Thank you! And I wonder if you might not make a garden of forking paths yourself, how all of these things relate to you, and cross-relate to each through you? That's what's fascinating to me, and full of interest! And that leads elsewhere of course. It's a bit like Kabbalah (something else I have trouble following!)
Best!, Alan On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 4:14 PM Max Herman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Alan, > > Yes far too many bits and pieces on my part, apologies for that! > > I've been in the habit lately of assembling excessively large lists of > fragments and trying to see patterns, which often are not there. Note to > self, this process is not a final product! 🙂 > > Did very much enjoy the *Resonances* book/let however, so many thanks > again, > > Max > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on > behalf of Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour < > [email protected]> > *Sent:* Friday, October 30, 2020 2:51 PM > *To:* NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity < > [email protected]> > *Cc:* Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [NetBehaviour] Resonances 1970-2020 > > Hi Max, > > I have a hard time following you; I trace very little myself back to > Leonardo; I haven't corresponded with Hofstadter, I read Calvino years ago > but haven't drawn anything from him, and so forth. For example, it doesn't > matter to me whether Leonardo drew the spirals or not or what relevance > that has. I was drawing figures that could only reverse by pulling them out > of 3-dim and turning them in 4; this is the usual stuff about gloves - to > make a left-handed glove right-handed, you'd have to turn it in 4 > dimensions, an impossibility of course. There's lots of writing on this > stuff. As far as the Quanta article goes, I can't comment either; Susskind > and Hawking have argued this as have thousands of other physicists. We're > very much on the outside of actual research, and without the mathematics, > for me, I'd just be playing around. I worked w/ David Finkelstein at one > point, proofreading his stuff as I mentioned somewhere I think, and he also > felt the divide - "time" in physics doesn't translate easily into daily > life for example. > > One thing I'm sure you've looked at? Mandlebrot's fractals - but also > fractal theory itself; that's heavily related to all that self-similarity > stuff of moving in and out; I've even worked with plotting/mapping fractal > paths in QBasic years ago; check out Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of > Science, Mandebrot's book, etc. etc. Or for that matter, work on surreal > numbers or studies of the continuum. The problem is you can find anything > anywhere, I think, if you jump metaphorically from one place to another. > For me, I'd look at Euclid closely and then jump to 19th-century > geometricians, then maybe dimension studies, etc. I can understand using > Leonardo as a basis, but I think you might try doing that just as well with > say Caravaggio, or painters like Pontormo and Fiorentino who were breaking > with totality. I love your writing, by the way, just not sure where it's > going and its veering seems to loosely lose its subject at times, at least > for me; I'd rather have a better grasp of mathematics and mathesis than > Leonardo or any other literary figure. > > For me, I know I don't know recursive function theory, and that's what I'd > need here. I used Rosza Peter's Recursive Functions book, which I couldn't > follow in its entirety; I also spoke to mathematicians at the time. I was > fascinated by Wittgenstein's TLP, in particular the use of primitive > functions not-both-a-and-b and neither-a-nor-be, not this not that. I did > understand that well enough to write on them and that was published in a > philosophy journal. > > The picture of the knot is beautiful; you'll find similar things in > Islamic architecture. Erasing WCBS was a metaphor for a return to a ground > state, an empty carrier wave which is already a contradiction, since > carrier waves are at specific frequencies. I was also interested and > wrote/talked about the idea of a news "story" since "story" implies a whole > bundle of conventions - stories are "killed" for example (which parallels > the killing of a process in linux, and all those metaphors in operating > systems from daily/organic life). > > For me, these are all different worlds; I majors in English lit. in > college (unfortunately), studied some physical anthropology, got Brown's > first MA in creative writing poetry after studying Middle English, and have > found no place to rest/roost since. > > Keep going! > > Alan, thanks! > > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 12:52 PM Max Herman via NetBehaviour < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > One other thought Alan, have you ever corresponded with Hofstadter? He is > still working at the University of Indiana and would understand much more > than I can about the series and set theory you discuss. I contacted him > about the many references by Calvino in *Six Memos* to his book *GEB*, > and he replied that he had never heard of such references and knows of but > has not read *Six Memos*. > > I think it could lead to a great conversation if Hofstadter was to read *Six > Memos*, and its contemplation of poetry and math, but I have no idea how > to motivate him to do so! I floated the idea of an article about *Six > Memos* and *GEB *to a well-known author who had interest for a time but > got too busy. 🙁 > > Must keep trying, I suppose, just like our redoubtable hero of the > *Odyssey!* 🙂 > > ------------------------------ > *From:* NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on > behalf of Max Herman via NetBehaviour <[email protected] > > > *Sent:* Friday, October 30, 2020 11:21 AM > *To:* NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity < > [email protected]> > *Cc:* Max Herman <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [NetBehaviour] Resonances 1970-2020 > > > Hi Alan, > > Just read this now, it is extremely relevant I think! > > First off, the spirals in the JPG Leonardo pretty much drew those > constantly from what I can tell in the notebooks. > > The "removal" you write of might correspond, I wonder, to the idea of > "less" in the novel. Because, in a way, when you do a recursion and return > back to and resume from where you were the recursion "disappears"; but of > course not really. Or, in what what does it and in what way does it not? > > I saw this article from Quanta yesterday after writing about all this > chiastic structure stuff and *Less *to my three mathematician friends > (who correct me constantly): > > https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-black-hole-information-paradox-comes-to-an-end-20201029/ > I'm not qualified to judge the validity of the physics being discussed, but > the visuals are evocative and seem to echo the removal/trace idea you > describe. > > The concept of the 4-hour tape being made and erased reminds me a bit of > Bjorn's concept of works that do not exist. But in a way, they do? > > I asked my mathematician friends what if anything in math might compare to > chiasmus, and one replied that anti-isomorphism would. This makes sense to > me, because "antimetabole" (or reverse change) is a sub-type of chiasmus > where the words are exact matches (all for one and one for all). > > Here is a potential text chiasmus from Leonardo; the first sentence > resembles ABCD-BADC: > Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting > which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either > poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they > penetrate to the intellect.A Treatise on Painting (1651); "The Paragone"; > compiled by Francesco Melzi prior to 1542, first published as Trattato > della pittura by Raffaelo du Fresne (1651) > > Actually now I'm kind of "tripping out" because the Leonardo sentence is a > "linked" chiasmus pair exactly like the links in the neckline of the *Mona > Lisa*. > > Here is an image Leonardo made for his "academy" which was, I think, an > imagination: > https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1877-0113-365 > > In reading the Resonances pamphlet, the reference to symmetry and > encoding/decoding on page 7 makes sense. With Leonardo, I'm trying to > understand if there is kind of a text/image method going on that he wants > us to first "figure out," then "listen to," (or in his term, "experience" > or "esperienza"). One idea I have is that we are meant to look at the Mona > Lisa as a mirror equal of ourselves i.e. a peer (not servant or master). > Then we are meant to notice the difference between the living awareness, > which is present (the person), inanimate nature (the rock/water landscape), > and the art/technology flows (which are the garment and the bridge). The > whole composition is then chiastic, in a way, kind of based on a symmetry, > but "dislodged" if you will by the passage of time (which I see as > represented by the shallow, inverted V of the horizon line, splitting > "before" if you will on the left from "after" on the right, with the apex > somewhere around the sitter's eye). This dislodgement would yield for > example a spiral or helix rather than a point rotating around a circle. > So, your reference to extrapolating to higher dimensions (mainly 2 to 3 I > think for Leonardo) and rotating are very much part of the Mona Lisa, > especially if on views (as I do) the notebooks as a fundamental part of the > Mona Lisa, the latter being in a sense merely an anchor or fulcrum with > which to leverage the preservation of the notebooks or more accurately what > the notebooks represent. Hence the knot, VICI, etc. Maybe relates to the > IPL ideas of stack etc. too, but I know virtually nothing about computers. > > I had never heard of Greer before reading *Less *last week so my take on > him is brand new; but since he lives in SF among SV people and half-time in > Tuscany among Calvino readers I can see how he would go into these kinds of > inquiries. > > One article I found argues that Nabokov in *Pale Fire* was actually > referring more to *Hamlet*, which he did not state openly, than to *Timon > of Athens*, which he did. The phrase "pale fire" is from Hamlet, but > appears interrupted by other words. > > Here is a quote from Wikipedia: > > Explanation of the title > As Nabokov pointed out himself,[14] the title of John Shade's poem is from > Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale > fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a > metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but > does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate > Zemblan translation of the play "in his Timonian cave", and in a separate > note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as > titles. > Some critics have noted a secondary reference in the book's title to > Hamlet, where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his > uneffectual fire" (Act I, scene 5).[15] > The title is first mentioned in the foreword: "I recall seeing him from my > porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of [index cards of > drafts of the poem] in the pale fire of the incinerator...". > > Now, one possibility we must consider is that Nabokov was lying or > concealing when he said that the title was from Timon. Why would he do > that? Well, I think for a range of reasons but one is simply to assert > that art is not passive. The artist does not deliver it to us like a > package in the mail. There is much assembly required! 🙂 Or as Hamlet > said, why would the artist want to let the viewers play him like a flute? > Also, Greer mentions glow-worms several times, which to me blares "yes it's > a reference to Hamlet everybody" but that is my bias. (I see Hamlet and > Oedipus in many works -- Oedipus is the chiastic hero detecting and > punishing his own crime -- such as in *Less *when the protagonist steps > on a sewing needle.) > > If this is true, then Greer's reference to Lolita in *Less *might be more > a reference to Pale Fire, and his reference to the Last Supper might be > more a reference to the Mona Lisa, and his reference to aging backwards > might also be a reference to Dorian Gray. But they might not! I could be > projecting, but in a sense projection is also "on purpose," in the sense of > all probabilities playing themselves out. > > For example: it struck me while reading *Less *that he mentions > everything in the fictional world tour being closed, or already passed, or > not happening yet, so the protagonist misses almost everything. This hit > me rather sharply, because one of the main reason I got to thinking about > the Mona Lisa in summer 2019 was because the Louvre was closed on the day I > had planned to visit. My companion and I just had to read the sheet of > paper on the door of the glass pyramid "closed due to one-day staff strike > to protest the excess number of visitors" and walk around the square. It > was still a very vivid memory however. > > Or in another reference from the book, it mentions "the spiral nature of > being" and Nietzsche's eternal return. I had always thought of this as > "modernity always having to return to antiquity, as in daily" or the > present/future always having to digest the past, or not being able to jump > over your own shadow. But maybe it is not that -- maybe it is about the > universe being born, expanding to total entropy, collapsing again in a big > crunch, and starting over. I don't know which it is, both, neither; > uncertainty persists. > > One note on Greer is that if Calvino's *Six Memos* was a reading list and > syllabus for America in 1985, which Calvino died before being able to > deliver to us in person (though he concretely imagined doing so), Greer has > probably completed the course. *Less *is a mixed book however, it seems > to me, something too overdone about it, but that is very well just me > projecting. In fact, one image in the book is about the kaiseki meal -- > overdone, done, underdone, so to speak, one cannot seek perfect > homeostasis. There's no such thing. Or as Blake said, "Enough! or too > much." > > Your page 7 item 6 reminds me of one of the first videos I made, in about > 1996. I taped a newspaper of stock prices to the wall and sat in front of > it kind of ranting about what a novel is, and I think ended up on "the > novel is the novel," more or less totally incoherent and certainly > terrible, a memory tinged with nausea. Another interesting Quanta item > from a couple of weeks ago has some good visuals of quantum mapping, with > one 3-d movable diagram if you scroll way down at this link: > https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-map-of-the-standard-model-of-particle-physics-20201022/ > > Page 9 in your book/let starts to get pretty complex so I will have to > revisit. But great reference, many thanks, and nicely done! > > All best wishes and regards, > > Max > > PS -- just skimming through the pages after 9: black hole/shell on p. 15 > with mention of "lessening" echoes *Less *and the Quanta article about > black holes as shells; p. 16 reminds of many Leonardo notations and his > drawing of the uterus; story and expiration on p. 17 reminds me of an old > joke to self of "reading the oldspaper" and Thoreau's critique of news; > p.26 the "inconsistency" of the circle twisting into an infinity sign which > I think of as chiastic perhaps, from the Greek "chiazein" "to shape into > the form of an 'x,'"; p. 27 is interesting about the poetic, reminding me > of the "contemplative aesthetic" implicit in "predictive regulation," which > Peter Sterling terms "allostasis" and places as a more important ring of > complexity around homeostasis as a building framework of all biological > life -- allowing greater processing of energy into work -- and what is > prediction but imagination, or recursive chiasmus selected in time? I > forgot to mention, the earlier drawings in the book/let remind of meiosis, > which is I think is the main genetic application of the term chiasmata. > > PPS -- I have a piece going into a museum on Sunday, based on the number > 27, will post announcement to list. 🙂 > > PPPS -- one question, have you ever heard of Nietzsche's "transvaluation > of all values"? I view him as more or less the Enemy, but that idea is > somewhat relevant I sometimes think or at least suspect, or I least I > sometimes have wondered what he meant by it, quite likely something totally > evil or almost so. > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on > behalf of Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Thursday, October 29, 2020 4:14 PM > *To:* NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity < > [email protected]> > *Subject:* [NetBehaviour] Resonances 1970-2020 > > > > Resonances > > http://www.alansondheim.org/resonances/resonances001.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/resonances/ > > In 1971 I showed at the Bykert Gallery in Manhattan; it was > accompanied by a 32 page book/let describing the theory behind > the work. I was interested in mathematical symmetries, both in > terms of reflections and ground states. I forgot about the show > and book/let for a long time, thinking that the math in it was > faulty and next to useless; I also had difficulties following my > own terse approach. Recently I went back and carefully reread > what I had written, and it suddenly made sense, and for me had > implications in relation to digital constructs and phenomenology. > (The book/let was RESONANCES, Alan Sondheim, ppress, 1971, in an > edition of 200. The work is almost entirely from 1970. Klaus > Kertess ran the gallery; Mary Boone was the gallery assistant at > the time.) > > I was working with the idea of blank ground states in relation to > otherwise content. So a ground state might be designated [] or in > other words, not designated. Place a non-symmetrical symbol on []. > There are possible operations of rotation and translation within > []. I considered a 2-dimensional sheet of assertion. I wasn't > concerned with raster; I assumed none. Rotation and translation > might be made in relation to a second symbol. I assumed that if T > was such an operation, T' might be its reversal. In identity of > course, TT = T'T' since nothing changes. What was of much greater > interest was the actual _placing_ of a symbol or symbols on a blank > ground state. Consider the placing an operation T. Then T' might be > the removal of the symbol or symbols. The ground state might be > anything, that sheet of assertion, a rock, a soccer game, a > gesture. On a macroscopic level, removal is never pure, never > perfect; traces are left. On a theoretical level, removal is > possible and that's where I was. So the world seethes with the > potential for the symbolic, for marking, for demarcation; the world > is (and yes, this is a fiction, non-sense) ground; entropy ensures > that nothing reverses on a macroscopic level. Yes, but I was and > find myself still interested in the ground as potentially seething. > So for example I can consider a book or a national constitution as > the result of a heavily fuzzily indefinite set S of operations or > {T}, and then a reversal S' as {T'} and even the elements of T and > T', however defined, need not be equivalent. It's as if there's a > process of _lifting_. The example I used was a radio news broadcast > (thinking WCBS or WINS, NYC) and there is this accompanying > statement: > > a four hour tape of [WCBS] was produced and erased > 11/70 > > So there are several things at work here: sheets or basins or > worlds of assertion; possible operations within or upon the sheets > (or basins); "inverse" operations that reverse those possible > operations; other operations that (re: Weyl) manipulate symbols > within the sheets or basins, by affine or other translations; other > operations that require "leaving" the sheet or basin and returning > - for example b and d transform only by a move from 2 dim to 3 or > high dim, etc.; and finally, operations that _undo,_ annihilate, > and/or eliminate those operations which created the symbols in the > first place. In this sense, and only in this sense of course (this > is fiction), mathematics and logic are _doing_ mathematics and > logic, and symbols may be both or either epistemological (i.e. > tan(x)) or ontological within a given framework (i.e. x, or better > perhaps [x] , []). > > This does nothing in reality; it might even be considered and > rightfully so, a mathematically naive mess. I believe mathematics > represents ideal forms, (as did Godel btw), that it's ontologically > coherent and existent, but _applied_ mathematics, if it takes into > account the idea of a sheet of assertion, (Mathematica notebook for > example), it might also take into account those operations that > send the symbols on the sheet, as we as the sheet itself, into - > not only a null state, but a non-existent one. > > I'm not sure any of this is clear; my knowledge of mathematics is > close to non-existent. And the math itself is just _wrong._ But you > know, you might think of the process of _lifting_ from a ground > (however defined) as a form of cultural annihilation, just as radio > news (and by implication, perhaps, any other news form or medium) > disappears, is always already in the formation of disappearance, as > it is absorbed - not only by the passage of time rendering news > useless qua news, but also by the continuous decay of physical > artifacts that ostensibly carried, embodied, reproduced, the > signals themselves as records/recordings. The digital acts as a > retardant of course; its ideality is the perfection of reproduction > and perhaps even the lack of any original - but this also depends > on a whole matrix/network of physical storage. The past not only > recedes from us; it disappears as signal or object, as ontology or > imminence. And that's what the operation of _lifting,_ of [x] -> [] > is about. > > Later: I'm putting up almost the entire publication with the texts > and diagrams. Thinking about the sheet of assertion - this of > course can be anything at all, a cloud, speaking (into the air), > and so forth. The substrate is anonymous, anomalous; it needn't > have any sort of symmetrical substructure which a pixel raster does > of course. A raster can also be removed; there might be layers > spiraling downward. Covid dissipates in the air, remains longer in > the 4-dimensional interiority of a room (x,y,z,t), especially if a > fan is absent. Virus particles sign in, are signed in, passive and > active tenses are moot. No DNA, fossil or otherwise, remains > forever. [x] -> [] might be a process of debris; accompanied by the > broken character armors of anxiety and depression. When things fall > apart, there might be no things. What are things are what we call > things, what we call them to us. > > There's more, part of what the short book/let pamphlet is about, > something written poorly (bad math again) about recursive functions > and a play off Ackermann's function which I never truly understood. > I think of coagulations: repeated additions of a unit results in > multiplication, for example 2+2+2 = 2x3; 2x2x2 = 2^3 and so forth. > I became interested in the reverse, and use the symbol 'o' for the > operation, a kind of gateway and noticing. For example, 3o3o3 = 6. > The repetition just increments; 2o2 = 4 (as usual), and 1o1o1 = 4 > as well. The operator itself carries the increment. Just as > addition might metaphorically refer to a gathering of objects, 'o' > might refer to a set of notices. Okay, this is pushing things too > far and I'm not a mathematician. But it seems interesting to mess > around with recursion in this way. And naturally one can also > produce the natural number series; start with 0, then 0o0 = 2. What > happened to 1? Think of 'o' as fundamental; then 0o = 1. My god > what have we here? Demarcation of course; before a unit length is > agreed upon, we have to think about the act of noticing. The act of > noticing also establishes a domain or sheet or region of assertion. > > So far off track, there might be a kernel here or a kernel of > something of interest. In any case the relevant sections are up > online. The show was a success. > > http://www.alansondheim.org/resonances/resonances001.jpg > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > > > -- > *=====================================================* > > *directory http://www.alansondheim.org <http://www.alansondheim.org> tel > 718-813-3285 **email sondheim ut panix.com <http://panix.com>, sondheim > ut gmail.com <http://gmail.com>* > *=====================================================* > -- *=====================================================* *directory http://www.alansondheim.org <http://www.alansondheim.org> tel 718-813-3285**email sondheim ut panix.com <http://panix.com>, sondheim ut gmail.com <http://gmail.com>* *=====================================================*
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