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Volt Bok Pages 2016 Game Piece A
Volt Bok Pages 2016 Game Piece A
Volt Bok Pages 2016 Game Piece A
Macro
DISTANCE
SPACE
system
din
PERCEPTION
law
lreading
TIME
re
a
din
organs
PERCEPTION
TIME
SPACE
society
Collective
a
re
cell
nucleus
UNIT
methodological particle
TIME
group
molecule
TIME
particle
process
Singularity is just
a tool to create discourse.
(reference point)
Micro
PERCEPTION
individual
Game Piece
- Conference and
Examples
E (1)
This diagram is a proposal for how the
unit can be considered only a methodological issue. There are different
ways of making something appear, for
example by presenting the body of a
person as a defined entity; but at the
same time it can be a group of organs
or millions of cells. It can be a myriad
of molecules or a universe of atoms if
seen on a different scale. When do we
start speaking of the individual? What
exactly is an individual? How do we
recognize a thing? By seeing it? There is
a special relationship between the mechanics of appearance and the concepts
of unit, scale and entity. A scale is a
level where the relations among space,
time and perception permit visibility.
Colective
B
Consider the case of the painter
Frenhoffer in Balzacs The Unknown
Masterpiece. At one point he is correcting a painting of a woman by one of
his pupils, Porbus. But he is doing it in
front of Porbus and a very young Franois Poussin which is rather strange,
as we learn later on, since Frenhoffer is
quite the recluse and has been working
on a painting that no one has seen. He
is painting in public, and talking while
he is doing so. Describing what he is
doing. And this description touches on
all theories of painting; the opposition
between drawing and painting; colour
and form; aerial perspective; surface
versus structure. He talks about all this
while painting the air between the chin
and the neck. Painting air I must
underline this. There are microscopic
differences that when rendered make
the figure come alive. For example the
subtle difference in skin colour that can
be mapped on top of the circulatory
system the skin over an artery has a
different colour and temperature from
the skin that covers a vein. And these
differences in colour and temperature
produce micro-atmospheric effects that
will affect the transparency of the air
between the chin and the neck. And
rendering these micro-differences will
introduce the air between chin and
neck into the flat surface of the painting. And it is precisely air, that which is
barely visible, that makes the materiality of the picture, the paint-stuff that is
smeared on the canvas, dissolve, and
makes the image emerge.
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E
Imagine Andr Breton arriving in
Mexico to give a conference. He pictured himself giving the talk at a long
narrow table, so when he passed in
front of an artisan making some tables
at the side of the street, he decided to
ask for one. Avoiding language issues,
he drew a splendid perspective picture
of a long, narrow table. One week later
he returned for his furniture and was
appalled by the final result: a table with
one standard end but at the other end
extremely small and with short legs just
as his angular drawing had instructed.
Breton left the conference after saying
just two sentences: I do not dare to say
a word about Surrealism, since Mexico
is already a surrealistic country. I do
not know what I am doing here.
B
A strange letter to the editor was published in an obscure sociology journal
in Bogot in the fifties; the Revista de
la sociedad colombiana para el estudio
de los tiempos modernos. A sociologist,
presumably a member of this society,
sent a report from Popayn, a small
city in the south west of Colombia.
He had been travelling through the
country doing field work for ongoing
research that the society was funding:
a material history of Colombia. But his
letter is not about this. He wanted to
report an encounter with an image that
he could barely perceive as an image.
While in Popayn he met someone
named Valencia who showed him some
Soviet pamphlets on painting from
the thirties. At the height of Stalinism
these pamphlets were discussing what
they labelled the errors inherent in the
painting and the art of the early revolution. Trained as a sociologist, our
writer was not very aware of the art of
the twenties, so to him it was troubling
to read about all these errors and see
the reproductions of the paintings
referenced in the article:
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5
B
When I was ten or twelve I was home
alone watching television. I had a knife
in my hand. And without properly
realizing what I was doing I began to
carve a hole in my fathers drawing
board. Not until a good hour of carving
had passed did I suddenly realize what
I had done. In fear, I ran downstairs
to my fathers wood workshop and
gathered some balsa wood, some
watercolours and some shoe polish.
Carefully, I carved a piece to fill the
hole, glued it in, sanded, painted and
polished it. The table is still there.
E (5)
During the evangelization of Latin
America, Indians were obviously very
reluctant to accept the imagery of the
new religion, but with one curious
6
exception. The only group that showed
any signs of religious adoration was the
wood carvers/artisans who were forced
to make full-body reproductions of
Christ, the Virgin and other incarnations of the Holy Word. Seeing this as
a possible doorway to quicker conversion, the priests encouraged large
woodworking shops for the younger
generations and were not disappointed. 7
Enthusiastic communities were attracted into temples just as they had
been by the old, now-forbidden gods. It
seemed that the wood and the carvers
had a definite, seductive secret.
The use of neo-Hispanic sculpture as
a vessel for stone pre-Hispanic gods
and symbols is well documented by
modern anthropology. Artisans hollowed out altar figures to insert smaller
ancient gods.
B
So some gods can be parasites on other
gods.
E
A diagram is a function. It is something
that represents the minimized path
of energy needed to make something
happen. Since it is a minimal point,
it can be shared by many events. A
diagram can be used to explain multiple events. It is related to transmutation, since it deals with essences.
B (6)
In the nineteenth century Viollet-leDuc restored Notre Dame. He claimed
that the cathedral was now even
more Gothic than it originally was.
Obviously this was an exaggeration.
But it had a lot to do with Le-Ducs
unrealized project: his restoration of
a mountain, Mont-Blanc in France.
Le-Duc published a huge volume, Le
Massif du Mont-Blanc, which cited
all the geological studies that would
enable him to use some carefully
placed dynamite charges to restore the
mountain to its original state at the
beginning of time.
E (7)
The idea of unspecialized knowledge.
Imagine you are facing something with
no idea of what it is. What do you do?
Basically you have two options: a) you
can recall old information (something
that your family or society told you)
and try to use it to define this new
event; or b) you can return to your
own experiences and try to confront
it. But what happens if you are facing
something not clearly defined by these
archives? Reality urgently demands
an answer; you have to function, to
solve things!! so the quickest way is to
attempt a Frankenstein of an answer:
you pick things from here and there
and fuse them together. You make
up your own theory of what it could
be. For example, if someone asks you
how a mobile phone works? . You
have no idea but oh yes, it looks like
the classic phone, and once I heard
E (8)
The bamboo slips are considered the
first books in civilization. At first they
were difficult to recognize, since they
were blocks of organic strips found in
Chinese royal tombs . Each strip represented a page of a book that was bound
together like an accordion of bamboo
sticks. In the eighties archaeologists
came across the oldest copy of a Confucian book as a bamboo slip, but with a
problem: the original page order had
been lost. Confucius wrote in aphorisms, so the order of the appearance of
each line can create a new text. Since its
discovery the only fifteen people with
the knowledge necessary to access this
text have been discussing and fighting
over which order is the original one.
Which is the real Confucius?
B
I guess you can call it a game of
bamboo sticks.
E
Remember Pentothal, considered the
most humane way of inflicting the
death penalty, since the patient gets
dizzy, numb and relaxed. Pentothal is
also famous as a truth serum. Once it
hits you, it is only a matter of letting
yourself go.
B
I think Im calling the whole thing off.
Im completely exhausted by stories.
Game Piece was presented at The Wittgenstein
Archives in Bergen 8 April 2013. Game Piece was
commisioned by Volt. Later new versions have been
presented in Vienna and Los Angeles.
107