Philosophies

Philosophies 10032009 3.

Experience.Nothingness.Space.Place.

“Space is Perpetual to the Diagram”

I found this idea to be very interesting. I stumbled upon it the other night in the midst of thought about ordering space and place, and what falls where under deductive and inductive reasoning. I believe I asked Brent Cox, which is before the other Space or Nature. He laughed, asked me what I was on, and then said, “Just know Space is perpetual to the Diagram!”

After some pondering, I now know, love, and fully believe that Space is Perpetual to the Diagram.

On Nothingness

If space exists, in Space, then what is outside of Space. What is where there is no Space. Can there be no Space? I think it is a natural progression for my thoughts to come to these ideas of nothingness. While perhaps it is obviating the obvious for existentialist thinking, it also is an area in which I haven’t spent much time. So there is Space and Time occurring, and I have come to wonder what is without Space and Time. I think this may be similar to the ideas of questioning, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, does it exist.

My answer is an obvious, yes! People, much like the Missouri catchphrase “Show-Me”, have a real need for seeing to believe. Seeing adds an experience that they couldn’t emotionally connect to before.

This is similar to the media these days. We have become desensitized to experience of one kind. Natural disasters, death, and for some, aspects of war. When the media reiterates the same ideas ad stories, day in and out, although the people and locations names change, there is a complete disregard to the fact that that event is real. We know there was an earth quake, but we feel no emotional charge about it. It is the experience of physically being in a place which brings the emotion back to the person. Another example would be horror movies. Say you have seen the entire gore-filled collection of Saw movies. The idea of a woman getting her head smashed in by some device with teeth would seem gross still, and would rile the nerves, but not as much as if you were with your friend, and they really had a metal machine crushing their skull. The reality of experience would be so intense, it could actually send you into PTSD. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). So I suppose the media can effectively get an emotional experience across to the viewer, but it must be 1.) something which is presented in a new way 2.) Something which we haven’t seen before “Can’t believe it with your own eyes” experience 3.) An issue which hits close to home (home being personal to each individual).

So when the tree falls, and no one is there to see it, it doesn’t necessarily exist in the space of our minds. We have no knowledge of that tree, so how could we come to know anything that it is doing. If we were made aware of the tree before it fell, then it would be real to us. Yet the tree does fall whether we know of it at the time or not. I have found many a fallen tree. We cannot know about something if we do not know of something.

So this idea of nothingness is quite obvious in the inquisition of Space.

In one of my sketchbooks, while in class, I wrote on an idea about nothingness that came to my thoughts. I had already established this idea for myself that everything is something, and we cannot know nothing if we are something. This may seem confusing, but it is quite simple. Every object, thing, person, place, idea, is something. It is a physicality, or collection of mental data. If everything is something, then what is nothing? Well, if we could give nothing descriptive words such as a void, blank space, or vast emptiness, then we would be assuming that we know nothing. But if we are something we cannot possibly comprehend something that we have never experienced, or will consciously be able to. (Nothingness is quite closely related to emptiness, but it is important to not confuse these two.)

The sketchbook reads

“Nothingness” is not “nowhere”

to be in the middle of

nowhere is somewhere,

and that’s important to myself and my work.

To put a motion light in the middle of nowhere to create place.

Does it then become somewhere when illuminated? [yes]

Does that light create “somewhere” and what happens

When, in day, it is lit with sunlight,

But no one experiences it.

I’m interested in existence and experiencing existence when people are not present

But to be with a lack of my presence, and to fully

Understand

Existence when

No one is watching I

Would have to become nothing somewhere.

But I cannot become

Nothing because I have no knowledge

Of what is not something.

For the blackest hole I can imagine is something, somewhere, and its contents, while I cannot identify them, are contents.

And that’s something.

In talking about nothing I can offer no answers, just arguments, and ideas. It also must be understood that these thoughts can all go a million different directions, but from what has previously influenced me in my life, through a filtering process, has led me to thoughts such as these.

Entropy; Systems theory 5.

Small thoughts.

Entropy: “heat death” –everything spans out, also the total unification of all things. We become one entity as one, without time.

What is unique about ourselves?

“We harness energy by reordering things” Niel Thrun

Eating is the same as war or murder.

The body is comprised of systems boiling. So on the stratum, or surface, you may look cool, calm, and collected, but your body is pumping for stability.

We go beyond that to create systems of organization.

Nature and Artifice don’t need such a great distance.

Science and Biology

There is a basic divide in science and biology as systems. They are very much the same in that they both make and support themselves.

“What we call structural, solid, and persistent is only so because of our time frame.”

Assuming that I may be perceived as an “artist”, then at this point I cannot deny ideas of form and function. I think that they must now be observed as the same thing. When work is observed this way, it will give you an incredible insight into the objects which you were completely unaware of.

The human Skeletal frame is a structure, but now add a billion years.

What we call structure is only structure away from function and form because4 of our deception of time. What is functional is moving away from time.

It is all flowing and moving, they are the same, but we don’t see it from our experience and misapprehension of time.

Notes from the Black Notebook

Sound

When you lower the quality of sound, with recording particularly, you lose the intelligence (technologically), but you gain everything else that is in the song. All of the room tone, flaws, and rawness is gained, thus that is labeled emotion.

People tend to have strong responses to lower resolution.

Pilot Simulation- pilots are more alert with lower resolution screens when going through simulation. Perhaps this is because they have to be more aware to fill in the missing information which they are not getting off the screen. When everything is visually handed to you, there is no need to focus strongly on the image and to work it out. But when the quality of the resolution is lowered, there is much more attention to piecing the image together.

Stream of Conscious of writing 6.

Play with documentation.

With natural investigation, consider who is influencing who, and with experience think about the constant variables.

(Figure A) Space (Figure B) Man/Audio/Audience

I I

Used by man /visual drawing is made

I I

Altered by man/controlled drawing makes space

I I

What controls space? Man makes space

I I

Nature controls Space Man is the measure

I I

God artifice

(Figure C) (Figure D)

Space, Man, God, Audience, Artifice, Space

Space God Man as Audience Man makes Space

(used by) Man Nature visual is made Space

artifice

(altered and controlled) / audience Man \

Man / space

visual

Space artifice

Some confusion here over man vs. Space

Surrogate Space

Places which physically, but do not politically exit.

Feeding into city cameras, surrogate space.

-blend into landscape

-blend into technology

-blend into digital noise

-tons of information gives you a totality of all the information.

Identity Management 7.

If we are in control of our own information, we have a much more accurate view of ourselves.

-cell phones have become the most authentic image

“Collage distorts time, space, and the world it supports into fragments.”

Fragments that could terrify or liberate us from the tyranny of tradition.

Darwin often deifies nature, saying that nature is a her, and sometimes it’s an object.

The world does not need more scientists, it needs more people who realize aesthetics and how we can change what’s around us.

Destroying Space

I could “destroy” Space with fire, crushing etc.. and attempt to destroy space.

HYPOTHESIS:

Space cannot be destroyed, it can be altered. When space exists it exists. If you were to blow up the earth, it will remain in pieces, but its space where it once existed will still be there.

-Create rooms in space, project on them, and burn them.

-could also burn small holes in the grass. “destroyed space”

Can you replant grass immediately? The spots can then become a new space, does old space always become new?

This touches on decay, but I am not interested in dwelling there.

What about water as space?

Can I take away the water and will that create a new space, or just alter space?

Can space be created or destroyed? Place can be. Place can be altered and created.

Can I destroy Space First?

Create | experience

Alter | experience

Destroy | experience

Experience creation birth |

Experience altering life | experience

Experience destroying death |

8.

POLITICS AND ENLIGHTENMENT

You need to separate yourself from what has influenced which you or may not be aware of.

-In a political, commercial, and consumer driven society you must remain awar3e that your information is not meant to be controlled by others. If you were to follow you would not have individual thoughts in your brains.

All brains perform and perhaps we are a machine as a whole. But individual brains are meant for the intricacy of each delicate component of a machine. We must project out our beliefs, but they must be ours, and we must to conform to the information which has influenced us, and continually tries to. Elegance, and Simplicity.

•Now we’re nothing, but I think that’s something, and the world still spins.

PROJECT ION

Inquisitive Experience

Practical Application of theories into Space,

Re-contexturalizing existing Space.

Using the observer as active participant.

Using light, color, iconography, and motion to define and decipher space and it’s trifecta with the audience and the artist

ARCHITECTURE

It is important to remain sensitive to the architecture itself

Break the Frame

Anything is a screen

Instead of the rectangle, try luminous objects or shapes.

Be aware you can give up the frame and focal plane

Ex: camera on chest, breathing, watching ocean, then projecting onto organ pipes, partially focused.

Can be an image, or patter, created to work with the space

“hangings show a window”

integrate into space

Give up a certain space

SOUND 9.

Needs to composite in the environment.

Voices can be nice

Electronic megaphone

Sound | screen

O |

Sound will reflect off buildings, and create space in between he image and the wall. This can be a nice play, and also a disconnect. It must receive sensitivity.

If you do need sound, put two speakers by the wall at a 45 degree angle, so that the wall hits, and then bounces back out at the viewer, so the sound essentially comes from the wall.

Gov’t Monument, people in public memorial spaces.

KC gay culture is a great target.

The memorial by Penn Valley is so close to the gay area, “Memorial for gay space”

-history

-time

PARTICIPATION

The idea for my work is that I have researched these ideas on space and place and have come to what I believe to be a firm belief in my findings. Now, rather than doing field work just for myself, it is important to start getting these ideas out there into public space for others to be aware of as well.

The audience, or observer should be as an active participant.

It is not art until it is viewed.

(Much like the tree which has fallen yet no one knows).

The participation should call us out and beyond ourselves.

CALLING [YOU] OUT 10.

Spotted by the Light

Spotlight/Documentation

Materials

2 strong strobe lights

-power source

2 snoot

at least 3-4 documenters

2 get away vehicles

means of communication between the ground and s1 and s2 (spotlights)

2-3 still cameras

2-3video

BASIC IDEA

S1____________S2 (strobes higher off the ground than street level)

\ /

\ /

\ /

\ /

ground

1. Ttwo strobes, one on each side of the street, at least 1 story above.

2. Two documenting members down below on the street (still and video), as well as one by S1 and another at S2

3. Documents should focus on trying to catch both close up illuminations (chest up) if facial expression seems more relevant, and also farther shots capturing the strobes from the light source to ground. Also include B-roll shots

DIGITAL STILL DOCUMENTATION 11.

There are three main kinds of shots I am looking for in this piece. As the piece can only live through documentation, it is important to try to capture as much as possible, Quantity with Quality.

A. Close up/detail- Shots from the chest up, with the person filling most of the frame. All shots should capture gesture and/or facial reaction to being spot lit. Close ups can stray a bit in terms of being chest up. It also is meant to focus on details. Maybe they are holding something, which plays into the illumination, or they have a great shadow at their feet.

B. Mid-range- Catches action of somewhat close surroundings. The person should have their full body in the frame, and their body should also take up about 2/3 of the frame. These shots are for catching the entire body in the light, as well as interactions between two people who are caught by light.

C. Far-B Roll- These shots should establish the scene and location, giving both lights from source to street room.

When shooting:

1. Any interactions between people who are being spot lit should be captured if possible, as well as any interactions or gestures from the people towards the camera when spot lit, or towards the lights (s1 &s2).

2. Being with the farther B-roll Shots first, as soon as we arrive. Set up shots of the area, the people who are out and about, as well as when the lights first come on. After you feel that you have set up the scene well, please try to focus on the detail shots, and midrange, as they are very important.

3. Shoot as many as you can, and don’t stop until you are signaled to leave by s1 and s2. There will be constant contact between the people on the ground and the people with the spotlights. If for any reason you get stopped, politely leave, or just run away. DO NOT give them names or information.

4. Everyone who is documenting needs to get everyone else’s number at the beginning, so if we are separated we can all contact each other.

5. No man will be left behind. If it is a situation where people must run and split up, try to get to the vehicle, and if the vehicle must leave, circle around while contacting everyone who rode in the vehicle, and arrange to pick them up elsewhere.

6. If the spot lights get stopped by police or security before the cameras, try to document the altercation.

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION 12.

There are three main kinds of shots I am looking for in this piece. As it will be somewhat difficult to capture these people being spot lit, please try to use the camera as SMOOTHLY as possible. I will show you in camera smooth cam if you would like before the shoot. The three shots we are looking for are:

A. Close up/detail- Shots from the chest up, with the person filling most of the frame. All shots should capture gesture and/or facial reaction to being spot lit. Close ups can stray a bit in terms of being chest up. It also is meant to focus on details. Maybe they are holding something, which plays into the illumination, or they have a great shadow at their feet.

B. Mid-range- Catches action of somewhat close surroundings. The person should have their full body in the frame, and their body should also take up about 2/3 of the frame. These shots are for catching the entire body in the light, as well as interactions between two people who are caught by light.

C. Far-B Roll- These shots should establish the scene and location, giving both lights from source to street room.

When shooting, please allow the shot time to breathe. If you capture a person in the light, it would be great to hold the camera on that person until the light goes off and hits a different person.

1. Farther shots are important at first. We need the same far shots [c] as the still cameras. It is important that both the video and still cameras try to capture all of the same things. We need the ground covered by both to be similar.

2. After you are comfortable with the far documentation, it is then alright, and preferable that you try to capture each person from mid to close range.

3. Also, if you are documenting from above with the spotlights, please make sure to include the artist with the spotlight, and also the people on the street.