Limitless Fire

BORN: September 13, 1939: From John Wood: “No visual artist since Blake himself is better suited to illustrate the Songs of Experience than Joel-Peter Witkin, for Witkin is the most profoundly religious photographer in the history of the medium and probably the most god-haunted American artist of the twentieth century. His imagery, like Blake’s, is a direct outgrowth of his spirituality. Witkin understands that art and religion are made of the same things: sex, death, and God. In Blake’s own time few people could perceive the prophetic nature and spirituality of his work. Two centuries later we see him far more clearly, but in his day his visionary claims coupled with an art like no one had ever before seen or read made him an outsider. When artists see beyond what others insist on calling the ‘real’ world, when they shape new realities, such as Cézanne and Picasso did, or shape new mythologies from the very flesh of the ones we know, and then insist that the deity they reveal is historical, orthodox, and authentic, those artists begin to disturb us deeply. They undermine our security. They demand we look again at what we thought we had seen, that we look through their eyes, and that we look more deeply than we ever before had looked.” From the artist (Songs of Innocence): “If our first book was glorious, this one will be mystical. There is a Buddhist saying — To everyman is given the key to the Gates of Heaven — but the same key also opens the Gates of Hell. That is the difference between innocence and experience. It is what compels our desire to live. It is why, for those who can see it, Blake is God’s jester. Blake was so wise that he could see ‘nature as the work of the Devil.’ He stated that ‘The Devil is in us as far as we are in nature.’ It is only when we are disengaged from mortality — at death — that evil leaves us. Then, after Judgment, either our chains are broken or we are ‘his’ Evermore. Logic, the rational – these are options, the Soap Operas of Divine Belief. Philosophy is a soiled diaper… Darwin playing in guano some where in a Bosch landscape. The subjects of my work are not freaks, degenerates, or the grotesque. They are ourselves. In this violent and visually wallpapered age, I have chosen to evoke the darkness rather than the light: as Goya, Blake and Redon have. Because we argue for Divine Madness as an honorable choice in a society devoid of human honor. The themes of my work are the things which constitute human existence, history, beauty. The work has at its very core the evidence of conscience presented as photographic metaphor. I strive to create experiences no one has seen or felt before.”

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Peter-Witkin/108071172547273?sk=wiki

OBSERVATION: In the realm of art, all is possible, limited only by the artist’s imagination and the control of media, tools, and technology. Truly original artists establish new boundaries for the definition of art, stretching their own capacity to imagine, forcing the audience to participate, or surrender.

http://www.whartonesherickmuseum.org/about.html

OBSERVATION: Wharton Esherick was that rare human being who lived beyond the restraints most of us experience. Throughout his life he pushed the envelope in woodworking, leaving a legacy of form and ideas that are the evidence of true mastery of applied sculpture.

Conventional vs. Unconventional Superconductors, Michael R. Norman

“To appreciate these issues, we need to first understand what superconductors are all about, and how unconventional ones differ from their more conventional counterparts. Superconductors are not only perfect conductors (their electrical resistance drops precipitously to zero below a transition temperature Tc), but also exhibit the so-called Meissner effect (6), where they expel magnetic fields. As noted by Fritz London (7), this implies that electrons in superconductors behave in a collective manner. Bosons, which have integer values of a fundamental property known as ‘spin’, can behave in this fashion, whereas electrons, which are fermions that have half-integer spins, typically do not. This apparent contradiction was resolved by Leon Cooper in 1956 (2) who demonstrated that the presence of even an arbitrarily small attractive interaction between the electrons in a solid causes the electrons to form pairs. Because these ‘Cooper pairs’ behave as effective bosons, they can form something analogous to a Bose-Einstein condensate. Rather than being real-space molecules, however, Cooper pairs consist of electrons in time- reversed momentum states and consequently have zero center-of-mass momentum. Because a pair of identical fermions is antisymmetric with respect to the exchange of one fermion with another, the spin and spatial components of the Cooper pair wavefunction must have opposite
exchange symmetries. Thus these pair states are either spin singlets with an even parity spatial component, or spin triplets with odd parity. The spin singlet pair state with an isotropic spatial component (s-wave) turns out to be the one realized in conventional superconductors (3). Despite the fact that electrons repel each other because of the Coulomb force, at low energies there can be an effective attraction resulting from the electron-ion interaction. To understand this, note that a metal is formed by mobile electrons detaching themselves from the atoms that
form the crystalline lattice (these atoms then become positive ions). Such a mobile electron attracts the surrounding ions because of their opposite charge. When this electron moves, a positive ionic distortion is left in its wake. This attracts a second electron, leading to a net
attraction between the electrons. This mechanism works because the ion dynamics is slow compared to the electrons, a consequence of the fact that the ions are much heavier than the electrons. However, the interaction at shorter times becomes repulsive because of the Coulomb
interaction between the electrons; this retardation is what is responsible for limiting Tc (8). Up until the discovery of cuprates, the highest known Tc was only 23K.”

OBSERVATION: We must be thankful to all great thinkers who inhabit our planet. Questions arise when pondering ideas about materials that redefine what we know about matter. What are the limits of the physical? We live in an era of great scientific expansion, and the future will allow us to observe the abstract nature of the human imagination in retrospect. The known, the unknown, that which will be known…………………

Humans have extraordinary capacity for abstract reasoning. Through the years they have developed religious awareness, spiritual life, and assorted elements of mythological, and metaphysical belief. Additionally, the ability to appreciate aesthetic, moral, and ethical behavior have become part of the human psyche. Through self-conscious discipline humans have been able to harness the will. While it is easy to recognize the genius involved in all of these capabilities, humans also function without conscience, building horror upon horror in the lives of others, and in the natural world.

In aesthetics, artists delve into the mysteries of the human capacity for imagination, intuition, expression; a world of the yet unknown. This is the place where art bridges the instinctual with the conscious. At the instinctual level, the human mind invokes, reacts, and processes ideas in an immediate (pre-conscious) way. Prior to the mechanism of conscious intervention, the instinctual creative mind brings to the surface ideas, organizing thoughts from the many regions of the mind, the intellect, the emotions. These processes of inspiration, intuition, instinct, and imagination, all contribute to the ability to foresee that which is intangible. In bringing forth ideas from these complex regions of the mind and brain, the artist transforms idea into a fashioned, constructed manifestation (the form). The medium takes on the characteristics of that original thought, allowing material to act as a cohesive device, a kind of matrix holding ideas in place.

Aesthetic encounter takes the art further, when a viewer, or participant interacts with the concept using powers of perception to draw the idea into the self, merging mind with mind. As the perceptual mechanism absorbs data, feeding the information to the higher functions of the brain, a new impression forms in the viewers mind, perhaps, nearly identical with the original moment of creation, perhaps different, but at the very least becoming a tool, an experience for new and uncharted mental ideation. Art is the catalyst, the enzyme triggering a cascade of secondary responses in the viewer’s mind. Perhaps this is the greatest function of art, where the mind of the viewer takes on new characteristics, new capacity to learn, understand, and feel, becoming immersed in the aesthetic experience.

Each viewer enters this action of aesthetic encounter with unique criteria; perceiving, processing, and making new the art put in place by the artist. Here we find the power of communication evident in the language of art; the tangible, the unknown, beauty, horror, complexity.

Frederick S. Lane, The Decency Wars : The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture
M. Katherine B. Darmer and Robert M. Baird, Morality, Justice, and the Law : The Continuing Debate
Michael Ruse and Christopher A. Pynes, Editors, The Stem Cell Controversy : Debating the Issues, 2nd Edition
Steve F. Sapontzis, Food for Thought : The Debate over Eating Meat
Peg Tittle, Should Parents Be Licensed? : Debating the Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Same-Sex Marriage : The Moral and Legal Debate
M. Katherine B. Darmer and Richard D. Fybel. Editors, National Security, Civil Liberties, and the War on Terror
Edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Death Penalty
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Euthanasia : The Moral Issues
Robert Zubrin, Energy Victory : Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil
Michael Ruse and David Castle, Editors, Genetically Modified Foods : Debating Biotechnology
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Caring for the Dying : Critical Issues at the Edge of Life
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, The Ethics of Abortion : Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, Third Edition
Lee Nisbet, Ph.D., The Gun Control Debate : You Decide, Second Edition
Michael Ruse and Aryne Sheppard, Editors, Cloning : Responsible Science or Technomadness?
Robert M. Baird, Reagan Ramsower, and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Cyberethics : Social and Moral Issues in the Computer Age
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Hatred, Bigotry, and Prejudice : Definitions, Causes, & Solutions
Robert M. Baird, William Loges, and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, The Media and Morality
Jeffrey A. Schaler & Magda E. Schaler, Smoking : Who Has the Right?
Robert M. Baird & Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Pornography : Private Right or Public Menace?
Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., Drugs : Should We Legalize, Decriminalize, or Deregulate?
John Donnelly, Suicide : Right or Wrong?
Robert M. Baird and M. Katherine Baird, Editors, Homosexuality : Debating the Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Punishment and the Death Penalty : The Current Debate
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Animal Experimentation : The Moral Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Morality and the Law
Kristina Borjesson, Into the Buzzsaw : Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA, Elusive Peace: How Modern Diplomatic Strategies Could Better Resolve World Conflicts
Al J. Venter, The Road to Nuclear Armament: The Third World Threat
Steven K. O’Hern, The Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad
Ann Fagan Ginger, Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11 : Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Lewis S. Feuer, Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Mind
Eliezer J. Sternberg, Are You a Machine? : The Brain, the Mind, and What It Means to Be Human
Josias Semujanga, Origins of the Rwandan Genocide

OBSERVATION: In order to function as a thinking and productive human being it is necessary to grasp and understand information. Without access to data, we are left in the blind. Without the ability to imagine, interact, and communicate we are also left blind. It is only by actively participating in the life of ideas where we contact, process, and interpret information that we have any opportunity to exist beyond the mundane.

compound: metamorphosis

OBSERVATION: Science continues exploring the shape and composition of the known and unknown universe. This point of inquiry has been vital to the continuing progress of knowledge, accumulation of data, and application of wisdom. Throughout human history, we have inquired, beyond the mere surface, attempting to grasp the mysteries of all that is possible. Perhaps, those individuals who pursue this inquiry are artists, and there is really no distinction between us. The human mind has the potential to understand the profound depths of the natural universe, and also reflects inward questioning the meaning of self.

http://www.artandreligion.de/data/index.php?idcatside=35

At the URL listed above Friedhelm Mennekes has collected insights regarding Joseph Beuys, and his work Manresa (Ignatius of Loyola). Mennekes has described the relation between art and religion found not just in the work of Beuys, but in other art as well. In 2002 Mennekes was awarded the Wilhelm-Hausenstein-Medal of the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts, Munich, “for his outstanding achievement in the field of promoting visual arts“.

Mennekes has been engaged in many discussions with artists through exhibitions and lectures that address this vital relationship of creative expression and experienced religion. These encounters are documented in print in a multitude of catalogue contributions, essays and monographs that discuss individuals such as Donald Baechler, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, James Brown, James Lee Byars, Francis Bacon, Eduardo Chillida, Marlene Dumas, Jenny Holzer, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Kruger, Arnulf Rainer, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Antoni Tàpies, Rosemarie Trockel, and Bill Viola among others. Mennekes poses systematic questions, addressing individual works and also their vital relationship to the broader world of contemporary culture. He seeks structural correspondences and parallels that address our experience of faith and doubts in organized religion, as well as the secular world. Above all, however, he shows through over one hundred interviews with artists that their work is not simply dealing with private convictions of a personal nature, but with large issues that relate to all kinds of people striving to live a meaningful life.

OBSERVATION: It is necessary to understand that art may contain insight and meaning beyond the mundane. Many artists have worked to demonstrate the potential of human thought and action.
The potential (action), that we find in the work of Joseph Beuys, is the path that leads to full participation in the mystery of humanity.

Heinrich Boll, Missing Persons, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Koln, 1961-1977.

page 220: The problem that torments us all–the young artists and writers who are being honored here no less than myself–is the problem of transforming objects into material and transforming this material back into a new reality that does justice to both object and material. Linguistic objects also offer themselves to writers for materialization. Every painter, sculptor, and composer is faced with the same problem, except that language is fraught with particularly ticklish objects, and their materialization, the double transformation language must undergo, is burdened with conventional images, with morality, politics, history, and religion, with misunderstood and misguided ideals lying in readiness on the palette of interpretation.

….Flames are too much alive to be intrinsically suitable for that double transformation into object and material; that is why I considered the artist’s heroic endurance in the front line of reality to be a waste of time. It is sufficient to pass by. What is interesting is the residue from the fire, from the flames, the ashes, including the ashes of remembrance and the ashes of the future; there is no present–what I have just said has already passed, is remembrance. The only thing that tries to remain within the present, that tries to grasp at a shred of permanence, is art, which creates something from the ashes, from the handful of dust and dirt.”

OBSERVATION: Heinrich Boll presents this complex aspect of artistic creation, the process of transforming and transmuting ideas and materials, forming a new reality. The equation, recognized by the remnants of the creative process leaves an impression of the artist’s life, personality, beliefs, and intent. Experiencing art is that moment of fulfillment when the artist’s mark is felt by the participant. It is this moment when the art comes alive, again, in the mind of the participant. It is possible to define, criticize, abstract, interpret, and evaluate the many layers of impression left by the imprint of the artist’s mind and hand. It is also possible to experience this same expression without subjective commentary, using conscious mental processes leading to a clear understanding of artistic purpose.

Kubler, The Shape of Time, Yale, 1962.

page 84: “Time has categorical varieties: each gravitational field in the cosmos has a different time varying according to mass. On earth at the same instant of celestial time, no two spots really have the same relation to the sun despite our useful convention of time-zones regulating the regional concordance of clocks. When we define duration by span, the lives of men and the lives of other creatures obey different durations, and the durations of artifacts differ from those of coral reefs or chalk cliffs, by occupying different systems of intervals and periods. The conventions of language nevertheless give us only the solar year and its multiples or divisions to describe all these kinds of duration.

St. Thomas Aquinas speculated in the thirteenth century upon the nature of the time of angels, and, following a neo-Platonist tradition,1 he revived the old notion of the aevum as the duration of human souls and other divine beings. This duration was intermediate beitween time and eternity, having a beginning but no end. The conception is not appropriate for the duration of many kinds of artifacts–so durable that they antedate every living creature on earth, so indestructible that their survivial may, for all we know, ultimately approach infinity.”

1 Duhem, “Le temps selon les philosophes hellenes,” Revue de philosophie (1911).

OBSERVATION: ETERNITY: INFINITY: Pondering the concepts of time and space allow the human imagination to wander through territory well beyond the touch of conventional reality. In considering the idea of aevum, or infinity, it is possible to understand time and space beyond the individual physical presence of the self. Astrophysicists using mathematics, physics, and contemporary technologies explore the possiblity of looking back in time, actually seeing events occurring historically. The ideas of art, imagination, insight, intuition, creativity, and all these things represent clearly point to a potential of the human mind for vast exploration.