The Slow Long Eye Tardigrade (Slow Walker) The Long Now Molecular Twitter Party 8-10-09
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have,and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people
spend it for you. - Carl Sandburg
Painter Richard Meyers, a partner in Chordata, began a series launching off from Paul Klee's Twittering Machine painting (which is a rather small, translucent work in the Museum of Modern Art in New York). I am the Twittering Machine and Richard is not and this has led to hot "thought performances" (a reference to Paul Valery. Paul Valery said he was "sociable on the surface,singularist and separatist in my depths." His was a "conscious dialectic of surface and depths."). What follows will be a rambling Twitteresque dialectic (?) or a strange,elastic timeline. This series was an attempt to see if the paintings that resulted (and the images are of studies,not finished works....to illustrate the complexity of thought process that goes on in the creation of art) could be offered via Twitter (among other related "offerings"). Paintings are a one on one experience. There is no way to convey what goes on in a painting via digital media. "My Hand to Your Brain" is how RIchard puts it. There is no substitute for this direct experience and this then leads to the notion of place and space, the "ground", locality versus virtual social interaction. Surface and depths.
We were curious to see if someone on Twitter got (bought for a song!) a physical painting (and they are large scrolls) delivered to their home and they lived with it,touched it,inhabited the same space with it:Would this affect them on a deeper level? Many of us Twitterers see our lives as blended: both virtual and "real" ,each enhancing the other. Richard has questioned the virtual and whether it will always be just skittering across the surface,hollowing out our humanity. He may question the way I'm putting this,but essentially it comes down to: Are we better neighbours and friends, aware of our common humanity (more the same than different) as a result of social media?
CHORDATA STUDIO APRIL 09 Notes on "Gravity Conquers Chordata".What does
Chordata do and how does it work (or does it)? Microscope to look at waterbears. It's too bad that we didn't record these conversations (but merciful for all of you probably). Here is the latest email from Richard ,which I think refers to surface and depths.perception and reality. Richard: Metamerism: Used to describe the undesirable effect sometimes exhibited when two matching colors differ from each other when viewed under another kind of light. Matching and composition of substance are radically different ideas. The composition of substance is the more interesting by far...........................
................yes? Liz: Yes. What is interesting to me is not so much the color theory definitions of Metamerism, but those we find in Chemistry. The reference for the Molecular Twitter Party is Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus/Capitalism and Schizophrenia). "To confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself. "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference." (this is from Negotiations). Deleuze ultimately seemed to me to be interested in a pragmatic philosophy (like Robert Pirsig). Not "What is it?, but rather "How Does It Work?" or "What Does It Do?" (Twitter: "What Are You Doing?") Metamerism in chemistry refers to different SUBSTANCES that contain the same elements in the same proportions and having the same molecular weight.
Explain THAT....
This Paul Klee Book is an example of serendipity. It goes to illustrate something about
the long eye. When Richard began the Twittering Machine inspired work, I didn't know about it.
When he mentioned he was exploring this track,in a flash (a lightning bolt), I remembered that I still had this
Paul Klee book. I bought it from a used bookstore in New York when I was 14 and it has been with me,wherever I roamed, ever since. I used to go into MOMA almost weekly and one of the paintings that mesmerized me was The Twittering Machine. Klee had a huge impact on me related to poetry and this winds itself into the present with an interest in "Asemic" poetry or "post-literate" poetry.
I gave this book to Richard as It seems I carried it with me all these years,just waiting to give it to him.And so it goes with asynchronous and synchronous time.PAINTING GOES WHERE WORDS CANNOT (or,Language is a slippery slope) All of the images to follow were taken in April at Chordata Studio. Colors are not accurate. If you were here, they'd look different on that day in Spring. Each would see the colors differently anyway and it's said that men and women have different color perception.NOTE: EDIT/Posterous messed up the image sequence so beautiful timeline is no more. Ha...the joke's on me for using all this splendid free tech.
Explain THAT....
the long eye. When Richard began the Twittering Machine inspired work, I didn't know about it.
When he mentioned he was exploring this track,in a flash (a lightning bolt), I remembered that I still had this
Paul Klee book. I bought it from a used bookstore in New York when I was 14 and it has been with me,wherever I roamed, ever since. I used to go into MOMA almost weekly and one of the paintings that mesmerized me was The Twittering Machine. Klee had a huge impact on me related to poetry and this winds itself into the present with an interest in "Asemic" poetry or "post-literate" poetry.
I gave this book to Richard as It seems I carried it with me all these years,just waiting to give it to him.And so it goes with asynchronous and synchronous time.PAINTING GOES WHERE WORDS CANNOT (or,Language is a slippery slope) All of the images to follow were taken in April at Chordata Studio. Colors are not accurate. If you were here, they'd look different on that day in Spring. Each would see the colors differently anyway and it's said that men and women have different color perception.NOTE: EDIT/Posterous messed up the image sequence so beautiful timeline is no more. Ha...the joke's on me for using all this splendid free tech.
This sequence is out of order but let's just say that elements in it show how when he took
the "line for a walk", simplicity begins to take over...as deceptively simple as a Japanese calligraphic
scroll, there's almost no there "there." Metamorphosis of an idea. See below where the line went.
Art + Music Centered. Period. Image 2 is on panel and is
liftoff point for Richard as he jettisons Twittering Machine boosters. Upstretched beaks reaching towards
light? All related.
Entity...the surface begins to disintegrate...Still the painter is nowhere
near where he wants to be (still isn't...is still struggling & still starving....)
Credit: J. S. Pezaris, adapted with permission from D. H. Hubel
and...Enjoy the Deleuze Lego in Cologne: W Wordsworth on Newton...."Voyaging through strange seas
of thought, alone."
