Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0508281846030.9283@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Art and experiment, vision of the PLAGUE
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 18:46:34 -0400 (EDT)
Art and experiment, vision of the PLAGUE The IMAGE of three folding wooden rulers, German, millimeter rules: PLACE these in a triangular configuration: two from the wall down, one across the endpoints of the two. AS IF these formed an equilateral triangle, however BROKEN by virtue of the WEIGHT of the wood, the intrusion of the physico-inert into the virtual-inert of the static euclidean WORLD. I do not know or give their LENGTH. Remnant of memory: Early 1970s Bykert Gallery NY show: collapsed hyper- cube made from nylon cord - topological accuracy but disrupted per- ception. The IDEAL held; the perceptual-real, i.e. constructed meaning, collapsed. No progress now: This current work represents no progress whatsoever; the theme is tackled with only the DISTINCTION: the topological is trivial (a loop) or absent (an irrelevant loop). The MEASUREMENT is ANALOGIC, the ideal DIGITAL, a world of zero tolerance - well, perhaps analogic as well. Can this be? A zero-tolerance analogic world? A wave-equation collapse or even rounding-off - that REWRITES the digital, INSERTS IT as permanent markers? Or rather, perhaps it is the zero-tolerance digital world that REWRITES and analogic, REINSERTS within the analogic. What of this REWRITE? I have often said: I write myself into existence. I write myself out of existence. And ONLINE? See early Internet Text, Nettext sections: Existence is equivalent to CONTINUOUS REWRITE; when insertion ends (and this is insertion THROUGH the mediation of digital/ analogic means INTO the analogic WETWARE of the perceiving SUBJECT), MEANING begins. The ANALOGIC measurement of the rulers, with WEIGHT and problematic or rough TOLERANCE, is the measure of MEANING as well, coupled with the idealized MIRRORING of the digital within the analogic (as if the analogic were a cast-off of the digital, or as if the digital were a cast-off of the analogic). The rulers, in their UNGAINLY stance, are a source of DIS/COMFITURE or the DIS/EASE of GRAVITY. A straight-line bending, inconceivable! The misplacement of tolerance: Unforgivable! Yet this is what we are confronting in our cultural-political world today: digital laissez-faire and the bending of the analogic, as RULES, not rulers, are bent to meet every contingency: Let us, for example, over-develop this nation, these wetlands, this war, in the guise of the ABSOLUTE - of freedom, of god, of Capital. As with the Procrustean Bed: Cut off what doesn't fit! Purify at all costs! In this regard, the future is always already cleared, cleansed, and ready for action. (All development is over-development or under-development.) Back in the Gallery: I will gather the rulers, take them with me across the United States, sleeping, measuring only the unease of dreams. Four of them, found in a small second-hand shop in Copperton, Utah, next to the Bingham Copper Mine excavation, the largest human-made scar on the face of the earth. Next time, the plague.