Traité historique et pratique de la gravure sur bois 1766

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8626113x/f1.image

hood and bag / pilgrim fathers / terror

fox talbot // conchology

achilles and the tortoise

Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked

The physical world requires a resolution amount used to distinguish distance while mathematics can use any resolution.

- At every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.

- Instants are not parts of time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of that time

Saturday, 23 July 2011
hypothetical desert
HOLDEN   You're in a desert, walking along in the sand
       when....

LEON     Is this the test now ?                              

HOLDEN   Yes.   You're in a desert, walking along in
       the sand when all of a sudden
       you lookdown and see a.....                               

LEON     What one ?   
       It was a timid interruption, hardly audible.

HOLDEN   What ?                               

LEON     What desert ?                              

HOLDEN   Doesn't make any difference what desert..
       it's completely hypothetical.

LEON     But how come I'd be there?                             

HOLDEN   Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be
       by yourself.. who knows.
       So you look down and see a tortoise.
       It's crawling toward you....

westray whale

https://soundcloud.com/royalanthropologicalinst/2016-huxley-memorial-lecture-by-margaret-lock

Eileen Agar

stones bones conchology

ovum anguinum

There is also a sort of egg, famous in the provinces of Gaul, but ignored by the Greeks. Innumerable snakes coil themselves into a ball in the summertime. Thus they make it so that it is held together by a bodily secretion and by their saliva. It is called an anguinum. The Druids say that [the snakes] hiss and cast it upwards, and that it is to be caught in a cloak so that it not touch the ground. One must immediately ride off on a horse with it, for the snakes will continue to pursue until the course of a stream blocks their way. If one tests it, the anguinum will float against the current of a river even when covered in gold. And, as the magi will throw a cloak of deception over their trickery, they make out as though the eggs are to be taken only on a particular point in the lunar cycle, as though it was up to human beings to determine the snakes’ role in this procedure. Nonetheless, I have seen one of these eggs myself. It was round the size of a small apple. The shell was cartilaginous, and mottled with cups like the tentacles of a squid. The Druids value it highly: it is praised as insuring success in litigation and in going to audiences with kings. However, this is nonsense; for once a man (a Roman knight and a tribesman of the Vocontii) held one of these eggs against his body during a trial, and was condemned to death by the Emperor Claudius, for that reason alone so far as I can tell.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F7pZfLUoHJIC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=Shepherds%27+crowns,+fairy+loaves+and+thunderstones:+the+mythology+of+fossil+echinoids+in+England&source=bl&ots=vOaKkqEfKL&sig=KgjEwynw9hh9u6PilNtvGn7tzPg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAmoVChMIu_6DvM-DxgIVg0bbCh26kACs#v=onepage&q&f=false

Llhuyd informs us that "the Cornish retain a variety of charms, and have still towards the Land's-End, the amulets of Maen-Magal and Glain-neider, which latter they call Melprer, and have a charm for the snake to make it, when they find one asleep, and stick a hazel wand in the centre of her spirae," or coils. The rings thus generated are called Gleiner-nadroeth, or snake-stones.   

Where is Sisyphus now? Using the analog sticks on the game controller, you move a little character who rolls a ball called a Katamari. The game is called Katamari Damacy.* The name translates roughly as ‘clump spirit’, which might in turn translate as ‘analog’. As the Katamari ball rolls, things stick to it. At first it is small things that stick, household items picked up off the living room floor. The ball gets bigger as things stick, and so it can pick up bigger things. Once your ball is big enough, you move out of the house and into the world. To move the ball, you twizzle the little analog joysticks. Push the sticks forward, and the character rolls the ball forward. Pull the sticks back and the character rolls the ball back. Turn left, turn right — it feels as though the variable pressure on the sticks translates into variable movements. This is analog — a relation of continuous variation. Only it isn’t really. It is a digital game. The game converts the continuous movement of your thumbs on the sticks into a digital code. It turns movements into decisions — back/forwards, left/right, stop/start. An algorithm calculates the outcome of each movement. If you roll your ball over a small object, you pick it up. If you roll your ball over one that is too big, you collide with it, throwing off a few things you have already gathered. Analog spirit becomes digital code (see Fig. D).But in Katamari Damacy, things are different. Rather than the rolling of the ball being entirely useless, now it is entirely purposeful. Time, like space, no longer harbors indifference. Brenda Laurel:”…even the smallest fragments of your idle time have been colonized…”. As you roll your ball around, making it bigger and bigger, an icon in the corner of the screen shows your progress. The icon shows your ball as a circle inside a larger one, which is the size it must grow to if you are to win this level. It grows, gradually, incrementally, but at some point — a decision. Big enough! An analog progression stops at the digital threshold.*katamari

https://echinoids.wordpress.com/https://echinoids.wordpress.com/


 

NAKAHARA Kodai

http://realkyoto.jp/en/article/conversations-between-nakahara-kodai-and-sekiguchi-atsuhito-i-in-okayama/

scarcity & substitutes

echinoid

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/echinoid-directory/models/image-index.html

http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/273/1/279.full.pdf

Porphyrogennetos

...touch through the colour

Porphýra, the Purple Chamber, a pavilion of the Great Palace of Constantinople): no child born anywhere else could legitimately be called Porphyrogénnētos. This pavilion was a free-standing building in the Great Palace complex in Constantinople. As the Porphyrogennētē Anna Komnena described it, the room rested on one of the Palace's many terraces, overlooking the Sea of Marmora and the Bosphorus Strait, "where the stone oxen and the lions stand" (i.e. the Boukoleon Palace), and was in the form of a perfect square from floor to ceiling, with the latter ending in a pyramid. Its walls, floor and ceiling were completely veneered with imperial porphyry, which was "generally of a purple colour throughout, but with white spots like sand sprinkled over it

//www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/people/Imperial%20Porphyry;%20its%20special%20qualities%20which%20influenced%20its%20form,%20function%20and%20use%20in%20antiquity.pdfThe 


mud-purple feeds on rotting slime and the seaweed-purple on seaweed, both being of a very common quality. A better kind is the reef-purple, collected on the reefs of the sea, though this also is lighter and softer as well. The pebble-purple is named after a pebble in the sea, and is remarkably suitable for purple dyes; and far the best for these is the melting-purple, that is, one fed on a varying kind of mud. Purples are taken in a sort of little lobster-pot of fine ply thrown into deep water. These contain bait, cockles that close with a snap, as we observe that mussels do. These when half-killed but put back into the sea gape greedily as they revive and attract the purples, which go for them with outstretched tongues. But the cockles when pricked by their spike shut up and nip the creatures nibbling them. So the purples hang suspended because of their greed and are lifted out of the water.

natural history IX

oxacan purpura dyeing - milking the shellfish

The official fasces and axes of Rome clear a path, and it also marks the honourable estate of boyhood; it distinguishes the senate from the knighthood, it is called in to secure the favour of the gods; and it adds radiance to every garment, while in a triumphal robe it is blended with gold. Consequently even the mad lust for the purple may be excused; but what is the cause of the prices paid for purple-shells, which have an unhealthy odour when used for dye and a gloomy tinge in their radiance resembling an angry sea?

http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK%20IX

http://www.kremer-pigmente.com/media/files_public/36010e.pdf 

The earliest abstract decoration in the world is really big news

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429983.200-shell-art-made-300000-years-before-humans-evolved.html#.VIAmQ0hk9_-

Bernard Palissy (c. 1510 – c. 1590)

Palissy is known for his molding from life of plants, fish, amphibians, and reptiles (Amico 1996). These creatures were captured alive, immersed in urine or vinegar, coated in grease, and finally pressed into plaster (Shell 2004). The resulting mold was used to make a clay impression of the animal, which was then posed with other animals and plants in a naturalistic scene, usually on a large shallow dish known as a rustic platter (see Figure 6.1).
These creatures appear extremely realistic: the process of manufacture permits every scale of fish or snake to be recorded, and Palissy spent years perfecting the glazes that allowed replication of the color and sheen of the living animal. However, rather than considering his work as mere imitation or mimicry of these creatures, Palissy saw his ceramics as replicating natural processes of fossilization (Smith 2000; Newman 2004; Shell 2004). In his Discours Admirables, Palissy describes the power of “generative salt” and “congealative water,” which provided the material substrate of the minerals (Shell 2004, 27). Minerals were seen as having a tendency to congeal within the earth, through the evaporation of “accidental water.” If this happened in an enclosed space, the mineral would congeal in the shape of its container. Palissy considered this to be the method by which fossils were generated. As Newman (2004, 157) argues, Palissy considered natural processes and the potter’s process of fabrication to be the same. His clay was also composed of congealing and generative material. He also made accidental water evaporate in his kiln, thus faithfully reproducing the process whereby nature created

fossils. Palissy’s belief in the equivalence of clay animals and fossils is made evident in his catalogue of his “teaching exhibit,” which he insisted visitors view after attending his lectures. These consisted of a series of fossils displayed alongside items of his own work. Both were used to illustrate the operation of natural processes (Shell 2004, 35–36). 

 

Deception and (Mis)Representation: Skeuomorphs, Materials, and Form
Chantal Conneller

 

flint / chalk /

Each event, however commonplace and insignificant, thus became the speck of impurity around which experience accrued its authority, like a pearl.

Agamben / Infancy & History / 14

The majority of silica found in flint nodules is biogenic (produced by living organisms or biological processes). Although today's flint nodules are inorganic, the silica that formed them was originally sourced from the remains of sea sponges and siliceous planktonic micro-organisms (diatoms, radiolarians) during the late cretaceous period (60-95 million years ago). Flints are concretions that grew within the sediment after its deposition by the precipitation of silica; filling burrows/cavities and enveloping the remains of marine creatures, before dehydrating and hardening into the microscopic quartz crystals which constitute flint.

 

 The exact mode of formation of flint is not yet clear but it is thought that it occurs as a result of chemical changes in compressed sedimentary rock formations, during the process of diagenesis. One hypothesis is that a gelatinous material fills cavities in the sediment, such as holes bored by crustaceans or molluscs and that this becomes silicified. This theory certainly explains the complex shapes of flint nodules that are found. The source of dissolved silica in the porous media could arise from the spicules of silicious sponges.^[3] Certain types of flint, such as that from the south coast of England, contains trapped fossilised marine flora. Pieces of coral and vegetation have been found preserved like amber inside the flint. Thin slices of the stone often reveal this effect.

 

How flint is formed

David Bone – West SussexGeology

The formation of flint is a complex process which began in the chalk seas millions of years ago and is, summarised below:

Organisms such as sponges (on the macro scale) and radiolaria/diatoms (on the micro scale) use silica from sea water to manufacture the biogenic opal which forms their skeletons. When the organisms die and the organic parts decay the microscopic silica is scattered on the sea bed and becomes incorporated in the accumulating sediment.

At depths of 1 to 5m within this sediment, the biogenic opal breaks down, enriching the water between the sediment particles (sediment pore water) with silica.

At sediment depths of less than 10m, there is an oxic-anoxic boundary where hydrogen sulphide rising from the decomposing organic material within the sediment diffuses upwards meets oxygen diffusing downwards from the water column above. At this interface, the hydrogen sulphide is oxidised to sulphate with hydrogen ions as a by-product. The hydrogen ions lower the local pH, dissolving the chalk and thereby increasing the concentration of carbonate ions. These act as a seeding agent for the precipitation of silica.

Silica precipitates by the molecule-by-molecule replacement of chalk. The silica is initially in the form of crystalline opal but gradually transforms to quartz (flint) during later burial and with time.

The chalk sea bed is deeply burrowed by many different organisms, such as shells, echinoids and worms etc. Some of these burrows are quite deep or branching, or have open living spaces. The burrows fill with sediment after the organism has died, this is slightly different material from the sediment around it. These filled burrows act as preferential pathways (conduits) for the chemical reactions to occur. Flint formed within these old burrows often has a nodular shape which reflects the whole, or part of, overgrown remnants of such burrow systems.

There are two possible explanations for why flint forms in bands or layers. Firstly because chalk sedimentation occurs in cycles and secondly because the process above exhausts the silica within a given depth of sediment and flint formation can only recommence when there is enough silica to start the process again.

 

beads < - >shells< - > stones

beads<  -  >shells< - > stones

Gifford states that such small pieces of calcite or aragonite could not definitely be classed as "money stone." They may actually be shell, he says, as the formation of calcite and aragonite occur in both inorganic and organic forms.

MGS // tankerton castle

QLIPHOTH / QLIPPOTH

 

shell  centre / southbank / harmless travellers / dirty fossils

->

QLIPHOTH/QLIPPOTH  Lit. "shells" (singular: qliphah). Shades of the dead whose names appear in the books of Dyzan or Thoth, or the Book of the Law (AL). They may contain formulae of magical powers. RAW calls them "souls of those who died insane... the tulpas of Tibet... avatars of Coyote, the American Indian prankster-god." RAW also identifies them with the Celtic "little people" or faeries. Some of the twenty-two qliphotic entities of the Black Tarot, as envisioned by Grant, are defined herein under separate entries, although strictly speaking, the qlippoth are the names of the guardians of the tunnels, not the tunnels themselves.   To understand the qliphothic atus fully and to do them justice can be more deleterious to the artist or researcher than one might suspect. Conceivably, such complete understanding could result in the destruction of the ego without restoration in the Oversoul and therefore lead to actual madness. Dealing with the Qliphoth is the psychic equivalent of working with toxic wastes, dangerous animals or high voltage wires.  To invoke any force is to invoke automatically its opposite as well. In the more conventional sense, qliphoth are negative cosmic energies equating with the ten positive Sephiroth (e.g., Lilith is the evil counterpart of Malkuth). All positive aspects of divinity have their "excremental" sides, or demons: Beelzebub, Satanas, etc. The difference between metamorphosis and excretion is thinner than you might guess. From the universal lexicon:            

scall  English   scab          

chale  Cupeno           husk, shell          

skalli Icelandic        a peeled head          

geled  Hebrew    skin          

kulit  Malay   skin          

skull  English   the "shell" of the brain          

azal  Basque   peeling          

soale  Hausa   to peel off          

scale, shell English                  

scalp

Stone was "that which all men despise" -- and this in turn led the puffers to experiment with various types of excrement in order to see if that substance, perchance, could possibly yield the Secret of the Ages, since nothing so far had succeeded in doing so. And of course all such experiments accomplished was to mark the nadir of human folly.  What is this word "excrement", after all? It's from Latin, excernere, "to separate." It is a separation, a peeling away, as when we peel away a scab or a blister, making it no longer a part of ourselves. German scheiden/schieden (divide, separate, divorce) is simply another form of the word Scheisse (Fr. chier, Engl. shit) or its Greek equivalent schizo, "to split."  Latin cutis (skin), we should notice, first of all, is a cognate of Greek skatos (dung). Like the snake, what we throw away begins with the "skin" -- a word which probably represents a form of one of the universal roots. Compare Peruvian kina (the bark, or tree peeling, whence we get quinine) and Malay sisek (fish scales). Perhaps even the Austrian Kakadu word, kŠngir meaning "skin" is distantly related. At any rate, kŠngir is almost certainly the origin of "kangaroo," particularly since the Australian Warramunga word, nguru, meant "foreskin." These two are clearly connected and themarsupial associations are plain enough.The puffers didn't understand that excrement isn't exactly what all men despise. Or to be more precise, what matters isn't so much what is discarded and thrown away, but the value we place on the kept, as opposed to the trash. That faulty decision itself is where the problem lies. In fact, the Finnish proverb: Kulta kultainen v“lkkya roskatta, "gold glitters in
what is thrown away", is a sentiment well understood by shamans, witches and other marginal people, who are drawn to the rubbish heaps and middens, much as the money-vultures circle the stock market. What all men despise is "that out there," that is to say, the world. And they try incessantly to dissociate themselves from it. Yet, obviously, if we really were one with the world, then we'd have in hand "the universal solvent," we'd have
immortality because the world is immortal. In the world's all-powerful Nature is the very secret of turning lead into gold.Instead man tries desperately to throw out everything that is not self.Part of the problem is that the verb "to be" has two meanings (as in Spanish): one is an expression of permanent identityor equivalence to something else and the other an expression of a changing, on-going process. When we accept the error that we are not gods, we cease all self-examination, self-disciplines and self-improvement. We define god as an embodiment of "pefection" (or completion) instead of as the avenue of evolution and becoming. Only idols are perfect.Not even Odin ever thought of himself as perfect: he had to make many sacrifices in order to gain wisdom. Ditto Osiris, who was so far from being "together" that he was chopped up into little pieces. Granted, Jehovah is perfect, or thinks He is, but He is also a difficult God to respect, for that same reason. When you say we are not gods, you mean we are not idols. But an idol is precisely what modern man has made of himself. He worships himself, even though gods never
worship themselves. Obviously, they don't have to. Only man worships himself, though not really as a god or potential god. He worships himself just as he is: as a fatted, golden pig wearing Gucci shoes. The reason people push gods "outside" is the same reason they shove everything else outside, separating everything and calling it evil because it is unwanted. Anything which is not self, including the planet earth, is felt to be of no real value. in fact, matter is simply unwanted "dirt." Most of the self is thrown away, at least that part of the self which demands the most work or struggle. All that may remain is the momentary gratification of physical need: food, drink, sex, rest, entertainment. To put a god into that strait-jacket, even a minor one, is to disrupt the routine, to interfere with the direct line of ice cream to mouth. Besides, the puffing up of an imaginary personal ego is a thousand times easier than the expression of difficult, real Divinity. Standing far enough away from the world empowers objectivity to serve as the perfect defense of the ego. Here ego cannot be challenged and "Science" and "Reason" become the last refuges of Subjective Solipsism. In the Qabalah this peeling away of the self, this separation or "excrement" is called a Qlipha (pl. qlipphoth). The qliphoth are the negative personifications. All the expressions of Divinity have their "qlipphoth": Samael, Beelzebub, Satanas, etc., as we've said. And, in truth, these are what people actually bow down to: these idols that are made up out of excrement. Divinity that lies outside of self is not divinity. in contemporary Occidental man's desperate struggle to separate himself we would do well to remember Alan Watts' comparison of the self to an onion. You can peel and peel until there is nothing left.

THE MAGICIAN'S DICTIONARY

An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced M/magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings

EE. Rehmus 

conchology

black box white box kernel shell

black box white box

black box testing where you don’t know what is in the box , testing functionality, behaviour of overall system, u know the requirements that went into the code.

With (Hegel, the dialectic) is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell

Marx/Kapital/Afterword to second section

white box testing –you can look at algorithm / source code

shell/ tongue / tooth / palate/ sheath