Trees reach to clouds

trees reach to clouds, originally uploaded by Negentropic Object 23.

Rant in Nu-major

The Great British brand NuLabour is digesting in its own decay.

History repeats and again the tangibly pathological, selfish, manic, self-aggrandising, edifice-building, venal, vapid, vacuous, soundbite-memorandum-mutherfucker segment of ‘society’ has spun semantic. A propagandist engine so completely convinced of the veracity of its value, and vision, that in denial and unconcerned, sweeps aside all complaint, dissent and refutation as mere triviality, whilst stipulating its own depraved logic as truth.

Long live NuLabia!

I’m hoping we’ll all get this as a Christmas card as the lights go out.

MetaMeme

...or why arguments are always with mind viruses.

We perceive, translate and experience, a fraction of the sensory information that is currently extant in our temporal domain, yet we confuse this semi-fictive fraction with Universe. ‘The map is not the territory’. Cultural paradigms, most typically those concerned with taboo, tend to become ossified, fossilised as dogma, particularly in the minds of those that need to cling desperately to ‘truth’ for security, a truth which can only ever be their own, or that of their local group or time. These notions of ‘truth’ are often blatant falsitudes, but their mental potency self-sustains, often contrary to rational refutation. Such semantics trap us, bound static to outmoded ontologies, and although often harmless, some of these gremlins grow into brutal mythological beasts that cannot be readily slain.

Amalgamations of words, in the form of ideas (memes?), can behave autonomously; insidiously, masquerading as ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, when they are merely a notional ripple in the paradigmatic tide of a noos-spacial sea; a local experiment in the evaluation of Reality. Although knowledge of a model or idea becomes more sophisticated and complete with time (ideally more congruent with the thing in itself), philosophical, scientific and political ideas should not be intended (or accepted) to demonstrate absolute veracity (as some of the most notorious indubitably are), but to elucidate and explore, plausible, useful postulates, ones that can be tested and criticised (at the least enjoyed) by the dialectical exchange of history.

Reality - absolute, unknowable, ineffable - is denigrated on its journey through the prismatic vector of the perceptor, be it that of an individual or a collective. The course of this process manifests apprehension and prejudice, not intentionally, but inevitably. Reality-tunnels auto-constitute, every experience that can be construed confirmational, reinforces, and all evidence that is refutational, or cannot be reconfigured into confirmation, is partitioned off through displacement. Unfortunately, many of these perceptional journeys end in the extreme realm of personal certitude, belief, or other pathologies.

When absolute certitudes of any kind, limit the exploration of potentiality, the evolution of knowledge is inhibited. It is interesting that we tend to define reality on the basis of our ability to 'see' i .e. that which we can observe and measure, capture and dismantle, and our relationship with the sense of scale which this provides. The need to categorise, compartmentalise and reduce, can lead experimentalists too close to their subject, occluding them from the greater wholistic system, one that is often tangibly greater than the sum of its parts. In science, a 'truth' is validated by an accumulation of repeatable experimental results, results that confirm and substantiate the experimental hypothesis, but scientific ‘truth’ can only ever exist as a high probability of 'truth'; a best fit model. A hypothesis can never be proven absolutely 'true', even though it only describes itself in its own vanity, but it can be proven 'untrue', if it fails to account for even the subtlest behaviour of that which it claims to define. Many 'truths' and scientific models are demonstrably useful, in that they are functional, even when approximate (that our mental architectures and civilisations have been built upon such things is testament to that), but they are never ‘true’.

Curiously DADA, it seems that Reality seems to resist our anachronistic attempts to reduce it into symbolic order. The continuum of our perception is rarefying, but as universe stuff is examined to the limits of the looking glass, it ceases to be what we expect, confounding and confusing our very attempts to define it.

(to be extended)

Breathe Easy

Soft spectrum

soft spectrum, originally uploaded by Negentropic Object 23.

sYSTEM cITIES?

Vincent Callebaut - Lilypads (Copyright Vincent Callebaut)[pixelab]

The creations of architectural savant Antoni Gaudi, were those of a man who succeeded in fusing a profound and innate understanding of bioengineering and biomimicry, with an elegant and refined organic aesthetic, one that was intuitively extant long before such notions ever became culturally or scientifically formalised. Recently, some intriguing and enthusing architectural anomalies have emerged, which seem to resonate with such an understanding, particularly those which could be called Aquatic Arcologies - partially self-sustaining water-based colonies.

Architecture of this form can seem unrealistically Utopian, and more realistically Dystopian when endeared to the worst facets of our nature; Dubai's artificial islands are audacious, perhaps hubristic, feats of engineering, yet are intended to indulge the decadent and acquisitive desires of the super-solvent. It need not be so. If the construction of this technology is sensitive but passionate, yet necessarily informed by the conceptual elucidations of systems theory and ecology (concepts that seem integral to the architectural intentionality but that are often frustratingly elusive in actualisation), then perhaps it could operate as beautifully as it appears.

Speculative architecture is not new; anyone familiar with historical Utopianism or Science Fiction will recognise extrapolations of the imagination. What is interesting however, is the local, temporal context that these new designs are emerging from; manking seems to be engaged in a significant period of social transition, the established, acquisitive economies are in perilous shape and an urgent sense of ecological anxiety is snapping at the heels of all but the most entrenched and recalcitrant of economic conservatives. New paradigms are desperately required in all walks of life, not just for the practical purposes of biospheric survival, but for the sustenance of manking's sense of hope and self-respect; lest we squander our apparent evolutionary and intellectual privileges.

Eugene Tsui: Nexus Plan

Eugene Tsui: City On The Sea

Links :

Vincent Callebaut
Lilypads
Nexus
Arcologies
Arcology Profound

entanglement

entanglement, originally uploaded by Negentropic Object 23.

Reader Notice

We at the Institute of Semantic Reindoctrination apologise for the postings of our patient 66601723. He has now been fully restrained and will no longer have access to the computer facilities. We are currently attempting to rectify his deconstructional dysfunction, although the illiterate alliterations are proving to be heavily embedded.

The Juicy Looters

When, if marshal madness reign
and tag-daubed shutter rattles
they send missiled shatter rains
and tear in joyous battle
a vicious orifice
and through this portent portal rent
we clamber, crackle.

Then, no pharm-bomb mind-rot shake
or greasy stomach's ache
can compare, the mighty urge to slake
a thirst, to dance and hoot
amidst these isles that hate
our deprivation
and lift their juicy loot.