The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) is packing up to leave Princeton for its new home at the International Consciousness Research Laboratories. For almost three decades, PEAR has done research into unexplainable but scientifically measurable psychic phenomena. Using a computer that generates massive sequences of random numbers, the lab has demonstrated that subjects are able to influence the generation of the numbers by wishing for a certain outcome. In other words, humans are able to psychically exert an influence on machines.
These experiments build on a series of similar experiments that are the empirical basis for the Carl Jung’s writings about Synchronicity. The word synchronicity has been used widely to describe all sorts of remarkable events, but in Jung's work it has a very specific and narrow definition. Synchronicity is defined as two corresponding events, one inner (in the psyche or consciousness) and one out in the physical world, that appear related but for which there is no rational explanation for their relationship.
In his book, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung cites a series of experiments by J.B. Rhine carried out in the first half of the twentieth century that use similar methodologies to PEAR and achieve similar results. Rhine used cards and dice as the random event generators. The experiments start by asking a subject to guess a card being held up facing away from them. The initial study discovered that subjects are slightly more capable of naming the correct card than can be accounted for by chance. The studies went on to measure the influence of wishing for an outcome on a sequence of dice rolls. It discovered a measurable positive effect of wishing on the outcome of the random event. This version of the experiment was carried further by placing the subject in Europe while the dice were rolled in the United States. The results were the same. In the most startling outcome, the experiment was carried further. This time subjects wished for the desired outcomes on a series of dice rolls halfway around the world that had been previously made. Incredibly, the effect was still measurable, even though the connection between subject and event was around the globe and was occurring backwards in time.
In this work, Jung sought to address the problem of what to do with empirically verifiable data sets that appear connected but have no rational explanation for their connection. How do we, in a post enlightenment rational world, relate to the irrational? In the face of empirical evidence that has no rational explanation it is tempting to make up causes for the unexplainable. History's junkyard is littered with discarded explanations of the unknown. Jung's response was to resist the impulse to make up ideas to explain these events and instead to simultaneously and separately explore ones own application of meaning to the data. In the case of the Rhine experiments and in the work of PEAR, there are clear empirical relationships between the subject and the event, but there is no evidence for the cause or the mechanism by which they are related. A person wishes for something and a measurable event occurs simultaneously in the world. Jung would have us stop there in terms of examining the cause of the result and instead look at the meaning of the coinciding events.
His theory is really a nontheory. It is about standing in the breach between question and answer, recognizing that there is evidence in front of you that is unexplainable, and neither turning away from it nor offering up an unverifiable explanation for the event. He proposes that we resist the drive to explain everything in causal relationships and instead explore the meaning of the coincidence. In the case of the Rhine and PEAR experiments, there is no evidence of a clear causal connection between wishing and outcome. And yet the relationship exists.
This kind of research is the scientific equivalent of the avant garde. It is solid, empirically verifiable science that has yet found no complete explanation for its existence. That is indeed worthwhile research, for it pushes past the boundaries of what we know. In a world more focused on financial successes like finding the next erectile dysfunction pill, asking the bigger questions that have fewer answers and less profit return may seem strange. Let's all wish for PEAR's continued success in its new home.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
To Know The Dark
To Know The Dark
by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Addendum: I include this poem because nowhere else have I found so eloquent and complete a description of the world without light. Vision is simply one means of knowing, and the recognition of life that not only exists without it but thrives in its absence reminds us that seeing is a construct, and it can be considered from a place outside of itself. The implications this has for the visual arts are profound, for it indicates that work that relies on visual operations may have foundations rooted in non-visual truths. I have written more about this more in Modernism and Esotericism.
by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Addendum: I include this poem because nowhere else have I found so eloquent and complete a description of the world without light. Vision is simply one means of knowing, and the recognition of life that not only exists without it but thrives in its absence reminds us that seeing is a construct, and it can be considered from a place outside of itself. The implications this has for the visual arts are profound, for it indicates that work that relies on visual operations may have foundations rooted in non-visual truths. I have written more about this more in Modernism and Esotericism.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Mos Def at BAM
February 16, 2007 at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Opera House
The curtain came up on an empty stage with a lone pianist working a dinnertime background jazz sound. Then the bassist came out and began laying down a groove, followed by the drummer who climbed up on his kit, put a tambourine on his high hat and turned up the beat with crisply syncopated rhythms.
One by one, a complete eleven instrument horn section came out to make a total of 14 musicians followed by a DJ in the background scratching on a double plate. Everyone on stage was wearing shirts with a picture of Barack Obama and the words in large type, "So Fresh, So Clean."
Finally, Mos Def wandered in from the back of stage, unassuming, to huge applause.
Most surprising about the show was the broad range he put together. Mos did a version of "I Put A Spell On You" starting acappella with the drums, his voice soaring through the sold out house. He has an amazing singing voice, carrying the song while the rest of the instruments came in to create a hip hop blend mixed with spoken word poetry and a final rapping finish.
Mos Def's message is clear. It is about bringing people together. His lyrics are honest with the challenges and violence of the urban experience, but they don't stop there. Love, friendship, a little bravado, musicianship, community, and hope all feature in his balanced word play.
At one point he looked out over the crowd and said, "Guess what, Brooklyn? I loooove yoooou." The crowd loved him back, with some real Brooklyn banter between songs. At times he appeared in conversation with the audience. Taking time between songs, moments of silence filled by the sounds of the room.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music opera house is the same venue that debuted genre breaking performances by John Cage, Philip Glass, Lou Reed and many others. Mos Def was right at home, building on the traditions behind him, absorbing the urban landscape and always making something new. It was a beautiful night to be in Brooklyn, and if you were in New York City, this was the place to be.
The curtain came up on an empty stage with a lone pianist working a dinnertime background jazz sound. Then the bassist came out and began laying down a groove, followed by the drummer who climbed up on his kit, put a tambourine on his high hat and turned up the beat with crisply syncopated rhythms.
One by one, a complete eleven instrument horn section came out to make a total of 14 musicians followed by a DJ in the background scratching on a double plate. Everyone on stage was wearing shirts with a picture of Barack Obama and the words in large type, "So Fresh, So Clean."
Finally, Mos Def wandered in from the back of stage, unassuming, to huge applause.
Most surprising about the show was the broad range he put together. Mos did a version of "I Put A Spell On You" starting acappella with the drums, his voice soaring through the sold out house. He has an amazing singing voice, carrying the song while the rest of the instruments came in to create a hip hop blend mixed with spoken word poetry and a final rapping finish.
Mos Def's message is clear. It is about bringing people together. His lyrics are honest with the challenges and violence of the urban experience, but they don't stop there. Love, friendship, a little bravado, musicianship, community, and hope all feature in his balanced word play.
At one point he looked out over the crowd and said, "Guess what, Brooklyn? I loooove yoooou." The crowd loved him back, with some real Brooklyn banter between songs. At times he appeared in conversation with the audience. Taking time between songs, moments of silence filled by the sounds of the room.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music opera house is the same venue that debuted genre breaking performances by John Cage, Philip Glass, Lou Reed and many others. Mos Def was right at home, building on the traditions behind him, absorbing the urban landscape and always making something new. It was a beautiful night to be in Brooklyn, and if you were in New York City, this was the place to be.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Torture in popular entertainment
This article in the current issue of The New Yorker details a meeting between an interrogation instructor from the military academy at West Point and the producers of the Fox television hit "24" in which the instructor asked the program to stop depicting Jack Bauer torturing individuals as a means of interrogating a suspect. The show is hurting army recruits' understanding of what is effective and legal in a real world setting. West Point has to unlearn what eager recruits bring to the classroom from the plot line of "24."
Additionally, the military released an unrelated report on how troop behavior in the field is influenced by depictions of torture in popular culture. Apparently the military agrees that watching television has an influence on real world behavior. The troops get some incorrect ideas about how to treat prisoners/suspects from the popular media. Or they are trying to shift the blame for their own failings to popular culture.
Additionally, the military released an unrelated report on how troop behavior in the field is influenced by depictions of torture in popular culture. Apparently the military agrees that watching television has an influence on real world behavior. The troops get some incorrect ideas about how to treat prisoners/suspects from the popular media. Or they are trying to shift the blame for their own failings to popular culture.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Burn To Shine
Imagine you go to a great city,
find an abandoned house,
recruit some of the best local bands,
put on a rock show in the house,
and then burn the house down.
You film the whole thing.
Check it out.
Burn To Shine
find an abandoned house,
recruit some of the best local bands,
put on a rock show in the house,
and then burn the house down.
You film the whole thing.
Check it out.
Burn To Shine
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Robert Frank, STORYLINES, Steidl
Robert Frank’s Storylines (Steidl) sits on my couch. It was a gift from some friends and it has been my companion these past days. The book has a resonant hum of energy.
The image on the cover is of a typewriter sitting in a window, and it forecasts the appearance later in the book of words scratched into the emulsion of the negative. Word becomes etched into the flesh of the photograph. The photograph becomes word.
This cover image alone could be the subject of a lengthy treatise on language and picture making; the typewriter as word making machine, the camera as image making machine. The window is the viewfinder and the picture plane. A wind has blurred the paper in the typewriter over a lengthy exposure. The image becomes a record of the passage of time into memory.
Inside the book there are pages of contact sheets from Frank's negatives reproduced in sequence. Studying these is a lesson in cinematic narrative. Through the sequences on the contact sheet we see his shooting process unfold and we get a feel for the pace and rhythm of his working method. He makes few bad frames. The shutter is not released until the next frame is composed. You can feel his pacing; expose a frame, wind the camera, recognize the next frame, expose the frame. The taking of the picture becomes an automatic act, an instinctive harmonic between inner and outer.
As important as each image in this book is, the distance between them is equally important. The spaces between each frame on the sheet create a unity in which the entire sequence becomes a nonspecific narrative unique to photography.
The interstices are as resonant as the pictures themselves.
Frank's work cuts a swath through America in a smoky dream. The photographs are smoothly toned as if the light were itself almost liquid. They fade in and out of focus with sprocket holes in the negatives creeping into the frame. Lens flare and optical effects bring Frank’s Leica into the picture. The instrument is apparent, and it so is the hand of the photographer.
Subjects here are presented without judgment. They are neither elevated nor denigrated. Frank positions himself as an equal moving in an ambiguous world, neither good nor evil. This gray middle ground is emphasized in the tonality of his printing. It is a world with few dark blacks or bright whites.
We see a world here that we recognize or that we are sure we remember. Wood paneling and vinyl seats become classic, not eternal, but clearly placed in memory and perhaps a dream. His is a dark poetry of America captured somewhere between the poverty and war of the 30’s and 40’s, and the eternal and unachievable pursuit of prosperity. Somehow he makes even American kitsch feel like a part of our archetypal memory.
This is photography as the complete package.
The image on the cover is of a typewriter sitting in a window, and it forecasts the appearance later in the book of words scratched into the emulsion of the negative. Word becomes etched into the flesh of the photograph. The photograph becomes word.
This cover image alone could be the subject of a lengthy treatise on language and picture making; the typewriter as word making machine, the camera as image making machine. The window is the viewfinder and the picture plane. A wind has blurred the paper in the typewriter over a lengthy exposure. The image becomes a record of the passage of time into memory.
Inside the book there are pages of contact sheets from Frank's negatives reproduced in sequence. Studying these is a lesson in cinematic narrative. Through the sequences on the contact sheet we see his shooting process unfold and we get a feel for the pace and rhythm of his working method. He makes few bad frames. The shutter is not released until the next frame is composed. You can feel his pacing; expose a frame, wind the camera, recognize the next frame, expose the frame. The taking of the picture becomes an automatic act, an instinctive harmonic between inner and outer.
As important as each image in this book is, the distance between them is equally important. The spaces between each frame on the sheet create a unity in which the entire sequence becomes a nonspecific narrative unique to photography.
The interstices are as resonant as the pictures themselves.
Frank's work cuts a swath through America in a smoky dream. The photographs are smoothly toned as if the light were itself almost liquid. They fade in and out of focus with sprocket holes in the negatives creeping into the frame. Lens flare and optical effects bring Frank’s Leica into the picture. The instrument is apparent, and it so is the hand of the photographer.
Subjects here are presented without judgment. They are neither elevated nor denigrated. Frank positions himself as an equal moving in an ambiguous world, neither good nor evil. This gray middle ground is emphasized in the tonality of his printing. It is a world with few dark blacks or bright whites.
We see a world here that we recognize or that we are sure we remember. Wood paneling and vinyl seats become classic, not eternal, but clearly placed in memory and perhaps a dream. His is a dark poetry of America captured somewhere between the poverty and war of the 30’s and 40’s, and the eternal and unachievable pursuit of prosperity. Somehow he makes even American kitsch feel like a part of our archetypal memory.
This is photography as the complete package.
Monday, February 5, 2007
SweetArt New York, 2007
One of the key ingredients to success in New Orleans’ struggle to rebuild is in its ability to remain proactive in making a vital culture for its residents. The Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans (CACNO) is the hub for contemporary visual arts in the city.
On March 2, SweetArt New York 2007 will be held at Christie's in Manhattan, with parties and an art auction to benefit CACNO. Tickets are available on the SweetArt website.
Come for a great party and buy some great art. Proceeds go directly to keeping the arts in New Orleans alive and well.
On March 2, SweetArt New York 2007 will be held at Christie's in Manhattan, with parties and an art auction to benefit CACNO. Tickets are available on the SweetArt website.
Come for a great party and buy some great art. Proceeds go directly to keeping the arts in New Orleans alive and well.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Some worthwhile reading
With the World Press Photo Award winners about be announced--some critical thoughts from Jim Johnson in his Feb 4 post at (NOTES ON) POLITICS, THEORY & PHOTOGRAPHY, especially this quote further down in the post.
What the PDN folk note is that the preponderance of winners deal with matters of suffering and grief and pain in one or another form. They also suggests that sometimes the judges select an under-reported story. What they do not note, but what the examples I've lifted here suggest, is that the overwhelming majority of the winning images focus on a single individual. They invite compassion - vicarious identification with the pain of an other. Hence, as Hannah Arendt tells us, they are de-politicizing in the sense that they direct attention away from general or aggregate level matters. And since most of the circumstances (most obviously epidemics, war, famine, genocide, industrial accidents, forced displacement, etc., but also often purportedly "natural" disasters) that cause the pain and grief and suffering depicted in the pictures have political causes, the winning images point us in precisely the wrong direction. That is what is wrong with the conventions of photo-journalism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)