Reckon | The Whole World's a Stage

I'm Chris: Poet, lover of academy and porch, sidewalk and turning row. I am looking for everyone discovering her hands and camera trying to overstand the in between.

Reckon

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"Civilization is entirely the product of phonetic literacy. As it dissolves with the electronic revolution, we rediscover a tribal integral awareness that manifests itself in a complete shift in our sensory lives....This new electronic environment itself constitutes an inner trip, collectively, without benefit of drugs. The impulse to use hallucinogens is a kind of empathy with the electronic environment." - Marshall McLuhan
language:
“Language,” William S. Burroughs reminded us, “is a virus from outer space.” Performance artist Laurie Anderson adds, “That’s why I’d rather hear your name than see your face.” This metaphor captures beautifully both the power and the danger presented by the task of communicating the “flux of wholeness,” as Heather Raikes describes the rheomode. Raikes’ use of the rheomode suggests that technology might be seen not just as a channel for communication and performance, but more radically as the environment in which subjects serve as conduits for experience.   A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us; its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts. xxx“Language,” William S. Burroughs reminded us, “is a virus from outer space.” Performance artist Laurie Anderson adds, “That’s why I’d rather hear your name than see your face.” This metaphor captures beautifully both the power and the danger presented by the task of communicating the “flux of wholeness,” as Heather Raikes describes the rheomode. Raikes’ use of the rheomode suggests that technology might be seen not just as a channel for communication and performance, but more radically as the environment in which subjects serve as conduits for experience.   A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us; its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts. xxx

“Language,” William S. Burroughs reminded us, “is a virus from outer space.” Performance artist Laurie Anderson adds, “That’s why I’d rather hear your name than see your face.” This metaphor captures beautifully both the power and the danger presented by the task of communicating the “flux of wholeness,” as Heather Raikes describes the rheomode.

Raikes’ use of the rheomode suggests that technology might be seen not just as a channel for communication and performance, but more radically as the environment in which subjects serve as conduits for experience.   A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us; its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts.

xxx

written on the body III. via w;twritten on the body III. via w;t

written on the body III.

via w;t

unchienandalou: aja: Tauba Auerbach unchienandalou: aja: Tauba Auerbach

unchienandalou:

aja:

Tauba Auerbach

“Words are the means to get the idea where you want it,
catch on to the idea and you forget about the words.”

—Chuang Tzu fUSION Anomaly. Language (via kenmat)

Amazonian Tribe Doesn't Have Words For Numbers »

robot-heart:

danielholter:afghanistanbananastand:

A small group of hunter/gatherers living in the Amazon rain forest is overturning some fundamental assumptions about the mind. Although linguists have long believed that counting and having words for numbers are basic, if not innate, to human cognition, the Pirahã people in Brazil have no words to express numerical concepts such as “one,” “two,” or “many.” “They don’t count and they have no number words,” says MIT cognitive scientist Edward Gibson, who headed a study published in the journal Cognition [pdf].

The researchers spent eight days in a Pirahã rain forest village conducting counting tests on adult members of the tribe. Sometimes the experimenter placed varying numbers of spools of thread on a table and asked the participant to perform a simple one-to-one task, such as laying down the same quantity of uninflated balloons. Other tasks required remembering how many spools had been placed inside a can.

On a related note : I just finished reading Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, about an evangelist who goes to live with the Pirahã people (to ostensibly save them/convert them), and it was quite fascinating, eyeopening, and remarkable.  The author ends up appreciating their way of life, renouncing his faith and losing friends and family in the process.

furryrabbits: missmodular: Nod Young’s take on The Puti Trees poems, an excellent exploration of Chinese characters.  Did I just screw up the meaning by arranging them in this manner?  Fail. (via happy cavalier) furryrabbits: missmodular: Nod Young’s take on The Puti Trees poems, an excellent exploration of Chinese characters.  Did I just screw up the meaning by arranging them in this manner?  Fail. (via happy cavalier)

furryrabbits:

missmodular:

Nod Young’s take on The Puti Trees poems, an excellent exploration of Chinese characters.  Did I just screw up the meaning by arranging them in this manner?  Fail.

(via happy cavalier)

“Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.”

—Ludwig Wittgenstein
barefootvinyl: 6od: I fLOVE Jenny Holzer!!! I took pictures of something that Peggy Guggenheim bought of hers and is in her museum in Venice, Italy… but I haven’t posted them on flickr yet… It is probably one of my favorite poems and it’s engraved into a park bench. I should probably post them now, huh?juliemiller:sympathyfortheartgallery:maybeitsallok: This is by Jenny Holzer, she has a pretty great gallery on her website of this style work from all around the world. barefootvinyl: 6od: I fLOVE Jenny Holzer!!! I took pictures of something that Peggy Guggenheim bought of hers and is in her museum in Venice, Italy… but I haven’t posted them on flickr yet… It is probably one of my favorite poems and it’s engraved into a park bench. I should probably post them now, huh?juliemiller:sympathyfortheartgallery:maybeitsallok: This is by Jenny Holzer, she has a pretty great gallery on her website of this style work from all around the world.

barefootvinyl:

6od:

I fLOVE Jenny Holzer!!! I took pictures of something that Peggy Guggenheim bought of hers and is in her museum in Venice, Italy… but I haven’t posted them on flickr yet… It is probably one of my favorite poems and it’s engraved into a park bench.

I should probably post them now, huh?
juliemiller:sympathyfortheartgallery:maybeitsallok:

This is by Jenny Holzer, she has a pretty great gallery on her website of this style work from all around the world.
havent-got-a-prayer: cwphoto:havent-got-a-prayer: cwphoto:

havent-got-a-prayer:

cwphoto:
Fiona Banner Every Word Unmade (Neon Alphabet) Frith Street GalleryFiona Banner Every Word Unmade (Neon Alphabet) Frith Street Gallery

Fiona Banner

Every Word Unmade (Neon Alphabet)

Frith Street Gallery

Cunnilingus in North Korea »

ashleystar:

(via amaclean)

by Young-Hae Chang | Heavy Industries

“

Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty well. The poets have hardly touched it.

In March 1958, when I was living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make available to literature the means that painters have been using for fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them. You’ll hear someone draw a bow-string. Who runs may read, To read better, practice your running.

”

—Brion Gysin (Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success)

Tumblr is a pharmakon.

henryeatspeople:

… Right now I’m looking at a copy of the Phaedrus, a fictional conversation between Socrates and a young Athenian named Phaedrus.
Socrates is trying to convince the young man that speech is better than written communication, or any recorded communication including film. According to Socrates, the god Theuth in ancient Egypt invented numbers and calculations and gambling and geometry and astronomy… and Theuth invented writing. Then he presented his inventions to the great god-king Thamus, asking which of them should be presented to the Egyption people.
Thamus ruled that writing was a pharmakon. Like the word “drug” it could be used for good or bad. It could cure or poison.
According to Thamus, writing would allow humans to extend their memories and share information. But, more important, writing would allow humans to rely too much on these external means of recording. Our own memories would wither and fail. Our notes and records would replace our minds.
Worse than that, written information can’t teach, according to Thamus. You can’t question it, and it can’t defend itself when people misunderstand or misrepresent it. Written communcation gives people what Thamus called “the false conceit of knowledge,” a fake certainty that they understand something.
So, all those videotapes of your childhood, will they really give you a better understanding of yourself? Or will they just shore up whatever faulty memories you have? Can they replace your ability to sit down and ask your family questions? To learn from your grandparents.
If Thamus were here, I’d tell him that memory itself is a pharmakon.

-from Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”

—William S. Burroughs