***************************************************************** GLOSSOLALIA Issue 5 ASCII version --------------------------- Cut here ---------------------------- _________________________________________________________________ GLOSSOLALIA [5] Electronic Journal for Experimental Arts April 1996 _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS ~~~~~~~~ TITLE: "Transparent Screens" POETRY & PROSE \ from Sconticut by John Landry \ from Machine Language by David Joseph Dowker ESSAYS \ Copy Culture by Harry Polkinhorn SOURCE TEXTS & REPRINTS \ Ghosts \ "Spectropia" \ Addendum: A Quote from H.P. Blavatsky CONTRIBUTORS _________________________________________________________________ TITLE: "Transparent Screens" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fowler: "In what does the materiality of cyberspace consist? Screen? Phosphor blips? ... It all exists only on the evidence of itself as we view it, or hear it, or enter into it. An endless sea of material, a saturated solution the fallout of which is ourselves." Cyberspace is an attempt to visualize the imaginary. We have devised ingenious algorithms that call forth RGB shadows formed of digital ectoplasm -- shadows extracted from obscure numbers and garbled letters, diagrams and equations resembling Goetic grimoires -- in a vacuum, beneath the crystal surfaces of our monitor screens. z(0) = pixel; if modulus(z(n)) < shift value, then z(n+1) = fn1(z(n)) + c, else z(n+1) = fn2(z(n)) + c. Five parameters: real, imaginary portions of c, shift value, fn1 and fn2. There is an unlimited number of "invisible worlds" accessible as we gaze %in crystallo%, like some latter-time spiritualists, in our solitary mesmeric trance, staring at pixelated Enochian visions and vivid MPEG frenzy. (Now, as the primary engagement with cyberspace is through vision, this retinal contact -- monitor as an extension of the eye -- opens a "royal door" to the mind and unconscious. With the 100 Hz frequency of modern computer monitors, transmission of subconscious messages is readily possible as "invisible" images interlaced between the frames of a normal animation sequence.) "There is a kind of transitional phenomenon found among certain borderline patients ... These are patients who are preoccupied with maintaining proper physical distance from their objects, in order to regulate anxieties about isolation on the one hand, and identity-annihilating closeness on the other. Since they believe the activity of looking to be intrusive and devouring, hence dangerous, transparent screens are interposed between self and other, and serve as protective barriers. These screens function intrapsychically as well, to split off or hide those aspects of the self felt to be unacceptable." (R.J. Rosenthal: Transparent Screens, J-Am-Psychoanal-Assoc. 1988; 36(2): 295-317) No. Records Request 9: 304 SEMANTICS 10: 110 DREAMS 11: 1 SEMANTICS and (DREAMS in MESH) Searches and records above from: MEDLINE (R) 1994 J. Lehmus jlehmus@cute.fi Editor Esbo, 2 May 1996 _________________________________________________________________ John Landry from Sconticut ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and did come home to blossom many near-annual perigrinations peripatetics circuited back upon themselves still hungry and time that quasi-erotic notion a having come and gone so much between hauling up anchor setting course or oars up drying like a dragonfly's wings drifting influenced by tides and currents currents and tides listing pros and cons the seasons shift and I react to everything include myself in small craft warnings walk ou;into the green sky hurricane the ocean leaping in my boots this poncho torn to sail shreds I still standing I am here and refuse deny myself an imposition here in this which comes from my hand somehow unsure knowing little so much in my head in fragments what's guessed at the reason for rising at all the sundisc of silver thru the fog the moon being chased its soft melon shadowed by the earth that go between the moon is chaste departured returns annuals biennials perennials perineal reflections the knee unbent the trees walking the grove in motion the wind-borne seeds of everything a toehold a wingspan unmeasured coincidences and cleave to cleave to what clung to hull and hilt of a crow's nest view of hell the vortex whorl around the suck of littoral concerns I cannot extract myself from no flies on and yet rockweed on my knobs briars where my moustache grew barnacles flither at a passing wish the character of each very different foray the readying the ill-prepared pursuit of motion the expenditure of will the surrender to the thrust the dune my moon head now is swept by neap and heap left long by ebb these tides excel in commerce we owe so much to land AND sea that ships from treewood felled and dragged then out to bob who claims the sky then for themselves my gyroscope my sextant astrolabe and willow wands the world births all the elements of and here at the lip again returned the well the spring here this glacial morain there the rivers runnig hown each side Acushnet Nasketucket this land between the rivers where first my geophallic concerns intrude came up then like driftwood from far came bobbing then here on shore laden with and filled with longing for precious fluidslife force light source none can do withou some changing entity aureola borealis what the moon the eggplant under thin dim light unlit but visible.. the fragments the fractures of language forked-tongues the language torn from the head the gut that utters the eyes that speak the soul no knowledge hoard no learning limn beyond which only the knowing know what good then who poisoned Spring why not remember Winter fierce and every byway hushed with snow my feet the first to blaze a way at 3 a.m. the world alone awake what signs are these all paths possible no one way _________________________________________________________________ David Joseph Dowker from Machine Language ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Contact human reference, ambiguous body-image projected through haze of phases, feedback and overlap, loop and spiral. Branch on _green_ to _a continuous present_. She walks into the film through a reflective surface such as glass or wet asphalt. The dawn result in quanta of sky deciphered. Nested spirit hypothesis. Found consciousness. (Focus on the sound of one brain waving.) The absence of thought and the intensity of the emotion. Quotidian occurrence blurs, re- verberates. Vertigo hold. Coded sun- light permeates the terrestrial. *** Shall we toss the thousand-sided dice?* Do we dare disturb the logosphere? Hieratic access codes and eidolons of the ichthyphallic notwithstanding, votive (or is that vatic?) force acknowledged: archaeopteryx with an asterisk, semi-divine conductor of souls, Thoth with his mnemonics and a bag full of micro-chips, I and I de-vining the deity: do we dwell in the null-field forever or delve the delic? *** The whole thing goes nirvana circa 2010 - the ultimate transmutation, this mortal spiral to total knowledge if not nova in the mean time, blasted back to stone or drowned in our own waste, mercury in the fish the messenger for species, light-footed, lethal - cancer coiled throughout the system - no-signal condition *** PROGRAM ONE: CALLING ALL SURVIVORS. THE MOMENT IS MOMENTOUS. THE LONG SILENCE IS OVER AND ABOVE IS BELOW AS LONG AS YOU LISTEN. THERE IS NO AUTHORITY. IT WRITES: "ONCE MORE THE STARS IN THE UNMOVING AIR AROUND THIS VICIOUS SPHERE AND I MYSELF ALONE WITH THAT OTHER ELSEWHERE." HISTORY BEGINS HERE. IN THE NEXT ROOM A WORLD IS WOMBED, WAXING MIRACULOUS WITHIN THE MUNDANE MATRIX WE CALL HOME, HOPEFULLY. SO TO SPEAK, DISCRETELY, WHERE THE HEART ACHES MAKE RADIANT. THIS IS THE GHOST OF THAT PROCESS. AN ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE AS SOULS ATTACH AND DETACH THEMSELVES DAILY. *** The genetic is _soft_ machinery, inter- self-programmable, either oscillate or remember. He is the one who makes a noise upon something hollow or stretched to filament, incandescent. She is rain/bow, solid sky warp, crystal fissure colour shines through, whose bridge over curved space? *** we are the same ape, the same angel, the genius of the planet, essential spirit and that strange beast emblazoned upon the human karyotype, drugged into remission, by certain forces bound and determined *** from the caves of Lascaux to Los Alamos *"Desiring to expand the already impractically large English language, Allegra Sloman and Jeff Rivett were moved to research/write a program which uses a thousand prefixes and a thousand suffixes from a variety of English feeder languages (with thumbnail definitions) and tosses them together to create 1,000,000 new words. Of these words, approximately 10,000 are useful or amusing. Most of the rest merely need the human circumstance to render them fit for use." (aers) _________________________________________________________________ Copy Culture ~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Harry Polkinhorn Prelude [1] Thesis: the idea of the copy is a form of nostalgia, based on anterior notion of original/copy, a structuralist move. [2] Antithesis: we are afloat in a sea of signs indistinguishable from the point of view of originary vs. derivative status. [3] Synthesis: art is the ground, theory the pattern. I. [4] Copy: Theories of "the copy" fail because they do not account for the relative position of their own articulation in the shifting spheres of discourse/power. As part of this opacity they project, they fail to acknowledge something as basic as the determinative force of their own syntax. The consequence is a series of indefensible if fashionable conclusions proferred in the heady atmosphere of ungrounded abstraction. Copy = structuralism, and structuralism was born under the sign of the bankruptcy of the European Enlightenment's drive to totalize sweet reason. [5] Replicate: A biological model predates a mechanical. Turning to biology is turning back. But since we can't get back to the beginning of things no matter how much we would like to establish some base line of certainty, we are pitifully left with tracing any "laws" we can discern in the unfolding of things as arbitrarily cross-cut by the snapshot of inquisition. I use this term because it implies extracting supernatural information under duress, a close description of the so called scientific method. Hence, Darwin. Our best models are nothing but witch doctors dressed up in drab Victorian waistcoats. Freud. Nietzsche. The Neogrammarians. Linneaus. They were all obsessed with tree images, branches and roots, what you might call the family connection, even as the European and North American family was falling to pieces. Thus with the gradual disappearance of the authorizations of controlled lines of descent (the divine right of kings, the revolting fraud of the aristocracy), another ruler had to be smuggled in, this one to be passed off as powerless and immanent. God is no longer up there on a throne but in the appropriately invisible warp and woof of society (cheap fraud of liberal democracy). Copies are no longer struck; things just replicate themselves. [6] Representation: In the last decade of the twentieth century, representation continues to perplex thinkers. Now a major theme, it has stalled in its self-examining phase. Problematic since its invention and especially since its elevation in quattrocento Italian practice, representation surged onto the popular scene as that scene was being created in the 1830s and after with the invention of stone lithography and photography, both of which revolutionized the commodification of likenesses. The naive notion of culture as an imperfect reflection of the real was displaced by the equally misguided idea of the real presumably projecting its own reflection (cheap fraud of technology). II. [7] Technology: The most obvious point but one which must continually be repeated is that it's not the machines but their social dimension. Under this is included how they interact with one another, the impacts of such processes on human beings, especially on redefining "human being" to "human becoming." The content will have been a summary statement at the end of the chain of stages which technology mediates throughout. With a photographic negative (misnomer: the negative should be the positive, since it is the matrix), a series is generated made up not of copies of something either lurking out there in hypothetical reality or within the photographer's mind (analogue of the misnamed "latent image" in exposed but undeveloped photographic emulsion); the series merely comprises cross-readable duplicates all with identical reality claims, be they strong or weak. [8] Duplicate: The analogy here has been with us for centuries: numbers. They exist in a timeless realm of human abstraction, a desperate and brilliant ploy for eternal life made by the dying animal. The binarism of splitting underlies duplication, carrying forth structuralism's agenda of paralyzing the senseless flow of things but at a different, much more fundamental pitch. The distance from copy to duplicate is one traveled in reverse, down the pyramid of specialization to the desert floor. [9] Photocopy: Nothing more than the photograph on paper and not always only on that. With chronologically advancing technology, our link with the machine weakens, then vanishes altogether. Like computer graphics far removed from machine language, the photocopy opens up realms of information transfer the power of which cannot be measured. First, it must be understood that image includes text and refers to a binary process of duplication rather than an object. Then attention is refocused on how an image is generated, since its social value has been evacuated. These empty "objects" are haunted by copy ghosts, purveyors of our Zeitgeist. A dematerialization has occurred, breaking us away from the body of sickness and death. The distance from those images secreted by machines of representation to the raw photocopy image is a measure of electronic duration, whose extremes collapse the human scale into itself. [10] Simulacrum: Careful to maintain the gnostic split, a simulacrum copies the copy as metacopy. Robbed of the ability to explain, to jam things into the hierarchies by means of which we stop the world, we are finally forced to sit back to witness the passage of these disembodied bodies before us. The classifying mind rests from its centuries-long labor. Defeated. History has vanished into the present perfect tense, now blurring previously maintained borders. A swirling cloud of dust and fire surrounds us. Out of it there emerges art. _________________________________________________________________ Ghosts ~~~~~~ (from The Lancet, Feb. 21, 1863) [1] The credulous man is, as a rule, a pertinaciously aggressive creature, who, like %Dogberry%, insists that you write him down an ass, and will take no denial. He is the recruiting sergeant of ignorance, the tout of the knave, and the tool or the swindler; yet is very mischievous, since wise men have better work to do than arguing with fools, and because the majority or mankind -- certainly not the wise men -- too often accept unrefuted assertations as true, without considering the value of the judgment of those who make them. [2] It is in this way that quackery succeeds in filling our churchyards. For when any stupid old goose has been persuaded by a knavish homoeopath to believe in the enormous globulistic humbug, he is only happy hen hissing at decent, honest, reasonable men, who despise such egregious imposture. And when that evil-eyed Frenchwoman who is just now gulling our English fools by pretending to see their insides whilst in mesmeric trances, has told any hysterical old girl that her nerves are delicate, the poor deluded gander cannot rest until every ailing friend has heard of "Julie," and promised to pay heavily for a %se/ance% with the creature. As with extremely credulous ones such as these, so is it also with %gobemouches% of every kind, who prefer a lie to the truth because it is more startling, and so affords them the unwonted privilege of obtaining a hearing. It is in this way that the mere force of unreasoning assertion, always the strong point of the very weak, has for many centuries kept alive a faith in ghosts and apparitions. Indeed, it is a good illustration of the infinite power which continued assertion exercises in this world, of the results of crying out one thing and crying that one thing very loud, that even sharp and clever men have taken on faith what they would have rejected on reason, and have been content to accept from the mere assurance of others what they would have been sceptical about had it occurred to themselves. Thus Horace never doubted Canidia's power, "crematos excitare mortuos," however, sceptical he might be on other more personal matters. Ovid fully believed in the power of Medea, "manes exire sepulchris," although he elsewhere shows how little of earnest faith there could be in the mind of such a pusillanimous libertine. So good Sir Thomas Browne, notwithstanding his pedantic tilting at Vulgar Errors in the "Pseudodoxia," implies, in his "Religio Medici," a half belief in the existence of disembodied spirits. Whilst Mr. Clergyman Wanley, in that collection of "The Wonders of the Little World" which comprises such a collection of quaint and curious stories, says -- "There are some who deny the very being of spirits; these I look upon as men possessed with such an incurable madness as no hellebore is sufficient to quit them of." And so he cites a number of ghost stories, as amusing and about as authentic as the tales which %Autolycus% told to the clowns in the "Winter's Tale." [3] Now, although all stories about visitations of spirits or appearances of apparitions are %de facto% fibs, manufactured in order to make money, imagined by people distempered in mind or body, or devised by poor frightened fools to cloak their pusillanimity, yet it would be a difficult and thankless task to trace out the origin and expose the folly of all those which are current. So, for once, Science has turned the tables on Ignorance, has assumed aggressive tactics, and attacked the ghostmakers with their own weapons. [4] There is now exhibiting in London an admirable illustration of what Science can do when it condescends to take the field against Imposture. It forms the subject of a lecture at the Polytechnic Institution, in the course of which is displayed a most ingenious contrivance wherewith any amount of very highly-finished ghosts can be produced to order. These Mr. Pepper raises by the aid of a strong light, a mirror, a few lenses, and some smoke. And even an audience, such as in AEsop's time preferred the imitation of a pig to the genuine squeak of a pinched porker, could not refuse the merit of superior ghost making of the scientific device at the Polytechnic; which will do more to upset the lingering faith in the foolish and wicked superstitions about ghosts than a considerable amount of reasoning or argument. [5] But there is another and a medical aspect of the matter to which Mr. Pepper discreetly alludes in the excellent practical remarks that accompany the exhibition of this new Spectrodrome, as it is called. All medical men know, but few of the public are aware, how wonderfully deceptive are the spectral illusions occasionally experienced by persons physically or mentally out of health. Of these the instances related by Abercrombie and Davy afford well marked illustrations. But it cannot be doubted that there are many unknown cases where persons of weak minds secretly and morbidly cling to a faith in the reality of revelations or visitations which they know not how to account for except by believing them supernatural. To such sufferers the following words, with which Mr. Pepper concludes his lecture, may serve to convey a valuable lesson, and to open the way of escape from much secret misery: -- "The moral of my story, if a lecture may have one, is this: Ghosts, hobgoblins, apparitions, nursery bogeys, if they do happen to come as pictures or spectres on the retina of the eye or mind, are produced by some kind of bodily disease, and are best and most quickly get rid of by calling in the good and skilful aid of the family physician. At the Polytechnic we are anxious to instruct, amuse, and (when we can) do good; and we shall think ourselves fortunate if in bringing these optical spectres before you we have helped to shake that ridiculous belief in ghosts which still lingers in the minds of many sensible persons." _________________________________________________________________ "Spectropia" ~~~~~~~~~~~~ (from The Lancet, Jan. 2, 1864: Reviews and Notices of Books.) Review of: Spectropia; or surprising Spectral Illusions, showing Ghosts Everywhere and of any Colour. By J.H. BROWN. First Series, With Sixteen Illustrations. Square 8vo. London, 1863. [1] COLERIDGE, on being asked by a lady if he believed in ghosts, replied, "No, Madam; I have seen too many to believe in them." Mr. Brown seems to hold the opinion that the more familiarly people become acquainted with spectres the less likely they are to believe in ghosts. There is much sound philosophy in this opinion. Everyone is haunted. There are spectres common to all people; spectres peculiar to the individual. It is difficult at any time to escape altogether from the ghostly throng. They intrude themselves unbidden upon the mind and the senses. When an individual has become familiar with those ghosts which are peculiar to himself as well as with those which visit him in common with all men, he learns to know that there is a very scanty margin for the genuine ghost of superstition. To the absence of this knowledge must be attributed, where imposture does not exist, the gigantic folly of spirit-rapping. Spectres of the eye, ear, and touch, and the feeblest hauntings of the brain, are elevated to the dignity of spiritual visitations by our new-fangled "spiritualists," as they impudently style themselves. It would have been well for these so-called "spiritualists" if they had learned wisdom from one of the shrewdest of modern ghosts -- the ghost of the inimitable Marley. "You don't believe in me," observed Marley's ghost to Scrooge. "I don't," said Scrooge. "What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?" "I don't know," said Scrooge. "Why do you doubt your senses?" " Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" [2] Mr. Brown would make popularly known one form of ocular spectre. If we gaze for a few seconds at a brilliantly illuminated object and then cast the eyes upon a white surface or upon a clear sky, a spectre of the object will presently take its appearance before the field of vision, remain visible for a short time, and then vanish. The spectre will appear several times in succession, each re-appearance being fainter than the one preceding. Further, the spectre will appear differently coloured to the object of which it is the apparition -- the apparition, in fact, always presenting the complementary colour of the original abject. Mr. Brown has conceived the happy notion of making these physiological phenomena more familiarly known by a series of coloured plates representing grotesque and other figures -- the majority being based upon popular conception of the supernatural. By means of these figures an intimate acquaintance may be made with a highly respectable family of ghosts, and a considerable power of ghost-genesis may be acquired. No better means could be devised of teaching readily the great truth that seeing is not altogether believing, as is too commonly sustained. The person who knows well one form of a sensorial spectre will be less likely to be deceived by other forms. We heartily commend Mr. Brown's ingenious work to the profession and the public. _________________________________________________________________ Addendum: A Quote from H.P. Blavatsky ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty. "'The discovery consists,' he says, 'in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the electric light.' The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides and acids are subjected to the action of the light in an %experimental tube%, lying horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of the parallel beams issuing from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves and of involved scrolls. 'In one case,'he tells us, 'the cloud-bud grew rapidly into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged.' Finally, to cap the climax of marvels, 'once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no %disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other%.'" (H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled) _________________________________________________________________ Contributors in Glossolalia [5] From djd@io.org David Joseph Dowker http://www.io.org/~djd/ From jlandry@umassd.edu Mon Apr 8 15:37:02 1996 John Landry, P.O. Box 1007, New Bedford, MA 02741-1007, USA Born in New Bedford MA 1953 (under the shadow of Melville). Have survived as quahogger, scallop-shucker, factory worker, library assistant. Have lived in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Wisconsin, North Carolina, Lousiana, Texas, and on the islands of Maui Hawai'i and Patmos Greece. From jlehmus@cute.fi J. Lehmus From Theo Lorenc, 8 Dowding Road, Bath, Avon BA1 6QJ, England [HTML version] From hpolkinh@mail.sdsu.edu Harry Polkinhorn _________________________________________________________________ Glossolalia ~ Electronic Journal for Experimental Arts Publisher: CI Acad. Poet. Aeth. Editor: J. Lehmus (jlehmus@cute.fi) Tech advice: Aleksandr Koltsoff (czr@cute.fi) Copyright (c) 1996 by J. Lehmus. All individual works Copyright (c) by their respective authors. All further rights to works belong to the authors and revert to the authors on publication. Glossolalia is published electronically, 6 issues/year: February, April, June, August, October, December. Glossolalia is published simultaneously as ASCII and HTML format versions. ASCII version can be subscribed by sending SUBSCRIBE GLOSSOLALIA in the body of an e-mail message to: jlehmus@cute.fi HTML version is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.thing.net/~grist PostScript (tm) version of Glossolalia is under preparation. Reproduction of any complete issue of Glossolalia (ASCII version) is permitted. Complete issues may be downloaded, duplicated and distributed free of charge. Authors hold a presumptive copyright and they should be contacted directly for permission to reprint individual pieces. Editorial address: CI, J. Lehmus, Stenbocksv. 24, 02860 Esbo, Finland jlehmus@cute.fi _________________________________________________________________ in*for*ma*tion: [ME: a forming of the mind < ML, L: idea, conception] _________________________________________________________________ --------------------------- Cut here ----------------------------