Emblem

“We should not be sat­is­fied with either biog­ra­phy or bib­li­og­ra­phy;
we must reach a secret point where the anec­dote of life and the apho­rism of thought
amount to one and the same thing” (The Logic of Sense 128).

— Deleuze (via Ulmer; cit­ing Nietzsche’s method for invention).

 
Stu­dents’ inde­pen­dent reflec­tive work this week­end intended to spark notic­ing “attune­ment” and dis­cov­er­ing an “inter­face” like Pynchon’s in Lot 49. To these ends, pro­vided them two strate­gies (from Heuret­ics and Telethe­ory) — and my exam­ples — of Emblem (wideIm­age) and Sig­na­ture The­ory.
First time I’ve artic­u­lated each; worth not­ing here given how res­o­nant and salient the “find­ings” are — cat­alytic in “fine tun­ing” the Stim­mung of my thought.

• Emblem
• Sig­na­ture

ghink

 
Cochlea: spiral-shaped part of ear; con­verts vibra­tions to neuro-sensory (audi­ble) infor­ma­tion;
i.e. lit­eral inter­face between phys­i­cal (”fre­quency”) and neu­ro­log­i­cal sen­sory data.

 
 
 
Anec­dote: (child­hood mem­ory)

In 4^th grade, my class was assigned to paint some­thing in art class to be con­sid­ered for inclu­sion in the forth­com­ing play­ground, which our com­mu­nity (includ­ing my fam­ily) was build­ing.
As I lacked fine art skills — unlike my younger brother Brian, the visual artist — I sim­ply spent the period paint­ing abstract shapes, delib­er­ately not attempt­ing to paint “a pic­ture” like my class­mates (fol­low­ing the instruc­tions).
Not intend­ing mine to be con­sid­ered in the con­test, I care­lessly splat­tered some paint over it — which I found I quite liked, inci­den­tally. A few more ’splat­ter” motions drew the atten­tion of the teacher, who unex­pect­edly praised my work; (in ret­ro­spect, shapes of geo­met­ri­cal abstrac­tion and meth­ods of abstract expres­sion­ism!) I’d mainly used the col­ors that I con­sis­tently loved dur­ing pre-teen years: black, pur­ple, and teal (as well as some com­ple­ments of red, if I recall) — not any ref­er­en­tial scheme.
 
The most promi­nent shape in the paint­ing was an imper­fect spi­ral, which I’d been con­stantly prac­tic­ing in those days (before per­fect­ing the cir­cu­lar pen­cil technique).

It looked some­thing like this:

 
Two notable ele­ments that frame this anec­dote, prior and subsequently:

1) I most def­i­nitely was (and am) not skilled in visual arts, and never drew/draw
(except for trac­ing comic book char­ac­ters in an attempt to match my brother’s skilled ren­der­ings! but that is a sep­a­rate anec­dote)
My broth­ers and I all grew up play­ing music, first through invol­un­tary piano and vocal lessons for me, fol­lowed by sax­o­phone and trum­pet choices by me and Brian respec­tively (once we reached fourth grade) — then even­tu­ally our “real” instru­ments of choice (pas­sion) by high school, gui­tar.
Andrew (youngest) is with­out exag­ger­a­tion a musi­cal prodigy, hav­ing begun play­ing piano at age four vol­un­tar­ily (with a piano in the house, after all); he quickly super­seded my skills at first piano and then saxophone(s) (but not gui­tar, a manda­tory instru­ment for him in col­lege!).
Indeed, Brian has become the visual artist (pho­tog­ra­phy, paint­ing, mixed-media) he has always been (after years of guitar/bass); Andrew has been / will always be a musi­cian (com­poser and per­former) — for them, there is lit­tle dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of their “life” and “career” (key les­son for all of us, as my par­ents have sup­ported for 26 years and count­ing).
In this con­text, I con­sider myself not “invol­un­tar­ily” but inci­den­tally and notably sit­u­ated in rela­tion to them: artis­tic sen­si­bil­ity (way of under­stand­ing and express­ing), yet in a schol­arly con­text; thus, the pri­or­ity of the aes­thetic mode for my career and schol­arly method, orig­i­nat­ing from the “life” dimen­sion (pas­sion for music).

2) The paint­ing from class with the spi­ral and paint-splatter appar­ently was only a “draft,” which is unusual for art but not writ­ing (as I’d later endure and then require dozens of com­po­si­tion stu­dents to prac­tice).
Unfor­tu­nately at the time, I could not quite repli­cate the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion for the play­ground, hav­ing a much dif­fer­ent atti­tude toward the desired repro­duc­tion.
How­ever, this was for­tu­nate, as I have the framed orig­i­nal (”draft”), which hung in my room where I prac­ticed sax­o­phone and gui­tar in the sub­se­quent years, until we tore my child­hood home down.
Sim­i­larly, the play­ground was torn down last year, per­haps “fated” with its name on our barrier-island town: “Sand­cas­tle Park,” (two blocks from the beach).
The spi­ral image ended up being just like the cochlea of the ear after all, only receiv­ing vibra­tions (”hear­ing”) in the present tense — like the splatter-technique impulse, or live musi­cal per­for­mances,
or the con­ver­sa­tions between the “archi­tects” (me and my dad) and the “engi­neers” (Brian and Andrew) of sand­cas­tles dur­ing an ephemeral con­struc­tion at the beach — where of course one might find a spiral-shaped seashell.
(This present time always belong­ing to Lêthê.)
 
Whereas the spi­ral once sig­naled the move­ment toward “immor­tal­ity,” — selected for one of the playground’s (cas­tle) tow­ers in the con­text — there even­tu­ally became a point in time when the move­ment shifted, pro­gress­ing toward destruc­tion. Rather than lin­ear nar­ra­tive, we could say that both of these motions were always-already encom­passed in the spi­ral shape.

 
 
Career Res­o­nance

 
// Spi­ral in chaos the­ory

sum­mary: dynam­i­cal sys­tems are sen­si­tive to changes in ini­tial con­di­tions (not deter­min­is­tic); ordered sys­tems include move­ment toward chaos, while chaotic sys­tems include move­ment toward order. In other words, “unde­cid­able” with binary logic, not “either/or.” Con­sider: is spi­ral mov­ing “inward” or “out­ward”? Unknown, unde­cid­able; both.
At SUNY Buf­falo, my the­sis super­vi­sor was Joseph M. Conte — who uses chaos and com­plex­ity the­ory in his work with post­mod­ern literature.

 
 
 
Spiral’s in/direct appear­ance or func­tion
in (French) post­struc­tural­ist theory
(my pri­mary area of research):

— Roland Barthes: “third mean­ing” of expres­sion is nei­ther deno­ta­tion or con­no­ta­tion, but sig­nifi­ance. The “third sense” is hear­ing. (Image-Music-Text)
 
 
— Hélèné Cixous: task is to hear the unsaid, with attune­ment.
 
 
— Jacques Der­rida:
“mid­dle voice” is between active and pas­sive, self-address. (i.e. speaking-hearing one­self)
Also, Dif­férance is nei­ther word nor con­cept, but active mov­ing forces: unde­cid­able, as dif­férer means both “to dif­fer” and “to defer.” Between speech and writ­ing; becoming-space of time and becoming-time of space; new logic of impos­si­bil­ity.
 
 
— Gilles Deleuze:
Greek myth of Ari­adne (from Nietzsche’s under­stand­ing); labyrinth is both spi­ral shaped and sonorous in Deleuze’s read­ing. For him, Ariadne’s song becomes one of affir­ma­tion of Life, as lover of Diony­sus — rather than slave to ressen­ti­ment that results from judg­ment.
Thus, way of liv­ing that affirms Life.

 
“Sig­na­ture The­ory” exam­ple: ghink

(g)ary

 
ary:
Main Entry: “-ary”
Func­tion: noun suf­fix
Ety­mol­ogy: Mid­dle Eng­lish –arie, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French –aire, –arie,
from Latin –arius, –aria, –arium, from –arius, adjec­tive suffix

 

1 : thing belong­ing to or con­nected with; espe­cially : place of <ovary>
2 : per­son belong­ing to, con­nected with, or engaged in <func­tionary>

 
French: –aire = “surface”

— also, River Aire in England (?)

 
Suf­fix –aire
1. –er; suf­fix used to form agent nouns.

e.g. legionnaire

 
* Latin: “ARIA” = expres­sive melody

noun
an air or melody in an opera, can­tata, or ora­to­rio, esp. for solo voice with instru­men­tal accompaniment

 
— thus, expres­sive melody (solo) + con­nected with (orch/accomp.)

* voice/song as ges­ture (expres­sive qual­ity of voice; unique)
 

Nov 27, 2009

• Posted by Gary Hink
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• Research, Teaching
• Ariadne, Barthes, chaos, Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, emblem, heuretics, Nietzsche, resonance, signature, signifiance, stimmung