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Spherical Thinking The hermeneutic circle refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. The concept of spherical thinking refers the hermeneutic circle to quantum physics and celestial mechanics. The intuitive sense of spherical thinking is to look outside of local phenomena and position a perspective relevant to place, time, and the greater spheres of influence. This point of view includes an awareness of process. Art is a marriage of discovery and the human perspective. Science continues to gather greater perspectives in building the big picture. Art continues to refine a metaphor capable of containing these discoveries. With respect the complexity of all existence, the artist shapes a vision by defining scale in proportion to our limits of perception. The search for universal absolute form is replaced by working models of probabilities suited to relevant perspectives. The need for “The Answer” is replaced by many answers appropriate to the governing dynamics of the particular perspective “Field.” The observer and observed form the critical center localizing the expression of existence into experienced reality. We look to understand the dynamics mindful that spherical forces are most likely at play. Our metaphorical lens imitates nature as a sphere. -- Excerpt From zen Process National Academies' report: "Interdisciplinary research is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice." *Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (2004). Facilitating interdisciplinary research. National Academies. Washington: National Academy Press, p. 2. Forms ~ Superstructure ~ Universal Dynamics Plato’s forms were considered the parent structure "within" something other than perceived reality. He supposed that the essence of object was the Form and that the experienced perception were shadows echoing the Form. The idea of universals presumed that Form was a distinct singular thing causing multiple representations of itself in particular objects. Form being aspatial and atemporal (outside of time/space). Today similar ideas in string theory suggest that particle super-position exists in a state of all possibliness actualizing in local universal matter as partnership with occurrence. Form "Tetrahedron" is perfect and unchanging. It’s Form is exactly the same whenever anyone chooses to consider it; time/space is that of the observer and not of the Tetrahedron. The Greeks believed there to be three 'ingredients' to beauty: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. As an approach to a mosaic artistic motif, The configuration of 8.5x 11" units (Landscape orientation) in 4 columns and 5 rows measuring 34"x 55.01" represents a starting point for a work in 2D representation. Rectangle Calculator The Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393 E.T.C. shows the progression of PHI. Every third number of the series is an even number. This produces the PHI spiral known as the golden mean in nature such as the spiral in a seashell or nebula. The golden mean can be found in everything from vortex formations of matter to biological systems, solar systems, and galaxies. The earliest references to atoms date back to Jainism in India, 6th century BC. Democritus coined the term átomos in Greek, which means "uncuttable" or "the smallest indivisible particle of matter". The Hubble Space Telescope has presented a big picture suggesting that dark matter and dark energy are formational superstructure. This also suggests fundamental patterns as keystones to fundamental principals structuring events, and possibly Infinite divisibility and finite structure as a partnership in (event horizon as a fulcrum) to twin universal structures. So the search for pattern and structure existing in varying systems and/or disciplines points to cross-referencing. By seeing how something works in one environment suggest possibilities in new environments. Repeated structures in multiple environments suggests principal structures. The well traveled experience of cross media migration and referencing through precedents of time as well as space/place inform the ability to see. Theory ~ Perception Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modelling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings. An analogy for strings' modes of vibration is a guitar string's production of multiple but distinct musical notes. Different notes correspond to different particles. The only difference is the guitar is only 2-dimensional, you can strum it up, and down. In actuality the guitar strings would be every dimension, and the strings could vibrate in any direction. Meaning that the particles could move through not only our dimension, but other dimensions as well. Shamanic visions speak of a creational spiral which allows passage between worlds and time. The history of art refers to to an evolution of symbolic meaning. The quest to understand the world around us and within us remains constant. The internet a short time ago would have been described as impossible, or as magic. Bucky Fuller described magic as unperceived technology. We need a new model of the universe which offers a user friendly access from a human scale. Our model created out of the industrial age is in collision with the requirements of an expanding information universe. Myth Of Creation The human scale is interpreted by many stories of reunification with nature. The Johnny Rainbow Ballet was one of my interpretations of this fate. Kachina Energy Paintings This art created out of native American myth is also part of Johnny Rainbow. It informs the art created for the stage and movie productions. Kachina Woman K-1, K-40, K-02, Hopi creational myth of reunification with nature, is only one of many such folk stories where humankind transcends to an awakened awareness. Johnny Rainbow (combined projects) x Johnny Rainbow ~ Rock Operetta Re-Unification Myth set in a small town run by the corrupt Boss D. Songs: (a demo CD is available) Easy Street ~ They Say That Love ~ Hoochie Coochie ~ Beggars ~ Crazy ~ Tribe ~ Your Age ~ Conformity ~ Hero ~ Crossroads ~ Flash Fools ~ Ethera ~ Ethera 2 ~ Far Away ~ Past Life ~ Brother The meta-physical concept of Shamanic transcendence framed the work. music, art, and poetry. Lyrics, poetry, short story, and reflections combine to propel us into a world dense with meaning. The Big Picture Installation 13’X 11’ Mixed Media on 30 panels, each panel 20”X 30” This is a physical metaphor reflecting the impact of the digital window. Parts of this work continue to migrate into new media. The following pages present original works and the image as it migrates into new forms. The definitions of art as we might have known it enter into a relative world. In this world of new media our experience is defined by evolution and process. The Big Picture is an expression of my esthetic migration to a time based synthesis. This particular resolution freezes time as well as parts of separate visions. The start of my path in art was the physical organization of light in the discipline of painting. The Big Picture Installation is 30 panels which are 20"x 30" each hung in a configuration of 6 columns and 5 rows. The approximate size of the complete installation is between 13' and 14' tall and 11' wide. The size and combination of images offers a new canvas able to encompass a greater scope. Some of the source materials are paintings originally created from 1965 through 2007. Between dissection and re-painting, the original context is drastically altered. The images and original intentions continue to succeed in this migration. The Big Picture is in fact a much closer depiction of how I experience the life in art construct. This view is now absorbed into my art and presented as an individual work. This work also depicts periods within my larger body of art. During these periods, fidelity to local discovery permeated my consciousness. My overview of a greater vision was realized in the compression of time. Part of my concept of art is art as intentional artifact of its time. The Big Picture was influenced by several art viewing experiences. The world wide web provided frames of images which would shift and offer new related or fragmented images. Sometimes the relationships were not immediately clear. Another influence was a show at The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College . The show required that each artist fit whatever material they desired into a hanging file folder. These folders contained paintings, prints, P.R. material, CD and DVD works, and one artist simply cut up a very large painting into pieces which would fit into the folder. I was intrigued by this show and went through every folder. I was impressed by the cut up painting because it took guts to do the cutting and kept the purity of the art. Both the web and the show at Bard underlined multiple points of view and glimpses through time. My work has gone through various periods that express my thirst for discovery. At this time, my need for a gathering up from these periods into a larger vision reaching toward unity brings me to the present series of works forming The Big Picture. The greater view includes migration into digital media and the world wide web. On The Web Mega File Mega file construction is an experimental digital picture which is huge. It can be experienced with a viewing program. The experience is basically zooming in to details of the picture which expand into a newly defined interior microcosm. The clarity of the microcosm contains more levels to zoom in further. The viewer may at any time roam the picture in any direction as well as zooming in and out. Although this is a 2D picture, the experience has a feeling of flying. In a later project I will bring it into a virtual 3D space with sculptural movement. The Big Picture Show Convergence Of Art, Movies, Dance ~ In Concert Digital Magic The computer has become the keystone for orchestrating the digital magic. The integration of audio, projected images, sequenced images, and stage elements, interact with dancers and lead performers. Both live and programmed images interweave to enhance and amplify the performance. The perspective developed out of the fine art installation “Big Picture,” and the dynamic web pages orchestrated with code are the core. From this core, new technologies with the focus of the project continue the Big Picture Show. Dynamic Web Show On The Web and On The Web Web Art is derived form "Parts" taken from paintings. Re-Birthed in the digital domain, they are organized in groups and called by the program. The program I am using is a Java script display window maxed with code. I have rewritten the program to a multi-grouped modular complex including variables within the sub groups. The design is similar to a digital colony. This program is a progression of the called picture parts starting from uniformity. This uniformity is repeated through several cycles re-presenting the parts, displaying the field form created by them. The translation of uniformity in the repetition of the single parts dramatically changes the field form though the display system is unchanged. The stager in display is a real time wave form created by memory delay in loading. It is not in the code. However it is played with, and later influences the code. While this program is simple, it represents a significant metaphorical model outlining my long standing concerns with field forms, wave forms, code, and experiential translations to the individual persona defined by the abilities of perception. Print Making My work in printmaking includes, wood block, etching, stone lithography, zinc plate lithography, dot matrix, inkjet, laser, monoprint, silk screen, photographic, and combinations of these in mixed media. Many works starting as prints migrate into paintings. They serve the basis for a series in an in depth study. Print making is an arena where techno-science has evolved and converged with old masters methods and modern digital technologies. A modern twist is the importing of conventional art such as oil paintings into the digital domain. There, manipulation can transform the picture into a far abstraction of it’s parent image. I started this process with an Amiga computer. While computers offer millions of color possibilities, the intelligence to create nuances relevant to the human scale is absent. I quickly discovered that colors I imported from works of art were far superior in building a palettes. The image in the digital domain is what print makers call a matrix. My more recent Web-Works are dynamic printmaking resolving on a web browsers. They are called from digital media and a matrix including several languages of code. The code are the rules by which the image unfolds, although the code itself remains invisible. Tech SCI & Art Convergence (relative from uniformity) The idea with the grouping of images is very different than other field frame web works. My play here is a slice &n dice on the imitation of nature. My experience as a landscape painter is closer to these shifting frames than the picture of a painting. When I do the landscape painting I am freezing a single frame in time and taking it out of the environment and presenting it as a thing. A painting. My actual experience is the flowing montage of visual experience. The actual landscape offers a multitude of possibilities any of which may be fitted to a frame and called “The Landscape.” The single frame depicted in a painting is the symbolic re-presentation of the idea of the "Landscape." Our shared literature of symbols within our culture makes the "Landscape" icon understood. All of the frames in this program might be “Landscape” picture parts. Those which might seem abstract are details or re-oriented parts and on only a few cases a composite symmetrical image. I will explore the concepts of symmetry, super-symmetry, and meta-symmetry in later programs. It is interesting to note that while steeped in code writing, for art I began to experience the understanding of code in nature. Seeing a gentle breeze turn over leaves on trees, seeing strata of clouds at different levels, all governed by code of vector equilibrium. Massive convergence of coded fieldforms in nature are an awe inspiring vision. Like traditional print making and digital forms the matrix is the invisible structure producing what we experience. Some of the images I have included are a marriage of traditional art migrating through a digital matrix governed by complex algorithms and code. Rebirth Series Energy and matter have a special relationship in my work. There is metaphorical link to physics, the unified field, (super structure) periodically appearing as chaos, matter (formation on objective level), sometimes appearing as realism or representational art. Energy works are representing non object defined fieldforms at a point of internal resolution. The “Cutting Board” painting to the right shows the beginning of the rebirth. Marks start to fly around separated but still influenced by the original object depiction. Just to the right, on the next page a representational work has made the full rebirth journey. Under the energetic field an image as tightly constructed as “Cutting Board” previously existed. The painting on the far right focuses on marks as independent entities existing in a open space within the field. The painting below strives to balance a supersaturated field with organizing forms intuiting but not becoming a world of object. Art And Science As most obviously exemplified by Leonardo Da Vinci, art and science are bound from the core of discovering creation. Methods and materials for the artist are the science in the discipline of painting. Physical applications, intellectual organization, and theory are documented by many authors, including; Ralph Mayer 1957, Sir Charls Lock Eastlake 1869, and Cennino Cennini published in 1400, (The Artist's Handbook) ~ As literature, art enters the domains of documentary, theology, psychology, symbolic studies, and human history. While periodic trends may produce artists specializing in commercial applications, the master artist continues the profound investigation of our existence. The digital domain as new media is another chapter in the science of art. The human scale migrating into a newly defined universe continues the marriage of art and science. On the frontier of knowledge, the mind and associations to the dialectics of culture and persona as well as brain chemistry, inform our perception. The re-refined symbolic icons of deep association unlock our identity. The mass of information arriving from a previously invisible world, invites our flexibility to be ever more resilient in the synthesis of a new paradigm. We exist in motion. Therefore, we orient our thinking to the understanding of a process. I remember when the first picture was released from the Hubble Space Telescope of a section of deep space where it apeared that nothing existed. I was happy because it confirmed that we exist in a supersaturated field form of a spherical nature and gave context to my field paintings which experimented with field density and space perception. The other reason is that it exemplified pure research as the heart of science. The world Of Thought Esoteric Areas Of Thought Seek To Organize Perception offering patterns for reference. In Search of the Miraculous, P.D.Ouspensky was an early thought provoking presentation of ideas which sparked my interest. It suggested that two basic laws, the law of three forces and the law of the octave, pervade existence. A structure symbolized by the seven-tone musical scale, with steps both upward and downward. There where junctures on this scale where forces are checked and require new energy to continue along the ladder. Related ideas included a unified field. In music, unified field is often used to refer to the "unity of musical space" created by the free use of melodic as harmonic and harmonic as melodic material. In physics, a unified field theory is a type of field theory that allows all of the fundamental forces between elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field. The term was coined by Albert Einstein who attempted to unify the general theory of relativity with electromagnetism. A Theory of Everything is closely related to unified field theory, but differs by not requiring the basis of nature to be fields, and also attempts to explain all physical constants of nature. The ideas of unity in art also seek to reconcile questions raised by science. As art imitates nature, it seeks to define the human scale in proportion to the known world. The known world changes with great strides such as with the Hubble telescope. Albert Einstein put forward the notion that the universe was a spherical structure. As our abilities to see the world increase, we rediscover the spherical structure in the stars and the microcosm of sub atomic particles. As physical forces and time effect the spherical structures, they become spheroids on spiral orbital paths. Polarization becomes another primal organizing phenomenon. A balance of interacting forces seeking a vector equilibrium explains the workings of these forces. Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a solid, liquid or gaseous medium. Energy in motion. The term 'waveform' also refers to the shape of a graph of the varying quantity against time or distance. Waveforms may exist within fieldforms. They may be better sometimes for describing a local event. The reason for having a point of view in harmony with nature is to increase our ability to focus on the larger picture and zoom into a perspective appropriate to our individuality. The various quests for knowledge, truths found in ancient religions and wisdom teachings resonate with individual needs for identity and humanity's place in the universe. Other influences included Mesmer, Jose Silva, Edgar Casey, Andreas Lommel, Carl Jung, Freud, and others. The discovery of ways to access and organize the mind has been a partner to all the disciplines. My cross-referencing of disciplines seemed a natural progression. The creation of visual symbols to help organize thought is an ongoing part of the literature of mind gathered in our libraries. The digest of ideas forms our language. The refinement of this language becomes literature of mind. If we are to draw off from this literature, then a poetry of universal dynamics must be the conclusion of our quest. Techno Science & art ~ Quantum Mechanics And The Art Metaphor A good metaphor will maintain it's meaning in variable environments. The foundation of interdisciplinary studies is arriving at universal dynamics sustained by cross-referencing. The idea of a unified field is a re-occurring theme in art as well as physics. Speaking with several physicists I realized they were also attempting to define a comprehensive view of creation. The symbolic structural design of the art metaphor is to imitate nature. Discovery is the process, in which every discipline an individual may be working in grows. Truth is beauty. The faithful, who do not tarnish the clarity of discovery eventually emerge with a clear vision. The ability to increase a capacity to see, hear, comprehend and apply knowledge is the quest of all discovery. History has demonstrated that we can not draw credible conclusions in a vacuum. The necessary elements are increased perception delivering high quality information. Much of my inspiration has come from the scientific community. The technologies I employ have also had a definitive impact on the scope of my work. A main driving force has been a deep desire to understand how things work. CODE Weather code is produced for a program, the world wide web, music or moviemaking hardware the concept is the same. Nature provides the stage for our bodies with genetic code. Physics points to the code governing the universe and subatomic particles. Literature provides the code for emotion and the human scale. The invisible matrix is the axis-mundi of the metaphorical unified field. The creative concept of unity. Until the perfect universal translator comes along, the interdisciplinary will have patch together language and meaning through multiple systems of code. Weather Leonardo Da Vince or today’s interdisciplinary the idea of cross-referencing structural dynamics to discover the secrets of creation is imbedded in the CODE. The sheet music below on left was written by hand. The score below to the right is from a music production program. The tools of notation remain the same. In 1962 I bought the guitar pictured to the left. It is a Martin Dreadnought D28. Whenever I pick up this guitar, I enter a quiet lucid space. It is a meditation ... practiced, rehearsed, perfected, refined and always a new adventure within the moment. It remains a seeing stone into the great mystery. Art is the same seeing stone. The experience of discovery through many seeing stones is a vision I feel privileged to share. When skill, knowledge and perception combine to express a vision of creation. A sense of connection with existence is a source of immense satisfaction. When an audience can also experience that satisfaction, a cathartic transference provides shamanic transformation. Infancy and childhood are such active learning periods that the idea of isolating fields of learning, separating them and stopping the process of understanding in most of them is absurd. Yet later in life our society of hyperspecialization expects exactly that. The Seventh Discipline The foundation of interdisciplinary studies is arriving at universal dynamics sustained by cross-referencing. The wider the field of reference the greater probability of pattern recognition. A centered awareness moving freely across disciplines is the keystone of the mature interdisciplinary. The ability to zoom into specifics of a unfamiliar discipline and quickly orient an organizational overview is the flower in the interdisciplinary garden. There is a pattern created by referencing 3 commonalties within a discipline. As an example, if you have 3 figures of a man, each one smaller, they create an appearance of perspective. That is, rather than understanding the figures as being progressively smaller, the mind sees the same size figure receding in space. Similarly with sound, an echo appears to create the illusion of space when there are 3 sounds progressively growing fainter. The presence of 3 elements of information all possibly saying the same thing forms a commonality (the space, or the illusion of space). The mind finds it easy to make these relationships. We use this understanding to build relationships between disciplines. When we have a cross-reference between 3 disciplines we get a sense of what these disciplines are doing which is greater than the 3. When we bring another discipline up to speed, we reference 4 disciplines and a sense model. When we get 6 disciplines fully resolved to an expert level we have 2 full sense models. The theory of the seventh discipline is that with the seventh there is a qualitative change in understanding. The seventh produces a new sense model making 3 models, and therefore very strong probabilities for universal patterns to be visible. The learning becomes much easier. Like an expert skier on a big mountain the slopes become fun. The new vision of nature becomes an inspiring source of energy. |