...some of us can't wait, and are compelled to tell stories...

I imagine that all of our (human) genesis stories have something in common; but especially that they are encapsulated by our specific environments. We see things as we see things! And these things appear in our stories.

What re-occurs/appears in your bioregion? What sustains your people? This will eventually tell you what is anathema to you as well!

"Shape of escape" (panapsida) as a performance piece:

Okay, so: I presented a final project for a photography class at Wayne State University which introduced visually some of the affore disclosed ideas and the instructor and the senior class I was presenting to, thought greatly of it. It was suggested to me and even insisted by my instructor that I go to New York with it; but, well, sadly I'm not a good salesman. I balk whenever I MUST assert myself in this way.

Spiral Logic

To back track a bit: when I was relatively young I recall I did some drawings of plants and from these studies I had this nagging sense that everything progressed in time in a kind of spiral eventuality (the Golden or divine geometrical principle is apropos here). And so, I was very early on aware of the need to visualize in a four dimensional space. Seeing the so-called "chemical wave" in a Nature Magazine article, too, really invigorated me - and from my own appreciation of the phosphene display of my own retina - these experiences only supported this idea for me.

From this I had hopes of what the interactive educational software industry might develope for us - that is, what interactive educational opportunities might be available on line as alternatives to the commercial college educations out there!

The rationality of killing: the Goldhagen debate.

Need I say anything here?

Okay, "Whoah!" to me again. If Ethics is territorial; then morality is cyclical.

Okay, nevermind the details for now - but these are figures from a college philosophy (ethics) paper I submitted in 2000 at the University of Washington, Seattle.

...and William Blake!

Now there is an obvious promoter of the upper and lower as primary in any compostion!

Nevermind William Butler ...

...I want to know what his wife was visualizing!:

Hourglass applied to literary aspiration

Whoah there fella!

I got pretty carried away at one point - I was submersed in what I thought to be the political/territorial aspects of my "visions." This was a flipping of my personal hourglass if I can call it that. I had thought I had successfully diagramed Machiaveli's description of governmental cycles as a sinewave and then, well... thankfully, I recovered my aesthetic sanity. I'm not nor do I want to be a political scientist. Just a cultural critic through my art!

"Holy cartouche, Batman!"

As I have mentioned, I began to see everything in terms of the arbiform and toroid; but later simplified this to the hourglass. So, it's a parody of the psuedo-scientific and the so-called spiritual path, the "way" - the supposed divine knowledge supported by the esoteric schematics of the mystics, shamans, and the contemporary "New Age," wican and pagan cultural developments. The pun of course is in the "Book of Hours -" the suggestion of an illuminated holy book to keep by the bedside for comfort and prayer. Very promptly, however, text became secondary in my images, as labels, quotes and captions - thus the intertextual nature of what little narative can be discerned by the viewer/reader.

Again, why a blog on Neuroboros?

This blog is meant to be a description of the origins of "neuroboros" as well as a kind of source for reviewers of the epic poem of the same name, which has yet to be published in physical book form. It is no longer viewable at http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1517130-van. Some audio clips will be available through the acconpanying audio archive blog.

Hermetic Heritage...

There is nothing new about trying to schematize our being here in this "world." The uroboros is only one archetype among many that gave our visual inquiry its early start.

Some are more recent and pretty complicated, like the sefiroth.

The Mother Meristem becomes an intertextual project

There is circumcisal force around everything, while everything is compelled to emerge from a something else.

Panapsida becomes the "Mother Meristem"? "naves ... collapsing like the first word having the last say..."

Apparently this phrase is used elsewhere- regardless I also coined it myself at some point to suggest this unifying principle linking the paradigms I was investigating visually. It seems quite silly or culturally naiive perhaps, but I think of it as being like Tunkashila's Hands, the shape of the force behind everything.

the double helix and the sun

Matter followed like an eddie along with that which energized it. Light hit the surface of the waters and through an ultimate and primaeval compromise over eons life began entwined with the light-"rays"(?) of the sun. Thus the helix, the neuron... then the moving waters drew outward the matter of "life" into other eddies that mirrored the flow of the waters, fins and green strands of energy gathering manifolds. And then catastrophically, as it has been misconstrued to be, some of the "life" was abandoned by the waters - splat! Like being cast upon a wall, limbs flattened and pinate at the pinnacle from disasterous escape; while some of the life continued spiraling as it had begun, reaching up with green hands to get closer to the sun.

We have a history of re-invisioning our models of the microcosmic world; the atom has become not so much layers of shells any more and the Periodic table is morphing into a myriad of "galaxies." Perhaps it is inevitable that we will continue to re-invent the universe according to current advances in visual and not just mathematical or lingual competence. We are some of us waiting... but some of us can't wait, and are compelled to tell "stories." One day our scientific papers will all be collected by some as yet evolved intelligence and be considered to be our creation myths. Who knows, maybe one of us will be anonimously responsible for a rebirth of faith in the cosmos to reunite us all on a beautiful course through eternity.

conjecture

All of this of course is mere conjecture from a naiive artist. Regardless, whether I've the authority to announce anything, Say we agree the spiral to be the ultimate compromise of all points in a three dimensional space - what would we find to be the ultimate compromise of points in a moving space, and with evolving scaled topologies. I suspect we might visualize something akin to the involutions of phosphenes or chemical waves. But again the question must concern itself with all points including those near unstable surfaces and not just still interiors. It occurs to me then that the universe must have more than one shape. But while it might appear to some that evidence rests right under our noses I would not be so quick to equate a microorgnism in a petrie dish with a partical suspended in the more fluid solution of a test tube. We find ourselves always up against boundaries of some kind - if we limit our view to the moment, that is. Perhaps we must extend our view to include that which comes back at us, where suddenly the boundary has slipped into us, and veritably emanates back out again as if projected by some internal dynamo or sucked out by some cosmic soul-catcher. Again, of course this is no scientific pronouncement. It is merely the intuitions of a lowly artist who can do nothing else but consider our fate on this imperfect sphere.

synapsida becomes "panapsida"

Note the lateral correlations if you can...

but you can find better image detail at: http://www.myspace.com/arbiforum

the paradigm of shifting and splitting

What topological precedent set matter in motion as "life"?

The Bodies of Land, Bodies of Water Paradigms

Topologies and flow have a good deal to do with the shape of living objects and events.

the "shape of escape."

As you can see there is a sequence suggessted here. This is what became more involved later as my take on the concept of "paradigm shift." And I've suspected recently it has correspondences to Perelman's "... different topologies at different scales..." (from Donal O'Shea's The Poincaire Conjecture.)

the beginnings...

Neurobotos actually began back in the early eighties as something I called "the shape of escape" and then later "panapsida" and was brought about through my obcession with the arbiform and the toroid and the idea of everything as fluid travelling from open space to open space through portals as it were, graphically visualized as prostrated pathways like trunks of fallen and invisable trees, a sublime lattice of events and objects intertwined in integrated sequences of "individuation and involvement"(Susan Langer). Later I also conceived of it as my visual take on the concept of "nested hierarchies." Regardless I began to "see" everything in terms of this, and even at some point toyed with the idea of this being a privileged shamanic vision. I nearly succumbed to the idea that all disciplines and ideas could be bundled into this arbiform concept, that the interdisciplinary studies required this link as it were for us to progress to a numinous view of the universe, blah, blah, blah... I had wanted us all to freeze in our tracks all at once and understand that a visual competence was required and could be had in this way. Shikes!

You can find better image detail at http://www.myspace.com/arbiforum Just scroll down the main page.

tidy slum - ok, so this should be on a different blog

It isn't a new complaint: that of all these street sweepers and blowers are a waste of civic funds and earth's resources. Consider this as well however: if we are so committed to the illusion of order, of keeping the "city" looking like everything is under control - including nature, which only appears intrusive in the cleared spaces humans have attempted to preserve for their squandering of the plundered bits of earth they've dug up or cut down elsewhere - if we can commit so much effort to this denial of earth, to the belief that we have any natural riegn at all, we should not be surprised to find that the affirmation of the natural wilderness, living sustainably, and such too have become subsumed by the very commercial habits that maintain the illusion that we are separate from nature in the first place. If we buy a rake instead of a blower for instance there is still the valid question, "why do we care to clear away the falling leaves?"! I like the look of leaves in a natural breeze, and I for one know that leaves provide some nourishment for the soil. Trees apparently must suffer for the sake of the well-groomed lawn. And so we must now look for an environmentally friendly fertilizer to replace the leaves' gift, yet we've already been unfriendly haven't we. Perhaps we will never undo what we began when we cleared away the first forests. But we continue to behave as if our attempts to beautify the cities is an act of conservation. It is not. But apparently beauty still resides in the ayes of the stake holder. But no amount of levys or lies will keep the real intruder from making the same mistake over and over.

Why Neuroboros? a brief outline of "the Commonbook of Hour...s"

I find myself at times at odds with the real world. In such times I may submerse myself in the endeavors of artists such as Darren Aronofsky, or the Wachowski brothers to name only a few. At other times I am driven to construct my own worlds. I have a few works in progress. All of them are bound by a concept I call "neuroboros," an update on the uroboros archetype, our contemporary self-absorption.

Neuroboros, the Commonbook of Hourglasses, is a sort of concordance for three hands - a tripartite work wherein there are three voices: a parody of spiritual authority through a poetic text; a pseudo-scientific(hermetic) voice through visual images; and an aesthetic referential voice of extracted quotes from supposed "authoritative" literature (this being the primary reason for calling Neuroboros a "commonbook" journal). There are individual columns for each voice, and three stages within each voiced content. The spiritual voice is divided thus, though none too methodically: upper = mountain; middle = river and tree; bottom = fountain and flame. The pseudo-scientific voice: upper = sphere/thesis; middle = arbiform/antithesis; bottom = nested sigmoids, toroids and fields/synthesis. The aesthetic voice(s of authority): upper = oration, the proud up-reaching gesticulation of emphasis, fists clenched; middle = prayer, hands cupped together; bottom = loss and dread, the downward out-stretched hands of "Why me?"!