Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby American Dream » Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:48 am

Story of my life. We all have to know ourselves and our triggers, keep poised out there, watch what we say and to who. This includes who we trust, and how much we trust them.


dada » Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:59 am wrote:I saw the comparison of artists to sex workers as a way of making a point about the artist, not the sex worker. The art industry. Academic conformity, find a patron or perish, and marketing uber alles.

American Dream » Sat Aug 11, 2018 4:03 am wrote:I'm inviting the Cop in the Head out to a party, not to enforce any laws but to get to know new people, new ways of doing things.


It's dangerous out there, though. This is why I think it's a smart idea to send the retrained cop in the head to Ninja school. Then he's invisible, a shadow in the night. When the Ninja goes to a party, first he observes who is friend, and who is foe. To friends he allows himself to be seen. Foes don't see him, until it's too late.

edited to add: On my 'sex work' comments. I apologize if my comments appeared insensitive, I hadn't realized that was a discussion spilling over from another thread.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Sun Aug 12, 2018 10:16 pm

I have a method for that. If someone is looking to earn my trust, or is creating situations where I'm supposed to earn their trust, I don't trust them.

---

I think I can use this picture to make a point about the difference between 'free revolutionary art,' and 'revolutionary art propaganda'

Image

The photoshop looks like propaganda against the bashar, linking him to the kremlin and isis. And that does happen to be its intent.

But how easy would it be for the Kremlin to repurpose it as a kitschy, fun piece. Put it in humorous context, it is like some over-the-top irony, which the Kremlin loves. Or maybe a little detournement speech bubble to pop the meaning, or turn it on its head. Then it's just another attention-sucker for the Kremlin. Surkov wins again.

Nothing free or revolutionary about it. Just an image with no intrinsic meaning. But the more propagandistic the original intent, the easier to flip it.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:01 am

dada » Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:16 pm wrote:I have a method for that. If someone is looking to earn my trust, or is creating situations where I'm supposed to earn their trust, I don't trust them.


Solid. Two thumbs up.

"If there is any doubt, there is no doubt."
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:47 am

billymitchellthumbsup.jpg


***

So, free revolutionary art, what is it. Revolutionary is easy enough. Not revolutionary like "in support of the revolution." Carrying around pictures of chairman mao. (What about chairman meow? I'll allow it)

Not necessarily like "revolutionary change" (synonyms: thoroughgoing, thorough, complete, total, absolute, utter, comprehensive, sweeping, far-reaching, extensive, profound) Although there is always the danger of this. It could happen at any time.

Closer to "a revolutionary new drug," or "a revolutionary kind of wheelchair." New, novel, original, unusual, unconventional, unorthodox, newfangled, innovative, modern, state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, futuristic, pioneering.

Of course that last type of revolutionary is the kind co-opted by corporate advertising. Big star, mean guitar, drive around in your jaguar, that sort of thing. A Pavlovian dogbell to trigger the consumer drool ducts. So we have to be careful.

So we are careful. Hopefully by now, four or five pages into the thread or wherever we are, the 'revolutionary' in "free revolutionary art" has some shape, which is added to by pointing out what it is not, without having to define it too clearly.

The 'art' in free revolutionary art, borrowing from the talk about art and creative work with Cordelia, we can define as "an undefined set." Like "Pile Wonder" by Sachen for the nes. What's in the pile? I wonder...

What is art? Oh, all kinds of things. Traditional art in traditional mediums, like urinals, to the off-broadway play "the defeat of the West in four acts," by Surkov. The sky is the limit. You might not even know it when you see it, nowadays.

So the definition of 'art' in free revolutionary art is the conventional definition.

But what about 'free.' Free speech, free beer. A little bit of both, I guess, but I think both those types of free fall short in this case. You can do whatever you want with it, like purchased free speech, and you can give it away for nothing, like beer at a party. But really it's free like free of politics, free of coercion from within and without. Not for success, status, popularity or the lulz. Free of the drive to do anything other than "Let's make some art!" as Lloyd Kaufman says. Unfettered creativity, no strings attached.

So what we got. Free Revolutionary Art: the unfettered wheelchair of an undefined set. A newfangled, innovative, pioneering wheelchair, like Edna Granbo's chair in Gwar's 'Phallus in Wonderland.' Boy, now we're really getting somewhere.

Getting somewhere is just a figure of speech though. Really we're getting nowhere. And that is what free revolutionary art forces the viewer to face, simply by its presence. Some face it, some pretend they don't see it, try their best to ignore it. Some wish it would go away, nostalgically pining for lost innocence of sleepy days before the bad, mean person irrevocably altered the conventional rules of the social games they were taught in college, forever. Some run to the hills, run for your life. But it catalyzes something for everyone, even if only subconsciously for some. It speeds up the 'wheels of karma' grinding away inside of the little crystallized ego, turns up the heat under the jiffypop lifestyle. It's absurd, sometimes. When necessary.

It could even be New Joycean, don't you believe it. Where does a New Joycean go on vacation? To du jour, of course. That's a beach in the south of France.

***

Another neat old trick was how Rob Fulop created the starfield in Cosmic Ark for Imagic. Take it away, Rob..

"The starfield already existed .. it appeared one day from a total accident, btw … a few years earlier I was stumbling through making the kernal for Missile Command … and was trying to reposition the ball graphic over and over again for some reason, and I think maybe I put the wrong value in the wrong place at the wrong time, I dunno … all of a sudden this cool starfield just APPPEARS on the screen, like a magic trick. I had NO CLUE why, or what was going on. Nobody could figure it out … but it seemed to be pretty replicable on any unit. To this day, nobody has ever explained to me WHY the player/missile register in the chipset goes crazy if diddled with the wrong way.

Anyway, Cosmic Ark was made for the express reason to show off the starfield trick to Crane and Whitehead .. no other reason. And one year later, there was Cosmic Ark featured in the Imagic booth at CES … and about two hours after the show opens .. sure enough .. Crane and Whitehead come strolling by .. just as casual as they can be .. “dum de dum, dum de dum”. Obviously they could not appear overly interested in Cosmic Ark .. but it was just as obvious that it just TORTURED them … they walk up and down the aisle three times .. it made me SOOOO happy. Finally Crane just cannot take it anymore, and comes over and ever so subtle, chats me up “how ya doin, Rob? Cosmic Ark looks great, blah blah”. We make nice for about three minutes. “I like the way you are using the Playfield for the stars, Rob”. GAWD, I was soooo luvin life at that moment. Can he be any more obvious in his attempt to probe how the starfield was made? Of course I said NOT ONE WORD, other than “Yup, it’s just the playfield, obviously”.

But it isn't the playfield, it's the player/missile register that makes the starfield.

cosmicarkstarfield.gif
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:09 am

Here are the posts moved from the "Whither the Democrats?" thread.

slad suggested I move them to the Quantum Entanglement thread, and I thought that was a good idea, but I decided on Free Revolutionary Art, because it feels like making art, reformatting and restoring the posts. And what is Free Revolutionary Art, if it isn't a creative dialogue between friends.

I think there may be one or two posts missing from earlier in the Whither the Democrats thread, since things shifted back a bit, but I'm not sure where in the six previous pages those missing posts were located. I did get the bulk of the deleted posts though, about two pages worth.

I'm breaking the exchange into a few posts here, probably two more about the same length as this one, I think. Don't know for sure, I haven't finished cleaning everything up. And I'm starting a few posts back from the ones that are missing from the thread, so the exchange doesn't start in a place that makes no sense.


dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 7:55 am

It's the non-voters fault!

Incredible. You finally caught us. The real culprits behind the curtain.

I'm being peaceful, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you walk all over me! haha

***

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 15, 2018 7:58 am

if you do not vote you get what you deserve ......good thing black people decided to laid their lives on the line to vote...but maybe you think they should have stayed in the fields

maybe my grandmother should have been satisfied not to be able to vote at all

white men :roll:

so easy for them to say no need to vote

it is just fine for the pres to call a black woman a dog ...you know what a female dog is don't you?

it is perfectly fine for a pres to use the word n****er

it is perfectly fine for a pres to kidnap brown kids

it is perfectly fine for a pres to grab women by their p****ies

who is he going to come for next?


hopefully it won't be you.....for you are comfortable correct? I can understand that



About 100 million people couldn’t be bothered to vote in 2016........It's the non-voters fault!......YES IT IS!

It is the non-voters fault that we have a racist for a president

A 100 million people had the power in their hands and they were too lazy to use it

in 1970 I did not have the right to chose.....just 40 years ago.....good thing women fought for the right to vote

funny thing some women really don't want to be bare foot and pregnant

***

dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:33 am

Nice spin, turning it around on the non-voter. Kind of like blaming the victim.

But don't blame the non-voter, just blame me. Because it's nobody's fault but mine.

Blaming the non-voter probably won't work as a political strategically, though. I don't think it will get you any votes.

***

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:44 am

it is not spin it is reality

100 million ...REALITY

but you have no worries so you do not vote..I can see that

yea I am blaming the people that do not vote...maybe they should have voted in the primaries

***

dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:51 am

Ah, truth and truthiness, the question of the hour. What are the facts, and what is the truth. And it's a cosmic struggle, with the future hanging in the balance. The future is for who knows the difference.

Hey, I vote sometimes. That's my goddess given right.

George Carlin said If you vote, you have no right to complain.

I always liked that one.

***

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:53 am

so what FACTS are you disputing

you can take your cosmic and not vote fine by me..apparently you have nothing to loose

if women took your lead we would have the right to our own bodies

blacks would still be slaves

***

dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:57 am

Not disputing any facts. I already took the blame for everything, what more do you want?

I gotta go print newspaper, back soon. We can continue this later if you want.

I'm actually feeling nothing but cordial towards you, slad.

***

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:58 am

I'm actually feeling nothing but cordial towards you also dada

what happens when you can't get the paper for that news? I really want you to have paper

47% of republicans want to stop you from printing anything

***

dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:03 am

When we can't get the paper, we will stop. This is only natural.

***

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:06 am

this is not natural ...it is trump made

Trump’s Tariffs on Canadian Newsprint Hasten Local Newspapers’ Demise
The printing and distribution plant for The Gazette in Janesville, Wis., which has cut its staff and started using narrower paper to save on newsprint costs. Trump administration tariffs on newsprint have increased costs for newspapers across the country.CreditAngela Major/The Janesville Gazette, via Associated Press
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/us/politics/newsprint-tariffs-newspapers-trump.html



local papers are so important


Do you consider yourself local?



If 25 million would have voted in the primaries maybe Bernie would be president


here's what happens when people vote

Earnell Lucas defeats Richard Schmidt in Milwaukee County sheriff's race
Schmidt could not shed the mantle of his close association with former Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. and his role as the department's second in command since 2010.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/08/14/milwaukee-county-sheriff-schmidt-lucas-ostrowski-battling-badge/952194002/



people died so you could vote...they thought it was kinda important

how could you not vote against climate change deniers?


Democrats are not the party of racists ...there is a difference.....fun idea try living in a country where you can not vote ....where you are not allowed even the choice

this idea that the parties are both the same is bullshit...unless you have no one to protect then you can have your fascists

my great grandparents knew what it was like not to be able to vote.....they haunt me

purity can be fun

DkEoFNBX4AAu7bW.jpg


***

dada » Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:56 pm

Yes, I know what is up in the newspaper industry already. Like a job in any field, if you pay attention you end up picking up on most goings on just by osmosis.

Just the facts - who did what when - is just that: the facts. Truth is what those facts mean.

For example, a hundred million non-voters is a fact. But what that fact means changes, given different contexts.

A hundred million non-voters, that's about half of American voters, I think. So half the voters chose to abstain, a quarter voted Donald, and a quarter went with Democrats, Inc. Generalizing, using big round numbers here to make a point. Context gives meaning to facts.

"If you don't program your mind, someone else will," as someone else said. I forget his name, some Irish programmer. O'leary, I think it were.

Who (or what) is providing context and meaning for your facts? Half voted, half didn't. Is it the abstainers, or the participators who caused the mess. Which half is to blame?

(Trick question. We already know who is to blame. The original strange attractor, spirit-avatar of the goddess, animating the empty body of the qbert magister like an irresistible, almost unbearably sexy living corpse.)

Hi.

edited to add: "If 25 million would have voted in the primaries maybe Bernie would be president"

If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there wad be nae need for tinkers. - O'leary
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:15 am

Not sure if there were any posts between the last one and this one in the Whither the Democrats thread, but I don't think so. I'll check later, add them if I find any. I had to go offline and grab a bunch of pages out of my personal cache, since they weren't cached on google yet. They were from various points in time, so the grabs were not uniform. First I had to figure out how to do that. I tried a bunch of methods before having success.

Kind of reminded me of figuring out how to get the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator working. Running from command line and stuff. Certain games are very difficult to get working. Pac-Man jr I remember being very difficult, I probably couldn't do it again now without starting from scratch. Other games posed difficulties as well. Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters, one of my favorites, was a difficult one to get running.

Very satisfying seeing an attract mode screen boot up after struggling with the machine for half a night. With some difficult to load games, I was just happy to see them finally running, didn't even play them once they booted up.

The worst was the game Pig Newton. Such a great game, the 'crap game nonpareil,' as it were. No matter what I did, the game ran slow. Friends sent me their copies of the romset, but for me they all ran in glitchy slow motion. My techy friends and I came to the conclusion that the wolves that try to capture Pig Newton were leaking code, slowing down the old computer I was running the emulator on at the time. Ah well, you can't win 'em all. Such is life.

Anyway, I also lost textual embellishments like bold and italic in these posts, so you'll have to add your own emphases.


dada » Thu Aug 16, 2018 9:35 am

I think the tendency for these left/right threads is to lend undue weight to politicians as the prime vector of world problems. But they're employees, not the designers. When they craft legislation, they do it under pressures. Mostly financial pressure, public pressure occasionally. Above the politicians, there's still corporate finance, and shadowy Intelligence. Enemies of the people whose names are not in the spotlight as often, some - especially in Intelligence - whose names we never know. Just pointing it out to try to keep it real, here. Layers, requiring different levels of analysis.

The role of the media, and of party politics, in this multi-tiered analysis is to define 'politics' for you. Because we can talk 'politics' all day, and many do, while the gears of money and class keep grinding away, business as usual. Another day, another dollar. Safe again. Safe for what. The security of the cemetery plot.

Maybe that works for you, fine. You might like watching royal weddings, and posting about them. But for some of us, politics is more than who the elected officials are, and what the media does or doesn't report about them. Again, those things are just the facts. Truth, what is the meaning of the facts, is defined elsewhere.

Where is the meaning defined. Or is there no meaning, are we just spinning sweet nothings and tossing them into the air to pass the time, because that's what we were taught to do.

Shadowy Intelligence. Not talking about the specifics, the content of rabbit holes now, just the most basic strategy of power. Keeping your attention. The role of Intelligence is doing whatever it takes to keep your attention. To waste your time, and mine, in every way possible. They're on top of their game right now, you'll notice. With your attention elsewhere, you don't define meaning. Someone else does.

Corporate strategists, and the Company man who prefers to be called "no one." Are you letting them define meaning for you? You're welcome to. I'm not.

And this is why I'm impressed with Surkov. Because if you've been paying attention, you'll see he is the meaning-definer for the Kremlin. But this is a unique character, not an invisible, like a corporate boardroom kid, or a cia man. I wonder if this is why the Kremlin is winning. An unexpected strategy, the shadowy figure is right up front. Gotta give it to the Mr. Bean-looking motherfucker. Guys got balls. Cojones, ese.

Edited to capitalize Company. Because I didn't mean just any old company, I meant that Company.

***

seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 9:38 am

this is NOT about right-left

trump is not a republican

it is about a traitor in the WH

78873c78aa40cbecfc2a937cc406662483d2bf92.jpg


and the guys that helped him get there with their Russian money and the traitors in power that are helping him stay there....in America there is only one way to get him out .......you know what it is called when one party rules everything?

Dkr_fk1VsAAaOOc.jpg



Craig Unger, says he has found ‘59’ links to the Russian mafia. He lists them all in his new book House of Trump, House of Putin, which is damning in its accumulation of detail, terrifying in its depiction of the pure evil of those Trump chose to do business with, and enraging in that — if Unger is right — Trump acted with impunity for decades to get filthy rich laundering the mob’s blood money. This is the man who now sits in the Oval Office, Unger says. In fact, he argues, they put him there.

***

dada » Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:38 am

So we agree that focusing on the left/right impasse doesn't get to the roots of our dilemma.

I don't like Star Wars, but I'll use a scene as a metaphor here. Sometimes I feel like we're in the garbage-crusher, and I'm Solo saying "Get on top of it!" as the walls close the trash around us. Because if we don't try to get on top of it, we might drown in this muck even before the walls get to us.

Of course it's a futile attempt. The only way out is to be on the side of the author, the narrator. The rube farm boy calls the robots, just in the nick of time they answer. Dumb luck. But the narrator creates that, actually.

And even the multi-tiered analysis falls short at the final analysis. In the final analysis, meaning has to come from within, or we're sunk. Any analysis that doesn't get back to you at the end, you personally, as the definer of your meaning, is essentially flawed. It's like Science. As the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote, "The laws of quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without recourse to the concept of consciousness." Without the concept of consciousness in the final analysis, any laws we formulate will be distorted. Clear accurate analysis has to come back to you, get down to the simple, most basic level.

Something Chomsky said, that if you can't explain a concept in a clear, concise way, like explaining it to a ten year old in five minutes, there may be something wrong with the concept. Something like that. I think you get the point.

So the multi-tiered analysis falls short. There are holes in it. But even that is helpful, because at least now we can see the holes.

What's in the holes? Chinese Intelligence, probably. Playing a mean game. Invisible like the Company man, yet more effective than Surkov, even. Assume Surkov sees this as well, though.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:56 am

This batch dovetails back into the posts that are still up on the other thread. Again, I'll double check later, just to make sure there's nothing else that I grabbed that's still missing.


Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:42 am

you have to play the cards your dealt


philosophy is nice and is very entertaining

do you know when the smell of burning flesh became a thing?

***

Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:48 am

"dada wrote: Something Chomsky said, that if you can't explain a concept in a clear, concise way, like explaining it to a ten year old in five minutes, there may be something wrong with the concept. Something like that. I think you get the point."


I'm not autistic, just insufferable: that wasn't Chomsky, but you deserve serious props for not attributing it to Einstein, or, for that matter, Richard Feynman. "An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid," some Brit toffer said. He was quoted in a book on Einstein and now that quote has undergone some truly impressive mutations in the wild.

Either way, I don't think you'll find many people less interested in the implications of Quantum mechanics than SLAD.

As a side note, I'm not trying to flag this for the moderators or anything, but: we've had a ban on Star Wars metaphors in effect here since Bush was still President. Just tuck that away for future reference.

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seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:49 am

:P


reality is always getting in my way

but I am studying

everything is quantum...right?


QMJobCrop.jpg


I've got 4 grown kids.....11 grandchildren for god's sake and I post here non stop there is only so much time in a day

***

dada » Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:20 am

I'm very glad to hear about the Star Wars ban, I hadn't realized that. Not a fan, at all, at all. Of course it isn't beyond me to break (or bend) the rules occasionally. Always starting trouble.

Didn't know that about the barmaid quote. I like it much better like that. When Chomsky borrowed it, he made it too Chomsky. "If you can't explain it to a barmaid." is much better. Succinct. Also who doesn't like chatting up the barmaid. Falling for hot bartenders is one of my greatest weaknesses. One weakness that I would never change, don't mind one bit.

---

"you have to play the cards your dealt"

This is electronic poker machine logic. A number generator is dealing the cards according to an algorithm. That's not really a game, that's just a click addiction, like farmville.

So I don't think playing the cards you're dealt really helps. It's one of those 'take it for granted, shut down critical though' sayings. All those sayings are ripe for subversive critique. Subversive critique can release the pent-up energies buried inside of folksy aphorisms.

Who is the "I" that is playing cards? Perhaps the personality, the ego you grew up with, isn't who you define yourself as. Then, cards that "I" was dealt are not the cards "I" play, because "I'm" not that person. "I" can evolve, grow out of the linear narrative that is fed to me. Or "dealt" to "you."

But what's the point of arguing. We see what we want to see, what can one do. Why I like Walter Benjamin. He isn't talking at you. His tone is always conversational, he's not talking down, not insulting the intelligence of the reader. Who is he talking to?

---

Ah, the smell of burning flesh. Make it a futurist romantic notion, or employ it as an emotional weapon in a debate. Either way, nothing like the reality of it.

***

seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:25 am

“What happened to you would have appeared to the rest of the world as an unusually high-energy photon giving up its energy to create an Alice and an anti-Alice. The anti-Alice would travel along until it collided with an Alice and the two mutually annihilated one another, converting their energy back to photons.”

“How can that be?” cried Alice in some dismay. “I do not see how this anti-Alice could ever have found a second Alice to collide with anyway. There is only one of me and I certainly haven’t been annihilated,” she concluded defiantly.

“Ah, but what I have just described is how it would appear to the rest of the world. How it would appear to you is quite different, quite different altogether. For you the annihilation would come before the creation of course.”

“I do not see any ‘of course’ about it,” answered Alice rather sharply. “How can anything be destroyed before it is created?”

“Why, that is the natural order of things when you are going backward in time. Normally, when you move forward in time you expect creation to come before destruction don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do,” replied Alice.

“Well in that case, if you move backward in time you naturally expect the creation to come after destruction from your point of view. You are experiencing events in reverse order after all. I would have expected you to see that for yourself.

“In this case you were walking quietly along with the Quantum Mechanic and suddenly you collided with the anti-Alice. As far as your companion was concerned you and the anti-Alice were both utterly destroyed and your mass energy was carried off by high-energy photons.”


aliceinquantumland.jpg





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dada » Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:39 am

I was using the Wigner quote to make a point, about what happens when one leaves oneself out of the equations. It distorts the view, can't do accurate analysis that way.

But just mention quantum mechanics, and look what happens. Jokes and philosphy, right down the rabbit hole. Good luck, Alice. Meanwhile, Dinah is out here, killing mice for you.

And who is the joke really on? It may have been directed at me, done at my expense, but the joke wasn't on me. I didn't play the fool, or look it.

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seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:53 am

I don't have a cat so there is no one killing mice for me in fact I do not believe in killing mice....if they are a problem live traps work fine


quantum mechanics...that joke was directed at me...and I am perfectly fine with it

not tooting my horn though I did believe in Continental Drift before it was a thing

I still say the POTUS kidnapping brown children is a problem ...should be dealt with post haste and I don't need a masters to figure that out

do flea infested babies in cages remind you of anything?


all this leads back to the only way to get rid of this scourge on the world as soon as possible is to elect democrats ...it's just reality

***

dada » Thu Aug 16, 2018 1:59 pm

Well if the strategy is electing democrats, I don't see any evidence for it. The tactics being employed don't seem to lead anywhere near that strategy.

---

So we have an accurate, multi-tiered analysis, and things are looking more hopeless than ever. The enemy is revealed as competing international intelligence agencies and their deep pockets. How to compete with that? Lazy American intel, grown slow and fat in their hubris, is the least of it. Kremlin strategy is in your face, masterminded by an artist, and the Ministry is everywhere and nowhere, like a zenny mist over everything. How does one fight this?

I'd ask what really made communism collapse. Was it the American way? I don't think so. What was underneath the rock n roll and blue jeans, kids smuggling Zappa records at great personal risk to listen to in damp basements. It's nonconformity. The best weapon we have left. Not to 'save America,' 'American way, rising to the top again,' do we really want that? I don't. It isn't the literal commodities that knocked down the wall, and it won't be good old American rock n roll that knocks down the Chinese-American wall of cash money, or hoists Surkov on his own petard.

Weaponizing cultural debris can be an effective strategy however, although I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket. Taking the mundane consumer junk, re-purposing it with fresh meaning is weaponizing it. Then send it off and forget about it. Stand at the end of the lane, watch the machine set up the pins. A well-placed, weaponized Don Knotts will bowl a strike every time. Even a weaponized Bob Newhart will work in a pinch.

edited to add: My cat caught a mouse just last night. He rocks.

***

seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:10 pm

we will know in 81 days 10 hours and 49 minutes
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Tue Aug 21, 2018 4:21 am

I like this idea that tech, or Technik, when mismanaged, explodes into war. Clever upturning of the technocratic tea table. I know words like 'bourgeois' and 'proletariat' are conceptual trigger words loaded with baggage for most people. But we all know what they mean. Who is who. We all know who we are, and which side we throw our lots in with, deep down. Quoting Esther Leslie:

"The annihilating coincidence of Technik and war is articulated inside a theory of the interplay between technological forces and socio-political forces. This is most clearly expounded on the opening page of 'Theorien des deutschen Faschismus'. [Benjamin's] 'sober' analysis of technological dynamic encourages continued insistence on an imminent worldwide conflagration, due to (mis)alignments in the relationship between forces and relations of production, that are part of a social inability to administer Technik.

Technical resources, sources of energy, have been so intensified and yet are not 'adequately' directed into the conduct of private or social lives, because of structures of ownership that affect the particular articulation of the political-moral and the technological. There is a gaping discrepancy between the vast potential uses of Technik to the benefit of the proletariat and a lack of 'moral elucidation', which is a consequence of the bourgeois organization of production and politics.

...For Benjamin, this descrepancy between productive and political realms compels technological forces to find another outlet in war, or, as he expresses it, to 'still push to justify themselves'. Technology erupts into war, finding no other place to expend its energies. Benjamin's Technik possesses a certain natural disposability or normativity. Technik is endowed with a peculiar subjective autonomy. The term adaquat implies a notion of essential predetermination of the technical resources: technology's dynamic is an unfolding energy that will out. Technology's energetic overspill is a by-product of capitalist economic competition and overproduction of surplus value. The surplus value produced in capitalism cannot be profitably realized within the system and must erupt violently as weaponry deployed by the imperialists. This situation allows capital and the state to become sole and guaranteed consumers of their own military productions, as well as to conquer new markets."

Neat way of looking at it. I like where the idea goes, too. The 'Technological essence.' I've always found the 'will AI become conscious one day?' debate to be one for people who are thoroughly, hopelessly confused as to what consciousness is. But this I like, playing with the idea that technology already has a soul. Here's Esther:

"Benjamin's report on Technik suggests a necessary realization of technological essence, and provides therefore evidence of a tendency towards a technologism that assigns historical determinacy to technology. The purpose proper to Technik is only realized when Technik is taken up into political discussion, in a most literal sense. For Technik to be taken up into the political or moral realm and to be effective there must be a subject and it must have a voice. Likewise, in an instance of reciprocity, Benjamin maintains that technology, which has forged the apocalyptic visage of nature and silenced it, was the force that could have given nature a voice.

The economic nature of bourgeois society impels the cleavage between the mental and the technical, signifying the exclusion of 'the technical thought from the right to participation in social ordering'. War has become vicious against populations because technology has not been consulted."

Fun, right? "War is a terrible opportunity for technology to make known its demands."

And my favorite quote, "each coming war is the slave revolt of Technik."

---

So, "Post-war experience is shaped by the continued mismanagement of Technik."

However, "It is also the experience of the end of the bourgeois humanist subject and the beginning of a possible new collective humanity. The loss of experience [in the spectacle panopticon] (as it was previously known) might be the inauguration of a new form of experience that may be deeper, more complex or simply different."

Turn the technological tables on them. Find your soul. Then technology's soul will be your natural ally.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:08 am

"death's claim to rule even Arcadia is challenged by art, who must insist that she was discovered in Arcadia too, and that she is the legitimate ruler everywhere, whilst death only usurps her power. In the face of death, art's duty is to recall absent loved ones, console anxieties, evoke and reconcile conflicting emotions, surmount isolation, and facilitate the expression of the unutterable." - Gereon Becht-Jordens and Peter Wehmeier, Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie


Sounds nice. Doesn't work that way for me, though. Art just doesn't do those things for me.

I agree she is the legitimate ruler everywhere, that's obvious. And Art may do all these things for others, and that's a beautiful thing that I wouldn't begrudge anyone.

But who will do these things for Art? Who will recall Art's absent loved ones, console Art's anxieties, evoke and reconcile Art's conflicting emotions, surmount Art's isolation, and facilitate Art's expression of the unutterable?

Actually, Art's job sounds kind of like my job. So maybe that's why Art doesn't work that way for me. Someone has to do it for Art. I guess that responsibility falls on me. Falls like the Moon of Termina.

But who will do it for me? I know, don't answer that. Someone has to be at the end of the chain, at the place where Art hurts. The place where Music hurts. Sorry, kid, no music for you. Good work, though, keep it up.

Disinfo agents? Man, you don't even know who the disinfo agents are. The disinfo agents are the senses, all seven of them.

Whatever.

So Art is the weapon you use to fight death. The phrase "Et in Arcadia, Ego" isn't a reference to an ancient secret society from Arcadia, Greece, but is a memento mori, a reminder of mortality. Arcadia symbolizes a world of idle merriment, a place of idyllic bliss, remembered in regretful dirges. Therefore when death says "Even in Arcadia, there am I" it is telling you that even in this golden land, it is present. Like the danse macabre, or a glance at a watch, reminding that time flees, or the Skull Kid atop the clock tower, celebrating the imminent destruction of existence by the falling moon.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:05 pm

Here's a link to some free revolutionary art. Free pdf of Psychedelic Bolsheviks, Everything is Everything vol. 1. I play the role of 'the uncredited contributor' in this issue. Next issue comes out this month.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/everythingiseverything
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:32 am

It Was Ghosts

Ha! What was that collection of weatherbeaten warehouses
off in the distance? And is not that a man rigning a gong in
front of the largest shanty? Surely we are not approaching
the worldly mansions of Labor, the residence of the proletariat?
It cannot be - and surely that gong is not a supper bell?

Why are we going in that particular direction, and why
are our feet dragging is if some invisible shackle was weighing
them down? Is it possible that we do not desire to arrive there
too soon?

What made the rest turn back?

Were they frightened of something?

Darkness is upon us but we can distinguish ten or twelve
buildings and, as I live, two of them are tents. We hold a
consultation in muffled tones as if loath to disturb the gloomy
sanctity of the ill-smelling "square."

"I wonder what the hell have we struck here," comes a
question from one of the boys, who appeared to have
knowledge of such things.

"It beats me," volunteers another. "What are we going
to do - go back or stay?"

"Take a look at 'er, anyway," somebody suggests.

In this solemn moment, under a frowning sky, we approach
the forbidding and forlorn hovel - hesitatingly expectant, half
fearful, as to what terrible retribution may there await our
discovery. A ghostly gleam, pale and yellow, stabs us in the
eye. Ghosts!

The darn thing may be haunted! Look! There it is again - in
the window!

A fellow worker, braver than the rest, creeps to the window
and looks in. "My god, fellows, there are human beings
in there! 'Tis a camp," he whispered, voice husky with emotion.
"'Tis the place we were shipped to."

Haunted? Yes - by Labor.

Tell me how long...

Ghosts? Shadows of men!

- T-Bone Slim

--

Tulpa

If ghosts are the memory of a person bound to a place,
then what are words bound to paper but another form of ghost?
The earthly remains of a Sumerian written in clay,
endlessly complaining about lost shipments of copper ore.
Nothing else left of the kindly man who sang to his children:
only querulous comments scratched to mark where he had once been.

Memories sheltered and protected between leather covers
like the last thylacine at a zoo, precious and endangered.
Or like the last polio virus, terrifying in scope.
Ghosts that weep, rage, laugh, and ponder in their thin paper hallways
and always find their way back to haunt the living who seek them.
With each word we resurrect the dead, allowing them inside.

What, then, of the words we leave behind in our wake carelessly?
Splinters of ghosts running wild, moments in time of who we were,
no covers to keep them safe and no shelf to store them away.
Stray specters screaming into space, a poltergeist made of words.
I am here, I am alive, yet you see my ghosts with each line.
Wild spirits birthed from my mind and hands that you invited in.

We all are haunted by the ghosts of the living and the dead,
surrounded by spirits captured in paper and letters.
Now they fly through the air around us like ghosts in a story.
Recursive ghosts, living in our minds and our eyes and our hearts,
an eternal séance of words and pictures given meaning.
Fragments of moments, endlessly repeating, this phantom bound.

—L.W. Salinas
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:17 am

How did you re created all that stuff? You are surely the one with magical powers around here :P

I have no idea how you could get back all that deleted stuff....so weird and scary but truly quantumly artful :D


Alice in Quantumland


“Ah, but what I have just described is how it would appear to the rest of the world. How it would appear to you is quite different, quite different altogether. For you the annihilation would come before the creation of course.”

“I do not see any ‘of course’ about it,” answered Alice rather sharply. “How can anything be destroyed before it is created?”

.....

“Well in that case, if you move backward in time you naturally expect the creation to come after destruction from your point of view. You are experiencing events in reverse order after all. I would have expected you to see that for yourself.

“In this case you were walking quietly along with the Quantum Mechanic and suddenly you collided with the anti-Alice. As far as your companion was concerned you and the anti-Alice were both utterly destroyed and your mass energy was carried off by high-energy photons.”

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:13 pm

Thanks, slad!

My powers may sometimes look magical, but they're really not. They're better than magic! haha

People like to say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But when you're the sufficiently advanced technology, magic can't hold a candle to you.

In this case, though, I also had to use tech-monkey skills. Just some basic tech proficiency, tricks I picked up while monkeying around with computers over the years, trying to figure out how everything works under the hood. 82 could probably do this kind of thing in his sleep, he's a Linux guy.

But for me it was a case of trying every different way I could think of and read about to retrieve the lost posts, and failing, failing, failing until I got lucky. That's usually how things go for me in general actually. I don't have a skeleton key, I just keep trying all the keys until one of them works.

So "Whatever Works," and "Just Get Lucky." Stronger than any magic around. Then you don't have to be a wizard, but you're more powerful than all wizards, combined. Which is fine with me, because I don't like wizards! Just not fond of them, at all, at all.

And you're right, it is scary. Nothing is ever really lost.

But it's really only scary in the NSA sense. In the bigger picture, it isn't scary, it's just the way things are in the real surreal, hard science sense, true in that weird, quantumly artful Alice way. Nothing is ever really lost, because time doesn't really work linearly like that.

Now I must apologize, but I must excuse myself from this tea party. I'm late for an important date, you see, I've an invitation to play croquet with the Queen. I won't be long, though, keep my seat warm. And keep an eye on my tarts for me, don't let Jack steal them!
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:14 pm

I see... ghost planes. Ghost planes, circling in a holding pattern around ghost towers.

Also see crows, circling RI. I like crows. That time of year, the old habits die hard. Velcome back, children of the night.

Ghost scenes playing like they do in old hauntings. The lights flicker in the hallway of an old mansion, the ghosts play the scene again. Could go on for years, hundreds of years. Until the Chinese exorcist dispels the pk with his whisk and chant.

Ghost train whistle at midnight, every third Friday of the month. Old films in dead air. The Dealey Plaza scene.

The ghosts are called, pulled by invisible lines of psychic gravity. Sometimes you can't see the scene, but you can feel it, replaying.

When I say I can see these things, see the ghost planes, I don't mean literally, with my eyes. And I don't see the crows in the nsa or fbi way, of course. And yet the ghost planes are circling, anyone who knows how to look can see them.

Got a stupid analogy for this. Naturally. Not one of my stupid video game analogies, one of my stupid Dune analogies.

Paul drinks the poison that only the witches can drink and not die from it. He falls unconscious for three months. Very irresponsible, it's right in the middle of the war, and he's needed on the battlefield. He's also chief strategist and otherworldly spiritual inspiration for the troops. It seems very irresponsible, at least.

He wakes up and he can see the Heighliners - Manhattan-sized commercial freighters of the Honorable Mercantile Advancement Combine - above the planet. He's sitting in a room with a ceiling, and no computer. But they're up there, and he can see them.

Fast-forward to the end of the story arc, five-thousand or so years later. Much has changed. The ships are even bigger than heighliners. Lots of people can see the way Paul could. But there are people and technologies now that are invisible to that kind of sight.

Miles Teg, the Bene Gesserits Bashar, while being tortured by an experimental mindprobe, fights it and escapes. But the mindprobe changed him. Now he can even see the things that are hidden to that kind of sight. He can see the things that are invisible to seers.

He takes advantage of this in battle, but he acts like it was all his Bashar skills that won the day. The Bene Gesserit are suspicious, but it is true that his Bashar skills are very formidable, he is the best there is, so it's plausible. Which is what Miles was banking on. Because he knows that if the Bene Gesserit found out about his scary new power, they'd probably lock him up.

Maybe you can see the ghost planes, too, I don't know. Ghost planes, circling in a holding pattern around ghost towers.
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Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

Postby dada » Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:46 am

Thinking about Monkey from Journey to the West. Who in the West knows about Monkey. Monkey, Sun Wukong. Not too many, I reckon. Not too many outside of the academy bubble. Even inside the bubble academy, I doubt many really know Monkey.

I was reading the Journey to the West page on Baidu, in the wiki-type section recently. I ended up there a few years ago while looking up the many Journey to the West movies. Searching through my bookmarks recently, looking for a Japanese poetry book, I saw a bookmark that said, "Journey (Journey to the ancient Writings of Ghost Stories)" I thought that was curious, so I went to investigate. It was the Journey to the West page. Don't know why it said ghost stories in the bookmark, I find it difficult to attribute that to bad google translation. But I just shrug those things off. I never found that poetry book, either.

There are some excellent bad google translations in the summary section of the Baidu page, good poetry-fodder. Further down the page the English becomes more coherent, in the Appreciation of Works section, a few articles that must have been written by academics. The first article on 'thought content' is in the style western academic philosophy, and takes a negative, critical approach. But it misses the point in every way. For lack of anything meaningful to say, the author of the article sets up straw men to knock down. The best is trying to look at Monkey as a 'classical hero.' Monkey is the great sage equaling heaven, he can't be compared to a classical hero. The story is an absurd surrealist comedy, there's really no way to do the 'comparative literary philosophy' thing with it. Just a failure of an article, even the idea of writing it fails. Someone should have told the author before he started, "You know, this is a dumb idea, and just makes you look foolish," and saved him the trouble.

But the other article, which takes a positive approach, is not much better. Discusses Journey to the West as high fantasy, a mythic story. It's like an advertisement, a book review in the NYTimes. Same thing.

Then there are a few blurb quotes, like book jacket endorsements. Mention made of how Journey to the West playfully brings together Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, with humor and satire.

And for the masses - who love it, it's hugely popular and always will be - it's just fun action adventure, for kids and kids of all ages.

But I don't know, I see something different in there. Monkey's journey has many aspects that correlate symbolically with the Iranian Sufism, Zoroastrianism, and Mandeanism works I'm reading about. A whole lot, in fact. Not hidden deep in there, either, the connections are striking. Sure, the Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist elements are in there, in the narrative itself. But what the story symbolically represents is something else.

I haven't found anyone in the West pointing this out, either. Not that it surprises me. But I find myself wondering, wondering. Journey to the West was compiled, as far as anyone knows, in the sixteen hundreds, from folk tales dating back at least to the twelve hundreds. So there's nothing to pinpoint, really. I know there are some direct connections between esoteric Islamic works from the twelve hundreds and some esoteric taoist works, so there's some precedent. But then I think the Islamic connection might be exactly why no one ever talks about it in China. Or maybe they really just don't know? Like, no one in China is aware of this, at all? I find that hard to believe.

Anyway, it's pretty great, reading the unabridged Journey to the West for the third time, and seeing it in an entirely new way. So I'm happy. And I like thinking about the others that knew or know this. It's like an inside joke that no one talks about. Much more than a joke though.

As an aside, I had been planning on reading Gurdjieff's big book to see if I would see it in an entirely new way, as well, and I just now decided to pick it up, and opened it right to the chapter 'The Bokharian Dervish,' where the old dervish is studying the 'ancient Chinese science.' Pretty funny. Great chapter, he's in rare form in that one.

He goes, "This part of Bokhara is called 'Upper' because it is very mountainous and much higher than that part of Bokhara which, to distinguish it, is called 'Lower Bokhara.' Made me laugh out loud. I don't know, maybe you gotta know Gurdjieff to see why that's so funny.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about Monkey.
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