Weapons are instruments that carry messages much in the same ways that thoughts, images or pens do. Women used to kill with their tongues and poison pens and their particular arsenal of weapons. Yet there seem to have been always the need for little tools that can inflict instant physical harm. Such devices are of course only defensive. Hair pins and miniature weapons come to mind. A beautiful and metaphorically functional matching tea set and pistol from the finest east German porcelain can be found on display at the home of New York’s 69th Regiment, the Armory on Lexington Avenue – known also for the legendary 1913 Armory Show. Spectators were overheard speculating on the type of bullets these delicates may contain. They appear to be vessels for all kinds of poisons or drugs that would go well with tea. Chinese gunpowder tea perhaps? Maybe they serve best by reminding of the potential dangers of just “having a cup of tea” with someone.

“P.P. R28” © 2006 Yvonne Lee Schultz

Tomomi Maehata is a native of Fukuoka, southwestern Japan. Now she lives in Tokyo. In a recent exhibition at the Tokyo National University for Fine Arts and Music she exhibited a peculiar garment object. A bra made from glass. That bra can be worn. It protects while it extends the breast. It is actually composed of a cell-like structure of glass beads that she formed and fused together. The bra exposes the inside of the breast as one might imagine it – beyond the skin layers. The the inside could be worn to protect the outside. While this hyper-naked rendition of a breast may seem surgical, we see a strange glowing beauty that men want to touch and women like to stare at. She has managed to translate her love and fascination for the inside of her own body across gender barriers and preconceptions.

For herself, there is even more to it. But that is a private matter. “I am not telling you.” she snaps back.

This is Charlie. He is a third participant in the communication.

This is Bob.

Insane in the membrane
Insane in the brain.
(Cypress Hill)

This Worldprocessor-globe based composite image plots the total amount of patents granted worldwide, beginning in 1883 with just under 50,000 and continuing to 2002 on a rapid climb towards 1 million, the x-y parameters of the annually shifting amount of total patents granted worldwide is plotted around a globe by a line graph. Though other cartographically related information distorts as a result, by preserving the plotted line as an uninterrupted constant, an overview of this rapid escalation is derived through the reconstitution of four different perspectives into a single image. Geographic regions where countries offer environments conducive to fostering innovation are represented by topography. Additionally, nations where residents are granted an average of 500 or more US patents per year are called out in red by their respective averages in the years after 2000.

[Research was supported by NSF IIS-0238261 award and Indiana University. It is part of Indiana University’s effort to map science and human knowledge. For more see scientometry.net ]

(download or drag image into a new browser window for a more detailed view, especially if your browser displays a vertically distorted image)

cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoveries, that we can ge more out of them than was originally put into them”. Heinrich Hertz quoted by Dantzig, Tobias: Number. New York 1967: The Free Press

“Here the Quara-Khitai or Western Liao kingdom presents possibilities. It will be remembered (cf. Vol. 3 pp.118, 457) that persistent tradition in
China has ascribed to this country the transmission of scientific and technological knowledge to the West.”*

Did the compass from the chinese east meet here the zero from the indian south?

(more…)

1

I

1 + 2

I look

1 + 2 + 3

I look at

1 + 2 + 3

I look at the

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5

I look at the pines

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8

I look at the pines on

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13

I look at the pines on the

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 + 21

I look at the pines on the hillside

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11 + 13 v 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 + 21 + 34

Alive,

The laws of evolution differ. The sequences of natural numbers differ. Their patterns are predictable. Nevertheless they have the capacity to grow infinitely.
Zukofskys words accord to a common syntax (subject, predicate, object).
Nevertheless their system of evolution is unpredictable.
One word appears, unexpectedly. It is a sign of life.
It is an unforeseeable turn. A turn of no return. A definite turn, which creates a gap between the former evolution, and an evolution to come. It marks death for the former, it marks beginning for something which is about to begin.
There is something defined, limited, so that something different may start.
This will also end. The lines of the poem do not grow infinitely.
Nevertheless they evolve in an unpredictable manner.
Finite but unpredictable, Zukofsky`s poem evolves, dies, when the end of the verses is reached, the book closed. The poem may resurrect, resonate for a certain time through the day and night of the reader, dies again, later.
Finite but unpredictable, dying, resurrecting, dying again, verses of a poem.
Algorithms, which will train to deal with unsolvable questions of mankind, which nevertheless will die, far away, in Africa, here, where our self esteem is fading because of problems, which we do not face.

“He said: Man who don`t think of the far, will have trouble near”. The Confucian Analects, Book 15, XI. Translated by Ezra Pound