Tuesday, February 24, 2009

PATTERNS OF MATTER

PATTERNS OF MATTER


Every moment, every day, we are, in fact, replaced. Cell by cell our constitution is renewed as part of a normal biological process. The atom and molecules that compose our brains right now, are completely different than those that comprised them just a short time ago. The neurons in our brains which persist for a relatively long period of time, are not the neurons we had a mere month before.

So I am a completely different set of stuff than I was one month ago. But I still appear and feel remarkably, the same. My matter has changed, yet my pattern persists. Just as the water rushing past the rocks in a stream consists of completely new molecules each nano-second, it’s pattern persists for hours or years. And all we can ask is who are we? Are we matter? Or are we pattern?

You, I, we, us, neigh life itself and all the universe is in constant flux, shifting every moment, matter forever renewed, yet forever aging. We are patterns of matter and energy persisting through time. And if we could upload our patterns, and replicate our matter; Could we copy ourselves? And if we could copy ourselves, Would our copies be indistinguishable from our originals? Perhaps; but our copies would not be our originals. They would be replicas living a separate life, as a separate system, that was remarkably like our system. Our originals and replicas would be different bodies in different spaces encountering different events, engendering new chance. They would be us, yet we would not be not be them. Something is always the same, yet something is always different. Flux.

Heraclitus, 2500 years past, knew that the fundamental fact of nature is change. It is not being, but becoming that is the sole actuality and eternal destiny for all energy and things. Everything is, and is not simultaneously. All phenomenon are in a state of continuous transition from existence to nonexistence and back. As things are, nothing remains. He stated: 'you cannot step into the same river twice for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you '.

So what is life if reality is merely a succession of transitory states? No matter is permanent, and all things come into being and pass away through strife. This is the universal principal, according to Heraclitus: ...'it is the Thunderbolt that steers all things'. The power of transmutation is the logos of God, the cosmic double. And the world which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made, but is now and ever shall be eternal change. Energy, not matter, is permanent. And energy is not a thing, but a process. It transforms one substance into another without ever becoming that substance itself.

What persists is pattern, which rests, by changing. Even though nature loves to hide, we remain patterns of matter, patterns of substance, and patterns of energy itself. The senses are poor witness as only wisdom can judge. Just as thought is common to all; mind is matter too. And as the one is made up of all things, all things issue from the one.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Goddess Universe-City

Summon
the starchitect
to erect the temple
in the foremost
"goddess" universe-city.

Materialization
of the
matrixial border-space
wherein
vibrations of the voice
guide the
traces of the translucent,

The one is made up of
all things
and all things
issue from the one.

Divinity need not be
sought
when stopping and looking
is enough.

If we do not
expect
the unexpected
it shall never be
found.

Ti's wisdom
knows the thought
by which
all things are steered
thru all things.

That
the world is the same
for all
no one of gods
or man
has made.



ode to Heraclitus
and the

Hin Jew Goddess
xo

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Paradise Paradox

Paradise Lost, Paradox Found:
Fran Bull Riddles with Dark Matter
.


Paradise Lost

“What you know you cannot see,
… but you can feel it.
You’ve felt it your entire life,
… like a splinter in your brain
Do you know what it is? … “
It is the Matrix.
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
(Wachowski Bro Film The Matrix, 1992) .

The Matrix …is Dark Matter

In the Al-Kemi of Khemet (The magic art of Ancient-Egypt) Dark Matter was the Black Materia-Prima of the Nile from which all life came and went. Later forms of Alchemy, including Jungian, say it is the first-matter in the Magnum-Opus, the experiential creation of the philosopher’s stone wherein full consciousness is co-opted into absolute knowing. Throughout history it has been the physical basis of all mysticism and the occult. Out of its darkened void The God of Christians and Jews created the Genesis; and a myriad of other Gods and Goddesses did as well. Modern theories of psyche and mind pay homage to its’ fertile depths. Post Modern Movements from Pop-Goth to Punk, Retro-Sage to New-Age, extol its creative virtues. Finally Science itself whether high-tech or low-brow dares not ignore its’ dark principles.


Paradox Found

Presently cosmic-physics theorizes at least 80% of the known universe consists of Dark Matter. Invisible and undetectable in and of itself, scientists postulate its existence using measurable and observable phenomena such as the rotational speed and distribution of galaxies, speed and trajectory of light, cosmic radiation background and affects of gravitational lensing, all of which are completely contrary to predictions of dominant Big Bang and Gravitation based theories that fail by their own methods to posit sufficient energy to explain them. Dark Matter, the unseen yet powerfully eminent force is thus believed responsible. As it is now, so it ever was... Dark Matter is the...ultimate paradox to explain paradox, matrix supreme to cosmos extreme, universal womb-tomb for all existence and consciousness. It is a grave riddle Fran Bull knows and explores in her recent 'hybrid' paintings: “Dark Matter”, of which she wrote: its’ "...intriguing presence / absence, with all of its fertile implications and metaphorical possibilities, inspired the title of this series of works on canvas"

Dark Matter

Dark Matter, the series is large, some thirty plus pieces, and offers ample insight into Bull's astute and deviously elegant methods of metaphor, as well as her preoccupation with dynamics of figure and ground which she herein extends to a deeper dimension; one tacitly expressive of the dark interface between the cloak of culture and the obscurity of soul. The pieces, mostly square in format, range in size from 12” x 12” to 30” x 30” to 50” x 55” and consist of monochromatically painted muslin fabric that has been dipped in Italian Plaster and laid over none to few small simple forms set atop stretched canvas frames. While at first glance they function as spare low-relief abstractions worthy of minimalism in their reductive quality of parts and matter of fact resistance to content and detail; they are quickly perplexed by a theatrical tension duplicitously entangled in a simultaneously gauche and glamorous play of figure and ground, ground and surface. By this strategy Bull radicalizes her stated influences of Ancient Classical and Renaissance/Baroque painting and sculpture from which in her own words she sees: "the human body.. portrayed as lying hidden beneath ...swaths of fabric...sacred garments of the divine ...whose folds tell their cryptic stories of what lies beneath, and in some cases, of what has transpired as with volcanic ash ...capable of burying whole civilizations."

In Bull‘s hands, Greek edicts of how drapery should by movement and distortion reveal the form are revamped, and Romanesque preferences for divine costuming, Platonic Revival and low relief representation are redressed to a contemporary level of craftiness inclusive of consumer ready-mades, cultural commentary and postmodern inside-trading. Under the histrionic, exquisitely painted surfaces of satin white, shimmering rose, metallic bronze, glimmering gold, blood red, creosote black, paste peach and primer matt crenellations of fabric, lay odd objects, eerily inert and disturbingly recognizable as lowly craft items, whose associations with home-spun kitsch subvert presuppositions of high-born art and tasteful understatement. Bull’s collusion of mundane and urbane value systems debases signification in a lubricious currency of skepticism and pleasure that operates as darkly and perniciously above the ground as it does below. Presence begets absence and the viewer seeking solace in definitive meaning finds only a retrograde sensation of ambiguity cast upon a timeless ground of inertia as cold and blind as the contents within. The result is unsettling.

The dyadic tensions between conceptual and formal oppositions where-in material and metaphysical dissolution and resolution of figure vs. ground are affectively crucified in surface relations of ego-self, culture-soul, day-night, micro-macro, intra-extra create a tension which Carl Jung believed was prerequisite to the emergence of meaning and James Hollis claimed was the terrible embodiment of the divine. Saying one thing through two that are violently opposed is a necessary way of seeing through to reality, James Hillman noted. He conferred with Heraclitus‘s thoughts that ‘the real constitution of each thing is accustomed to hide itself and that to arrive at the basic structure of things we must go into their darkness‘. Thus by separating one thing from another and pitting them even against themselves in a process of phenomenological “bracketing”, Bull ascertains essence through transcendental reduction while her use of an extreme metaphor is a clear sign that hard answers do not exist. And it is only Plato’s forms that remain firm beneath the covers when reality shifts as readily as the greatest concepts forever elude. Stanley Kubrick once said: “No matter how vast the darkness, we must supply our own light”. Ultimately it is through Bull’s lucid eye that we see Dark Matter is not so much a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

Dark Matter, the paintings and more may be seen at Fran Bull's Site:


http://www.franbull.com/home.html

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

OBJECT CODE: BUCK_M_FULLER

#96 #% #96 #

OBJECT CODE:
BUCK_M_FULLER


I would like to to introduce an OBJECT, mine in some ways, whom was once a man named Buckminster Fuller, and whom is now a thing, a memory, an idea and a form. IT/HE crossed my mind and a'mused me after having read an exhibit review by Bruce Sterling In ArtForumOnlineMagazine 10Sept08 entitled: "Starting With The Universe". Which, in my less than humble opinion. Yes it
not only starts here,
ends
is here
everywhere here
all it is
all that is
what it is
what it is...
forever.
And BuckM was inspired by it.

I begin with Sterling’s article which was written in celebration of the exhibit: “Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe” (220 models, videos, photographs, and works on paper and the only extant Dymaxion car, a fuel-efficient vehicle designed by Fuller), first installed at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and soon to be installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The article, wills Fuller a 20th century self-created genius, an:
“American beau ideal, ’60s guru: non-violent, non-ideological, non-revolutionary, drug-free, neatly dressed in a suit, with horn-rims, and close-cropped hair, ...optimistic yet thunderous, can-do yet contrarian, a firm believer in the scientific method, yet questioning received wisdom in ways that seem to offer broad, smooth paths into a radically transformed world.”
It goes on to say that Fuller should be known and idolized by the 21st century's:
“one million ranting Internet techno-enthusiasts, muddling disciplinary boundaries with their web-logs and search engines“, whom, he states “If they knew themselves better, ...would surely make a point of knowing him”.
The author exuberantly points out that this is so because Fuller was a:
“one-man world-saving machine…a miniature academy: an architect, engineer, designer, physicist, geometer, and poet, whose main occupation was explaining how to operate reality, and who has become ‘the ultimate space-age techno-utopian” who through his “intellectual exploration... had “answers for everything.”
The claims made for Fuller by this author were so upbeat as to claim he was, what the future wants to be now; or at least what present futurist-types want to be: retro-modernist hu-mechs;
bright and civic minded cyber-sapiens who will release the world from the filth of emotional baggage and jettison it space-long into the universal age of solubility capable of dealing with even the toughest mega-dimensional problems. I found these claims so appealing, I decided to do a little more research into Fuller so that I might see for myself how well his character met established canons of Modernism and Post-Modernism, as well as 21st century visions of itself. I of course went to Wikipedia, my ideal world-co-lab-o-pedia; and I also read a few other online articles to learn that Fuller was indeed as remarkable as Sterling described. He held 28 patents, wrote over 24 books, left 270’ of text in journal entries made nearly every 15 minutes from 1915 to 1983, was a popular professor, lecturer and friend to many artists, was the inventor of the geodesic dome (now numbering over 500,000 worldwide... though admitedly abysmal living space), and was an acclaimed inventor and creative impresario’ professing ideas such as sustainability and renewable energy, ‘omni-successful education', and "sustenance of all humanity’. He propagated amongst his followers a ’do more with less’ optimistic view of humanity’s future; and he hoped that society might come to define wealth in terms of knowledge while simultaneously developing the “technological ability to protect, nurture, support and accommodate all growth needs of life”. He thought the cultivation of these views made
“selfishness unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable.”
What I find so charming about Buckminster Fuller, is that he was incredibly creative, hopeful, resilient and industrious in his visions of the future; and that he saw himself as:
“not a category, …a thing, …noun”, but a “verb, …an evolutionary process, …an integral function of the universe”.
I believe that if Modernism could have at least into the space-age, and better yet into the electronic era, held the strength of its’ 'emotional/irrational pole" (beautifully engendered by Buckminster Fuller) against its’ 'scientific, rational pole', (engendered most brilliantly by Fuller) than the force field generated by the tension between the two, might have projected sufficient power to have repelled the now historical shift to Post-Modernism, from having occurred and placed with its' deadly nihilism and black hearted righteousness, a cold elliptical tombstone at Modernism's head. Perhaps if the force of the tension's field had been strong enough, the soulless, machine -like tendencies inherent in Modernism's mechanistic, hard-selling, over-consumptive indulgence, might have been sublimated so as not to have given rise to Post-Modernism's trademark movements steeped in slick sarcasm, sardonic back-stabbing, desperate deprecation, irresponsible defecation and deadly deconstruction.

Yet, from the contents of the grave there is preterit hope, and it is from the congeries of the past, the future is forged. To look toward a man such as Buckminster Fuller for inspiration is worthy, for he certainly bridged the past and future with genius aptitude for the proclivities and desires of the cybersapien generations of today. Fuller anticipated the humech, self-personafying, cybernauts of the present-future world, whom while longing for mystery and communion with nature and each other, are disembodied by over-abundance and an irreverent lack of honest reflection and humility inherent in post-modern culture. Sterling points out that if today’s retro-modernist
"techno geeks knew themselves better, they would be sure to try and know Fuller".
I would agree with that and would take it one step further to say in Fuller, their/our better side is the reflection we seek and might cultivate and admire. Fuller was a Neo-Modernist, with all the , honesty, freedom, creativity and responsibility (*Joseph Beuys' traits for healing), as well as the energy, discipline and loving care to be a 21st Century model for Neo-Modernism. He could see and acknowledge short-comings while standing firm in the resolve to contemplate them deeply and act on them courageously. At the same time, he hoped to cultivate and sublimate the urges, preferences, needs and proclivities of the universe's collective and divergent offspring in all its matrixial worldly forms (creatures, forces, objects and ideas).

Yaay Bucky!