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[ by Charles Cameron — the bell just tolled 72 for me, so it’s no longer Thanksgiving, it’s Psalm 90, still early in the “labour and sorrow” zone ]
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A propos, then, of nothing in particular — and because it is a glorious work of art, here in a tweet is Marcel Duchamp‘s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2:

@fadesingh "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2", Marcel Duchamp, 1912. pic.twitter.com/0P9dAR3f6S

— LapsusLima (@LapsusLima) November 25, 2015

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And because it shows the paucity by comaparison, not just of language but of constructed languages — and also how finely tuned such languages can be, as in this extraordinary translation into the Ithkuil:

Aukkras êqutta ogvëu?a tnou’elkwa pal-lši augwaikštülnàmbu.. pic.twitter.com/wIb1MzSYvd

— 1 / ?(x) (@fadesingh) November 25, 2015

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Now — how many words are worth a picture?

[ by Charles Cameron — it seems — to me at least — that associative memory is at the root of creativity, and that the process, preconscious pattern-recognition, is basically aesthetic in nature ]
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As stormy winter weather approaches please take care around our coasts. #alwaysoncall #rnliroughweather @RNLI pic.twitter.com/Wk5W0Is2oJ

— RNLI Poole Lifeboats (@PooleLifeboats) November 17, 2015

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There’s the present moment — in this case, today’s tweet from the RNLI above.

And there’s the memory it elicits — in this case, Hokusai‘s Great Wave at Kanagawa, with its three little boats, tiny Mt Fuji, and towering, breaking wave, from A Series of Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji:

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That’s the same process, from perception to memory, that I was thinking of when I wrote DoubleQuoting the French Revolution, and quoted Robert Frost:

The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic.

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Come to which, and moving by the same process from what’s in front of me to what I remember, here’s a DQ of Hokusai (~1760-1849) — before me now as I write this — and an image deriving from the work of Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) on fractals” — which looking at the Hokusai quickly reminds me of:

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And as I look at that DoubleQuote, here at the time of writing this post, it reminds me strongly of my earlier DoubleQuote of Van Gogh and Von Kármán:

In each of these two cases, art precedes science.

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In each case, too, the associative process is the same, with some item perceived in the present calling up a past memory that is related to it — in a manner that can generally be articulated and annotated.

Such is the mechanism of a typical “move” in a DoubleQuote or HipBone game.

[ by Charles Cameron — astronaut in a cathedral, nuclear reactor in Gabon ]
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I enjoy scoping and snoping out strange claims, and had to check out possible anachronicities not once but twice today — first, to verify the presence of an astronaut in Salamanca’s seventeenth-century (1513-1733 to be more precise) “New Cathedral”:

and then, of a nuclear reactor from two billion years ago in Gabon, West Africa.

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Neither one turned out to be von Däniken fool’s gold, but both certainly glisten enough to be worth a mention.

The Salamanca cathedral astronaut is there, carved in stone, all right — but as part of a 1992 renovation. And what’s most interesting to me is that it’s entirely in conformity with tradition for an artist working today on such a restoration to “sign” his work with a contemporary flourish of this sort. It is thus faithful to what Benedict XVI would call the hermeneutic of continuity.

And 2 billion year old nuclear reactor?

It’s not as old as the sun, of course, by about 3.6 billion years, nor as close to us, nor as vast — but it’s there, it’s there.

Hat tips:

for the astronaut, Jeff DeMarco

for the reactor, Cheryl Rofer

[ by Charles Cameron — the Aurora cinema shooting — a forensic view, and one through Mantegna’s eyes ]
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Two ways to be chilled once again by the 2012 slaughter in the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The forensic view comes courtesy of the Colorado DA‘s office:

Mantegna‘s image of St Sebastian — one of three he painted — affords us a reminder of human suffering.

The film that was showing at the Aurora Century 16 that midnight was The Dark Knight Rises.

[ by Charles Cameron — some examples of deep dreams, mechanical and spiritual ]
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In the upper panel, a claim made for the Deep Dream Generator:

In the lower panel, an image of the chakras or lotuses in the subtle body, through which the kundalini serpent rises from deep sleep to full spiritual awakening.

The “sixth level” in the chakra system would be the Ajna chakra:

The Ajna chakra is positioned in the brain, directly behind the eyebrow center. Its activation site is at the eyebrow region, in the position of the ‘third eye.’

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Deep Dreams:

Here’s what Google’s Deep Dream Generator comes up with:

Here’s an early statue of Arya Lokeshvara from the Potala Palace, dating to the 7th century and described as the Potala’s most sacred statue:

This is a detail from Hieronymus Bosch, The Temptation of St Anthony:

From one of the marvellous array of manuscripts of the Beatus commentary on Revelation:

Here’s a deep dream in words, from Hermann Hesse..

Another, from Shakespeare:

A secular deep dream..

and a deep dream — as surreal as all the rest, yet capturing “no more than” simple reality — in a photo posted today by Bill Benzon:

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Roll over, Beethoven: