Once upon a transdimensional day...

 

Four Seasons - oil painting - 2020, Petras Lukosius.

A Walk

by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1924

(Translated by Robert Bly)

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has inner light, even from a distance

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on

answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

***

Reveal Arriving - oil painting - 2020, Petras Lukosius.

Evening

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by A. S. Kline)

Slowly the evening draws on its coat

Held out to it by a row of ancient trees:

You gaze: and the landscape splits in two,

One part lifting skywards, while one falls,

Leaving you not quite part of anything,

Not quite so dark as the house, the silent one,

Not quite as surely invoking the eternal,

As that which turns to star each night, rising -

Leaving you (indescribably, to unravel)

Your anxious, immense, and ripening life:

So that, now bounded, and now grasped,

It becomes, in turn, stone in you, and star.

Clouds, Time & Spiraling Planes (revised August 19)

 

Credit: Jinik Renatus, Jinikal Art.

(Update: September, 9, 2025. A new, and even better video from Jinikal. This one features amusing little pentagrams! See: Cosmic Joy: The Infinite Playgrounds.)

It occured to me recently that in the earlier days of blogging, I made a point of trying to feature new digital artists on Trans-D, a habit I somewhat abandoned after the genre grew to such a degree I could no longer keep track of it. And, I can only marginally keep track of the burgeoning AI video artists; new artists seem to appear literally every day.* But, every now and then, a video makes an appearance that resonates on a personal level - call it kismet - and, well,  Jinik's In a World Where Time and Space are Distorted is one of those videos.

Don't be fooled by the title. Time and space are not "distorted." In terms of spatial effects, they are either intentionally (or intuitively) orchestrated and organized around the laws of pentagonal phi and/or the Fibonacci series,** and best of all, Jinik created some fantastic spiraling clouds! Regarding time, spiral clocks  (also here) and time spirals are all the rage in cyberspace, everywhere from scientific circles to Fantasy Fandom worlds.

As it happens, spiraling clouds are not unusual in the real world. I see them every day, albeit on a smaller scale. Inset left (above) is an example I shot earlier this summer but often the golden spiral's signature paisley shape can be found on a much larger scale. (Below is a detail of a photo found in a previous cloud post.)

A cloud in desperate need of a Phi-shell!

Clouds and spirals? Can't get any better! Thank you, Jinik Renatus, your video made my day!

(My apologies for all the typos and delays with the text... hopefully, now corrected!)

______________________________________________

* I have been featuring them on Mac's memorial, with the latest appearing on this post... and his birthday post.

** I want to be perfectly clear about my use of mathematical terms regarding art here. That is, while phi may, indeed, be mathematically present in a work of art, the exact math is not required for it to fit the criteria of possessing the Golden Meme; best described as a shape, sound, or movement based on a mathematical ratio present in the geometry of the pentagram - in itself, a fractal - that is so perfect in its mysterious beauty and/or powerful efficiency that it might be described as Divine, or Golden. Regarding space-time, the Golden Meme represents a key to understanding the eternal.

(Note: The Golden Meme as a theory and an artistic investigation is mine alone and is not currently recognized as valid by any accredited source. It is also in its infancy. In any case, for me, it serves as an organizing center for the pentagonal phi material I've been amassing for 6 years. See: Reflections on Water, or the golden snail shell on the sidebar.)

Swan Bones Theater Presents...

Forest Sleep - oil on panel - 2010, Kelly Louise Judd.
(Click to enlarge.)

Well, it's the witching season again and, in an effort to stay true to the spirit(s) of our various Days of the Dead, I thought I might feature a new artist whose work is unique, pleasantly spooky, darkly ethereal and the stuff of Old World dreams: the illustrations of Kansas City, Missouri artist, Kelly Louise Judd. (Inset right: Light of the Owls, 2012.)

"Swan Bones Theater" is the name she uses to describe the "fragile shadowland" from which her images emerge as well as the illustrations themselves. Which is perfect really - especially for today - because, if you've recall from the Swan People posts, the swan is the symbol of the psychopomp in many traditions. To repost a quote (found here):

"In the British Isles, Samhain is the time when we see the migratory swans returning for their winter break. Their arrival at their winter waters is far from shy. In full voice, the awesome, evocative sound of hundreds of powerful wings beating signals their presence. They have been guided by the stars of Cygnus, the swan constellation, the Northern Cross, that guards the gateway rift in the Milky Way. They represent the winged soul returning.

The swan is the psychopomp. She flies with the souls of the dead from the burial grounds, the charnel grounds, and the necropolis. She takes them, under the guidance of the Cailleach, to the realms of the spirits."

- Caroline Wise from The Swan, the Goddess, and Other Samhain Musings.

Inset left above is Three Swans (2015). All images in this post - including the one below - can be found on Judd's website.

The Mockingbird and the Hare - oil on panel - 2010, Kelly Louise Judd.

Blessed Be and have a (transdimensionally) magical day!

***

"All our times have come

Here but now they're gone

Seasons don't fear the reaper 

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain; we can be like they are 

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper

We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper

Baby I'm your man"

- First stanza of the love song, (Don't Fear) the Reaper, written by Donald Roeser

in 1976 and performed by the band, Blue Oyster Cult. (Lyrics) (Video)

"Keep Going" (Featuring the Work of Jada Fabrizio)

"keep going" - diorama, mixed media - 2017, Jada Fabrizio
(All images can be clicked on for enlargements.)

"I believe that art should make you feel something, it should touch you, make you think, laugh, cry. I consider myself an alternative reality photographer. I sculpt my own characters, build dioramas, and light the scene to create surreal visual fables or freshly minted fairy tales for adults... Each image is purposely unresolved. They are, in essence, stories in need of an ending."

- Jada Fabrizio, quoted from the Monmouth Museum Journal.

***

Once upon a time... (in 1979... which seems like a lifetime ago because, relatively speaking, it was) two young, punked-out, female artists recently transplanted from the east coast (USA) met in a warm, sunny place called San Diego, California. As it so happened, they met in an art supply store where one girl was a cashier. She (Jada, then a painter) was a striking, dark-haired girl with a tiny - but fashionable - peculiarity... something the second girl (me, then a cartoonist) picked up on from the get-go. (Inset right, from 1980, my cartoon alter ego Rude Girl.)

Looking down at her hands, I noticed she had only one of her fingernails painted... I think it was on her left pinky - at least that's how I remember it - but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, nor even the color (blue?). That one fingernail was like a code word... a subliminal prompt... and immediately we struck up a conversation. We found we had a great deal in common... up to and including a certain alienation from the overwhelming "whiteness" of the west coast.

Girls - color photograph - 2013, Jada Fabrizio

Less than a year later, Jada high-tailed it back to New York... myself following soon after. We found ourselves on the Isle of Manhattan involved in all sorts of mad (and often pointless) (but, always fun) adventures. In time - and not very long - I (at least) would look back and say: "Gee, why did I ever leave California?"

Jada, however, was in exactly the right place. Some people are lucky that way. They never regret the past nor lose sight of themselves...

They just keep going...

The Book Surgeon: Brian Dettmer

A book sculpture by Brian Dettmer. Click to enlarge.

"New York-based Artist Brian Dettmer creates impressively intricate multi-layered sculptures from books. The artist calls himself the Book Surgeon because he uses knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve the art works out of old medical journals, illustration books, dictionaries, map books and encyclopedias. The bigger the book, the better – The Surgeon doesn’t add anything additional to the sculptures, he only folds, bends, rolls, stacks, and, of course, removes."

- Both the (above) quote and the photos of Brian Dettmer's book sculptures found in this post were sourced from this 2015 "DeMilked" article.


"So I think one of the reasons people are disturbed by destroying books, people don't want to rip books and nobody really wants to throw away a book, is that we think about books as living things, we think about them as a body, and they're created to relate to our body, as far as scale, but they also have the potential to continue to grow and to continue to become new things. So books really are alive.

... And I think of my work as almost an archaeology. I'm excavating and I'm trying to maximize the potential and discover as much as I possibly can and exposing it within my own work. But at the same time, I'm thinking about this idea of erasure, and what's happening now that most of our information is intangible, and this idea of loss, and this idea that not only is the format constantly shifting within computers, but the information itself, now that we don't have a physical backup, has to be constantly updated in order to not lose it. And I have several dictionaries in my own studio, and I do use a computer every day, and if I need to look up a word, I'll go on the computer, because I can go directly and instantly to what I'm looking up. I think that the book was never really the right format for nonlinear information, which is why we're seeing reference books becoming the first to be endangered or extinct."

- Two quotes from sculptor Brian Dettmer from the (translatable) TED transcript for the TED video below.

***

Considering all the book-related posts I've been inspired to write for the past few months, it only stands to reason that when I recently discovered the work of Brian Dettmer, I'd be compelled to feature his sculptures here. Considering that his re-purposed books are not, in fact, assemblages, but carefully carved from the pre-existing content of the old books themselves... well, words like "astonishing" are understatements.

And, I love stories like this... about artists doing unimaginable things... totally unprecedented "out of the box" things... not because they intend to start a trendy movement, but because their muses call upon them to do such things, and in doing so - following their muses - we are allowed to see ordinary objects - in this case, encyclopedias and the like - in a totally new, non-linear, and extraordinary way.

For those interested, an interview with Dettmer can be found here...

And, if art from re-cycled material turns you on, here's a nice Make magazine article about the Ancient Futuristic work of artist Theo Kamecke: Old Circuit Boards Are Reimagined as Sarcophagi and Ancient Monuments.

Werner Hornung & Joma Sipe (An Interlude)

Romantic Utopia - digital art - © 2014, Werner Hornung

Well, it's time for another interlude... and as I haven't featured any contemporary (2-D) artists in a long time, I'd like to present two amazing artists I came across recently on the web; each a transdimensionalist in his own way.

The first is the German-born digital artist Werner Hornung, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, whose artistic career began in Paris in the early 1970s and continues there till this day.

His digital work is intricate, dramatic, surreal and multi-dimensional. I am particularly drawn to Romantic Utopia above, but it represents merely one example of the mysterious and multi-layered magic inherent in his work; most especially when the images come to life in an animated .gif format on his must-see website. He also has an exhibit at MOCA's virtual museum, and more of his enigmatic images can be found here and here.

___________________________

A sampling of images from Lumine Stellarum - © 2015, 2016 Joma Sipe
(click to enlarge)

The second artist I present to you is the Portuguese visionary, and sacred geometer, Joma Sipe. I don't think I've seen any geometrical work in the past that even compares to his masterful (and meticulous) drawings. He uses gold and silver ink on a black background and then goes so far as to embed small crystals in his images, illuminating them in such a way that the effect is truly breathtaking. His subject matter includes many of the geometric and esoteric symbols discussed in my previous post plus numerous others, so he's particularly relevant here. Above is just a tiny sampling of his work - a visionary's view of the stars - but to truly experience the magic of Joma Sipe, I recommend visiting his website, or his YouTube channel, where the two videos (below) featuring his work were found.

Hare Interlude...

The Curiosity of Lurices - sculpture - clay - Ellen Jewett
(click to enlarge)

"Caught up in a mass of abstractions," writes David Abram, "our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth -- our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."

- David Abram... quote (and photo above) found in the Myth & Moor entry, Relationship and reciprocity.

***

I have a strange dichotomy in my own nature that, on one hand, I've never quite felt wholly of this world, but, at the same time, on a more cellular level, deeply enmeshed in the natural world - the wild world - from which I've always drawn sustenance. And, when I found the beautifully organic clay sculptures by Ellen Jewett (example above) on Terri Windling's (always elegantly eloquent) Myth & Moor blog today, the reality of my present situation sort of came home to me in the same way hearing the video of the thrush's song did a few days ago. In other words, I may be living near the deserts and plains of the American Southwest now - and, that was my choice - but my roots are still in the forests and seashores of New England... where the world outside my door was somehow more intimate, intricate, dense... and magical.

Very much like the entanglement of Ellen Jewett's hare - and really, its expression is a masterpiece in itself - a tribute to the wild women and men in all of us. (Note, too, the moths and/or butterflies on the hare's back!)

Anyway, this is today's (unpremeditated) post. Another "interlude" entry because I'm not really back to blogging yet. You might say I'm just dropping a line as I wander thru the wilds of the most recent interstitial realm I've fallen into.

Oh, you know: Greetings - from the rabbit hole! ;-)

___________________________________________

April 28, 2016

Hares are called jackrabbits here in the southwest, and I just saw what looked like the "antelope" variety on the dirt road behind my house yesterday in the early evening. They're incredibly lean, long-legged hares and do have a strangely deer-like quality about them when you see them in action. Very cool! Meanwhile, I just found a YouTube video of a gentle jackrabbit in someone's backyard... and just had to add it to this post.

Matrices of Light & Shadow; Alex and Allyson Grey

Spiritual Energy System (left); Universal Mind Lattice (right) - acrylic on canvas - 1981, Alex Grey

"Looking at Grey’s paintings and other works on display, Hoffberger said, “Given the way technology is moving, do we want to become like machines? With each new high-tech invention, how do you download a ‘you’ into an ‘it’?” Grey’s powers-of-the-universe paintings, with their images of trees as fecund bodies, along with choruses of prehistoric animals, suns, eyeballs and planets, evoke an eternal, all-unifying, omnipresent spirit. Grey’s art seems more all-embracing than the ecumenical posturing of those praying, chanting, bead-rattling leaders of so-called organized religions who sometimes pause to look beyond their own belief systems and pay a little lip service to the dream of world peace."

- From the January, 2014 Hypoallergic article: “Human, Soul & Machine”: Big Brother Watching — and Other Digital Discontents"

"Love, consciousness, and creativity are the highest refinements of the cosmic evolutionary force."

"The Inevitable consequence of Love is the building of Temples."

- Two quotes by Alex Grey, found on his website.

***

"Secret Writing Magic Square with Mandala Border" - oil on wood - 1990, Allyson Grey

"Language is like a portal through which the inner world of order may pass into the outer world of chaos."

- Allyson Grey, from her website: Chaos, Order & Secret Writing.

***

In terms of the the Matrices (described here) and their relationship to the human body,  I don't think I've seem a better visual description than those presented by Visionary artist, Alex Grey in his amazing Chapel of Sacred Mirrors series. It's almost as if they were made to order for the musings of a Space Pagan, most especially his "Universal Mind Lattice," which he describes here:

 "No longer identified with or limited by our physical bodies, our essence is an individual fountain and drain of Light, interlocked with an infinite omni-directional network of similar energy cells, the interpenetrating consciousness of all beings and things."

The odd thing for me, at least, is - at the exact same time, and the exact same place (New York) - while Alex Grey was painting the huge canvases that would become the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (see video), a far less flamboyant artist (me), was envisioning something along vaguely similar lines...

Matrices of Paper; the Creations of Eric Standley

"Either/Or Circle" - layered paper - 2001, Eric Standley
(click to enlarge)

Inspired by Gothic and Islamic architecture, much like Cristóbal Vila, another "matrix" artist featured on Trans-D, Eric Standley takes the fine art of paper cutting to a new level. That is, approximately 100 of them! 

What appears as one cohesive - and elegant - mandala is actually composed of layer upon layer of intricately laser-cut "windows."

To see the artist in action, David Pescovitz has posted a video found here.

The artist's new website can be found here.

(Thanks, DP!)

Revitalizing Vitalism; A Thought Experiment

"Aura" - digital/fractal - 2012, Renate S.

(Click on all images to enlarge)

Vitalism

1. a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from physicochemical forces

2. a doctrine that the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone and that life is in some part self-determining

 - Definition of Vitalism

"He goes on to show how the particular properties of consciousness might arise from the physical laws that govern our universe. And he explains how these properties allow physicists to reason about the conditions under which consciousness arises and how we might exploit it to better understand why the world around us appears as it does.

For Tegmark, this paradox suggests that his mathematical formulation of consciousness is missing a vital ingredient. “This strongly implies that the integration principle must be supplemented by at least one additional principle,” he says.

- From the article: "Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter..."


"Barušs wrote: "Scientific materialism assures us that reality is a meaningless, incidental, mechanistic, collocation of improbable events."

He summarized some of the ways in which the materialist interpretation of reality has already broken down: quantum events are seen to be non-deterministic; time is no longer linear, as effects have been shown to precede their causes; particles change position depending on where one looks or what one decides to measure.

Finally, he said, “Materialism cannot explain … the sense of existence that people have for themselves.”

- From an August 20 article: 8 Scientists Contemplate Place of Human Consciousness in Science  (New quote just found, August 22; hat-tip to Bruce Duensing!)

***

"Throughout the ages men have been intuitively aware of such a center. The Greeks called it a man's inner Daimon, in Egypt, it was expressed by the concept of Ba-soul; and the Romans worshipped it as the "Genius" native to each individual..."

- from: "Seeing With The Mind's Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization", 1975,  Michael and Nancy Samuels

"Is the earth dead or alive? The ancient cultures of east and west and the native peoples of America saw the earth as a mother, alive, active, and responsive to human action. Greeks and Renaissance Europeans conceptualized the cosmos as a living organism, with a body, soul, and Spirit, and the earth as a nurturing mother with respiratory, circulatory, reproductive, and elimination systems. The relationship between most peoples and the earth was an I-thou ethic of propitiation to be made before damming a brook, cutting a tree, or sinking a mine shaft. Yet for the past three hundred years, western mechanistic science and capitalism have viewed the earth as dead and inert, manipulable from outside, and exploitable for profits. The death of nature legitimated its domination. Colonial extractions of resources combined with industrial pollution and depletion have today pushed the whole earth to the brink of ecological destruction."

- From "Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World" - 1992, Carolyn Merchant.

"But what is it that shamans 'see' or 'know'? Shamanism is a kind of spiritual technology. It is a technology that is based on the animistic worldview much in the way that physical technology is based on the modern scientific worldview. Unlike modern science, however, which is based on the search for uniform laws that work the same way for everyone, shamanism has literally infinite forms of expression -- just as art, inspired creation, can take literally infinite forms and there are infinite cultural styles of art, yet the word "artist," like the word "shaman," has a cross-cultural meaning. (Indeed, art itself originated as a tool and expression of the shaman. Shamans are a kind of inspired artist, channeling a common source of spiritual energy in their own unique ways. Art as merely decorative is a modern, desacralized echo of the real purposes of art.) "

- from an article: Indigenous Shamanism, Animism, and the Spirits (by "Gayle") found here.

***

"Without an active agent, an ordering center, or an Intelligence, "consciousness" becomes a rather hollow proposition; another one of those phenomena which, if merely viewed as another mechanical quality arising from matter, has no intrinsic meaning. It has no "cause" and is no cause. It will not build a ship, invent a car, nor drive it. It will simply exist in a somnambulistic manner as a sort of passive, unspecified awareness. Consciousness, alone, does not create; and, by itself, cannot evolve. Consciousness alone, is not the answer to the existential quandary."

- Paragraph from a post file which never materialized, The Shamans of Spirit & The Shamans of Matter; Dia Sobin, June 12, 2014

"Because, who knows, but, hiding among those four famous "forces of nature" (recently renamed the "Fundamental Interaction") is an undiscovered ordering force, a "shadow" component permeating the matrix: intelligence, but wholly unspecific intelligence - without genre or gender - which, although diversified and expressed relative to the matter which interprets it, is also the architect of the matter it unfolds. I call it: Creatura... (most emphatically) not to be confused with religionist myths and its corresponding characters - example: "the man upstairs."

If "god is dead" religionists (specifically Western and Middle-Eastern varieties) killed it. They gave it limits; limits imposed by their own fears, politics and pathologies."

- Paragraphs deleted from a previous post, and added to a collection of notes; DS, June 28, 2014

"Creatura (singular and plural) - A creative Intelligence: the integrated ordering agent and organizing, self-referential noumenon present in all living organisms."

- A working definition of Creatura from a collection of notes; DS, July 1, 2014, posted July 28.

***

I was kind of on the fence about posting this "thought experiment"... I originally attempted to allude to it with a post containing a brief definition of Creatura. That didn't cut it for me, so I pulled it down (deleted post, July, 28, 2014). 

For the past few months however, this concept - admittedly a "Vitalist" concept (or, more appropriately, Revitalist), and not even a terribly original one - has been stirring around in my psyche, coloring just about all of my thoughts. I've drafted (and destroyed) a number of posts, but they all seem to have the same general theme; a theme I was planning to slowly build up to, but now I find I'm not going to have the time (I'm about to take an extended hiatus from the blogosphere). So, it's now or never... 

The Pet Store - Creatures as Commodities - (featuring murals by "Phlegm")

"Cat" - urban mural - Sheffield, England - "Phlegm" (found here)
(Click on all images to enlarge)

"The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters. Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read. We call one another by “pet” names, wear animal-print clothes. We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can’t completely satisfy that yearning.

But what if, through novelty and convenience, digital nature replaces biological nature? Studies show that we’ll suffer. Richard Louv writes of widespread “nature-deficit disorder” among children who mainly play indoors — something new in the history of humankind. He sees it leading to attention problems, obesity, depression and lack of creativity. Adults suffer equally. Patients with a view of trees heal faster than those forced to stare at city buildings. In studies conducted by Peter H. Kahn and his colleagues at the University of Washington, workers in windowless offices were given flat screen views of nature. They reaped the benefits of greater health, happiness and efficiency than those without virtual windows. But, importantly, they weren’t as happy, healthy or creative as people given real windows with real views of nature."

- From the 2012 NYT article, Nature: Now Showing on TV, by Diane Ackerman *

***

It was a fairly nondescript summer day... hot and hazy, glazed over with that white-gold cast that defines a predominately cloudy sky. I was in my car with no particular destination, but, as is usual, found myself gravitating towards the coast, as if the ocean was some huge magnet and neither myself (nor my car) had any choice in the matter.

Lying between myself and the shore, however, is Route 1, which, in part, is just one long, extended strip mall, punctuated by an endless repetition of shoe-box shaped buildings, identified only by their corresponding rectangular signs. These advertise everything from food to furniture, service stations, beauty salons, craft stores, consignment shops, and the occasional "Psychic Reading". On impulse I drove into the black-topped parking lot belonging to one block of buildings, featuring an outlet of a popular pet store franchise. I'd been there before... I liked to look at the small, exotic fish in the marine-life aquariums, so, I went in...

To Decode The Living Matrix... Featuring the Work of Cristóbal Vila

From the video: Isfahan - 3D digital still - 2005, Cristóbal Vila

matrix |ˈmātriks|
noun ( pl. -trices |ˈmātrisēz| or -trixes )
1 an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure : free choices become the matrix of human life.
• a mass of fine-grained rock in which gems, crystals, or fossils are embedded.
• Biology the substance between cells or in which structures are embedded.
• fine material : the matrix of gravel paths is raked regularly.
2 a mold in which something, such as printing type or a phonograph record, is cast or shaped.
3 Mathematics a rectangular array of quantities or expressions in rows and columns that is treated as a single entity and manipulated according to particular rules.
• an organizational structure in which two or more lines of command, responsibility, or communication may run through the same individual.

ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [womb] ): from Latin, ‘breeding female,’ later ‘womb,’ from mater, matr - ‘mother.’

North American Wood Thrush

“As we listen we lose the sense of time—it links us with eternity…Its tones…seem like the vocal expression of the mystery of the universe, clothed in a melody so pure and ethereal that the soul still bound to its earthly tenement can neither imitate nor describe it.”
- Anonymous Twentieth Century naturalist describing the Wood Thrush

"It was dawn and as I lay there listening to the birds w/ my eyes shut I began to see a weird pattern emerging from the darkness... an almost graphic pattern similar to computer graphics... It looked like chopped meat being criss-crossed (sic) by a rapidly moving concentric ring pattern... similar to my cyclocentric* patterns but more intricate. From this emerged what seemed like another darker dimension - again filled with cyclocentric patterns but these were made of various colors of light... and some were large and whirlpooling (sic) while smaller brighter patterns emerged... all of them moving and vibrant and living and all of them revolving and forming harmonics by which even tinier glowing patterns emerged. It was as if I was delving into a series of many dimensions... but I could only glance at certain aspects (of the patterns) for milliseconds at a time (as they were) far too complex and enmeshed for human resolution...

Forevermore, Dr. Evermor - In Praise of a Steampunk Pioneer

"Dr. Evermor's Forevertron, built in the 1980s, is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States."
(Photo found here.)

"I don't think there’s any damn need to alter anything at any given point in time, because any kind of shape or form can be anything! It’s all in the way you look at it! I make that vast statement in the many birds I've created here. Those special bird bodies out there – I’ve got electric motors in them. Who says you can’t have electric motors in a bird to make it a power-bird? It’s a rebellious forum that I am presenting in all these things. If an art teacher says, “You can’t do that, you've got to have a bird body shaped like a bird body, I say, “The hell with that, I’ll put any kind of body I want on it!"

"This is a very different kind of art, because there’s never anything imposed on the piece itself - the parts are always used as they are. Thus, you have to put a little twist or torque into it, in order to get some kind of human communication between the finished piece and the more or less rigid, sterile, pre-existing shapes and forms. You have to get some kind of magic going there, and we have a lot of people who have come here, taken pictures, and then they go home and produce things. There are fifteen to twenty people out there trying to do Evermors, but they fail on just that issue of getting enough energy flowing so that the piece has a little magic."

- Two quotes from Dr. Evermor found in this interview.

Tom Every was a depressed man in 1983. At the age of 45, after a disillusioning battle with Big Brother, and in a state of chronic dissatisfaction with the burgeoning commercialism and de-humanizing artificiality he sensed in the modern world, Tom  - a former demolition expert, born in Brooklyn, Wisconsin - turned to the one thing he knew well: scrap metal; vintage industrial machinery. His epiphany arrived in the form of a fictional character - and a story - which emerged in his psyche at the time... the story of "Dr. Evermor", a Victorian inventor from Eggington, England, whose singular purpose was to build a spacecraft to the stars. But, this was no ordinary spacecraft; nor was its proposed destination found on any official celestial map. This vehicle was designed to propel Dr. Evermor to the center of creation - the phenomenal, virtually-timeless lap of "God"- on a magnetic beam of lightening within a magnetic force field, both conjured and fabricated by Evermor, for his first and final solo-mission.

Imbolc

Noosphere Day Image -  digital - Tatiana Plakhova
(Click to enlarge.)

"By her many graces I call to Brigit who graces us this day;

Grace of eye and grace of hand,

Grace of word and grace of will,

Grace of caring, grace of birthing, grace in mourning,

Grace of carriage, grace of courage,

Comforter and mother,

Brigit of the Blessings I name the one

Who blesses us this day!"

- Brigit Invocation from A Solitary Imbolc Ritual, Rob Henderson and Kami Landy, 1999

"Even after the Roman Catholics banned all Pagan ways, She was so firmly and permanently beloved, She was absorbed into Christianity as a saint. But the Wheel turns and we once more give honor to the Sun Goddess Bride (pronounced “breed” or “breej”), Brigit, or Brig(h)id. She is the Fire Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Art. You can see Her embodied in the bright stars of the constellation we call Orion.

For millennia at Her temple at Kildare, Her priestesses, and later, the nuns of Her order, tended an eternal flame in Her honor. Although it was extinguished during the Burning Times (the Inquisition), in 1993, Sister Mary Minehan boldly re-lit St. Brigid’s flame in Kildare. It was lit again in 1997, in the square at Kildare by Ragny Skaisten, a member of the Norwegian Brigidine Sisters, at the opening of Her feast day, Feile Bhride."

- from Blessings of Imbolc!, Beth Owl, 2010*

There's sort of "Land of Milk & Honey" vibe about the pagan holiday of Imbolc (pronounced EEM bolg), also known and/or confused with the Christian holiday of Candlemas. While the actual date of the holiday varies, you can begin to see it in the change of light that occurs around this time. While winter isn't exactly over, it's possible to react like our ancestors must've reacted, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief: finally, a flicker of of hope on a previously desolate horizon.

Ancient-Future Artifacts #3: Sherry Bellamy's Beads

My original title for the post that started it all - "Explorations of An Ancient-Future" - was "In Search of...," and I might change it back, because the original title was probably more accurate. Certainly the ancient-future was not found by myself in the intellectual realm, but was, more or less, intimated by the artifacts I later found... Tom Beddard's Faberge Fractals, and then those awesome bismuth crystals. One statement in the post was certainly legitimate though: "Ultimately, the Ancient-Future - and/or the necessary bridge between the two - is forged In the creative imagination..."

And, so it goes; approaching the ancient-future directly is almost impossible, and discussing it as if were some physical conundrum is equally as futile.

Poetry, then, is the the only effective way to go. Presently, there are no mathematical equations. So, my mission remains to ferret out examples whenever and wherever they're found, and recently, I came upon another treasure trove. Love, sweet love... Sherry Bellamy's lampwork beads!

Although I've been unsuccessful in contacting the artist - her blog and website seem to have gone dormant earlier this year, and while her tutorials are featured in her Etsy Shop, I'm unsure about the availability of her work - I still felt compelled to feature some glowing examples of Bellamy's art glass. Click on the images and, with your mind's eye, follow the glints, globules and organic glass folds deep inside the globes... Wander accordingly. ;-)

And, as we stand upon the cusp of another year - a metaphor for the ancient-future - here's hoping the "future" part is at least as bright as a lampwork bead.

Happy trails to all of us in the coming year...!

Art glass - Sherry Bellamy, found here

For more luminous examples of Bellamy's work, try this page with a 2005 interview, this 2012 blog post, or her website, Orca Beads, where the piece directly above was found.

The Transdimensional Landscapes of San Base

There are numerous new artists out there - too many, in a sense, to wrap ones head around - and new artists jumping into the digital arena every day. But, every now and then, I'm introduced to new art (this time via MOCA) that really resonates with me, and art that fulfills the purpose of what I believe art should ideally be; that is: a visual language which has the ability to both illuminate and transform. And when I find the art, the artist, I am moved to feature them here... and so, I present to you San Base, a Russian artist now living in Canada.

San Base, as in the case of many digital artists, though artistically inclined, was initially trained in the science of mathematics, becoming a cybernetics engineer before fully devoting his efforts to his true passion, painting. What he refers to as "Dynamic Painting" - both the images and the program he developed to generate them - represents the marriage of his painting skills and his digital expertise, and the result... well, as you can see from the example above, the result is amazing.

All too often digital creations are too slick - lacking integrity, emotion, and poetry - but, San Base's transdimensional landscapes breathe, shift and transform as naturally and aesthetically pleasing as running water and drifting clouds. One recognizes something... maybe it's the way we dream... or the organic composition of our thoughts and memories. But, no description is ever necessary with successful art. It simply is, and, intuitively, we know it's precise.

Bravo, San Base!

Incidentally, after you've viewed this "painting", you might want to try this one!

For more of San Base's work, including imagery for sale, more videos (even a few Mandelbulb fractals), visit his website, and his online studio.

***

PS: And, here's two new articles in cyberspace that may interest you... "Art + Technology = New Art Forms, Not Just New Art", and "What is New Media Art?"

Artifacts from an Ancient-Future... Featuring the Fractals of Tom Beddard (Updated)

Faberge Fractal (from a series) - digital 3D Generative - Tom Beddard, 2012

“I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there’s another kind of time, imaginary time, at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end.”

 - Stephen Hawking, from Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, 1984,

Oxford University Press

"The creative process is akin to an exploration into a space that can dramatically change with a slight tweak of one parameter. A fundamental feature of fractal algorithms is recursion, where the output of one iteration is fed back as the input of the next, so often certain features can get ‘amplified’ leading to unexpected and delightful results."

- Tom Beddard via this 1.4 interview, 2012

"Fractals, in other words, bridge the micro to the macro, and do so by the marriage of mathematics to the language of form. Symmetry, on the other hand, has become the catch-word across the board; in all areas of science, as well as art, music, history and societal analysis. Symmetry, in other words, is a very transdimensional term. It describes both the singular entity and the encompassing field. It can take us from a simple geometric figure to a parallel universe. We can follow it from the atomic to the galactic, from the child's "cat's cradle" to the Super-string universe and beyond."

- Dia Sobin, from the post: The Language of Form (Part 2): Fractals, Form and Symmetry

Faberge Fractal (from a series) - digital 3D Generative - Tom Beddard, 2012

It doesn't always work, but, sometimes, when one is looking for a clue to some personal dilemma, or some creative "fix" to jump-start the little grey cells into up-and-running mode, the internet proves to be The Great Provider. It's almost uncanny. At least, that's what I thought when I stumbled upon a post by Cory Doctorow, at the irrepressible, irreplaceable boingboing, the other day.

I'd been mulling over my Ancient-Future meme, having, to some degree, lost my original thread from an idea that originated weeks ago, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but actual artifacts, embodiments of just what I'm attempting to illuminate!

The artist: Tom Beddard, an English web-developer currently operating his own company Hyper Digital Ltd. out of Edinburgh, Scotland. The artifacts: a series of 3-D generative renderings he refers to as "Faberge Fractals". It was love at first sight.

Naturally, I wasted no time in visiting Tom's Subblue studio, where I was delighted to find more 3D generatives, and, better still, a whole slew of animations, which he describes as: "rendered using raymarching in the same way as the Mandelbox and Mandelbulb fractals. The formulas follow similar processes of folding, scaling, rotating and inverting the space to give the final shape."

Soon, links to his animations will be embedded on the sidebar of this blog, but, for now, Tom has kindly allowed me to include two of his animated gems... which appear at the end of this post. (Note: I've switched out the 2nd video, and replaced it another - I'm a sucker for soundtracks with my fractals - but, have left a link to the previous.)

In Tom's words, taken from Subblue: "I have a fascination with the aesthetics of detail and complexity that is the result of simple mathematical or algorithmic processes. For me the creative process is writing my own software and scripts to explore the resulting output in an interactive manner. The best outcomes are often the least expected!"

Hmmm... well, from the point of view of a primarily analog digital artist - which is, alas, what I am (out of sheer fear and laziness) - my question would be: but, where exactly does the muse crawl in? Because, you know it must.

Ah, well, I did find this quote from Tom (from this article): "You get an intuition about what equations lead to interesting results," he says. "Everything in 'Surface Area' comes from slowly changing just one parameter. And when it moves in and out of phase with some of the other parameters, certain structures pop out: some organic, some geometric, some classical and tree-like."

My guess: the intuition.

Faberge Fractal (from a series) - digital 3D Generative - Tom Beddard, 2012

Then again, looking at Tom's work, my inuition is that the muses - with Tom at the helm - have fashioned themselves ingenious little abodes... or, perhaps complex mechanisms which accomplish strange things when held in ones hands or above ones proverbial noggin. My suggestion to Tom? In two words: 3D printing!

When it comes to the sheer mechanics which produce fractal patterns, however, I am as much in the dark as anyone else. But, I find, the best way to approach fractal art, geometry, or anything else that smacks of complex mathematics, is to simply allow oneself to respond in much the same way as one might when gazing into the bifurcating whorls of a particularly intricate seashell... the awe, the palpable wonder... because the body can subliminally and inherently grasp what the mind - with all its pre-conceived notions and emotions - cannot. The body understands all geometrical configurations because its ability to function depends upon them; from the division of a cell to the algorithmic arrangement of atoms, the body is a complex, exquisitely fine-tuned geometrical expression in motion. In other words, truly "seeing" is a holistic, whole-body experience.

And, a body loves fractals. They are keys to the Transdimensional, and, hence, keys to the Ancient-Future I've been grappling with.

But, you're going to have to read between the lines on that one. I think I've left enough clues. Meanwhile, forget all of that, and let your aetheric body and/or your pineal body (via your eye-sockets) wander amid the fractal animations below. They will thank you for it.

Welcome to an Ancient Future!

Music Box by Tom Beddard - Soundtrack by J. Saunders

Surface Detail (& soundtrack) by Tom Beddard - Previously shown: Window Well 

For more of Beddard's fractal animations, go here... or, visit his blog, and/or his pages on Twitter, and Flickr.

And, do keep an eye on his sites Subblue, and Fractal Lab; he's promising "some very big new stuff " in the near future!

Thanks, Tom!

Next in the Ancient-Future series: More artifacts!