have made great jumps in our awareness regarding global warming, but we haven’t acknowledged the ocean’s role in global climate. The oceans are the greatest regulators of climate on the earth. Phytoplankton (tiny plants) in the oceans provide 70 percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere, and are the greatest sink for carbon dioxide on earth. We’re now destroying the oceans, removing apex predators such as sharks, dredging the oceans; without considering that this atmosphere, our precious oxygen, and our hospitable planet, is all made possible because of life in the ocean that is part of a food chain. Food chains are sensitive, haven taken hundreds of millions or billions of years to form, and we’re destroying it.

another interview

The film was shot in high-definition, bringing gorgeous underwater footage of both sharks and their neighbours.

{ Official site, blog, trailer and other media, Saving Sharks }

~ ~
This next film is one I discovered only through the recommendation of a friend which, after having seen it, makes me all the more determined to promote it. Like Sharkwater, it deals with the atrocious behaviour of humanity and its continued disregard for long-term, conscientious thinking. However, rather than bringing to attention our destructive impact on the natural environment, we are reminded of a chapter of human history which is all too often neglected even though it defined one of the most pressing issues we face today and for the foreseeable future. Steven Okazaki's documentary about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only teaches what school history books generally skim over (and often distort) but, through the words of survivors (and pilots), gives a true glimpse of what it was like to experience the events first-hand, to survive, and to continue struggling 60 years afterwards. Set to one of the best soundtracks I've come across, White Light/Black Rain is heart-wrenching, intellectually provocative, and relevant to many of today's most important debates concerning the likes of technology, morality, and war.


As global tensions rise, the unthinkable now seems possible. The threat of nuclear "weapons of mass destruction" has become real and frightening. White Light/Black Rain, an extraordinary new film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first — and hopefully last — uses of nuclear weapons in war.

Even after 60 years, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. Surprisingly, most people know very little about what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, two days that changed the world. This is a comprehensive, straightforward, moving account of the bombings from the point of view of the people who were there.


Like most American, public-school educated kids, I had no background on the subject at all. I knew that bombs were dropped on Hiroshima-Nagasaki and then the war ended. But that really was about it. I think the concept of their being survivors hadn't occurred to me. But here in this room were housewives and shopkeepers, and I just thought, well, this would be a less threatening way to tell the story...

Some people are surprised by the reserve of the survivors. But you have to remember that culturally, for Japanese to just talk about themselves in any way that might elicit sympathy or pity is something that Japanese just don't do. When the survivors speak out publicly, they often face criticism and prejudice from their neighbors and the public. People tell them to be quiet, to forget the past, not to stir up old emotions, not to remind people of the war. So it's a difficult thing to do...


Many people in the film are still dealing with survivor guilt but somehow have found reasons to live. One of the survivors talks about looking for her mother, and seeing what she thinks is her mother because she finds a burned corpse with a gold tooth that looks like her mother, and she reaches out to touch the body and it turns to ashes before her finger reaches it. And then her sister gets radiation sickness, her hair starts falling out, and the kids at school are taunting her sister because she's bald, and the sister steps in front of a train and kills herself. This woman says that there are two kinds of courage—the courage to die, and the courage to live. And she says she decided she wanted to live, despite her having lost everybody...

I think what we want to do with the film is not make particular political points, but just the point that the bombs affected the lives of real people, and so let's hear what they have to say. No matter how important your message is, if the film is boring, no one will hear it. And my feeling is, this is an incredibly dramatic, amazing story, and if we just let the people tell their stories, that in itself is a political act, of sorts, and that people can find their own messages.

Steven Okazaki interview

It's sixty-two years since the bombing and it's still a really political topic. It's still a topic that makes people uncomfortable. I developed an insecurity complex while I was making the film. Early on, I was at a party and people would ask what I'm working on and I'd say a Hiroshima/Nagasaki film, and I swear, 80 percent of the people either went, "Oh. I'm going to go get a drink" or they'd change the subject. Or they start arguing.... People have really strong feelings, but they really know nothing about the subject. I think it's natural to have a block because the images and stories are so disturbing. But I think it's surprising — people really don't know anything about it.

another interview: transcript, video

{ Official site, Steven Okazaki, survivor artwork, IAEA }

Tue, May 13, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: !, $

RSS for this post

/////// every day is a beautiful day /////// John Cage

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four.
If still boring, then eight.
Then sixteen. Then thirty-two.
Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

"So that each person is in charge of himself. " from Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake

Music is Everywhere, we just have to look for it.

{ From Miroslav Sebestik's Listen : In Love With Another Sound, A Bottle Of Coca-Cola }

Like acrostics, mesotics are written in the conventional way horizontally, but at the same time they follow a vertical rule, down the middle not down the edge as in an acrostic, a string spells a word or name, not necessarily connected with what is being written, though it may be. This vertical rule is lettristic and in my practice the letters are capitalized. Between two capitals in a perfect or 100% mesostic neither letter may appear in lower case. .... In the writing of the wing words, the horizontal text, the letters of the vertical string help me out of sentimentality. I have something to do, a puzzle to solve. This way of responding makes me feel in this respect one with the Japanese people, who formerly, I once learned, turned their letter writing into the writing of poems. In taking the next step in my work, the exploration of nonintention, I don't solve the puzzle that the mesostic string presents. Instead I write or find a source text which is then used as an oracle. I ask it what word shall I use for this letter and what one for the next, etc. This frees me from memory, taste, likes, and dislikes, By means of Mesolist, a program by Jim Rosenberg, all words that satisfy the mesostic rule are listed. IC [a program that generates the I Ching numbers, available for downloading on the Net] then chooses which words in the lists are to be used and gives me all the central words, the position of each in the source material identified by page, line, and column. I then add all the wing words from the source text following of course the rule Mesolist does within the limit of forty-five characters to the right and the same to the left. Then I take out the words I don't want. With respect to the source material, I am in a global situation. Words come first from here and then from there. The situation is not linear. It is as though I am in a forest hunting for ideas.

{ The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage's "What You Say", Norton Lectures }




Side A from the album: John Cage Meets Sun Ra, Meltdown MPA-1 (1987). Alternates performances by Sun Ra-Yamaha DX-7; and John Cage-voc. Sideshows by the Sea, Coney Island, NY, 6/8/86. (Ubu)

We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.

~ from "An Autobiographical Statement"



Silence excerpt from The Dial-A-Poem Poets: Disconnected

— How do you feel about the intrusion of technology with art or the intrusion of art with technology?

I think it is one of the things that characterizes the present period and that it will probably continue, and the technology will get more and more sophisticated. I think it will ultimately get to the point where we don't notice that it exists, although it will be, then, even more essential, and generally essential, to everyone's life. But I think instead of imposing itself on our attention that it will become more and more invisible. We notice — Fuller, Buckminster Fuller has noticed that we do more with less — copper, for instance, and we can notice the difference between, oh, engines of, say, 50 years ago and engines of the present time. And there appears to be an increasing ability not only to do more with less, but to do the same thing with something simpler. And I think it would be marvelous if, say, in some utopia that I hope we're going to that we would have all the advantages of technology with seemingly no presence of it.

— In other words, art should eventually become magic?

Yes, if, for instance, I could telephone without bothering with the telephone.

{ John Cage @ UbuWeb Historical, Sound, Film }

This post was originally inspired by squashed's third installment of Three Lists For The Lover (After Love) at motel de moka. And on that note...

Love is memory. In the immediate present we don't love; life is too much with us. We lust, wilt, snort, swallow, gobble, hustle, nuzzle, etc. Later, memory flashes images swathed in nostalgia and yearning. We call that Love. Ha! Better to call it Madness.

+ +


Amazing what discoveries one often makes whilst following a tangent!


I was looking for an image of John Cage and came across a fascinating virtual collage of Cage-related information and media, created by Ralph Lichtensteiger, whose diary contains a wealth of enlightening entries. But that's only part of the main site (and here's his latest project).

Wed, Apr 2, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: ♪, $, Δ, *

RSS for this post