Paul Pope

November 24th, 2009 | people I know

Life without Paul Pope art is no life at all.

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(link)

IGNITION CITY TPB 2010

November 24th, 2009 | Work

According to Forbidden Planet International, the collected IGNITION CITY will be out in February 2010, and apparently it’ll look like this:

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Links for 2009-11-24

November 24th, 2009 | brainjuice

  • African conflicts spurred by warming - environment - 23 November 2009 - New Scientist
    "Africa is poised to experience a surge in civil wars, causing nearly 400,000 additional battle deaths by 2030 ? all as a direct result of rising temperatures."
    (tags:war pol eco )
  • Nicholas Szczepaniak ? A Defensive Architecture | Interactive Architecture dot Org
    "Set in the Blackwater Estuary, Essex, his allegorical and provocative defensive architectures envisage the construction of a set of austere coastal defence towers that perform multiple functions within this dystopian future. The militarised towers are alive ? breathing, creaking, groaning, sweating and crying when stressed. Airbags on the face of the towers expand and contract, while hundreds of tensile trunks are sporadically activated, casting water onto the heated facades producing steam…"
    (tags:architecture )
  • Motion Comics
    "one of comics' greatest strengths is the idea of closure, or how readers fill in the gaps between panels. Motion comics do this for the viewer with extra sound effects and time. An unfortunate side effect of this is that while traditional comics enable us to read at our own speed, motion comics lock us into fixed durations." Which is why motion comics aren't comics, if you were wondering.
    (tags:comicstheory )
  • New global map of Mars suggests Red Planet once had ocean
    "?All the evidence gathered by analyzing the valley network on the new map points to a particular climate scenario on early Mars,? said NIU Geography Professor Wei Luo. ?It would have included rainfall and the existence of an ocean covering most of the northern hemisphere, or about one-third of the planet?s surface""
    (tags:space )
  • I traced my dad… and discovered he is Charles Manson | The Sun |Features
    "He says: "I didn't want to believe it. I was frightened and angry. It's like finding out that Adolf Hitler is your father. I'm a peaceful person - trapped in the face of a monster.""
    (tags:crime )

Music I Liked In 2009 [2]

November 24th, 2009 | music

Continuing my list (and yes, there will be more of these posts to follow, so don’t tell me what I’ve left off this list):

MONOLITHS AND DIMENSIONS, Sunn O))): the more I listen to this immense album, the more I think of it as four movements transitioning from the pagan to the organised church through an apocalyptic collapse into some awful, barren post-civilisational doomspace that fades to become a weirdly sylvan, almost innocent place. Of course, that could just be me. Never discount the possibility that I am a mad old man and completely full of shit. Anyway, yes, it all sounds a bit prog, but they pull it off as far as I’m concerned.

BROMST, Dan Deacon: perhaps not as gleefully mental as SPIDERMAN OF THE RINGS, but still a greatly entertaining record and a working-playlist staple for me over the summer. Very beautiful in places, and, I think, curiously revelatory of his conservatory background. It’s a record you can just spazz around to that also rewards a close listening, just to hear how he really builds that stuff.

"Skeletons," Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Off the album IT’S BLITZ. Honestly, much of the album left me cold. "Skeletons," though, approaches the heights of "Maps" (and if you don’t like "Maps," then you’re dead inside). Love as a long winter march.

"Dog Days Are Over," Florence And The Machine: similarly, I thought LUNGS was a weak album, and I suspect "Dog Days" will prove to be their One Great Song. (I have a half-arsed theory that 95% of bands have One Great Song in them, and I can prove this using an abacus, Manhattan Love Suicides’ "Veronica," and my right fist.) This one is the one: brilliant structure, some beautifully written lines, she sings like she knows what she’s talking about (which I didn’t get from "Kiss With A Fist, oddly), and she opens up her pipes and blows the door off.

SYMBIOSIS, Demdike Stare: this was a marvellous thing. World Hauntology, if you like: Middle Eastern musics, lo-fi drone and the hideous Arctic menace of Scando exorcists like Elegi, all whacked together with stark rhythmic instinct and crazed machine intelligence. I get the impression this record went way under the radar this year, and it really shouldn’t have.

More in a while.

T-Shirt Of The Week #005: HEALTH

November 23rd, 2009 | Work

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

Anyway. I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #005: HEALTH:

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We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

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(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

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Links for 2009-11-21

November 22nd, 2009 | brainjuice

Music I Liked In 2009 [1]

November 21st, 2009 | music

By which I mean music released in 2009. And [1] because I’m obviously not going to get them all in one post. It’s going to be lots of little ones. I’m giving myself a month for my memory to work properly. But I think it’s still worth making a note of what was good to my ears this year.

THE SPOILS, Zola Jesus: of which I’ve made much mention lately. Nika’s a beautiful ghost moaning from the shadows of a bombed-out cathedral, on this record. Possibly an aspect of my continuing fascination with The Haunted in early 21st Century music. But I’m returning to this record a lot.

GABON and INCAPULCO and a bunch of other releases, High Wolf: top of the whole glo-fi thing, for me, has been High Wolf and his wet lo-fi tropical dreamstates. GABON in particular was a glorious thing. Hypnogogic reverie when you’ve still got the drugged beat of a rainforest drone-rave beating in your ears.

MAN OF ARAN, British Sea Power: always a band I’ve almost-liked rather than love, but "The SOuth Sound" off this soundtrack they prepared for the re-release of the eponymous film is the best piece of classical building/soaring postrock I’ve heard since "Raise Yr Skinny Fists." I mean, flat fucking out. Coda to the whole subgenre.

HORRIBLES PARADE, Gary War: this thing continues to fascinate me. It’s melted music. Seriously. Like someone went at a wax master with a blowtorch and then struck the record with it. A gorgeous gurgling gargoyle of a thing. Partially dissolved rock.

FLORINE, Julianna Barwick: astonishing vocal music, multitracked and layered and processed until it became the sound that the trails of collapsing photons passing through the feathers of angels’ wings in a particle accelerator should make. Or something.

BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP INVESTIGATE WITCH CULTS OF THE RADIO AGE, Broadcast And The Focus Group: the title should tell you all you need to know. You’re either the sort of person who wants to own an album by that title, or you’re not. It is, as Moon Wiring Club would say, in the finest tradition of confusing English electronic music. It’s less a "proper" album than a collection of sounds that surround a certain set of timebound notions about Strangeness. As the title implies, it sometimes seems more like research (in the form of original music). It is really bloody good, yes.

Links for 2009-11-21

November 21st, 2009 | brainjuice

The Friday Telescreen [14]

November 21st, 2009 | brainjuice

Because the internet is made out of people: this was The Friday Telescreen 2009. These are the readers of warrenellis.com.

Thanks to all who sent in photos, and especial thanks to the three hundred people whose photos I just couldn’t fit in. Sorry. Next year I’ll do a weeklong thing again, and get everybody in.

Have a good weekend.

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The Friday Telescreen [13]

November 21st, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next hour or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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The Friday Telescreen [12]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next couple of hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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The Friday Telescreen [11]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [10]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [09]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [08]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [07]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [06]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Ariana, Some More, On POD and SHIVERING SANDS

November 20th, 2009 | people I know, researchmaterial, shivering sands

Ariana got the shouting out of her system in re: whining about how making stuff and showing it to people is too hard.

Now she’s moved on to: how to start thinking about making a project.

…if the feedback I’m getting is any indication (and I’ve got comments disabled here because they don’t suit me, but I do pay attention to Twitter and I read everything on Whitechapel) — there are a LOT of you right. on. that. cusp. of taking the first step. So look, I know I’ve been giving you lot a hard time about “just getting it done,” but before I get into my list of Stuff What I Learned Working With POD sometime tomorrow, I wanna back up a step and talk to you.

Here’s what you need to do, right now, tonight. No, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now….

And from there to book-specific notes and observations about working with a POD system:

…how you go about putting your book together is completely up to you, and what you’re comfortable with. The Lulu templates will give you a bit less control over what the finished product looks like, but it’s a really good place for the people that are just starting out. Do you already understand why your inside margins need to be a titch wider than your outside? If that question just kinda terrified you: that’s all right, but you probably want to start with the templates. Trust me, your book is still going to be lovely, the important thing for you is just getting your content into a pretty and readable format.

And, today, the begininngs of how we run FREAKANGELS the way we do.

Wil’s been all over Ariana’s THIS IS HOW WE FIX SHIT WITH WRENCHES posts during this week, and has a distillation of what he’s taken from them at this link here:

This is incredibly inspiring to me, and I hope that it’s just as inspiring to indie artists everywhere. Why not take a creative risk and see if it works out? Unlike the old days, when we had to purchase a lot of stock ahead of time and hope we could sell it, we can just Get Excited and Make Things, knowing that the very worst that can happen is that nobody likes that thing we made as much as we thought they would…

The Friday Telescreen [05)

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [04]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [03]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

The Friday Telescreen [02]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Links for 2009-11-19

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

  • IBM Makes Supercomputer Significantly Smarter Than Cat
    "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IBM have presented at paper at the SC09 supercomputing conference describing a milestone in cognitive computing: the group's massively parallel cortical simulator, C2, now has the ability to simulate a brain with about 4.5 percent the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, and significantly more brain capacity than a cat."
    (tags:tech computing neuro )
  • Cabell cairns pique archaeologist’s interest
    ""On the summits of nearly all prominent bluffs, spurs and high points of this region are heaps of large, angular stones," according to a survey report published in 1894. "Unlike the loose cairns of the Plains and the Northwest and elsewhere, these appear to have been systematically constructed for some particular purpose.""
    (tags:history )
  • Gang ‘killed victims to extract their fat’ | World news | guardian.co.uk
    "Peruvian police have arrested a gang which allegedly killed scores of peasants, drained their bodies of fat and sold the liquid abroad as an anti-wrinkle cosmetic."
    (tags:crime )

The Friday Telescreen 2009 [01]

November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 20-odd hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

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(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Knock John

November 19th, 2009 | knock john

Knock John, like Shivering Sands, was a Maunsell Sea Fort in the Thames Estuary. It still stands today. All its ladders have been prised off to ensure it can’t be used as a smuggling stage… although it’s worth noting that the big guns weren’t taken off it until 1992. In 1965, it was taken over and used as a pirate radio station.

(We like our pirates around here. The creeks of shoreland Essex were the byways for pirates all the way into the 19th century, after all)

Radio Essex broadcast for a little over a year. They may have been the first British radio station to broadcast the likes of John Lee Hooker, I’m not sure — I know they played a lot of blues and R&B that wasn’t getting much attention elsewhere. I’ve read that Radio Essex was in fact criticised for being "weird" in 1966. Roy Bates, who set Radio Essex up, later decamped to the sea fort Roughs Tower, which you may know better as the principality of Sealand.

SHIVERING SANDS was my first POD book. A year from now or thereabouts, KNOCK JOHN will be the second.

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(Superb image of Knock John by Richard Brown, found on a Flickr search)

A Friday Telescreen 2009

November 19th, 2009 | brainjuice

So every year I do a thing where all the readers of the site take a photo and send it in to me, and I run as many as I can. It started off as World Wide Wednesday, and last July I did a World Wide Week just because of the volume of shots I get. I just realised today that I haven’t done one of these stunts this year. And that I don’t have a clear week between now and New Year where I’m actually at the keyboard every day. So I’m going to bring back the iteration from 2008, I think. Tomorrow will be The Friday Telescreen 2009.

Take a picture of yourself, email it (not a link to it) to warrenellis@gmail.com and I’ll run as many of you as I can here during Friday.

Why do I do this every year? I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.

It begins.

Off In My Head Again/ @network 19nov09

November 19th, 2009 | people I know, photography

I’m off in my head today, in story-hunting mode. In lieu of actual content, let’s see what some people I know are up to.

Jamais Cascio is practising his stance for the day he takes over the world:

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Katie West is… god, I dunno… pink?

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She’s also in Matt Sheret’s PAPER SCIENCE, which I’m going to need a copy of, young man, if you’re reading this…

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Zo is Zo:

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Templesmith’s new book is looking good:

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Bruce Sterling’s laptop:

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(Bruce lives out of his laptop, and it accrues memetic furniture as it rolls around the world with him.)

Ellen Rogers photography for the Dec 09 issue of i-D:

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GLOBAL FREQUENCY On TV: Round 2

November 18th, 2009 | Work

The Twitter account of industry magazine PRODUCTION WEEKLY just posted on teh twittarz:

The CW will again try to adapt Warren Ellis’ comic book "Global Frequency," this time Scott Nimerfro will script the pilot.

Which I discovered because half a dozen people retweeted it at me within about thirty seconds of it landing.

I haven’t been cleared to comment yet, so I can’t really add anything to this. I’ve spoken briefly to Scott Nimerfro — by which I mean I threatened to have him stabbed, and he thanked me and told me a funny story about how he’s had worse threats — and he is Okay.

Anyway. Yes. Shouldn’t say any more until I get the nod from the studio. But yes.

(Also, yes, I did tell John Rogers. But John, you know, has his own hit show LEVERAGE these days. One of his temple houris told me that John, from the depths of the bed made of golden vaginas that they wheel him around in, wishes me luck.)

Matt Brooker

November 17th, 2009 | people I know, photography

(whom you know better as comics creator D’Israeli)

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(is living in Greece for a while)

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(and these are his photos of his time there so far)

LINKS: 25 NOV 09

John Robb - 25 Nov 09

Some random items of interest:

  • "Border Zones and Insecurity in the Americas" by Adam Elkus and John P. Sullivan.  
  • Suarez International, the combat training company that's always at the bleeding edge of practicable tactical innovation, has a very interesting course coming up: "guerrilla sniper."
  • Wired.  Software + webcam = 3d scanner.
  • Some great posts on how to generate innovative synthetic thinking in technology/science at Eric Drexler's Metamodern blog.  My finding:  Great analysts are a dime a dozen, great synthetic thinkers are rare.  
  • Comrade Simba.  I like how this writes.  It reads like near term fiction.
  • More later.

SHAKEDOWN

Pulphope - 25 Nov 09

SHAKEDOWNFINALforWEB

My next public gig is not at a book signing or a convention, but at a nightclub with Harvest Moon and a cast of professional circus/burlesque artists. Together, we're throwing a party called SHAKEDOWN at Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on December 5th. It's circus, striptease, and go-go, set to a rock and roll soundtrack. I am DJing all night plus contributing an exclusive video edit of psychedelic, cosmic imagery for the show (the club has an incredible state-of-the-art sound/visual system set up throughout the huge space) (including a dancefloor for 250+ people, 2 bars, a 7-lane bowling alley and a Blue Ribbon diner, open late). Click here for more about Harvest Moon, and here for more about Brooklyn Bowl. For my part, I am interested in contributing a 21st c. update of the old gel light show bands like Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd used in the '60s. So it is an interesting challenge-- a cartoonist/analog print artist such as myself working in sound and moving pictures--for a live event. If you're in NYC/Brooklyn on December 5th, come by. The Bowl also has a merchandise booth set up for Shakedown-- you can check out my new Homage to Crepax screenprint and T shirt if you want (proceeds of which go to CBLDF).

Also-- we're working on a new site re-design for PULPHOPE and PAULPOPE.COM, criminally overdue, launching soon with new content, including a preview of the work for my next major book release, Battling Boy.

Dark Avengers: Ares 2 Out

Kieron Gillen - 25 Nov 09

Ta-dah! No reviews yet, but there’s a five page preview for you to digest. In short - Ares takes his team off on their first mission. Hi-jinks and adventures ensue!

It’s not the full total of comics pages appearing this week. The final issue of JMS’ Thor run comes out - THOR: GIANT SIZE FINALE. It’s apparently got a six page preview of the first issue of my run in it, which hits next week. 604 apparently has an enormous gatefold sleeve, which looks pretty damn nifty actually.

Oh - as a break from the war and chaos, I direct you at a friends of mine’s parents Sri Lankan humanitarian work, which could do with your support. Go nose.

STARDUST

Kung Fu Monkey - 24 Nov 09

Wow, the last 15 minutes is just %$#@# AMAZING, isn't it?

Seriously, best swordfight/chandelier/true love rescue in ... I don't know how long. Plus, Mark Strong bonus points.

(I know, I know, took me long enough.)

Problems of Translation

Steven Shaviro - 24 Nov 09

Nathan of <a href=”http://un-cannyontology.blogspot.com/2009/11/ubersetzung.html”>An Un-canny Ontology</a>, responding to the same posts by Levi Bryant that I cited in <a href=”http://steveshaviro.tumblr.com/post/255685503″>my Tumblr workblog</a>, asks the question: “What exactly happens during translation? What is translation? And why do some things get translated and others do not?” After mulling over this question for some time, Nathan concludes “that objects predict, expect, or anticipate other objects – they recognize potential.”
Now, I am not sure that this is the right answer — or, at the very least, I would argue that it isn’t all of the answer. Nathan makes this claim because, for instance, “for leafs [sic] to translate photons of light into complex sugars, they must recognize the photons of light as photons of light.” I suppose this is true in a sense: leaves will not — cannot — translate just anything into complex sugars. But I don’t see why “recognition” has to be the precondition. If anything, I’d say that the leaf’s “recognition” of the photon is a consequence of, rather than a precondition for, its “translation” of light into sugar. Re-cognition, and indeed any form of cognition, always comes afterwards; it is the error of cogntivists (which we human beings, unavoidably misunderstanding ourselves, tend to be much of the time) to think that cognition is a ground of action, when actually it is a result of action.
I think that the source of this problem, in Nathan’s account, is the following. He says that ” objects first and foremost recognize each other,” precisely because — here paraphrasing Levi, and also to an extent Graham Harman — “objects translate each other, they change each other without encountering each other directly.” But as I’ve said before, my biggest disagreement with both Levi and Graham is that, for me, objects do encounter each other directly. (Whitehead’s actual entities are a bit like Leibniz’s monads, but actual entities touch each other directly, as monads do not. Cf. also Gabriel Tarde, who posits monads that — unlike Leibniz’s — interact with one another directly).
Levi puts it this way:
One of Harman?s core claims is that objects withdraw from one another or never directly encounter one another. This is the Kantian moment in Harman?s ontology. Where Kant holds that we never have direct access to the thing-in-itself, emphasizing the relationship between mind and thing-in-itself, Harman generalizes this thesis to allrelations between things, regardless of whether or not humans are involved. This is precisely why Harman?s ontology, despite being an ontological realism is also anepistemological anti-realism. In my own ontology, I refer to this general feature of things with the concept of ?translation?. As Gadamer (and Quine) taught us, every translation is a transformation. (from this post)
I largely agree with this (as I’ve said before, here and here). I think that it is precisely right to generalize what Kant says about the mind’s encounter with external reality to all interactions between/among objects. However: unlike Levi, I am unwilling to equate Kant’s argument for the cognitive inaccessibility to the thing-in-itself with the thesis that “objects never directly encounter one another.” This is because contact or encounter cannot be reduced to cognitive access. In Kant’s account, we are affected by things-in-themselves, even though we can never know them. This is indeed the source of one of the most-remarked problems with Kant’s thought: he seems to be saying that, in some sense, things-in-themselves cause our perceptions of them, even though he explicitly says that causality is merely phenomenal (i.e. merely produced by the way our minds organize our sensations). There are two ways to resolve this dilemma. One is Hegel’s and Zizek’s way, which absolutizes Mind or Spirit or Subject, by saying that even the inaccessibility of things-in-themselves is in fact posited by the Mind in the first place. Obviously, I find this undesirable. The other alternative — or, more precisely, the move in the opposite direction — consists in distinguishing the way things affect other things from “causality” understood as a Transcendental Category (i.e. roughly, as a form of cognition). Causality, as a cognitive category, isn’t adequate to describe the way that the mind is non-cognitively affected by things-in-themselves. Or — to make the speculative realist generalization — causality, as a cognitive category, isn’t adequate to describe the way that an object affects, or is affected by, another object.This is one way of describing Whitehead’s distinction between “causal efficacy” (what I am calling non-cognitive affectivity) and “presentational immediacy” (which, for Whitehead, means the type of causal connection discussed by Hume and by Kant).
So I agree with Levi and Graham that an object never cognitively grasps any other object in its entirety. (This is what Levi calls epistemological anti-realism). But I disagree with their move of equating this cognitive inaccessibility with the claim that objects never directly encounter one another. My non-vicarious version of ontological realism consists in claiming that objects do directly encounter (or affect) one another — only they do so non-cognitively. This is precisely why our ontology can be realist, even when our epistemology is confessedly anti-realist. The translation that happens in every encounter between objects — i.e. when, in Whitehead’s terms, one object prehends another object — is a direct, but non-cognitive, encounter (in Whitehead’s terms, it is a process of feeling, in which an “actual entity” determines itself by making a “decision” about how it will feel that which moves it to feel. An object functions for another object, Whitehead says, as a “lure for feeling”).
[I know that Levi and Graham won't agree with my account here, and probably Nathan won't either. But none of this would have come clear to me -- to the extent that it has come clear -- if not for my puzzling over what they wrote].

Nathan of An Un-canny Ontology, responding to the same posts by Levi Bryant that I cited in my Tumblr workblog, asks the question: “What exactly happens during translation? What is translation? And why do some things get translated and others do not?” After mulling over this question for some time, Nathan concludes “that objects predict, expect, or anticipate other objects – they recognize potential.”

Now, I am not sure that this is the right answer — or, at the very least, I would argue that it isn’t all of the answer. Nathan makes this claim because, for instance, “for leafs [sic] to translate photons of light into complex sugars, they must recognize the photons of light as photons of light.” I suppose this is true in a sense: leaves will not — cannot — translate just anything into complex sugars. But I don’t see why “recognition” has to be the precondition. If anything, I’d say that the leaf’s “recognition” of the photon is a consequence of, rather than a precondition for, its “translation” of light into sugar. Re-cognition, and indeed any form of cognition, always comes afterwards; it is the error of cogntivists (which we human beings, unavoidably misunderstanding ourselves, tend to be much of the time) to think that cognition is a ground of action, when actually it is a result of action.

I think that the source of this problem, in Nathan’s account, is the following. He says that ” objects first and foremost recognize each other,” precisely because — here paraphrasing Levi, and also to an extent Graham Harman — “objects translate each other, they change each other without encountering each other directly.” But as I’ve said before, my biggest disagreement with both Levi and Graham is that, for me, objects do encounter each other directly. (Whitehead’s actual entities are a bit like Leibniz’s monads, but actual entities touch each other directly, as monads do not. Cf. also Gabriel Tarde, who posits monads that — unlike Leibniz’s — interact with one another directly).

Levi puts it this way:

One of Harman?s core claims is that objects withdraw from one another or never directly encounter one another. This is the Kantian moment in Harman?s ontology. Where Kant holds that we never have direct access to the thing-in-itself, emphasizing the relationship between mind and thing-in-itself, Harman generalizes this thesis to all relations between things, regardless of whether or not humans are involved. This is precisely why Harman?s ontology, despite being an ontological realism is also an epistemological anti-realism. In my own ontology, I refer to this general feature of things with the concept of ?translation?. As Gadamer (and Quine) taught us, every translation is a transformation. (from this post)

I largely agree with this (as I’ve said before, here and here). I think that it is precisely right to generalize what Kant says about the mind’s encounter with external reality to all interactions between/among objects. However: unlike Levi, I am unwilling to equate Kant’s argument for the cognitive inaccessibility to the thing-in-itself with the thesis that “objects never directly encounter one another.” This is because contact or encounter cannot be reduced to cognitive access. In Kant’s account, we are affected by things-in-themselves, even though we can never know them. This is indeed the source of one of the most-remarked problems with Kant’s thought: he seems to be saying that, in some sense, things-in-themselves cause our perceptions of them, even though he explicitly says that causality is merely phenomenal (i.e. merely produced by the way our minds organize our sensations). There are two ways to resolve this dilemma. One is Hegel’s and Zizek’s way, which absolutizes Mind or Spirit or Subject, by saying that even the inaccessibility of things-in-themselves is in fact posited by the Mind in the first place. Obviously, I find this undesirable. The other alternative — or, more precisely, the move in the opposite direction — consists in distinguishing the way things affect other things from “causality” understood as a Transcendental Category (i.e. roughly, as a form of cognition). Causality, as a cognitive category, isn’t adequate to describe the way that the mind is non-cognitively affected by things-in-themselves. Or — to make the speculative realist generalization — causality, as a cognitive category, isn’t adequate to describe the way that an object affects, or is affected by, another object.This is one way of describing Whitehead’s distinction between “causal efficacy” (what I am calling non-cognitive affectivity) and “presentational immediacy” (which, for Whitehead, means the type of causal connection discussed by Hume and by Kant).

So I agree with Levi and Graham that an object never cognitively grasps any other object in its entirety. (This is what Levi calls epistemological anti-realism). But I disagree with their move of equating this cognitive inaccessibility with the claim that objects never directly encounter one another. My non-vicarious version of ontological realism consists in claiming that objects do directly encounter (or affect) one another — only they do so non-cognitively. This is precisely why our ontology can be realist, even when our epistemology is confessedly anti-realist. The translation that happens in every encounter between objects — i.e. when, in Whitehead’s terms, one object prehends another object — is a direct, but non-cognitive, encounter (in Whitehead’s terms, it is a process of feeling, in which an “actual entity” determines itself by making a “decision” about how it will feel that which moves it to feel. An object functions for another object, Whitehead says, as a “lure for feeling”).

[I know that Levi and Graham won't agree with my account here, and probably Nathan won't either. But none of this would have come clear to me -- to the extent that it has come clear -- if not for my puzzling over what they wrote].

The Sexy Fringe Of Jill Stafford

Kieron Gillen - 24 Nov 09

I had a few people asking when I had grown a sexy fringe in the backmatter to PG2.5. I hadn’t, alas. The days of fringes are long behind me. It was my good friend, the splendid uberlady Jill Stafford, as pictured here. Due to me being momentarily shit, we didn’t caption her up. Man! What were we thinking(Answer: LET’S GET THIS TO THE PRINTERS ASAP). Pah! Anyway - our model was Jill Stafford, who was wearing the still-available-photo-T-shirt and does art like this…

And you should go see more.

The Miniature Machines Of Szymon Klimek

Coilhouse - 24 Nov 09

Polish artist Szymon Klimek creates startlingly small models out of paper thin sheets of brass, which he displays in glass goblets. Even more astounding are his lilliputian, moving engines powered by the rays of the sun with the use of tiny solar panels. I have a raging nerd-on for work like this. I spent much of my youth attempting to hastily construct various types of models and miniatures. My lack of patience was a considerable hindrance, meaning that I left a long trail of shoddily painted plastic and wood behind me; amorphous piles of acrylic, enamel, and glue that in no way resembled the images that adorned their respective packages. One really must enjoy the process in order to construct magnificent pieces like Klimek’s and I, like many, am much more interested in the destination than the journey. I suppose that’s why they invented money.

via The Automata


Post tags: Art, Industrial, Sculpture

Twitter Updates for 2009-11-24

Girl Farts - 24 Nov 09

Untitled Post

blissblog - 24 Nov 09

ON WAR #323: Milestone (William S. Lind)

John Robb - 24 Nov 09

One of the ongoing themes of this column has been gangs and the role they play in a Fourth Generation world. Here in the United States they already serve as an alternative primary loyalty (alternative to the state) for many urban young men. Gangs will likely be a major player in 4GW because gang members are expected to fight...   Read the full article

NOTE: Bill Lind has asked me to host his columns and his collaborative work on fourth generation warfare (4GW) theory. I've set up a blog dedicated to this called LIND. I will be fleshing it out over the next couple of days.   IF this model proves successful, and I get the OK from the copyright owners, I'll add a site for John Boyd, Martin Van Creveld, and others.

UPDATE:  I think the new LIND site has most of the basics including the seminal 1989 article, "The Changing Face of War:  Into the 4th Generation" and the new 4GW manuals.  Still need a compilation of #242-322 for the On War series, more pictures, and an approved biography.

UPDATE 2:   I've also created a new site for John Boyd related material.  Right now, it's more archive than a blog due to the lack of a stream of new content.  If anyone has content I've missed (and that's likely plenty), please send me a note and I'll include it.  Also, if there are any ideas on what can be used to generate new ongoing content, please let me know.