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The Library (which all others call the universe)

~ amandakatarina ~ 1 Comment

I just read “the library of babel” last night ( http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html ) and this morning saw these beautiful images. I remember when I was a child I saw “Beauty and the Beast”, after seeing the scene where the Beast reveals his library to her…I’ve always wanted to see a library like this…do you think things would be different if libraries were still made like this?

from curious expectations.org

“Their name is execrated, but those who deplore the “treasures” destroyed by this frenzy neglect two notable facts. One: the Library is so enormous that any reduction of human origin is infinitesimal. The other: every copy is unique, irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles: works which differ only in a letter or a comma. Counter to general opinion, I venture to suppose that the consequences of the Purifiers’ depredations have been exaggerated by the horror these fanatics produced. They were urged on by the delirium of trying to reach the books in the Crimson Hexagon: books whose format is smaller than usual, all-powerful, illustrated and magical.” –  Jorge Luis Borges, The  Library of Babel

The Ride

~ amandakatarina ~ 1 Comment

So far, things have been moving along…slowly but still moving none the less. Still a lot to do, thankfully I have extra time! I love the rich texture of the seats and how quiet it is in the back! As you can see I stopped the clock at 10:17…for added omnipresence. Orginal radio installed over the weekend! speakers through the front and back, original as well! Still on the search for an actor!

Signs

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Last night I was driving home and I noticed the message on a sign by a near-by church “God is the potter, we are only clay”….this has really been bothering me. Now, without trying to sound like the she-devil, I’d just like to say that I find this metaphor not only illogical, but also irresponsible for the following reasons.
1. Last week while walking to the LRT, a man a couple people in front of me fell down the steps, losing his shoes, bag, and dislocating his shoulder. Absolutely nobody other then me stopped to help him or see if he was all right. Every other person (and it was pretty busy) was completely passive, thinking “Someone else will help him.” We can see this passivity everywhere, people litter because “someone else will pick it up.” People just don’t care about things because “someone else will care.”
“Passivity is bred by the forces of society today. A desire to be entertained is nurtured from childhood, with increasing efficiency, cultivating generations willing to be led by whoever proves skillful at appealing to superficial emotions.”…. – The Universal House of Justice 2010
I find myself “stepping in” often, perhaps too often at times…(I try not to be as exhausting as Barbara in “The Way we Were”) but I find this world and its people frustrating. It’s so popular to negate yourself as being shallow, materialistic and passive.
2. Passivity versus Conviction. Although I harbor myself in the grey areas of absolutism, I strongly believe in the ability to form the skills to negate one’s own opinions and path. To argue this point in the same domain, I believe that God would want us to hold an empowered understanding his reign. As a religious person is never condoned to shame or passively misplace their faith…would God therefore not want a true believer instead of a complacent lump of thoughtless clay?
3. To go against all that I was saying, people aren’t that insipid and terrible. Don’t they deserve a little credit towards themselves? Has the world fallen to pieces through secularization? No, it’s as good-bad as ever. Perhaps giving our true heroes credit as being a regular person who made the right decision will empower others to do the same.
4. Really? You mean I can’t clone myself or jot down to the nearest sperm bank? And if a fifteen-year-old girl gets raped in the street by a serial killer and is impregnated, it’s God’s will for her to keep it?
I’m getting ahead of myself, the argument becomes cyclical at this point…but truly, I do see merit in religion. It may not be for me personally, but I do see it as an opportunity to bring light and hope into peoples lives, but this message to me gives the same hope to its believers as the lottery does to the superstitious.

And mightie proud to humble weak does yield

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It fortuned out of thickest wood
A ramping Lyon rushed suddainly,
Hunting full greedie after salvage blood:
Soone as the royall virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily
To haue attonce deuour’d her tender corse:
But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
his bloudie rage asswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.
(Book 1, Canto III, 5)

…The lyon would not leaue her desolate…
(Book 1, Canto III, 9)

Oh Edgar…

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“Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me), which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul.” – Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

My McQueen

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There is a certain kind of disheartening feeling that comes with his suicide. I wish I could tell him this:

my hero, my imaginary audience, my inspiration…I hope you are at rest. I wish I could have told you how much you meant to me. It made me so hopeful that you existed and that you were able to find success.

I’m still contemplating style.com’s words by Tim Blank’s “…He was also an arch romantic with a pessimistic streak. It produced some of the most beautiful, shocking images in the history of fashion, but it’s a state of mind that can lead to endless disappointments”

balancing warrior 4.

~ amandakatarina ~ 1 Comment

Balance. Being good at anything is just like “being good at balancing”. It’s your minds ability to concentrate hard enough to truly tell your body to do something that it understands…but knowing that your ability to balance is based on a momentary situation built on nothing concrete or imaginable and that could change or be destroyed at any time.
-Another thought during yoga.

For the Love of the Game..

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For class tomorrow I’m going to read this passage from our text “The Faerie Queen”, as I felt it fell nicely into the themes of subjectivity, and faceted identities; which is what I think I’m going to progress into over the semester.

He then deuisde himselfe how to disguise;
For by his mightie science he could take
As many formes and shapes in seeming wise,
As euer Proteus to himselfe could make:
Sometime a fowle, sometime a fish in lake,
Now like a foxe, now like a dragon fell,
That of himselfe he oft for feare would quake,
And oft would flie away. O who can tell
The hidden power of herbes, and might of Magicke spell?
(The Faerie Queene, Book 1 Canto II, 10, Spenser)

So far I’ve deduced that he’s dealing with betrayal, he’s appalled by the witches tricks yet is seduced by the idea of revenge and taking part in such games. A knight, a quest…boys and their video games.  This makes me think about the idea of adventure and escaping, voyeurism. The love of arts, entertainment, and the petty games we play with one another, is it all a battle of good versus evil? or simply an arbitrary distraction to occupy a theological mindset until we die? Does it matter?  In many ways this reminds me of a Frost poem.

quotes

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“All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It’s scary.”
Barbara Kruger

“The material world is an illusion. It doesn’t matter if they’re there or not. The world is in my head.”
Rashid Cole

“Science has not yet told us whether madness may not be the sublime form of intelligence”
Edgar Allan Poe

“I bear in my hands the disguise by which I conceal my life. A web of meaningless events, I dye it with the magic of my point of view.”
Michel Leiris

This might not sound nice but…

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Seriously, I sometimes feel like I’m in a world full of zombies. I’m always shocked at how gullible people can be and how eager they are to be accepted. Brainwashing, it’s actually really simple. Hello?! wake up can’t you see whats going on? I’m getting sick of pointing out the obvious. Maybe I’m just being a pretentious bitch, I don’t know.

I really want to meet William Gibson.

I like this quote;

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. ”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

yes, I think that being weird made me smart.

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Thanks to S, I stumbled upon this: http://www.miller-mccune.com/news/this-is-your-brain-on-kafka-1474 The title was “This is your brain on Kafka: Does absurdist literature make you smarter”. Naturally I couldn’t click on the link fast enough. I was happy to discover that according to this argument, absurdist literature does touch into the deeper realm of understanding. In the string study the people who experienced the crazier version of Franz Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” where better able to re-pattern the string. This takes me back to my argument that through the common experience of art, lies understanding. Alas, hope.

Fear…

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One word that keeps coming up is fear. It seems that fear-tactics are the easiest ways to to create compliance and make others agent to power. It stimulates us to act irrational, creates alienation between people, and brings out prejudices. So how do we deal with it? Is understanding it more the best way? confronting it?
These are two opinions on fear by Napolean and Einstein. they work together in a fairly indicative way.

There are only two forces that unite men – fear and self interest.
Napoleon Bonaparte
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein

waiting…

~ amandakatarina ~ 3 Comments

http://facetedwords.wikia.com

I can’t move forward with the dictionary (401 project) until I solve a presentation problem with myself. The question is; Do I make my own website, or use the wiki?

To understand my question, I first must explain my piece so far. The point of this piece is to create an emphasized subjective-reality, (I’m aware of the paradox in putting subjective and reality together, it’s the point, to put emphasis on the ironic truth) it’s basically another view or an abstracted view of the world of narrative. The words are facts interpreted through subjective thoughts, arguments, and situations. The point of view is stressed through the element of colour, each colour is a single facet, it stands as a cognitive embodiment of expression. Each coloured expression reveals a perspective and a list of words. These words are put in particular lists because they share fibers that fall suite to that particular facet revealed through the mood of the colour. Now, that’s not to say that one word can only fall suit to one colour, they can be expressed through multiple colours, this is what makes up the irony, the putting together of two (or more) truths. So far, they’ve developed a surprisingly funny dialogue, I’m considering putting some of it together for a play, which would un-abstract (is there an actual term I could use here? perhaps reconstruct? but that doesn’t work as it implies that it was deconstructed, which it isn’t it was simply translated into a new identity) from the alternate view of narrative that I have created. Now this is where my question comes in, if I leave it in it’s wiki-state, it will be at it’s purest form, it will exist as cognitive exploration through software  that was made with the intention of collective understandings, and differences in mind. The concept of wiki software is like the bottom layer or skeleton of the concept. However if I make my own website, it will follow the specific narrated design plan needed to convey a more horizontal hierarchy, which would relay the point most effectively. This is important because, I guess it would reveal my own opinion as the artist, it would make the entire thing have a signiture moral or viewpoint. My own reasons for creating this piece is based on my feelings, that there is no value in being ignorant. The egocentric or ethnocentric mentality, will only be lost and celebrated among those of your colour, and will only represent a theory of the truth, therefore the more worldly your view is, the more applicable it is to reign truth.

So do I create a narrative? or do I set the stage? Which brings me to this, is it possible to simply just set the stage? I guess it depends on what my narrative is. I’ve been stumped on this for weeks.
…I’m not sure if any of that makes sense.

anyways, here it is if you want to look
http://facetedwords.wikia.com

Symmetry.

~ amandakatarina ~ 1 Comment

This is really interesting, he presents two quotes I love and an idea I find really interesting. I’m surprised how much I understand mathematical theory, but still can’t solve simple math problems.
The two quotes are ;
The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures without which it means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.

– Galileo

In everything…uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth… Even when building the Imperial Palace, they always leave one place unfinished.

– Japanese Essays In idleness. 14th century

new media art

~ amandakatarina ~ 3 Comments

When you think about it, almost everything that is produced now, is made through a process that is not physical. A movie, a photograph, a chair, a toy, these objects are no long convinced nor processed by the skilled craftsman, instead they are thought up designed on and delivered mind-to-machine to our figurative playground. When we look at art history the pieces artists of each era that are highlighted, are most often chosen for it’s depiction of the times. From studying these pieces of art, we learn about advancements, values, achievements, thoughts, and everyday life at the time. We choose to study these particular artworks to understand society at the time. I feel that although media artists are currently taking the backseat in the current highlights of present day modern art, they are displaying an indicative picture of the way we now process. When I say process I’m encompassing the manner in which ideas, communication, and research is conducted.

all or nothing; the exception

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The rule that everything is a narrative, is a narrative truth in itself. ie: a completely debatable opinion. The point being, is that some things are absolutes, or are seemingly absolute because they are based upon an undeniable fact free of logic. When this is the case, there are no words, no debate, nothing, you’ll know it when you feel it, because everything surrounding it is darkness. Call it blindness, free of illusion. It’s still out there.

jerks

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some words intregue me more then others.  one thing that the dictionary reveals is the complexities, richness, and issues that concern certain words and terms.  how do i define a word that holds the meaning of so many different applications. such a word has just come up to me, the word is “jerk”.  the idea of a jerk has become a common problem in many of my favorite ideals. my definition thus far is; one who undermines and counteracts often recklessly the goals of an ethos.

now this can be applied in both uses of the word jerk, a name to call someone, and a sharp movement. both have the ability to alter the original course of movement, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a negative way.

there are problems with this word and the definition that  i have given. in that jerks are sort of essential, in many ways they provoke questions contradictions within the established order.  in other ways a jerk is the one who uses trust and openness within an ethos as a catalyst for digression.  the authority loves jerks, jerks give power to the authority to take control away from humanity as a whole. whats troubling to me about hating jerks is that, they are proven to be a part of the voice of humanity.  dealing with jerks is a slippery slope, because the perspective of who is a jerk is completely subjective. it asks the question who is calling who a jerk?

a jerk i guess is something we may not like, sometimes we may hate them, but it’s something we have to live with.