Hi Paul, Such an interesting post and image, thank you!
In your signature, I see a kind of A-B-B'-A' or "chiasmus" pattern, which I learned about just last year: (*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#) asterisk, plus, number, equals number, equals, asterisk, plus equals, number, plus, asterisk plus, asterisk, equals, number or: 1-2-3-4 3-4-1-2 4-3-2-1 2-1-4-3 I'm not especially knowledgeable about such permutations, maybe they are standard in some context? But recursive loop is what I associate it with and this applies to lots of settings -- literature, geometry, knots, really very many contexts. In the natural world helical and rotation patterns seems to resemble it in a sense, like the vines populating in yards this time of year in my climate zone. The floor pattern you mention is also super interesting. The geometry itself in your photo is very unique and striking, how it looks kind of like a labyrinth pattern but it has lots of associations like a diagram, path, even a story perhaps but also a place. So many of the places people mention lately, like ancient towns, have this story-path mix. I was reminded of the floors of the Duomo in Florence which I visited in 2019 for the first time. The floors are really interesting and geometrical, and with the giant clock in the Duomo caused me to wonder if the whole structure is kind of about time in a way. The way one walks over, through, and within the geometry of the floors is very interesting. They also look very modern, so I wonder if I'm misconstruing them as part of the Duomo -- were they added in the 1800's? I assume not, and even the exterior of the Duomo looks so oddly modern in its patterns, but I could be wrong. I haven't done any kind of food art that I can recall but of course it's very interesting and has millennia of parallels. (Actually, in the book I just finished about Leonardo I included a little vignette about eating a wild grape I found during a walk by the river and it was one of my favorite parts of the book -- and the walk.) The social, community aspect of the great photo you include (which I didn't know was possible on list?) is very palpable. It really extends the geometric pattern to another sphere so to speak, the people who participated and all their perceptions before, during, and after the event. It makes me wonder in what ways all art is generative art so to speak. I'm sure this has been said before though. I was thinking this morning about Dante for a book I'm trying about his relationship to Leonardo, a book prompted by a book about Leonardo that was absolutely prompted by my visit to Florence and the Duomo in spring 2019 and the semi-coeval pandemic that followed shortly after. Dante called his book just Comedia, the old spelling of commedia, which means just "comedy" and in Dante's era meant, from what I can gather, "story" of the sort that was about ordinary life and did not end in tragedy. I had been thinking of someone's use of "convivial" to describe the list, a term that reminded me of Dante's pre-Comedia book Convivio (Banquet) which is about people sharing knowledge as they share food. Dante outlines a lot of his scientific ideas in the Convivio and I'm trying to understand them a bit; he also outlines a kind of philosophy of art, imagination, psychology, poetry, painting, and so forth. For whatever reason I got to associating the names Comedia and Convivio, and it got me wondering if comedy relates at all to "eating together," i.e. comestible, etc. I don't see that in the etymology site I use, but "komos" meant festival I guess which might have been associated with eating. It's terribly unrigorous, this way of word-associating, and of course there may be zero valid connection between comedy and eating etymologically, but it had me thinking anyway. Then I was reminded of Cattelan's Comedian from a year or two ago. I don't know much about Cattelan, just what one reads in the papers so to speak, but I do know he created a golden toilet (which was in the media relating to a spat over loaning artwork to the previous president, and then again for being stolen I think) and a work in which he "sold" his gallerist. So, kind of conceptual and performance art perhaps is a common thread. In any case, the Comedian was written about at the time for being a work documented and sold using a digital certificate if I recall. Again, not sure how or if this relates to the recent discussion here. In trying to "decipher" the work, a task which is perhaps some core part of every art work, commentators mentioned that "bananas are comical because people slip on them and it is deemed funny." I guess Cattelan had also used bananas in previous works. Comedian was a banana taped to the wall, in three reproductions, so people kind of said "it's a joke on the art world." Fair enough. Then however I wondered if it could have been a kind of chiasmus, where the duct tape crossing the banana was a motif. Seemed unlikely. Then I wondered, since I associate chiasmus with Leonardo's works, if Comedian could be a reference to the Mona Lisa, Lisa del Giocondo, La Joconde, the jocund one, the jokester. Aristotle was a major source for Dante, and he said that comedy was a way to process emotion via laughter in contrast to tragedy, which was by tears (to simplify a bit). I absolutely don't want to situate your work "eat your place in space" in any kind of a shadow, whatsoever, or preliminarity with regards to Cattelan's work. I also don't mean to suggest that the Leonardo reference (if true) makes or confirms Comedian as a "great work of art." I'm probably not qualified to criticize Comedian but I think on a basic level I would have "concerns" about it even or especially if it's a reference to Leonardo. In fact, I would say that even if Cattelan is making such references "he gets Leonardo wrong," just as I think the art world -- the world I suppose -- gets Leonardo wrong. I'd say that your work "eat your place in space" at least in how I see it presented by your email has more in harmony with Leonardo as I understand his work. Of course I can't prove this, but if I had to try to offer reasons I would say that Leonardo was critical of today's world, including its art world, in advance; he was as skeptical of the "great artist" paradigm as he was aware of his place at the pinnacle of it; and his goal was to assist the down to earth and decent in human life in its evidently long-shot attempt to survive the slick and fabulous -- a survival which he associated with the very survival of humanity and the planet itself. Again thanks for posting, and my apologies if this reply is way off base! All best, Max ________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf of Paul Hertz via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 1:01 PM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> Cc: Paul Hertz <igno...@gmail.com> Subject: [NetBehaviour] Eat your place in space Always words, words on the list. Let me offer you some cake. This is from the very first iteration of "A comer tu lugar en el espacio" / "Eat your place in space," in the Palau Maricel, Sitges, Spain, Fall 1982. The work consists of a geometric tiling design on the floor, usually done with tape, and the same design on a cake. Participants take a piece of cake and walk over to the corresponding spot on the floor, where they eat their location in space. The design was based on a generative system I was developing at the time, later known as IgnoTheory. The cake was made by my friend Marcelino Chacon, a skilled pastry chef. He decorated the cake with cocoa powder and different dried fruits. Our young son is looking on in anticipation, as is the pianist Charles Miles. The work has been repeated various times, notably in 1992 in Chicago. I ate my place in space and I am still here. Some of the participants, I've never seen again. [X] -- ----- (*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)| | --- http://paulhertz.net/
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