the random

I read the discussion of the random with interest.

I liked Plasma's comments on some of the uses and abuses of the random in
programming.

One thing that wasn't noted by anyone, that I read, was the sort of
perspective William S. Burroughs brought to the role of the random. His
novel Naked Lunch and, more radically, his trilogy (The Ticket that
Exploded, Soft Machine, and Nova Express) used the cut-up method in
literature. This is detailed well in his book The Job. As you probably know,
one of his themes was addiction and dependence. Not simply to drugs (he was
a heroin junky) but, say, to our habits of thought. Or our style. Or our
methods. He felt that we are usually deeply habitual enough, in most things,
that often it is necessary to introduce something out of our own control to
cut our own mental tape loops (he did interesting audio cut-up work as
well).

The random can be used in intelligent ways to help us toward insights that
we would not come up with on our own. Burroughs said "When you cut audio
tape, the future leaks out." And that quote has something of the feel of a
cut-up to it: unexpected, of a somewhat altered consciousness.

As Plasma notes, the random can also be used poorly as, for instance, a
substitute for making a decision that should have been made.

When I started in radio during the eighties, I was unfamiliar with Burroughs
and such methods and would have thought them inevitably productive merely of
nonsense. As I got into Burroughs and McLuhan and Gregory Whitehead's work
and writings on the cut, it started to dawn on me, though, that we are not
the sole creators of what even we ourselves produce in media and that,
instead, the media/um is/are influential in several ways in shaping what we
say/create. This can be an unacknowledged influence, ie, we can be
unconscious of the media's own rhetoric and its influence on us, or we can
explore it in various ways, including cutting it and using it as a material
in ways that we would not normally do were our notion of 'the material'
confined, say, to the typical writerly notion of 'the material' as subject
matter. The material is also media matter. There are both 'material' and
'immaterial' aspects to the 'material' we deal with, and that is true even
of media matter. That was an exciting time for me, coming to some sort of
awareness of media and art.

Use of the random needn't, of course, simply represent a failure to take
responsibility for decisions that would have better been made by us.
Instead, it can help us explore the decisions we do make, why we make those
decisions, and can *occassionally* offer us alternatives that are
preferable.

ja
http://vispo.com

Comments

, mez breeze

Quoting Jim Andrews <[email protected]>:

> The random can be used in intelligent ways to help us toward insights that
> we would not come up with on our own. Burroughs said "When you cut audio
> tape, the future leaks out." And that quote has something of the feel of a
> cut-up to it: unexpected, of a somewhat altered consciousness.


\_Web Statistics Poem Generator\_
November 21st, 2005 by Jeremy Douglass
in Search Engine Art, Code Art, e-Poetry, Generators, Digital Character Art

While reading the blog of the code-artist mez (Mary-anne Breeze, a.k.a.
net\_wurker), I encountered her Web Statistics Poem Generator v.1, a blog entry
which specifies a process resulting in a poem.

\_Input:\_ 3/9/05 key word entries

1 + 3 + 5 + 7
4 + 8 + 10

11 + 13 + 15
16 + 17 + 20
21 + 22 + 23

\_Output:\_

the Syntax of Inertia
a technique feeder

its emotional body style
depends upon
Aldous energy + machine, mez

Tags: generators, poetry, search

While the title calls it a

, Plasma Studii

interesting thing about Burroughs cut up experiments.
there's a book of essays by him and he describes this in more detail.

for a while he taught. one of his assignments was to walk around
the block, taking pictures with a poloroid (pre-digital camera days)
of whatever grabs your interest. then, once home, spread em all out
and look at em. you have to try it.

you'll see the pictures seem to have almost a message. he says of
course they do, it's YOUR environment. whether or not we create our
environment, we create out perception of it. our environment is
always speaking to us , because we are always speaking to ourselves.
(in fact, that may be why we have an environment at all, it's like an
internal monologue) the pictures merely document what is happening
continually. and, like our dreams. we impossibly encrypt them
ourselves.



On Jan 14, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Jim Andrews wrote:

> I read the discussion of the random with interest.
>
> I liked Plasma's comments on some of the uses and abuses of the
> random in
> programming.
>
> One thing that wasn't noted by anyone, that I read, was the sort of
> perspective William S. Burroughs brought to the role of the random.
> His
> novel Naked Lunch and, more radically, his trilogy (The Ticket that
> Exploded, Soft Machine, and Nova Express) used the cut-up method in
> literature. This is detailed well in his book The Job. As you
> probably know,
> one of his themes was addiction and dependence. Not simply to drugs
> (he was
> a heroin junky) but, say, to our habits of thought. Or our style.
> Or our
> methods. He felt that we are usually deeply habitual enough, in
> most things,
> that often it is necessary to introduce something out of our own
> control to
> cut our own mental tape loops (he did interesting audio cut-up work as
> well).
>
> The random can be used in intelligent ways to help us toward
> insights that
> we would not come up with on our own. Burroughs said "When you cut
> audio
> tape, the future leaks out." And that quote has something of the
> feel of a
> cut-up to it: unexpected, of a somewhat altered consciousness.
>
> As Plasma notes, the random can also be used poorly as, for
> instance, a
> substitute for making a decision that should have been made.
>
> When I started in radio during the eighties, I was unfamiliar with
> Burroughs
> and such methods and would have thought them inevitably productive
> merely of
> nonsense. As I got into Burroughs and McLuhan and Gregory
> Whitehead's work
> and writings on the cut, it started to dawn on me, though, that we
> are not
> the sole creators of what even we ourselves produce in media and that,
> instead, the media/um is/are influential in several ways in shaping
> what we
> say/create. This can be an unacknowledged influence, ie, we can be
> unconscious of the media's own rhetoric and its influence on us, or
> we can
> explore it in various ways, including cutting it and using it as a
> material
> in ways that we would not normally do were our notion of 'the
> material'
> confined, say, to the typical writerly notion of 'the material' as
> subject
> matter. The material is also media matter. There are both
> 'material' and
> 'immaterial' aspects to the 'material' we deal with, and that is
> true even
> of media matter. That was an exciting time for me, coming to some
> sort of
> awareness of media and art.
>
> Use of the random needn't, of course, simply represent a failure to
> take
> responsibility for decisions that would have better been made by us.
> Instead, it can help us explore the decisions we do make, why we
> make those
> decisions, and can *occassionally* offer us alternatives that are
> preferable.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/
> subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/
> 29.php
>

, Dirk Vekemans

>
> Use of the random needn't, of course, simply represent a
> failure to take responsibility for decisions that would have
> better been made by us.
> Instead, it can help us explore the decisions we do make, why
> we make those decisions, and can *occassionally* offer us
> alternatives that are preferable.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>


Well, that's exactly how i use random elements: to see what's in the soup.
If it looks promising, keep on cooking.

Sure one can't object to using randomness as a creative method, i never
meant to suggest anything like that. I do however perceive a tendency to
abandon the artistic quest (prematurely?) at that stage, not out of lack of
responsibility or lazyness or artistic vision (whatever that may be and,
well, let's be generous), but simply for not seeing the point to continue,
and not feeling the need to do so. (anyone seriously doubting whether
anything is possible after this stage might have a look at mez's
contribution to the discussion submitted while i was making this up, my
thumbs stuck deep in muddy water)

No need because
a) the result is fascinating/spectacular/beautiful/meaningful/(fill in your
blank) enough as it is or
b) going further would only ruin things by superimposing structures on the
work that can only be ascribed to the identity of the author. Putting your
personal grid over things just ruins the sight of the big picture.

Now this frame of mind is totally alien for me. I know it's there, i
understand it and i don't feel inclined to criticize it (the idea strikes me
as rather prepostorous), but i don't feel it, i don't live it. Far from
being prescriptive in any way, i can only try to analyse it. So, looking
back, at first i simply didn't grasp what i thought was a very curious
paragraph in Zev's last mail:

"I've also had repeated experiences with works of art over the years, mainly
paintings that I go back to look at, but also music, literature, films. Each
time my perception of them is different, so in that sense there is no
repetition."

Repetition? Starting from a paragraph of 'sunt quibus…' indicating the
camp of collaborating artists, it dumps those poor sods who keep mingling
their juices till something capable of quenching a dying thirst of some
senile individuals, in the doomed factory of endless repetition. An
extremely rare candour, a statement of some importance on contemporary art,
i presume. But no, not the pre of interpretation, because i'm not absolutely
certain that i do know now, either. I merely assume it means that in view
of previous artistic production anything the artist does now on his own will
only result in repetition, a highly suspect building on a tradition that is
per se incapable of producing anything new.

Who ever mentioned novelty, btw? Soit. En disant: assumptions are wicked,
you can't discuss things based on assumptions. Any point of view is
meaningless. In the end.

So enter the liberating use of randomness allowing the artist to let the
conceptual artpiece speak for itself, uncorrupted by the equally suspect ego
that would only blind the audience by its mischeavous personal ambitions,
its blabla_sex_blabla_frustration_Lacanian drab and all that mess standing
in the way of the pure, preferably collaborative artistic vision. You see:
even as i write this, the horrible beast of my ego comes out, doing exactly
the opposite of what i promised myself and you reading it.

But that is exactly the point: what's with this seemingly global
condemnation of the personal approach that i merely describe from my little
backward provincial pony stable? Why does a little, rather random sigh from
my pseudo-French cuisine draw out these grave rhetorics? What's wrong with
me minding my own business? What's so terrible about using your private and
destined-to-be-humble configuration to produce a little sieve and amuse
yourself in a pond you call your own?

Everything of course. Manovich will have it declared illegal by the end of
the year. April will supposedly be the cruellest month.

Jim's little historic expose expertly shows the 'mediatic' use of random,
that can ofcourse only be advantageous in the working process. Going over to
music one could add a spiritual dimension to that, referring to Cage's
approach that explicitly favours the stochastic element over the forced
authoring/ordering in order to generate a playfullness, a Zenlike
affirmation of life. Pierre Boulez invented the term aleatory music to
post-modernistically differenciate his habit of giving his performers the
liberty to partake in the composing process from what seemed highly suspect
at that time, a positive impulse towards the spiritual. Talking of
repetition, you might say we're in a new Cage age, but considering the
fashionable commercially automated zennification of Zen, it's more likely
anything spiritual is being caged and the age with it. For the sole and pure
purpose of movement. Does IT move? Sell.

I shouldn't bother. I must not move. I should sit still, have my pond frozen
over, seek comfort in boozing with the others of the undead, like a decent
de-generation-ed artist is supposed to. Father Google will come with an
abundance of Xmas candy, i can hear his sledge hammer in the distance
already. Mother Amazon's gone manic, sniffing blood in dead matter,
collecting on thrash gone random wherever she can.

dv @ Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee

, Nad

Dirk wrote:
>
> Who ever mentioned novelty, btw? Soit. En disant: assumptions are
> wicked,
> you can't discuss things based on assumptions.

answer:
of course you can. and actually usually the contrary is
rather true - if you discuss things you have to
specify your assumptions. almost all of math (hmm)
is based on axioms…which are more or less
assumptions you do not want to discuss further.
—> see e.g. axiomatic set theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_set_theory

and by the way every physical theory is just an ASSUMPTION about how
the world is, no physicist claims that the world IS like
that, she just ASSUMES that the world is like that.

Dirk wrote:

>Any point of view is
> meaningless. In the end.
>

depends on the meaning of meaning i would say….:-)

> Everything of course. Manovich will have it declared illegal by the
> end of
> the year. April will supposedly be the cruellest month.
>

is April assumed to be the new end of year?

> Jim's little historic expos� expertly shows the 'mediatic' use of
> random,
> that can ofcourse only be advantageous in the working process. Going
> over to
> music one could add a spiritual dimension to that, referring to Cage's
> approach that explicitly favours the stochastic element over the
> forced
> authoring/ordering in order to generate a playfullness, a Zenlike
> affirmation of life. Pierre Boulez invented the term aleatory music to
> post-modernistically differenciate his habit of giving his performers
> the
> liberty to partake in the composing process from what seemed highly
> suspect
> at that time, a positive impulse towards the spiritual.
>

i had already some weeks ago a little discussion with jim on this
forum about aleatoric music….may be i am wrong but
to my knowledge it was not
pierre boulez who introduced the term "aleatoric music" but
werner mayer eppler. apparently he used this term e.g. in his paper:
Werner Meyer-Eppler, Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme, in: die reihe 1: elektronische Musik. Informationen uber serielle Musik. Wien 1955, p. 22. see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music
and apparently he took the term from the book:
Theorie des fonctions aleatoires von Andre Blanc-Lapierre und Robert Fortet….which is i think a math book…..

nad

, Dirk Vekemans

> Dirk wrote:
> >
> > Who ever mentioned novelty, btw? Soit. En disant: assumptions are
> > wicked, you can't discuss things based on assumptions.
>
> answer:
> of course you can. and actually usually the contrary is
> rather true - if you discuss things you have to specify your
> assumptions. almost all of math (hmm) is based on
> axioms…which are more or less assumptions you do not want
> to discuss further.
> —> see e.g. axiomatic set theory:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_set_theory
>
> and by the way every physical theory is just an ASSUMPTION
> about how the world is, no physicist claims that the world IS
> like that, she just ASSUMES that the world is like that.

I was being ironic here. Intending to refer to sth similar as you bring up
here. These late night ramblings of mine are dark and full of
exagerration,not to mention the obvious mistakes. It's just the mood they're
written in. i know, sorry, but i sometimes feel the urge to let off steam
like that.


> Dirk wrote:
>
> >Any point of view is
> > meaningless. In the end.
> >
>
> depends on the meaning of meaning i would say….:-)
>
> > Everything of course. Manovich will have it declared illegal by the
> > end of the year. April will supposedly be the cruellest month.
> >
>
> is April assumed to be the new end of year?

Just a pun on T.S. Eliot's Waste Land. Springtime being cruel because it
stirs dull roots in an infertile land.
>
> > Jim's little historic expos? expertly shows the 'mediatic' use of
> > random,
> > that can ofcourse only be advantageous in the working process. Going
> > over to
> > music one could add a spiritual dimension to that,
> referring to Cage's
> > approach that explicitly favours the stochastic element over the
> > forced
> > authoring/ordering in order to generate a playfullness, a Zenlike
> > affirmation of life. Pierre Boulez invented the term
> aleatory music to
> > post-modernistically differenciate his habit of giving his
> performers
> > the
> > liberty to partake in the composing process from what seemed highly
> > suspect
> > at that time, a positive impulse towards the spiritual.
> >
>
> i had already some weeks ago a little discussion with jim on this
> forum about aleatoric music….may be i am wrong but
> to my knowledge it was not
> pierre boulez who introduced the term "aleatoric music" but
> werner mayer eppler. apparently he used this term e.g. in his paper:
> Werner Meyer-Eppler, Statistische und psychologische
> Klangprobleme, in: die reihe 1: elektronische Musik.
> Informationen uber serielle Musik. Wien 1955, p. 22. see also:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music
> and apparently he took the term from the book:
> Theorie des fonctions aleatoires von Andre Blanc-Lapierre und
> Robert Fortet….which is i think a math book…..

I don't know for sure either, but i think Boulez used the term himself,
approved of it himself. That's what seemed important to me, independent of
who actually introduced it. But there's a more serious mistake, lancune:
probably Boulez used (uses) the term primarily to distanciate himself from
the likes of Giacinto Scelsi rather than from Cage. Scelsi went much further
in driving the use of zen-random-spiritual to a kind of hermetic cult. All
three of them have produced some exquisite music, Boulez still being 'in the
running' and quite an institution on his own. Scelsi deserves better, i
think.

My own collection of math books is growing, btw. Someone ought to write a
math-for-artists thing sometime, wouldn't mind if it were linear or bad web
or anything. As long as it's useful…
dv
>
> nad
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
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> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Nad

Dirk Vekemans wrote:


> My own collection of math books is growing, btw.



reminds me of leonardo da vinci who apparently at one point
in his thirties started collecting books….
however most of it was in latin…(and leonardos
latin was not so good..)

..just joking…

interestingly among the few books leonardo probably actually read was euklids geometry book (it is most probably that he read it together with a mathematician friend called luca pacioli)

, Dirk Vekemans

Magna res est vocis silentii tempora nosse
dv

> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: maandag 16 januari 2006 19:50
> Aan: [email protected]
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > My own collection of math books is growing, btw.
>
>
>
> reminds me of leonardo da vinci who apparently at one point
> in his thirties started collecting books….
> however most of it was in latin…(and leonardos latin was
> not so good..)
>
> ..just joking…
>
> interestingly among the few books leonardo probably actually
> read was euklids geometry book (it is most probably that he
> read it together with a mathematician friend called luca pacioli)
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Dirk Vekemans

that was Seneca, an inconceivable bore, so darn the silence

…couldn't resist to follow up on Pacioli, started browsing
http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ which is pretty solid. When i got
to Leibniz and the brachistochrone problem (hey Dan Brown, here's another
book title:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Brachistochrone.html)
i wondered whether you math folks still hold this kind of competitions.
Apparantly they worked wonders at the time, although most of them were
written out by mathematicians who had solved the problem themselves first,
so they'd shine among their colleagues.

This MacTutor 's great although i think it's rather funny some British still
seem to have a hard time admitting Leibniz and Newton discovered
differential calculus simultaneously and independently. The page on Leibniz
is rather downplaying the man, and the account of the big Newton-Leibniz row
over who was first is told very differently from what i read in books.

Another thing that has always intruiged me is that Christian Huygens, the
Dutchman, was such a brilliant scientist and his brother Constantyn is, for
me at least, the best Dutch poet ever. It seems the great divide is not a
thing of the mind but of cultural and educational conditioning. Ofcourse
there's not much 'romance'in Huygens' poetry, so you need to strip all that
sentimental bs from what poetry is, before you can actually begin to wonder.
Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly different
matter than what we think of based on school experience, as you have
previously attested to…

dv

> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: maandag 16 januari 2006 19:50
> Aan: [email protected]
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > My own collection of math books is growing, btw.
>
>
>
> reminds me of leonardo da vinci who apparently at one point
> in his thirties started collecting books….
> however most of it was in latin…(and leonardos latin was
> not so good..)
>
> ..just joking…
>
> interestingly among the few books leonardo probably actually
> read was euklids geometry book (it is most probably that he
> read it together with a mathematician friend called luca pacioli)
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Nad

Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>Magna res est vocis silentii tempora nosse
woooo.
big thing? is voice silent time our?
a silent voice is a big thing in our times?

???????
i was choosing french in school instead
of latin…and somehow i had in my mind that this would
be more useful for e.g. communicating with some belgians!
apparently i was wrong…



> …couldn't resist to follow up on Pacioli, started browsing
> http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ which is pretty solid. When
> i got
> to Leibniz and the brachistochrone problem (hey Dan Brown, here's
> another
> book title:
> http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Brachistochrone.html)

do you know that you also get a cycloid if you
look at a bicycle reflector attached to the wheel
in the night ?(it has to be close to the wheel rim)
here you see a flintstone version of this
(tim - the other part of the daytar group did it for his
students):
http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~hoffmann/interactive/cycloid.shtml

> i wondered whether you math folks still hold this kind of
> competitions.

of course…win 7 million dollars…you only have to solve
some math puzzles….:
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

..for this money you could buy 700 holography displays!! (:-))

> Apparantly they worked wonders at the time, although most of them were
> written out by mathematicians who had solved the problem themselves
> first,
> so they'd shine among their colleagues.
>
actually usually they are not pre-solved. and the above are also not
of this type….just to warn you :-)

> This MacTutor 's great although i think it's rather funny some British
> still
> seem to have a hard time admitting Leibniz and Newton discovered
> differential calculus simultaneously and independently. The page on
> Leibniz
> is rather downplaying the man, and the account of the big
> Newton-Leibniz row
> over who was first is told very differently from what i read in books.
>

yep nationalism is a bad thing….

> Another thing that has always intruiged me is that Christian Huygens,
> the
> Dutchman, was such a brilliant scientist and his brother Constantyn
> is, for
> me at least, the best Dutch poet ever. It seems the great divide is
> not a
> thing of the mind but of cultural and educational conditioning.

there is no great divide. there is even sometimes an overlap.
like look at generative arts: its pure math
in the hand of an math-untrained artist who combines it
with aesthetic/whatever considerations.
the goal is to get nice/conceptionally important/beautyful/whatever output.
mathematical visualization is the same: its pure math
and this time the aesthetic/whatever considerations are in the
hand of an art-untrained mathematician.
the goal is (usually) to get important mathematical outcome
(which is "conceptionally important" to mathematicians). I know a lot of
mathematicians who spend much more time
in choosing the colors for their math viz piece than they should…
…and there are a lot of generative artists around who
love to dig out weird math….
the important thing is to keep mutual respect for the
different disciplines. get me right-its good to ask and to
think and use things, also if you are not an expert.
so with being respectful i mean: you have to be really
willing to learn….and you may be erranous.

> Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly
> different
> matter than what we think of based on school experience, as you have
> previously attested to…
>

yep-. and thats not only the mathematicians fault. I remember
when my sister (she is two years younger than me) suddenly
had some basic set theory in school. i was envying her for
haveing such a nice math stuff on the plate. but the kids
parents and some politicians (that was in bavaria, munich, seventies, franz-josef-strauss….)
where completely against it…so they abolished it again.
how stupid.

..and i remember my calculus students (umass, amherst usa)
who demanded to get "recipes" for solving some standard problems in order to get through their exams….this is not mathematical
thinking…this is even not engineering, but a lot of calculus
textbooks are built like this.

to be more precise lets say: the try and error method
(try a recipe and see wether it works) works well
for a lot of standard things, but well yes —it works
usually for the STANDARD things.

nad

, Dirk Vekemans

It's a great thing (Magna res) to know (nosse) when to speak (est vocis
[tempora]) and when to be silent (est silentii tempora). Any text is code
and vica versa.

But you, dear Nad, have spoken well and timely.

(Darn it's that late again)
dv

> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: dinsdag 17 januari 2006 22:08
> Aan: [email protected]
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
> >Magna res est vocis silentii tempora nosse
> woooo.
> big thing? is voice silent time our?
> a silent voice is a big thing in our times?
>
> ???????
> i was choosing french in school instead
> of latin…and somehow i had in my mind that this would be
> more useful for e.g. communicating with some belgians!
> apparently i was wrong…
>
>
>
> > …couldn't resist to follow up on Pacioli, started browsing
> > http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ which is pretty
> solid. When
> > i got to Leibniz and the brachistochrone problem (hey Dan Brown,
> > here's another book title:
> >
> http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Brachistochrone
> > .html)
>
> do you know that you also get a cycloid if you look at a
> bicycle reflector attached to the wheel in the night ?(it has
> to be close to the wheel rim) here you see a flintstone
> version of this (tim - the other part of the daytar group did
> it for his
> students):
> http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~hoffmann/interactive/cycloid.shtml
>
> > i wondered whether you math folks still hold this kind of
> > competitions.
>
> of course…win 7 million dollars…you only have to solve
> some math puzzles….:
> http://www.claymath.org/millennium/
>
> ..for this money you could buy 700 holography displays!! (:-))
>
> > Apparantly they worked wonders at the time, although most
> of them were
> > written out by mathematicians who had solved the problem themselves
> > first, so they'd shine among their colleagues.
> >
> actually usually they are not pre-solved. and the above are
> also not of this type….just to warn you :-)
>
> > This MacTutor 's great although i think it's rather funny
> some British
> > still seem to have a hard time admitting Leibniz and Newton
> discovered
> > differential calculus simultaneously and independently. The page on
> > Leibniz is rather downplaying the man, and the account of the big
> > Newton-Leibniz row over who was first is told very differently from
> > what i read in books.
> >
>
> yep nationalism is a bad thing….
>
> > Another thing that has always intruiged me is that
> Christian Huygens,
> > the Dutchman, was such a brilliant scientist and his brother
> > Constantyn is, for me at least, the best Dutch poet ever.
> It seems the
> > great divide is not a thing of the mind but of cultural and
> > educational conditioning.
>
> there is no great divide. there is even sometimes an overlap.
> like look at generative arts: its pure math in the hand of an
> math-untrained artist who combines it with aesthetic/whatever
> considerations.
> the goal is to get nice/conceptionally
> important/beautyful/whatever output.
> mathematical visualization is the same: its pure math and
> this time the aesthetic/whatever considerations are in the
> hand of an art-untrained mathematician.
> the goal is (usually) to get important mathematical outcome
> (which is "conceptionally important" to mathematicians). I
> know a lot of mathematicians who spend much more time in
> choosing the colors for their math viz piece than they should…
> …and there are a lot of generative artists around who love
> to dig out weird math….
> the important thing is to keep mutual respect for the
> different disciplines. get me right-its good to ask and to
> think and use things, also if you are not an expert.
> so with being respectful i mean: you have to be really
> willing to learn….and you may be erranous.
>
> > Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly
> > different matter than what we think of based on school
> experience, as
> > you have previously attested to…
> >
>
> yep-. and thats not only the mathematicians fault. I remember
> when my sister (she is two years younger than me) suddenly
> had some basic set theory in school. i was envying her for
> haveing such a nice math stuff on the plate. but the kids
> parents and some politicians (that was in bavaria, munich,
> seventies, franz-josef-strauss….) where completely against
> it…so they abolished it again.
> how stupid.
>
> ..and i remember my calculus students (umass, amherst usa)
> who demanded to get "recipes" for solving some standard
> problems in order to get through their exams….this is not
> mathematical thinking…this is even not engineering, but a
> lot of calculus textbooks are built like this.
>
> to be more precise lets say: the try and error method (try a
> recipe and see wether it works) works well for a lot of
> standard things, but well yes —it works usually for the
> STANDARD things.
>
> nad
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Dirk Vekemans

> there is no great divide. there is even sometimes an overlap.
> like look at generative arts: its pure math in the hand of an
> math-untrained artist who combines it with aesthetic/whatever
> considerations.
> the goal is to get nice/conceptionally
> important/beautyful/whatever output.
> mathematical visualization is the same: its pure math and
> this time the aesthetic/whatever considerations are in the
> hand of an art-untrained mathematician.
> the goal is (usually) to get important mathematical outcome
> (which is "conceptionally important" to mathematicians). I
> know a lot of mathematicians who spend much more time in
> choosing the colors for their math viz piece than they should…
> …and there are a lot of generative artists around who love
> to dig out weird math….

Yes, we can't keep our hands off anything. Like the Java Tools for
Experimental
Mathematics i found through one of your links at http://www.jtem.de/ .
Njamies.

> the important thing is to keep mutual respect for the
> different disciplines. get me right-its good to ask and to
> think and use things, also if you are not an expert.
> so with being respectful i mean: you have to be really
> willing to learn….and you may be erranous.

Being wrong is excellent, it means you can learn, improve, expand,
communicate.
Mostly, artistically, when you're right (feel you're right) it means you're
in a dead end somewhere.
You need to _want_ to be right all the time, though and not have the
prospect of you looking ridiculous
hold you back. Art is meant to be aggressive in that way.
Besides, we shouldn't be afraid of making stupid mistakes.
Most of the time in programming is spent on making stupid mistakes,
debugging your foolishness.
Learning to live with that is the first thing you need to do.
And sure, anything you do is bound to look completely ridiculous from some
'expert'
point of view. That just means you can expand your concepts some more, that
there's more field to cover, more debugging to do…

Of course you need to resist the temptation of mapping anything you dream of
to some superficial impressions you get from a field of knowledge by
skipping through a few web pages. You don't need to do much, but do it
thoroughly. Deleuze, the philosopher, has been known to make some serious
mistakes when venturing outside his own field of clarity, into the realm of
hard-boiled science. Mistakes like that are inavoidable. But his willingness
to go there, and be serious about it, has been enormously rewarding for
everyone.

One of the things scientist need to realise, perhaps, is that their
wordings, the mental states underlying their hard work are equally tainted
with fiction, human oddities and the restraints of the one tool we share:
our brain. When you start using visualisation as a scientific method for
instance, picking the colours can become a matter of bending the virtual
reality your way. Its a matter of second level recursive processing: you're
using code to construct models to visualise models of constructs of code in
order to enhance your coding capabilities. In nature, when such processes
are active, a tree can only become a tree, a desert is bound to look like a
desert. But surely, a tree is not a tree : it cannot be reduced (by what
Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) to the object tree,
or for that matter, the word tree. That would be arresting the recursive
process in favour of manageability in another process, reducing the external
determination of the process to random inputs. That's fine for modelling
purposes, but when you're modelling you are partaking in a similar process
of recursiveness. As much as we'd like to sometimes, we cannot eliminate
time from our thinking itself.

One can, however, engineer interruptions into these second level recursive
behaviours. Interruptions are, in my Derridian-Heraclitian-Leibnizian
textbook, incidents of absence mainly responsible for the creation of
meaning. Interruptions are at the heart of poetic processes, they consume
time instead of being consumed through it, they are the result of the
fertile but equally aggressive acts of propagation of meaning. The word,
each word, as a big bang. That btw, is also why our misery will always be
one of an erotic nature. We'll always be running into things we make
ourselves:


GROSSE GLUHENDE WOLBUNG
Mit dem sich
Hinaus- und hinweg-
Wuhlenden Scharzgestirn- Schwarm:

DER VERKIESELTEN Stirn eines Widders
Brenn ich dies Bild ein, zwischen
Die Horner, darin

In Gesang der Windungen, das
Mark der geronnenen
Herzmeere schwillt.

Wo-
Gegen
Rennt er nicht an?

Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen.

(Paul Celan, Atemwende, 1967)

dv

> > Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly
> > different matter than what we think of based on school
> experience, as
> > you have previously attested to…
> >
>
> yep-. and thats not only the mathematicians fault. I remember
> when my sister (she is two years younger than me) suddenly
> had some basic set theory in school. i was envying her for
> haveing such a nice math stuff on the plate. but the kids
> parents and some politicians (that was in bavaria, munich,
> seventies, franz-josef-strauss….) where completely against
> it…so they abolished it again.
> how stupid.
>
> ..and i remember my calculus students (umass, amherst usa)
> who demanded to get "recipes" for solving some standard
> problems in order to get through their exams….this is not
> mathematical thinking…this is even not engineering, but a
> lot of calculus textbooks are built like this.
>
> to be more precise lets say: the try and error method (try a
> recipe and see wether it works) works well for a lot of
> standard things, but well yes —it works usually for the
> STANDARD things.
>
> nad
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Nad

Dirk Vekemans wrote:


> Being wrong is excellent, it means you can learn, improve, expand,
> communicate.

yes indeed.

> You need to _want_ to be right all the time, though and not have the
> prospect of you looking ridiculous
> hold you back. Art is meant to be aggressive in that way.
> Besides, we shouldn't be afraid of making stupid mistakes.
> Most of the time in programming is spent on making stupid mistakes,
> debugging your foolishness.
> Learning to live with that is the first thing you need to do.
> And sure, anything you do is bound to look completely ridiculous from
> some
> 'expert'
> point of view. That just means you can expand your concepts some more,
> that
> there's more field to cover, more debugging to do…
>

the context is also important: usually nobody would
think that a beginner who is doing funny things
is ridiculous (well…depends a little bit on what
he does..:-))…if you call yourself an expert and
would do the same as the beginner then that may look differently….
this being ridiculous thing is good and bad—
on one hand it makes people be more serious and careful on what they do
on the other hand it may block them.
the setting plays also a role.

> Deleuze, the philosopher, has been known to make some
> serious
> mistakes when venturing outside his own field of clarity, into the
> realm of
> hard-boiled science. Mistakes like that are inavoidable. But his
> willingness
> to go there, and be serious about it, has been enormously rewarding
> for
> everyone.
>
what mistakes did he make?


> One of the things scientist need to realise, perhaps, is that their
> wordings, the mental states underlying their hard work are equally
> tainted
> with fiction, human oddities and the restraints of the one tool we
> share:
> our brain. When you start using visualisation as a scientific method
> for
> instance, picking the colours can become a matter of bending the
> virtual
> reality your way.

i wouldnt say bend, but yes the perception is different.

>Its a matter of second level recursive processing:
> you're
> using code to construct models to visualise models of constructs of
> code in
> order to enhance your coding capabilities. In nature, when such
> processes
> are active, a tree can only become a tree, a desert is bound to look
> like a
> desert.

may be i understand what you want to say, but math is different
from the other sciences. simplistically -math IS the code, you do
not construct MODELS. probably you meant mathematical
code may be used to model something real, like in physics?.
thats another thing.

in math a circle IS a circle, its not a MODEL for something
unearthly pure and unreal as a circle….

mathematical code comes out of itself. i like more
the thought that humans just
find the code (may be in their brains..) and try to write
it down and find more with it. you may
ask wether they are capable of finding the right things,
but thats another question.
math visualization is actually not very important for math.
its used only in a few areas and even there
its mostly used for plausibility arguments or didactics.
computer algebra programs are a little different and there
is quite some discussion about their use in the math community.


> But surely, a tree is not a tree : it cannot be reduced (by
> what
> Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) to the object
> tree,
> or for that matter, the word tree. That would be arresting the
> recursive
> process in favour of manageability in another process, reducing the
> external
> determination of the process to random inputs. That's fine for
> modelling
> purposes, but when you're modelling you are partaking in a similar
> process
> of recursiveness.

this i didnt get. ?

As much as we'd like to sometimes, we cannot
> eliminate
> time from our thinking itself.
>
> One can, however, engineer interruptions into these second level
> recursive
> behaviours. Interruptions are, in my Derridian-Heraclitian-Leibnizian
> textbook, incidents of absence mainly responsible for the creation of
> meaning. Interruptions are at the heart of poetic processes, they
> consume
> time instead of being consumed through it, they are the result of the
> fertile but equally aggressive acts of propagation of meaning. The
> word,
> each word, as a big bang. That btw, is also why our misery will always
> be
> one of an erotic nature. We'll always be running into things we make
> ourselves:
>
this i also didnt get may be i am too tired–

>
> GROSSE GL�HENDE W�LBUNG
> Mit dem sich
> Hinaus- und hinweg-
> W�hlenden Scharzgestirn- Schwarm:
>
> DER VERKIESELTEN Stirn eines Widders
> Brenn ich dies Bild ein, zwischen
> Die H�rner, darin
>
> In Gesang der Windungen, das

IM Gesang ?

> Mark der geronnenen
> Herzmeere schwillt.
>
> Wo-
> Gegen
> Rennt er nicht an?
>
> Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen.
>
> (Paul Celan, Atemwende, 1967)
>
>
>

..

, Dirk Vekemans

Nad,
i'll come back on this model-math-my confusing recursion stuff within a
reasonable amount of time.Seems i did make some formulation mistakes.
Although. But. Need to get some work out and do a bit of art on the side
for a sec. Im Gesang. i'm done with quoting German, im. Your u don't come
thru anyway, at least not on the rss feed. Hey people in the feed-industry,
ever heard of unicode? Of course it's not an English priority, is it? Never
mind.
dv



> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: woensdag 18 januari 2006 21:43
> Aan: [email protected]
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > Being wrong is excellent, it means you can learn, improve, expand,
> > communicate.
>
> yes indeed.
>
> > You need to _want_ to be right all the time, though and not
> have the
> > prospect of you looking ridiculous hold you back. Art is
> meant to be
> > aggressive in that way.
> > Besides, we shouldn't be afraid of making stupid mistakes.
> > Most of the time in programming is spent on making stupid mistakes,
> > debugging your foolishness.
> > Learning to live with that is the first thing you need to do.
> > And sure, anything you do is bound to look completely
> ridiculous from
> > some 'expert'
> > point of view. That just means you can expand your concepts
> some more,
> > that there's more field to cover, more debugging to do…
> >
>
> the context is also important: usually nobody would
> think that a beginner who is doing funny things
> is ridiculous (well…depends a little bit on what
> he does..:-))…if you call yourself an expert and
> would do the same as the beginner then that may look differently….
> this being ridiculous thing is good and bad—
> on one hand it makes people be more serious and careful on
> what they do
> on the other hand it may block them.
> the setting plays also a role.
>
> > Deleuze, the philosopher, has been known to make some
> > serious
> > mistakes when venturing outside his own field of clarity, into the
> > realm of
> > hard-boiled science. Mistakes like that are inavoidable. But his
> > willingness
> > to go there, and be serious about it, has been enormously rewarding
> > for
> > everyone.
> >
> what mistakes did he make?
>
>
> > One of the things scientist need to realise, perhaps, is that their
> > wordings, the mental states underlying their hard work are equally
> > tainted
> > with fiction, human oddities and the restraints of the one tool we
> > share:
> > our brain. When you start using visualisation as a scientific method
> > for
> > instance, picking the colours can become a matter of bending the
> > virtual
> > reality your way.
>
> i wouldnt say bend, but yes the perception is different.
>
> >Its a matter of second level recursive processing:
> > you're
> > using code to construct models to visualise models of constructs of
> > code in
> > order to enhance your coding capabilities. In nature, when such
> > processes
> > are active, a tree can only become a tree, a desert is bound to look
> > like a
> > desert.
>
> may be i understand what you want to say, but math is different
> from the other sciences. simplistically -math IS the code, you do
> not construct MODELS. probably you meant mathematical
> code may be used to model something real, like in physics?.
> thats another thing.
>
> in math a circle IS a circle, its not a MODEL for something
> unearthly pure and unreal as a circle….
>
> mathematical code comes out of itself. i like more
> the thought that humans just
> find the code (may be in their brains..) and try to write
> it down and find more with it. you may
> ask wether they are capable of finding the right things,
> but thats another question.
> math visualization is actually not very important for math.
> its used only in a few areas and even there
> its mostly used for plausibility arguments or didactics.
> computer algebra programs are a little different and there
> is quite some discussion about their use in the math community.
>
>
> > But surely, a tree is not a tree : it cannot be reduced (by
> > what
> > Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) to the object
> > tree,
> > or for that matter, the word tree. That would be arresting the
> > recursive
> > process in favour of manageability in another process, reducing the
> > external
> > determination of the process to random inputs. That's fine for
> > modelling
> > purposes, but when you're modelling you are partaking in a similar
> > process
> > of recursiveness.
>
> this i didnt get. ?
>
> As much as we'd like to sometimes, we cannot
> > eliminate
> > time from our thinking itself.
> >
> > One can, however, engineer interruptions into these second level
> > recursive
> > behaviours. Interruptions are, in my
> Derridian-Heraclitian-Leibnizian
> > textbook, incidents of absence mainly responsible for the
> creation of
> > meaning. Interruptions are at the heart of poetic processes, they
> > consume
> > time instead of being consumed through it, they are the
> result of the
> > fertile but equally aggressive acts of propagation of meaning. The
> > word,
> > each word, as a big bang. That btw, is also why our misery
> will always
> > be
> > one of an erotic nature. We'll always be running into things we make
> > ourselves:
> >
> this i also didnt get may be i am too tired–
>
> >
> > GROSSE GL?HENDE W?LBUNG
> > Mit dem sich
> > Hinaus- und hinweg-
> > W?hlenden Scharzgestirn- Schwarm:
> >
> > DER VERKIESELTEN Stirn eines Widders
> > Brenn ich dies Bild ein, zwischen
> > Die H?rner, darin
> >
> > In Gesang der Windungen, das
>
> IM Gesang ?
>
> > Mark der geronnenen
> > Herzmeere schwillt.
> >
> > Wo-
> > Gegen
> > Rennt er nicht an?
> >
> > Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen.
> >
> > (Paul Celan, Atemwende, 1967)
> >
> >
> >
>
> ..
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

, Eric Dymond

I spent a good chunk of the late nineties trying to emulate random sequences. I ended in disappointment.

The reality is of course discouraging, and follow this carefully:
" No given structure or construct can exhibit truly random behaviour.
Randomness developed mathematically is outside the context of any observer. The finite nature of the universe excludes the truly random by nature"…
so what can you do.
Obey the laws of physics, or try to emulate an open universe that doesn't exist"
for the javascript hackers we have:
function poesis(supposed,given,imagined) {
this.supposed = supposed;
this.given = given;
this.imagined = imagined;
this.print = print;
}
document.write(stanza[(Math.round(100*Math.random()))].given);
stanza[Math.round(100*Math.random())].print();
document.write(stanza[(Math.round(100*Math.random()-1))].imagined);
stanza[Math.round(100*Math.random())].print();

document.write(stanza[(Math.round(100*Math.random()-1))].supposed);
stanza[Math.round(100*Math.random())].print();
onerror=null
//where given is the array of values

or go to the perl cookbook and try a mathematically correct approach:

sub shuffle {
my $array=shift;
my $i;
for ($i=@$array;–$i;) {
my $j=int rand ($i+1);
next if $i==$j;
@$array[$i,$j]=@$array[$j,$i];
}
}

The problem provides a simple solution, and one that rankles the observer.
No truly random situation is available in a closed universe,
well have fun with that!
Eric

, Eric Dymond

so in other words:
We can only exist in a closed universe.
Any amount of randomness will always create complex numbers.
Complexity abounds, randomness however always exists as an immeasurable and non-quantifiable condition.

, Eric Dymond

In 1999 I created a random work entitled Junction Station.A second random work was developed for a relationship I was in (Ayesh).
It was an attempt (failed) to provide a random combination of poetry and images. The computer of the user however foils the truly random aim of the project.
http://www.edymond.com/artseen/junction/junction.html
http://www.edymond.com/artseen/ayesh/buffalo.html

Eric
(i am still in favour of these works, despite their mathematical shortcomings)

, Eric Dymond

oh yeah, i forgot about his one,
the lore of large numbers
generated randomly (almost, and the almost is the failure)
http://www.edymond.com/artseen/numbertheory.html
Eric

, Lee Wells

I remember when you launched these.
Still very cool.

On 1/21/06 2:19 AM, "Eric Dymond" <[email protected]> wrote:

> oh yeah, i forgot about his one,
> the lore of large numbers
> generated randomly (almost, and the almost is the failure)
> http://www.edymond.com/artseen/numbertheory.html
> Eric
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php


Lee Wells
Brooklyn, NY 11222

http://www.leewells.org
917 723 2524

, Lee Wells

Here is something that I stumbled into on Google the other day that uses
flicker images to randomly spell words that you can type in with photos of
letters.

http://metaatem.net/words

Its pretty cool and he give the source code as well.
Made by a guy named Eric Kastner



On 1/21/06 2:19 AM, "Eric Dymond" <[email protected]> wrote:

> oh yeah, i forgot about his one,
> the lore of large numbers
> generated randomly (almost, and the almost is the failure)
> http://www.edymond.com/artseen/numbertheory.html
> Eric
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php


Lee Wells
Brooklyn, NY 11222

http://www.leewells.org
917 723 2524

, Nad

Eric Dymond wrote:

> so in other words:
> We can only exist in a closed universe.
> Any amount of randomness will always create complex numbers.
> Complexity abounds, randomness however always exists as an
> immeasurable and non-quantifiable condition.
>

Frankly speaking, i haven't understood what you mean.
are you referring to pseudo-random numbers?

However I wanted to remark that we do not know what kind
of universe we are living in.
There is a video called "the shape of space", which
i can recommend:
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/video/sos/about.html
its about about some aspects of how one could possibly observe
the shape of space.

there is also to remark that we do not really understand
quantum mechanics.

nad

, Eric Dymond

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.- John Von Neumann (1951)

, Dirk Vekemans

> may be i understand what you want to say, but math is different
> from the other sciences. simplistically -math IS the code, you do
> not construct MODELS. probably you meant mathematical
> code may be used to model something real, like in physics?.
> thats another thing.
>
> in math a circle IS a circle, its not a MODEL for something
> unearthly pure and unreal as a circle….
>
> mathematical code comes out of itself. i like more
> the thought that humans just
> find the code (may be in their brains..) and try to write
> it down and find more with it. you may
> ask wether they are capable of finding the right things,
> but thats another question.
> math visualization is actually not very important for math.
> its used only in a few areas and even there
> its mostly used for plausibility arguments or didactics.
> computer algebra programs are a little different and there
> is quite some discussion about their use in the math community.

This is where i went wrong the other time ( i won't go into the Deleuze
thing again, i can't find the reference so i shouldn't have brought it up in
the first place, but i'm sure i'm 'right' about it and it only makes the
man's work more admirable in my eyes), comfortably squeezing math & other
sciences into a simplistic container for discussion's sake.

Now the reason for postponing my answer to you has nothing to do with
admitting this mistake, but everything with the matter we were discussing
and the fact that we cannot do so further unless we take into account some
seriously problematical things involving language, epistemology, logic and
even some downright metaphysics. Now i'm perfectly willing to go further
down that path, but it would require some willingness on your part to keep
me on it, because i know myself to wander straight into any garden i pass
just because it looks more attractive to my confused mind. You see i tried
to avoid that by jamming some quick statements on my private theories into a
pompuous finale with a Celan quote to finish it off, but that didn't really
do the trick, or so i gather.

Probably, certainly this is the case because i always see things as
speaking for themselves only to find afterwards that they only speak to me.
Mostly however, if i succeed in unfolding the steps that seem to be
implicated in my foolish artistic vision (i never quite succeeded doing that
up till now, not completely anyway), a universe of sensibility squeezed into
a ball as Andrew Marvell might have it, there appears to be some sense to
them after all. In fact, after such an explanation ( you can take that
literally as the hypothetical unwrapping of several faintly shimmering
things on a plane allowing the spectator to inspect the goods), i find it
hard to decide which of the two incidents would give me more pleasure: the
absurd flash of insight that is by its nature uncommunicable to others -
unless by obscurification in a poem for instance where some code is applied
in the hope a reader somewhere might experience something that is of an
equally satisfying effect ( that i did accomplish more than one time,well:
you can't keep calling yourself a poet when you're past forty and not be
sure about it)
or its more prosaic counterpart of following the breadcrumps of reason
through an essentially hostile wood of hasty opinion, thorough critical
assessment and ultimately random judgement. The latter option is equally one
of invention because i almost immediately forget everything i come up with
while writing, i guess it comes with the psycho-pathological condition of
being my kind of writer, a self-protective massive data-dumping mechanism of
sorts.

So really, things being what they are, it's up to you Nad, i really like
the conversation but if we are to continue on the same subject, i'll have
some explaining to do, you'll have to provide me with some background i
really know nothing off and correct me when i'm going back to my usual level
of error and foolishness or stupidly forget what it was i was saying
earlier. So here goes: a rather trivial introduction to correcting my
earlier mistake of not giving math what it's entitled to in the world of
science. Proceed at own risk or get out while you can, the latter option
being the more sensible one, by all means, we all have better things to do.



Certainly, one needs to make the distinction, even in my very private mess
of things, where math is the first order coding process, or better still:
the Code itself, the core of knowledge that, if anything, stands out as
Kant's a priori body of knowledge. For,as you put it, us humans just find
the code, when we think of things like a circle or a line, we indeed think
of things that have been before us and will 'survive us' in eternity. In
fact, let's be clear about it, no irony whatsoever, so there can be no
misunderstanding later on: we think of them as outside of time, circles
don't change, they're on some divine plane of consistency that for some
reason unintelligable for humans, just is there, waiting for us to unravel
more of its splendour as we make progress, not by invention but by
discovery.

A static system of truth. Unshakable. The only thing changing about it is
our perception of it, how much we have discovered, how many mistakes we
have made or are making, but those are irrelevant because they don't change
the things themselves. Not even Godel's theorem of incompleteness (
http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html) changes much with regard to the
untimely status of Mathematical Truth, it only proofs there's no end to it.

Equally, when we do math, we do not speak about math, we speak math. There's
no concept-to-code gap where anything human can come in between and spoil
the perfection, like there always is when we use language. The code is the
concept, the mathematical definition of a circle is a circle. Or: there is
no difference between a circle and a set of points in a plane that are
equidistant from a given point O. There may be a difference of position in
the words on your screen, or some time elapsing while you read them or
someone reads them to you, but that is only the case because we are bound by
our human condition and its contingent facts of interhuman communication.
The identity circle-circle's definition is an a priori truth, and therefore
untimely. Writing the code is only a matter of time, the written code equals
the unwritten code (give or take a few human imperfections on which we have
agreed they are irrelevant).

As what one would expect with pure code like this, there is no actual
meaning to it. Meaning can be generated afterwards, when you compile a
portion of the code and apply it in a real world situation, a habit common
to physiscists and, further on down the road to reality, to technical
engineers bringing the second order language handed to them by physics to
yet a higher-level language, the technological. Mathematical meaning is only
purely referentional meaning : the meaning of a proposition like 'A
transcendental number is a number that is not the root of any integer
polynomial' might be further referenced to 'it is not an algabraic number of
any degree' or you might further de-reference the definition by replacing
the word polynomial in the code by the definition of 'polynomial'. In fact,
using the quotes in my last statement is a bad literary habit because the
definition of polynomial, ergo the word polynomial is equal to the use of
polynomial. Any of my bad literary habits will find its much purer
counterpart in mathematical conventions, allowing a mathematician to replace
code-portions with more convenient ones as long as she explicitely states
her deviations from what is commonly accepted in mathworld, even its
off-and-on commercial version where i got the definitions from. Another
convention is going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Really this is a bad
idea.

dv

> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: woensdag 18 januari 2006 21:43
> Aan: [email protected]
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > Being wrong is excellent, it means you can learn, improve, expand,
> > communicate.
>
> yes indeed.
>
> > You need to _want_ to be right all the time, though and not
> have the
> > prospect of you looking ridiculous hold you back. Art is
> meant to be
> > aggressive in that way.
> > Besides, we shouldn't be afraid of making stupid mistakes.
> > Most of the time in programming is spent on making stupid mistakes,
> > debugging your foolishness.
> > Learning to live with that is the first thing you need to do.
> > And sure, anything you do is bound to look completely
> ridiculous from
> > some 'expert'
> > point of view. That just means you can expand your concepts
> some more,
> > that there's more field to cover, more debugging to do…
> >
>
> the context is also important: usually nobody would
> think that a beginner who is doing funny things
> is ridiculous (well…depends a little bit on what
> he does..:-))…if you call yourself an expert and
> would do the same as the beginner then that may look differently….
> this being ridiculous thing is good and bad—
> on one hand it makes people be more serious and careful on
> what they do
> on the other hand it may block them.
> the setting plays also a role.
>
> > Deleuze, the philosopher, has been known to make some
> > serious
> > mistakes when venturing outside his own field of clarity, into the
> > realm of
> > hard-boiled science. Mistakes like that are inavoidable. But his
> > willingness
> > to go there, and be serious about it, has been enormously rewarding
> > for
> > everyone.
> >
> what mistakes did he make?
>
>
> > One of the things scientist need to realise, perhaps, is that their
> > wordings, the mental states underlying their hard work are equally
> > tainted
> > with fiction, human oddities and the restraints of the one tool we
> > share:
> > our brain. When you start using visualisation as a scientific method
> > for
> > instance, picking the colours can become a matter of bending the
> > virtual
> > reality your way.
>
> i wouldnt say bend, but yes the perception is different.
>
> >Its a matter of second level recursive processing:
> > you're
> > using code to construct models to visualise models of constructs of
> > code in
> > order to enhance your coding capabilities. In nature, when such
> > processes
> > are active, a tree can only become a tree, a desert is bound to look
> > like a
> > desert.
>
> may be i understand what you want to say, but math is different
> from the other sciences. simplistically -math IS the code, you do
> not construct MODELS. probably you meant mathematical
> code may be used to model something real, like in physics?.
> thats another thing.
>
> in math a circle IS a circle, its not a MODEL for something
> unearthly pure and unreal as a circle….
>
> mathematical code comes out of itself. i like more
> the thought that humans just
> find the code (may be in their brains..) and try to write
> it down and find more with it. you may
> ask wether they are capable of finding the right things,
> but thats another question.
> math visualization is actually not very important for math.
> its used only in a few areas and even there
> its mostly used for plausibility arguments or didactics.
> computer algebra programs are a little different and there
> is quite some discussion about their use in the math community.
>
>
> > But surely, a tree is not a tree : it cannot be reduced (by
> > what
> > Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) to the object
> > tree,
> > or for that matter, the word tree. That would be arresting the
> > recursive
> > process in favour of manageability in another process, reducing the
> > external
> > determination of the process to random inputs. That's fine for
> > modelling
> > purposes, but when you're modelling you are partaking in a similar
> > process
> > of recursiveness.
>
> this i didnt get. ?
>
> As much as we'd like to sometimes, we cannot
> > eliminate
> > time from our thinking itself.
> >
> > One can, however, engineer interruptions into these second level
> > recursive
> > behaviours. Interruptions are, in my
> Derridian-Heraclitian-Leibnizian
> > textbook, incidents of absence mainly responsible for the
> creation of
> > meaning. Interruptions are at the heart of poetic processes, they
> > consume
> > time instead of being consumed through it, they are the
> result of the
> > fertile but equally aggressive acts of propagation of meaning. The
> > word,
> > each word, as a big bang. That btw, is also why our misery
> will always
> > be
> > one of an erotic nature. We'll always be running into things we make
> > ourselves:
> >
> this i also didnt get may be i am too tired–
>
> >
> > GROSSE GL?HENDE W?LBUNG
> > Mit dem sich
> > Hinaus- und hinweg-
> > W?hlenden Scharzgestirn- Schwarm:
> >
> > DER VERKIESELTEN Stirn eines Widders
> > Brenn ich dies Bild ein, zwischen
> > Die H?rner, darin
> >
> > In Gesang der Windungen, das
>
> IM Gesang ?
>
> > Mark der geronnenen
> > Herzmeere schwillt.
> >
> > Wo-
> > Gegen
> > Rennt er nicht an?
> >
> > Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen.
> >
> > (Paul Celan, Atemwende, 1967)
> >
> >
> >
>
> ..
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
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> +
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>

, Nad

Hi Dirk

yes this is more or less what i meant. However I think its
a big question, what the role of perception or
more important the role of cognition is here in this context.
I feel unable to comment sensefully on this in brief.

or in very short, I really think that this is
nontrivial: how come that we come up with such
concepts like e.g. a CIRCLE? Why do we "find" this
concept at all? Is it about
us in our space-time environment?

I dont know wether it makes sense to discuss this
particular thing on the raw list. its very hard to keep
track of threads and its very time consuming
to sort out comments. one needs some redundancy
for this kind of communication and may be i feel this is not
suited for the subject. at least for me: redundancy
can blur understanding sometimes.


nad

p.s. your definition of a circle supposes that you have
the notion of a distance. You can still define a circle
without having a distance, like in topology.


Dirk Vekemans wrote:


> Certainly, one needs to make the distinction, even in my very private
> mess
> of things, where math is the first order coding process, or better
> still:
> the Code itself, the core of knowledge that, if anything, stands out
> as
> Kant's a priori body of knowledge. For,as you put it, us humans just
> find
> the code, when we think of things like a circle or a line, we indeed
> think
> of things that have been before us and will 'survive us' in eternity.
> In
> fact, let's be clear about it, no irony whatsoever, so there can be no
> misunderstanding later on: we think of them as outside of time,
> circles
> don't change, they're on some divine plane of consistency that for
> some
> reason unintelligable for humans, just is there, waiting for us to
> unravel
> more of its splendour as we make progress, not by invention but by
> discovery.
>
> A static system of truth. Unshakable. The only thing changing about it
> is
> our perception of it, how much we have discovered, how many mistakes
> we
> have made or are making, but those are irrelevant because they don't
> change
> the things themselves.