We are immersed in our own time and it can be difficult to see the world around us objectively. One of the modern definitions of an artist, in fact, is someone who is particularly insightful about their own cultural moment. Thanks to global capitalism, social media and the internet, we are more interconnected and interdependent than at any other time in history. Some see this as a utopian moment. With internet access, we can all contribute to and benefit from what is being called the Information Revolution. For others, the prevalence of technology in our lives threatens our individuality and privacy, and reduces us to a data point that can be monetized by corporations like Facebook, Google, and Apple.

How I’m rushing through this! How much each sentence in this brief story contains. “The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth.” I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part — perhaps my stuff is was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the /why/? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia, must be silent?

I think that the quicker one gets these things out of one’s brain and on to the paper and off to the printers, the better. I dare say, sir,” and he smiled at Mr Norrell in a friendly manner, “that you find the same.” Mr Norrell, who had never yet got any thing successfully out of his brain and off to the printers, whose every attempt was still at some stage or other of revision, said nothing.

…

Horace Tott spent an uneventful life in Cheshire always intending to write a large book on English magic, but never quite beginning. And so he died at seventy-four, still imagining he might begin next week, or perhaps the week after that.

But if he is indeed mad, then he has some reason for being so. If you will take my advice, gentlemen, you will not worry about it.”

There was a short silence while the Ministers puzzled this out. “You mean to say he might have become mad deliberately?” said one in an incredulous tone.

“Nothing is more likely,” said the Duke.

“But why?” asked another.

“I have not the least idea. In the Peninsula we learnt not to question him. Sooner or later it would become clear that all his incomprehensible and startling actions were part of his magic. Keep him to his task, but shew no surprize at any thing he does. That, my lords, is the way to manage a magician.

and scholars, madam … are the most selfish beings in creation and think that devotion to their researches excuses any thing…

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people…

RE: I am an Integrator. ›

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wildcat2030:

See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception
By Madeline Schwartzman

missfolly:

See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception
By Madeline Schwartzman

Interest in design, art, technology, and the psychology of perception, then be sure to read this book. It will permanently alter your understanding of human perception and more. Miss Folly 

••••••

Cover art is by: { Hyungkoo Lee }

Gego.

This woman, { Ilona Royce Smithkin }, is amazing.

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theshipthatflew:

Ronald Searle, Morbid Anatomies, via Ronald Searle Tribute Blog

(via 50watts)

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Bern Porter, Score 8

via { Spore }

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Yang Zhichao, Planting Grass, 2002 —

the incisions.

via { EASTLINK Gallery }

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Hyungkoo Lee,
Altering Facial Features with Device-H5
2003

He’s onto something. THIS is the makeup of the future, and I want one.