1980’s Aesthetics Matter-Also, Handel’s Sarabande In D Minor & StarBabies Transcending Earthly Experience In 2001: A Space Odyssey

August 6, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

To the Future!:

If you listen to the above, with the sound turned off on the visuals below, you will arrive into the future (once the backbeat fills in, ‘Chase’ becomes more bodily percussive and rhythmic).

Don’t let this ruin your mental focus:

After traveling eons, you will arrive to a quiet room. There, a Japanese classical guitarist will be playing Handel’s Sarabande in D minor.

Such pomp, nobility and grief! Somewhere beyond the dancer and the dance might lie the truth.

On that note,

One can imagine an intelligence just ahead of ours, or wildly ahead of ours, with benevolent, indifferent or malevolent (evil demon) intentions.

Or perhaps one can imagine a story told using the the current popular visual narrative; a Sci-Fi novel played to classical music, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The first monolith seems to inspire a string of causation and hominid evolution which leads to humans discovering the second monolith buried on the moon three million years later. This monolith is found to be directing a signal to another, possibly transponding, monolith found orbiting Jupiter.

A mission is sent to this third monolith as the new HAL 9000 integrated and artificial intelligence on board knows some knowns and unknowns, and proceeds to act accordingly. Methodically and chillingly, the HAL 9000 kills all but one crew member, perhaps in ‘Self-‘preservation or according to some unseen logic, or just because he’s broken and crazy).

David Bowman, the last remaining crew member, after a batle of wits, disables the HAL 9000 and catches up with the third monolith, in order to complete the mission. At the end of the film, Bowman seems to transcends his earthly body, space-time, and ends up gazing over earth with the innocent eyes of a placental StarBaby, born anew.

Meh, the deisre for transcendence hasn’t gone too far beyond here, has it?

What am I missing?

Is this your favorite movie?

From Art Contrarian-‘Painted Maps, Then And Recently’

August 20, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full post here.

Some photos by Vermeer and Johns at the link:

‘My college art history course conveyed the Modernist Establishment party line that the practice of painting was teleological, that its ordained end was the Platonic ideal manifested by the New York School of Abstract Expressionist art. That’s the message I got by the end of the school year. And it was confirmed by the many examples of that style displayed on the pages of Time magazine in the late 1950s.’

and:

‘One such painter was Jasper Johns (b. 1930) who chose to paint objects that were already flat…’

As for the Abstract Expressionists, my grandfather was friends with Eddie Dugmore, and we had a painting of his up on the wall. I remember that it was abstract, and dark, and kind of raw.

Here’s a video on an exhibition of his:

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Goya, that modern, had to make a living from the royal family: Goya’s Colossus…Goya’s Fight With Cudgels…Goethe’s Color Theory: Artists And Thinkers…NASA Composite Image Of The Earth At Night…Beauty?…Garrett Mattingly On Machiavelli-The Prince: Political Science Or Political Satire?

Repost-From The NY Times: Schlieren Photograpy

Via Hulu: NASA Mission To The Moon And Mars

September 2, 2010 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Link here. (12:00 min video)

It may take some time, and a lot of work, but some of our deepest dreams are realized by continuing to travel beyond our planet.

Also On This Site: Via Youtube: ‘Space Shuttle Launch From The Perspective Of A Solid Rocket Booster After Detachment”…Repost: Richard Feynman at NASA

From The Wall Street Journal Via AL Daily: Buckminster Fuller’s World

May 19, 2009May 19, 2009 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full article here.

Terry Teachout takes notice of the traveling exhibit: Buckminster Fuller: Starting With The Universe (at the Whitney in late June). So was Fuller comparable to Frank Lloyd Wright?:

“…Fuller was a Wright-like figure, a high-octane utopian who believed in the life-enhancing potential of modern technology. The difference was that Fuller lacked Wright’s ruthless determination.”

Both have their followers and left some interesting work behind. The discussion also reminds me of the explosion of science fiction this past century, and some of its darker mystic, utopian…and even religious (cultlike-this is alleged of course) tendencies that can make for good reading.

This is one point Teachout wants to address when such ideas are pulled into the political realm:

“Was modernism totalitarian? That’s coming at it a bit high, but it’s true that more than a few top-tier modernists were also one-size-fits-all system-mongers who thought the world would be improved if it were rebuilt from top to bottom — so long as they got to draw up the plans.”

I first came across that argument here. Do such visions have potentially harmful consequences in the political arena?

Perhaps, but in the meantime Fuller’s geodisic dome (platonic solids, ever-existing?) is still pretty interesting.

Some Differences Between Newton And Goethe: Theories Of Light

April 19, 2009June 14, 2009 / chr1 / Leave a comment

“My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments…”

Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks.

Here’s a brief visual (scroll to the bottom of the page) of 2 of his experiments.

From A Wolfram biography of Newton:

“Newton invented a scientific method which was truly universal in its scope. Newton presented his methodology as a set of four rules for scientific reasoning. These rules were stated in the Principia and proposed that (1) we are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances, (2) the same natural effects must be assigned to the same causes, (3) qualities of bodies are to be esteemed as universal, and (4) propositions deduced from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict them.”

An artist can transport you to a vast imaginative world of profound insight and profound truth. Anyone who’s experienced great art can attest to that. Yet, part of the rigor of science is in its painstaking correspondence to observable phenomenae, to measurement (and a capacity for nimble and accurate estimation), and to a set of laws often derived from mathematics which as far as we know, have not yet been proven wrong when applied to nature.

Many artists seem to take much freer license with their imaginations, and despite their own rigors which are rarely appreciated by the audience, seem to differ in many important ways from such a standard.

——————–Here’s a repost I put up about Goethe:

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe is perhaps Germany’s greatest poet and writer, best known for Faust. Not so well known is Goethe’s theory of color (which claimed insights that could refute Newton). Like many artists, Goethe isolated the effect color has in terms of experience, making profound observations on refraction…for example…but for which he didn’t have a workable theoretical framework. To this, a certain type of philosopher might say: he ignored the fact that his thoughts and his senses combine to form experience.

Goethe from Steiner, from wikipedia:

“The colours therefore, to begin with, make their appearance purely and simply as phenomena at the border between light and dark…”

Colours arise at the borders, where light and dark flow together.“

Click here for a visual representation.

Goethe seems to have thought of light and dark in terms of a metaphysical dualism, from whose interaction color is born.

Newton held that white light passing through a prism is diffused into its various wavelengths. He also may have steered the discussion into wave-particle duality.

See Also: Wikipedia’s article, Physics Today article on his experiments, Goethe’s color triangle.

It seems like this debate (art/science) is a product of the times. I don’t think I’ve offered too much in the way of real insight.

George Smoot and Sean Carroll: Cosmic Inflation

March 16, 2008March 17, 2008 / chr1 / Leave a comment

If you’re interested in some ideas about the current state of cosmic inflation and Big Bang theory, check out recent Sean Carroll’s bloggingheads turn (~12 min). Recommended.

Also, George Smoot’s book, Wrinkles in Time is very readable and fun (like listening to a really interesting, smart friend) and gives a background to his COBE research and contributions to Big Bang theory. He had quite an adventure.

It’s a good way for novices to prevent from becoming cranks. Thanks to Mr. Carroll for sharing.