User:~brumatana/Reading and writing: Movement
1.0 Introduction
We use our mind and body as an apparatus to perceive and generate movement in our environment made of space and time. It is difficult to define what movement since there exist an infinite forms of it. This research is mostly focusing on mind perception, artistic and cultural movement and mechanical and cybernetic systems. It will talk about machines and inventions taking role in art and culture through history and nowadays. The text is divided in synopsis of books I’ve read on this thematic. All forms of any movement are like small complex universes with diverse laws and characteristics, while they all form one big universal organism. Movements formed in many layers of micro and macro possibilities of the universal principles are constantly interacting with each other, while evolving and adapting their shape to the limits of existent physical and mental boundaries of performance and imagination. Human is taking actions using his mind and body, he makes use of tools and instruments and creates apparatus. Every action activates an infinite chain of timeless outer movements and effects, infecting indirectly other objects and actions, also the one placed in space and time that is far away from the original trigger. In the following text I divided few types of infinite sorts of movements and talk about how do all those small systems interfere with each other and form the whole. I would like to explore the movement of our thoughts and mind, which is our main system for perceiving and producing motion while creating the illusion of our reality. With our mind and body, we create physical instruments which (while in motion), trigger infinite combinations of senses thoughts and images that activate or generate new forms and types of actions in matter and mind movements. This complex system of feedback and cause and effects is necessary for the evolution and progress of all existing systems. Human is in an emergency to begin to perceive himself, environment and whole universe in this way and remove the hierarchic system with his society on top.
2.0 The Journey or how the Mind moves through the space and time
Synopsis of the Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson
The mind creates the world that we perceive on a physical and psychological level. It is the command control, a self-regulating system of our movement through our lifetime space adapting itself to the outside stimulations, possibilities and boundaries. Our understanding of body movement and space recognition is based not only on physical senses; those are strongly connected with our psychological experience. It is necessary for human mind to constantly challenge the perception-determining beliefs to find new ways mind-expanding while observing and acting in order to learn, upgrade and adapt our mind movements in the intellectual climate. If applied, those mind-movements may someday possibly lead humans to a better approach of ecological and social responsibility and defining new scientific territories while making progress in our mind-evolution, which is today more urgent than ever.
Aldous Huxley explains the man lost’ his ‘’grace’’ which animals and God still have, because human behavior is corrupted by deceit or even self-deceit and is capable of internal confusions. Bateson argues that art is a part of man’s quest: ‘’…I argue that art is a part of man's quest for grace; some-times his ecstasy in partial success, sometimes his rage and agony at failure. I argue also that there are many species of grace within the major genus; and also that there are many kinds of failure and frustration and departure from grace. No doubt each culture has its characteristic species of grace toward which its artists strive, and its own species of failure. Some cultures may foster a negative approach to this difficult integration, an avoidance of complexity by crass preference either for total consciousness’’ (Bateson, 137-138)
The grace is a problem of the integration of diverse parts of mind–the multiple levels if consciousness and unconsciousness. The art of a culture can have meanings and validity in a totally different culture because it is the expression of the grace and psychic integration and the outcome can be recognizable across cultural barriers. The frustration of integration can be identified by the cross-cultural recognition and the form of information of physic integration is coded in artwork. So how do we recognize the artistic pursuit of grace through the code of artwork in different cultures?
"Le style est l'homme meme " ("The style is the man him-self") (Buffon).
Bateson is not interested in finding the meaning of coded message, but about the most general meaning of the chosen code. We can understand ‘’meaning’’ as an approximate synonym of pattern, information, redundancy and restraint. ‘’Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g., a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog, or a culture) shall be said to contain "redundancy" or "pattern" if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a "slash mark," such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess, with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side. Or, in engineer's language, the aggregate contains "redundancy." Or, again, from the point of view of a cybernetic observer, the information available on one side of the slash will restrain (i.e., reduce the probability of) wrong guessing. (Bateson, 140)
The characteristic of an art object is strongly connected with the characteristic or rest of the culture. What sorts of relationships can be defined in this situations? We can change our focus of attention from smaller to largest universe/units of message material and the combination of a message and our perception can constitute a message about personal relations. But still there is the complex layering of consciousness and unconsciousness that creates difficulties when we try to discuss art or ritual or mythology.
‘’The matter of levels of the mind has been discussed from many points of view, at least four of which must be mentioned and woven into any scientific approach to art: (1) Samuel Butler's insistence that the better an organism "knows" something, the less conscious it becomes of its knowledge, i.e., there is a process whereby knowledge (or "habit" —whether of action, perception, or thought) sinks to deeper and deeper levels of the mind. This phenomenon, which is central to Zen discipline (cf. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery), is also relevant to all art and all skill. (2) Adalbert Ames' demonstrations that the conscious, threedimensional visual images, which we make of that which we see, are made by processes involving mathematical premises of perspective, etc., of the use of which we are totally unconscious. Over these processes, we have no voluntary control. A drawing of a chair with the perspective of van Gogh affronts the conscious expectations and, dimly, reminds the consciousness of what had been (unconsciously) taken for granted. (3) The Freudian (especially Fenichel's) theory of dreams as metaphors coded according to primary process. I shall consider style—neatness, boldness of contrast, etc.—as metaphoric and therefore as linked to those levels of the mind where primary process holds sway. (4) The Freudian view of the unconscious as the cellar or cupboard to which fearful and painful memories are con-signed by a process of repression.’’ (Bateson, 144)
We can know trough senses when we recognize and perceive and we have to know our mind, although what we know through our senses become knowledge in in our mind. In art we can imagine an object and the culture as a smaller and lager universe. The characteristic of the art object is being determined by other characteristic of cultural and psychological systems. It has a concept that will force us to see us the ‘’message’’ which has an internal patterned system and in is the same time a part of a larger patterned universe like the culture or a part of it. Parts of patterned whole may itself be informative as part of some still larger whole. (Bateson, 142)
2.1 Bateson’s work in general Gregory Bateson extended cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences. He applied cybernetics to ecological anthropology and homeostasis. He claimed that the world is a series of systems, contained the one of individuals, societies and ecosystems. Inside every system can be found a competition and dependency. Each system has the ability of adaptive changes, that depend on feedback loops to control the balance and change multiple variables. He saw those self-correcting systems good as long they could maintain homeostasis. The key unit of survival in evolution was an organism and its environment. Bateson understand the individual, social and ecosystem were all part of one supreme cybernetic system, which many people refer to as God, though Bateson referred to it as Mind. As a cybernetic system it can be only distinguished as a whole and not as parts. He saw the root of system collapse because of Occidental and Western epistemology, which the man exerted as a method and a mindset of an autocratic rule over all cybernetics systems. The man changes the environment to suit him unbalancing the cybernetic system of controlled competition and mutual dependency. In this was the man becomes a slave in his own self-made system due to non-linear nature of cybernetics. He argues for a culture that promotes most general wisdom and is able to adapt and flexibly change within the supreme cybernetic system. Bateson tries to understand the importance of self-regulating systems and the causal role of idea, messages and differences.
3.0 The Illusion
Synopsis of the The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
Space and time are the illusory elements in a holographic universe. In the same time is very difficult for us to imagine to exist in a realm in without space definitions. Some of indications we are no more bounded by space than we are by time can be found in out-of-body phenomena, where the consciusnes awareness detach itself from the physical body. (Talbot, 230).
Some studies suggest that less than 50 percent of what we "see" is actually based on information entering our eyes. The remaining 50 percent plus is pieced together out of our expectations of what the world should look like (and perhaps out of other sources such as reality fields). The eyes may be visual organs, but it is the brain that sees.
Remember that in Pribram's view, reality at large is really a frequency domain, and our brain is a kind of lens that converts these frequencies into the objective world of appearances. Although Pribram began by studying the frequencies of our normal sensory world, such as frequencies of sound and light, he now uses the term frequency domain to refer to the interference patterns that compose the implicate order. Pribram believes there may be all kinds of things out there in the frequency domain that we are not seeing, things our brains have learned to edit out regularly of our visual reality. He thinks that when Seeing Holographically 165 mystics have transcendental experiences, what they are really doing is catching glimpses of the frequency domain. "Mystical experience makes sense when one can provide the mathematical formulas that take one back and forth between the ordinary world, or 'image-object' domain, and the 'frequency' domain, " he states.
Access to holographic reality becomes experientially available when one's consciousness is freed from its dependence on the physical body. So long as one remains tied to the body and its sensory modalities, holographic reality at best can only be an intellectual construct. When one [is freed from the body] one experiences it directly. That is why mystics speak about their visions with such certitude and conviction, while those who haven't experienced this realm for themselves are left feeling skeptical or even indifferent. —Kenneth Ring, Ph.D. Life at Death
4.0 The perception of time and movement
Synopsis of the Travelling Time by Sonic Acts XIV by Arie Altena and Sonic Acts
Musical tunings and systematic intervals have similar analogies in microcosmic and macrocosmic structures. The relations they have to eaxhother can be measured and expressed with numbers and distances. From the Pitagorean world-view to European music theory those were the basis with a core of simplicity, triviality of consonance, a complex relation of consonance and dissonance. (Altena, 770000000000)
Human body is a medium of resonance, a biological body with a storage of information, this is why humans are moved by the vibration of sound in the shape of music. The physical and metaphysical are being in a constant interaction. The simplier and more fundamental the consonance , the stronger is the impact and effect on human.
(Altena, 800000000000)
In the book Kitab al-Hiyal (Book of Ingenious Devices), written by Banu Musa brothers in ninth-century in Baghdad is filled with sketches and exact building instructionsfor 100 models of various artefacts, devices, kinetic sculptures and automotive artificial devices. Some of the objects are made to be in constant motion without a pause, like the oil lamp than can refill itself and move its wind shield in order to protect the flame so it can theoretically burn forever. In one of their solitary manuscripts they describe ‘’The instrumentthat plays by itself’’ (Al-alat illati tuzammir binafsiha). It is a musical device, a flute, that can play perpetually. With the title they indicated the universal significance of the technology and not the specific model of flute player.
The Three princess from House of Wisdom in Baghdad improved the mechanism by building a music automation that was capable of varying rhythms and could be fed with different melodies.
Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari made a pneumatically and hydraulically driven mechanical clock, who was measuring time and making sounds to mark it.
Hydraulically operated and pneumatically driven flute players and birds appear also in ancient Chinese and Greek texts.
The ancient music automata can be viewed as a mechanical objectification of time that is audible.
Kircher describes arca musarithmicus an artefact which has the character of an apparatus. (Altena, 880000000000 – 920000000000). Arca means box or a casket, musarithmicus signifies measure and order in music. He clearly states his interest in the artefact: ’Mechanical music-making is simply a specific theory that I have substantiated and by which anyone, even unmusical people, using very different musical instruments can compose song of a vertain artistry’. (Altena, 950000000000)
5.0 Sound – the most present air movement
Synopsis of Kahn Douglas, Noise, Water, Meat
John Cage’s Water Music in 1952 was one of the first works that moved toward theater and performance. Jackson Pollock was dripping and pouring paint over canvases laid flat on the ground. Both actions were a manifestation of movement, fluidity, water, sound, image and performance. It was a period of progressive dissolution of disciplinary constrains that spilled over to the next generation of artists, who came from many disciplinary and media backgrounds and start to work in a performative way. New performance modes known as happenings and events were set by Allan Kaprow and George Brecht. The ideas of the movement were fluidity, noise, performance, disciplinary and media breakdown in contrast with the previous period, that was rigid, dry, inactive and silent.
‘’If we were to continue to divine water in arts, it would necessarily invoke an ecological self-consciousness, including the nature of the body, where materials and techniques themselves become political’’(Douglas, 224)
Water was involved in John Cages performances, but it was also present in the conventional music as theatrical activity, for example, when a horn player empties his spit out from the horn. Vladimir Mayakovsky was dreaming to ‘’make the ocean waves pluck at strings stretched from Europe to America’’. His unrealized idea has developed over more recent times a whole genre of long-stringed instruments (Douglas, 224).
6.0 The complexity of Systems Theory
Synopsis of the The History and Status of General Systems Theory by Ludwig von Bertalanffy
The man in early culture is experiencing himself as being thrown in a chaotic and hostile world where rules incomprehensible demonic forces which are influenced by a way of magical practices. The birth of philosophy learned to consider an order controllable by thought and rational action.
Scientific revolution replaced descriptive-metaphysical conception of the universe with conceptions like mathematical-positivistic doctrine by Aristotle or Galilean conception. The word was perceived by the description of events in causal, mathematical laws.
The complex phenomena can be reduced into elementary parts and processes. We have to observe the organization of a whole system while being in isolation and it can be a living organism, social group or even an atom. This method can only be applicable if the observed events can be split into isolable causal chains, the relations between the variables.
The ideas tried to deal with the problem of order and organization. One of them was about man-made machines, epitomized by Descartes bete machine, later expanded to the homme machine of Lamettrie. Another one was Darwinian idea of natural selection. Both were highly successful. The ideas about the living organisms as a machine, from a mechanical machine to later conceptions of the organism as a caloric, chemodynamic cellular and cybernetic machine provided explanations of biological phenomena from physiology of organs to submicroscopic structures and enzymatic processes in the cell. ‘’Simillary, organismic order as a product of random events embraced an enormous number of facts under the title of ‘’synthetic theory of evolution’’ including molecular genetics and biology.’’ (Bertalanffy, 409)
Descartes principle of ‘’animal machine’’ explained the order of process found in the living organisms. According to him, God was the creator of the machine. The chance process within the systems had different rules; they all differ by the levels of complexity. Before the self-maintaining systems enter in the competition (survival of the fittest), of higher selective value they have to construct themselves and begin to exist. The self-maintenance, rather from being provided with the ordinary laws of physics, can be explained by the second law of thermodynamics, which irreversible process takes the actions toward most probable states and consequently toward the destruction of existing order and ultimate decay. (Bertalanffy , 410)
Bergson, Driesch and others were talking about neovitalistic currents, which were based on the limits of possible regulations in a ‘’machine’’ evolution by random events and on the goal-directedness of action. Those currents were referring to the Aristotelian ‘’entelechy.’’
Woodger doubted about the paradigm of classical science that claims complex phenomena can be explained in terms of isolable elements. He questioned if the ‘’random mutations’’ in natural selection can provide all the answers to the phenomena of evolution, organization of the living things and the question of goal—directedness. Those problems were linked not only to biology, but also to psychology and other sciences. (Bertalanffy , 410)
6.1 The foundation of general systems theory
In 1920 Bertalanffy wrote that the organization of fundamental characters of the living thing cannot be find through single parts and the process customary investigation cannot explain the vital phenomena, because it doesn’t give us the information about the coordination of parts and process. He called the new method of investigation that tries to find a foundation of theoretical biology by discovering the laws of biological systems at all levels of the organization ‘’the system theory of organism.’’. The term ‘’organism’’ was replaced by other ‘’organised entities’’ like social groups, personality, and technological devices. In order to understand an organized whole we have to know the parts and the relations between them. (Bertalanffy ,410)
‘’The properties and modes of action of higher levels are not explicable by the summation of the properties and modes of action of their components taken in isolation. If, however, we know the ensemble of the components and the relations existing between them, then the higher levels are derivable from the components [10, p 148]. (Bertalanffy, 410)
According to Bertalanffy General System Theory is a logico-mathematical field which is seeking for the general systems that are applicable to ‘’systems’’ in general, using models and principles that are paying attention to particular kinds, nature of the component elements and the relations of forces between generalized systems of their subclasses. (Bertalanffy, 411)
Bertalanffy outlined the mathematical descriptions of system properties such as wholeness, sum, growth, competition, allometry, mechanization, centralization, finality and equifinality, which derive from the system description by simultaneous differential equations. He developed the theory and the new model of ‘’open systems’’, which are systems that exchange matter with environment as every ‘’living’’ system does. This theory stands in relationship with chemical kinetics and thermodynamics of irreversible process while providing explanations for many special problems in biochemistry, general biology, physiology, and related areas. (Bertalanffy, 412)
According to the program ‘’Logical homologies’’ of laws or analogies are formally identical but pertain to different phenomena or appear in different disciplines. (Bertalanffy , 413)
Boulding wrote to Bertalanffy: ‘’I seem to have come much the same conclusions as you have reached, though approaching it from the direction of economics and the social sciences rather than from biology – that there is a body of what I have calling ‘’general empirical theory’’ or ‘’general system theory’’ in your excellent terminology, which is of wide applicability in many different disciplines [15, p. 14; cf. 18]. (Bertalanffy, 413) The new theory took place in many different development, like Psychiatry, automation and computer technology, cybernetic movement. (Bertalanffy, 413)
6.2 Trends in general systems theory The concept of general system theory can be used broadly, comprising everything ranging from fossil digging and anatomy to the mathematical theory of selection and behavior theory and applied to different sciences like physics, biology, psychology and social sciences. It can approach cybernetic, theory of automata, information theory, control theory, graph and network theory, set, game and decision theory, relational mathematics, computerization and simulation etc. The approaches can relate to ‘’system problems’’, which are problems of interrelations within superordinate ‘’whole’’. That doesn’t happen because they are isolated, but because they overlap. (Bertalanffy, 415) To understand entities, we require to know the elements and their interrelations between each other, the interactions of conscious and unconscious processes in the personality, the structure and dynamics of social systems. We have to explore many systems in our observed universe and find out the general aspects, correspondences and isomorphisms that are common to ‘’systems’’. It is a scientific exploration of ‘’wholesness’’ which was once considered as a metaphysical notion transcending the boundaries of sciences. The interdisciplinary nature of models, concepts and principles used in the exploration of the ‘’systems’’ provides a possible approache toward the unification of science. (Bertalanffy, 415) The existence of different descriptions of ‘’system theories’’ by various authors’ is not leading to a confusion, we can rather see it as a new growing field which indicates necessary and complementary aspects of the problem. ‘’Different and partly opposing approaches should, however, tend toward further integration, in sense that one is a special case within another, or that they can be shown to be equivalent or complementary. Such developments are, in fact, taking place.’’ (Bertalanffy, 415)
7.0 Bibliography
Bateson, G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler Pub. Co.
Talbot M (1991) The Holographic Universe, Harper Collins Publishers
Altena, A and Sonic Acts (2012) Sonic Acts Press
Kahn, D (2001) Noise water meat, MIT Press
Bertalanffy, L (1972) The History and Status of General Systems Theory, Academy of Management