The design below is a product of my being torn between several of prototypes, wanting to include elements from each.  Then came the realization: the image is indefinit(iv)e …

The beauty (or sublimity?) of electracy, as Professor Ulmer reminded me in an email response, is that we–the “author” of the image–don’t necessarily need to nominate a single, official logo…the others of the internet will nominate on our behalf; all of our images “circulate without us”:

“The intention is that the logo will work as an attractor and begin to circulate without us, just as did writing, as Plato complained in Phaedrus (the words went about repeating themselves endlessly like children without the parent).”–Gregory Ulmer

This image grew out of my work with prototype #6.  Initially, I was using it just as a photographic model from which to abstract the hands and tools.  What you see in this image is the intitial photograph (which didn’t particularly strike me) distorted and colored via photoshop effects, then overlayed with beehive outline.

Perhaps more than any other of the prototypes, this image incites in me the feeling of Barthes “punctum”.  I don’t really know why.  It took the least effort to (re)make.

I’ve noticed that abstract art/photography tend to “sting” me much more when I visualize what the image would look like as a work of realism, and holding this flicker of the realistic image in mind, the abstract image before me tends to become more of a true encounter.

Because the process of making and viewing this image involves this dynamic, perhaps this touches a bit on why this image stings me.

Last week, Professor Ulmer encouraged us to think about how our disaster relates to the disasters blogged by others in the seminar.  In other words: does the energy that I’ve abstracted from bee colony collapse correspond to the energies of another’s disaster, such that we could group them as a general type of disastrous energy?

At its most abstract level, I think the energy of BCC parallels the human core of the E. coli outbreak  at the Georgia water park (Will) and the meltdown of Iceland’s economy (Emily).  Each of these disasters, to my knowledge, can be described in the following way:

• that which motivates the striving beings to collapse once striving reaches a critical mass
• striving becomes wrapped up in itself (“In this rhythm, I am caught”) to the point of neglecting/forgetting its connections to larger structures or systems
• as striving progresses, it proceeds more and more with under this illusion of distance
• at the onset of disaster, striving is blind to the disaster: still striving to perfect what it believes to be isolated objects

I’d call this grouping of disastrous energy something like “Paradoxical Collapse” or “Dis(engaged) Striving”.

“BCC incites a paradox: our tunnel-vision productivity is (perhaps) destroying our classic emblem of productivity, which–by the way–is one of the most essential structures for the production of our food–that which enables us to produce (and live)…Our tools–emblems of human productivity–enable us to make some things (seemingly) outside of ecosystems (skyscrapers, cars, pesticides, etc).  And the beehive is, for many cultures, the classic symbol of productivity, efficiency and, in general, a structure in which “form follows function” and a society wherein every member does their part to further the mission of the whole (production of material/capital)…The idea is that nature is over “there”…it’s a mystery to us humans–it simply happens to us, all of a sudden…humans are above nature, or at least less bound up in it than bees, we’re able–to think of our species as–isolated/apart from nature, its ecosystems.”

Immediately after saving this file, I decided to make a single change which is shown and discussed in prototype #9.

Here, the only part changed from prototype #8 is the bee in middle.  What was the photograph of a living bee is now the graphic illustration of a cartoon bee.

What is significant about this change, in terms of the human energy of BCC?

I think it is more truth to the disaster-as-client in that the productivity-at-all-cost drive, coupled with the desire to distance oneself from the rest of the ecosystem (to perfect one’s self/species as an “isolated” object–these human energies have turned the bee into something like a cartoon (man-made) image without a home.  Caught in our own rhythmic striving, we see the imaginary/symbolic bee, forgetting we’re all-humans and bees-bound up in an interconnected Real.

Substitute blogger for actor, primal scene for memories, disaster for character…and you have a pretty accurate description of my experience of Part I, as well as its place in Part II of our project.

(well, maybe)

In The Empty Space, Peter Brook claims that Beckett’s stage images function as “theatre machines”:

“Perhaps the most intense and personal writing of our time comes from Samuel Beckett. Beckett’s plays are symbols in an exact sense of the word. A false symbol is soft and vague: a true symbol is hard and clear. When we say ‘symbolic’ we often mean something drearily obscure: a true symbol is specific, it is the only form a certain truth can take. The two men waiting by a stunted tree, the man recording himself on tapes, the two men marooned in a tower, the woman buried to her waist in sand, the parents in the dustbins, the three heads in the urns: these are pure inventions, fresh images sharply defined and they stand on the stage as objects. They are theatre machines. People smile at them, but they hold their ground: they are critic-proof. We get nowhere if we expect to be told what they mean, yet each one has a relation with us we can’t deny.”  http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotowsm.htm

Happy Days

Endgame

This is especially the case in Beckett’s shorter, even more experimental plays.

Not I

You could say that the whole of the play is invested in stage image (which remain the same until curtain), and that the dialogue is an unfolding or working-through of the omnipresent stage image.

Play

This holds obvious parallels to blog and logo, which holds potential instructions if we wanted our logos to act as Beckett’s theatre machines, and be received as Brook receives Beckett.

Can we approach the ecological crisis (or any disaster) as a Beckett play whose energy/dynamics we are failing to be affected by?  Beckett’s plays are routinely written off by people as “weird”, “too abstract”, or “pessimistic”.  Or, like disasters, many entertain a vague fascination with Beckett’s works, but their interests ultimately stops there–they turn back to more conventional stuff (like the experience economy turns back to Disneyland).  This is why I think that, before anything else, a critic’s task–with experimental works like Beckett–is to generate instructions for new modes of reading.  People get frustrated with Beckett when they view his work in the restricted economy of realistic drama.  Likewise, in the experience economy, disasters are written off as fascinating, devastating/tragic, or turned into Hollywood entertainment–they are not really experienced on their own terms, as a unique kind of energy (they remain “unsaid”).  So, in this sense, what we are doing laying out the instructions for people (most notably ourselves at this point) for receiving/experiencing our disaster (as if it were experimental literature/film/art/music,etc.).

“Know what rhythm holds men.” (Archilochus.)

-Voice from the general economy…the last of its voice…part valorized in the first forgings from general into restricted economy…part quoted and taught and passed on, to those who no longer need to hear it, they are already “held”…the last of its voice…that which restricted economy reminds to itself, in order to maintain restriction…echoed in the turn away from disaster…the moment of distance.

"Know what rhythm holds men." (Archilochus.)

Rhythm or language.

-Not a question…moment of insignificant choice…here or there, this or that…different and equal. (restricted)

Rhythm or language.

Prometheus: “In this rhythm, I am caught.”

-A striving that strives into itself, striving harder for have found itself…rhythmic striving…yes seeking yes finding yes hearing yes remembering…

Prometheus: "In this rhythm, I am caught."

Changing configuration.

–

Disaster

What is rhythm?

-Stepping back by the disaster…a step into rhythm…”this has rhythm, this has no rhythm”: such sayings speak outside of rhythm…his question does not have and does not seek any definitive answer…his question evokes energy: an energy general with restriction…rhythm restricted by the general…rhythm continuing without its distance, its distance having become distant…

…by the disaster…stepping back…a forgetting which remembers that which it has forgotten to itself in pursuit of rhythm…what appears when rhythm is lost.

What is rhythm?

The danger of rhythm’s enigma.

-Perfecting, thereby imperfecting

The danger of rhythm's enigma.

Posted in All Posts, Theory/Blogging Tagged: Blanchot, disaster, striving ]]> http://theecocrisis.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/rhythm-and-disaster/feed/ 0 jtinnell rhythm 01 02 03 04 enigma http://theecocrisis.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/sublime-ecology-part-2/ http://theecocrisis.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/sublime-ecology-part-2/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:15:17 +0000 jtinnell http://theecocrisis.wordpress.com/?p=376 ]]> How can we move from an experience of the ecological crisis as the sublime (Nature-as-big-Other)  towards a sublime experience of ecological crisis (affective engagement of the collapse of Nature-as-big-Other) [How can my logo support such a transition?]

Idea for Design revision:
On surface of honeycomb prototype logo: add parking lot line structure with question marks “parked” in each of the spaces. Play with this opposition to illustrate the human component mentioned above: the desire to compartmentalize free-form life, to stake out a space of human expectionalism for an existence that is isolated and atop of sprawling/spiraling “Nature”.

When we inhabit the stance of “Nature-as-big-Other”, we can keep our questions (question marks emblematic of free-form life) parked…this illustrates the underside of compartmentalization: a desire to be guided, accounted for, looked after, managed by a transcendental, higher power.

Additions to my design rational:
My logo, as the electrate equivalent of a concept, must support new forms of collectivity amidst (eco)collapse, to treat the sublime as an adjective, to localize the sublime experience of ecological crisis such that it can be shared/networked and thus function as a contingent truth ((predicated affective experience rather than (religious) belief or (scientific) proof)).  So my logo design wants to provoke a working through the sublime as noun into the sublime as adjective…feeling sublime rather than “fearing” the Sublime or returning to ideals of the beautiful (before collapse).

In what ways is the ecological crisis sublime?
*The ecological crisis, its “place” in our culture–our relation to it–is the relationship of one maintains with the Sublime as noun, both the mathematical sublime (we find ourselves unable to take it in as a whole) and the dynamical sublime (our minds recoil at the suggestion of such total, irresistible destruction).  From a more radical POV, we could say that what the ecological crisis presents is the rupturing of a dynamically sublime (all-encompassing totality: Nature-as-big-Other) by a mathematical sublime (crisis/threat beyond our ability to represent or even conceive).  So in Edmund Burke’s sense, its a situation in which “astonishment is the state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror”.  Yet, in the Kantian sense (when we maintain the faith in Nature-as-big-Other), one feels isolated/protected from actual danger in that eco-crisis is Nature’s problem, a burden that Nature itself will bear (predicated upon phantasmic compartmentalizations that are anti-ecological…this tendency may be the “human desire/drive” that I want to illustrate as “human contribution” to my disaster, that may have lead to it)…So I want my logo to account for this “human drive/desire”, but at the same time, support or suggest a mode of thought/desire that is alternatively driven.