[ZB Magnet 1] Taisnier of Hainault (Hannonius), De Natura et Effectibus Lapidis Magneticis, Coloniae 1562, published the letter on the magnet by Peregrinus under his own name. Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Alte Drucke und Rara, NE 1836: 3, p. 4.
The mariners employ an art which cannot deceive,
By the property of the lodestone,
An ugly stone and brown,
To which iron joints itself willingly
They have; they attend to where it points
After they have applied a needle to it;
And they lay the latter on a straw
And put it simply in the water
Where the straw makes it float.
Then the point turns direct
To the star with such certainty
That no man will ever doubt it,
Nor will it ever go wrong.
When the sea is dark and hazy,
That one sees neither star nor moon,
Then they put a light by the needle
And have no fear of losing their way.
The point turns toward the star;
And the mariners are taught
To follow the right way.
It is an art which cannot fail.
(Guyot de Provins*)
* Guyot de Provins, La Bible [1190], quoted by Brother Potamian: „Notes”, in: The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the magnet; transl.: Brother Arnold; introductory notice: Brother Potamian. New York: McGraw Publishing, 1904, p. 38.
Realo at Headfarm understands everything in terms of texts and writing.
H (andy) is a figure of thought. H insists that discussions should be productive.
J. discusses implicit or hidden structures of power and chances to subvert them.
Magnes wants to find out how the others have constructed their relation to him.
D. is an artist.
Realo: Suddenly, it’s there …
Magnes: Suddenly? It was there already, used by sailors.
Realo: By men who didn’t write, you mean?
H.: Men who didn’t have time to write.
J.: Men who didn’t think about writing.
Realo: Men who didn’t pay attention, because they weren’t writing.
D: Now, fasten your seatbelts for a fantastic journey. On board you’re invited to drink urine from an eagle eyed cat, the lynx.* You will pass stones which are able to gather fish on a spot, others which make horses noiseless, others which makes them noisy and above all stones which serve as pigments. They connect our eyes with the world under our feet.
The Magnet gem – crowned India brings to light
Where lurks in caves the gloomy Troglodytes**
Coloured like iron and by nature’s law
Appointed iron to itself to draw.
The sage Deendor*** skilled in magic lore,
First proved in mystic arts its sov’reign power;
D.: Bon. Again very good, we’ve learned that a text is generated by other texts like a secret is made out of secrets or out of books. Your attitude is very similar to Umberto Eco’s, who is a great teacher of things that can only be perceived by reading texts artists are usually not willing to read.
J.: I don’t want to start a discussion on teaching attitudes. Please do not strengthen the connection between writing texts on one hand and teaching on the other. Writing and reading are subversive strategies. They can be, at least.
D.: They’re also artistic, as well as technological, strategies. Or rather technological possibilities for artistic strategies. This is the reason why Cage was so fascinated by Buckminster Fuller and almost everything he heard about electricity. We are talking about an energy which enables us to publish posts.
Magnes: Electricity and digital media have inspired a form of digital theology. Magnetism offers a different approach. I would say it leads to polytheism, not to monotheism (Zeus, God: The masters of lightning and thunder). Magnetism is an invitation to take the risk of looking beyond, into the transcendental or into the suprasensible another way.
D.: Okay, I will tell you something.
Realometer: Before you start, please allow me to add why I find the images of staffs and of the shoe important. We could look at them in the blog yesterday. The shoe and the staffs are mentioned by Pliny and not by Claudian. They are important because via staff and shoe a fiction was possible: The fiction of Magnes the shepherd who was the first to discover magnetic attraction. So far no image from antiquity, neither a fresco nor a stone cut, that shows Magnes has been found. The antique notion of Magnes – as far as I can see today – is limited or restricted to texts. Nevertheless, the images of Jesus Christ as a shepherd can somehow be read as representations of Magnes by non-pictorial means.
