Just a stream of consciousness this morning…
I was thinking about Bach, and Escher!
Can we say the following apply?
1.) The discovery of a universal concept or structure.
2.) The demonstration of mastering understanding of a concept via transmutation.
3.) The creation of new high art by way of playfulness thus leading to new discovery.
The cycle repeats…
… do not forget to include Kurt Friedrich Gödel
Would you like to expand on your thinking?
What inspired your “stream of consciousness”?
Having to endure low art traits in the modern world, as “high art” has been relentlessly eroded, replaced and fragmented by mundane tinkerings worldwide, just like natural living ecosystems are being replaced by artificial, dead, non-living matter?
Reading the book to which Scarmodge alluded?
Wishful, nostalgic thinking of what life could be like if people thought about the likes of Bach and Escher?
All that is just a harmonic of the code creating the great simulation we live in. There can be beauty in the code. Fibonacci sequences present in ammonite shells etc.
I guess only to say, I think I was struck by their use of the ‘code’ to actually be able to see the matrix as it were, and then to use it as a canvas?
I am having enough trouble even getting a glimpse with Bach and Escher, Gödel I cant even fathom.
It seems to me like they were able to rotate the geometry to the angle where everything looks like a recursive infinite loop, a kind of multidimensional illusion?
In fairness you soon get lost even thinking about it, well I do anyway.
Well, you definitely created an intriguing place to ponder with that stream of consciousness… Thanks.
I just found this video, seems to show a weird illusion where an object looks different when reflected and rotated.
And could be a total red herring but isnt that what Hari Seldon is doing with the prime radiant in Foundation?
That is interesting thinking, Shadownet, that a brilliant mind is able to (detect and?) use “code” to see and use the matrix as a canvas.
I wander through this realm with only very minute and partial vision, as I’ve not yet fully grasped the genius within people, not being an artist or genius myself.
I had tried to read that book many years ago, and didn’t have the physics background to fully appreciate the depth of the ideas. And, at the time, (being a nature lover), I also had an uncomfortable impression that many natural phenomenae seemed to have been thought of as being a “code” of some sort. To me, once something is thought of in terms of “code”, that then cancels out “individuality” (something that can’t be codified). This part of the sciences somehow bothered me. And I suppose that yes, if one thinks of something as a “code”, without any individuality, then it is possible to rotate it into whatever one likes, or even transmute it into something else altogether.
It is fascinating, though, to contemplate what these artists were doing, perhaps possibly even extracting their “codes” for their artistry from the spiritual realm… through extra-sensory perceptions… (as I’m convinced that we have more senses than we’ve been told, that lie dormant in many of us).
BTW: Your description of “recursive infinite loop, a kind of multidimensional illusion” also brought to surface some memories of gazing through kaleidoscopes as a kid!!!
Same here, I suppose things like the Mandelbrot set are just manifestations of a mathematical sequence that becomes recognisable via looping, so the periodicity of the sequence is really the trigger that breaks the spell of illusion.
If you are in the middle of the period how can you recognise it is looping?
[Just having a read, the set is fractal so loop is not really correct here but its a recognisable sequence creating new detail as it plays out like a transcendental sequence.]
Have you any way of detecting whether that “illusion” could be AI-generated?
i.e., that we’re seeing a “fabrication” instead of an “illusion”?
Not really, maybe our minds are hard wired to accept the illusion?
… see the film Waking Life. It is a pretty good run at answering the question you are asking.
For a moment there i thought oh yeah, I sort of get it, and then realised I really have no idea what planet Bach was from.
How could he attempt to describe a duality between heaven and earth with the knowledge of his era?
Divine intervention?
Thanks for sharing film suggestion re: “Waking Life”. In all honesty, we could not take in more than 20 minutes of that academically abstract film (in which different ideas of reality are explored), which emitted a dystopian resonance, not only via the film’s visual animation artistry, but also via the musical soundtrack – depressing neuvo tango style very much like Piazolla’s music. That film emits a darkly negative Affektenlehre quality. I much prefer listening to Bach! I suppose that, in itself, is some kind of demonstration as to where “art” has progressed. We’re curious as to your own response when you first viewed that film… and how you would rank it in terms of “high” art…? Curiously enough, I found the Wikipedia article about how the film was made, to be fascinating. There was a quote in that article about Linklater’s film idea: “I think to make a realistic film about an unreality the film had to be a realistic unreality”.
Lately, I’ve been reading a copy of “The Best Known Works of Voltaire” (1927), and in that book is a story called “The Huron, or Pupil of Nature”. What is interesting about this story, is that it was written by someone who lived contemporary with Bach – and so there were thoughts about Renaissance ideals coming through the words – just like Bach’s works also captured higher Renaissance elements through sound. At the same time, Voltaire also experienced the dystopian elements of life under elite rulership, and his Huron character, who was being enlightened by another prisoner in a dungeon, remarked (pg 211) “I suspect that illusion, fashion, caprice, often warp the judgments of men”.
Voltaire, himself, was tossed into prisons simply for speaking his mind, for simply saying what he thought about things. In Canada, there have been a lot of political prisoners and people who have lost their jobs for simply speaking the way they see reality. A new law is being proposed that will criminalize any opinion that differs from the politically forced logos, as “hate speech”. And we are closely following the work (including her books) of (former) Professor Frances Widdowson PhD, who is exploring these issues of how societies break down when they revert to tribalistic identity politics. It is Voltaire’s idea of caprice being played out to its fullest in such a law (and which was embodied in Piazolla’s musical ideas) – where if you say anything that differs from the political flavour of the day, you can be tossed into prison for uttering “hate speech”.
And this brings me to Shadownet’s fascination with Bach’s high art – it is the opposite of “caprice”, and consistently so, no matter which of his compositions you take in. Bach’s compositions offer an art form that is stable and grounding, even while it moves, even through all of its brilliant complexity. By contrast, I’ve not developed a taste of some of Piazolla’s compositions or other composers who followed his neuvo tango style (despite my being an accordionist), because of the destabilizing “capricious” nature of this style of music – which were brought to mind in the soundtrack of “Waking Life”.
We went to an art display yesterday, of an artist who sculpts true-to-life images of animals and people from pieces of driftwood and paper. This reminded us of the dire need to support the high arts, in any ways that we can. Artists like this give us hope that there are still segments of society that are able to connect to the spiritual realm to inspire their imaginations, and thereby inspire the rest of us to move deeper into exploring spiritual life to balance our materialistic values.
Thank you, Shadownet, for your throughtful post, and giving us to ponder a little about the value of high art traits in a civilization that does not think about them.
Perhaps a tangent, but I think this is worth a discussion especially with regard to High Art… and what happened to it on a sculptural/architectural plane… or just jump to the energy grid about 30 minutes in.
A friend had asked us what we thought about this video several months ago – and we didn’t know what to make of it – it raised some good questions for sure about the corrosion of high art, but something felt a little “off” about it, and I wonder if there is a bit of an underlying agenda… And if anything was photoshopped…
That said about the video – we have no doubt that we’ve been lied to about history in general.
Breathtaking, high art indeed. The cathedral builders reached for the stars.
While providing a network of electrical connections back down to the ground… So glad we are waking UP.