This book, from what I remember, was kind of interesting as well. Touched on
a doctor patient relationship during the course of a neura surgery to remove
a damaged part of ze brain. Doctor probes, patient responds.
On Wed, Jan 1, 2003 at 4:42 AM, Ana Olinto <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> chris,
> i don't know if you've read whitehead's "the concept of nature". it's a
> modern, 20th century's philosophical-scientific view of space, time and
> matter.
> whitehead couples the best anglo-saxon thought (clarity, concreteness,
> realism) with the best continental thought
> (intuition, density, sistematic concepts).
> he also connects spatio-temporal perception to creativity,
> in the most palpable way.
> best, ana
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:33 AM
> Subject: Image and text
>
>
>
> I promised Judy bc I would write some notes on working with more then
>> one media at the same time for a single art project. I had to think
>> about it first, because it is a bit like trying to summarise some five
>> years training in writing and media arts.
>>
>> We can begin with space and the new ideas of space that emerged during
>> 20th century modernism in the arts. Space was perhaps the great theme of
>> this century.
>>
>> First, the old idea of space we see in Kant and which goes back to
>> Aristotle, is that of space as being extensive and quantitative. This is
>> a space that exists a-priori and can be divided infinitely without
>> changing in quality and can be drawn as a grid which extends to infinity
>> or if divided remains constant and does not change size after being
>> divided. You can walk away from this space and come back to it and it
>> will remain the same or constant. This is the metric space of Newton's
>> Law; F=ma.
>>
>> The new idea of space understands space as something that grows or
>> diminishes along with matter and if there is no matter there can be no
>> space. So space is created along with matter in time. This is a dynamic
>> and fluid space.
>>
>> The older idea of metric space is still needed to design buildings,
>> build bridges and high ways and so forth but this metric space is a
>> division of blip functions which separate one bit of space from the
>> other and as such complies with the classical law of the excluded
>> middle.
>>
>> The new idea of space does not have these infinitely small blips that
>> divide space into metric units but is continuous and fluid space which
>> is constantly being made and unmade and breaks the law of the excluded
>> middle. It could be said this sort of space is always happening in the
>> middle and takes on a more qualitative aspect. (Although not strictly
>> purely qualitative the idea of a qualitative space gives a sense or
>> feeling of what this space is like as a perhaps qualitative growth in
>> extension.)
>>
>> When it comes to art, matter is the media used to make art space with
>> this sort of fluid constantly flowing, growing bigger and growing
>> smaller, often at the same time in many and various ways. It is also a
>> space that has to be made with art media or matter. It does not exist
>> before or a priori. Basically this is modernist space, at least in
>> summary.
>>
>> Every time this modern idea of space is divided it changes in quality
>> and this is important to understand since an intuitive feeling for the
>> way this space changes needs to be cultivated or learnt, usually through
>> practice (as well as being lucky enough to have skilled teachers, in my
>> case.) It is also a space that cannot be logically indexed since it more
>> or less throws attempts at index off, always being in the middle.
>>
>> This modern space is what Deleuze calls virtual space or smooth space
>> and not to be confused with computer networks and virtual or cyberspace.
>> Cyberspace is a projected metric (Kantian) space or in D&G terms
>> striated space which is the space of metric extension. This is
>> important, since computer functions such as interactivity, feedback and
>> cyberspace which are Kantian metric space, as I have read more then once
>> become confused with the fluid modern notion of space. (A computer is a
>> Kantian mechanism. It uses metric space. It is not virtual space in
>> Deleuze's terminology nor is it a modern fluid idea of space. Hence,
>> computers are an older more archaic technology.)
>>
>> The modern fluid dynamic unfolding into extension and folding into
>> itself and diminishing space happens in time. Understanding time here in
>> the way Henri Bergson and William James understand duration as that
>> which is always changing so the present is also a fold of the past and
>> of the future without being divided into discrete units. The past,
>> future and present all happen together and at the same time so the
>> present can be both future and past and the future can change the past
>> as the present makes the past and opens onto the future. This makes or
>> creates difference, since difference cannot be given a priori.
>>
>> Once we have this basic idea of space then we can see that working with
>> two different media, say spoken text and video images, means that the
>> image and the sound track or spoken text are separate from each other
>> and what draws them together are resonating series which are the
>> composition of two or more rhythms, the sound rhythms and the visual
>> rhythms, for image and text.
>>
>> So the most basic is first to give each media, sound and image, its own
>> space which it creates itself as difference. Let them create their
>> differences, so to speak. Let them have their own rhythms which like
>> modern jazz cross over each other and make unpredictable improvised
>> resonating series.
>>
>> Second, don't attempt to make the image the cause of the text or spoken
>> words or the other way round. Let both media have their time and space.
>> So don't attempt to simply illustrate with an image what the words say
>> or again the other way round.
>>
>> Anyway, that is the basic idea, hopefully abstract enough not to be a
>> set of formal rules but a general way of working which can be shaped to
>> particular media and projects. The other problem is that in our
>> saturated media world there appears no free or open space from which we
>> may proceed. For this I use an abstract idea of absolute deviation,
>> absolute meaning without relation, and so abstract it cannot be
>> abstracted any further. This is like a little lever that can insert
>> itself in between the saturated media environment we live in and proceed
>> to open up a space for the art works to emerge.
>>
>> anyways, better stop here before I write a whole book, Chris Jones.
>>
>
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