🔊 “…Designed and directed, by his red right hand…”
Hand-made by me, using found and recycled things that include cardboard shred package filler, mesh net sacks, bubble wrap, and various types of tape (electric, micropore surgical)
☝️ Smart Studio Products
I am friends with the artist Oliver Smart, and we spent a gloomy-weathered Sunday afternoon at his warehouse lair in an industrial estate. His portfolio consists of ‘creating sculptures which are moving without mechanism’ —
“Everything a person passes is affected by that passing
The world is all sensors and response.
That is the physical system which we are part of.
These works find shapes and forms through my response to the world I am in.”
His craft-shop is filled with eye-candy objects and equipment, and as someone not (yet) familiar with carpentry or smithing skills, I kept spying around curiously asking about the artefacts on display. As we were chewing the fat, I shared my reasons for curating variations of the symbol, and apart from visual references of previous artworks, there were no other preparations towards an outcome. The agenda was simply to touch and experiment with the select materials available; we played with flotsam and jetsam scraps, from which we could make holy hand grenades with.
As Oli dug into red plastic mesh sacks, I was drawn to the malleable lattice structure of cardboard shred sheets, for I intuitively felt how I might form a hand with it. I used old medical tape to wrap and define the sinewy strips into fingers. There was both a fumbling and finesse in crafting what resembles a mummy’s hand, and this amused me since I was reviving old packaging. Eventually, I also assembled a soft and layered patchwork of a pomegranate, though rather than rounding bits into a ball, what I clumped together looked more like a heart at first, and then an apple. It was so much fun to make tangible solid shapes emerge!
It’s a pity that the term Luddite is mostly just associated with being opposed to technology by smashing machines, or inept at using them. Like many of my multi-disciplinarian friends, I have a fondness for traditional craftwork, and there’s an experiential pleasure in practicing some Rumpelstiltskin ability of spinning straws into golden threads. Why do people engage tediously in tugs-of-war of For VS Against, when perhaps what’s required from us is being better versed by synthesising sufficient movements.
Oli (fyi also a skilled puppet master) has plenty to practically and philosophically discuss on materiality (material reality) and metaphysical energy of objects. His notion of Livingness in particular sent me into deeper study of puppetry, especially as I continue to research contexts of E.T. not as an extra terrestrial character, but as extension transfers or ecological textures.
Thinking about puppets as entertainment or content delivery, I reflected on analogies for the human obsession with artificial intelligence:
“Let us suppose that each of us living creatures is an ingenious puppet [thauma] of the gods, whether contrived by way of a toy of theirs or for some serious purpose—for as to that we know nothing; but this we do know, that these inward affections of ours, like sinews or cords, drag us along and, being opposed to each other, pull one against the other to opposite actions; and herein lies the dividing line between goodness and badness. For, as our argument declares, there is one of these pulling forces which every man should always follow and nohow leave hold of, counteracting thereby the pull of the other sinews: it is the leading-string, golden and holy, of ‘calculation’…” — the Athenian in Plato’s Laws
I’m fascinated with how secularism and religiosity meet when it comes to the yearning search for omniscience, while all around us we have built inter-webs of omnipresence. In addition, I wonder what people are not seeing while we focus on shadows cast by X Medium: what are our brains editing out, what strings are being ignored/unseen?
Art exchanges with Mr Smart got me remembering Pinocchio 🥜👁️, created by Carlo Collodi in 1881. Calculators, Computers and CPUs help us Work it Make it Do it Makes us Harder Better Faster… but while we prolifically push and pull with prompts, who are the proprietors? And who are the owners nudging and prompting us to take part in this age of escalation?
» It’s good to revisit the must watch (yes, honestly) 1997 lecture by Neil Postman: “The Surrender of Culture to Technology” - his 7 questions to ask about technology starts from 00:50.
» Another tool for this is the Tetrad, a grid template for asking what X Media enhances, retrieves, reverses and makes obsolete:
What is a TETRAD, by Andrew McLuhan
“What statements can we make about media that anyone can test — prove or disprove — for themselves? What do all media have in common? What do they do?”
» If you want to explore more about Proxemics (study of human space) or Prosthesis as metaphor (man-made substitute for its parts), here are some further reading available via JSTOR. (Please do let me know if you want a copy)
THE PUPPET’S PARADOX: An organic prosthesis, by Chiara Capeletto
“[The puppet as] an outdated toy therefore makes apparent the original dynamics through which the living and the artificial collaborate in the human body and in man's experience of himself, including his impossible attempts at achieving unity.”
— Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Spring/Autumn 2011, No. 59/60, pp. 325-336THE GOLEM & THE LIMITS OF ARTIFICE, by Charles T. Rubin
“Thus the golem story is taken to teach that, while science and technology are potentially threatening, they are still very useful and not inevitably outside of our control. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the golem story has drawn the interest of modern students of the scientific project, particularly those who see in it a longstanding desire and perhaps even a well-established defense of today's most ambitious techno-utopian endeavors. Efforts to use the golem story as a source of moral wisdom provide a window into the promises and pitfalls of thinking about questions of science and technology from a Jewish perspective.”
— Source: The New Atlantis, Summer 2013, No. 39, pp. 56-72
NB: Some people believe in dogmatic science and will reject tales about strange metaphysical unseen worlds. Those who acknowledge more eternal Architekton/s meanwhile, are having conversations about how daemonic energies might use AI as portals. If we are to consider that there are invisible supernatural spirits/forces/entities around, many of which we are told through various forewarnings, are always seeking bodies or containers... maybe the black mirror is much darker than we care to acknowledge? (Do check out Flesh In The Age of Reason: How The Enlightenment transformed the way we see our bodies and souls, by Roy Porter (2005)
👋 Gestures (gesti) + Hands (mani) = *Gestipulation
To compensate for the lack of real hands in the previous newsletter, I’ve increased the digitisation in this edition. Mainly because I wanted to signpost about how machines can’t replicate the touchy feely dexterity and when we’re lost for words. (Yes, there’s a startup inventing a ‘long-distance kissing machine’, no thank you though.)
Who remembers the 1991 Terminator 2 film, where the T-800’s exoskeletal arm is a significant object that would be a technological game-changer? In Ancient Egypt, the untranslatable word ka refers to ‘that aspect of men and gods that is connected with the creative life force’ - and the hieroglyph is two uplifted arms… And Abracadabra? or Avada Kedavra - is probably sourced from the Talmudic story about a Rabbi Rava creating man: “Rava bara gavra”. Never-mind the fancy wands or incantations, what body parts wield it?
This material world and its media is filled with all sorts of manipulation, because Humans + Our Inventions. If ‘many a true word is spoken in jest’, then what about the gest - which apparently also means ‘a notable deed or exploit’. More confirmation of the precept that actions speak louder than words? Hence the poetic combination of Gesti-Culate with Mani-Pulate.
If the human is a powerful re-creator or replicator, and we seem unable to escape the myths of redemptive violence or salvation by heroic ideologies, what is the penalty when we wash our hands from the responsibility of our advanced instruments?
Weapons are technology. It's not just what the *thing* does. It's how a social object within an ecosystem has social & psychic effects. In the chapter “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis” (Understanding Media), Marshall McLuhan disclosed his knowledge of William Blake’s poetry, and reminded readers that “men become what they have beheld”, further emphasising that “technologies are self-amputations of our own organs”. A key sentence worth contemplating is that “In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.”
There’s definitely more than meets the AI. There’s much about it as some All Accessing-Surveilling Eye or All Knowing-Retrieving I - but what about other sensorial Organs of Perception? What are human faculties for comprehending (together-grasping) the dynamic connections of subjects, objects, referents within temporal and spatial contexts?
☞ CHIROLOGIA
This is The Natural Language of the Hand (1644), published by English doctor and philosopher John Bulwer - who also wrote Anthropometamorphosis / The Artificial Changeling (1650). There’s much to think about fingerspelling and being fingered (also a Unix command/phrase widely used to find out information about a particular internet user). This is another research time-sink on the anthropology of intentions…
☞ LE OPERE MANUALI DI BRUNO MUNARI
I first discovered Bruno’s books when I was an Art History student in Italy and exiting museums through its bookshops. I like the playfulness of his designs, and am amused by the challenge of his libri illegibilli (unreadable books), since books are interactive tool-toys too. I’ve just click ordered a copy of The Tactile Workshops, and though he associated with the 20th century Futurists, publishing his Manifesto Macchinismo in 1938, he didn’t sound so bent on its adoration either:
Machines reproduce themselves faster than mankind, almost as fast as the most prolific of insects; they already force us to busy ourselves with them, to spend a great deal of time taking care of them; they have spoiled us; we have to keep them clean, provide them with nourishment and rest, continually attend to them and meet their every need. In a few years’ time we will become their little slaves.
Artists are the only ones who can save mankind from this danger.
☞ IN PRAISE OF HANDS
The Ashmolean Museum held an exhibition of woodcuts by Naoko Matsubara, accompanied with poems by Penny Boxall from Oct 2021 - May 2022. The book is worth a purchase, and here’s a juicy sampler page:
The red hands drawing
together, almost touching,
make sense: the same way that beholding
the lemon’s yellow joy is almost tasting.
☞ MASTERPIECE BY THE MANUAL CINEMA
Watching Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) live at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019 was/is hands down, one of my most memorable and treasured theatre experiences so far. The production was just mind blowing ***** brilliant! They performed in Boston this year (here’s a review) - but do set up notifications for when they next tour. Manual animation’s Aura is still superior than any stable diffusion illusions; gauntlet thrown. And absolutely Yes! oh unapologetic art-theory nerds, that is a nod to Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935).
“I guess I find it hard to innately ‘care’ about things that didn’t originate in my own physical world (perhaps?) - it doesn’t mean it’s disinteresting, or has the potential to be used as ‘art-fuel’ for humans, but at the basic level I think I kind of refuse to be moved by it.”
—@Shardcore
Hi, I’m Rina. I teach a History & Context module for the Creative & Cultural Industries BA at Kingston School of Art and I’m also a polymath problem solver for hire. I enjoy untangling situations by synthesising the strategic with the scholarly and sacrilegiously spiritual.
[On LinkTree + Instagram as @rinabelle]