Drawings of the elements of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector in the style of Leonardo da Vinci
[gallery link="file" columns="4" orderby="rand"]
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Monday, 28 May 2012
Friday, 18 November 2011
Visualization calibration
What would a musical vector look like? Vectors have magnitude and direction; music possesses an amplitude (volume) and a frequency (pitch). If the directive parameter of the vector is substituted with the frequency of some noise and the magnitude of the vector substituted with the amplitude, and if the origin of the vector is held fixed, then it would move around that pivot, pointing in a certain direction for a given frequency and stretching in that direction according to the amplitude.
The next step is to model the direction according to the frequency: given that the noise playing could be at any frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, it would be quite a mundane exercise to manually calibrate a scale and have the vector point at the appropriate positions. Instead, it would be more interesting to ditch the cylindrical coordinates normally taught in classrooms at the middle school level and take up the circular coordinate system. Here, instead of the X and Y axes, there's the radial vector and the angular position: if I stand at a particular point, instead of being so much to the left and so much toward the front, I will be some distance from an origin and inclined at some angle against a baseline.
[caption id="attachment_20680" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A circular, or polar, coordinate system"]
[/caption]
Now, let's fix the frequency conversion first. 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is a range of 19,980 Hz. Dividing that value by 360 degrees, we get 55.5 Hz per degree: this means that starting at 0 degrees, each subsequent degree represents an increment of 55.5 Hz, as in 0 Hz, 55.5 Hz, 111 Hz, 166.5 Hz, and so on. Therefore, as the noise plays out, the vector will point in the corresponding direction. In order to make it more visually captivating, the timestep can be incremented to 0.5 seconds. In other words, the vector will correspond to the frequency only once every second instead of corresponding continuously. With suitable fade-in and fade-out effects, a smooth flashing motion can be visualized.
Before fixing the amplitude conversion, let's look at the following wave representation of some noise.
Demarcating it into three sections,
If the red line was to be held as the baseline, then the net displacement from it of each point of the green curve (with a timestep of 0.5 seconds) can be computed and a standard deviation (SD) arrived at. Now, the value of the SD is going to be different for different sections, the reasons behind which are evident. Now, instead of computing the deviations separately, section after section, it can be done continuously. Since the value of the SD is equal to the average value of all measured deviations in that section, the section under consideration can be moved with a timestep of 0.5 seconds and a range of 5 seconds.
For example, let's assume that the range of A is 5 seconds. This is the original section. Now, as the noise begins to play, we wait for the first 5 seconds to transpire. At 5.5 seconds, we move the head of the section we're considering to coincide with the the position at which the noise is playing - like a slider along a rail - while we bring up the rear, constantly ensuring that the range remains at 5 seconds. In this moving range, we continuously compute the SD and use this changing value as the radius of the circle we're using to visualize the vector in.
If the noise playing is a continuous and uniformly pitched beep, the vector is going to point in one direction all the time and the radius of the circle is going to be constant throughout. If a sine wave is playing out, then the radius of the circle will rise and fall according to the frequency of the wave and the vector will oscillate between two points on the perimeter of the circle. Here again, a latency can be effected by introducing a lag component to the vector's movement, ensuring that it moves, say, 0.25 seconds later than right then. The final step to calibrating a visualizer is the graphic effects: since we've assumed a circular coordinate system, the equation for the Archimedean spiral can be employed to assign each point, or pixel, within the circular a particulate color.
r = a + b . θ
'a' is the gradient of the coloring; 'b', the number of pixels on the radius of the circle; and 'r', the coloring function that has been employed. The total number of pixels in the circle will be πr2 which will also then be the number of colors to be assigned overall. Using a loop counter to increment the hex colors (and assigning them to the value of 'r'), the moving vector can be colorized depending on where it points to and to what distance within the circle (while θ is increased from 0-360 degrees). Since the radius of the circle, 'b', is going to keep changing, it would be better to colorize the entire canvas, superimpose the image of the circle on it, mask the colors, and then use the vector to unmask the colors on its "skin".
[caption id="attachment_20677" align="aligncenter" width="474" caption="A still of a visualization on Windows Media Player, achieved by using more subtle gradients, fading effects, and multiple layers of images."]
[/caption]
The next step is to model the direction according to the frequency: given that the noise playing could be at any frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, it would be quite a mundane exercise to manually calibrate a scale and have the vector point at the appropriate positions. Instead, it would be more interesting to ditch the cylindrical coordinates normally taught in classrooms at the middle school level and take up the circular coordinate system. Here, instead of the X and Y axes, there's the radial vector and the angular position: if I stand at a particular point, instead of being so much to the left and so much toward the front, I will be some distance from an origin and inclined at some angle against a baseline.
[caption id="attachment_20680" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A circular, or polar, coordinate system"]
[/caption]Now, let's fix the frequency conversion first. 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is a range of 19,980 Hz. Dividing that value by 360 degrees, we get 55.5 Hz per degree: this means that starting at 0 degrees, each subsequent degree represents an increment of 55.5 Hz, as in 0 Hz, 55.5 Hz, 111 Hz, 166.5 Hz, and so on. Therefore, as the noise plays out, the vector will point in the corresponding direction. In order to make it more visually captivating, the timestep can be incremented to 0.5 seconds. In other words, the vector will correspond to the frequency only once every second instead of corresponding continuously. With suitable fade-in and fade-out effects, a smooth flashing motion can be visualized.
Before fixing the amplitude conversion, let's look at the following wave representation of some noise.
Demarcating it into three sections,
If the red line was to be held as the baseline, then the net displacement from it of each point of the green curve (with a timestep of 0.5 seconds) can be computed and a standard deviation (SD) arrived at. Now, the value of the SD is going to be different for different sections, the reasons behind which are evident. Now, instead of computing the deviations separately, section after section, it can be done continuously. Since the value of the SD is equal to the average value of all measured deviations in that section, the section under consideration can be moved with a timestep of 0.5 seconds and a range of 5 seconds.
For example, let's assume that the range of A is 5 seconds. This is the original section. Now, as the noise begins to play, we wait for the first 5 seconds to transpire. At 5.5 seconds, we move the head of the section we're considering to coincide with the the position at which the noise is playing - like a slider along a rail - while we bring up the rear, constantly ensuring that the range remains at 5 seconds. In this moving range, we continuously compute the SD and use this changing value as the radius of the circle we're using to visualize the vector in.
If the noise playing is a continuous and uniformly pitched beep, the vector is going to point in one direction all the time and the radius of the circle is going to be constant throughout. If a sine wave is playing out, then the radius of the circle will rise and fall according to the frequency of the wave and the vector will oscillate between two points on the perimeter of the circle. Here again, a latency can be effected by introducing a lag component to the vector's movement, ensuring that it moves, say, 0.25 seconds later than right then. The final step to calibrating a visualizer is the graphic effects: since we've assumed a circular coordinate system, the equation for the Archimedean spiral can be employed to assign each point, or pixel, within the circular a particulate color.
r = a + b . θ
'a' is the gradient of the coloring; 'b', the number of pixels on the radius of the circle; and 'r', the coloring function that has been employed. The total number of pixels in the circle will be πr2 which will also then be the number of colors to be assigned overall. Using a loop counter to increment the hex colors (and assigning them to the value of 'r'), the moving vector can be colorized depending on where it points to and to what distance within the circle (while θ is increased from 0-360 degrees). Since the radius of the circle, 'b', is going to keep changing, it would be better to colorize the entire canvas, superimpose the image of the circle on it, mask the colors, and then use the vector to unmask the colors on its "skin".
[caption id="attachment_20677" align="aligncenter" width="474" caption="A still of a visualization on Windows Media Player, achieved by using more subtle gradients, fading effects, and multiple layers of images."]
[/caption]
Visualization calibration
What would a musical vector look like? Vectors have magnitude and direction; music possesses an amplitude (volume) and a frequency (pitch). If the directive parameter of the vector is substituted with the frequency of some noise and the magnitude of the vector substituted with the amplitude, and if the origin of the vector is held fixed, then it would move around that pivot, pointing in a certain direction for a given frequency and stretching in that direction according to the amplitude.
The next step is to model the direction according to the frequency: given that the noise playing could be at any frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, it would be quite a mundane exercise to manually calibrate a scale and have the vector point at the appropriate positions. Instead, it would be more interesting to ditch the cylindrical coordinates normally taught in classrooms at the middle school level and take up the circular coordinate system. Here, instead of the X and Y axes, there's the radial vector and the angular position: if I stand at a particular point, instead of being so much to the left and so much toward the front, I will be some distance from an origin and inclined at some angle against a baseline.
[caption id="attachment_20680" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A circular, or polar, coordinate system"][/caption]
Now, let's fix the frequency conversion first. 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is a range of 19,980 Hz. Dividing that value by 360 degrees, we get 55.5 Hz per degree: this means that starting at 0 degrees, each subsequent degree represents an increment of 55.5 Hz, as in 0 Hz, 55.5 Hz, 111 Hz, 166.5 Hz, and so on. Therefore, as the noise plays out, the vector will point in the corresponding direction. In order to make it more visually captivating, the timestep can be incremented to 0.5 seconds. In other words, the vector will correspond to the frequency only once every second instead of corresponding continuously. With suitable fade-in and fade-out effects, a smooth flashing motion can be visualized.
Before fixing the amplitude conversion, let's look at the following wave representation of some noise.
Demarcating it into three sections,
If the red line was to be held as the baseline, then the net displacement from it of each point of the green curve (with a timestep of 0.5 seconds) can be computed and a standard deviation (SD) arrived at. Now, the value of the SD is going to be different for different sections, the reasons behind which are evident. Now, instead of computing the deviations separately, section after section, it can be done continuously. Since the value of the SD is equal to the average value of all measured deviations in that section, the section under consideration can be moved with a timestep of 0.5 seconds and a range of 5 seconds.
For example, let's assume that the range of A is 5 seconds. This is the original section. Now, as the noise begins to play, we wait for the first 5 seconds to transpire. At 5.5 seconds, we move the head of the section we're considering to coincide with the the position at which the noise is playing - like a slider along a rail - while we bring up the rear, constantly ensuring that the range remains at 5 seconds. In this moving range, we continuously compute the SD and use this changing value as the radius of the circle we're using to visualize the vector in.
If the noise playing is a continuous and uniformly pitched beep, the vector is going to point in one direction all the time and the radius of the circle is going to be constant throughout. If a sine wave is playing out, then the radius of the circle will rise and fall according to the frequency of the wave and the vector will oscillate between two points on the perimeter of the circle. Here again, a latency can be effected by introducing a lag component to the vector's movement, ensuring that it moves, say, 0.25 seconds later than right then. The final step to calibrating a visualizer is the graphic effects: since we've assumed a circular coordinate system, the equation for the Archimedean spiral can be employed to assign each point, or pixel, within the circular a particulate color.
r = a + b . θ
'a' is the gradient of the coloring; 'b', the number of pixels on the radius of the circle; and 'r', the coloring function that has been employed. The total number of pixels in the circle will be πr2 which will also then be the number of colors to be assigned overall. Using a loop counter to increment the hex colors (and assigning them to the value of 'r'), the moving vector can be colorized depending on where it points to and to what distance within the circle (while θ is increased from 0-360 degrees). Since the radius of the circle, 'b', is going to keep changing, it would be better to colorize the entire canvas, superimpose the image of the circle on it, mask the colors, and then use the vector to unmask the colors on its "skin".
[caption id="attachment_20677" align="aligncenter" width="474" caption="A still of a visualization on Windows Media Player, achieved by using more subtle gradients, fading effects, and multiple layers of images."][/caption]
The next step is to model the direction according to the frequency: given that the noise playing could be at any frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, it would be quite a mundane exercise to manually calibrate a scale and have the vector point at the appropriate positions. Instead, it would be more interesting to ditch the cylindrical coordinates normally taught in classrooms at the middle school level and take up the circular coordinate system. Here, instead of the X and Y axes, there's the radial vector and the angular position: if I stand at a particular point, instead of being so much to the left and so much toward the front, I will be some distance from an origin and inclined at some angle against a baseline.
[caption id="attachment_20680" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A circular, or polar, coordinate system"]
[/caption]Now, let's fix the frequency conversion first. 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is a range of 19,980 Hz. Dividing that value by 360 degrees, we get 55.5 Hz per degree: this means that starting at 0 degrees, each subsequent degree represents an increment of 55.5 Hz, as in 0 Hz, 55.5 Hz, 111 Hz, 166.5 Hz, and so on. Therefore, as the noise plays out, the vector will point in the corresponding direction. In order to make it more visually captivating, the timestep can be incremented to 0.5 seconds. In other words, the vector will correspond to the frequency only once every second instead of corresponding continuously. With suitable fade-in and fade-out effects, a smooth flashing motion can be visualized.
Before fixing the amplitude conversion, let's look at the following wave representation of some noise.
Demarcating it into three sections,
If the red line was to be held as the baseline, then the net displacement from it of each point of the green curve (with a timestep of 0.5 seconds) can be computed and a standard deviation (SD) arrived at. Now, the value of the SD is going to be different for different sections, the reasons behind which are evident. Now, instead of computing the deviations separately, section after section, it can be done continuously. Since the value of the SD is equal to the average value of all measured deviations in that section, the section under consideration can be moved with a timestep of 0.5 seconds and a range of 5 seconds.
For example, let's assume that the range of A is 5 seconds. This is the original section. Now, as the noise begins to play, we wait for the first 5 seconds to transpire. At 5.5 seconds, we move the head of the section we're considering to coincide with the the position at which the noise is playing - like a slider along a rail - while we bring up the rear, constantly ensuring that the range remains at 5 seconds. In this moving range, we continuously compute the SD and use this changing value as the radius of the circle we're using to visualize the vector in.
If the noise playing is a continuous and uniformly pitched beep, the vector is going to point in one direction all the time and the radius of the circle is going to be constant throughout. If a sine wave is playing out, then the radius of the circle will rise and fall according to the frequency of the wave and the vector will oscillate between two points on the perimeter of the circle. Here again, a latency can be effected by introducing a lag component to the vector's movement, ensuring that it moves, say, 0.25 seconds later than right then. The final step to calibrating a visualizer is the graphic effects: since we've assumed a circular coordinate system, the equation for the Archimedean spiral can be employed to assign each point, or pixel, within the circular a particulate color.
r = a + b . θ
'a' is the gradient of the coloring; 'b', the number of pixels on the radius of the circle; and 'r', the coloring function that has been employed. The total number of pixels in the circle will be πr2 which will also then be the number of colors to be assigned overall. Using a loop counter to increment the hex colors (and assigning them to the value of 'r'), the moving vector can be colorized depending on where it points to and to what distance within the circle (while θ is increased from 0-360 degrees). Since the radius of the circle, 'b', is going to keep changing, it would be better to colorize the entire canvas, superimpose the image of the circle on it, mask the colors, and then use the vector to unmask the colors on its "skin".
[caption id="attachment_20677" align="aligncenter" width="474" caption="A still of a visualization on Windows Media Player, achieved by using more subtle gradients, fading effects, and multiple layers of images."]
[/caption]
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Thursday, 27 October 2011
The futurity of art
I suffer from a terrible lack of insight. Unless I find that something is structured in a way that I can recognize the structure itself, I cannot "read" it (and I don't know how better to put it).
For example, consider web design. Ignoring the programming aspect of it, anything on the web is designed keeping in mind the content that will be contained on the page. If it is purely written content, the primary objective is to provide the reader with an "environment" that contains no distractions irrespective of how many and what kind of widgets feature on the sidebar(s). The font has to be legible and stylistic at the same time, each post should be clearly demarcated from the next, keywords of the post should be visible to the reader as well as to any search engines that might crawl the page.
Keeping all this in mind, any insights I can and will provide will pertain to striking a fine balance between principle and technique, or requirement and style. However, the same cannot be said of art or creative writing because products in such arenas are products despite any disregard they may have expressed toward principle/technique because they are expressions of individual beliefs and tastes. In such cases, what is insight? I cannot say without a perfect knowledge of the subjective perspectives involved, and even then, things like the indeterminacy of translation limit the "quantity" of insight I am in a position to provide.
However, the necessity of insight persists because, in the absence of such information, development on the copy is impossible. In retrospect, this points to a consequential sort of lack-of-originality amongst those who employ another author's mythos to base their own works upon; at least, it is so that there is only any scalar development and no directional development: the plot will move forward in time or in space, but it will not move in any direction in terms of the ideological elements that it espouses.
For example, if I were a fan of Ludlum's Bourne series and if I were to speak about my liking of van Lustbader's continuation of the same series, then I will be not be professing any opinion on the subject of the series' essentially abstract constituents but only on van Lustbader's writing skills. In furtherance of the same line of thought, the creations of Ludlum will go from being fictitious to being meta-fictitious; van Lustbader's books will become individuations of Ludlum's mythos but can never aspire to become one of the mythos itself.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="510" caption="Magritte's 'The Treachery of Images', 1928-1929, questioned the viewer's perception of reality. The picture of the pipe in this painting is only a metaphysical representation of the pipe; the pipe itself is alluded to by the comment at the bottom."]
[/caption]
However, the more important deduction is that van Lustbader's works now form the basis of other subjective interpretations, thereby ensuring the propagation of the "art of authorship" as such but not of the articulated entity itself. Someday, the memory of Ludlum's works will fade; at the same time, the mortality of such memories will concern only the processes involved in the creation of the mythos (and therefore only the structured) and not the mythos itself. In other words, the mythos will lose its history but retain its form and function, or its futurity, which will persist in the works of van Lustbader.
That is the problem with structure: its cause is pure principle while its effect is pure technique. Such a particular state of being stresses on inductive memory as opposed to requiring deductive memory: insofar as deduction is concerned, the advantage of inheritable logic is present. Although the inductive nature of logic itself can be disputed, the relationships it derives its strength from are fairly ingrained into our minds because they are the foremost tools employed to deconstruct reality. Furthermore, inductive memory is essentially biological. Propagation, therefore, is limited by natural constraints. (This recourse to human memory also implies that the changing face of art is necessary for a healthy futurity.)
For example, consider web design. Ignoring the programming aspect of it, anything on the web is designed keeping in mind the content that will be contained on the page. If it is purely written content, the primary objective is to provide the reader with an "environment" that contains no distractions irrespective of how many and what kind of widgets feature on the sidebar(s). The font has to be legible and stylistic at the same time, each post should be clearly demarcated from the next, keywords of the post should be visible to the reader as well as to any search engines that might crawl the page.
Keeping all this in mind, any insights I can and will provide will pertain to striking a fine balance between principle and technique, or requirement and style. However, the same cannot be said of art or creative writing because products in such arenas are products despite any disregard they may have expressed toward principle/technique because they are expressions of individual beliefs and tastes. In such cases, what is insight? I cannot say without a perfect knowledge of the subjective perspectives involved, and even then, things like the indeterminacy of translation limit the "quantity" of insight I am in a position to provide.
However, the necessity of insight persists because, in the absence of such information, development on the copy is impossible. In retrospect, this points to a consequential sort of lack-of-originality amongst those who employ another author's mythos to base their own works upon; at least, it is so that there is only any scalar development and no directional development: the plot will move forward in time or in space, but it will not move in any direction in terms of the ideological elements that it espouses.
For example, if I were a fan of Ludlum's Bourne series and if I were to speak about my liking of van Lustbader's continuation of the same series, then I will be not be professing any opinion on the subject of the series' essentially abstract constituents but only on van Lustbader's writing skills. In furtherance of the same line of thought, the creations of Ludlum will go from being fictitious to being meta-fictitious; van Lustbader's books will become individuations of Ludlum's mythos but can never aspire to become one of the mythos itself.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="510" caption="Magritte's 'The Treachery of Images', 1928-1929, questioned the viewer's perception of reality. The picture of the pipe in this painting is only a metaphysical representation of the pipe; the pipe itself is alluded to by the comment at the bottom."]
[/caption]However, the more important deduction is that van Lustbader's works now form the basis of other subjective interpretations, thereby ensuring the propagation of the "art of authorship" as such but not of the articulated entity itself. Someday, the memory of Ludlum's works will fade; at the same time, the mortality of such memories will concern only the processes involved in the creation of the mythos (and therefore only the structured) and not the mythos itself. In other words, the mythos will lose its history but retain its form and function, or its futurity, which will persist in the works of van Lustbader.
That is the problem with structure: its cause is pure principle while its effect is pure technique. Such a particular state of being stresses on inductive memory as opposed to requiring deductive memory: insofar as deduction is concerned, the advantage of inheritable logic is present. Although the inductive nature of logic itself can be disputed, the relationships it derives its strength from are fairly ingrained into our minds because they are the foremost tools employed to deconstruct reality. Furthermore, inductive memory is essentially biological. Propagation, therefore, is limited by natural constraints. (This recourse to human memory also implies that the changing face of art is necessary for a healthy futurity.)
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Rusty and Sharded
Before I began writing this, I thought to myself how I would begin this entry. That's when it struck me that this is my diary; I can write whatever I want to write - and so I began this entry! Haha! It is difficult to understand why people pour out their sorrows in thousands of words but joy comes out in not more than a hundred words. If it weren't for a "special" relationship I believe I have with the words I put down, I wouldn't think words are oppressed that way. Would they rebel? In a world of words, what would the rebellion be like? Will the world "bloody" be draped across a thousand pages of their chronicles? Perhaps, but words are often used together with the logic that comes with using them - not grammatical but the one accompanying the justice (or judicial capacity) of reason.
He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.
Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.
I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".
Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.
It's a world sans friction.
Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.
He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.
Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.
I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".
Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.
It's a world sans friction.
Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.
Rusty and Sharded
Before I began writing this, I thought to myself how I would begin this entry. That's when it struck me that this is my diary; I can write whatever I want to write - and so I began this entry! Haha! It is difficult to understand why people pour out their sorrows in thousands of words but joy comes out in not more than a hundred words. If it weren't for a "special" relationship I believe I have with the words I put down, I wouldn't think words are oppressed that way. Would they rebel? In a world of words, what would the rebellion be like? Will the world "bloody" be draped across a thousand pages of their chronicles? Perhaps, but words are often used together with the logic that comes with using them - not grammatical but the one accompanying the justice (or judicial capacity) of reason.
He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.
Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.
I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".
Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.
It's a world sans friction.
Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.
He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.
Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.
I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".
Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.
It's a world sans friction.
Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
The Blog Pact: A poem
What’s the use of a blog pact /
When no one will blog /
They always say they will /
But no one has blogged /
The weeks turned into months /
The months turned into years /
The pen has run out of ink /
But the canvas is empty and in tears /
Like a brave warrior with sword /
Turned away from his destiny /
I blog like a lost weapon /
Craving for a just adversity /
If only someone would write /
I might have something to read /
I write and I write and I write /
And it’s become like a selfless deed /
One thousand pages are filled /
One hundred quills have withered /
Twenty thousand eyes have been pleased /
Only two have witnessed any work /
It’s your choice to write or not /
It’s your word to give or take /
There is no oath ever levied /
Although it helps if a promise is made /
The eyes are lonely and the road barren /
Each day’s demands are a sullen pique /
The pages are many and the ink awaits /
I must write now so you can read and sleep /
When no one will blog /
They always say they will /
But no one has blogged /
The weeks turned into months /
The months turned into years /
The pen has run out of ink /
But the canvas is empty and in tears /
Like a brave warrior with sword /
Turned away from his destiny /
I blog like a lost weapon /
Craving for a just adversity /
If only someone would write /
I might have something to read /
I write and I write and I write /
And it’s become like a selfless deed /
One thousand pages are filled /
One hundred quills have withered /
Twenty thousand eyes have been pleased /
Only two have witnessed any work /
It’s your choice to write or not /
It’s your word to give or take /
There is no oath ever levied /
Although it helps if a promise is made /
The eyes are lonely and the road barren /
Each day’s demands are a sullen pique /
The pages are many and the ink awaits /
I must write now so you can read and sleep /
Related Articles
- Poem: God May be Out There, But Very Busy (fmpoetry.wordpress.com)
Monday, 21 February 2011
The Death Of A Blogger
More so than using WP's Plinky to find something to write these days, I go through the archives of my oldest blog, more often than not finding not just badly written posts but also lots of good ideas that I find hidden between the lines but, back then, was digressing too much to focus on them. While I can safely say that I have matured as a writer, I know the difference between the earlier "me" and the present "me": I used to write because I felt like writing something. Now, I write because I have something to write about.
That's not a desirable part of the maturation process, nor is it undesirable.
That feeling of "wanting" to do something because you like doing it and not because it has become a medium to express something is what I miss, though not too much because I could only have written so much meaningful or contributory pieces before starting all over again. Writing for writing's sake has an expiry limit. We're all humans and our mastery over something is automatically succeeded with our employment of that same thing.
What prompted me to write this post was that, when I was sifting through some old notes on the blog, I found a particular WP user who had left comments on almost every post for a period of about four months. Whensoever I used to put up an article on anything, he had the habit of finding something wrong with it, and we would get into a lengthy discussion. I would comment on his blog, he would respond on mine, it was such a good experience, of finding a friend out of nowhere.
I found a link lying around to his blog and decided to pay him a visit, but this is what I saw.
[caption id="attachment_509" align="aligncenter" width="520" caption="Interrupted."]
[/caption]
That's not a desirable part of the maturation process, nor is it undesirable.
That feeling of "wanting" to do something because you like doing it and not because it has become a medium to express something is what I miss, though not too much because I could only have written so much meaningful or contributory pieces before starting all over again. Writing for writing's sake has an expiry limit. We're all humans and our mastery over something is automatically succeeded with our employment of that same thing.
What prompted me to write this post was that, when I was sifting through some old notes on the blog, I found a particular WP user who had left comments on almost every post for a period of about four months. Whensoever I used to put up an article on anything, he had the habit of finding something wrong with it, and we would get into a lengthy discussion. I would comment on his blog, he would respond on mine, it was such a good experience, of finding a friend out of nowhere.
I found a link lying around to his blog and decided to pay him a visit, but this is what I saw.
[caption id="attachment_509" align="aligncenter" width="520" caption="Interrupted."]
[/caption]One blogger has disappeared. In his place is an emptiness that cannot be filled because it is still so full of memories. Another blogger has died. In his place is a man who wants to write something only because he has something to write about and not for writing's sake. 'Ars gratia artis' is not impractical nor is it unreasonable as an expectation, but it has its purpose, a time and purpose to practice it. Being an artiste non gratis is not condemnable. What is is the idea that art is what it is and cannot be anything more.
Related Articles
- The Mystery Man & Reflections On Writing (enderanimate.wordpress.com)
- The Writers' Bloc In India (enderanimate.wordpress.com)
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
A Story Through Ten Images
- An old draft, warm with all the years of our acquaintance, edged conveniently off the table. Outside, the world was up to something, it was always up to something, but I never bothered. It was up to no good anyway. Such evenings always made me smile, not in the cocky way some old fart smiles when his midlife crises hits him in the face, but in the cocky way an old soldier is allowed to feel, is entitled to feel. Those were the days... when the world was up to worse.
[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Of all the many journeys I was a part of, the Kohrin Expedition comes to mind now - not always, it's too special to be wondering about on any evening except this one. The Kohrin were an ancient people who civilized slowly, deliberately, accruing for themselves a foundation for their future so strong, so unshakeable, that they automatically threatened anyone they dealt with, whether by accident or by measure. In the fourth year of the twelfth solar cycle, a secret expedition was sent forth by an affluent Kohrini thug named Brull; I was conscripted along with four other pilots to deliver resources to rebel factions coming together to topple the ruling council of ministers. Brull wanted the crown for himself, the kingdom for his house."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_149" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A 17-hour journey later, I was at SR-71 to meet with the faction titled Bazlac. To cut a long story short, they weren't there. The place was desolate, the wooden struts had been blasted off with undue force, pocks littered the face of the earth. Some of the spots were still smoldering and a wet track led away from them, deep in the squelch, a heavy vehicle of some kind had been here. Keeping the shuttle low, I followed it north for as long as it lasted. Then, in the distance..."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A Citadel of Light, unmistakable from this distance, with its rounded ramparts and domed crowns, with the blue flames of necromancy climbing into the sky out of the blast-capillaries, hot as Hell, cold as Hell, webs of some strange silken cord hanging in strands from its facade. The mound of land on which it stood seemed still loose, which meant it was new, a "fresh" acquisition. The Drasil were cannibals, morally decadent spawn detested by the kinds of Brull even. The Bazlac were done for, I knew, but what the Drasil were doing so far outfield I didn't, so I decided to pay them a visit. A secret one."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_151" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Drasil were very religious, which meant taking to the skies was equal to defying the airspace of the "Gods", so getting to the other side was easy. Perching atop a hill shrouded in mist, I found a vantage point after cloaking the shuttle, took my post and waited. Beneath, a sea of green light, within which boats were being scuttled. This was strange, there was no enemy army in sight, no threat, no chance of one either as a great army encircling the camp came to be seen under the dim light. Why were the boats being scuttled? I heard a noise behind me, and turning to look, saw it was a dunkke."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_152" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A dunkke was a proselyte with the Drasil camp whose arms and legs had been cut off and substituted with electromechanical limbs that enhanced speed. They argued that, over the years, this left the brain to focus more on other activities, such as strategizing or backstabbing. Two red bulbs glowed bright on the bosom of this woman, which meant she had been deactivated. Her activation signals would gradually die out, leaving her immobile and starving to death. I walked up to the figure, dragged her to near the craft, and fed her some energy from the engines. She was obviously a traitor to the Drasilhani cause."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The first words out of her mouth and I prepared to disconnect her, but her arms were exceptionally strong. She was some kind of a warrior, absorbed into the cult through blackmail and torture, to dive beneath the seas and awaken the Purge. Brull had not sought to bring down Kohrin, at least at first, but instead sought to repel the Drasil. The Bazlac were planning to awaken the Purge themselves to quench the fire of the Kohrin and the Drasil had intervened. But why? The Drasil needed life to kill, fertility to blight."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Purge was an antediluvian cabal buried midway between the outer crust and inner mantle of three planets in the entire galaxy, conceived and gestated since time immemorial by some Kohrin overlord, commanded to rise and be born as a machine with unimaginable power, with the sole purpose of melting and consuming whole planets within days. The one in SR-71 was named Red Hand. The three Purges were the ultimate weapons of the Kohrin, unstoppable, reckless in their hunger for metal and stone. Now, I understood the answer: the Kohrin had allied with the Drasil to eliminate fringe rebels, but the Drasil had grabbed the chance to reactivate the three Hands of Oblivion... against the Kohrin."]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_155" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This here's the construction site behind my home. They're building some sort of an office, although for what I don't know. My planet's exactly one parsec away from SR-71, which means it will be another six years before Red Hand gets here. They don't know yet, or they'd be over their sorrow already and holding some sort of celebration, calling for world peace and brotherhood, what melodrama! I can't stand that. If they let me be, I'd let them be. That looks impossible all the time. Cancer's going to take me in another four months, so I figured, hey! Let's not tell them anything. Keep the mystery alive, that sorta thing, get me? After all, anything's possible!"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anything at all."]
[/caption]
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