Wednesday 28 November 2012

bum bomb


Manufacturing a utensil object (for instance, an orbital bomb) only differs from manufacturing a simulacrum (for example the Callipygian Venus) by their contrary pretexts of wasteful experimentation; to wit: the orbital nuke has no other use except to distress the world of sterile usages. However, the Callipygian Venus is just the laughing face of the bomb, which turns utility into derision.   

July 1956, backyard of Tony Smith's home


Jackson Pollock, “Untitled” (1956), plaster, sand, gauze, and wire, 9 x 12 x 5 inches



Jackson Pollock, “Untitled” (1956), plaster, sand, gauze, and wire 12 1/4 x 12 x 17 1/2 inches (all images via matthewmarks.com)

Geometrical psychology, or, The science of representation

benjamin betts

Sunday 25 November 2012

marie-antoinclaudie



klossowski /// living currency // reena spaulings

klossowski /// living currency// jordan levinson

in the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another.  winstanley

Saturday 24 November 2012

endless wedgwood glass animals


one after the other

For Aristotle, the ways in which bees construct their hive in order to shelter their honey and youth, is parallel with the method in plants that produce leaves in order to surround and protect their fruits. Instinctive dispositions in animals like the construction of a hive, the construction of a nest, are comparable to certain modes of growth, which, have a visible finality in plants. What animals do by various movements such as the way bees construct their hive and benefit from the honey comb inside, is the construction of a structure comparable to what we see develop in the growth of a plant, a process with a view towards generation, reproduction. The animal and vegetal world are different, but there is a functional identity.. between these distinct operatory modes. In the less developed, least differentiated animals, the functions that liberate and define other animal forms such as imagination, anticipation. This phantasia aisthetike does not exist in ants worms, or bees, states Aristotle... They work and construct like a plant grows. The society of ants or the society of bees constructs its hive like a plant grows and constructs its branches and leaves during its development. This is where instinct appears. Instinct is a certain faculty of constructing as if it were a way of developing, like that of a plant. What is instinct in animals, is, in plants, the fact of growing in such and such a way, of developing a certain foliar scheme, formula, of the given vegetal form, with very specific characteristics. Consequently, instinct, in as much as it is an operatory mode of construction of a hive or an anthill, instinct is equivalent to a structure of development. It is specific. Instinct is part of specificity, it is a drive in animals and more specifically social animals, which is equivalent to growth defined by specific lines in the plant.

Two Lessons on Animal and Man / Simondon / Univocal Publishing 


They alone hold children in common: own the roofs
of their city as one: and pass their life under the might of the law.
They alone know a country, and a settled home,
and in summer, remembering the winter to come,
undergo labour, storing their gains for all.
For some supervise the gathering of food, and work
in the fields to an agreed rule: some, walled in their homes,
lay the first foundations of the comb, with drops of gum
taken from narcissi, and sticky glue from tree-bark,
then hang the clinging wax: others lead the mature young,
their nation’s hope, others pack purest honey together,
and swell the cells with liquid nectar:
there are those whose lot is to guard the gates,
and in turn they watch out for rain and clouds in the sky,
or accept the incoming loads, or, forming ranks,
they keep the idle crowd of drones away from the hive.

virgil georgics, book 1V

Friday 23 November 2012

monument to wedgwood glass animals



one on top of the other

fountain

ernst /// ca me fait pisser /// via foster/// armor fou


Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499

The greater portion, forming in solid columns, like an army obeying a definite order, will proceed to climb the vertical walls of the hive. The cupola reached, the first to arrive will cling with the claws of their anterior legs, those that follow hang on to the first, and so in succession, until long chains have been formed that serve as a bridge to the crowd that rises and rises. And, by slow degrees, these chains, as their number increases, supporting each other and incessantly interweaving, become garlands which, in their turn, the uninterrupted and constant ascension transforms into a thick, triangular curtain, or rather a kind of compact and inverted cone, whose apex attains the summit of the cupola, while its widening base descends to a half, or two-thirds, of the entire height of the hive. And then, the last bee that an inward voice has impelled to form part of this group having added itself to the curtain suspended in darkness, the ascension ceases; all movement slowly dies away in the dome; and, for long hours, this strange inverted cone will wait, in a silence that almost seems awful, in a stillness one might regard as religious, for the mystery of wax to appear.  

The foundation of the city // maeterlinck

beheading




Wednesday 14 November 2012

william faithorne

‘The Embleme of Englands distractions as also of her attained, and further expected Freedome, & Happines’ (1658), traditionally known as ‘Cromwell between Two Pillars’



The Wilkinson Head of Oliver Cromwell and Its Relationship to Busts, Masks and Painted Portraits

Tuesday 13 November 2012

lachrimae lachrimarum





henry's little bronze horse

pacing horse /// pietro tacca ///

Kings in old legends seem
Like mountains rising in the evening light.
They blind all with their gleam,
Their loins encircled are by girdles bright,
Their robes are edged with bands
Of precious stones—the rarest earth affords—
With richly jeweled hands
They hold their slender, shining, naked swords

rilke / book of pictures 

all this new work


whoever shall come for brick or for stone shall freely have the same for his pains
Commons Journals IV 309


La Dialectique Peut-Elle Casser Des Briques?



Hylomorphism
Aristotle -  clay is matter relative to a brick because a brick is made of clay, whereas bricks are matter relative to a brick house.
Aquinas - tiny pieces of brick remain in existence when the house goes out of existence... there can be no fireplace if the surrounding house has been torn down. We might say this pile of bricks once was the chimney, we cannot say that it is the chimney... characterised as a brick it still exists...


http://www.themasonictrowel.com/Articles/General/other_files/an_operative_bricklayer_builds_speculative_wall.htm

6.4 The Knocks
You will notice in the laying of the blocks you always hear the ringing of the trowel. This is music to the Brickie's ears since it indicates bricklayers at work which means money, security, and the good things of life. In like manner the knocks in a speculative lodge when heard outside the door indicate that the speculative masons are at work .... There is a certain rythem to the knocks. In the first degree they always remind me of the pound pound pound of an apprentice .... But by the time they get to the Third Degree they carry the sound of Mozart's Magic Flute .... And have the characteristic of a Master Mason lightly touching the block into its appointed place.

clairefontaine


BASING HOUSE /// a very noble fabric





Sunday 11 November 2012

block



The struggle for depth (presence) is always effaced (blocked and/or hijacked) by surface-as-information (mediation),or that information flowing through mediatic (mediatized) capital and across the face of commercial architectures as  both style and apparent “surplus” value. 
  


Saturday 10 November 2012

3D prototyping // ceann mor


   __    ____                                                                       
/'__`\ /\  _`\                                               __                    
/\_\L\ \\ \ \/\ \        ____    ___     __      ___     ___ /\_\    ___      __    
\/_/_\_<_ _="" br="" nbsp="">
  /\ \L\ \\ \ \_\ \    /\__, `\/\ \__//\ \L\.\_/\ \/\ \/\ \/\ \ \ \/\ \/\ \/\ \L\ \ 
  \ \____/ \ \____/    \/\____/\ \____\ \__/.\_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \____ \
   \/___/   \/___/      \/___/  \/____/\/__/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/___L\ \
                                                                              /\____/
                                                                              \_/__/

woodcut /// OO \\\













Dr. Syntax



http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=v48VAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Tuesday 6 November 2012

donkey rainbow pony sunspot




11 Can an ass be tragic? To perish
under a burden one can neither bear nor
throw off? The case of the philosopher.

rainbow pony gun