Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Jim Andrews re: Electronic Poetry

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@uiah.fi>]

> >  We are embodied and it is essential to our world view, to our joy, our pain,
> >  our vulnerability, our hopes, life, and death. If we lose 'touch' with our
> >  embodiment we lose touch with ourselves and with others and their pain and
> >  joys, and hopes and aspirations, our shared mortality. And thereby also our
>  > wisdom, empathy, self understanding, and breath.

this posting moved me to the following brief -- not directly on 
topic, but as it indirectly/directly applies to many posts in 
principle, here goes...

Embodiment -- seems still to be totally bound to a materialistic view 
of the world -- as are much of the commentary so far.  A much more 
accurate tool for mapping is to move beyond 
Newtonian/materialistic/mechanistic ways of modeling the noumenal 
would (including our selves) and apply some Quantum/Taoist & other 
models (for brevities sake, although this issue does take LONG 
dialogue to get to the principles of, more than can be allowed here, 
and is NOT bound to those particular modeling systems, just using 
them as possible starting points)...

If one takes a reduced interpretation of Quantum and looks at touch, 
for example, touch becomes the energized interaction between two 
states of a universal energy field.  the two 'objects' coming into 
(cartesian) contact merely expressions of that universal field in 
different energized conditions...

Much further along this line, an art 'object' is (nothing more than ) 
a difference in energy 'condition' (language is woefully short, as is 
contemporary mathematics to accurately model this energized 
universe).  From this point of view, taking my embodied energy state 
(I am a being of energy), I use energy to transform, change the 
states of regions around me (impossible to get away from Cartesian 
language!), and allow those changed regions re-radiate to the Other, 
to be received as 'inspiration' (or not).  The actual mediated 'form' 
(a now-defunct word in this system) is, literally, immaterial. 
Whether I use a painting or 20000 km of cable, mouse, screen, 
processor, and keyboard (AND electric energy).  The crux is how I 
gather my energy together, focus it in attentive and concentrated 
measure to leap the abyss from the Self to the Other with that 
energy.  NOT the materialist form, that is an obsolete way to model 
the exchange!

Okay, three paragraphs, not enough time to go into details.  I 
usually take a week in my workshops to get over Newtonian worldviews 
which have gotten us into the HUGE f*%#^king mess we are in these 
days, and move on to idiosyncratic and ultimately individual world 
views that validate each persons sensual experience in the world, and 
free people from the onerous burden of having to justify the 
uniqueness of their vision to a largely hostile socio-cultural 
matrix...

Strangely enough, from this 'energy' based worldview, language is 
placed squarely into a space of being just a socialized abstraction 
for trading models between self and other.  Language is not an actual 
carrier of the energy (as voice and expiration and vibrating vocal 
cords ARE, the actual language is NOT)...  Language has nothing to do 
with that which is described (the map is not the territory).  Or at 
least there is a final and complete gap between what any model system 
seeks to describe/circumscribe and the sensual, energized experience 
or presence itself...  we can dance around the Void with all our 
models, but it still comes down to the impossibility of re-creating 
or re-presenting lived presence and be-ing...

Have I dug a deep enough hole for meself?


JH
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
network artist & visiting lecturer
dept of fine arts
university of colorado - boulder
mobile: +1 303 859 0689 GMT-7
office: +1 303 492 6797
domain: http://neoscenes.net
email: <jhopkins@colorado.edu>