Re: [-empyre-] multi-perspectival / cultural hegemony of space

[John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>]

alan +,

possible certainly, and an interesting thing to do. i would love to see
if that could manifest as anything other that a mess of crunchy polygons
on the screen. but i have a hard time accepting what is on the screen,
"The Art," as merely a residue. the machine, if personified (in a sense
what i mean by domain knowledge) certainly will never perceive it as
residue, and is forced by its programming, to accept what ever it as the
primary "thing."

hyper-space (nD) is incredibly fascinating. however, i cant really "see"
the nth dimension, because i have nothing to use as a referent. on a 2d
screen (or in a painting) i can perceive 3d because i exist in 3d.
however if i had a 3d screen, i still won't perceive the 4th dimension
because i don't mentally exist in that 4th dimension. its the flatworld
problem. however, i certainly don't deny that nth dimensions exist, we
can conceptualize and even implement them mathematically, but as a
homo-sapien, it is only ever an inkling of that nth dimension. if i spin
a hypercube i get this "tingling sensation" but the nth-d never actually
resolves. this may be a limitation of my domain knowledge, my "cultural
programming." but i think it is rather the limitations of my human form.

in art, it all ultimately boils down to an individual viewer, existing
in a "this" world, coping with the thing in front of them. spatial
representation can be metaphoric, coded, symbolic, or scientific - we
are all always completely stuck with how the universe actually is.

j

Alan Sondheim wrote:
> 
> However, I wonder if it's possible to define or delineate these
> coordinates (polar etc.) through neural networks; in other words,
> place the coordinates themselves within a fluctuating system.
> I'm thinking among other things of the paintings of Kuo Hsi and
> other Chinese landscapists, where the perspective is complex and
> heterological, without any hegemonic positioning.
> 
> If a system is used, then the coordinates would be second-order,
> much as language is second-order in Eco's semiotics. While the
> mapping would still revert to the x/y of pixels-on-a-screen or
> some such, the mapping itself would be a residue. In 1973
> I worked with a program developed by Charles Straus, at Brown
> University then, that mapped 4-D onto 3-D which was then
> projected; obviously the 4-D coordinates had to be collapsed, but
> 3-D only projected a slice of objects.
> 
> The point I'm trying to make (badly) is that the paradigm need
> not be polar or cartesian - that these coordinates are only a
> mediative representation producing something in 'real' space for
> the viewer.
> 
> Alan
> 
> http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/
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