Thursday, January 1, 2015

One & Other: A.L.L.





Click to enlarge, please.






Artist Statement:

This work--entitled "One & Other: A.L.L."--intends to capture, create, and/or represent and inspire towards A & ~A (enunciated as "A and not A") as the integral metaphor pointing to the fundamental "thing" that is at once the generator, source, maintainer, and "benefactor" of (this last less about money--indeed, no reference to currency at all--but instead includes notions of "value" and as that which "helps" or "supports") manifestation; while also a symbolic engraving, as in "etching," our necessary relationship between necessary dualistic pairings (such as, but not limited to, (One, Other), (Internal, External), (Subject, Object), (True, False), & etc.), by which our understanding is necessarily incomplete, upon the psyche of the One who experiences.

In order to arrive at a necessarily incomplete possible understanding of the metaphor, it is possibly necessary for us to undertake an analysis and exploration of each of the images, which together form an animated triptych, whereby the individual panels are united in sequence over time; which is to say, the inherently singular representations of each panel occupy the same location in space, but, due to their inherent Otherness from One and Other, they must necessarily be separated and analyzed or interpreted as individual metaphors or pointing to that which by their unification over time symbolizes the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Put differently, this work presents and represents a necessarily incomplete vision and enunciation of the Art and Science of Existential Engineering.

Analysis:

Image 1.

In this image we see the Milky Way galaxy as wrapped up inside a morphed representation of the horizon of our planet Earth. This panel of the triptych is entitled "OUTSIDE".

OUTSIDE
The Milky Way galaxy is home to our wonderful and mysterious solar system. While we have some ideas about the objects that occupy these structures--the Milky Way and the Solar system--we certainly lack anything that reassembles a complete knowledge of these "Heavenly" structures, but we have at least some knowledge of these. We understand, for instance, that the Milky Way is embedded within a larger galactic structure, that the Solar system is embedded within the Milky Way, that our Earth is embedded within the Solar system, and that we are embedded in the Earth's own systems.

We are, from our own individual perspectives, looking outwards from the source of our perceptions, and towards that which lies, perhaps in some sense "deceivingly" so, outside of ourselves. Now, "deceivingly so" insofar as all our observations of an apparently external world become the objects of our necessarily subjective experiences and interpretations whereby informative signals from a possibly external world are passed along our human nervous systems and then ultimately reconstructed as sensory data in the electrochemical processes of the brain and these in turn, or perhaps not really by "turn," but more as a mutual co-arising, reveal themselves to each of us privately as representations of what we can only logically assume, but not logically assert as fact, is a shared world. Since we are necessarily limited to direct experiencing of only our own interpretations of informative signals from a seemingly external world, we are unable to be certain that any Other's interpretations of their own informative signals are identical to that of our own. Indeed, given that each of us is a unique structure of biological matter, we can, it seems, almost be certain that no two internally self-referential reconstructions of an apparently external world are in fact identical. We can merely hope, which is to say "have faith," that there is much more overlap than less.

A ponderous type of individual might notice of this panel, "OUTSIDE," the necessary conjunction of land and sky--mutually exclusive to One and Other--which unite through our observations to inform us of the incidental differences between One and Other which thereby conjoin to create our perception of a horizon. That the image wraps up our unique and location specific vantage point from a singular view and enfolds this around what is the greater outside expanse of our universe, is, in fact, a delightful visual pun whereby the "as above" becomes necessarily engulfed within the "so below." We see in this a direct reversal, an irony of sorts, with regards to the previous recognition and discussion of the order of embedding: visually this image suggests that it is the Earth that is embedded in ourselves, and the Solar system that is embedded in the Earth, and the Milky Way which is embedded in that. It reflects upon the notion that everything seemingly "out there" is in fact embedded within each instance of any specific human being.

Image 2.

In this image we see the singularity, that is to say, the black hole, as depicted in the film Interstellar. In the context of the triptych, this panel is entitled "INSIDE".

INSIDE
Black holes as construed in theoretic physics are objects of intense interest and much theoretical work has been constructed around their analysis. Most of this is largely a sort of scientific mythology. We have never directly observed a black hole with our instruments and we have exactly zero satellites or space probes that have gotten anywhere near one. Moreover, we are strictly forbidden a look into the black hole beyond its event horizon and can not have access to the singularity that allegedly lies therein. Yet, we, some of us, anyway, still seem to like to talk about them a whole lot.

Every, or almost every, galaxy, it is speculated--because like we've ever really examined every galaxy in detail--has a massive black hole at its centre. We too, as human beings, we can also speculate, also have a "black hole" or "singularity" at our centre. This could be "cashed out" in terms of the Jungian archetype of the Self, but also "cashed out" not only in those terms.

Incoming informative signals from the things outside of ourselves cross the threshold of our own individual event horizons. These informative signals transit from something "out there" and become electrochemical impulses "in here." Once those signals cross the event horizon through our sensory apparatus and become these electrochemical signals, they are lost to the outside world in exactly the same way that things crossing the event horizon of a black hole are lost to the rest of the universe that the black hole is embedded within. We are, each of us, in this sense, the singular receiver and ultimate interpreter of our individually reconstructed version of whatever it is that might be "out there," and we are embedded within that which can only be knowable in itself as indirectly through our sensory apparatus.

As a singularity of Self, we are consuming or entrapping the incoming informative signals that are attracted to us by our own personal gravity. The individual mind is a singularity which bends the spacetime of collective consciousness in such a way as to generate a sense of individualized differentiation of One from Other. The mass of each of our necessarily differentiated and individualized minds warps the collective consciousness in such a way that the structure of this consciousness is stretched into a self and Other referencing loop that dances around and through the infinite. It is much like a Möbius Strip insofar as it is constructed from a seemingly two-sided surface which, when folded in a higher space, then becomes only a single sided structure. The length of the loop is itself infinite in the same way that a nonrotating singularity with no electric charge would also stretch the spacetime of the universe towards infinity as any object that passes its event horizon would then be able to observe. However, since the circles and cycles of our interpretive self-other referencing give our individual and singular minds what is an analogous occurrence of rotation and charge, the infinite recedes from our unique experiences of consciousness and instead grants us a comprehensible and seemingly finite interpretation of the received and processed sensory data.

To put all this a little bit differently, the "INSIDE" is where the "so below," that is, the incoming informative signals from the world as it is outside of us, becomes subsumed by "the above," by which we mean the individualized and uniquely personalized warping of collective consciousness that we each refer to as our own "mind."

Image 3.

In this image we see what is taken to be an "occult" or "alchemical" representation of reality. In the context of the work it is entitled "A.L.L. Together". It is itself composed of four unique symbols, perhaps in the same way that certain modes of "classic" thought suggested the universe was composed of four unique elements which occurred only together and could not be separated One from the Other to appear in their naked individuality or differentiated singularity. In the same way, this work, "One & Other: A.L.L." is actually four elements in one: there are the three individual images that form the triptych, and the animation, or movement, of the three images in time but not space then creates the fourth image, which is the whole of the work itself.

A.L.L. Together
We will, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of not only this particular part of the work, but also, of the overall work itself, need to examine these four symbols and their relationships between themselves. So let's delineate the four apparent symbols: the Ouroboros, the Triangle, the Sun, and the Eye.

Let's start with the Triangle.

Triangles, especially equilateral ones such as the one that occurs in the image, mean many different things to different people. Triangles such as this are seen, for instance, as the strongest or most stable geometrical shape: due to their structure, they are the most stable and most efficient shapes in terms of handling applied forces. This is why triangles often feature in various load bearing engineering designs.

Triangles also represent, obviously, Trinities of all sorts and kinds. There's the Holy Trinity of Christianity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) and there are also several Other instances of trinities in several other religions or mythologies: in Mesopotamia, there was Anu, Enlil, and Ea; in Egypt, there was Osiris, Isis, and Horus; in Babylon, there was Nimrod, Semiramas and Tammuz; in Plato's conception of the world, there's The Unknown Father, The World Soul, and the Logos. Indeed, there are occurrences of trinities to be found scattered throughout much of human conceptions of the world, ourselves, and the relation between the world and ourselves, which, clearly, is a trinity in itself: (world, ourselves, relation between).

As E.E. Rehmus frames it, there are, with respect to several instances of metaphysical trinities, the three following elements in the form of assertions:

1) There is one Immutable, Ineffable, Pre-manifestational Reality.
2) Everything is periodic or cyclic.
3) The cosmos is a hologram in which each part is a reflection of the whole.

The above three points are some things to consider about the elements of some trinities even if we choose not to believe in the elements of any specific trinity.

In terms of dualities, the triangle shows us how, exactly how, dualities exist in relation to One and Other. Indeed, One and Other is the primary mode of our experiencing: we exist as One in relation to an Other--many apparent Others, in fact. But there are two general categories of being in the world: self and Other. How is this a trinity we might ask? Because relations are objects. Indeed, on a deep analysis it seems as if relations are the only objects: the things we mark out as Other, the boundaries we define in our perceptions that determine our self, are merely a product of collecting as a whole, some set of relationships amongst apparent parts and bracketing these off in contrast to the rest of the relationships amongst the rest of the parts. So, to put it clearly, the Trinity of our actual being in the world is:

1. Self, as in myself, as in yourself, as in One.
2. Other, as in not myself, as in not yourself, as in Other.
3. &, as in the necessary relationship that must exist between the binary or dualistic pairing of (One, Other): One & Other is the trifold representation of the fundamental structure upon which any specific thing has its being in, and in contrast to, the world.

Further, we see that One is not Other when it comes to the relationship perceived between them. This is to say that, given the binary pairing of (One, Other), we can code this up in terms of symbolic logic as:

One := A, and since the negation of One, in terms of its dualistic pairing, is ~A, we see that:
Other := ~A, as the negation of A can only imply ~A in terms of a singular instance of a dualistic binary pairing.

Thus, the whole of our individualized and differentiated existences is entirely captured by the expression A & ~A. Each of these terms, (A, ~A, &) are "pointed to by" or "located at" the vertices of the equilateral triangle. The equilateral triangle itself demonstrates not only the necessary structure of our being, but also demonstrates that this is the strongest, most stable way to conceive of our existence: One in a necessarily conjunctive and ideally equitable relationship with the Other. QED.

Let's now turn our gaze towards the Eye, the Eye as it occurs in the triangle, which some people have some sort of fear or reservations towards, feeling that every occurrence of such a symbol is in fact evidence of some secret plot in which some secret and nebulous minority of people are, in fact, controlling everything. This is entirely not our concern here. What we see by the Eye as it occurs in the triangle is nothing more than the symbol that points to an Illuminated self, and not some Illuminati. Although, we might consider that any instance of an illuminated self would necessarily be part of an Illuminati ("Illumiated Ones") by definition.

But what is this self illuminating? Well, if we go back to our understanding of the triangle, then we see how the illumination is about the vertices of the triangle; that is, the eye exists in a single vertex of the triangle. This implies that we, as a singular conscious entity, are only able to illuminate one vertex in any given instance, or moment, of our being. We can, and most often habitually do, occupy the illuminated vertex as an instance of One, of self, of our own being. We can, however, through things like empathy, come to illuminate, as in see in our consciousness, as in give light to, the instances of Otherness, as in recognizing and identifying with the Others: we can, in this sense, see ourselves in or as the Other. And, finally, we can turn the triangle again, so that the vertex of & is where the light of our consciousness illuminates the relationship between any given thing and all the things it is not in order to understand exactly how One exists in contrast and conjunction to any Other.

This is the "Outside" description of the Eye as it occurs in the triangle. In other words, this is the Eye in the triangle as it represents the things outside our selves and their relationships to us. We can now turn inwards, and see the trinity that is illuminated by the Eye with respect to the "Inside."

The"Inside" trinity is:
1) Eye as object of seeing; that is, the mechanism by which informative external signals cross the event horizon of our being and are translated into internalized electrochemical informative signals.
2) Eye as in I, as in "Interpretation." We all have our modes of interpretation. Each of us has a decidedly unique and singular Interpretive structure that translates the internalized electrochemical informative signals into a picture, a representation, or manifestation of the world.
3) Eye as in I, as in the self, or ourselves, as Individuals with both eyes and Interpretive strategies for representing the world and the Others that occupy such a world to our unique, differentiated, and individualized instance of selfness.

This Inside trinity operates in conjunction with the Outside trinity. Put differently, there is a necessary conjunction between Inside & Outside; that is, we see in this conjunction yet another clear example of A & ~A: the Inside is not the Outside and vice versa--they are the negations of One and Other along a dualistic pairing of (Inside, Outside), whereby there is a necessary and, ideally, equitable relation of conjunction between Inside & Outside. We can literally and actually not have One without the Other in every possible sense of what that means.

So, the Inside Trinity operates in conjunction with the Outside trinity and we see how the Interpretive strategies of One must necessarily have at least some overlap with the Interpretive strategies of an Other if we are not only to be able to communicate and share in a reality, but also, have any ability to see ourselves in the Other. If the Other was entirely and utterly foreign to us, not only would we be unable to recognize our self in the Other, but we would not even be able to perceive the Other; which is to say, without mutually conjunctive and overlapping being in both an Internal and External sense, there would be no relation of One to an Other in any way at all. QED.

Let's now turn our increasingly dynamic and complex yet necessary gaze towards the Sun.

Ah, the Sun. Where would we be without the Sun? Well, we certainly would not be here at all. The Sun is central to our existence and it is what illuminates and powers our world: with regard to the Sun and its energies, which pour down upon us like so much Mana, it's not merely that without it life on earth would not exist, but the Earth itself would never have formed in the context or embedding in the gravitational wells allowed by the very mass of the Sun. So, is it any wonder that the Sun is the central figure in the triangle? No. Clearly it is the central object that allows for, and gives rise to, things like ourselves, Others, triangles, eyes, interpretations, and all the rest.

We could, if we wanted, examine the Sun in terms of Qabalistic or "occulted" meanings. In this sense, we can simply note that the Sun is central to the Tree of Life (the Sephiroth called "Tiphareth" aka "Beauty"), and it is associated with the heart, which is also central to our own Tree of Life; that is, the biological and metaphysical (aka "philosophical") necessity of the heart is clearly recognized as central to any instance of a human being, and that this Heart of things both real and ideal corresponds to what we call "Love." There is little question as to why we tend to draw hearts where we want to symbolize Love and we see through the lens of Qabalism that Love as Beauty is central to ourselves and Others. Put differently, Love is the beauty and the energy that is the force that acts within and without in regards to the equitable and strongest triangular manifestations of One and Other both Inside and Oustide. QED.

Finally, as in "last" but most certainly not the "least," we turn, as in circle, as in revolve--as in revolution--our thrice folded gaze, as in (Triangle, Eye, Sun), towards the Ouroboros.

Ah, the circle that consumes itself, that generates itself, that exists in its eternal perfection only in our ideals but is merely ever approximated in the world as a many sided object whose number of sides approach infinity, but since infinity is necessarily something that can not be represented adequately in a finite world, any actual instances of the circle are necessarily approximations--exactly like this entire evaluation, explanation, and interpretation of the images in the triptych: a necessarily incomplete representation of the whole.

The Ouroboros, then, is simply the cyclic oscillation between any instance of A in conjunction, &, with ~A. That is, it represents the necessary and complete union of all opposites whereby the seemingly apparent differences are collapsed into a singular circle of consuming and creating being. QED.

So, taken together as a whole, we see that the third image is nothing more and nothing less than a pictographic metaphor that intends to point the viewer, the experiencer, the I that Interprets through the Eye, towards that which, ultimately, can neither ever be fully understood nor wholly held in the mind in its entirety. It is a representation of the ineffable which intends to allow us inroads towards "effing" the ineffable. QED.

Image 4.

Is the whole of the work itself, the triptych as unified in space but necessarily differentiated in time. It is its own representation of the dynamics of "effing" the ineffable. As such, it is the Alchemical process of turning metaphorical lead into metaphorical gold, and this--no matter how it is analyzed or represented--is only something any individual can undertake alone. No One of us can understand for the Other, we can merely offer our own understandings with the hope that such understandings are well received by any Other, and it is the Other who must accomplish the Alchemical work in order to understand.

The fourth image is A & ~A whereby A can be assigned to either INSIDE or OUTSIDE and that assignment determines which term becomes ~A and the two are both united in, and defined or differentiated by, &, which is the ineffable relationship pointed to in A.L.L. Together. The work is a rotational symmetry of evolving being. It is the blinking of the cosmic and all seeing (eye, I) by which Self comes to manifest as instances of Other as derivations from necessary and fundamental paradox.

QED.



A Three by Ten Matrix Generating One Thousand
Possibly Intentional but Also Equally Unintentional Meanings of
A.L.L.
Presented in Terms of Alternating Sense and Nonsense
This Matrix Is Necessarily Incomplete.

Hi it's Eve bringing you a update from the year 2020. I read this over and when I got to here, I realized that it is not clear how the Matrix works, so here is how to play:

1) Use any method you Choose to pick a word from column 1,
2) Use any method you Choose to pick a word from column 2, and the method need not be the same as the last one you used if you do not Choose it to be,
3) As in (2) above, but for column 3.
4) The three words taken together generate a phrase: it will mean something to you--make sense--or not.

It occurs to me now, but didn't then, that we could also view each set of three words six different ways: there are 3! (three factorial) ways to order a set with 3 members. So we can repeat the above steps with each of the three words to determine a possibe set of up to six phrases from each set of 3 words.

Hunh. How about that?


After the Fact

Discussion and development of the notion of consciousness expressed in the above work is at least partially unfolded here.



Reference to E.E. Rehmus and his notions of the Trinity are from The Magician's Dictionary An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced Magic(k)al Arts and Alternative Meanings, by E.E. Rehmus, as published by Feral House, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 1990.

Original Images from:

"INSIDE" comes care of Miguel Claro with some some small alterations by myself of the edges to make for a more seamless representation in the overall work.

"OUTSIDE" comes from a Google search of images for the singularity as it has been advertised and disseminated far and wide with respect to the movie Interstellar. Find it yourself, it's easy to do. Also some minor alterations by myself in order to make its appearance in the animation more seamless.

"A.L.L. Together" comes care of The Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel and I have no idea where this Order co-opted this particular depiction of the Orouboros from, but I will say it was exactly the image needed for the work.

All images used entirely without any permission of their respected owners, and no ownership is claimed or implied on behalf of myself, b.e. hydomako, towards any specific image. Each image is used under the intention of "fair use" law insofar as such use by myself is intended as commentary, research, teaching, and scholarship, as specifically demonstrated in the above analysis of these images.

Terms and Conditions

The work itself--"One & Other: A.L.L."--is licensed as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, which, as I, b.e. hydomako, understand it means: any presentation of "One & Other: A.L.L." must also be accompanied by the complete text, or a clear and well defined link (embedded in the page of representation of this material) to the text as it occurs on this page, and no instance of the complete text shall be without accompaniment of the image "One & Other: A.L.L." or at least a clear and well defined link (embedded in the page of representation of this material) to this image as it occurs on this page. Any reproduction of the work in its entirety or in part must be accredited to b.e. hydomako either directly and include a link to this page on the page in which such reproduction occurs, or indirectly by including a clear and well defined link to this page on the page in which such reproduction occurs. Any hard copy version of this work in whole or in part must be accredited to b.e. hydomako and include somewhere in the hard copy a clear and well defined string of symbols which together define the URL of this page. Portions of the text may be used with respect to fair use law, but reference to the source (this page and its creator, b.e. hydomako) is always required. No other parties shall profit by any use of this page, in whole or in part, with regards to any of its contents--imagery or text--and any such profiting is open to liable action. Any monetary settlements from any such actions, after such settlements reimburse me, b.e. hydomako, for any and all and only the cost of such legal action and any expenses accrued in conjunction with such legal action, are to be donated in the entirety of their remainder to the charity of my choosing. Any commercial use of this work, whether for profit or nonprofit or not-for-profit, is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of its creator, b.e. hydomako. Any viewing of this page or pages in which material from this page occur which satisfy the aforementioned terms re: accreditation of source or any hard copy of this material in whole or in part which satisfy the aforementioned terms re: accreditation of source counts as recognition, acknowledgement, and agreement to the terms as presented herein. Any party or parties which do not give satisfactory accreditation of source, as defined in the above, in any reproduction of any of the materials on this page shall be solely responsible for all damages accrued from subsequent derivations and representations of the original unaccredited reproduction in any form. Any discrepancies between my understanding of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license and the interpretation of this license as presented herein shall always defer to the terms presented herein. Any terms of licensing lacking as presented in the aforementioned interpretation of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license shall always defer to the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Both the Terms and Conditions defined herein and the materials presented on this page are subject to change without notice and all such changes to the Terms and Conditions are binding to every specific instance of the presentation or the representation of the material on this page for all time and for every possible instance of change. Any profit from the use of this page or its contents and any future derivatives, reformulations, and representations of its contents in both their use and their possible or actual profits--excluding the use of the specific and individual images named herein as "OUTSIDE", "INSIDE", and "A.L.L. Together" as images separate and exclusive from the whole textual work of "One & Other: A.L.L." or as exclusive and individuated from the animated triptych; i.e., no ownership of any of the specific individual images as they are in themselves is ever intended or implied outside their use in terms of "fair use" with respect to their use in this presentation or any future possible derivatives--by their owner, b.e. hydomako, are and shall remain the sole property of said owner. Safe Muffins.

2 comments:

  1. "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." ~Heart Sutra

    "Emptiness is not separate from appearance. Appearance does not exist other than emptiness. Emptiness does not exist other than appearance. These two things are inseparable. When we realize the union of these two truths we realize Emptiness." ~ Geshe Kelsang

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    Replies
    1. Yes, (emptiness, form): another instance of paradox, of A & ~A.

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