Category: Experimenctes

My own quick attempts at inscribing experience + experiment, languaging

Of Objects and Artefacts

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes16 Comments

Friday Fictioneers, April 26, 2013

Copyright-Claire Fulller

I stepped up to read.  I.  Stepped up.  To read.  Probability, readiness, obligation.  The ambiguities.

A body, emotive, sensitive, intentional – in an environment that includes me.

In a state.  For an activity.  Motional, potentially controllable: possessions, perceptions, cognition.

A circumstance, a situation.  Complex phenomenon.  Elaborating, extending, enhancing.

Time and place replete with past, present and future.  Here, now.  Ordinary, occasional, simple things – processes.

Being, doing, sensing.  Thinking, feeling, seeing, saying.  Behaving.  Acting, changing, being created.  Existing.  Having identity and attributes, symbolizing.  Relation is all.  The relations of relations.

We interact.

N Filbert 2013

The Wasps Nest

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes13 Comments

Friday Fictioneers – April 19, 2013

Wasp nest

We move in, we move out – forging a network in lieu of an origin.  Seekers in search of a source.  Our tunneling leads to more tunnels and caves – enclosures disclosing.   Disclosures enclosing – we seesaw in dialogue.  We create and we seek.  We call it the Realm of the Conduits – we guess and infer, hungry for meaning.  Communicating by movement, we follow and lead, listen and hum.  When sharing we shove through the space.  We sense we’re on shifty smooth ground.  To call it a world does not matter.  The question is how we might meet.

N Filbert 2013

The Writer: a context out of context

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes7 Comments
author sketch by Holly Suzanne
author sketch by Holly Suzanne

.

Faced with the blank page, Writer runs.

Confronting the white spaces, Writer enters.

Emptiness indicating gaps.  The writer attempts to cross.

In theory this is “bridging” – the ability to construct a bridge.

In practice, Writer uses words like rope.

Without them he would fall.

Plummet.

.

In the presence of what infers silence, Writer hears patterns and rhythms.

Sometimes also sees.

Constructing shapes of nothing, this is sometimes called.

Creatio ex nihilo referring to no context.

In absence of recognizable sound – the infinite conversation.

Writer holds there and eavesdrops.

Writing is a device.

.

Responsibility ends where opportunity begins, which invokes responsibility.

Writer fills the margins.

Working at the edge of labor.

.

If the tracks are laid, Writer composes rails.

The network is for nothing – conversation going on.

Creatio in contextus refers to complex emergence, a result of adaptation

and leftovers causally unexplained.

Writer is compelled into absence.

Children skipping cracks, stuntmen leaping canyons.

.

Writer is friend to correspondence

ecstatic moments

the distance in between

threading disconnections

shooting gaps.

.

Setting aside is opening doors

in land without land a Writer’s building.

Writing represents a reference

context woven out of context

Writer spins.

.

Portrayal is errant copy.

Narrative a fabrication.

Sentencing – destruction.

Every symbol plugs the whole

cluttering conduits

Writer can’t escape.

.

Writing is abiding time.

Never yet, always almost.

Writer leaps

with nothing there

into now + here

which equals…..

 N Filbert 2013

 

The Training

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes25 Comments

Friday Fictioneers – April 5, 2013

From Scott Vanatter with permission-Copyrigh- Indira

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it”

Proverbs 22:6

Now I’m grown up and old I can see the effects of my “training.”  Ingrown here, stunted there, twisted and crooked aslant.  The cells in their leaning away.  Living and dead all over.  No chance of undoing.  I don’t  doubt that the core of me is reaching, but axes and ropes have wounded my way.  I did my damnedest.  Filling up leaves, sending out seeds, but the root was in the sap.  Perhaps I’ll be useful for burning.

N Filbert 2013

Friday Fictioneers – March 29, 2013

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing19 Comments

Lamps

The body as a field where many battles rage.  Strife of ideal fathering, strafed with spousal passion and demands.  The infantries advance – toward occupational worth – stealth sweeping the rewards.  Childhood plans of freedom and grandeur – the risk and adventure – hits from guerilla flanks.  The will to heroic power and injured survival.  Biology of age.  Maproom of surrender and negotiating borders.  Where the surge will be.  Today.  Rigorous advance of death.  Waging to forge something like a home, a country, an interdependent territory.  All of it leaving its marks.

It is time to sit down and write.  Time, as measured by flame.

It has to be burning.

N Filbert 2013

 

Or perhaps correspondence…(Asking after the Nature of Nobody, pt. 3)

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes9 Comments

from pt. 2:

This is a portion of a map that does not represent the territory.  There are, perhaps, moments – instances – in which I fit with my surround – but usually it is organizing a mapping conference of sensation, affect, percept and infinite inputs coupling to pre-formed acquired categories and classes, fuzzy generalizations to stencil lines and rivers, mounds and fissures with very little correspondence to the world.

It writes this as “my world,” or “the world that I in-habit.”

Or perhaps correspondence…

(Asking after the Nature of Nobody, pt. 3)

…is precisely what is occurring.

“Each biological life-form, by reason of its distinctive bodily constitution (its ‘biological heritage,’ as we might say), is suited only to certain parts and aspects of the vast physical universe.  And when this ‘suitedness to’ takes the bodily form of cognitive organs, such as our own senses, or the often quite different sensory modalities discovered in other lifeforms, then those aspects and only those aspects of the physical environment which are proportioned to those modalities become ‘objectified,’ that is to say, made present not merely physically but cognitively as well…the difference between objects of experience and elements of sensation is determined primarily not by anything in the physical environment as such but by the relation or, rather, network and set of relations that obtains between whatever may be ‘in fact’ present physically in the surroundings and the cognitive constitution of the biological organism interacting with those surrounding here and now.”

-John Deely, Umwelt–

Given the apparent disjunction of its maps to the potential largesse and intricacy (unknowns) of the territory, it reconsiders.

It thinks it may be inextricably related to the territory.  In no way accurately or exhaustively (in relation to the territory) yet constitutively via what kind of co-respondence pertains (in relation to the species of which it is an example).

In other words, by inter-relation to the territory, and by nature of its dynamic organismal systems of sensation-perception-cognition and communication (+ language – the capacity to model the above relational systems): it is I.

It co-evolves personhood.  The capacity to refer to an I among Is.  An individual personality among a We.

Map and territory, co-respondent.  The map being a model of that correspondence and correlation.  Therefore, of course it is idiosyncratic and fraught with misperceptions, disjunctions and erroneously organized interpretations and representations of the networked environments…yet the map = correspondence with the territory in species-specific experience.

Perhaps?

Correspondences of one to many and many to one, and to a very delimited aspect of the territory, but still constructed by real linkages (reciprocal relations and responses) to that “Territory.”

Bees’ links look different.  If a lion were to speak we would not understand.  Every organism its own relations to the territory, selecting and responding, sensing and processing various aspects of the territory into species-specific lifeworlds, but correlated and corresponding particular to their kind.

Or…our maps are our maps.  Ever changing, adapting, responding to our environments and experiences, genuinely related to the territory, representations of our habits of being in the world (in-habit-ing it as humans).

I can’t lay claim to truth about the territory, but my maps derive from it and shape my forays within it, can be shared and examined, evaluated and adjusted with other mapmakers, and trusted as the experience of a peculiar entity of a particular species modeled in reciprocal relation to specific environs of the territory.

“The map is not the territory” but a model, a depiction, a fragment co-evolved in and with that territory, a specific kind of rendering and representation, and valuable for the explorer-species of the sign.

Umwelt by John Deely

Disjunctive Cartography – Our Propensities, Asking after the Nature of Nobody, cont’d

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes5 Comments

“The map is not the territory.  That’s an expression which  means

the world does not match the picture in our heads”

-Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions, vol. 1–

            It thinks.  It considers that it has not done with it.  It reasons that I will know more tomorrow.  Its hope of reading, of selecting and organizing, of patterning and arranging toward some partial whole, toward an item, an element, a concept or thought (any Other) that it might also become (or have been, an “I”).

In other words, it requires difference.

Yesterday I played soccer with  my son, it concocts.  I was the Other experiencing, moving, tripping-shouting-laughing – discretely – other than the ball or grassy ground, other than the leafy trees and wind, the boy (the one I called son), it was anOther yesterday, and therefore it may refer to that example of human-in-a-context (a surround of not-it) by a meaningful (adequately functional) pronoun (name-toward), namely “he” or “I.”

I gained definition by my surroundings, it conjures.  Any object will do (it’s perceiving assorted matter and energy, its limbs rest on some as “desk,” the 10” fence as “books” and the process of sensing, transforming to perception as “time” and mediates “it” as separate-though-connected – of the same stuff (matter) but in motion and of a unique form (relating to) – and names its organized system “self,” “me,” “I”).

It meditates (categorizes, classifies, identifies, compares and contrasts) on these sensations/percpetions/affectations and wonders.  “It was I,” it hears without sound – a confession aimed at a photo of a boy-child near against an aged man I knew as “grandpa.”  I looked so different – of different cells and height and weight, blood pressure and vision, facial contours, bones, hair and skin – so very different (it looks at a reflection) – how is it the “same” (identical to) “I” it is now?

Or might be tomorrow – through an utterly unknowable future of events, weather, interactivities, sensations, affectations and cognitions.  Will it be me tomorrow?  It wonders how identity can withstand such difference – variance, change, even replacement and erasure – and still meaningfully or validly considered “same”?

It places its’ head on its’ wrists.  It writes these words (is writing) in order to create (or craft) a recognizable trace, an effect, communally learned, socially agreed-upon marks that construct a momentary reflexivity its’ own existence.  A sort of extrinsic, partial it, to feel like also an I, at a moment.

It in-scribes in a medium, borrowed from others – borrowed, acquired, manipulated, stolen – a kind of proof to it that it is, and is unique, separatively connected, yea, conjoined seamlessly, molecularly, and yet… distinguishable… therefore I-able.  Referable.  Nominal.

It senses discomfort in parts labeled (categorized, classified, i.e. generalized and lumped indiscriminately/arbitrarily or learned) “head” and “neck” and “shoulders.”  It shuts its eyes.  I slept well last night, that is, I woke refreshed, my discomforts (aches) diminished.  It remembers I went to bed dry-eyed and suffering allergic responses to Springtime.  It drinks coffee.  It is not the same.

This is a portion of a map that does not represent the territory.  There are, perhaps, moments – instances – in which I fit with my surround – but usually it is organizing a mapping conference of sensation, affect, percept and infinite inputs coupling to pre-formed acquired categories and classes, fuzzy generalizations to stencil lines and rivers, mounds and fissures with very little correspondence to the world.

It writes this as “my world,” or “the world that I in-habit.”

-Becoming Human: Asking after the Nature of Nobody pt. 1

Set Screens

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing25 Comments

for Friday Fictioneers, March 15, 2013.

Copyright - Lora Mitchell

With age I come to see more clearly, through glaucoma and the cataracts.  Each layer beamed away, burning holes in cloudy veils.  Colors hardly remembered, bright edges that the world lends.  All that glitters can’t be told.  Even my hearing improves, as if long years of practice had taught me how to listen.  The paper of my skin whispers pages’ sound.  Dying’s process of deletion, dropping memories like scales.  Surgery after surgical procedure – removing the lens, installing; expanding tubes, constricting; bypassing and shunting – internal edits increasing my awareness that I’ve no idea how deep my set screens go.  I am yet to see this world, through the versions that I’ve filmed.

N Filbert 2013

Becoming Human: Asking after the Nature of Nobody

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes14 Comments

“What, in summary, is the nature of the singular entity referred to by the word ‘I’ in judgments like ‘I am in pain’?  Answer: since those uses of ‘I’ do not refer, the question is nonsensical.  One might as well ask after the nature of Nobody.”

-John Canfield-

“The ‘main point’ is rarely extricable from the digressions.  Every section spills into every other… [he] no longer knows what he was talking about.”

-R. M. Berry-

            It grows hair.  It remembers things differently.  It is singing as if in a mumbling voice.  Yesterday I got angry.

It thinks, but after talking with the child I was upset with, it revises its conception, taking into account that she said I exhibited joy.  Yesterday I was happy.

This glassy essence.

“I will need to accomplish a task tomorrow,” it thinks, in a manner different from image, music or text.  It can almost see me doing it – in a situated context – surrounded by people (other ones), objects, time and space.  Not essentially.  Well, maybe.

It calls to mind (read fabricates) what I was like two decades ago.  I was climbing mountains then, most often alone (i.e. not in the company of additional humans), still it is able to consider me there.  There where?  It imagines Long’s Peak in Colorado (in neither image, language nor feeling – it cannot recall particulars well enough to reconstruct)…it senses I was there.  It is reading in a diary.

Does this make it me?  The same as the I who wrote it, camping somewhere along the Eastern slope of Long’s Peak in 1995, apparently gladly absent of friend, foe, spouse or tamed animal counterpart?

I had a pack full of peanut butter and potatoes, a couple jugs of water, a tent, a cloak, a knife, an assortment of pens, books and blank journals.  It roughly remembers some of that.

It reflects (not to itself – that doesn’t even make sense) – must be a sort of nuanced synonym for thinking – (with itself? of itself? nonsense, it simply reflects) – I’m sitting cross-legged on a small clearing near a frothy crystalline stream within a circle of baby pines, trying to read philosophy texts packed in for the purpose of uninterrupted, or it could be me yet-to-come as distinguished by Swiss mountains and an understood language barrier protecting my solitude along with evident (it imagines) distance (and therefore time) between whatever residents might exist and I.  It (hypothetically) notices that (well, enough to pick out an “I” on the Jungfrau or Matterhorn).

But that has happened too.  Does the case that it conceives me thus proscribe an identity?   It isn’t sure, but there are similarities of some variety.  It isn’t saying for certain (the fact is it could say “for certain” but what might that establish as regards me?) – the appearance and accidents, character and behavior are in many ways inexact and altered – but for pragmatic and discriminatory purposes – it would designate me “me” (if it were in conversation or thinking extrinsically).

Could it really say, most definitely, that I was there?  Any more than that I will be?  It is uncertain, entirely possible.

This glassy essence.

It remains, for now.

Thinking of the time I was writing this (nearly now but just before).  It is writing, but not this, I have written this, it is aware, but only just before or just after – that it is I.

It writes.

“…man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.”

-Shakespeare, Measure for Measure–

The Direction of Dreams

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing23 Comments

a la Friday Fictioneers – everybody should give it a go!  Thank you Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for keeping us prompted…

copyright - Jennifer Pendergast

The Direction of Dreams

My son says he always dreams the same house, strangely enough.  Except with a spiral staircase.  The cartoon girl runs jerkily past.  Perhaps she trips, perhaps there’s a dog in the way, perhaps a lady walking with a stroller.  He doesn’t know the house, he says, but it’s always the same house.  With a spiral staircase, but not a cartoon girl.  I know she’s running though, in fits and starts, with urgency.  Something depends on her speed.  There’s a trying to get somewhere, in any direction.  And direction needs a context.  Something about dreams, spirals and speed.

N Filbert 2013