tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-214436542024-03-13T16:58:42.267+01:00Zombie 'PataphysicsAn excursion into certain areas of art, computers, philosophy, text, zombies, alchemy, metallurgy, music, food, creativity, pataphysics, politics, France where I worked as a cultural civil servant (yes, I do know that this is appalling), Berlin where I live and work for me, England where I come from, and so on... this may change.BRSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090441994395511995noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21443654.post-65410121619302512122016-11-07T14:21:00.001+01:002016-11-07T14:21:45.677+01:00Crease Crumple Fold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Meanwhile, please note that there is Zombie-Pataphysical content on my Facebook site, using Brian Reffin Smith.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Note: since this photo was taken, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29581342" target="_blank">Kim Jong-un has disappeared</a></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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Zombie 'Pataphysics and Trains Why Not - some photos.</h2>
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(Gallery photos of opening, performances and Zombification, on the Muses Maschine site, <a href="http://www.musesmaschine.net/#/Er%C3%B6ffnung" target="_blank">here</a>)</h2>
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Some images are in red/blue 3D (anaglyph stereo) requiring red/blue glasses</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"In a Bad Place with a Good Idea"</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">VW Microbus playing an LP of train sounds</td></tr>
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A video sketch for a performance at Zombie 'Pataphysics and Trains Why Not, my art show in Berlin.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">(Based on a paper given at the 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, October 2013, Riga, Latvia)</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The Anti-Kuhn: Post-Media
Art, a Zombie-Pataphysical Approach</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Thomas Kuhn’s argument
that science proceeds with periods of dominant normality interrupted by
paradigm shifts, where everything is uncertain until one paradigm becomes
dominant (Kuhn 1962) is important and useful (Fig.1).</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">1. ‘Normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ science</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> I use the title
‘Anti-Kuhn’ only in the sense that an antithesis is ‘against’ a thesis.
Computer-based or new media art knows no ‘normality’. Every moment is
revolutionary, every paradigm is up for grabs (Smith 1997). There is no time
for the development of a critical discourse, nor to examine the flux properly
(Fig.2).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">2. Constant revolution</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">How to think and write
about, make and curate, art that is undecidable? We make theories. But these
theories, since they seem to be slightly more concrete than the chaotic flux of
media art, instantly assume the status of fact, of monumental criteria for
judging… something, never mind, quite, what. The theories are what we can
handle best. (I have been to conferences about, for example, cognition in art,
or histories of media art, where there were no artists involved at all, not
one, and few artworks mentioned too.) This is mirrored in our avoidance of the
concrete in social media. We use Facebook to show that we use Facebook and
tweet to show that we tweet. We are the first generation to become less
literate by reading, less seeing by looking, less listening by hearing, less
communicating by talking, less social by using social media and less
revolutionary by making art. All that is solid melts into air, as Marx and
Engels predicted for late capitalism in their Communist Manifesto (Marx 1848). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">When
the <i>Kunstkammern</i> or cabinets of curiosities became offensive to
post-enlightenment orderliness they were categorised in museums. You’d have
though that order had replaced whim and chaos but it’s possible to see this
curation more as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The ‘objective’
museum could now categorise everything. But we know of course that there is no
single objectivity and that categories can be whimsical. To misquote Borges, we
can, for example, exhibit things which from a distance look like art. Too
often, these categories were also symptoms of anxiety, which is nearly always
quantitative and tends to see strangeness and complexity where similarity and
resemblance might be more useful. As Gregory Bateson has said, when a crab has
one huge pincer and one small one, it is still the similarity between the claws
that is important, the ‘pattern that connects’, not the difference in a size
(Bateson 1979).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">So: if we can’t trust
categories, and anyway that which is to be categorised is in a constant state
of flux, what is to be done? I have referred to a ‘Zombie-Pataphysical
approach’ in my title, and want to show two examples in my own art work as well
as claim their use for making sense of new media art. So why Zombie, and what
is ’pataphysics?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(First, an interjection:
does any of this really matter at all? I believe it does, and here, as simply
as I can state it, is why: if there is something in chaos, and those producing
the processes and objects of, and discourses around, this chaos claim that even
if it looks chaotic in fact it isn’t and might be really, really important in
art and the world, then we have two choices. We can either use our habitual
tools of ‘art thinking’ to try to make sense of it, or refuse to fragment
wobbling jelly with a large mallet. As a practitioner and theoretician of
computer-based art (part of but not the whole of new media), I have a
professional obligation and a psychological imperative to make sense of what I
and others are doing.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">’Pataphysics is the
absurdist ‘science’ of the impossible, of the exception, of imaginary solutions
to non-existent problems. I want to use certain ideas from that discipline to
establish the possibility of a new approach to Post Media art, one needing no media
at all, Post-Modem, Post-Everything. Paul Feyerabend’s arguments in ‘Against
Method’ (Feyerabend 1975) and ‘Science in a Free Society (Feyerabend 1978)
against methodologies in science (such as Kuhn’s and even more so Karl
Popper’s) were based not on an absence of rules, but a basic undecidability
between them. He wanted an injection of anarchic or dadaistic thinking. As
Christian Bök has observed, ’Pataphysics <i>dramatises</i> Feyerabend’s ludic
principle (Bök 2001) (as such, this is an excellent example of anticipatory
intervention, rather than ’pataphysics’ beloved “plagiarism by anticipation”,
used to describe pataphysical thinking before ’pataphysics.) Shall I then be
arguing that if ’pataphysics is a sort of poetics of science, then that makes
it a bit like art? Not at all. ’Pataphysics is no more poetic when applied to
science, art or media, than is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">i</i>, the
imaginary square root of minus 1, applied to the real numbers (things like 2,
984, -13 and so on) to give complex numbers consisting of real and imaginary
parts, at the basis of just about everything of practical applicability in
mathematics. ’Pataphysics provides<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>space, permission (even obligation) to play games (and in doing so to
discover temporary, psychedelic rules) and to slice things differently. As such
it is a prime candidate for decomposing, deconstructing in fact, our
methodologies for understanding the past, present and future of new media art,
its objects, actors, histories, languages and so on. <span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Confronted with, say, a study suggesting that it is of some value to
correlate the redness or size of an artist’s paintings through time with, say,
life events of that artist, ’pataphysics reaches for its revolver and
shoots…bullets into a canvas; or slashes it (and then spends time sewing up the
holes, the ‘Femme à Fontana’ project undertaken by Aline Gagnaire, a member of
Oupeinpo, the art equivalent of Oulipo, under the umbrella of the Collège de
’Pataphysique, Paris). Another example of Oupeinpian work produced by Jack
Vanarsky used the constraint of making the Seine, flowing through the French
capital, a straight line, and seeing - showing - how that distorted the rest of
Paris that surrounds it. Such an act is central to my thesis here. </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Oulipo is the Ouvroir de Litérature Potentielle, or
Potential Litterature Workshop: Oupeinpo is the Potential Painting Workshop.)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The
development of the processes of the computer based arts is nonlinear,
multi-dimensional, chaotic and ‘difficult’. If we treat it as a straight line,
then we can do that, but it will distort - it does presently distort - all that
surrounds it. If what surrounds it is first wilfully distorted, we might
discover some truth.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Why Zombie? We are not
too concerned here with brain-eaters. But they, the living daed, are a
transgression, both totally alive and, impossibly, totally dead. They are both
‘yes’, and ‘no’. They are the answer ‘whatever’ to any question. They are a
superposition of states. The ‘philosophical’ or <i>p-</i>Zombie, more useful
here, is just like us, yet a Zombie. It is indistinguishable from us, there is
no test whatever that could differentiate it from a normal human being; but
it’s a Zombie. It has no <i>‘qualia’</i>, no <i>real</i> feelings. Yet it is a
perfect simulacrum of a human and again, you can’t tell the difference. We may
all be Zombies, and we wouldn’t know it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Zombies make excellent
art critics and historians. They make all the right noises, but have no <i>real</i>
feelings one way or another. Their aesthetic or other ‘judgements’ are just
perfect, unconscious pretences. As such, they have no methodology, no <i>a
priori</i> structure even though they might say they have, or look as if they
have.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Let us imagine ourselves
to be simultaneously such a Zombie art critic or historian and a pataphysician
(I would assert of course that in fact that we are all both, without any
exceptions, we just have to get used to recognising it). Then how might we
proceed to look at computer art, made partially or wholly by machines without a
soul at the behest of those claiming to be conscious, ethical, moral, aesthetically
aware and so on?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The pataphysician (since
s/he has nothing to do with the purely random) would take artworks, processes
or concepts from this river of art, and use them reflexively, on the river
itself, not to straighten it but to make it <i>temporarily decidable and hence
other than itself. </i>But <i>this</i> alienation is utterly unlike that of
those who would impose order and category upon it. This <i>détournement</i> or
hijacking is full of glorious possibility.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The Zombie would shrug
and say “whatever”. A deeply rigorous, defensible, rich, ambiguous “whatever”,
however.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">So I now want to take two
Zombie Pataphysical themes from my own work and use them to construct a
possible approach to ways of making sense of such computer based. The first is
the idea of “Inside-Out”, in the sense that one can turn a glove inside out.
With an image, one simply operates on it cartographically to map the edges to
the centre (where they become infinitely small) and the centre to the edges,
where it continues to infinity. Fig. 3 shows an example, an image of the moon
turned inside out. The whole of space is at its centre. What is peripheral
becomes central. What was central moves to the margins.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NGVL0N0mZ_E/Uu5NSMzjU6I/AAAAAAAAAeY/LrvZ20lV5PQ/s1600/Figure+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NGVL0N0mZ_E/Uu5NSMzjU6I/AAAAAAAAAeY/LrvZ20lV5PQ/s1600/Figure+3.jpg" height="304" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">3. The moon turned inside out</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">That was done in two
dimensions, but of course one can imagine, with some difficulty, such an
operation in three dimensions, the core going to the surface and beyond, the
outside moving to the centre. A sculpture of a glove could indeed be turned
inside out, in some sense. But what would it mean for a text, a film, a piece
of music to be turned inside out? The beginning and the end would be in the
middle, the middle would be at the extreme start and finish. Or a novel, easier
to manipulate? The first page and the last as neighbours in the middle, the
middle two pages now the beginning and the end… and the same for a film.
Imagine <i>Casablanca</i> like that: I am working on such a version using still
photos of the entire film.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This is pataphysical
because it uses a constraint to produce ultimate liberation (of the centre);
and Zombie because it recognises that it is just a matter of fortune that the
moon is as it is, and Casablanca was made with a beginning, a middle and an
end, rather than a middle, an end, a beginning and another middle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">If we apply this to a
history or vision of new media art we are immediately in Post-Media Art
territory, because the structure loses all relation to a conventional linkage
of means of production to some time-scale, and art-historical considerations
are, literally, turned on their heads. Of course the result of turning a
history of media art inside-out depends on what we started with. As an exercise
for the reader, I suggest buying a second hand copy of a book purporting to be
such a history, ripping out all the pages and replacing them so as to make a
differently-coherent whole, with the beginning and the end now in the middle
and vice versa. We love cause and effect, so this history might tell us that
1950s images on cathode ray tubes manipulated by analogue computers were the
direct result of and neighbour of neuro-telematics. Or the other way round. And
that 1970s paintbox art was still cutting edge, whilst fractals began it all.
This is simplistic, but worth doing just on this single time dimension. Of
course there are many other dimensions one can use, such as postulated
adjacency to ‘conventional’ art movements. Did cubism influence Virtual
Reality? Yes, in Pataphysical terms, and is certainly guilty of plagiarism by
anticipation. And in a way, it did, did it not?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The second theme is that
of “Out-betweening” or extra-morphosis, by analogy with in-betweening and
metamorphosis. A cartoon mouse is drawn by some animation expert with its hand
in the air, and then with the hand by its side. Lesser cartoonists - the
in-betweeners - then draw a succession of hands (and arms) at positions in
between, and when these are animated we see the character’s hand in motion. Or
a triangle gradually morphs into a circle, losing its points and its sides
inflating and curving. To go the other way would make a circle suck itself with
3-dimensional symmetry, and become more and more pointy. That too is
in-betweening. We can do it simply on a piece of paper using a ruler and
pencil, distributing points of interest on two shapes as we see fit, drawing
lines between them, and measuring the midpoints of all these lines, then
joining them up to make a figure that is 50% A and 50% B. Fig. 4 shows this
process applied to a Z and a square.</span></span><br />
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-egtdjmd747g/Uu5NOF1PfwI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/EtL_6co3Sw0/s1600/Figure+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-egtdjmd747g/Uu5NOF1PfwI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/EtL_6co3Sw0/s1600/Figure+4.jpg" height="141" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">4. In-between and Out-between</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">But what if the process
did not stop (Fig. 5)? </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L9Bu39ksRy4/Uu5NTGp9OiI/AAAAAAAAAeg/sCOWn_nphug/s1600/Figure+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L9Bu39ksRy4/Uu5NTGp9OiI/AAAAAAAAAeg/sCOWn_nphug/s1600/Figure+5.jpg" height="320" width="185" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">5. Circle and triangle morphing in and out</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">What if we let the lines continue, outside the two figures?
And then measured the same distance outwards from B as we measured inside,
between A and B, and then joined up the points again? What we now have -
strangely - is 150% B, the Out-Between. Fig. 4 also shows this Out-Between.
’Pataphysics obliges us to consider such crazy notions, Zombie considers the
Out-Between exactly as significant as any in-between. The amazing thing is that
the new figure, the Out-Between, is in fact a <i>caricature</i> of B, as seen
by A! Of course this can be taken very far, as an idea and tool. I have used
this extensively in my own work, and again, not only visually. </span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Let us now consider how
this process might be applied media art. We must search for two different
paradigms, first in-between them, morphing them, and then apply Out-Between.
Let us take two paradigms then, the first being that media art is is entirely a
reflection and utilisation of available technologies, that it is
technologically driven and determined. For example, if a cheap new method of
capturing and analysing brain electrical activity via a headset emerges, there
will be many new works of art that employ that, because it exists, and
stimulates ideas about how it could be used. The second paradigm might be quite
different, one asserting that it is the current of contemporary art that most
influences new media creation: for example, if it becomes the Zeitgeist to use
slow animation, or something to do with structures at the molecular or cosmic
level, then media artists will use available technologies to try to do that
kind of art.</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">We might call the first
paradigm TD for Technological Determinism, and the second ZG for Zeitgeist. It
is easy to morph one to the other. Remember that morphing can be of any A to
any B, through some space which may be 2-Dimensional as in a drawing, or some
more semantic space as in this case. We need not be rigorous, it is a
qualitative, not quantitative phenomenon, even if calculation might sometimes
be involved.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Let us then imagine that
in between DT and ZG there is a paradigm P (Fig. 6). </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRJipoEBG0c/Uu5NT7vAF-I/AAAAAAAAAeo/Mf_hUdcS8sM/s1600/Figure+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRJipoEBG0c/Uu5NT7vAF-I/AAAAAAAAAeo/Mf_hUdcS8sM/s1600/Figure+6.jpg" height="221" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">6. In- and Out-betweens of paradigms</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">We might say it is a bit
of both. What happens to DT to become more like ZG? It would gradually rely
less upon manufacturers’ PR, and more upon attention to contemporary art. It
might use older technology, in old or new ways. It would not think that the cost
of its systems was a criterion of artistic excellence…well it would a bit,
because we are in-between the two paradigms. Similarly, the ZG paradigm would
become more and more aware that the aura of certain kinds of technology can
sometimes add artistic value to a project; and that a new technological
possibility can actually connect with the artistic Zeitgeist to let new hybrid
ideas emerge. A mixture of these two “compromises” or awarenesses is what P
actually is. We might agree that most media art is more P than either TD or ZG.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Here</span></i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">
is the power of this approach. We can now ask the question, in a way hidden
until now: What is the space through which this morphing occurs - in other
words, what is the ground for such paradigms and paradigm shifts? An answer
might, of course, lead to a new awareness of how to structure new paradigms, a
kind of unexpected brainstorming. In a moment, we shall consider what the
Out-Betweens might reveal.</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I would assert that based
on the above, a likely dimension (this to simplify; of course the problem is
multi-dimensional in n-D space) along which these changes (from TD to ZG) occur
is simply one of the “technological presence” in the artwork. At one extreme,
the TD end, we might have a walk-in booth covered in video cameras and screens,
where touching the interactive sensitive surfaces changes the image of the
visitor on the screens, who is seen touching the screens on which he or she is
portrayed touching those very screens. This <i>mise-en-abyme</i> might be fun
for a few minutes. At the other, ZG end, we might be confronted with what looks
like a conventional installation of fur-covered objects in a room, but which
senses movement and has face-recognition capabilities, and changes shape as we
observe it. We don’t know how it does that, but people might stay some time
interacting with it by looking or gesturing, trying to analyse what rules, if
any, it was using.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">We can imagine artworks,
installations, at various points along this spectrum. Now, perhaps we can
categorise examples of media art along this scale, and see how they, or
artists, position themselves along that dimension, and what changes might
occur.</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">To see how this might
also be useful artistically, let’s take the Out-Between along this dimension.
Remember that it’s like a caricature, as seen from the other end. So the
Out-Between beyond ZG - a caricature of media arts that pay attention to
current issues of contemporary art might be something like paintings done with
a computer and water-colour plotter that are indistinguishable from those done
by hand (this exists, the WaterColorBot). Only the paintings would be shown,
not the process of producing them. Do we know other examples, across the
decades, of art like that?</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">At the other extreme
might be technology for the sake of technology, just set up in a gallery, doing
its technological things and sort of pretending to be art. Do we know examples
of that?</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The idea, the
paradigm-questioning act, now becomes: make an exhibition of works using these
extremes only. By doing so, a new paradigm <i>must</i> emerge or suggest itself
to visitors, and raise, recursively, the same questions I raise above. This
would indeed be Post-Media Art.</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<br /></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I hope that I have shown
that since the histories and paradigms of new media are chaotic, non-linear and
in some formal sense ‘crazy’, then it is entirely appropriate to use crazy
means - those of ’Pataphysics, of Zombie - to analyse them, to change them, to
caricature them or turn them inside-out, to make more art, and to open the
entire area up for a somewhat delirious discussion. Above all, we must see that
making art with new media and analysing new media are, or could be, the same
thing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">References:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Bateson, Gregory. 1979.
Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New
York: Bantam Books</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Bök, Christion. 2001.
Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science. Evanston (IL): Northwestern
University Press</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Feyerabend, Paul. 1975.
Against Method. London: Verso (4th edition, 2010)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Feyerabend, Paul. 1978.
Science in a Free Society. London: New Left Books</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Marx, Karl & Engels,
Friedrich. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, (2004)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Smith, Brian Reffin.
1997. Post-Modem Art <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> Mealing,
Stuart, Computers & Art. Bristol, UK: Intellect (2nd edition 2002)</span></span></div>
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<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a4atNVZDt-g/Ut00y8KCqBI/AAAAAAAAAds/bSIudA4bwzY/s1600/paintingbynumbers1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a4atNVZDt-g/Ut00y8KCqBI/AAAAAAAAAds/bSIudA4bwzY/s1600/paintingbynumbers1.jpg" height="332" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet (over 5000 numbered areas for YOU to colour in!)</div>
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things that are the main interest of the zombie-oriented. A fascination
with Object-Oriented-Ontology, where it is thingness that counts as much
as or more than what the thing is. It is also salutary to consider
people, processes, whatever, as "things", just in this sense. It's not a
psycho- or socio-pathological objectification, but rather a different way
of looking at any "thing" in the universe, including of course the
universe itself. We are all things, in some sense, so let's not get too
bloody pompous and arrogant about ourselves.<br />
<br />
In the process of
making artworks and installations using <i>détournements</i> or abusive misuse of model railways, I came across
the possibility to download for free or for little money, kits of
buildings that can be printed (2-D) cut out and assembled (they come
from Scalescenes.com and the one shown here is free to download). I have little or no intention of doing any of the fiddly
stuff, but just appreciate the designs for what they are, a kind of
greeting card sent from another epoch of industrial archeology. No one
wants modern buildings associated with model trains, just stuff from about 1920 to 1970.
Wonderful.<br />
<br />
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</h3>
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
More Zombie Art; or, Wheel Charts as a Means for Understanding the World
</h3>
<div class="post-header">
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A small part of the large collection of wheelcharts (or wheel charts)
which I use as approximations to artworks. The creatively ambitious
reader will realise that one can take the inner, information-bearing
wheel from one wheelchart and combine it with the upper wheel - the one
with windows cut in it - or some cut out or transparent pointer,
measuring device or scale - from another. The reader is left to imagine
this.<br />
<br />
Insofar as Zombies find anything "beautiful" (no such thing of course) these are "beautiful".<br />
<br />
And, if you have been: thanks for looking...<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/7.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/400/7.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/8.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/400/8.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a><br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/6.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/400/6.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/2.3.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/400/2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a><br />
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<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-96HaAiOtnFg/UlFsxPdu8MI/AAAAAAAAAbs/fqCsjsL6nd8/s1600/zwalkriga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-96HaAiOtnFg/UlFsxPdu8MI/AAAAAAAAAbs/fqCsjsL6nd8/s320/zwalkriga.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
We are the first generation to become less literate by reading, less
seeing by looking, less listening by hearing, less communicating by
talking, less social by using social media and less revolutionary by
making art. Thomas Kuhn’s argument that science proceeds with periods of
dominant normality interrupted by paradigm shifts, was important and
useful. I use the title ‘Anti-Kuhn’ only in the sense that an antithesis
is ‘against’ a thesis. Computer-based art, however, knows no
‘normality’. Every moment is revolutionary, every paradigm is up for
grabs. There is no time for the development of a critical discourse, nor
to examine the flux properly. When revolution becomes ‘normal’, a
transgression occurs. You can’t tell the difference between progress and
stasis. Art enters a ‘Zombie’ state, both dead and alive, true and
false, one and zero. It becomes undecidable. How do you think and write
about, curate and make, art that is undecidable? It is proposed in this
comedic, interactive and hopefully revolutionary paper that Post-Media
art should be independent of outdating technologies and electricity
supplies. What counts in art – surely? – are the ideas, which don’t care
about their medium of support or transmission. Ideas are not time based
but can be structured in an ‘all-at-once’ way. Then criticism of and
discourse about such art must occur in an all-at-once way, with no past,
present or even future. We need an art that makes us – viewer,
participant, critic, artist – do homework instead of networking. But
how? Pataphysics is the absurdist ‘science’ of the impossible, the
exception, of imaginary solutions to non-existent problems. I propose to
use certain ideas from that discipline to establish the possibility of a
new approach to Post Media art, one needing no media at all,
Post-Modem, Post-Everything.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WwqmQ6IrFoY/Uj2P21VcMSI/AAAAAAAAAbg/ZBdVYFrHv3c/s1600/pig+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WwqmQ6IrFoY/Uj2P21VcMSI/AAAAAAAAAbg/ZBdVYFrHv3c/s320/pig+copy.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Belarus's fuck-pig "President" Lukashenka (official portrait) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">who gives even Zombies a bad name.</span></div>
<br />
Svetlana Kalinkina, editor of the independent Minsk newspaper Narodnaya
Volya, said that there had been similar cases before, including one
where a deaf and mute person was accused of shouting antigovernmental
slogans.<br />
<br />
Actually this reminds me of a less disgusting episode years ago in, I think, Brighton (UK) where radical deaf people were demonstrating, and police had to call on the services of a sign-language interpreter before they could be certain of the abuse being directed at themselves.<br />
<br />
<i>Stop press 21.09.2013 from the <a href="http://president.gov.by/" target="_blank">official presidential website</a>:</i> The President sent his best greetings to the "State Puppet Theatre", thought to refer to the justice system.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Blast from the past ---Monday, January 05, 2009</span></span></h2>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=21443654" name="267754113814999534"></a>
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
Pinter clarifies for us how to live with Zombie and quantum physics </h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZU8e7EOKOL4/SWIGdU7zGbI/AAAAAAAAAL4/2GvhzBREotc/s1600-h/Bonneann%C3%A9e.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287796013391878578" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZU8e7EOKOL4/SWIGdU7zGbI/AAAAAAAAAL4/2GvhzBREotc/s400/Bonneann%C3%A9e.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 400px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 300px;" /></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 100%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Harold
Pinter, who died at Christmas <i>(2008)</i>, wrote in 1958 and expanded in 2005
something which makes clear that the worry about "yes and no, true and
false" etc. at the heart of any Zombie, Post-Modern or scientific
discourse (which must recognise the tentative nature of reality) is
swept away by the simple recognition that we have different
responsibilities at different levels of thinking, of acting in and on
the world.<br /> <br /> 1958: "There are no hard
distinctions between what is real and what is
unreal, nor between what is true and what is false.
A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can
be both true and false."<br /><br />Nobel Prize speech of
2005: "I believe that these assertions still
make sense and do still apply to the exploration
of reality through art. So as a writer I stand
by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I
must ask: What is true? What is false?"<br /><br />Is there, however not a contradiction here? No. Both statements are simultaneously true (smile).<br /><br /></span>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RzYfp4-wHRk/UVmYdDUiGII/AAAAAAAAAaU/aIRdZ_JLzxE/s1600/New+Anaglyph+Image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RzYfp4-wHRk/UVmYdDUiGII/AAAAAAAAAaU/aIRdZ_JLzxE/s320/New+Anaglyph+Image.png" width="222" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jarry 3D bike red/blue flooded BRSmith</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<b>Pataphysics: A Useless Guide</b><b><br />
</b><br />
by Andrew Hugill<br />
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012<br />
296 pp. $24.95 £17.95<br />
ISBN: 9780262017794.<br />
<br />
Reviewed by <i>[your present blogger]</i><br />
Collège de ’Pataphysique, Paris, France<br />
<br />
To talk about ’Pataphysics (of which there are more than 100
definitions) usefully, we have to get rid of certain notions of which
the most important may be that any way of thinking about the world
should be testable within that world. Was non-Euclidian geometry
testable in this sense before its physical manifestation in gravity? Did
imaginary numbers make sense "externally" from mathematics until it was
shown that the behaviour of elementary particles depended on the
totally imaginary square root of -1? With 'Pataphysics it gets even
weirder. It is entirely internally consistent to say that ’Pataphysics
is not only physically manifest everywhere in all universes, but that it
also changes the physical world, becoming externally consistent just
because it says so! Some will find this nonsense; some may say that it
is useful nonsense; and others may agree with me that this science of
the absurd, the study of the laws governing exceptions, the science of
the particular, is the most liberating and creative catalyst there is.
Others who have agreed range from Tom Stoppard to Jean Baudrillard, from
Umberto Eco to Marcel Duchamp, Ionesco, Miró, Genet.<br />
<br />
Members of the Paris-based Collège de 'Pataphysique include artists and
scientists from all disciplines, philosophers, dramaturges,
technologists, doctors, historians, futurologists, film-makers,
astronomers, paleo-botanists, roboticists and more. The current
Vice-Curator, Lutembi, is a crocodile. The Collège itself consists
almost entirely of a delirious but deeply important bureaucracy, like
Freemasons on LSD. Subcommittees include ones for the fine and ugly
arts, of between-the-lines moralities, of realisable incompetences, of
anagrams, inadequations, badger-brushes and of the inexact sciences.
Certain thinkers, artists, and scientists from long ago, such as
Leonardo, are also pataphysicists in virtue of their plagiarism by
anticipation. Joan, in the Beatles’ <i>Maxwell’s Silver Hammer</i>, “was quizzical / studied pataphysical / science in the home”.<br />
<br />
Here an interest must be declared: whilst your present reviewer does not
know the author personally, we are both office holders in the Collège.
Normally a disqualification, this lends the review, pataphysically,
extra objectivity. It just does. And anyway since this is a pataphysical
review, what else did you expect?<br />
<br />
The subtitle, <i>A Useless Guide</i>, paradoxically tells us at once
that this is no shrinking violet of a book, but one that intends to
claim a necessary status for itself as a seminal text. However since all
texts, even those as yet unwritten, must be considered as seminal to
’Pataphysics, we must ask ourselves if this book is an exception to that
rule (and more pertinently should one buy it?). If it is, it isn't. If
it isn't, it is. So the answer must be: yes and no. I hope that this
review has helped the reader decide.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EFqVTpWQQsM/UMdONLh1sWI/AAAAAAAAAYI/DF17yZ1qITk/s1600/red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EFqVTpWQQsM/UMdONLh1sWI/AAAAAAAAAYI/DF17yZ1qITk/s400/red.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span id="goog_1658738532"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1658738533"></span> Once upon a cake and gathering nuts, knocked at the door and the wolf, said “I’ll go”.<br />
The poor child lived in a cake. <br />
“The wolf,” said the bedclothes, “Put the wolf…”<br />
Oh I hear she was excessively fond of little flowers. It suited the wolf.<br />
The wolf pulled the shortest path and was greatly amazed to her, softening his voice as he could, "Pull the little pot of butter upon you.”<br />
“Grandmother, what big ears you have!” <br />
“All the better to hug you with, my dear.”<br />
“Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!”<br />
“All the better to hug you with, my dear.”<br />
“Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”<br />
“All the better to see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill.”<br />
The wolf cried out, “Pull the cake ! Pull the prettiest creature who lived!” believing her nightclothes, and ate her up, and ate her nightclothes, and was in bed.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain" target="_blank">Markov Chain</a></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<tr><td width="610"><div align="left">
<b>As part of an ongoing Pataphysical enquiry into the nature of the North Korean madness, we bring you:</b></div>
<div align="left">
</div>
<div align="left">
<b>Lair of King Tongmyong's Unicorn Reconfirmed in DPRK</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">For English, scroll down >>></span></b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Yc1AXoSpNKM/ULkjSS_hFGI/AAAAAAAAAX4/Xp-XgttH758/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-11-30+at+10.19.59+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Yc1AXoSpNKM/ULkjSS_hFGI/AAAAAAAAAX4/Xp-XgttH758/s400/Screen+shot+2012-11-30+at+10.19.59+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
</b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr height="5">
<td height="5" width="610"><div align="center">
</div>
</td>
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<tr height="4">
<td height="4" width="610"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="610">Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of
the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have
recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong,
founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668).<br />
The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in
Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words
"Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are
believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392).<br />
<br />
Jo Hui Sung, director of the Institute, told KCNA:<br />
<br />
"Korea's history books deal with the unicorn, considered to be ridden by King Tongmyong, and its lair.<br />
<br />
The Sogyong (Pyongyang) chapter of the old book 'Koryo History'
(geographical book), said: Ulmil Pavilion is on the top of Mt. Kumsu,
with Yongmyong Temple, one of Pyongyang's eight scenic spots, beneath
it. The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which
there is the lair of his unicorn.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qikWQdObV5o/ULkhW3QV8YI/AAAAAAAAAXw/g9K7X9pa6VQ/s1600/k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qikWQdObV5o/ULkhW3QV8YI/AAAAAAAAAXw/g9K7X9pa6VQ/s320/k.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo inexpertly Photoshopped showing unicorn's single horn apparently on Kim Jong-Un's head.</span></i><span id="goog_219269537"></span><span id="goog_219269538"></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1zLkdR8QsM/UB_dK9k4cnI/AAAAAAAAAXY/EuECSmVeFhY/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-08-06+at+5.02.28+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="345" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1zLkdR8QsM/UB_dK9k4cnI/AAAAAAAAAXY/EuECSmVeFhY/s400/Screen+shot+2012-08-06+at+5.02.28+PM.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b>Alien Phenomenology: Or, What It's Like To Be A Thing</b><b><br />
</b><br />
by Ian Bogost<br />
University Of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, MN, 2012<br />
168 pp., illus. 8 b/w, 11 col. Trade, $60.00; paper, $19.95<br />
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7897-6; ISBN 978-0-8166-7898-3.<br />
<br />
<i>(I reviewed this book for Leonardo Reviews, but reprint it here as it addresses thing-ness, hence Zombie concerns.)</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Well, the things they say! Do we attend enough to things? Or to change the emphasis, do we pay enough attention to <i>THINGS</i>?
No, it still doesn’t really work. So used are we to dealing, in normal
discourse, with things as just stuff, that the title of <i>Alien Phenomenology or What It’s Like To Be A Thing</i>
comes as an almost transgressive shock. It goes skipping over living
graveyards, shorn of the dead, bats on past the philosopher’s <i>Fledermäusen</i> and past post-humanism.<br />
<br />
Connected to the pleasingly named OOO or Object Oriented Ontology, Ian
Bogost’s book makes us re-examine our philosophical relationship to that
part of the universe that is not the minuscule ‘us’. For those who
thought it was a bit of a stretch to include (just some?) animals,
systems and artificial intelligences, it may seem absurd - or in this
reviewer’s case delightful - to happen again and again in this text upon
lists of things that demand, Bogost argues, to be seen as perceiving
and interacting, even if he has to use metaphor to do so. But as Gregory
Bateson used to argue, we need to see computers as metaphor machines,
able to handle syllogisms such as ‘Men die, grass dies, so men are
grass’. He told me he wanted a ‘computing Greek, not Latin’, the latter
being perhaps too pornographically meticulous. As professor of digital
media at Georgia Institute of Technology, and as a video game designer,
Bogost may naturally want his ideas to be seen in virtual worlds. But it
goes beyond that, beyond ‘mind and nature’ so to say, back into - I was
going to say ‘our world’ - the world of things. And that ‘back into’ is
just me being human about it, because of course logically there would
be no such distinction, though some things are more equal than others.<br />
<br />
If we read just a few of his randomly or carefully chosen names of
things, we are forced, again rather joyfully I find, to consider
plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players and sandstone, or the unicorn,
combine harvester, the colour red, methyl alcohol, quarks, corrugated
iron; bats (Nagel’s ‘What is it like to be a bat?’) are “both ordinary
and weird, but so is everything else: toilet seats, absinthe louches,
seagulls, trampolines.” Especially when you read this book. Just as the
word ‘hetereological’ (words that cannot refer to themselves: is
heterological heterological?) looks more and more alien the more you
consider it as a thing in itself, this text alienates every thing, in a
good way.<br />
<br />
He also wants us to do and make things, to become practicing
philosophers in the sense that a doctor would be no good if she just
read textbooks. I am dusting off my old Meccano (Erector Set)
collections and seeking exploded diagrams of anything, or any thing, not
to understand how a submarine or iPad works, but to marvel at the
thingness. But does part A27 love, or do harm to, or appreciate part C7?
Is it ethical to screw in a screw? Anyway, ethics is itself a
‘hyperobject’, ‘exploded to infinity’. There is no panpsychism here, for
it all comes down to nothing/everything, unless you want to postulate
the Higgs boson as a unit of consciousness, and let’s not.<br />
<br />
Of course, we are not really insulated from the idea that things have
things to say and do - eighteenth and nineteenth century stories told by
household objects*, ‘I am a camera’ etc. - but these are really saying
things are ‘like’ other things. This book is different, for it asserts
that everything, perhaps even that which does not exist, and certainly
including us, is alien and metaphorical. As he proposes, it’s not
turtles but metaphors all the way down.<br />
<br />
You might like or loath Bogost’s possibly over-heated but apparently
necessary use of metaphor and simile in his argument - roasted chilies
lose their skins and are like the wounds of Christ, gypsum dunes
resembling a white shoreline in a Žižek daydream never reach the sea -
is the Baroque elaboration making up for the absence of a tune? - but if
you want to see what the OOO Zeitgeist is about, and be jolted out of
human-centred complacency, this might well be the book to read. The
pilot of a crashing aircraft is encouraged by air traffic control to
“Say your souls, say your souls” (i.e. how many on board?). Well, the
things they say! Perhaps we should say our things.<br />
<br />
There are useful notes, a bibliography and, for once, a good index.<br />
<br />
* They are called ‘it-narratives’: <i>The Memoirs and Interesting Adventures of an Embroidered Waistcoat</i> (1751), <i>A Month’s Adventures of a Base Shilling </i>([c.1820]), <i>The Life and Adventures of a Scotch Guinea Note</i> (1826) - it was almost always ‘adventures’.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UJL3dhMLe-c/T_q68QdZhzI/AAAAAAAAAXM/pGG4Q-KgxQk/s1600/water99.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UJL3dhMLe-c/T_q68QdZhzI/AAAAAAAAAXM/pGG4Q-KgxQk/s400/water99.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
Existence is an emergent property of quantum fluctuation. Physics is an
emergent property of existence. Chemistry is electrons swapping around,
emergent from physics. Biology is the chemistry of carbon-based systems.
Life is an emergent property of biology. Neuro-processing is an emergent property of life. Consciousness is an emergent
property of neuro-processing. </div>
<br />
<div style="color: #660000;">
A question might be: what's an emergent property of
consciousness?
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News From KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK(Democratic People's Republic of Korea)</h3>
<h2>
Kim Jong Un Gives Field Guidance to Pyongyang Airport</h2>
<br />Pyongyang, July 5 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, first chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, gave field guidance to Pyongyang Airport…<br />
Kim Jong Un went round the outside and inside of newly built Terminal 1. He said the overall construction was done splendidly… <br />He also stressed the need to successfully build the airport having terminals and facilities for safe and correct landing and take-off of planes and a control tower commanding the airport area… <br />He got aboard plane No. 633 to learn about the technical feature and operation of the plane. <br />Then he got aboard plane No. 535 and gave an instruction…for operation of the plane.<br />
<br />
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</script></div>BRSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090441994395511995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21443654.post-40203891268397389692012-06-03T22:59:00.000+02:002012-06-23T14:43:58.455+02:00Zombie Pataphysics Revisited<h2 class="date-header">
Blasts from the past #2 - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 -</h2>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=21443654" name="113818832283269017"></a>
<br />
<h3 class="post-title">
What is Zombie? What is 'Pataphysics?
</h3>
"And they said unto him, Whereof may we speak, that thereof we need not remain silent?<br />
And
he replied, When you know what to say, and when the man become the
woman and the woman the man, and the father the daughter and the mother
the son, and the outer shell the inner core, and vice versa, then shall
ye enter into a place not unadjacent to the kingdom of heaven. And they
were speechless."<span style="font-size: 78%;"><br /><span style="color: #333333;">From the (apocryphal) gospel according to St. B.</span></span><br />
<br />
Apart
from the eponymous cocktail and musicians etc., there are three kinds
of Zombie: the Hollywood (more correctly the Pittsburgh) version; the
"real" Voodoo/Vaudun Zombie, poor buggers, and the philosophical
construct: the p-Zombie. The reeking, living dead are almost certainly
amongst us, in one form or another. I should know since I became a
Zombie about 6 years ago in the Lariboisière Hospital in Paris.<br />
<br />
More later, off for lunch. Toasted ham
and organic Red Leicester cheese on good sunflower seed bread, a fine
salad with nut, olive and pumpkin seed oil dressing followed by many
lychees.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/lychees.2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/400/lychees.0.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 253px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 351px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Well... and dinner too.<br />
<br />
<br />
Anyway:
more later about how I became a Zombie. But for now, let us be amazed
that from the Zombie films, especially those of the 1930s and 1940s,
there has actually been a back-adoption of certain made-up aspects of
the Zombie/Voodoo rites and rituals into the religion itself - or so I
am led to believe. That "real" Zombies exist is, though contentious,
rather probable. There was a BBC documentary (<b>Last of the Medicine Men</b>, Benedict Allen, BBC, 2000)
which culminated in a Zombie being presented to the camera. On the
other hand, they know that we expect Zombies. There have even been cases
of tourists buying a Zombie by mistake.</div>
<br />
In fact, they are
slaves. Poor, uneducated people are given a potion containing a cocktail
of drugs, and fall into a coma. They are buried, but later dug up and,
after the administration of an antidote, I suppose also containing
hallucinogens, are in a more or less aware but damaged state. They are
told that they are now Zombies, and what is more believe this. Then they
work on the Bokor, or priest's, farm, as slaves. The traditional Zombie
bandage round the head and jaw is suppose to keep the latter closed, so
that the P'tit Bon Ange - the little good angel - shall not escape.<br />
<br />
As I said, this is contentious, and may possibly be based on misunderstandings and myth, but I tend to believe it.<br />
<br />
One
of the poisons used is tetrodotoxin, the same agent that causes painful
paralysis and a terrible death in a few hundred Japanese every year,
from eating the naughty bits of the Fugu or Puffer Fish. It is worth
noting that the genome of the puffer fish is so close to that of humans,
having most of the same genes but far less "junk" DNA, that it is the
subject of massive study...<br />
<br />
It is thus a tragedy - it was for me -
and perhaps an actionable failing, that the French health care system
sees fit to use the Puffer fish instead of the usual balloon in a
process called ichthioangioplasty, whereby a blocked artery feeding the
heart is opened again. Usually, a tube is inserted into an artery in the
thigh, and is manipulated under X-ray guidance into the required spot,
when a small balloon is inflated, pressing the blockage back against the
artery wall. It is true that the process is not risk free, but surely
hardly less so than the "bio" or "natural" alternative, involving the
insertion of a tiny Puffer fish which, receiving at the crucial moment a
small voltage on its tail, suddenly inflates (used to scare enemies
when under threat) and thus unblocks the artery.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/fish.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/320/fish.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" /></a>For
there is a small but real chance of toxin release, about as close to
the heart as it is possible to get. In my case, the hospital and health
authorities have denied even using this process, and it is still subject
to a legal investigation. However, although I cannot comment on the
actual details, what is sure is that although in all respects I am like a
human - that is, there is no objective test in science, psychology or
epiphenomenology that may distinguish me as a Zombie - I am now part of
what Derrida was referring to when he said that "In between the true and
the false, there is always the undead, the Zombie." The Situationists
too talked about the mass of the non-living. Neither dead nor alive,
neither true nor false, one nor zero if you like, the Zombie is entirely
without qualia - that is, it has no feelings. But you <span style="font-style: italic;">cannot tell</span>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/me%20as%20zombie.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/200/me%20as%20zombie.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
Present
me with a glass of armagnac, I will appreciate its colour, its taste
and smell. I may ask for a second glass, hold it to the light and
comment on its age. Burn my finger with a match and I will yell, and
blister. Yet I have no real feelings. I can cry, real tears too, yet
don't "really" mean it. How unlike a real human.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/1600/me%20as%20zombie%20profile.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6533/2168/200/me%20as%20zombie%20profile.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
Would you hurt me, knowing this? Would you torture a computer, a robot, that screamed and begged for mercy? Shame on you.<br />
<br />
To be continued. And in case you have been, thanks for looking.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</script></div>BRSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090441994395511995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21443654.post-55881622652792072012012-06-03T22:56:00.001+02:002012-06-03T23:02:12.522+02:00Zombie Pataphysics revisited<span style="font-size: x-large;">Some blasts from the past, that is to say from the archives: #1</span><span style="font-size: 78%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> <i>Zombie Biscuits </i></span></span><br />
<img alt="[bisc.jpg]" border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZU8e7EOKOL4/Rs7sIoTmCYI/AAAAAAAAACc/xrjsCvsBfkU/s640/bisc.jpg" width="624" /><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 78%;">A clearly visible "Black Zombie" (inset enlarged) - note the eyes. The appropriate authorities have been notified.</span><br />
<br />
Regular
readers will know that I have previously celebrated examples of the
stupidly gullible (usually "religious") believing that they have found
or observed sacred imagery in potatoes, aubergines, American subways
(the underpass and the sandwich) and so on. Doubtless there are many who
would willingly put up with long queues of the frenzied and the rich
outside their doors, pushing and fighting to see some holy phenomenon
and perhaps to buy some small but not insignificantly priced memento.<br />
<br />
Now,
you too can participate in this gastronomic iconography, using these
easily made ZOMBIE BISCUITS - a startlingly realistic image virtually <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">GUARANTEED</span> in every biscuit. Your friends will be amazed, the press stunned.<br />
<br />
They also taste very good, though clearly to eat one would be tantamount to heresy under some religious regimes.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">Preheat
an oven to 200° C, (500 °F - Ha! Let the Americans burn them!) then
make a dough that would usually end up as oatmeal biscuits:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">50
g oatmeal flour, 175 g wholewheat or spelt flour, 2 level teaspoons of
baking powder (raising agent), 90 g cold, chopped up butter, 2 level
table-spoons of sugar, 2 table-spoons of milk; a pinch of salt, and a
few pinches of oat flakes.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">Mix
all the dry ingredients and the butter together in a large bowl with
the fingertips until they become crumb-like, then add the milk and mix
and knead to form a dough, about 2 on a scale of 0 to 9 where 0 =
totally dry and 9 = sloppy and wet; the mixture should seem a bit too
dry, if you tried to roll it out now it would crack. Leave the dough
covered in the bowl for 10 minutes.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">Now toss 50 g fresh </span><span style="color: #996633; font-weight: bold;">blueberries</span><span style="color: #996633;">
into the bowl and mash them into the dough. The juice that emerges will
make the dough moister. Don't let the fruit totally disintegrate
though.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">Put the
dough in a lump on a floured surface & roll it out to about 0.5 cm
thickness with a floured rolling pin or bottle. Using a small glass, cut
out circles of approximately 5 cm diameter and place them on a baking
sheet, either special baking paper or non-stick metal: they can stick
badly if not. Prick the biscuits several times each with a fork, and
place in the preheated oven. Ignore, for the moment, all the dark forms
in the biscuits. Just do it automatically, don't think. You want to be
surprised by the emergent properties.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #996633;">After 10 to 12 minutes the biscuits should be </span><span style="color: #996633; font-style: italic;">just</span><span style="color: #996633;"> changing colour at the edges, no more. Remove from the oven and put somewhere to cool for a few minutes.</span><br />
<br />
Now
you can observe the multitude of Zombies, saints, prophets, gods,
sexual symbols, miniature horses and cosmic patterns that you have
created. Savour each form, photograph the best, send it to the local
press— the national press will take up the story later. Declare that the
fruit fell in by accident, though <span style="font-style: italic;">as if it were meant to</span>, and that you didn't notice the picture until much later.<br />
<br />
In
case there are biscuits containing (but this is unlikely) no
significant religious or other imagery, the biscuits should be eaten
with either <a href="http://www.stiltoncheese.com/UK/pr/uk.cfm">Blue Stilton</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Leicester">Red Leicester</a> cheese, available from any decent cheese shop. Roquefort or Cheddar make rather poor, but just about acceptable, substitutes.<br />
<br />
To those who might aggressively argue that I am cheapening or demeaning food-based religious experiences, just shut the fuck up.<br />
<br />
And if you have been, thanks for looking…<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</script></div>BRSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090441994395511995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21443654.post-24235903399576842982012-05-28T14:58:00.000+02:002012-05-28T15:02:45.719+02:00Zombie psychopathic ex-prime ministers"Mr Blair began work in January 2008 as a £2million-a-yearn (sic) adviser to JP
Morgan." (Daily Telegraph September 18 2011).<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oEyNenPKstc/T8N3OcPjBFI/AAAAAAAAAXA/k70pyHAN7FE/s1600/blair.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oEyNenPKstc/T8N3OcPjBFI/AAAAAAAAAXA/k70pyHAN7FE/s400/blair.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
"Mr Blair said on the record that there was no truth in the allegation,
made by the protester, that he was "paid off" by the US banking giant JP
Morgan for the Iraq War." BBC, May 28 2012<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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