der Möglichkeit von nichts, nicht des Nichts, sondern des Eindrucks eines Farbflecks, der schwindet, eines Schattens, der an den Gittern des Fensters vorbeistreicht. Sehschlitz zwischen etwas und dem Nichts von etwas, eben nicht dem absoluten Nichts. Das absolute Nichts, braucht es das?

Altan beschreibt die absolute Zeit, ihre Gewalt. Es ist eine Gewalt, die Einbildungskraft keinen Platz lässt.

Einbildungskraft stellt sich ein, wenn die absolute Kraft relativiert werden kann.

1 (Wenn ich einmal anfange, finde ich kein Ende, also verursache ich die Wahrnehmung von etwas Unbegrenztem, das vielleicht nur wahrnehmbar wird, weil ich anfange)

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.

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A Journal for Art, Sex and Mathematics is appealing because:

It trains our perception of differences and oppositions (gender, polarity, property, capacity, opportunities) and it also expresses hope. Hope, that thinking itself (mathematical construction, zero/nothing) might be able to continue to think. (Realometer)

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For a certain time I was a character who helped authors to write about art and science.

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D.: I’ve never read Descartes to speak of. … I am not a Cartesian by pleasure. I happen to have been born a Cartesian. The French education is based on a sequence of strict logic. You carry it with you. *

*Eric Cameron: „Given”. In: De Duve, Thierry (ed.): The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (Nova Scoatia College of Art and Design, Halifax Nova Scotia). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 17.

Very Hungry God calls the idea of the human head as a vessel and reservoir in question, since the buckets are completely empty.

The materials of Gupta’s sculptures, utensils in everyday use in India, are also traditional attributes of the gods. As such, they are useful for spiritual orientation. His sculptures point to the ambivalent status of instruments that structure the relationship between Man and his inner world as well as his outer world. This inner world is considered by traditional Indian culture as a transit station. The artistic thematization of instruments and everyday materials as in Gupta’s work is sculptural and therefore visual-spatial, yet it can also be time-based and appeal primarily to the ear instead of the eye.

Excerpt of Pointers – Contribution to beam me up

Vilém Flusser’s (12.5.1920-27.11.1991) theoretical work is an example of the critical understanding of the dominant role of writing in western society. On the other hand he serves as a counterexample: Flusser substitutes the domination of writing by the dominance of computing. He replaces one medium on the top of the hierarchy of communication by another one. His work integrates aspects of modern nomadism with the theory and history of exact sciences. As a writer he felt challenged by the impact of computer technology on text production. On the one hand Flusser argues that computer culture will dominate all aspects of civilized life, on the other hand he strengthens the position that this domination has to be counterbalanced by inter-subjective values. One part of his thinking is a prophecy, saying that exact sciences and their major tool – the computer – will overwhelm the culture of writing. He regards computer processed mathematical functions as far more sufficient in describing phenomena than writing. Therefore the art of bookmaking and of authorship will die. On the other hand thinking and philosophy will survive when the computer is used dialogically. Flusser believes that the computer on the one hand will help to establish a technocracy of scientists, a new authority, but on the other hand it can be used to set up intersubjective relations and to overcome the authority of monological narrators. Flusser points out the communicational and mediational potentials of the computer. We see Vilém Flusser engaged in a conflict between the traditional communication of writing and the event of computer based communication. Problematic is Flussers impetus to establish the sovereignty of the computer. He reorganizes written history under the effect of a technological revolution, and establishes by himself a historical order, leading directly to the advent of the computer, which he regards as a tool to establish a new technocracy. Often he writes that the remaining time in which to fight and avoid this technocracy is short.*

On occasion of Flusser’s birthday we post “Serie Flusser” from Darya Berner.

* Extract from Nils Röller: „Hierarchies of Communication“. In: Diebner, Hans and Ramsay, Lehan (eds.): Hierarchies of Communication. Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2003.

Bloom offers one slight  allusion to hope: A form of hope which gains its impact on the basis of a nihilistic  résumé. One has to think (according to the protagonists of Bloomism)  that subjects were never able to join a community. Subjects always had the illusion to participate in an community, but never participated in.  Now – with the advent of Bloom – the ruins of this illusion became evident. Given this, constructions of comunties may evolve.

Realometer is sceptical about this. Constructions are only conceivable within the framework of texts.

Jabès is in favour of this, because since the book of god did evolve, subjects are reinforced to invent themselves via fragments. He remembers Reb Fluss. Once asked to write about cities, Reb Fluss proposed to conceive cities as “Wellentäler” (wave troughs) and subjects as instable, momentary concentrations of waves (electromagnetic).

Duchamp puts into question. Wave is a metaphor, it is a mask for non retinal actions.