Category Archives: Space

The Silva Rerum, the Weblog, and the Journal

In many of my courses, I have students keep journals where they log their reading and keep notes. Looking back at my description of the journal reminds me of the ancient practice of commonplacing. Weblogs, Tinderbox, and other tools are methods of commonplacing, which plays a role, I would have to say, in the history of hypertext, hypertextuality, and the concept of the memex, since readers, such as Locke or Milton would read, reread, and recall and collect ideas based the numerous works they might have been reading at any given time.

The “silva rerum” refers to a forest of things. The commonplace book has been referred to as a reflective journal, where, in practice, sections of work would be written down by the reader and commented on in a notebook, now, of course, in a weblog or a note tool.

In the first dialogue exchange between Satan and Beelzebub in Paradise Lost, we have Milton employing dramatic language, either self-directed or to his comrade. It goes like this:

If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d
From him, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth’d with transcendent brightnes didst outshine
Myriads though bright: If he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope,
And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,
Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd
In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fal’n, so much the stronger provd
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? (84-94)

The first words uttered are significant because they expose the magnitude of change that has occurred after the war in heaven. Just those few lines, spoken slowly, and in amazement (to suggest the kind of utterance it actually is) are key to the relationship the reader may have with Paradise Lost. “If thou beest he; But O how fall’n” can be read in all kinds of interesting ways, numerous affects, speeds, and expressivity, given the readers take on the situation.

This would be a commonplace entry, involving reflections on the theme of reading, drama, and performance. Typically of the commonplace is its organization. It’s not just meant to collect thoughts, but those thoughts are meant to be found, revised, and rethought. Why collect otherwise; why should we write notes at all unless those notes serve some larger purpose?

Oppositions are important to Milton, to religion, and to polemic. Hell, for example, as place, state, and staging ground will rear back at the end of the text after Adam and Eve are removed from the place, state, and staging ground of Paradise. For Satan, hell is both a place to fall into, physically, sensually, and a state of mind or frame of reference. Satan will not repent. He says:

. . . Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. (249-254)

Satan possess hell and refers to the mind as a “place,” habitable, motile: the state argument.

On his decent to Paradise, Satan observes the beauty he will never have back, this in Book 3. The idea of hell as mind follows the action. Thought follows Satan and all the torture that can bring with it:

Satan from hence now on the lower stair
That scal’d by steps of Gold to Heav’n Gate
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this World at once. As when a Scout
Through dark and desart wayes with peril gone
All night; at last by break of chearful dawne
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing Hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some forein land
First-seen, or some renownd Metropolis
With glistering Spires and Pinnacles adornd,
Which now the Rising Sun guilds with his beams. (3.540-51)

Satan’s wonder is like a scouts, who, tapping a hill sees a new landscape. This passage, much like the expression to Beelzebub, recalls that sense of observed change and surprise.
In Book 4 we read doubt in Satan and identify the surfacing of regret:

Yet not rejoycing in his speed, though bold,
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt, which nigh the birth
Now rowling, boiles in his tumultuous brest,
And like a devillish Engine back recoiles
Upon himself; horror and doubt distract
His troubl’d thoughts, and from the bottom stirr
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair
That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorie
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. (4.13-26)

The commonplace observation should reveal the structures of the work. This last passage closes the state argument, at least for now and in this section. “The Hell within him” is an echo of “The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” Satan carries “himself” with him no matter the place.

Space and Justice

This is a description of the LATWIDNO exhibition at Just Space(s). Interesting to quote in full for Louis Gottlieb’s act and its implications:

In the case People of the State of CA vs. Louis Gottlieb (1969-73), the defendant Gottlieb asserted his right to donate the land he owned, Morningstar Ranch, to God. In doing so, Gottlieb intended to offer “Land-Access-To-Which-Is-Denied-No-One, land whereon permission to live is not required; land from which no one may be ordered to depart.”

This audio piece is a “reading” of transcripts from several of the court hearings. Rather than a theatrical re-telling of a divisive Plaintiff v. Defendant court drama, the voice score speaks of Gottleib’s aspirations and the fundamental legal paradoxes of the court grappling with humanistic, not-for-profit ideals.

The Sonoma County Court opined on the legal issues concerning dedication. Dedication in the proper sense involves giving a gift to the public. In common law, the intention to dedicate may be made in writing, orally or by virtue of the owners conduct. Generally, a “dedication” must be accepted by the public, though public use may be used to indicate acceptance.

In this fascinating, though virtually unknown appeal, Gottleib’s defense, legal counsel and Amicus Curiae raise First Amendment Freedom of Religion claims, as well as Evidentiary and Due Process ones. Specifically about: whether the court may be allowed to assume God is a material being when God’s existence remains an unsettled question of fact and, if/how the court has the right to determine whether God is or is not the legal owner of the land if God is not likely to appear before the court to make a statement. Since the court must first establish it has the legal right to interfere in any disposition before it may rule on it, the case People vs. Louis Gottleib teeters between the edge of judicial absurdity and that which is outside the scope of the law.

Numbers Game

Much of the talk at Congress over the past couple of days has been about numbers and, I must contend, vague expression about this or that strategy. Some argue that al-Maliki has to do honest business with Sunni Arabs and that Saudi Arabia must keep speaking to Iran and vice versa, another Sunni/Shiite issue (to generalize).

But what I take from the Petraeus transcript is a disarticulation of relationship between the “administration” and life on the ground, both for the soldiers and Iraqis. Troop reduction means what to them? How can normality be defined and by whom?

Hypertext 07 and Bubble Worlds

I’m really bummed about my inability to make it to Hypertext 07. Manchester looks gand in September. Fortunately, my novel, The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, was able to make it in my stead, and I want to thank Jamie, Mark and others for its safe travel.

My first regret is that I can’t perform TLGS. My second is having not written and designed the work on a Mac. Unfortunately, it was built in Windows over the last five years and would take some effort to rebuild in the Mac version of Storyspace. However, I will soon be embarking on this, relocating images into my MBP. I made the switch to the Mac this summer and am only now beginning to realize how important it will be to provide two versions of the novel or, even better, to allow for new ideas to develop because of this other method of revising.

TLGS tested all my powers in spelling, semantics, organization, and rewriting. It takes time to understand that in Storyspace, editing is a non-linear process, where linking can take the place of idea moving. In Storyspace, the writer doesn’t move a paragraph, though this is possible to do, he or she simply relates it to something else via a link. In the flow of story development a link may proceed from the shape of a cloud, or a returning mood in memory, thus motioning the reader down a path based on image not necessarily by plot. This means one must unlearn the remediated spaces of the typewriter, on which I wrote my first novel back in 1986, and the word processor. I found editing in Storyspace a deep, rethinking process, one that is almost impossible to share or explain. In TLGS, there are many areas of the text the reader will never see because they are simply bypassed. They are a sort of idea-based archaeology, bits of broken pottery that over time, I found no use for in the paths of the novel, such as a stretch of action that appeared at one time to supply the answer to a quandary, but that become too burdensome to keep in the possible flow. Likewise, the end of the novel may prove another beginning or yet another plot point if I was successful at making things interesting enough to explore.

In hypertext, the novel can form a cluster of lives that, much like Heroes, can spin off into an ever expanding universe of possibility. One link could provoke an infinite cluster of new spaces and times: Jackie meets Ron. Ron remembers his grandmother. A new story begins at the next link 1,000 years in the future with Grandma’s extended relation Jose, secluded on some rock being towed toward another sun. For the writer, hypertext can contain bubble worlds.

I honestly cannot say whether The Life of Geronimo Sandoval is a decent work. But writing it was something I’ll never forget. One image by the Rio Grande started it all off. That image also ended my progress into it.

1/4 Life Crisis

In this response Neha tells me about the quarter-life crisis, which I know only from John Meyer. I also know of Abby Wilner’s work on the issue.

We talk about liminality, spatial and temporal transition a lot (and yet never enough). But new spaces and transitions do not constitute “reality.” When we ask the question, “Then where was I ten years ago” (a question that Ham Sandoval would ask), we verify the validity of Tomorrow as Reality? Transitions and our experiences of them merely indicate continuum. Indeed, it could be argued that our definitions and descriptions of reality add up to the problem of completion in phases. “I’m entering reality now.” What this means is that period of development in my life is “over” and now I can start living, a common phenomenon. This is my essential and benign disagreement with Neha. I can’t fight the narrative of contemporary life (the one sold as The (current) Way), at least the linear narrative that persists, by asserting the abundant alternatives.

This is tricky business. We all buy into some sort of narrative, a structured image we hold as valid against perceived reality: what we see either validates the image or we take what we can get. This image becomes a powerful structure for plot. In my professional position, I have absolutely no long term goals or aspirations because getting the position was immensely difficult and not something easily tossed off (it was a 12 to 15 year process just to get the job. Some do it in less time, other more). I now have short-term issues that need completion to satisfy a question: will this or that work or be interesting to try out? This does not delegitimize any other person’s goal, short or long. Neither does it make for “reality” or a “real world,” merely a now in which we all must act. It is difficult to remain still.

Okay, this is fun.

As to cushion. I partly agree with Neha. But at the moment, I can’t see how one can negate the balance of learning in a “choice-driven” environment and at the same time “experience” the world one hopes to enter in terms of a career.

Help?

What to say about the City

Nicolas Retsinas writes:

The United Nations estimates that, today, 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day. And it is this huge, desperate underclass that is filling these mega-cities. Children are more likely to roam in gangs than attend school. Cholera and typhoid – listed as “rare” in Western textbooks – are endemic.

Parts of these cities are modern, with the familiar skyscrapers, highways and BlackBerry-toting workers. Yet they are surrounded by rings of shocking poverty where millions live in paper-covered hovels.

Without some concerted action from nations and international institutions, these mega-cities will grow larger and more desperate. Philanthropy helps, but these developing countries need public policies that promote property ownership, increase access to credit and enhance government transparency.

It took more than 50 years to address the slums of the 19th century. But there is an urgency to today’s task. The slum dwellers of Lagos and Manila and Karachi are part of the global economy, bound to the rest of the world. Their misery will spill beyond their borders, and if that happens, our urban age risks becoming a global nightmare.

Not much new is being said here. The argument is?

Design School

“Remember: good ideation creates the innovation potential that the rest of the Design Thinking process makes actionable,” writes Michael Tiemann at Open Source.

When people think of design (and this is of course a generalization) they probably think of finished article not the “process” behind or the ideas that generated it. Do people consider a poem something “designed” by the poet. We don’t have to think of a poem’s visual or semantic arrangements in terms of the language of design. Roads, for example, just are: there when we leave the house. Their design, is, therefore, hidden.

Considering how an object is placed in a rock garden can be a question of design, not just “placement.” The environmental features of hypertext brings design logic to the writing, as would writing in Flash, because the author can arrange not just the narrative but also a visual arrangement of the narrative parts onto the screen, like stones in a garden, a wonderful layer of complexity that I think needs more study.

Designers of massive or small public spaces can and should study epistemology.

Vectors

Siddharth Hegde on tangent space:

The u, v, n axis represent the direction in which u, v, n values increase across the face, just as the x, y, z values represent the direction in which the x, y, z values increase in the world space coordinate system.

Learning and Design

Do we design enough for learning? This and the post that follows are linked:

Buildings are more to blame for school failures than teachers, according to new research from Manchester University.

The lack of space in school halls, gyms, canteens and other areas is the cause of many of the problems blighting today’s secondary schools, said Naomi Breen, a teacher studying secondary school buildings for her PhD.

According to Mrs Breen, school design affects the curriculum and encourages gender stereotyping, bullying, antisocial behaviour and alienation.

Mrs Breen, who teachers at Hulme grammar school for girls, Oldham, surveyed 18 secondary schools – nine in Burnley and nine in Berkshire – and analysed historical records and documents. She says these reveal government regulations from the 1940s and 50s lie at the root of today’s problems.

Trends

From the Guardian:

Poor and wealthy households in Britain are becoming more and more segregated from the rest of society as the UK faces the highest inequality levels for 40 years, according to a study published today.

A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation provides a groundbreaking geographical analysis of changes in the distribution of wealth over time, and reveals an increasingly divided nation.

It shows that already rich areas – particularly the south-east of England – have become disproportionately wealthier over four decades, while in areas of some cities more than half of all households are now “breadline poor”, on a level of relative poverty with enough to live on but without access to opportunities enjoyed by the rest of society, yet above the level of absolute poverty, or “core poor”.

“Poor, rich and average households became less and less likely to live next door to one another between 1970 and 2000,” says the study, Poverty, Wealth and Place in Britain, 1968 to 2005.

Urban “clustering” of poverty has increased, while wealthy households have concentrated in city outskirts. Meanwhile, the number of average households – those categorised as neither poor nor wealthy – has been shrinking.