Sunday 19 January 2014

monogram / schema



The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination, the schema of sensual concepts [as figures in space] is the product and, so to speak, a monogram of pure imagination a priori, through which and after which images are possible in the first place, but which can be related to the concept that they indicate only by means of the schema.



very different it is with those creatures of imagination [Geschöpfen der Einbildungskraft] which nobody can explain and of which nobody can give us an understandable concept, monograms, so to speak, which consist only of diverse traits, delineated after a rule that cannot be given, and which are less a clear image than a design hovering, so to speak, between different experiences, the kind that painters and physiognomists claim to have in their head, and that are supposed to be a shadow image of their products or also their judgments

Kant

The Laughing Tear / Constructions of Allegory in Modernism / Rainer Någele


Sunday 12 January 2014

knots

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20131209-knots-unravel-mysteries-of-fluid-flow/


Here we find ourselves in a thought factory, in which, as in the “Weaver’s Masterpiece”:
        “One tread moves thousands of threads,

The little shuttles fly back and forth,

The threads flow on unseen,

One stroke ties thousands of knots.”

Friday 10 January 2014

we are undone by each other

“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another.”
― Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Steganography / hiding in plain sight

Steganography is the art and science of hiding that communication is happening. Classical steganography systems depend on keeping the encoding system secret, but modern steganography is detectable only if secret information is known, e.g. a secret key. Because of their invasive nature, steganography systems leave detectable traces within a medium's characteristics. This allows an eavesdropper to detect media that has been modified, revealing that secret communication is taking place. Although the secrecy of the information is not degraded, its hidden nature is revealed, defeating the main purpose of Steganography.