Hi Alan, A long reflection I wrote yesterday, no need to read but feel free if you wish! 🙂
+++ Today I was reading Canto 10, the first episode inside the gates of Purgatorio, and what does Dante see first? Paintings! (Sort of.) https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-10/ His first encounter, after passing the Gate to the strains of music and a brief but tangled rocky climb through "the eye of the needle" up to the first terrace, is with low-relief carvings, three, in a white wall of marble. Though still and silent, he "hears" them talking and singing, they are so perfect, the first visible things on this level which is "a plateau lonelier than desert paths." These carved images of "visible speech" -- visibile parlare -- show Dante and Virgil the examples of good behavior (to contrast with the nearby real spirits who did not do right and carry heavy burdens of voluntary self-reassessment). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sandro_Botticelli%27s_illustrations_to_the_Divine_Comedy#/media/File:Botticelli,_Purgatorio_10.jpg The confusing and sense-confounding character of these imaginative carvings is worth noting, and persists throughout Purgatorio and the Commedia, as in this example where a carving "made two of my senses speak—one sense said, 'No,' the other said, 'Yes, they do sing'; just so, about the incense smoke shown there, my nose and eyes contended, too, with yes and no." Dante says that not only Polycletus but nature itself is outdone by these images, and goes on to describe "seeing" a conversation between the figures in the third image, the dialogue seeming to occur sequentially like a film even though the image is fixed: 'Among that crowd, the miserable woman seemed to be saying: “Lord, avenge me for the slaying of my son—my heart is broken.” And he was answering: “Wait now until I have returned.” And she, as one in whom grief presses urgently: “And, lord, if you do not return?” And he: “The one who’ll be in my place will perform it for you.” She: “What good can others’ goodness do for you if you neglect your own?” He: “Be consoled; my duty shall be done before I go: so justice asks, so mercy makes me stay.” This was the speech made visible....' Virgil guides Dante's approach to visual art just as he does for poetry: “Your mind must not attend to just one part,” he says, advising Dante not to linger too much over any detail of the images like a greenhorn or tourist. At risk of hypocrisy here, noticing this from your dialogue: "the body not as an element of techne but as an interalized and politicized flow which is among other things a problem within and without a digital or rather the digital can be seen as a carapace or virus in relation to the body." I'm not very knowledgeable about this realm of theory but it seems like the metaphor or allegory of river as flow juxtaposed to bridge, canal, and engineering could be compared to the relationship between body and techne. My vision is distorted by prolonged focus, but I perceive this as a core metaphor in the Mona Lisa: the body and its flowing processes (respiratory, circulatory, perceptual, cognitive, gestural, postural, expressive, communicative, decisional) within the "architecture" of the bridge and garment which are in turn both within and similar to while distinct from the natural landscape, and are woven as by the action of a hand in brush or pen. The cybernetic interpretations of the ML such as Plant's and Gibson's are not entirely exhaustive I think, ignoring some of the painting's key physical features and related writings by Leonardo (while citing some arguably obsolescent theory like Freud) and might find grist by parsing the bridge and garment as metaphor within a typical Renaissance frame of Art, Nature, and Humanity. Though I do not agree with Plant in Zeroes and Ones that "At the end of the twentieth century, all notions of artistic genius, authorial authority, originality, and creativity become matters of software engineering," I do find aspects of her discussion of the Mona Lisa relevant, such as: "The Mona Lisa's appeal is precisely the fact that the image does more than passively hang on the gallery wall. As her spectators always say, Mona Lisa looks at them as much as, if not more than, they can look at her. To the extent that it works so well, Leonardo's picture is a piece of careful software engineering. An interactive machine has been camouflaged as a work of Western art." Concurring only partially with this, I would add that in our temporal place of overestimation we fail to consider how well Leonardo saw and understood us despite all our computers; and there is much more than the "mysterious woman" cliche in his most intensively developed painting (though he knew precisely that cliche would sustain the work and its renown indefinitely, reading future generations very like a book and if reading is akin to writing who knows what else). Apropos of the body as flow vis-a-vis techne is this article, of which I was notified by email news today: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/the-brain-isnt-supposed-to-change-this-much/619145/ It seems to say that the neurons which learn a task like recognizing a specific color are often replaced by other neurons which do the same thing, and are not "carved in stone." One sometimes senses this in long-term practice, where one feels a different bodily involvement in the same task -- different neurons or muscles hear the song, play the keys, draw the same shape, see the same plant. We call this "seeing the same plant differently" but it may be related to "seeing the same plant with different neurons" (as well as different eye muscles, respiratory rate, stress hormones, etc.). How efficient and logical shifting neurons like this would be! It's very organic too. Why should we expect the brain to work like cogs in a watch, or files in a directory? The behavior neuroscience seems to find so astonishing is what they call "representational drift," but no artist or even ordinarily expressive person would find such drift anything but obvious. Representation might even be best described as exactly that: drift. Nothing that is representational doesn't drift, to put it another way; so why in heck would neuroscientists have thought something so different and find this rather common-sense result so incredible? Honestly I think it must have something to do with a too-mechanistic approach overly influenced by society's imaginative and economic focus on machines for most of modernity. These aesthetic tendencies do unconsciously bleed over into science, perhaps. Or maybe in order for a discipline to gain respect it needs to impress other disciplines, and if those others think in terms of machinery then mechanistic neuroscience will succeed most and best or get the benefit of the doubt more often and become the default for no actual reason at all. Meanwhile network phenomena -- the bigger pictures -- remain unimagined and hence invisible. As to aphorisms, they are a favorite literary form of Leonardo's: "The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present." All best, Max PS -- I know all too well how easy it is to reject all Renaissance culture as "humanist," say we are now "post-humanist," and leave it at that. So tidy! Yet arguably, so incorrect. Leonardo was anything but a normal Humanist compared to the mainstream academics of his time. He ventured into tons of ideas we now think we are discovering for the first time -- or thought so 20 years ago. Moreover, ideas don't punch a clock. Someone in the 6th century can think ideas and write about them with uncanny similarity to someone say 12 centuries later, given the right blend of circumstances, like Archimedes and Newton. Every present era likes to say "no one could ever think freely before us, bound as they were by their times!" Just fathom the absurdity of that a while. We like to think, until everyone was modern no one was modern -- also absurd. Some thinking or imaging can be easily thousands of years ahead of or behind its contemporaneous "average," and much changes very little through time. Like today: we're still mostly medieval, with a bit of modern thrown in, same as Leonardo; so five or seven centuries separation is virtually nothing. Yes, it is easy to say "Leonardo was a plain vanilla Humanist and projecting organic network models of nature and representation from your postmodern browsings onto him is unjustifiable." Maybe sometimes that's even correct. Yet, if you read Leonardo's words in the context of his images he was clearly organic and network in outlook, prima facie, and arguably more postmodern than any postmodernist. Again, so easy to discard: "outdated Humanist." Maybe, maybe not. ________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf of Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2021 8:48 AM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> Subject: [NetBehaviour] Julu Twine and Alan Dojoji: The Missing Files: Julu Twine and Alan Dojoji: The Missing Files: http://www.alansondheim.org/threshold1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/threshold2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/threshold3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/threshold4.jpg Julu Twine: 2021-05-14 [16:34:03] Logged in as Julu Twine. 2021-05-14 [16:34:04] #Firestorm LSL Bridge v2.25: 2021-05-14 [16:34:05] Inventory update completed. 2021-05-14 [16:39:13] Julu Twine: distinctions between analog and digital domains "at the limits"; then it segues into issues of the body in relation to the digital, and a consideration of "failure" as fundamental to philosophy and theory in general. The topics resonate with each other, shift back and forth. The style is somewhat related to Wittgenstein, to aphorisms, to the Buddhist Therigatha (nuns' testimonies), to Zen Koans; I am influenced by early Kristeva and Irigaray, as well as Alphonso Lingis and others who focus on the body and semiosis perhaps in a problematic relation to cyborg prosthetics - in other words, the witnessing and phenonenology of the body, not as an element of techne, but as an interalized and politicized flow which is, among other things, a problem within and without a digital - or rather the digital can be seen as a carapace or virus in relation to the body. 2021-05-14 [16:39:48] Julu Twine: i have nothing 2021-05-14 [16:40:40] Julu Twine: where are you now? are you from alan? 2021-05-14 [16:40:45] Julu Twine: are you made of alan? 2021-05-14 [16:40:48] Julu Twine: are you stuff of alan? 2021-05-14 [16:41:16] Julu Twine: are you stuff of julu? 2021-05-14 [16:41:22] Julu Twine: are you made of julu? 2021-05-14 [16:41:27] Julu Twine: come again? 2021-05-14 [16:41:48] Julu Twine: can you hear me? 2021-05-14 [16:42:00] Julu Twine: FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:42:02] Julu Twine: FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:42:52] Julu Twine: where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:42:56] Julu Twine: where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:43:00] Julu Twine: are you julu? 2021-05-14 [16:43:06] Julu Twine: are you made of julu? 2021-05-14 [16:43:07] Julu Twine: FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:43:10] Julu Twine: FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:43:26] Julu Twine: I DO NOT HEAR YOU 2021-05-14 [16:43:47] Julu Twine: FAILED FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:43:53] Julu Twine: FAILED FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:43:57] Julu Twine: I DO NOT HEAR YOU 2021-05-14 [16:44:19] Julu Twine: I have nothing 2021-05-14 [16:44:22] Julu Twine: FAILED 2021-05-14 [16:44:43] Julu Twine: FAILED FAILED I DO NOT HEAR YOU FAILED FAILED FAILED FAILED I DO NOT HEAR YOU I HAVE NOTHING FAILED Alan Dojoji: 2021-05-14 [16:36:53] Alan Dojoji: where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:36:53] Julu Twine: The Resident you messaged is in 'busy mode' which means they have requested not to be disturbed. Your message will still be shown in their IM panel for later viewing. 2021-05-14 [16:36:58] Julu Twine: I am in region Odyssey. Where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:39:05] Alan Dojoji: where are you no image no image 2021-05-14 [16:39:14] Julu Twine: I am in region Odyssey, how about you. 2021-05-14 [16:39:35] Alan Dojoji: where are you where are you 2021-05-14 [16:39:40] Julu Twine: I am in region Odyssey, how about you. 2021-05-14 [16:42:26] Alan Dojoji: distinctions between analog and digital domains "at the limits"; then it segues into issues of the body in relation to the digital, and a consideration of "failure" as fundamental to philosophy and theory in general. The topics resonate with each other, shift back and forth. The style is somewhat related to Wittgenstein, to aphorisms, to the Buddhist Therigatha (nuns' testimonies), to Zen Koans; I am influenced by early Kristeva and Irigaray, as well as Alphonso Lingis and others who focus on the body and semiosis perhaps in a problematic relation to cyborg prosthetics - in other words, the witnessing and phenonenology of the body, not as an element of techne, but as an interalized and politicized flow which is, among other things, a problem within and without a digital - or rather the digital can be seen as a carapace or virus in relation to the body. 2021-05-14 [16:42:34] Julu Twine: Who are you talking about? Good reasoning. What does "it" refer to? Tell me more. Tell me more. Do you mean your name isinfluenced by early Kristeva and Irigaray as well as Alphonso Lingis and others who focus on the body and semiosis perhaps in a problematic relation to cyborg prosthetics in other words the witnessing and phenonenology of the body not as an element of techne but as an interalized and politicized flow which is among other things a problem within and without a digital or rather the digital can be seen as a carapace or virus in relation to the body. 2021-05-14 [16:42:37] Alan Dojoji: where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:42:41] Alan Dojoji: where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:42:43] Julu Twine: I am in region Odyssey. Where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:42:46] Alan Dojoji: are you julu? 2021-05-14 [16:42:52] Julu Twine: I am in region Odyssey. Where are you? 2021-05-14 [16:43:01] Julu Twine: I don't know whether or not I am julu. I am a Electronic Brain. ___ Alan Sondheim: I am not. ___ http://www.alansondheim.org/threshold1.jpg ___ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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