Jacarandá_ platform of Arts, Sciences & Politics

Diagrammatic Thinking

2011-11-28T17:06:00.003Z

Gerner, A. (2011) “Diagrammatic thinking”. [Encycopedia entry] In: Vít Havránek/tranzit (Ed.) Atlas of Transformation: jrp-ringier Zürich, 173-184.

Diagrammatic Thinking

Alexander Gerner

Introduction

“Come on, my Reader, and let us construct a diagram to illustrate the general course of thought [ … ]”¹

“[ … ] we have no knowledge a priori of how to inquire—there can never be a time when we will know, for sure, that we are proceeding in the right way or even that there is a right way to proceed. We can only go by the evidence we have so far acquired, in faith that there is an impersonal truth, that is, a final opinion toward which an ideal inquiry would tend. The evidence that supports that faith is extensive and compelling and yet conceivably erroneous. It is shot through with uncertainty, unanswered questions, unresolved problems, and vague formulations.”²

“The diagram is no longer an auditory or visual archive but a map, a cartography [ … ] It is an abstract machine. It is defined by its informal functions and matter and in terms of form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discursive formation and a nondiscursive formation [ … ] If there are many diagrammatic functions and even matters, it is because every diagram is a spatio-temporal multiplicity.”³

The use of a diagram enables us to create a new way of relating to the unknown, of unfolding the dynamics of orientation in the world.

The diagrammatic is a method or a tool which enables us to know more, and to differentiate what is initially vague in a new way. In this way the structural parts of any-body, any-force, any-thing or any-world appear and show themselves more clearly. The power of diagram-making could be described as the skill of change and transformation by reason, and may be “cartographic,”⁴ “topologic,”⁵ or diagrammatic. Diagrammatic thinking is, however, not so much about the concrete shapes and forms of the geometrical configuration of knowledge represented as about the dynamic of how the structures of connectivity and separation—together with attentive abstractions and the relation of points of connectivity (territorialization) and disconnection (deterritorialization) and reconnection (reterritorialization)—areperformed, evolve, and show forces of change.

In Erik Beltrán’s concept map (2008), rectangular patterns of lines and curved lines partially intersect but also open up hodologically closed spaces with conceptual names and attributed or imagined significations. The white-inked middle square on the black plane has at its very center (thus orienting the dynamic open constellation) the concept word diagrams (although it also presents the words “ethics,” “category,” and “map” as well as the disciplines “physics,” “chemistry,” and others in the same-sized lettering). The square outlined in white on the left enables the observer to focus on the tension in language between the material techniques of such scriptural notations of “linguistics” as “calligraphy” and “typography” and the oral tradition of knowledge and authority, “voice.” The lower left starts with an ellipse including concept “signs.” An ellipse-like line enters the top of this dynamic diagrammatic map machine suggesting the concepts “Intuition,” “Statistics,” and “Mathematics” and, on the curved part already inside the line that shows a middle square, “topology,” and “geometry” are written. All these concepts are important when reflecting on how “the” diagram can show a structure or a scheme of thought that is perceived and observed as both discursive and iconic at the same time; a structure that is in movement or serves as a dynamic navigation tool of complex relations in the organization of knowledge and experience when using diagrammatic thinking and experimentation.

We can never find our way in diagrammatic experimentation (thinking, reasoning [perception and cognition], observing and art practices such as map-making and affective becoming) without the orientation of our experiential habits and our oriented body (left/right hand etc.). Visual material artifacts (alias visual diagrams as in the following section) are the outcomes of constructed knowledge tools, which by being laid out or noted spatially will show more about the world than we already knew.

I

Visual diagrammatics: operating with diagrams as spatially extended and perceivable notations between visibility and readability

For Mersch, the diagrammatic builds its own category⁶; not a hybrid between discursivity and iconicity but—by putting discursivity and grammaticality into tension with what shows up, for instance in the perceptive principle of the visual—a proper category that creates spatial differentiations via contrasts, lacunae, nonfilled places or distance-relations. It therefore properly constitutes the visual operational space which shows how the structure of visual arguments is principally topological. This first notion of the diagram could be constituted by the necessity of a “lineature” that gives way to an epistemology of the line⁷ in all its different forms (arrows, linking structures, Jordan curves, folds, knots, etc.) in the disegno tradition⁸ of the Renaissance for a diagrammatic theory of diagrams as a creative tension between thevisible and the knowledgeable, or the tension between the visually perceptible that exceeds the discursively readable notation. One could also speak of thinking, discovering, and creating with a hand that notes by drawing iconic scriptural and spatial localizations and positional extensions of unfolding lines and their folded points or knots on a plane perceived by the cognitively instructed eye, describable as the relation of eye, hand, and thinking.⁹ This widens the famous notion of Kleist that posits the creation of thought by/while speaking and the generation of knowledge with creating thought by/while drawing and observing, and thus unfolds lines or knots to form perceivable and notable spatial orders that not only accompany thought with illustrative graphics, but that actually show thought in the making, in which the universe itself is seen as a multiplicity of knotted and folded spaces that thought unfolds or explains on a perceivable plane.¹⁰ In this narrow account of the diagram as a visual diagrammatic, the diagram category is put into perspective by spatially given visual orders of notations on a plane or a on a sheet of existence onto which the diagram is projected and scribbled on, thus acquiring a history. In this way, by aligning inscriptions, transformations of information are transferred from one medium to another or from one level of a medium to another. The artifactual diagram-objects thus produced perform and constitute a structure and ordering of space in order to represent and show something. In this account of the visually perceptiblediagrammatic, diagrams can be defined as visual-graphic schemata that form and perform arguments in a visual medium. Through them, arguments can be inferred, proved, refuted, and hypothesized.¹¹ Of first importance in the visual diagrammatic is the “leading principle” of spatiality or spatial orders that rationalize space, in which topological relations are the most basic, and the lines and points interact with a plane. Secondly, the operationality of diagrammatic performance dislocates the importance of logical relations from discursivity and syntacticity toward relations of spatiality, in which iconic elements and scriptural language are superimposed on a plane and copresented by diagrammatic notations. For Krämer¹² the focus lies on diagrams as hybrids between images and scriptural notations that make discursivity visible through interspatiality.¹³ Diagrams in this account have a double linear and nonlinear “readability” in which the directedness of the eidetic element of the diagram (seeing something in something else) points beyond a mere discreteness of texture and its referentiality toward a fixed symbolic system and its conventionalized objects.

On the other hand, diagrams do not just include pictorial representations that can be read in a nonlinear way, but (as in infographics) add to the mere pictorial presentations the operationality to think and reason further with the diagram, and to distinguish and differentiate spatially syntactical or other formalized structures with it.

Fundamental, however, is the realization that even writing itself is a hybrid construct in which the linguistic and the iconic, the double act of telling and showing, intersect, and can with Krämer be called an example of “notational iconicity” (Schriftbildlichkeit).¹⁴ The diagrammatic category is here interpreted as making thought visible through perceivable marks that contain both scriptural and iconic elements. Such a diagrammatic category could not exist without the capacity of the nonautomatic, nonprogrammable constitutive creature attention¹⁵ that lies at the basis of the capacity of constructive observation and the perceptively influenced creation of the new.

II

Charles Saunders Peirce’s account of the iconic diagram sign and the process of diagrammatic reasoning as the quest of invention and discovery

“Remember it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far they aid us to construct diagrams.”¹⁶

In Peirce’s sense, diagrams are first of all eidetic operations or icons of relations. According to Peirce and Stjernfelt diagrams are icons, signs that work operationally in the moment they are used, and that therefore enable us to learn something new about the world according to its objects and scenes. Exploring unknown territory, real or imaginary, calls for the drawing of lines, paths, and trajectories. I assume here that the drawing of lines and diagrammatic relations is to be found at the very foundation of spatial orders that later lead to scientific activity (geometry, invention of numbers, scriptural fixation of notations as writing/alphabets or pictograms). Most probably the oldest material diagram artifacts are the orientation map-like artifacts that made it possible to orient oneself in a given life-world territory over 25,000 years ago. These were carved into mammoth bones and stones as primary human knowledge tools that made it possible to orient and discover something as well as to project and memorize places and food supplies.

Diagrams as “skeletonized icons” represent their object analyzed into parts, among which rational relations hold, be they implicit or explicit. They are also responsible for the proper genesis of objects. These “objectiving” relations can be spatial relations (topological) as well as any other kind that the diagram allows us discover and think with. Thus diagrammatic experimentation not only enables us to find and discover new knowledge about an object, but may enable us to reinvent a whole system of how to draw diagrams (see the debate on hypostatic reasoning/abstraction); for example, in the transformation of Euclidian to non-Euclidian geometry,¹⁷ and in introducing new objects or ens rationis, unknown before the diagrammatic thinking process started, by construction—that is, “the principal theoric step” of a demonstration.¹⁸Peirce also underlines the fact that the observation of diagrams is essential to all reasoning—even if no auxiliary constructions are performed; in deductive reasoning there is always a step from the general statement to the singular. In 1903 Peirce distinguished between the terms “precisive abstraction,” which separates one element from another, and “hypostatic abstraction,” which by skeletonizing and abstracting at the same time introduces a new object and designates a transformation e.g. from good> goodness. Diagrams are thus pilots of complex relations that reveal new knowledge about the world through which we pilot our way by introducing or making explicit hidden or new elements of thought which transform the diagram or the complete representation system by “abduction” which is “parallel” (introducing hypostatizing abstractions from other areas), “creative” (creating new hypostatizing abstractions) or “theoretical”(creating a new perspective on the problem diagrammatized).¹⁹Diagrammatic thinking therefore first makes the principle of diagrammatic reasoning accessible by introducing new elements through iconicity and through the operations of “hypostatic abstraction” and theoretical abstraction.

One has to be careful not to adopt a trivial similarity definition when speaking about diagrams as part of iconicity. From a non-trivial standpoint similarity cannot be equated with “identity” with the object, nor can similarity be psychologized to refer to merely subjective judgments or feelings of resemblance.²⁰ For Peirce, it is through the icon and the operationality of similarity, and not through indexes or symbols, that knowledge of an object grows:

“For a great distinguishing property of the icon is that by the direct observation of it other truths concerning its objects can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its constructions.”²¹

The operationality criteria²² of iconic signs means that icons are signs from which more new information can be derived by observation and manipulation than that which sufficed for their construction.²³ There is no new information, no learning possible, according to this theory, other than through the participation of iconic signs that need to be interpreted. However, the degree of image iconicity and its virtuous vagueness as the vague possibility of an introduction of the new is reciprocal to the preciseness and degree of determination toward its object. In Peirce’s taxonomy of the trios of signs (icon, index, symbol) in the “Syllabus” of 1903, the Peircean diagram forms a second subtype of the three hypoicons that can never show up in a pure form but are always in use: first, images (not necessarily in pictures!); second, diagrams (not necessarily visually represented); and third, metaphors (not necessarily linguisticmetaphors!).²⁴ When considered to be an icon in use, the diagram is defined by its similarity to the object it represents and performs. Peirce’s account of the iconicimage sign presents its object by simple qualities (color, form, etc.) and Peirce definesmetaphor by its similarity parallel with a third object (e.g., a symbolic system). The diagram (d), however, presents its object with a “skeleton-like sketch of relations,”²⁵so that we a) construct a diagram for the sake of prototypicality while attentively prescinding and eidetically abstracting from accidental characters²⁶ and creatively synthesizing (eidetically abstracting for a schema) as in the subsequent conceptual map (d1, d2, etc.). Then in a second step b) we are enabled, through diagram observation, to read new information directly off the diagram; and c) through the technique and praxis of the third step we can drop (abstract) unnecessary elements or creatively insert new elements—e.g., by introducing auxiliary lines in geometry—and then from the transformed diagram (d1´) deductively conclude new knowledge.

We may come to the conclusion that we have to redraw the diagram completely (d2) or rethink a complete way of how to draw and think diagrams (d*) according to the presumptions or a priori knowledge we held, but may not hold any more after the first diagrammatic thinking process. Thus the sign process is seen not as a fixed moment, but in a succession of elements in time and space, and can be “[ … ] characterized with great truth as presenting before our eyes a moving picture of thought.”²⁷

III

Mappings as artistic creation practices of thought: from orienting thought by diagrammatic reasoning (Peirce) to cartographic orientation (Deleuze) before representing thought diagrams

Concrete artistic diagrammatic/cartographic praxe and techniques may include

“[ … ] fragmenting known maps and rearranging them in novel ways; juxtaposing far with near; distorting space into a relative or egocentric form; changing orientation; manipulating projection, scale, and generalization to infringe accepted mapping standards; drawing on standard cartographic tropes such as the border, or naming to question social norms; abstracting and overcoding a known form; employing recognizable country shapes in new ways; shifting novel conceptual frames onto familiar icons such as the globe or tube map; and mapping onto different media so as to ask questions about the world or our identities.”²⁸

“But we do not make a diagram simply to represent the relation of killer to killed [ … ] and the reason why we do not, is that there is little or nothing in that relation that is rationally comprehensible.”²⁹

One could say that Deleuze’s account of the map category³⁰ located before any rational representative order of the diagram, takes seriously what Peirce calls “the relation of killer to killed.” For Peirce, this contains little or no rationality to be read off a possible diagram and thus presents a complementary concept that investigates the ontologies that constitute diagrams. However, for Deleuze, cartographic ontology precedes the diagram category, while for Peirce the map is seen as a subtype of the diagram.

The “causality” of the “event” (of killing, alias the creation of a first diagram) and the rationality of a diagram as a logic of relations toward the event of the genesis of a diagram is put into question in the artistic practices and creations of real maps that for Deleuze are located on a subpersonal and sublogical level before being represented in any kind of medium. For Deleuze “art attains this celestial state that no longer retains anything of the personal or rational. In its own way it says what children say. It is made up of trajectories and becomings, and it too makes maps, both extensive and intensive.” Maps are constructive, and develop new knowledge; they also exercise power³¹ and can promote a change of orders (political, epistemological, social, and representational diagram); or they can transform or project “identities.”³²

However, before having a thought, a history or a representation, we, as embodied and embedded creatures, navigate and create a spatio-temporal cartographic ontology that an artwork shows, according to Deleuze, as a “[ … ] map of virtualities, superimposed onto a real map, whose distances [parcours] it transforms [ … ] Every work is made up of a plurality of trajectories that coexist and are readable only on a map, and that change direction depending on the trajectories that are retained.”³³

It is therefore not a matter of deciding whether the map is indexical or related with a material object (the territory), or whether it is not a territory³⁴ in the sense of representing a possible object to which we attribute meaning. In Deleuze’s sense, it is very important that maps are above all dynamic, and evaluate displacements:

“Maps [ … ] are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one map to the next it is not a matter of searching an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclosures, which necessarily go from bottom to top [ … ] Maps should not be understood only in extension, in relation to space constituted by trajectories. There are also maps of intensity, that are concerned with what fills space, what subtends the trajectories [ … ]”³⁵

It is also not just a question of how artistic artifacts of maps “kill” and deconstruct “identities” or conventionalized and pre-existing logic of representational diagram relations, their symbolic practices of representation, or offer “clandestine” counterproposals to a theoretically possible (but actually impossible) “all knowing map,”³⁶ but of underlining how artistic maps and mappings propose new possibilities of orientations and create new projection types concretizing first spatial orders and the proper understanding of the genesis of the diagrammatic, besides their material historical representations and expositions of representing the already-existing force and power relations of the diagram.

It is therefore no coincidence that geographers today show an interest in reflecting artistic maps and mapping processes in order to clarify by contrast what maps in scientific orders can do, should do, or should not do: “I studied maps,” said Fromentin “not in geography, but in painting.”³⁷ In this way the diagram is not so much a functional machine as a factory of meaning production, closer to a theater in which scenes and diagrammatic relations change permanently on the map-stage.

“This is a different kind of diagram, a different machine, closer to theater than to the factory; it involves a different relation between forces. [ … ] This is because the diagram is highly unstable or liquid, continually churning up matter and functions in a way likely to create change. Lastly, every diagram is [ … ] constantly evolving. It never functions in order to represent a persisting world but produces a new kind of reality, a new model of truth. It is neither the subject of history, nor does it survey history. It makes history by unmaking preceding realities and significations, constituting hundreds of points of emergence or creativity, unexpected conjunctions or improbable continuums. It doubles history with a sense of continual evolution.”³⁸

Thus the picture can become clearer; the traditional field of the conscious logic of relations (and its Noeta) will have to be seen as superimposed on the map-plane of the aesthetic (and its Aistheta) and the subtending map-points of intensities as affective events (and its Affects) and its movement in spatial trajectories, where hidden topological ontological assumptions or subtending forces must deal with the cartographic a priori notion. The focus should be on the appearing or individuations of artistic processes of map-making, as well as on the level of subconscious “cartographic activity.”³⁹ This means that we have to start to investigate the dynamic aspect of the genetic cartographic a priori of orientation itself,⁴⁰ in which a posteriori diagrams or structures of relations are produced as in the diagrammatic art of map making in hodological spaces, and not so much in the science of fixed geographies. Maps and their diagrammatic structures of iconic relations to create knowledge are therefore dynamic, and have something in common with “milk,”⁴¹ as they are fluid and have a “sell-by” date. As proposed in the title of a brilliant book by Karl Schlögel,Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit (Reading Time in Space):

“Always when a world comes to an end and a new is initiated, is the time of the map. Map-times stand for the transformation from one order (of space) toward another.”⁴²

ILLUSTRATION

I / Map 1 In “L’image du monde au Sudan,”⁴³ Marcel Griaule (1949) interprets this diagrammatic graphic, representing and codifying the spatial knowledge of a culture painted in caves on the Bandiagara escarpments in Mali, as a map of the “Dogon” cosmos, known as aduno kine (the life of the world). According to Griaule, the oval “head” signifies “the celestrial placenta” and the “legs” show the “terrestrial placenta.” Here “[ … ] the torso and the arms form a cross, representing cardinal directions [ … ] This orientation toward the aduno kine is replicated in other patterns of everyday life such as in the layout of fields, weaving designs where men and women sleep.”⁴⁴

II / Map 2 Erick Beltrán (2008) “The personal social order,” from the “Calculum Series,” Poster b/w.⁴⁵ A meta-diagrammatic machinic map experimenting with orders of thinking, representations, and operations in different orders of knowledge, the subconcepts and lines of which can be related, folded/unfolded in multiple representative and non-representational “clandestine” ways.

III / Map 3 Terry Atkinson & John Baldwin, “Map of Itself” (1967), Bookprint 14.5 x 18 inches, from the series “Art & Language.”⁴⁶ The introduction of the grid as a spatial order—“the map of itself”—or the standardized construction of an isotropic, homogenous space in “geometrism” ⁴⁷within the model of mathesis universalis reduces and abstracts a real or qualitative and perspectivated (embodied and embedded) experiential place to a quantifiable, measurable algebraic spatio-temporal extension. Thus the introduction of the grid is shown here as an important topic of map-making explored by map artists.

IV / Map 4 Recently a team led by the Spanish archaeologist Pilar Utrilla⁴⁸ of Zaragoza University deciphered the oldest prehistoric map-like cartographic engraving to date in Western Europe, found in 1993 on a hand-sized stone (1kg) in a Grote in Abauntz, Navarra. In the above map-like stone the complex etchings engraved around 13,660 years ago, probably by Late Magdalenian hunter-gatherers at various times and using various diagrammatic design styles, superimpose the discovery’s reference point of the “mountain” San Gregorio with animal layers and other geographic layers. Just as the spoken language existed long before written languages, mental maps preceded the physical evidence of materialized map-making artifacts. The cartographic, in a wide notion of orientation, path-finding, etc., precedes the modern notion of maps and may include spatial planning ahead as a cognitive tool for orientation. This ability of prospection to navigate mentally as a possibility for the planning of future actions seems essential for adaptation and human brain evolution, as well as for preserving, relinking (religio), and reexperiencing past events real or imagined by the mnemonic functions of cartographic structures⁴⁹ linked to present or future actions. This all shows how the diagrammatic imagination and the external epistemic diagrammatic tools of the cartographic are complementary in creating orientation on all imaginable levels. For the complementarity account of a) mental maps and b) material map artifacts (or map-like artifacts) for orientation in two anthropological models based on ethnographic research to account for the “way-finding” ability of early humans.⁵⁰Defining the map as a representation of a part of the Earth’s surface naturalizes and thus universalizes the map: “it also obscures its origins in the rise of the state; and it ignores its role in the establishment and maintenance of social relations in those societies where it exists.”⁵¹ It is not our purpose here to conflate maps with specific projection types and the modern science of mapmaking, nor with fundamental human abilities like orientation, way-finding, and other features of spatial intelligence.

V / Map 5 For Peirce, the operational definition of diagrammatic thinking is the following:

“We form in the imagination some sort of diagrammatic, that is, iconic, representation of the facts, as skeletonized as possible. The impression of the present writer is that with ordinary persons this is always a visual image, or mixed visual and muscular [ … ] If visual, it will either be geometrical, that is, such that familiar spatial relations stand for the relations asserted in the premises, or it will be algebraical, where the relations are expressed by objects which are imagined to be subject to certain rules are, whether conventional or experiential.”⁵²

“By diagrammatic reasoning, I mean reasoning which constructs a diagram according to a precept expressed in general terms, performs experiments upon this diagram, notes their results, assures itself that similar experiments performed upon any diagram constructed according to the same precept would have same results, and expresses this in general terms. This was a discovery of no little importance, showing, as it does, that all knowledge without exception comes from observation.”⁵³

Schematically, the diagrammatic thinking process shown above in this metadiagrammatic map would be better exemplified in a moving image in which the arrows and the schematic fields of gray (results) and blue (operations) and the precepts and preconditions (red), the immaterial operations (white notations) and the material results (black notations) diagrammatic parts 1,2,1´2´are seen as momentary fixations and directions of a developing and changing process of diagram experimentation

VI / Map 6 Druksland—Physical and Social—January 15, 1974, 11:30 am 1974 Offset print (unnumbered edition) 18 x 15 inches.(here black& white reproduction)⁵⁴ The superposition and not the “causal” relation of personal and political orders in the map by the Israeli artist Michael Druk that marked out a cartographic depiction with different pictorial color elements, an explanatory legend, a scale of distance, a title, and such symbolic fixations of topographic areas as, for example the “occupied territories,” show in the first place the attribution of a spatial order that can be intentionally indicated as related to the map projections of the occupied territories in Israel with what can be called a “psychogeography”⁵⁵ in his series of self-portraits, metamorphosing geographical into psychographic maps and vice versa. Spatio-temporal boundaries are traversed in which the territory and the face of the artist are becoming an immanent plane of the other (the map), showing the folded relation between the topography of the territories in its occupied and unoccupied parts and body orientation (left Duks, right Duks etc.), as rethinkable parts and embodied parts that are not rational but subconscious parts. There is no Cartesian ego of self-affirmation here, but the form of a dated map, a “fractured I of a dissolved ego.”⁵⁶ The map’s title is dated very precisely, which makes it a proper time-diagram of meaning attribution “Druksland—Physical and Social January 15, 1974, 11:30 am.” This fixation of a momentary map that proposes that there could be changing maps each measurable instant of time shows how maps are located in between a mirror or copresentation of a reality and a diagrammatic structure of relations. In Duksland the presented spatial order of a physical territory superimposed on the pictorial element of a persona-mask on a flat plane representing a human skin-face shows in the lines that are named as “occupied,” the points and areas of intensity (located at the forehead) and might propose that the reality of the map could be a momentary thought map already outdated when visualized on a material fixed plane or image-medium.

VII / Map 7 Louisa Bufadeci’s diagrammatic “Ground Plan” (2003), digital Print 330 x 900 cm.⁵⁷

NOTE

1 / Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs. Reprinted in Peirce (1906), CP 4.530.

2 / T.L. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, p. 347.

3 / Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, Continuum, London 2006.

4 / Franco Farinelli, “Von der Natur der Moderne: eine Kritik der kartographischen Vernunft,” Räumliches Denken, ed. Dagmar Reichert, ETH, Zurich 1996, p. 267–302. Franco Farinelli, “Did Anaximander Ever Say (or Write) Any Words? The Nature of Cartographical Reason,”Philosophy and Geography 1(2) (1998), p. 135–144.

5 / Sigrid Weigel, “Zum ‘topographical turn.’ Kartographie, Topographie und Raumkonzepte in den Kulturwissenschaften,” KulturPoetik 2 (2002), p. 151–165.

6 / Dieter Mersch, “Visuelle Argumente. Zur Rolle der Bilder in den Naturwissenschaften” in Bilder als Diskurse—Bilddiskurse, ed. S. Maasen, T. Mayerhauser, C. Renggli Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2006, p. 95–116.

7 / Sybille Krämer, “‘Epistemology of the Line’: Reflections on the Diagrammatical Mind,” Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis, ed. A. Gerner, O. Pombo, CFCUL, Lisbon 2010 (forthcoming).

8 / Wolfgang Kemp, “Disegno. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Begriffs zwischen 1547 und 1607,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaften19 (1974), p. 218–240.

9 / Elke Bippus, “Skizzen und Gekritzel. Relationen zwischen Denken und Handeln in Kunst und Wissenschaft,” Logik des Bildlichen. Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. Martina Hessler, Dieter Mersch, Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, p. 76–93. Horst Bredekamp, Die zeichnende Denkkraft. Überlegungen zur Bildkunst der Naturwissenschaften, Einbildungen (=Interventionen 14), Zurich 2005), p. 155–171. Horst Bredekamp, Galilei der Künstler: der Mond, die Sonne, die Hand, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2007.

10 / Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibnitz and the Baroque, Continuum, London 2006. Horst Bredekamp, Die Fenster der Monade. Gottfried Wihelm Leibniz´ Theater der Natur und Kunst, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004.

11 / Martina Hessler, Dieter Mersch, “Bildlogik oder Was heißt visuelles Denken?” Logik des Bildlichen. Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. M. Hessler, D. Mersch, Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, p. 8–62.

12 / Sybille Krämer, “Operative Bildlichkeit. Von der ‘Grammatologie’ zu einer‚ ‘Diagrammatologie’? Reflexionen über erkennendes Sehen,” Logik des Bildlichen. Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. M. Hessler, D. Mersch, Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, p. 94–123.

13 / Krämer, “Operative Bildlichkeit,” and Sybille Krämer, “Writing, Notational Iconicity, Calculus: On Writing As a Cultural Technique,”Modern Language Notes—German Issue 118/3 (2003): p. 518–537. Martina Hessler, Dieter Mersch, “Bildlogik oder Was heißt visuelles Denken?” Logik des Bildlichen. Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. M. Heßler, D. Mersch, Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, p. 8–62.

14 / Krämer, “Writing, Notational Iconicity, Calculus,“ p. 518–537.

15 / Bernhard Waldenfels, Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2004.

16 / Charles S. Peirce, The Logic of Quantity (1893), CP 4.127.

17 / Michael Hoffmann, Erkenntnisentwicklung, Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2005.

18 / Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, CP 4.616.

19 / Michael Hoffmann, “Seeing Problems, Seeing Solutions: Abduction and Diagrammatic Reasoning in a Theory of Scientific Discovery,”Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery, ed. O. Pombo, A. Gerner, CFCUL, Lisbon 2007, p. 213–236.

20 / Frederik Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderline of Phenomenology, Ontology and Semiotics, Springer, Dordrecht 2007.

21 / Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, CP 2.279, 1895.

22 / Krämer, “Operative Bildlichkeit.”

23 / Frederik Stjernfelt, “Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircian Epistemology,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 36/3 (2000), p. 357–384. Frederik Stjernfelt, “Two Iconicity Notions in Peirce’s Diagrammatology,” Conceptual Structures: Inspiration and Application. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 4068, Springer Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 70–86. Frederik Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology.

24 / Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, CP 2.277.

25 / Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology, p. 90.

26 / Charles S. Peirce, New Elements of Mathematics IV, The Hague, Mouton 1976, p. 317.

27 / Richard Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, University of Massachusetts Press, Worcester 1967.

28 / Chris Perkins, “Cultures of Map Use,” The Cartographic Journal 45/2 (2008), p. 156.

29 / Peirce, New Elements of Mathematics IV, 316.

30 / Gilles Deleuze, “What Children Say,” Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Verso, London 1995, p. 61–67.

31 / Yves Lacoste, “An Illustration of Geographical Warfare,” Antipode 5 (1973), p. 1–13.

32 / John Pickles, A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World, Routledge, New York 2004, p. 12.

33 / Deleuze, “What Children Say,” p. 67.

34 / Jane England, “The Map Is Not the Territory,” Essays by Jane England, England and Co., London 2001.

35 / Deleuze, “What Children Say,” p. 61.

36 / Perkins, “Cultures of Map Use,” p. 156.

37 / Deleuze, “What Children Say,” p. 66.

38 / Deleuze, Foucault, 30/1.

39 / Deleuze, “What Children Say,” p. 64.

40 / Werner Stegmaier, Philosophie der Orientierung, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2008. Farinelli, “Von der Natur der Moderne,” p. 267–302. Weigel, “Zum ‘topographical turn,‘“ p. 151–165.

41 / See: Mark Monmonier cit. in Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2003, p. 86.

42 / Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit, p. 87.

43 / Thomas J. Bassett, “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa,”Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, ed. David Woodward, Malcolm Lewis, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998, p. 24–48.

44 / Bassett, “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa,” p. 26.

45 / Edition of the Barcelona Exhibition at Galeria Joan Pratts December–January 2008/2009.

46 / Katharine Harmon, The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2009, p. 13.

47 / Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon, Boston 1994.

48 / Pilar Utrilla et al., “A Paleolithic Map from 13,660 calBP: Engraved Stone Blocks from the Late Magdalenian in Abauntz Cave (Navarra, Spain),” Journal of Human Evolution 57 (2009), p. 99–111.

49 / Bassett, “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa,” p. 30–33.

50 / Kirill Istomin and Mark Dwyer, “Finding the Way: A Critical Discussion of Anthropological Theories of Human Spatial Orientation with Reference to Reindeer Herders of Northeastern Europe and Western Siberia,”Current Anthropology 50 (2009), p. 29–49.

51 / Denis Wood and John Krygier, “Maps,” http://makingmaps.owu.edu/elsevier_geog_maps.pdf (accessed 2009).

52 / Charles S. Peirce, Manuscripts on Existential Graphs, CP 2.778.

53 / From “Peirce’s application to the Carnegie Institution,” July 15, 1902 (from Draft C), p. 90–102.

54 / Online: http://itp.nyu.edu/isco/1/img/IMG_1426.JPG.

55 / Guy Debord, “Essay: Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” (1955), http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/2. Kanarinka, “Art-Machines, Body-Ovens and Map-Recipes: Entries for a Psychogeographic Dictionary,” Art and Mapping: Special Issue of Cartographic Perspectives, ed. Denis Wood, John Krygier (2006a), p. 24–30, http://www.nacis.org/documents_upload/cp53winter2006.pdf. Kanarinka … (2006b), (see above). “Designing for the Totally Inconceivable: Mods, Hacks and Other Unexpected Uses of Maps by Artists (and Other Regular People),” paper presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.

56 / Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, Columbia University Press, New York 1994, p. 194.

57 / Online: http://www.louisabufardeci.net/site/pages/gp.html.

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Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-25T16:43:00.004+01:00

Slavoj Žižek RED INK

(Occupy Wall Street speech transcript)

Slavoj Žižek, spoke at Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street protests are being held. Here is a full transcript of his speech.

— TRANSCRIPT —

" They are saying we are all losers, but the true losers are down there on Wall Street. They were bailed out by billions of our money. We are called socialists, but here there is always socialism for the rich. They say we don’t respect private property, but in the 2008 financial crash-down more hard-earned private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare.

We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scene from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath this ground. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street, "Hey, look down!"

In mid-April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV, films, and novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. These people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dreaming. Here, we don’t need a prohibition because the ruling system has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.

So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like “Oh. we were young and it was beautiful.” Remember that our basic message is “We are allowed to think about alternatives.” If the rule is broken, we do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt. Beware not only of the enemies, but also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make this into a harmless, moral protest. A decaffienated process. But the reason we are here is that we have had enough of a world where, to recycle Coke cans, to give a couple of dollars for charity, or to buy a Starbucks cappuccino where 1% goes to third world starving children is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and torture, after marriage agencies are now outsourcing our love life, we can see that for a long time, we allow our political engagement also to be outsourced. We want it back.

We are not Communists if Communism means a system which collapsed in 1990. Remember that today those Communists are the most efficient, ruthless Capitalists. In China today, we have Capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American Capitalism, but doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize Capitalism, don’t allow yourself to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy and Capitalism is over. The change is possible.

What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you it’s impossible. We lose competitivity. You want more money for health care, they tell you, "Impossible, this means totalitarian state." There’s something wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for healthcare. Maybe we need to set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standard of living. We want a better standard of living. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this, and only for this, we should fight.

Communism failed absolutely, but the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not American here. But the conservatives fundamentalists who claim they really are American have to be reminded of something: What is Christianity? It’s the holy spirit. What is the holy spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other, and who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense, the holy spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street, there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostaligically remembering “What a nice time we had here.” Promise yourselves that this will not be the case. We know that people often desire something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire. Thank you very much.

— END OF TRANSCRIPT —

Q&A

Q: You have any solution how this movement can go forward after this?

Such a difficult question that I almost want to take the fifth ammendment. I refuse to answer it because the answer might incriminate me. All I'm saying is, and I'm sorry this will hurt some of you, that this dream of local participatory democracy is not the universal answer. Look at ecological problems. It is clear that [..?] large-scale decisions will have to be made. Probably millions of people will have to be moved. New desert in Africa emerging now. Somalia, Ethiopia, and so on. How will we do this? I think that the big problem is how to implement large scale decisions without falling into the trap of strong stage power. It can be done but we, the left, should also drop certain taboos: discipline, hard work, following orders on things on which we agree can be positive and important. It's not only a carnival. The difficult part is to do the work afterwards.

Do not allow the enemy to set your agenda. That if they say, "sacrifice, work", we should just say "No, freedom, enjoyment". We should take from the enemy their own tools. Think about family values. Many left liberals react to those who defend family values by criticizing family as a conservative insitution and so on. But should we not say, "The neo-liberal economics did much more to destroy family values than all the alternative cultures put together"? It's the same with private property. We should make clear to the people that we don't have a well-functioning system which for some irrational reasons we are trying to destroy. The system is destroying itself. So we are not against democracy. We are observing how democracy, in its present political form, is gradually undermining itself. And it's a very difficult task but there is hope. You here are the hope because you know Herbert Marcuse, the old leftist, who said something very nice: "Freedom is a condition of liberation". That is to say, to be engaged in fighting for freedom, you have first to free yourself from the chains of ruling ideology.

Did you see a good Hollywood Marxist movie? John Carpenter's They Live, you know, where a guy finds some strange sunglasses, puts them on, and he sees the true message. For example, you have an advertisement for a Hawaii vacation, you put on the glasses, and what you see is, "Be stupid, enjoy, don't think". So whenever you read the official media, imagine yourself putting these glasses on. I remember seeing, recently, an ad to help starving children in Africa. It said, "For the price of a couple of cappuccinos, you can save this child's life." Let's put the glasses on. What you see is, "For the price of a couple of cappuccinos, we allow you not only no longer to feel guilty but even to feel as if you are really doing something about poverty without really doing anything". We have to get rid of pseudo activities. For example, organic food. It's good to buy, I buy it. But remember what the danger. Is it not true that many of us buy it because it makes you feel good? "Look, I'm doing something to help the mother earth. I'm part of a wonderful project of humanity". You know, it's an easy way out.

Charity, for me is not the answer. You know, once I called Soros, George Soros, who I appreciate. As a person he's not bad. I call him chocolate laxative. You know you can buy a laxative which has the form of a chocolate. But chocolate is usually associated with constipation. So, first they take billions from you, then they give you half back, and they are the greatest humanitarians. Of course, we should take this kind of money. But what we should fight for is a society where this kind of charity will not be needed. So I know I didn't answer your question, maybe next time better luck.

americans have long been divided by the two-party system that pits us against each other over emotional issues, like gay rights, abortion. this is a divide-and-conquer strategy. if we don't let go of our differences, we'll keep butting our heads together while corporatism and the military industrial complex gut our democracy. americans need to come together.

I agree with what the lady said but I prefer to put it in a more combative way. The divisions that the lady mentioned, I agree with her, are false divisions. These false divisions are here to cover up the true divisions and where the true enemies are. We need even more […?]. So let's all come together, but to fight the real enemy. When I visit another country, I am not interested in their culture—this is for UNESCO and official representatives. I'm interested in their struggles. Solidarity is not "Oh my God, we are all parts of the same great humanity". Solidarity means we are part of the same struggle. [Break for mic check: two waves of crowd echo are being used for amplication at the moment]. You know, if I were to be CIA, I would have corrupted someone like you, to change it and censor it in a slightly different way [with each echo].

i would like your opinion on the consideration of a new form of government which relies on the structure of anonymous.

Let me tell you something horrible. We pretend to be leaderless. But then you look closely, and you see often a very tough hierarchic structure, and that we don't even want to admit it's hierarchy. So what I think we need a new figure of a leader who in a way admits that he is no leader. Marx said something wonderful, although wrong, about Abraham Lincoln. Marx said that in the United States, even a totally average person like Lincoln can become the leader. Marx was wrong here about Lincoln. So even an average person like Lincoln was able to do great historical acts. Maybe this is the order that we want. The leader is not anonymous but you don't need a genius to be your leader. Everyone can be [one]. And believe it or not, it can be done. Experts, they should know, but they shouldn't be given power. Power should be given precisely to the average people. If we abandon this principle, we abandon democracy.

i've been having a lot of great conversations at this carnival. i don't consider myself to be a radical. i believe i'm of a privileged life and i have a good education. my question touches on what we already discussed. how do we have these conversations at home regarding anti-capitalism and socialism while gaining the support of people who share our ideas and beliefs? without immediately frightening them and scaring them off? how do we have this conversation? what words?

We live in sad times for those in power, where people are no longer afraid of Communism as an enemy. But they are getting more and more afraid of what is happening here. We are not scaring the people. Are they not a sign that people are scared? So the choice today is not: Are people scared or not? They are scared. The problem is, who will determine for them the meaning of this fear? [interruption for "mic check" of two waves of crowd echoes]. I feel with this echo, it functions a little bit like, remember that Janet Jackson scandal few years ago? Showing her breast for a second, and then your free TV adpoted the Stanilist procedure in all live transmissions, you have a one second and a half delay. Sometimes I feel that this repeition in echo functions the same way.

as somebody who's taking on a large amount of responsibility, i've heard a lot of inspiring speeches, yours is one of them. what i'm looking for is guidance in constructive movement strategy. and i don't know where to look and i don't know how to get people who are used to operating in a system who are often told what to do, to do a 180 and start taking responsibility to making a revolution happen. so my question is, where are the strategists?

I think it's a crucial question. The only thing I can tell you is that if you want to convert them, you should do it an imminent way. You should show them how by what they are doing they are already undermining their own values. Even [..?] in the long term, they are working against their own interests. Let me give you an example. Two years ago, the first wave of tea parties, I was sitting here in the United States in a hotel, watching TV, jumping between two channels. PBS, a documentary on Pete Seger. And of course on FOX TV, a report on a tea party in Texas, where there was a right wing folk singer singing a song against Washington and so on. When I compared the two singers, what surprised me, was how on abstract level, it was very similar, what they were singing. The tea party guy from Texas was also complaining how the rich guys on Wall St. and Washington are exploiting the poor working class. […?]. They are practicing a false class warfare. Today in United States, the way to protect the interest of the rich people is to complain how the state is exploiting the poor working people. So the tragedy is that most of the tea party should be on our side. That's where we should work. They may be stupid but don't look at them as the enemy. I've now been ordered that we are closing.

Rehearsing for after this autumn: some declared the 15th of October 2011 a peaceful world revolution

2011-10-13T16:05:00.003+01:00

What will happen on the 15th of October 2011, and after?

Where are we heading? Me and you are what? Food for banks?

What do we prepare?

Which means do we dispose besides our heads, hearts and hands?

Can we realize certain projects without envolving money at all?

Can we start with alternatives now?

Can you tell me one? Can I show you another?

What about the pursuit of happiness, does that mean anything now? Basic income?

Rehearsing Utopias...

Are we still not feed up to live in having debt when being born?

What does it mean to be born free?

How much freedom can we stand? A lot more, that´s for shure!

Do we really want to hand over wall street and the other stock markets to computer programs faster than anybody can think about things, or people who act as if they were a program called "savage greed" or "preditory lending"?

What about the one´s who do not own land, are they still getting their part?

Does a state have to have control and access to all of your data for social communities to work?

Autumn arrived here in Europe in the center of Portugal it is still hot. Actually the center here is always pushed to the margin. But then it seems that what the north calls the margin and the south calls the centre were re-directed by a shift and a time-lag of horizons since 2008. Greece is much more at the center of Europe as it was when democracy was invented by a few for a few. And now what will a democracy of the many for the many look like in the future? Maybe we are rehearsing for it on the 15th of October 2011, still the images are of natural autumn, still nature eats its leaves, but we are rehearsing for something to come. Rehearsing for after this autumn...

>Thresholding< Sérgio Costa Galeria Pedro Serrenho Lisboa Portugal 12/2/2011 - 2/04/2011

2011-01-29T18:24:00.008Z

Sérgio Costa (2010) 3D audience, spray on paper

on the exhibition of Sérgio Costa (2011) >Tresholding< (Galeria Pedro Serrenho, Lisbon, 12/02/2011- 2/4/2011)

Thresholding. Cracks in the “landscapes of experience"

Alexander Gerner

In a literal, psycho- physical sense thresholding seems an impossible undertaking. It would be the conscious maintaining - a sort of stretching or bending- of an experiential zero point of time, in which an observer maintains the experience within the realm of the first momentary observable difference. By the event of passing the threshold something gets captured by our senses (visible, touchable, audible etc.) after, for example, the retina’s photoreceptors registered about 120 million points of light intensity and in pre-attentive perception, a first sketch of a retinal image is formed- that cognitively is inicially useless - and is then transformed by the brain along visual pathways and perceptual routines from an instable proto- object to a conceptual image-object that is stabilized in front of my eyes for the first time

The jumps over the threshold (the notable limit) of something appearing to us, can be seen as the rupture, or as a void being crossed from the pathos side of sensible stimuli - the still not observable/notable - in the chaos of impressions towards what actually just appears to me attentively. In Sergio Costa’s “Thresholding” this suspension of time- in holding onto the first moment of noting- by passing over the threshold, becomes visible: The first instance of the just getting noticed in experience is my personal threshold. This seems more a cut, a fissure or a crack in the continuity of the landscape of experience than a gradual or smooth unfolding.

The thresholding is a double event of appearing from the affective pathos side and from my side of noting something: this happens for instance in a kind of template matching or a chart comparison process of recognizing a known pattern (of a planet) or in noting that something is new (a new highlighted area behind a planet appears). A threshold is a limit being crossed from a notion of equality of what I observed before to an non-equality in relation to what I observe after something jumps over the threshold. Something is actually happening to me when it jumps out of the equally distributed, the normal, the ordinary, and the regular, the flat mono-coloured plane. This happens when something shows the cracks in my landscape of experience. These “landscapes”- in the sense of Sérgio Costa’s work- are collections of transformable synthetic artefacts or systems of spatial-visual places created by humans for reasons of self-organisation and orientation. If the lived experiences -alias human landscapes we live in- are maps of orientation, thresholding would be a kind of compass activity of showing where we are and where we go next at this specific point and when we experience a differing from the planned and repeated paths and actions and how our experiential maps are changing or have to be transformed over time, when something passes the threshold.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Moon#1" acrílico e spray sobre tela, 144x120cm

Sérgio Costa (2010), Kamikaze, spray on paper

Already Ernst Heinrich Weber (1834) – as did Fechner (1860) and von Helmholtz (1866)- had researched on thresholds, in what could be called the fundamental law of human perception as a relational phenomenon in noting psychophysical stimuli. In the early psychophysical studies- however- this was done in a mere quantitative empirical manner.

Weber saw the threshold as the experiential possibility of sensible change. It was defined by the measure of sensibility characterized as the difference in magnitude relative a (changeable) baseline-intensity, in which a difference of two sensible moments (two moments of touch or between non- touch and touch) was noted. However, continual fine-grain processes of change often do not enable us with the possibility to note that something is different or has changed. If too quick, or the more soft the gradient of change happens (too slow) over a time period, we might not observe the different stimuli follow each other: we are “blind” to note the difference. “Thresholding” therefore seems to make this necessary jump over the limit in order to notice something, an artistic task and method for experience. But, can we hold onto these fragile cuts and cracks inside our constitutional “brokenness of experience”? By noting these thresholds repeatedly, the fragile difference between them might disappear in the repetition of the same threshold…

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Planets" acrílico e spray sobre papel, 80x100cm

Thresholding in the realm of the artistic creation of visibility is also a basic and simple technical method of image segmentation (sampling) and composition (puzzle). Hereby Sérgio Costa researches on the long-term cracks in the landscape of experience as the theme of the double image of the rocks as his exhibition: “Strata: a geopictorial collection” (2008)” shows. In the “Strata” series Costa introduced an almost invisible difference line of experience in between the two images that could pass unnoticed as an illusion of unity of being one and the same image. By the introduction of the fine separation line, experience breaks into the reality of the presented image sujets of the “strata”, and cracks up into two images-samples.

Sérgio Costa (2008) "Strata #2"oil on canvas, 144x120cm from the exposition of 2008 Strata: A Geopictorial collection

The image- sujets of the “Thresholding” project are worth mentioning: In contrast to the mainly political aesthetics - that we are used to attribute to stencil images and its´ most common form nowadays in the contemporary punk/resistance/anarchy street art expression of graffiti- Sergio Costa’s sujets, however, are not dealing with the actuality of small-scale political struggle within a specific political system, but show, in a visionary sense, an indirect geo-pictorial observer of long-term cosmological / micro-logical change by the appropriation process of the images of the strata of our experience and the creation of synthesis in long-term transformations in experience.

Costa shows not only a struggle in between rural vs. urban life, but also the micro-/macrocosmic tension inside the sedimentation and formation of experience as well as the relation of (in)visibility and experience at its limits .

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Sampling Puzzle_S3_#3" acrílico e spray sobre tela, 144x120cm

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Sampling Puzzle_S3_#2" acrílico e spray sobre tela,

144x120cm

The “Sampling Puzzles” remind me on repetitive, structural plans of modular computability, as in new quantum computers: schematic puzzles still under development.
Here the appearing puzzles of patterns question the different velocities of change, in relation to our human temporality in between appearing/disappearing of landscapes of experience.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Planets Chart" acrílico e spray sobre papel, 70x140cm

In “Planets chart” Costa seems interested in how we scientifically sample and cut our observations in pieces: “junks & phases of reality” to be compared, related and rendered knowable.

In “Untitled” the stone material of a roman head sculpture portrait after being photographed is “thresholded” and translated into a stencil template, in which the cut- out parts arrive by the colour that is sprayed on the paper surface. The colour leaves out the uncut on the template: colour islands appear. Also here the black cracks in the image that enter the uncut white female torso are signals of the brokenness and fragility of our landscapes of experience.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Untitled" acrílico e spray sobre papel, 70x140cm

In “Thresholding” these cuts and cracks in the stencil templates are not limited to the image sujets, but are constitutive parts for the appearing of the image itself: The cuts and cracks in the stencil template that let the spray appear on the paper plane. The cracks and the notable contrastive changes in the landscape of experience is a constant theme in Sérgio Costa´s work. He is not a researcher of the perception of natural phenomena, but of how these natural phenomena are rendered possible to us and are transformable by us in our conscious experience by the cracks, flashes and cuts in a given experiential landscape, passing over the notable thresholds.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Lightening" acrílico e spray sobre papel, 80x100cm

Threshold anxiety. What passes over thresholds are not only visible phenomena. In the moment when a knife cuts into the surface of the paper-thin skin and passes through all my body make-up towards me: this passing over the limits from non-experience to experience shows what stays- pain to be noticed. Thresholds affect me in experience of the sensible world. There could be something as a “threshold- anxiety”, the slight feeling of nervousness and tension, that something could jump over the threshold and stay present, or that the intensity of the black colour after passing second by second another threshold step of noticing the growing dark regions, would blacken the uncanny difference to infinite complete darkness forever: Nothing more to be noted! In the video “Threshold Anxiety” the process of blackening appears as the proper anxiety of disappearance of the known, that something would never be the same after holding on to the new experience after the threshold, the implications of which I am afraid. The fear of loosing control, the fear of “loosing an old life”, a routine, a work, a relationship, or the image of the world as we know it, when a new territory of experience is just being cracked open. As if a child’s hand would hold on to an invisible map and tried to orientate without knowing how to use it: how to make the map visible?

The creation of a new landscape- holding on to the void of the (still) unknown: “thresholding”.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Threshold Anxiety", video-still, video, PAL, 4:3, p/b, sound

THRESHOLDING: FISSURAS NA >PAISAGEM DA EXPERIÊNCIA< Alexander Gerner

Num sentido literal a limiarização (thresholding), parece uma tarefa impossível. Significaria uma espécie de distensão, ou dobrar, do momento zero da experiência, no qual o observador conservasse a experiência, dentro do instante primeiramente observável. Através da acção de passar o limiar algo fica acessível aos nossos sentidos (visível, palpável audível, etc.). Por exemplo: os fotoreceptores da retina registam cerca de 120 milhões de pontos de intensidade de luz e na percepção pré-atenta forma-se um primeiro esboço como se fosse uma representação vindo da retina - inicialmente inútil e inacessível, do ponto de vista cognitivo - que depois é transformado pelo cérebro em proto- objecto volátil conceptualmente acessível mas instável quando nós atendemos e formamos conceptualmente um objecto que persiste para nós.

Sérgio Costa (2010). Untitled#2, Spray sobre papel,

Transpor o limiar de algo que nos surge, pode ser visto como ruptura, ou como duplo movimento: a) do lado que nos afecta pelos estímulos sensoriais - do ainda não observável - b) em direcção ao que acaba apenas de aparecer para mim pela atenção. Em >Thresholding<>Threshold< é um limite que é atravessado a partir de uma noção de igualdade entre o que eu observei antes para uma não - igualdade que observo depois de algo transpor esse limiar. Algo só acontece realmente para mim quando salta para fora do arranjo da paisagem habitual, do normal, do comum e regular, do plano liso monocromático. Isso acontece quando alguma coisa mostra as falhas e fissuras na minha paisagem de experiência. Estas >Paisagens< - no sentido da obra de Sérgio Costa, são colecções de artefactos transformáveis ou lugares espaço-visuais criados por seres humanos por razões de organização e orientação. Se as experiências do vivido - se as paisagens do humano que habitamos - são mapas de orientação, o >Thresholding<>estímulos psicofísicos<. Nos primeiros estudos psicofísicos, porém, isso foi feito de forma meramente quantitativa e empírica. Weber estudava o limiar como possibilidade experimental da mudança sensível. Era definido pela medida de sensibilidade caracterizada como a diferença de magnitude em relação a uma dada intensidade variável de base, em que uma diferença de dois momentos sensíveis (dois momentos de toque, ou entre não- toque e toque) era registada. Contudo, os processos contínuos, graduais de mudança muitas vezes não permitem que possamos prestar atenção a algo que se alterou. Se demasiado célere, ou quanto mais suave o gradiente de mudança (muito lento) durante um longo período de tempo, a cadeia de diferentes estímulos é-nos inobservável: ficamos cegos para essa diferença. O >thresholding<, por conseguinte parece tornar necessário esse salto sobre o limiar ou limite, de forma a perceber algo: tarefa artística e método de experimentação. Mas conseguiremos nós agarrar á esses cortes, fracturas e falhas dentro da constituição fracturada da experiência? O paradoxo é este: ao atentar repetidamente nos limites, a diferença entre eles, frágil, pode perder-se na série, na repetição do mesmo limiar tornado habitual... >Thresholding< (Limiarização), nas áreas de criação artística de visibilidade designa também uma simples e elementar técnica de mostrar a segmentação (sampling) de imagens e da sua recomposição (puzzle). Dessa forma, Sérgio Costa trabalha na longa duração das falhas na paisagem de experiência como o tema da dupla imagem das rochas na exposição “Strata: a geopictorial collection” (2008). Na série >Strata<, Sérgio Costa introduz uma linha quase invisível de separação da experiência entre duas imagens, que poderia passar sem ser notada, como uma ilusão de unidade, por se tratar de uma e da mesma imagem. Através da introdução de uma fina linha – falha- fissura de demarcação, a experiência - no momento de se fracturar - acede à realidade do objecto das imagens apresentadas dos estratos, e parte-se em duas imagens - amostras (samples).

Sérgio Costa (2010), Moon#2" acrílico e spray sobre tela, 144x120cm

Os temas das imagens do projeto >Thresholding<>stencil<>Sampling Puzzles<>Planets Chart<, Costa parece interrogar-se sobre como o conhecimento científico é amassado a partir de uma amostragem de pedaços e fases, que serão comparados e tornados objectos de conhecimento.

Sérgio Costa (2010) Planet Charts 2, Spray sobre papel

Em >Untitled<, o suporte em pedra da escultura romana, depois de ser fotografado, é "limiarizado" e traduzido num molde (template) de stencil, em que se acede ao cortado pela cor que é pulverizada sobre a superfície do suporte em papel. A cor deixa de fora o não - cortado no molde: ilhas brancas aparecem. Também aqui as falhas e fracturas negras na imagem que imprimem o torso branco feminino incólume são sinais da falha e fragilidade das nossas paisagens de experiência. Em >Thresholding<>Threshold Anxiety<, o processo de enegrecimento surge como a ansiedade do desaparecimento do conhecido, de que algo nunca mais seja o mesmo após a captação da experiência do limiar, de cujas implicações eu tenho medo. O medo de perder o controlo, o medo de >perder a velha vida<, uma rotina, um trabalho, uma afinidade, uma relação, ou a imagem do mundo como nós o conhecemos, quando depois de se instalar uma falha um novo território de experiência se abre. Como se a mão de uma criança agarrasse um novo mapa invisível e se tentasse orientar sem saber como usá-lo: como tornar esse mapa visível? A criação de uma nova paisagem - agarrar a falha, o vazio que é (ainda) desconhecido: thresholding.

Sérgio Costa (2010) "Threshold Anxiety" video still

Visita guiada no jardim do´aqui e agora´

2010-11-24T22:29:00.007Z

miguel rondon (2010) "aqui e agora" exposição na sala do veado (2-12.dezembro 2010)

Visita guiada no jardim do ´aqui e agora´
Alexander Gerner

orientar – se: agora estás aqui - come esse fruto“Aqui” e “agora” surgem como palavras que marcam uma origem do sentido de orientação, uma sinalética da experiência do lugar (aqui) e da experiência da temporalidade humana (agora) dando corpo à imagem entre ambos: a origem de uma esfera de mostrar algo que se chama eu – aqui – agora , tu – aqui – agora, nós – aqui – agora. Com as marcas do tempo em que aparece o lugar, cria-se a nossa experiência antes de pensar e sentir algo em especifico,

antes da orientação pelos significados da linguagem da nossa cultura, suas grafias e gramáticas: estamos sempre já orientados pelo sentimento da orientação pelo nosso corpo que dá origem ao sentido do lugar (no caso do Miguel Rondon: o lugar do jardim botânico). Esse sentimento de “orientação”, mostra-se tão frágil e subtil como os caminhos, pontos e traços lançados pela mão sismográfica nas pinturas na sua exposição “aqui e agora”, que tem lugar ao pé do Jardim Botânico, aonde foram pintadas. Vamos então aproximar-nos desses traços pretos ou em cores de terra e sombras de plantas, bem como campos em brancos ainda por viver, trajectórias e

mapas intensos e extensas ainda por descobrir. Começamos por ter a noção de que algo ainda vai nascer em nós e no Jardim, em aquis-e-agoras próximos. Descobrimos: por caminhos lentos dentro de Lisboa numa “visita guiada” orientada pelo pintor do jardim botânico Miguel Rondon.

Num pequeno e subtil ensaio, publicado em 1786 no jornal Berlinische Monatsschrift o filósofo alemão Immanuel Kant aproxima–se desse sentimento da orientação do aqui e agora, que se dá paralelo ao sentir algo sem objecto fixado ou mapa já definido. Esse sentimento do corpo que

nos acompanha sempre na orientação, percorrendo a nossa experiência corporal, pode sentir- se no dado da nossa mão direita e da mão esquerda:
“Orientar-se, no genuíno significado da palavra, quer dizer, a partir de uma dada região cósmica (uma das quatro em que dividimos o horizonte) encontrar as restantes, ou seja, encontrar o nascer (Aufgang). Se vejo o Sol no céu e sei que agora é meio-dia, sei encontrar o Sul, o Oeste, o Norte e o Oriente. (Kant “Que significa orientar-se no pensamento?”/ Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? (1786)Esse processo da orientação intuitiva, sentida sem nenhuma diferença notável que, por vezes até, troca o sul pelo norte ou pelo oriente ao virar o papel ao avesso e ao lado, esse processo encontramos no trabalho de Miguel Rondon sobre pontos/sementes e linhas/percursos no lugar do jardim, que se tornam num mundo concentrado mas espaçoso por explorar. Viajamos nesse mundo/jardim. O aqui e agora dá-nos um lugar para encontrar direcções e orientações para além dos quatro cantos do mundo, como se as plantas do jardim nos oferecessem

verdadeiramente uma sinalética do sentido, pela qual encontramos então as nossas orientações - “os restantes, ou seja, encontramos o nascer”. Esse processo de observação de uma botânica do sentido é sempre uma procura da rede de estabilidade das mãos, pernas e olhares para não dar passos em falso. São caminhos atentos, concentrados na maioria dos traços das cores e do preto sobre o branco do papel para não nos desorientamos: pinturas calmas, lugares na sombra, orientações pela botânica da arte: miguel rodon
*No fundo, como já o era para Joseph Beuys, e já podíamos notar no pensamento morfológico de Goethe ou na procura da ciência dos traços das plantas em Paul Klee, no fundo não há diferença em fazer uma visita guiada pelo jardim botânico ou uma visita guiada pelos quadros de arte de Miguel Rondon. Há uma proximidade entre as folhas do papel e as plantas entre as quais encontramos um campo-de-mostrar da experiência do nosso próprio jardim. Nessas pinturas, entre os diagramas da botânica e os traços/manchas do papel, podemos ver os mapas dos corpos- pensamentos idos para caminhos do jardim e vindos, mediados pelo gesto de pintar, desenhar e deixar pingar. Assim somos guiados pelo jardim da arte e pela a arte de mostrar o

jardim.

Olhando para os desenhos pintados em aqui e agora parece que vemos o Miguel na primeira pessoa e escutamos uma terceira pessoa vindo do jardim ao mesmo tempo. Como se o jardim fosse e ficasse realidade enquanto a mão toca, criando traços sobre o papel e ao mesmo tempo a mão, tocando-se a si própria, toca algo que é do jardim. Dessa imersão da atenção entre tocar e ser tocado, surge o que se podia chamar um jardim-eu que se evidencia pelo toque que marca o papel. Em vez de um “eu” ocidental que está ausente nessa origem da orientação nas pinturas de Miguel Rondon há um jardim-do sul pintado com uma viragem do olhar para os jardins do

oriente, inerentes também a Lisboa. Dá- se então a possibilidade da existência do jardim desse sul e oriental na sala do veado, na proximidade “real” do jardim botânico, referência histórica do estudo da natureza em Lisboa, que no fim do Outono de 2010 ainda existe no outro lado das janelas do museu de ciência. O que se dá é um emprestar do olhar da pessoa que já foi orientada pelo jardim - e agora empresta o seu olhar às pessoas que aqui vêem. Cria-se, nesse emprestar uma aproximação de olhares temporários, uma espécie de condição humana da visita guiada pelo jardim do aqui e agora. Por isso na relação entre jardim e eu há uma arte

nómada mas ao mesmo tempo quase cavaleiresca e lisboeta em Miguel Rondon, há um guardar contemporâneo sem lugar fixo e sempre frágil de um ser que reconheceu e viajou - pelo menos - pelas três e meio cantos do mundo desse jardim. Essas pinturas do Miguel Rondon mostram assim também uma suspensão e desvanecer de qualquer forma de queda ou pertença permanente a um significado fixado: estamos perante uma tensão equilibrada com um pé dentro e com o outro fora do jardim, como se fosse um usufruto a prazo; só que esse prazo é o nosso tempo de vida por inteiro.

“Aqui! (Mas aonde é aqui? aqui não é localizável, é a localização tendo lugar, o ser vindo aos corpos)” Jean-Luc Nancy “Corpus”

Com Miguel Rondon dá-se uma visita original desse jardim pela traseira numa porta de Lisboa

no museu de ciência. Nada de perguntas graves, nem modelos científicos complicados. O aqui e agora simplesmente só nos dá o que ninguém nos pode tirar, nem explicar: amostras de plantas, os corpos, as sombras, cores de terra, linhas rectas e bifurcações de caminhos com sinais de plantas orientadas pelo sol, brisas e linhas do vento sul, as quais – imagino eu - podiam até passar pelo cabelo de uma mulher, também ela do plano nómada de visita ao jardim botânico, viajante sem mala que guarda esse lugar único de Lisboa num piscar de olho. Ela é que deixamos passar e então passeia à nossa frente nos traços e corpos levemente

suspensos no papel dessa exposição. Assim ela até podia trazer um fruto bonito consigo: Traços de cabelos, plantas, linhas e caminhos, rugas suaves na pele que orientam a mão pela bengala do pincel criando grafias suaves de corpos, encontros com o nosso tempo, se aproximam e quase se tocam.

Nessas pinturas de Miguel Rondon: não há nenhum interesse em fixar o olhar e mostrar alguma forma de enraizamento: nem para morar, lavrar a terra ou introduzir um arado para pertencer a um sítio e sentido construído. Aqui não há casa nem planos urbanísticos, agora não há nem arquitectos, nem campos agrícolas, nem parques de distracções nessas imagens pintadas pelo gesto do guia que guarda só o aqui e agora do jardim nas suas imagens do momento. Às vezes há uma sinalética de caminhos possíveis, os significados dos quais ainda ficam por descobrir e por inventar pelo nosso olhar atento. As pinturas nómadas do jardim do Miguel Rondon partem assim do mais frágil: das sombras, que mudem com a luz do dia e são simplesmente pesados pela leveza dos campos em branco, que tocam os campos, traços e pontilhas em cor sem pertencer a elas.
O jardim propriamente ainda não existe nessas pinturas: não é nada mais e nada menos que a bengala de um grama, uma grafia, um toque, um corpo e uma pinga de sentimento de vida levado a um encontro com algo e alguém puro/impuro ao mesmo tempo. que não se compra nem se devia vender aos mercados do ali e depois..
*
Antes da hora de fecho desse texto acerca do “pintor do jardim botânico”, o Miguel sem olhar para mim - escreve algo num papel rascunho, e pinta uma receita para baixar a tensão alta em que vivemos fora do jardim: “pêra cozida (pêra rocha)” e desenha uma romã: “come esse fruto”.

A exposição de

miguel rondon
"aqui e agora"

inauguração 2 de dezembro 19h

sala do veado

2 a 12 dezembro 2010
terça a sexta 10h-17h sábado e domingo 11h-18h
rua da escola politécnica 56/58 ao príncipe real
rondonrondonATgmail.com
Tel: 910600188

The body is our fear exposed: naked. Airport Control Image. Disapearance of the personal right of the image?

2010-11-19T00:44:00.019Z

see also: http://gizmodo.com/5690749/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans?skyline=true&s=i
A ghost is wandering around the world. The ghost of securantism that could be called the implantation of a logical fallacy: the quest of achieving absolute control on the danger of living in a free society. This comes at the same time with the loss of a fundamental right: the right of privacy in the sense of having some kind of control of your own image-while travelling by air. If you want to travel, and this is the baseline, you ought to be willing to summit your body to a treatment of absolute control (even that it is not a must). Full body scans.

The post 9/11 hysteria is far from over.

The afghan war and its consequences is far from over.

Writing these lines on the day of the start of the Nato summit in Lisbon, we have to be clear on one point: Nato is a global power structure, even that it claims to be a local defense mechanism of western allies. I will not deny that there is power struggle over ressources and economic interests all over the world, but... But

But is the word of reason. Let´s not be fooled.

We accepted without protest the new passports, chips included and being thus a traceble target all over the world, thaks to the US and the weak EU. We transmit our SWIFT data of all kinds of bank transfers to the US. Who garantees that these data are not used in economic spionage? The portuguese people seem to accept without hesitation a central citizan card in which all data are stored, nobody seems to care that this might not only have advantages for the citizans and their right of not everybody knowing all kinds of data in a single click on a file. The german interior minister even prepares for a single cash card ID, not spending a second thought on how this all-in-one ID/cash card can- in the worst case- be manipulated.

Second not only are our data not any more controlled by us, but by economic and political interests that seem not any more be serving the interest of a democratic society, but are getting involved in abandoning one fundamental right of free citizans. The german constitutional court had baned a law of storing personal data of each german citizan for instance of phonecalls for 6 months (Vorratsdatenspeicherung) as non-constitutional. But the CDU and SPD party wat to recover this system. Now I´m only talking on a simple issue: the right to have control on our own image. If you want to travel by plane- as the story goes- get body scanned!

Well I am not against body scans they can do a great job in fMRI PET x-ray or other medical imaging technology to localize and detect irregular patterns in medical diagnostics (even that they also do no wonders still). I also used the 3D body scan some 11 years ago to animate actors on stage in "CUT" a multimedia performance in 1999 in Munich, nevertheless the ghost of a all over controlling political structure, that "we elect" haunts me. I don´t think that these technologies on airports can be introduced like if it was clear that they are simply doing good for all people protecting "the homeland security" as George Bush would say. The radiation/cancer debate is just a smal part of what we are dealing here. I still think that the bigger issue is the line we still did not draw between ourselves and a all more and more controlling biopolitical power that protects us from what?

But is anybody really willing to refuse these treatments? The panic and paranoia has names and reasons, but even the US voted Bush´s politic off, still they are introducing the full body scans at a vast amount of airports ( in germany it is alrady possible to be body scanned at the Hamburg airport) and this seems to tell one story: we are getting very close to a very dangerous distopia described by the philosoher Gilles Deleuze in "Postscriptum for a society of control". After Guantanamo the introduction of the full body scans at airports are another form of getting us more naked (which actually is less sexy as it might sound like).

"The body is our fear: exposed naked" Jean-Luc Nancy

Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis

2010-07-22T17:14:00.004+01:00

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/logic/lcs/?00003

Olga Pombo, Alexander Gerner (Eds.). Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis. (=Logic and Cognitive Systems,Studies in Logic 24) London, College Publications.

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: College Publications (June 8, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1848900074
ISBN-13: 978-1848900073

Index

Preface i

I. Fundamental Issues on Diagrammatology

Olga Pombo: Operativity and Representativy of the Sign in Leibniz. 1

Sybille Krämer: ‘Epistemology of the Line’. Reflections on the Diagrammatical Mind 13

Jan Wöpking: Space, Structure, and Similarity. On Representationalist Theories of Diagrams 39

Frederik Stjernfelt: The Extension of the Peircean Diagram Category. Charting the Implications of a Diagrammatical Revolution in Semiotics 57

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen: Is Non-visual Diagrammatic Logic Possible? 73

II. Visual Diagram Praxis

Augusto J. Franco Oliveira: Picture-proofs in Mathematics: a Chapter in James Robert Brown’s Philosophy of Mathematics, with Examples

Ángel Nepomuceno-Fernández: Concept Script and Diagrams: Two Ways of Using Images in Scientific Reasoning 95

J. R. Croca: Diagrammatic Thinking in Physics 117

Matthias Bauer: Diagrammatology, Scenographic Media, and the Display Function of Art 125

III. On Maps

Valeria Giardino: The World in Maps: Looking for Treasures, Neurons, and Soldiers 145

Alexander Gerner: Notes on Diagrams and Maps 167

Christoph Ernst: “From Images to Diagrams”. Diagrammatic Reasoning in Gilles Deleuze's Film Philosophy and its Relevance for General Media-Theory 191

Catarina Pombo Nabais: Deleuze’s Rhizome-Thought 211

Excerpt of the preface from Olga Pombo and Alexander Gerner

"This volume puts together most of the papers given at the interdisciplinary workshop on Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis held at the University of Lisbon, 23-24th March 2009. The workshop was organized by the Research Project Image in Science and Art of the Center

for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL), namely by its task number two whose aim is to analyze the place of image and diagrammatic thinking in three different epistemological and semiotic programs (Leibniz, Frege and Peirce). (...)we were able to

incorporate additional papers of four invited speakers that unluckily were not able to be present in the Lisbon: Sybille Krämer (Freien Universität Berlin), Christoph Ernst (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg), Valeria Giordano (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris) and Anghel Nepumoceno (University of Sevilha). The articles are organized in three main sections. In the first, Fundamental Issues of Diagrammatology, we open with a paper by Olga Pombo untitled Operativity and Representativity of the Sign in Leibniz. The paper offers an historical account of the roots of diagrammatic thinking in the cognitive conception of language and in the semiotics which Leibniz worked out in the XVII century. Olga Pombo claims that it is necessary to go back to Leibniz in order to understand the requirement of both operativity and representativity of the sign as an attempt to combine the heuristic virtualities of written characters as stable and manipulative devices with its capacity of making visible, or as Leibniz says, of “painting” (pingi) the signified ideas in all its presence and complexity of relations. (...)the paper of Sybille Krämer, Epistemology of the Line. Reflections on the Diagrammatical Mind, faces the need of recognizing the constitutive contributions of iconicity to our faculty of cognition. The stressed idea is that we are today confronted with a multiplicity of hybrid phenomena which combine language and imagery, digital and the analogical. On that basis, the author stresses the need of enlarging the concept of diagrammatic in order to embrace “all forms of intentionally created markings, notations, charts, schemes and maps”. But, if so, it is necessary to recognize the biological and anthropological nature of graphic activity as a spatial-visual-tactile form of thinking. In the line of representationalist approaches, Jan Wöpking, Space, Structure, and Similarity. On Representationalist Theories of Diagrams, proposes to think the cognitive power of diagrams on the basis of two independent claims: the first concerns what he calls nomic similarity, a kind of structural correspondence (in Leibnizian terms, we would say “expressive”) between the diagram and what it represents; the second relays on the two-dimensional graphical dimension of diagrams, their spatial schematic structure. Two claims and key distinctions which are used by Jan Wöpking in order to analyze and classify the several definitions of diagram and to revise some of Peirce’s ideas on diagrams. Frederik Stjernfelt, who gave the opening lecture in the 2009 Lisbon workshop, offers a paper titled The Extension of the Peircean Diagram Category. Charting the Implications of a Diagrammatical Revolution in Semiotics. First this revolution launched by Peirces ́ diagrammatology, as described by Stjernfelt, will be ontological – because it reemphasizes the connection of semiotics to mathematical and logical idealities as well as empirical universals. Stjernfelt argues that the uses of prototypical signs in logics, algebra, pictures, linguistic grammar and linguistic semantics are diagrams, thus opposing the common sense notion of diagrams as a printed or drawn appearing on a support as concrete sign tokens, that in his view merely give access to the type of diagram. The other “revolutionary” aspect of this view is that diagrams are fundamentally cognitive phenomena, involved in giving access to generalization, idealization, abstraction and thus providing direct perceptual access to an “ideal type”. Stjernfelt builds his argument on Peirce with cross-reference to Husserl, as for Stjernfelt this cognitive notion of the diagram is providing direct perception-like access to ideal structures, that in Husserlian terms is described as “categorical intuition”. Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, Is Non-visual Diagrammatic Logic Possible? develops the very interesting possibility of making a propositional logic based on sounds. For that, he goes back to Peirce and to his large conception of diagrams in order to show that diagrams should not be restricted to visual forms of representation. The question is thus formulated in order to question the extreme possibility of constructing a mental yet diagrammatic logic without any visual or written support, no symbols, no marks, no language.

The second part, Visual Diagram Praxis, includes four case studies

on diagram practices, namely in mathematics, logics, quantum-physics and scenographic media. Augusto J. Franco de Oliveira, Picture-proofs in Mathematics: a Chapter in James Robert Brown ́s Philosophy of Mathematics, with Examples, questions the role played by pictures, figures or diagrams in mathematics, identifies some of their purposes as visual aids, focus their disturbing or even highly misleading effects and passes in review some of the conflicting positions concerning this issue. From one side, Euclides’ belief in geometric pictures, from the other Bolzano’s efforts to avoid the intuitive properties of continuous functions, from one side the geometric intuition of curves underlying Newton and Leibniz calculus, from the other Dedekind, Cantor and Weierstrass endeavors in order to ground infinitesimal calculus in purely analytical terms, from one side Lagrange “paranoid” fear of figures and Dieudonné severe refusal of any geometric intuition, from the other side Brown’s proposal of pictures as possible rigorous evidence. As Franco Oliveira shows, “with the development of computers, computer generated graphs (for instance, in fractal geometry), experimental mathematics and computer generated proofs in mathematics the discussion

has been revived”. However, as he also states, the relevant question persists: Is visual thinking merely a psychological aid, facilitating grasp of what is gathered by other means, or does it also have epistemological functions, as a means of discovery, understanding, and even proof? Ángel Nepomuceno-Fernández, in a paper untitled Concept Script and Diagrams: Two Ways of Using Images in Scientific Reasoning, compares the conceptual writing proposed by Frege with Peirce’s diagrams stressing the complementary nature of those two forms of picturing logical structures. The paper by J. R. Croca’s, Diagrammatic Thinking in Physics, emphasizes the need of using diagrammatic thinking in fundamental

quantum physics. Face to the huge, say infinite, number of solutions for differential equations describing the physical situation, diagrammatic thinking appears as able to provide good reasons for choosing the right solutions. Finally, Matthias Bauer, Diagrammatology, Scenographic Media, and the Display Function of Art, argues that diagrammatic reasoning is not restricetd to Logics and that art, in its fundamental display function, is itself a diagrammatic procedure. The papper offers then an interpretation of Rembrandt’s famous painting “The Night Watch”, of Peter Greenaway’s “Nightwatching-project”, and of Oliver Stone’s feature film “JFK” as three examples of artistic works with clear scenographic or diagrammatic nature.

The third part, On Maps, opens with an article by Valeria Giardino, The

World in Maps: Looking for Treasures, Neurons, and Soldiers. Enlarging the concept of map from geographical maps to new cases of maps such as cortical maps in neuroscience and graphs, Valeria Giardino reflects upon the different components that must be considered in a map, its specific spatiality,its unavoidable incompleteness. The map appear then as a procedure which necessarily lies and, at the same time, are able to provide a more or less

precise description of what it is.

Alexander Gerner, Notes on Diagrams and Maps is an exploratory journey that hinges on the very question of what a map is. Gerner draws on the work of Stjernfelt, Perkins, Krämer and, mainly, Deleuze and Peirce. It is his argument that these authors’ work open up seminal ways of interpreting diagrammatic fixtures common to different notions of the map - as a diagrammatic spatial knowledge tool or as an ontological category preceding any representational semiotic operations. The diagrammatic operational and the ontological map reading, though evidently at cross-purposes, should not ultimately be seen as mutually exclusive. The journey into the map territory in the second part of the paper reflects on contemporary map artists (Beltrán, Barrio, Hirschhorn & Steinweg) and on their artefacts. Art seems to surge as the place where a map can be accepted as the “Map of itself” (Terry Atkinson & John Baldwin 1967). However, that is not to say that this notion of self- indexicality of the proper map is absent in scientific maps. It is simply not visible, focused on or accepted as such. The “all knowing map“ that Perkins (2008) describes as “scientific”, is seen here as a contradiction towards the notion of map as a fundamental diagrammatic or ontological orientation tool, that necessarily has to leave out certain “knowledge” to constitute orientation. With Deleuze, even the “chasm” between different operational cultures of map use (Perkins 2008) becomes questionable. Christoph Ernst, “From Images to Diagrams” – Diagrammatic Reasoning in Gilles Deleuze's Film Philosophy and its Relevance for General Media-Theory, stresses the deep similarity of Peirce’s concept of diagrammatic reasoning and Deleuze’s concept of the thinking-image. In general, Christoph Ernst’s paper aims to “illustrate the relevance of Peirce’s semio-pragmatic concept of diagrammatic reasoning for the further clarification of the category of the thinking-image in Deleuze's film- philosophy”. According to Deleuze and in the line of his critique of rationalist understanding of human reasoning, thinking-images can no longer be described in terms of “figurative” images. Within the medium of film, thinking may now externalize its own potentialities, it may now produce the visualization of its own knowledge, it can be observed “in progress”, happening on screen. We understand why Deleuze’s film-philosophy supposes a strong reference to Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning. Two main questions may then be formulated: do Peirce’s ideas on diagrammatic reasoning help clarifying Deleuze's film-philosophy? How does Deleuze's film-philosophy, or media theory in general, benefits from making use of Peirce’s ideas? Finally, Catarina Nabais in an article untitled Deleuze’s Rhizome- Thought, presents Deleuze´s specific non-representational account of the rhizome. Instead of an arborescent, hierarchical and static model of thought, the “rhizome” appears as an endlessly bifurcating system pointing to a nomadic movement of thought, a dynamic and heterogeneous way of thinking in process. (...)"

new insight in HIV antbodies may prevent 90% of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells

2010-07-08T23:22:00.001+01:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100708141531.htm

ScienceDaily (July 8, 2010) — Scientists have discovered two potent human antibodies that can stop more than 90 percent of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory, and have demonstrated how one of these disease-fighting proteins accomplishes this feat. According to the scientists, these antibodies could be used to design improved HIV vaccines, or could be further developed to prevent or treat HIV infection. Moreover, the method used to find these antibodies could be applied to isolate therapeutic antibodies for other infectious diseases as well.

"The discovery of these exceptionally broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV and the structural analysis that explains how they work are exciting advances that will accelerate our efforts to find a preventive HIV vaccine for global use," says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health. "In addition, the technique the teams used to find the new antibodies represents a novel strategy that could be applied to vaccine design for many other infectious diseases."

Led by a team from the NIAID Vaccine Research Center (VRC), the scientists found two naturally occurring, powerful antibodies called VRC01 and VRC02 in an HIV-infected individual's blood. They found the antibodies using a novel molecular device they developed that homes in on the specific cells that make antibodies against HIV. The device is an HIV protein that the scientists modified so it would react only with antibodies specific to the site where the virus binds to cells it infects.

The scientists found that VRC01 and VRC02 neutralize more HIV strains with greater overall strength than previously known antibodies to the virus.

The researchers also determined the atomic-level structure of VRC01 when it is attaching to HIV. This has enabled the team to define how the antibody works and to precisely locate where it attaches to the virus. With this knowledge, they have begun to design components of a candidate vaccine that could teach the human immune system to make antibodies similar to VRC01 that might prevent infection by the vast majority of HIV strains worldwide.

NIAID scientists Peter D. Kwong, Ph.D., John R. Mascola, M.D., and Gary J. Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., led the two research teams. A pair of articles about these findings appears in the online edition of Science.

"We have used our knowledge of the structure of a virus -- in this case, the outer surface of HIV -- to refine molecular tools that pinpoint the vulnerable spot on the virus and guide us to antibodies that attach to this spot, blocking the virus from infecting cells," explains Dr. Nabel, the VRC director.

Finding individual antibodies that can neutralize HIV strains anywhere in the world has been difficult because the virus continuously changes its surface proteins to evade recognition by the immune system. As a consequence of these changes, an enormous number of HIV variants exist worldwide. Even so, scientists have identified a few areas on HIV's surface that remain nearly constant across all variants. One such area, located on the surface spikes used by HIV to attach to immune system cells and infect them, is called the CD4 binding site. VRC01 and VRC02 block HIV infection by attaching to the CD4 binding site, preventing the virus from latching onto immune cells.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," says Dr. Mascola, the deputy director of the VRC.

With these antibodies in hand, a team led by Dr. Kwong, chief of the structural biology section at the VRC, determined the atomic-level molecular structure of VRC01 when attached to the CD4 binding site. They then examined this structure in light of natural antibody development to ascertain the steps that would be needed to elicit a VRC01-like antibody through vaccination.

Antibody development begins with the mixing of genes into new combinations within the immune cells that make antibodies. Examination of the structure of VRC01 attached to HIV suggested that, from a genetic standpoint, the immune system likely could produce VRC01 precursors readily. The researchers also confirmed that VRC01 does not bind to human cells -- a characteristic that might otherwise lead to its elimination during immune development, a natural mechanism the body employs to prevent autoimmune disease.

In the final stage of antibody development, antibody-producing B cells recognize specific parts of a pathogen and then mutate, or mature, so the antibody can bind to the pathogen more firmly. VRC01 precursors do not bind tightly to HIV, but rather mature extensively into more powerfully neutralizing forms. This extensive antibody maturation presents a challenge for vaccine design. In their paper, Dr. Kwong and colleagues explore how this challenge might be addressed by designing vaccine components that could guide the immune system through this stepwise maturation process and facilitate the generation of a VRC01-like antibody from its precursors. The scientists currently are performing research to identify these components.

The discoveries we have made may overcome the limitations that have long stymied antibody-based HIV vaccine design," says Dr. Kwong.

The two research teams included NIAID scientists from the VRC, the Laboratory of Immunoregulation, and the Division of Clinical Research, all in Bethesda, Md.; as well as researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; Columbia University in New York; Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston; The Rockefeller University in New York City; and University of Washington in Seattle.

The book of modernity finally in a critical edition: Fernando Pessoa O Livro do Desasocego

2010-06-13T12:27:00.000+01:00

1 [4-68r] [1913?]

Minha alma é uma orchestra occulta; não sei que instrumentos tangem e rangem1, cordas e harpas, timbales e tambores, dentro de mim. Só me conheço como symphonia.2

Todo o esforço é um crime, porque todo3 o gesto é um sonho morto.4

Apresentação de Jeronimo Pizarro

Começo amanhã, sábado, a procurar e juntar

os papéis do «Livro do Desassossego».

Maria Aliete Galhoz a Jorge de Sena,

carta de 6 -5 -1960 (in Persona, n.o 3, 1979: 42)

Esta é a primeira edição crítica do Livro do Desasocego, que logo no título anunciava a sua pluralidade. Pessoa escreveu desassocego, desasossego e desasocego, optando, nos últimos anos, por desasocego. Tem mais de mil páginas — e podia ter tido muitas mais —, embora nela se proponha um corpus textual mais reduzido e menos fragmentado do que nas edições anteriores. Não é que Fernando Pessoa crie paradoxos, é que uma edi-

ção crítica do Livro do Desasocego dificilmente podia ter menos páginas. O Desasocego é o grande livro de Pessoa, O Grande Livro como dizem os francezes (1 -82r), e cada linha, cada palavra, cada vírgula é importante. Sem ir mais longe, em todas as edições da obra a referência aos francezes não existe: falta em 1982 (Ática); em 1990 -1991 (Presença) lê -se: «O Grande Livro que diz quem fomos»; em 2008 (Relógio d’Água) lê -se: «O Grande Livro que diz que somos»; em 2009 (Assírio & Alvim) lê -se: «O Grande Livro que diz que fomos». Somos? Fomos? Não, francezes, com a ortografia da época. Que era preciso então para propor um novo texto? Rever leituras e analisar com serenidade científica o desasocego editorial do Livro; introduzir alguma ordem e privilegiar a transparência (ver a «Tábua de concordâncias»), depois de ter procurado obter uma visão de conjunto. Começarei por explicar o aparente paradoxo: uma edição mais volu- mosa que propõe um corpus textual mais reduzido e menos fragmentado. O corpus da primeira edição, que tanto deve a Maria Aliete Galhoz (prima inter pares), a Teresa Sobral Cunha e a Jacinto do Prado Coelho, sofreu uma tendência inflacionária depois de 1982. A partir da década de 1990, o Livro do Desasocego tornou -se uma espécie de arca em que foram sendo «depositados» novos escritos; era «O Grande Livro», e tudo o que Pessoa escreveu — até um apontamento solto com a palavra inglesa pursuit (e não «persistir») — parecia ter cabimento nessas páginas. Alguns desses escritos Livro do Desasocego — Tomo I já tinham sido publicados e foram redireccionados para o Livro; outros eram inéditos e permitiam criticar a louvável edição de 1982. Dada a exis- tência de uma tendência inflacionária, o primeiro passo que se impôs foi de índole filológica: estudar cada texto, quer da primeira edição, quer das subsequentes, suspender o juízo por um momento e perguntar: este texto será mesmo do Livro, esse seria o seu destino? A pergunta não era nada simples porque Pessoa não identificou todos os escritos com a abreviatura L. do D. e em mais de uma ocasião hesitou em relação ao destino de alguns dos seus textos. Além disso, em muitos casos pontuais, dois ou mais editores respondiam de maneira diferente à pergunta acerca da pertença de um texto à obra, ou respondiam com uma certa ambiguidade, porque a fragmentos incluídos na sua edição do Livro também deram outros destinos (um conjunto de aforismos ou a prosa de Alberto Caeiro, por exemplo). De resto, essa ambiguidade era previsível, porque o Livro, nas vivas palavras de Eduardo Lourenço, «comporta todos os textos de Fernando Pessoa», dado que nas suas páginas «dialogam indistintamente os fantasmas bem presentes de Caeiro, Reis e sobretudo de Campos, mas igualmente o do nunca sepulto

autor da “Floresta do Alheamento” que aqui, em sumptuoso “requiem” à memória do wagneriano Luís II, nos aparece como Fernando, rei da nossa Baviera de sonho» (Fernando, rei da nossa Baviera, 1993: 89). Fundamentalmente, o corpus desta edição crítica é mais reduzido por dois motivos: porque a crítica textual — como disciplina académica, que pode ter implicações éticas — levou a questionar a inclusão de muitos fragmentos; e porque o próprio conceito de trecho foi objecto de crítica. Evoco umas palavras de Ivo Castro: «Uma edição chama -se crítica quando resulta de uma dúvida metódica em relação às condições existentes de um determinado texto e de uma inquirição aos seus testemunhos mais autorizados, feita de fresco e sem restrições» (Defesa da Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, 1993: 43).

A edição Ática tem mais textos — evito a utilização da palavra, mais fácil, «trecho» — porque alguns textos, escritos em dois ou mais momentos ou separados por traços, foram divididos em muitos textos. Como conceito,

um «trecho» remete para uma realidade muito mais circunscrita do que um «texto» — que pode referir -se a um livro ou a um aforismo —, mas, enquanto sinónimo de fragmento, o termo também assenta numa ambiguidade

problemática: teoricamente, qualquer apontamento poderia candidatar -se a ser um «trecho». Se a numeração dos textos do Livro do Desasocego não é, simultaneamente, um acto de contabilidade, isso deve -se a haver textos que em algumas edições são muitos textos, e outros que eram muitos e, tardiamente, perderam essa pluralidade. No caso do Livro do Desasocego, a delimitação hipotética do «todo» começa pela delimitação conjectural das suas «partes», para usar uma linguagem que a própria obra põe em causa.

Um texto desta edição — em que foram mantidos os traços divisórios do autor — pode corresponder a dois ou mais de uma anterior. A organização do presente volume — o XII da Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa — procura ser cronológica e o mais objectiva possível. Esbocei os princípios que regem esta organização — que não difere do modelo seguido em outras edições da Equipa Pessoa — no volume IX, A Educação do Stoico, que sempre vi como um Livro em escala reduzida. Ambas as obras coincidem parcialmente no tempo, e o Barão de Teive e Bernardo Soares são considerados por Pessoa como semi -heterónimos ou figuras minhamente

alheias (16 -58r; ver «Apêndices»). Esta edição também procura «um grande compromisso entre materialidade e sentido»; e a sua organização também «não responde a uma leitura subjectiva dos conteúdos das peças individuais, senão a um estudo cuidadoso de cada um dos suportes». Aqui é preciso que defenda abertamente duas tarefas sem as quais este volume não teria sido possível (v. o «Estudo», no tomo II) e às quais espero que a Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal continue a ser sensível: o exame físico dos originais e a conferência global de todas as peças, dispondo -as em simultâneo. Para estruturar este volume foi decisivo um atento exame material dos originais e a sua disposição lado a lado sobre um conjunto de mesas. O tamanho exacto de uma folha, a existência de uma marca de água (menos visível quando a folha é mais espessa), a irregularidade de um corte, a cor e o matiz da tinta, etc. são elementos preciosos para aproximar documentos dispersos no espólio pessoano e, em alguns casos, para propor uma datação. O texto fiável que uma edição crítica procura apresentar — porque multiplica os confrontos, estuda a génese dos textos, etc. — é também o resultado de diversas investigações de índole material. Veja -se a este respeito a introdução de Luís Prista ao volume das Quadras — a Prista devemos a organização desses poemas — ou o estudo de Ivo Castro do dossier d’O Guardador de Rebanhos, que permitiu reconsiderar a história do dia triunfal. Se este Livro do Desasocego não propõe uma nova arrumação subjectiva e quase espectacular da obra — já Sidónio Paes e Fernando Cabral Martins falaram numa montagem de atracções (in Colóquio -Letras, n.o 155/156) — é porque se apoia num paciente trabalho de arquivo. Darei explicações circunstanciadas sobre a presente edição do Livro do Desasocego no «Estudo» (tomo II). Resta dizer que, quanto a mim, esta edição permite perceber melhor algumas questões — como as das autorias do Livro, as fictícias e a real — e advertir até que ponto a obra de Pessoa, e em particular esta, tem sido construída postumamente. Quem percorrer o Aparato Genético surpreender -se -á com o número de divergências textuais e com a história da «migração» de alguns textos. Este volume demonstra, a meu ver, não só a necessidade de certos apêndicese quadros algo demorados, como a complementaridade entre o Texto Crítico e o Aparato Genético. Este último parece -me capital para se perceber como um dos livros canónicos da literatura portuguesa foi mudando com o tempo, como foi canonizado antes de ter alcançado uma relativa estabilidade. A história do Livro do Desasocego também é a das suas edições, e é com essa história que esta nova edição dialoga: nomeadamente com a primeira edição, da qual, como se de um manuscrito mais antigo se tratasse, as outras edições se afastam ou a que se mantêm fiéis; ou, às vezes, afastam -se, para mais tarde a ela regressarem. Não quero terminar sem agradecer o auxílio de Jorge Uribe em algumas tarefas mais trabalhosas, como a primeira versão da Tábua de concordâncias, nem sem manifestar um voto de gratidão a todas as pessoas que me têm

ajudado a sentir que Lisboa também é meu lar.

palimpsest Identitätsfiktion I (study object_objecting studies)

2010-02-27T21:02:00.000Z

Alexander Gerner 2010

No Future triggers violence: Might Not Be A Tomorrow

2010-01-19T19:32:00.003Z

Mr Pink: Did you kill anybody?

MR White: Just a view cops

Mr Pink: No real people?

Mr White: Uh-Uh, just Cops.

Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarrantino)

Might not be a tomorrow: Youth anticipate early death

ATLANTA— As Atlanta officials aim to tackle the city's safety problems this year, some of their toughest criminals to stop maybe young offenders whose desires to commit crimes are being fueled by an anticipation of dying early.

Georgia State University Criminal Justice experts Timothy Brezina, Volkan Topalli and economist Erdal Tekin, have released a unique study that indicates that although young criminals are aware of the risks of violent injury, death or punishment, the possibility of a shorter life span encourages them to focus more on the "here and now."

"It turns out that if you boil it all down the more you think you are going to die young the more likely it is that you are going to engage in criminality and violence," Topalli said. "This is the opposite of what most people think, because most people think that if you think you're going to die soon you become depressed and you wouldn't commit crimes."

The research "Might not be a Tomorrow", is among the first Criminal Justice studies to simultaneously include one-on-one offender interviews with an econometric analysis of nation-wide adolescent data to provide a better understanding of why young people tend to pursue high-risk behaviors associated with immediate rewards, which include crime and violence.

The professors interviewed more than 30 young offenders in some of Atlanta's toughest neighborhoods, specifically focusing on Central West Atlanta, a community that has suffered high rates of drug trafficking, serious street crime and youth violence. Those interviews, which lasted from 45 to 120 minutes, focused on the participants' perception of risk, with an emphasis on the risk of future injury, early death and the extent to which these perceptions influenced their attitudes and behaviors related to offending.

"Many had been shot or stabbed and bore visible scars of physical trauma," Brezina said. "They also expressed what criminologists refer to as a "coercive" worldview; in their eyes, they occupy a dog-eat-dog world where it is acceptable if not necessary to use force to intimidate others and to prevent victimization."

The bleak outlook on life and sense of "futurelessness" of young offenders has been shaped by some of their earliest memories and reinforced by other people in their lives and the witnessing of violence, Topalli said. Prior research has found that when young people believe they have no future, it is argued, they have little to lose by engaging in crime or violence.

"They live in neighborhoods that are kind of like war zones," Topalli said. "They grew up hearing gun shots, seeing people die and hearing ambulances and police cars. Just about every young person we talked to had seen a dead body, and either has fired a weapon or has been fired upon in some context. Over 70 percent of them have been victimized themselves, which is far greater than the larger population. The majority of them won't die early, but the illusion is that you will and it's reinforced by the culture."

The professors also analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, also known as Add Health, which was specifically designed to investigate adolescents' health and risk behaviors and is considered the largest and most comprehensive survey of adolescents ever undertaken. The data includes responses from more than 20,000 adolescents between seventh and 12th-grade and their parents. Detailed questions were included about the delinquent behavior of adolescents, like whether they had committed crimes such as theft, robbery or shooting in the nine to 12 months prior to the interview and whether they thought they will live to 35 or be killed by the age of 21.

The study's finding state that when the perceived chance of being killed by age 21 is greater than 50 percent, the probability of offending behavior increases by 3.3 percent. The probability of offending behavior increases by 3.4 percent when the perceived chance of living to age 35 is less than 50 percent.

"The results from the Add Health study mirrored the results from the interviews," Topalli said.

Georgia State researchers say the finding have implications for public policy. And not only do the researchers have plans to expand the research, Georgia State University is establishing a Center for Crime and Violence Prevention Policy, to deal with issues like youth/gang violence, urban drug markets and crime trend forecasting.

"It seems unlikely that threats of harsher criminal justice penalties will deter these fearless offenders. They assume life is short anyway and willingly accept the risks associated with a criminal lifestyle—even death," Brezina said. "An alternative approach is to confront the pervasive violence and other social ills that so many inner-city children confront in their daily lives—conditions that deflate hope and breed crime in the first place."

###

The study "Might Not be a Tomorrow" is published in the December edition of CRIMINOLOGY, a top international journal in the field of Criminal Justice.Contact: Leah Seupersad

lvh@gsu.edu
404-413-1354
Georgia State University

Robot Ethics -from work partner to bed partner?

2010-01-17T18:17:00.005Z

"There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans," Levy says. "At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance. Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba. Now you have robot toys, like Sony's Aibo robot dog, or Tickle Me Elmos, or digital pets like Tamagotchis."

In his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.

"It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable."
"Always turned on and ready to talk and play." That´s the slogan of the first sex- robot company "True Companion"

Sex with robots in 5 years? It´s 2010 and it is on the market already...See: http://truecompanion.com/
See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article675984.ece

No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

Ed Habershon and Richard Woods

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines.

“Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen,” said Verruggio. “Robots will develop strong intelligence, and in some ways it will be better than human intelligence.

“But it will be alien intelligence; I would prefer to give priority to humans.”

The analysis culminated at a meeting recently held in Genoa by the European Robotics Research Network (Euron) that examined the problems likely to arise as robots become smarter, faster, stronger and ubiquitous.

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy? “The question is what authority are we going to delegate to these machines?” said Professor Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Are we, for example, going to give robots the ability to execute lethal force, or any force, like crowd control?” The forthcoming code is a sign of reality finally catching up with science fiction. Ethical problems involving machines were predicted in the 1950s by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov whose book I, Robot was recently turned into a Hollywood film. The Terminator and Robocop series of films also portrayed mechanical law enforcers running amok.

Present robots perform more mundane tasks: the most common consumer robots in Britain include self-guided vacuum cleaners such as the Scooba, lawnmowers such as the Robomow and children’s toys such as Robosapien.

But far more sophisticated machines are being developed. The National Health Service has used a robot called da Vinci to perform surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London. In Japan, human-like robots such as Honda’s Asimo and Sony’s Qrio can walk on two legs. More advanced versions are expected to be undertaking everyday domestic tasks and helping to care for the elderly in as little as 20 years.

“I would hope they would always be subordinate,” said Brian Aldiss, the science fiction writer. “But one will no doubt come to rely on them deeply.” Aldiss’s short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film AI, which addressed the subject of whether androids that have become as intelligent as humans should be denied equal rights.

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys? The greatest danger, however, is likely to lie with robots that are able to learn from their “experiences”. As systems develop, robots are likely to have much more sophisticated self-learning mechanisms built into them and it may become impossible to predict exactly how they will behave.

“My guess is that we’ll have conscious machines before 2020,” said Ian Pearson, futurologist-in-residence at BT. “If we put that in a robot, it’s an android. That is an enormous ethical change.”

To critics who scoff that intelligent robots are a long way off, the roboticists easily riposte that machines can already exert surprising influence over our lives — think about the influence of the internet.

Keeping control

New robo-ethics recommendations

Safety Ensure human control of robot
Security Prevent wrong or illegal use

Privacy Protect data held by robot o Traceability Record robot’s activity
Identifiability Give unique ID to each robot

Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics

Robot may not injure human or,

through inaction, allow human to

come to harm

Robot must obey human orders,

unless they conflict with first law

Mind, Brain & Consciousness Seminar Jan 14-15th 2010 India

2010-01-11T14:51:00.006Z

"Art and Science #1" Marjorie Taylor (2000). Collection of the artist from the site: The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/Brain/index.htm

Mind, Brain and Consciousness

The Vidya Prasarak Mandal, Thane, the K.G. Joshi College of Arts and the N.G. Bedekar College of Commerce and its Philosophy Department, and the Mens Sana Monographs, have great pleasure in welcoming you to this International Seminar on Mind, Brain and Consciousness slated for 14-15 Jan 2010. This event is co-sponsored by the World Psychiatric Association's [WPA] Philosophy and Humanities section.

The attempt will be to exchange ideas on this intriguing topic from the diverse fields of Philosophy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Neurology, and the Cognitive Neurosciences. The Indian Concept of Mind will also receive a careful scrutiny. Introduction Concepts related to the Mind, Brain and Consciousness have intrigued both philosophers and scientists since time immemorial. While the former have speculated on the nature of mind and put forward many theories of consciousness, the brain as an object of scientific enquiry and how it relates to functions ordinarily subsumed under mind is a relatively recent phenomenon. The emerging body of evidence that the cognitive neurosciences [neurobiology and neurophysiology] and cybernetics are producing cannot but impact our understanding of mind and consciousness and compel us to revise many of our long held theories and convictions. At the same time, many speculative insights of the philosophers regarding mind and consciousness can offer great areas for reflection and experimentation to the neuroscientists. Philosophy of mind is an active, intensely evolving body of knowledge.

The Purpose This International Seminar is an attempt to present the salient reflections/findings of philosophers and scientists on the interconnections between these concepts and evolve an ongoing dialogue between them so a robust body of knowledge serves as a foundation for further enquiry in this intriguing, and vastly unexplored, field. Of course we can feel satisfied much has been done in the realm of reflective thought about mind and consciousness down the centuries by the great masters, including the likes of Plato, St. Augustine, Descartes [all three on mind-body dualism, and Descartes on ‘mental substance’ ‘pensee’ or reflexive consciousness, and Interactionism]; Locke [rejecting ‘mental substance’]; Hume [‘bundle concept’], Kant [critique of associationist approaches and stress on ‘phenomenal consciousness’], Berkeley [Idealism as in Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710 ]; Leibniz [Parallelism]; Spinoza, Gustav Fechner and W.K. Clifford [Double-Aspect Theories] as also Herbert Spencer and P.F. Strawson; William James [‘stream of consciousness], Brentano [‘intentionality’]; Cabanis and older masters [Epiphenomenalism]; Vienna Circle, especially Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap [physicalism or extreme materialism]; Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty [phenomenology]; J.J.C. Smart and H. Feigl [Identity theory]; Russell [‘sensibilia’]; A.J. Ayer [a type of neutral monism inLanguage, Truth and Logic, 1936]; Geulincx and Malebranche [Occasionalism]; Gilbert Ryle [‘the ghost in the machine’ in The Concept of Mind]. There will be occasion to review their work in this seminar.

A lot has being done in the neurosciences by the scientists, especially K.S. Lashley [removal and study of animal brain parts]; H.-L. Tauber [war time brain damage study by EEG and PEG]; W.G. Penfield [direct stimulation of patient’s brain]; Eric Kandel, Paul Greengard and E. Carlsson [Microstructures necessary for learning, memory and effect of psychoactive substances; Nobel Laureates, 2001]; R. Axel and L.B. Buck [genes, protein receptors and odour recognition; Nobel Laureates, 2004]; and the vast body of work by different neuroscientists on the neurotransmitters, especially the biogenic amines, aminoacids, neuropeptides etc. There are so many others, and the neurosciences are teeming with research work.But precious little is being done to integrate the vast body of knowledge that already exists about these three concepts in these independently progressing branches of philosophical thought and scientific experimentation.This Seminar is a step to help the process of such integration. Mind and Consciousness

Velvet Cortex"
Marjorie Taylor (2006). Private Collection.

The present Seminar will attempt to review and present classical and modern concepts and theories about Mind and Consciousness, including the Mind-Body or Body-Mind problem; the idealist and materialist views about mind; the identity, the computational and double aspect theories of mind; monistic and dualistic theories of mind; as also interactionism, epiphenomenalism, structuralism, reductionism, materialism, occasionalism, neutral monism, functionalism, psychophysical parallelism etc. The concept of Mind in Indian thought needs a careful and detailed exposition for which a theme session/workshop is proposed.

The philosophy of mind is intimately connected with the philosophy of action. Therefore, concepts like free will, motive, intentions, cognition, volition, feelings, and also ethical issues related to these are of abiding interest, and also of concern in this seminar. Questions related to cognition like perception, sensation, insight, intuition, judgement, as also thought, reasoning, and the notions of doubt, inference, reasoning, logical thinking and how these are connected to our understanding of the mind and its connectedness with evidences from research in the neurosciences will also be of interest in this seminar.
The problem of Consciousness needs to be connected with that of the Mind, but not only our philosophical understanding of the Mind but the emerging evidence from brain research. The various metaphysical positions like the dualist and physicalist theories, and the specific ones like higher-order, representational, cognitive, neural and quantum theories, need to be put in perspective to understand where we stand in our grasp of this complex topic. Qualia, introspection [including the works of the champions of the introspective method as seen in the work of Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann von Helmholtz, William James and Alfred Titchener] and self-knowledge, as aspects of consciousness also need detailed analysis. Creature consciousness and state consciousness, as also the‘state of consciousness’ needs close study too. Work in scientific psychology, especially Behaviorism (Watson 1924, Skinner 1953), Gestalt psychology (Köhler 1929, Köffka 1935) and, more recently, cognitive psychology with emphasis on modeling internal mental processes and information processing (Neisser 1965, Gardiner 1985) needs critical appraisal. A major resurgence of scientific and philosophical research into the nature and basis of consciousness in the 1980s and 90s with the works of Baars 1988; Dennett 1991; Penrose 1989, 1994; Crick 1994; Lycan 1987, 1996; Chalmers 1996, needs to be critiqued too. Also noteworthy is the emergence of Specialty journals devoted to the study of consciousness (The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Consciousness and Cognition, Psyche), as also professional societies (Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness - ASSC). These exciting developments need to be noted in this seminar.The Brain

"Mark's Brain"
Marjorie Taylor (2002). Collection of the Lewis Center for Neuro Imaging.
The brain is a complex organ, the structural correlate of the mind, center and head of the central nervous and neuro-endocrine systems, whose various areas are yielding fascinating, though rather tardy, information to science and biology. Areas like the cerebrum, which controls higher functions like thought, language, moral and social conduct, creativity, spirituality etc, need as much study as the limbic system connected with emotions and sexuality, and the neuro-endocrine system which controls an organism’s response to stress, emotions, thoughts and feelings. As also various pathological conditions that result from toxic, metabolic, infectious, degenerative and congenital/traumatic conditions of brain pathology, not to forget the great number of neuropsychiatric conditions with hitherto ill-defined aetiology that are the great areas of interest and activity in clinical and research psychiatry/neurology.

The emerging vast body of evidential findings from the various neurosciences, including classical psychiatry/neurology, neurobiology, neuropsychology and neurophysiology needs a thorough presentation and a close look if present and future philosophic theorising has to be grounded on solid foundations. The interdisciplinary field of Cognitive Neuroscience which connects the sciences of the brain [Neurosciences] with the sciences of the Mind [Cognitive Science] needs a special and careful look. Nero-imaging and ionic/molecular processes studies are yielding fascinating information of brain function that philosophers of Mind can ill afford to ignore. The presence of neuroscientists and a close look at their findings will be a special feature of this Seminar.

The future is...

2010-01-10T13:13:00.003Z

[Photo: Gardard Eide Einarssons's installation on the Louisiana Museum photographed by Finn Broendum.]

"The future will be....

(List compiled by Hans Ulrich Obrist; via @Andrian Kreye/sueddeutsche.de)

The future will be chrome. Rirkrit Tiravanija

The future will be curved. Olafur Eliasson

The future will be in the name of the future. Anri Sala

The future will be so subjective. Tino Sehgal

The future will be bouclette. Douglas Gordon

The future will be curious. Nico Dockx

The future will be obsolete. Tacita Dean

The future will be asymmetric. Pedro Reyes

The future will be a slap in the face. Cao Fei

The future will be delayed. Loris Greaud

The future does not exist but in snapshots. Philippe Parreno

The future will be tropical. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Future? ...you must be mistaken Trisha Donnelly

The future will be overgrown and decayed. Simryn Gill

The future will be tense. John Baldessari

Zukunft ist lecker. Hans-Peter Feldmann

Zukunft ist wichtiger als Freizeit. Helmut Kohl (proposed by Carsten Höller)

A future fuelled by human waste. Matthew Barney

The future is going nowhere without us. Paul Chan

The future is now - the future is it. Doug Aitken

The future is one night, just look up. Tomas Saraceno

The future will be a remake... Didier Fiuza Faustino

The future is what we construct from what we remember of the past - the present is the time of instantaneous revelation. Lawrence Weiner

The future is this place at a different time. Bruce Sterling

The future will be widely reproduced and distributed. Cory Doctorow

The future will be whatever we make it. Jacque Fresco

The future will involve splendour and poverty. Arto Lindsay

The future is uncertain because it will be what we make it. Immanuel Wallerstein

The future is waiting - the future will be self-organized. Raqs Media Collective

Dum Spero/ While I breathe, I hope. Nancy Spero

This is not the future. Jordan Wolfson

The future is a dog/ l'avenir c'est la femme. Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron

On its way; it was here yesterday. Hreinn Friðfinnsson

The future will be an armchair strategist, the future will be like no snow on the broken bridge. Yang Fudong

The future always flies under the radar. Martha Rosler

Suture that future. Peter Doig

'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow' (Shakespeare). Richard Hamilton

The future is overrated. Cerith Wyn Evans

futuro = $B!g(B Hector Zamorra The future is a large pharmacy with a memory deficit. David Askevold

The future will be bamboo. Tay Kheng Soon

The future will be ousss. Koo Jeong-A

The future will be...grains, particles & bits. The future will be...ripples, waves & flow. The future will be...mix, swarms, multitudes. The future will be...the future we deserve but with some surprises, if only some of us take notice. Vito Acconci

In the future...the earth as a weapon... Allora & Calzadilla

The future is our excuse. Joseph Grigely and Amy Vogel

The future will be repeated. Marlene Dumas

Ok, ok I’ll tell you about the future; but I am very busy right now; give me a couple of days more to finish some things and I’ll get back to you. Jimmie Durham

Future is instant. Yung Ho Chang

'The future is not.' Zaha Hadid

The future is private. Anton Vidokle

The future will be layered and inconsistent. Liam Gillick

The future is a piano wire in a pussy powering something important. Matthew Ronay

In the future perhaps there will be no past. Daniel Birnbaum

The future was. Julieta Aranda

The future is menace. Carolee Schneemann

The future is a forget-me-not. Molly Nesbit

The future is an knowing exchange of glances. Sarah Morris

The future: Scratching on things I could disavow. Walid Raad

The future is our own wishful thinking. Liu Ding

Le futur est un étoilement. Edouard Glissant

The future is now. Maurizio Cattelan

The future has a silver lining. Thomas Demand

The future is now and here. Yona Friedman

is a fax best to use as facsimile G&G FAX is: THE FUTURE? SEE YOU THERE! AS ARTISTS WE WANT TO HELP TO FORM OUR TOMORROWS. WE HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. ITS GOING TO BE MARVELLOUS. LONG LIVE THE FUTURE WITH LOTS OF LOVE ALWAYS AND ALWAYS. Gilbert & George

The future is without you. Damien Hirst

The future is a season. Pierre Huyghe

The future is a poster. M/M

We have repeated the future out of existence. Tom McCarthy

The future has two large beautiful eyes. Jonas Mekas

less, few tours in my future. Stefano Boeri

Future is what it is. Huang Yong Ping

The future is the very few years we have remaining before all time becomes one time. Grant Morrison

FUTURE MUST BE HERE TODAY. Jan Kaplicky

Future is more freedom. Jia Zhangke

My art is very free, I don’t know what to do in the future. But I am positive. Xu Zhen

The future is inside. Shumon Basar, Markus Miessen, Åbäke

NO FUTURE - PUNK IS NOT DEAD ! Thomas Hirschhorn

The future will be grim if we don't do something about it. Morgan Fisher

The future is reflexive and coming together. Olafur Eliasson

The future is listening. Shilpa Gupta

The future lies in the unknown. Ann Lislegaard

Nothing stinks, only thinking made it so. Sissel Tolaas

The future can only be defined over the course of night. Die Zukunft kann man nur über Nacht definieren. Peter Sloterdijk

The future is a disease. Peter Weibel

Light from the wallpaper: forget the light bulb get the wallpaper !

2010-01-09T20:25:00.001Z

"30 December 2009
Revolutionary ‘light emitting wallpaper’ could start to replace light bulbs in 2012 - Carbon Trust backs organic LED lighting technology that promises major carbon cuts
A company developing ultra-efficient organic LED (OLED) lighting technology has been awarded a £454k grant by the Carbon Trust. The OLED materials, being pioneered by LOMOX Ltd, have a wide variety of potential applications and when coated onto a film could be used to cover walls creating a light-emitting wallpaper which replaces the need for traditional light bulbs.
Operating lifetime has traditionally been a problem with OLED technology, but LOMOX has found a way to achieve significantly longer lifetimes than fluorescent lamps. The technology will also be more efficient (producing 150 lumens/watt) as it only emits light along one axis. OLEDs can produce a more natural looking light than other forms of lighting.
The Carbon Trust is currently on the lookout for other technologies with significant carbon saving potential to receive up to £500k of grant funding through its Applied Research scheme. It has recently launched an open call for applications which will close on 18th February 2010. Applications can be made at www.carbontrust.co.uk/appliedresearch.
The Carbon Trust's Applied Research grant scheme has supported 164 projects from around 1900 applications and committed a total of £23m towards research worth around £55m. Approximately 65% of completed projects have, or are in the process of generating new patents, making commercial sales or receiving further investment into the development of the technology.
The scheme has provided grant funding to a wide range of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies including fuel cells, combined heat and power, bioenergy, solar power, low carbon building technologies, marine energy devices and more efficient industrial processes."

Bridging the natural and synthetic world (I) : Red blood cell-mimicking synthetic biomaterial particles

2010-01-09T01:57:00.000Z

"You have your synthetic world on one side, and your biological world on the other, and we want to bridge the gap as best we can between these two extremes."Samir Mitragotri

Optical microscope images of a synthetic cell formed in Chris Keating's lab.
Authour of the image: Chris Keating

http://drugdelivery.engr.ucsb.edu/

"People have made over a thousand different polymers of different sizes for drug delivery. But if you look at them all together, they represent the synthetic world; the particles are nice and spherical," Samir Mitragotri

"The longest circulating nanoparticle ever lasted about 24 hours, so there's a need for developing an approach to something that can circulate in the bloodstream for a long period of time," Jeffrey Karp, Harvard-MIT professor of health science and technology. cit in: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24219/?a=f

Red blood cell-mimicking synthetic biomaterial particles
Nishit Doshia,1, Alisar S. Zahra,1,2, Srijanani Bhaskarb, Joerg Lahannb,c,3 and Samir Mitragotria,3
+ Author Affiliations

aDepartment of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; and
Departments of bMacromolecular Science and Engineering and
cChemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
↵2Present address: Schepens Eye Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114.

Edited by Robert Langer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved October 29, 2009

↵1N.D. and A.S.Z. contributed equally to this work. (received for review June 25, 2009)

Abstract

Biomaterials form the basis of current and future biomedical technologies. They are routinely used to design therapeutic carriers, such as nanoparticles, for applications in drug delivery. Current strategies for synthesizing drug delivery carriers are based either on discovery of materials or development of fabrication methods. While synthetic carriers have brought upon numerous advances in drug delivery, they fail to match the sophistication exhibited by innate biological entities. In particular, red blood cells (RBCs), the most ubiquitous cell type in the human blood, constitute highly specialized entities with unique shape, size, mechanical flexibility, and material composition, all of which are optimized for extraordinary biological performance. Inspired by this natural example, we synthesized particles that mimic the key structural and functional features of RBCs. Similar to their natural counterparts, RBC-mimicking particles described here possess the ability to carry oxygen and flow through capillaries smaller than their own diameter. Further, they can also encapsulate drugs and imaging agents. These particles provide a paradigm for the design of drug delivery and imaging carriers, because they combine the functionality of natural RBCs with the broad applicability and versatility of synthetic drug delivery particles.

Climate change catastrophe took just months (and could take just months)

2009-12-21T18:31:00.001Z

Big freeze plunged Europe into ice age in months
In the film, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.

William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini ‘ice age’ in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the ‘Big Freeze’, which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This vast pulse, a greater volume than all of North America’s Great Lakes combined, diluted the North Atlantic conveyor belt and brought it to a halt.

Without the warming influence of this ocean circulation temperatures across the Northern hemisphere plummeted, ice sheets grew and human civilisation fell apart.

Previous evidence from Greenland ice cores has indicated that this sudden change in climate occurred over the space of a decade or so. Now new data shows that the change was amazingly abrupt, taking place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most.

Patterson and his colleagues have created the highest resolution record of the ‘Big Freeze’ event to date, from a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland. Using a scalpel layers were sliced from the core, just 0.5mm thick, representing a time period of one to three months.

Carbon isotopes in each slice reveal how productive the lake was, while oxygen isotopes give a picture of temperature and rainfall. At the start of the ‘Big Freeze’ their new record shows that temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped over the course of just a few years. “It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard, creating icy conditions in a very short period of time,” says Patterson, who presented the findings at the European Science Foundation BOREAS conference on humans in the Arctic, in Rovaniemi, Finland.

Meanwhile, their isotope record from the end of the Big Freeze shows that it took around two centuries for the lake and climate to recover, rather than the abrupt decade or so that ice cores indicate. “This makes sense because it would take time for the ocean and atmospheric circulation to turn on again,” says Patterson.

Looking ahead to the future Patterson says there is no reason why a ‘Big Freeze’ shouldn’t happen again. “If the Greenland ice sheet melted suddenly it would be catastrophic,” he says.

This study was part of a broad network of 38 individual research teams from Europe, Russia, Canada and the USA forming the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme ‘Histories from the North – environments, movements, narratives’ (BOREAS). This highly interdisciplinary initiative brought together scientists from a wide range of disciplines including humanities, social, medical, environmental and climate sciences.
***
see:
http://www.esf.org/media-centre/press-releases/ext-single-news/article/big-freeze-plunged-europe-into-ice-age-in-months-592.html
29. November 2009 10:00
***

Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427344.800-mini-ice-age-took-hold-of-europe-in-months.html?full=true&print=true
11 November 2009 by Kate Ravilious

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October.

"This is significantly shorter than what has been suggested before, but it is plausible," says Derek Vance of the University of Bristol, UK. Hans Renssen, a climate researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, says recent findings from Greenland ice cores indicate the Younger Dryas event may have happened in one to three years. Patterson's results confirm this was a very sudden change, he says.

The mud slices from the end of the Big Freeze show that it took around two centuries for the lake and climate to recover.

Patterson says that sudden climate switches like the Big Freeze are far from unusual in the geological record. The Younger Dryas was brought about when a glacial lake covering most of north-west Canada burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The huge flood diluted the salinity-driven North Atlantic Ocean mega-currents, including the Gulf Stream, and stalled it. Two studies published in 2006 show that the same thing happened again 8200 years ago, when the Northern hemisphere went through another cold spell.

Some climate scientists have suggested that the Greenland ice sheet could have the same effect if it suddenly melts through climate change, but the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded this was unlikely to happen this century.

Patterson's team have now set their sights on even more precise records of historical climate. They have built a robot able to shave 0.05 micrometre slivers along the growth lines of fossilised clam shells, giving a resolution of less than a day. "We can get you mid-July temperatures from 400 million years ago," he says.
***
Main Investigator: William Patterson, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
geochemistry.usask.ca/bill.html
***
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article6917215.ece
From The Sunday Times
November 15, 2009
Climate change catastrophe took just months
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

Six months is all it took to flip Europe’s climate from warm and sunny into the last ice age, researchers have found.

They have discovered that the northern hemisphere was plunged into a big freeze 12,800 years ago by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream that allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Previous research had suggested the change might have taken place over a longer period — perhaps about 10 years.

The new description, reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of past climate changes yet attempted.

“It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time,” said William Patterson, a geological sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who carried out the research. “It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.”

His findings, published at a recent conference, reinforce a series of studies suggesting that the earth’s climate is highly unstable and can flip between warm and cold very rapidly with the right trigger.

Most such research is based on analysing cores drilled from ice or from the sediment found at the bottom of oceans or lakes. In such cores the ice or sediment is found in layers whose composition shows what the climate was like at the time they were laid down.

Ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice cap have already shown that the big freeze of 12,800 years ago — known as the Younger Dryas mini-ice age — happened fast but lacked the detail to pin it down precisely.

Patterson, however, obtained mud deposits from Lough Monreagh, a lake in western Ireland, a region he says has “the best mud in the world in scientific terms”.

Patterson used a precision robotic scalpel to scrape off layers of mud just 0.5mm thick.Each layer represented three months of sediment deposition, so variations between them could be used to measure changes in temperature over very short periods.

Patterson found that temperatures had plummeted, with the lake’s plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months. The subsequent mini-ice age lasted for 1,300 years.

What caused such a dramatic event? The most likely trigger is the sudden emptying of Lake Agassiz, an inland sea that once covered a swathe of northern Canada.

It is thought to have burst its banks, pouring freezing freshwater into the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, disrupting the Gulf Stream, whose flows depend on variations in temperature and salinity.

A single year’s disruption in the Gulf Stream could have been enough, said Patterson, to let ice grow far to the south of where it usually formed. Once it had taken over, the Gulf Stream was unable to regain its normal route and the cold took hold for about 1,300 years.

Some scientists have suggested that if the Greenland ice cap melts it could have a similarly dramatic effect by disrupting the world’s ocean currents.

Other research has shown that rapid climate flips are normal. In its 4.5-billion-year history, the earth has experienced at least four main ice ages, of which the last, the Quaternary, is still continuing.

Within each ice age, however, there are periods when ice advances or retreats, and in the past 60,000 years alone the earth is thought to have warmed or cooled by up to 7C at least 20 times. The current interglacial period has lasted about 10,000 years.

“Human civilisation has grown up in a period of remarkable climatic stability,” said Tim Lenton, professor of earth system sciences at the University of East Anglia.

“In the period from 65,000 to 10,000 years ago there were periods of abrupt warming and cooling roughly every 1,500 years, when the temperature in Greenland might fall or rise by 10C in a decade.”

Patterson’s findings are supported by the research of Chris Stringer, professor of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.

He believes the extinction of Neanderthals roughly 30,000 years ago was linked to a series of rapid climate fluctuations that began more than 40,000 years ago. He said: “Climate is basically unstable, so one of the mysteries is why it has stayed warm for the last 10,000 years.

“Some researchers have suggested this may be linked to the activities of early humans, who started growing crops and clearing forests 8,000 years ago.

“That may have put enough greenhouse gases into the air to stave off another ice age, but the problem now is that we have gone too far the other way.

“The amount of greenhouse gases in the air is greater than at any time in the last million years, so ironically, the threat now is from global warming.”

Patterson is still focusing his efforts on the past. He has built a new robot capable of shaving tiny slivers from the shells of fossilised clams, showing temperature almost day by day from millions of years ago.

Tool Use in Invertebrates (Octopus)

2009-12-15T16:01:00.001Z

(A) Emerged on sand. (B) Using coconut shell halves assembled as shelter. (C) ‘Stilt-walking’ while carrying two stacked coconut shell halves Photos: M. Norman (A), R. Steene (B,C).
Supplemental Data
Supplemental data are available at http://
www.cell.com/current-biology/supplemental/
S0960-9822(09)01914-9.

A Correspondence by Finn and colleagues, published in the December 15th issue 2009 of CURRENT BIOLOGY, reports an example of tool use in an invertebrate, the veined octopus. As shown in the video, these octopuses carry coconut shell halves for later use as a shelter; they carry them beneath their body, with their arms extended around the shell and functioning as rigid limbs for "walking" along the sea bed.
"To carry one or more shells, this octopus manipulates and arranges the shells so that the concave surfaces are uppermost, then extends its arms around the outside and walks using the arms as rigid limbs. We describe this lumbering octopedal gait as ‘stilt walking’. This unique and previously undescribed form of locomotion is ungainly and clearly less efficient than unencumbered locomotion (i.e. costly in terms of energy and increased predator risk compared with normal walking or the faster jet swimming escape). While ‘stilt-walking’ the octopus gains no protective benefits from the shell(s) it is carrying as the head and body are fully exposed to potential predators. The only benefit is the potential future deployment of the shell(s) as a surface shelter or as a buried encapsulating lair. The fact that the shell is carried for future use rather than as part of a specific task differentiates this behaviour from other examples of object manipulation by octopuses, such as rocks being used to barricade lair entrances" evidence that this shell-carrying
see: http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982209019149.pdf?intermediate=true

"On four occasions (three in Northern Sulawesi, one in Gilimanuk, Bali), individuals were observed to travel over considerable distances (up to 20 m) while carrying stacked coconut shell halves below their body . For all instances of this behaviour, observing divers remained static for up to 20 minutes at 1–2 metres from stationary octopuses, which emerged from the cover of one or two shells halves, arranged the shell(s) under the arm crown, and of cephalopods are well known. However, recent observations of unexpected behavioural flexibility and the capacity of these molluscs to physically manipulate their environment — prey manipulation, burying and den excavation]; arm dexterity; den barricading with rocks/coral — suggest that member species, particularly octopuses, could have the capacity to wield tools."
(...)

"The behaviour reported here is likely to have evolved using large empty bivalve shells prior to the relatively recent supply of the clean and light coconut shell halves discarded by the coastal human communities adjacent to the marine habitat of this species. Ultimately, the collection and use of objects by animals is likely to form a continuum stretching from insects to primates, with the definition of tools providing a perpetual opportunity for debate. However the discovery
of this octopus tiptoeing across the sea floor with its prized coconut shells suggests that even marine invertebrates engage in behaviours that we once thought the preserve of humans. "
see also:

1. Hansell, M., and Ruxton, G.D. (2008). Setting tool use within the context of animal construction behaviour. Trends Ecol. Evol. 23, 73–78.
2. Baber, C. (2003). Cognition and Tool Use: Forms of Engagement in Human and Animal Use of Tools (Boca Raton: CRC Press).
3. Beck, B.B. (1980). Animal Tool Behavior: The Use and Manufacture of Tools (New York: Garland STPM Press).
4. Smolker, R.A., Richards, A.F., Connor, R.C., Mann, J., and Berggren, P. (1997). Sponge-carrying by Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins: Possible tooluse by a delphinid. Ethology 103, 454–465.
5. Mulcahy, N.J., and Call, J. (2006). Apes save tools for future use. Science 312, 1038-1040.
6. Hanlon, R., and Messenger, J. (1996). Cephalopod Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
7. Norman, M.D., Finn, J., and Tregenza, T. (1999). Female impersonation as an alternative reproductive strategy in giant cuttlefish. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 266, 1347–1349.
8. Norman, M.D., Finn, J., and Tregenza, T. (2001). Dynamic mimicry in an Indo-Malayan octopus. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 268, 1755–1758.
9. Huffard, C.L., Boneka, F., and Full, R.J. (2005). Underwater bipedal locomotion by octopuses in disguise. Science 307, 1927.
10. Mather, J. (1994). ‘Home’ choice and modification by juvenile Octopus vulgaris (Mollusca: Cephalopoda): specialized
intelligence and tool use? J. Zool. 233, 359–368.

E-mails of the investigators:
jfinn@museum.vic.gov.au,
T.Tregenza@exeter.ac.uk,
mnorman@museum.vic.gov.au

Vision of Europe. Notes on the 1st of December 2009 (The activation of the Lisbon Treaty)

2009-12-02T19:09:00.005Z

(Photo: Alexander Gerner 2009)

This is a picture taken in Portugal one day before the Lisbon Treaty of the European Union was activated yesterday, on the 1st of December 2009. This is a picture of my son on a roof of a house on the rocks, looking towards the sea. Actually he is at the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean looking in direction of the Americas, but he could be also looking south (Africa), east (Russia, India, China) or north. He is half portuguese and half german, even that his father is by heart not only german but has eastern cultural roots of germans that were paying their price when "welcoming" the “annexation”/occupation of the Chech - Republic by Nazi-germany; they were expulsed after the war, and until some weeks ago, the consequences of the II world war and the historically grounded fear of a strong germany was on the table of that treaty. Recently we´ve celebrated the 20th year after the Berlin wall was opened, we´ve seen the financial system being sustained by coordinated interventions on EU, national and international levels. We´ve seen conservative governments by actions contradicting their ideological claims of the “free” market, by partial massive state interventions, even that the idea was that this would be an exception of the rule. Finally all current members, including the chech republic and Poland signed the Lisbon treaty and the European Union made a new step ahead, if one likes it or not.
Besides all details of a “better functioning” and operability of a larger Europe, the question stays to what the vison of the EU will lead in the future, and what the new consequences will be of a Europe that is not just an economical construction, but influences more and more the daily of its populations and is a global player in economic and political affairs. We heard in the speech of Durão Barroso, that there are “values”, unfortunately not debated on a large scale with the population of Europe, of the EU that the treaty represents, but that doesn´t depend on this or any other treaty, but on political will and engagement, and on the contrary of Durão Barroso, I would say it not only depends on the leaders of the nations that the EU confederates and their mutual help, but is based on the people of Europe: peace, cosmopolitism, free circulation, equilibrium of powers, social responsibility and economic wealth for the people and the responsibility of the environment and the rest of the world is not a question of leadership, but of implanting the vision of Europe in each of its habitants.

I will take this photo as a point of orientation. You are here!
For me thinking about Europe from this point on, is to think about how the vision to a large and open horizon, the discovery of new forms of cooperation and co- responsibility will influence the life of my son, and how he and millions of others will make this vision their daily life. Am I prepared to think about peacekeeping and sending my son to missions like that of Afganistan? The immediate answer is of course no. But can I deny, that the security issue, the debate of a EU military or the creation of a EU police force, could be ignored? Or said the other way, can the EU stay with the ideal of peace just in their own borders and be dependent on the US/Nato as commander in chief, with all the side effects we know from the war on terror, that still we have to deal with? The EU is not prepared on the other hand to deal with war at this right moment, nor is the EU prepared that a EU member state would enter into war with another country, or aspires to break the borders of another country. And what about the issue of Kosovo? These issues are largely neglected in debate about the status of new members and old one´s too. Spain could never accept Kosovo as a “independent” country, as it fears the same happening within its own borders. What about Belgium and its separation in two parts? Does a double Belgium state necessarily be a member of the EU? What is the EU position in this question?

The german soldiers according the Germany´s fundamental law are not allowed to be involved in war action if not this represents a defense of germany, but this fundamental law is emptied by the participations in the recent NATO actions, from the bombardment of Belgrade onwards to the actual involvement in Afghanistan. No official in Berlin can call war “war” at the moment., but only the new opposition parte “The Left” is clear on this point, to see the german involvement in Afghanistan as illegal according to their own law. Still retreat also has to be well organized.

Do I think that the EU should understand their values as universal (and imperial) in a Kantian perspective?
I think that the ideas of enlightenment can never be forced upon anyone, as Kant himself declared it must surge from own insight, and has in analogy to grow within the countries in need of more justice, less violence, more constructive orders of giving more people the opportunity of a better life, and how can the EU help in this?

We, the citizians of the world

"Cosmos (world) in cosmopolitan originally meant simply “order” or “adornment”
—as in cosmetics—and was only later extended metaphorically to refer to “the
world.” Cosmetics preceded totality." (Robbins 1992, “Comparative Cosmopolitanisms”, Social Text 31/32, p.176)

Should the EU spread their values to the rest of the world, and how? I have doubts that the EU has clearly and explicit values, if not still cosmetic one´s that implicy a quest for cosmopolitical action. But these values and ideals have to be debated more openly. How these values are practicable and apt to stabilize world peace and make responsibility grow and distribute wealth in a just form beyond EU borders is a big task of the future. The idea of cosmopolitism to be not just a man or woman from Athens, nor from Greece but to be a citizen of the world, is a beautiful ideal, but to make this real means that the EU is not just responsible for its own people and has to fight social and economic injustice, as well as it has to creatively deal with migration take responsibility for poorer parts of the world. The EU funding is for all these issues not enough, but political will to invest in Europe at large scale is still very low. This for sure is a difficult task to imply people more into the tasks the EU has to manage, Brussels is still much too far away from the peoples life’s. Nobody on my 500 something facebook friendlist posted anything on the Lisbon treaty, the people I talked to today would not, if not I would force them to do so to comment on the EU treaty- "what?", and even a parlamentarian from the European left today posted that he almost forgot about the Lisbon treaty as he was too full of work. Bad news for Europe! Because it is lacking vision! People are bored of the cosmetical EU and this has to change, because soon the diplomatic way of avoiding almost any conflict will not work out any more. It is good to have good diplomacy, but it is not enough.

I would even think of a EU tax, that entirely could be invested inside each of the contributing countries and where EU projects could be developed on the most basic local levels, especially in terms of cultural and social engagement. How about a tax system in which people decide at least a 10% on where they want to see their money invested in their state? Of course tha EU is not just about money, even though we still have to be convinced by this, nor can it be a wealthy bastion or a golden cage of Europe with a “Lisbon wall” around its borders. And still the concretion of how to deal with migration und multiplicities of cultures, languages and convictions and ways of life is a more complex field, than talking and implanting measures of “integration”, as integration again supposes a common grounds of values, and argues from an ontological point of view in knowing the values we talk about: I still want to know what are these values!
It is not easy to understand how the historical development of rights and freedoms– say of the religious freedom, that had to be fought out in more than just one 30 year war and long term processes of saecularisation and the more or less takeover of scientific models of explanations of the world against religious world views can mutually survive and to make people live together without violence, or thinking that convictions can be forced by power, even if this seems much more practicable and simple.

The necessity of a new role of the US in a new world order. From imperal to cooperative cosmopolitiscm?

"Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially Security Council membership. That process needs to be initiated by the U.S., but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of Bretton Woods institutions, dominated by countries no longer dominant economically. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system to ensure that they will be active supporters.
The system cannot survive in its present form, and the U.S. has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The U.S. is still in a position to lead the world, but without farsighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush's administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby re-establishing American leadership in an acceptable form.
The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix.
We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did. In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality." George Soros, in: The Japanese Times, 8th of November 2009
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20091108a1.html

On the 1st of December 2009 also Barak Obama, the president of the United States made public his plan of sending almost 30000 troops to Afghanistan. And the double date of the 1st of December 2009 is of course no coincidence, as the still world leading nation at the moment is facing the necessity of a new world order with China, Russia, India, Iran, Brazil, and the EU and is depending on real cooperation like never in their history to stand for a world that officially wants to submit their executive powers to values of cosmopolitism, freedom, justice and equal rights of others, despite we all know that diplomatically the fight of power and interests are almost everywhere fought out behind the scenes of smiling politicians, International politics cannot evolve by cosmetic diplomatic smiles, Barak Obama, included. And the surging new “other players” might not want the predominance of a unilateral world power anymore. This means taking up the risk of a more complex but more multilateral world, and it is not clear what kind of values we have to assume as universal to act upon and which we should´t presume as to be universal as different cultures may live in differnet historical time-zones, and clocks may be ticking differently in different parts of the world. This is time of big transformations, dangerous as it is- especially if the US doesn't assume the necessity of a new world order, in which the US is more dependent on real partnership and sharing of interests, challenging as it has to be, and in need for more real engagement and more profound and open debate, that doesn´t avoid conflicts, nor is stuck in political correct ideals - one of the reason why left parties since some time constantly loose in national and EU parliamentary elections- but acts pragmatically and reflects well the consequances of its actions.
It is not enough anymore to simply critize the EU as too mercantilistic- even that a bigger critical mass in the EU is still very urgent. The EU is a fact that should be brought further in its workings on a vision of Europe, that participates more actively than in the past in the construction of and cooperation in a new world order, that is real, multilateral, conflictious and courageous. Courage to think with your own head, to observe with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart, and to act with your own hands. Courage is what I see in the vision of my son, and I know that it will not be easy to act, to feel and to think with that vision, as it needs many more people to do so.

Alexander Gerner
Lisbon 2nd of December 2009

Portuguese:

Visões da Europa

Escrito por Alexander Gerner

Notas a 1 de Dezembro de 2009 (activação do Tratado de Lisboa)

Por Alexander Gerner

Esta é uma foto tirada em Portugal um dia antes do Tratado de Lisboa da União Europeia (UE) ter entrado em vigor, no dia 1 de Dezembro de 2009. É uma foto do meu filho no telhado de uma casa sobre rochas, olhando para o mar. Na verdade, ele está na costa Oeste do Oceano Atlântico em direcção à Cúpula das Américas, mas podia estar também à procura do Sul (África), do Leste (Rússia, Índia, China) ou do Norte. Ele é meio português e meio alemão, e o seu pai seja também, do coração, um alemão com raízes culturais no Leste, raízes dos alemães que estavam a pagar o seu preço quando "acolheram" a "anexação"/ocupação da Checoslováquia pelos nazis Partido Nazista da Alemanha; alemães dos Sudetas que foram expulsos depois da guerra. Até algumas semanas atrás as consequências da II Guerra Mundial e o medo historicamente fundamentado de uma Alemanha forte estavam sobre a mesa do referido tratado.

Recentemente comemorámos os 20 anos da queda do Muro de Berlim. Desde então vimos o sistema financeiro a ser sustentado por intervenções coordenadas a nível comunitário, nacional e internacional. Vimos governos conservadores terem acções contrárias aos seus princípios ideológicos de "mercado livre", vimos intervenções estatais parciais maciças – mesmo que a ideia fosse tratar-se de uma excepção à regra. No fim, todos os actuais membros da UE, incluindo a República Checa e a Polónia, assinaram o Tratado de Lisboa e a União deu um novo passo em frente, gostemos ou não disto.

Além de todos os detalhes de um “melhor funcionamento” e “operabilidade” de uma Europa alargada, entrada em funcionamento de uma Europa maior, a questão permanece sobre que visão é que a UE tem do futuro, que consequências trará para além da construção econômica e como influenciará o quotidiano da sua populações, para além de permanecer como um jogador global em assuntos económicos e políticos. Ouvimos no discurso de Durão Barroso que existem "valores" – infelizmente não debatidos em grande escala com a população da Europa – da União Europeia que o Tratado representa. Porém, isso não depende deste ou de qualquer outro tratado, mas da vontade política e empenho, e, ao contrário de Durão Barroso, eu diria que não depende apenas dos líderes das nações que a UE e da sua ajuda mútua, mas também dos povos da Europa. A paz, o cosmopolitismo, a circulação livre, o equilíbrio de poderes, a responsabilidade social e de riqueza económica para o povo e da responsabilidade do ambiente para com o resto do mundo não é uma questão de liderança. É uma questão de implantar a visão da Europa em cada um dos seus habitantes.

Aproveito esta foto como um ponto de orientação. Você está aqui!

Para mim, pensar sobre a Europa a partir deste ponto é pensar sobre como a visão de um horizonte amplo e aberto e a descoberta de novas formas de cooperação e co-responsabilidade irá influenciar a vida de meu filho, e como ele e milhões de outras pessoas vão utilizar esta visão na vida diária. Estarei preparado para pensar sobre a manutenção da paz e o envio do meu filho para missões como a do Afeganistão? A resposta imediata é: claro que não. Mas poderei negar que a questão da segurança, o debate militar da UE ou a criação de uma força policial devam ser ignoradas? Ou, dito de outro modo, a UE pode ficar com o seu ideal de paz apenas nas suas próprias fronteiras e ser dependente dos EUA/NATO como comandantes-em-chefe, com todos os efeitos secundários que sabemos da guerra contra o terror, com a qual ainda temos de lidar? A UE não está preparada para lidar com a guerra neste exacto momento, nem está preparada para que um estado membro entre em guerra com outro país ou aspire a romper as fronteiras de outro país. E quanto à questão do Kosovo? Estas questões são muito negligenciadas no debate sobre o estatuto dos novos membros e dos antigos também. Espanha nunca poderia aceitar o Kosovo como um "país independente", pois teme que o mesmo aconteça dentro de suas próprias fronteiras. E sobre a Bélgica e a sua separação em duas partes? Terá necessariamente um estado belga duplo ter de ser membro da UE? Qual é a posição da UE nesta questão?

Os soldados alemães, de acordo com a Lei Fundamental da Alemanha, não estão autorizados a participar em acções de guerra, a não ser que represente uma defesa da Alemanha, mas este direito fundamental é esvaziado pelas participações nas ações recentes da NATO, desde o bombardeamento de Belgrado à participação real no Afeganistão. Nenhum funcionário em Berlim pode chamar neste momento chmara “guerra” à guerra. Apenas parte da nova oposição – Die Linke – é clara sobre este ponto ao ver a participação alemã no Afeganistão como ilegal de acordo com a sua própria lei. Porém, a retirada das tropas alemães tem de ser bem organizada.

Pensarei que a UE deve compreender os seus valores como universais (e imperiais) numa perspectiva kantiana? Creio que as ideias do Iluminismo nunca poderão ser impostas a ninguém, como o próprio Kant declarou. Têm que surgir de visão própria e crescerem analogamente nos países que necessitam de mais justiça, de menos violência, de mais construção de forma a dar às pessoas a oportunidade de uma vida melhor. Como poderá a UE ajudar neste processo?

Nós, cidadãos do mundo

"Cosmos (world) in cosmopolitan originally meant simply “order” or “adornment”

—as in cosmetics—and was only later extended metaphorically to refer to “the

world.” Cosmetics preceded totality." (Robbins 1992, “Comparative Cosmopolitanisms”, Social Text 31/32, p.176)

Deve a UE espalhar seus valores ao resto do mundo? E como? Tenho dúvidas de que a UE tenha valores claros e explícitos, se não mesmo valores cosméticos que impliquem uma busca por acção cosmopolita. Mas estes valores e ideais têm de ser debatidos de forma mais aberta. Como esses valores devem ser aplicados na prática, aptos para estabilizar a paz no mundo fazer crescer a responsabilidade e distribuir a riqueza de uma forma um pouco além das fronteiras da UE é uma grande tarefa do futuro.

A ideia de o cosmopolitismo ser não apenas um homem ou uma mulher de Atenas, nem da Grécia, mas ser um cidadão do mundo, é um belo ideal, mas para torná-lo real significa que a UE não pode ser apenas responsável pelo seu próprio povo: tem que lutar contra a injustiça social e económica, assim como tem de lidar criativamente com a imigração e assumir responsabilidades perante as partes mais pobres do mundo. O financiamento da UE para todos estes problemas não é suficiente. A vontade política para investir na Europa em grande escala ainda é muito baixa. Esta com certeza é uma tarefa difícil e implica haver mais pessoas nas tarefas que a UE tem de gerir. Bruxelas está ainda muito longe da vida de povos. Ninguém na minha lista de amigos no Facebook – cerca de 500 – postou fosse o que fosse sobre o Tratado de Lisboa. As pessoas com quem falei ou forcei para comentar sobre o Tratado da UE disseram "qual tratado?". E mesmo um parlamentar europeu publicou que quase se esqueceu do Tratado de Lisboa porque estava muito cheio de trabalho. Más notícias para a Europa! Porque é falta de visão! As pessoas estão fartas da UE cosmética e isso tem que mudar, porque em breve o caminho diplomático para evitar qualquer conflito praticamente deixará de funcionar. É bom ter uma boa diplomacia, mas não é suficiente.

Diria mesmo que um imposto europeu poderia servir para investir exclusivamente no interior de cada um dos países membros, onde projectos da UE possam ser desenvolvidos em níveis mais básicos, locais, especialmente em termos de participação cultural e social. Porque não um sistema fiscal em que as pessoas decidem, pelo menos, 10% sobre onde querem ver o seu dinheiro investido no seu estado? Claro que a UE não é apenas sobre o dinheiro, ainda que tenhamos de ser convencidos por isso, e nem pode ser um bastião rico ou uma gaiola de ouro com uma “parede Lisboa" em torno das suas fronteiras. A concretização de como lidar com a imigração e multiplicidades de culturas, línguas e as convicções e os modos de vida é um campo ainda mais complexo do que falar de implantação de medidas de "integração". A integração novamente supõe uma base comum de valores e deve ser argumentada a partir de um ponto de vista ontológico para se saber dos valores de que se falam. Eu ainda quero saber quais são esses valores!
Não é fácil compreender como a evolução histórica dos direitos e da liberdade – diga-se, da liberdade religiosa –tinha de ser travada em mais do que apenas uma guerra de 30 anos. Os processos de longo prazo de secularização e a relativa aquisição de modelos científicos de explicações do mundo contra as visões de mundo mutuamente religiosas podem sobreviver e fazer com que as pessoas vivam juntas, sem violência. Não se pode pensar que a condenação seja forçada pelo poder, mesmo que pareça muito mais viável e simples.

A necessidade de um novo papel dos EUA numa nova ordem mundial.

De imperialismo cosmopolita a cooperativismo cosmopolita?

"Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially Security Council membership. That process needs to be initiated by the U.S., but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of Bretton Woods institutions, dominated by countries no longer dominant economically. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system to ensure that they will be active supporters.

The system cannot survive in its present form, and the U.S. has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The U.S. is still in a position to lead the world, but without farsighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush's administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby re-establishing American leadership in an acceptable form.

The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix.

We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did. In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality."

George Soros, The Japan Times japonês, 8 de Novembro de 2009 (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20091108a1.html)

No dia 1 de Dezembro de 2009 também Barak Obama tornou público o seu plano de enviar quase 30 mil soldados para o Afeganistão. E a dupla data do 1 de Dezembro de 2009 não o é naturalmente por acaso, porque a nação que ainda continua a liderar o mundo neste momento está virada para a necessidade de uma nova ordem mundial com a China, Rússia, Índia, Irão, Brasil e UE. Depende de uma verdadeira cooperação como nunca na sua história para representar um mundo a que quer apresentar oficialmente os seus poderes executivos de valores de cosmopolitismo, liberdade, justiça e igualdade de direitos, apesar de todos sabermos que diplomaticamente a luta de poder e interesses é quase toda travada nos bastidores políticos sorridentes. A política internacional não pode evoluir com sorrisos diplomáticos cosméticos, Barak Obama incluído. O surgimento de "outros jogadores" não quer mais a predominância de uma potência mundial unilateral. Isto significa assumir o risco de um mundo mais complexo, mas mais multilateral, e não está claro que tipo de valores que temos de assumir como universal para agir. Não deveriam querer ser universais. Culturas diferentes podem viver em tempos históricos diferentes e os relógios podem estar batendo de forma diferente em diferentes partes do mundo. Esta é a época de grandes transformações. Será perigoso se os EUA não assumirem a necessidade de uma nova ordem mundial na qual estejam mais dependentes de uma verdadeira parceria e partilha de interesses desafiante e na necessidade de um engajamento mais real e mais profundo de e debate aberto que não evite conflitos e nem fique refém da política correcta de ideais – uma das razões pelas quais os partidos de esquerda estão desde há algum tempo constantemente perdidos na legislação nacional e na da EU, nas eleições parlamentares. É preciso agir pragmaticamente e reflectir bem as consequências das acções.
Já não é simplesmente suficiente criticar a UE como demasiado mercantilista, mesmo sendo urgente uma maior massa crítica. A UE é um facto que devia ir mais longe nos seus trabalhos sobre uma visão da Europa e participar mais activamente do que no passado na construção e na cooperação de uma nova ordem mundial, que é real, multilateral, conflituosa e corajosa. Coragem de pensar com sua própria cabeça, para observar com seus próprios olhos, sentir com o seu próprio coração e agir com as próprias mãos. Coragem é o que eu vejo na visão do meu filho, e eu sei que não será fácil de agir, de sentir e de pensar com essa visão, uma vez que necessita muitas mais pessoas a fazê-lo.

Alexander Gerner, dia 2 de Decembro 2009

Jacarandá_ platform of Arts, Sciences & Politics

Diagrammatic Thinking

Alexander Gerner

Introduction

I

II

III

Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street

Slavoj Žižek RED INK

(Occupy Wall Street speech transcript)

Q&A

Rehearsing for after this autumn: some declared the 15th of October 2011 a peaceful world revolution

>Thresholding< Sérgio Costa Galeria Pedro Serrenho Lisboa Portugal 12/2/2011 - 2/04/2011

Visita guiada no jardim do´aqui e agora´

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Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis

Olga Pombo, Alexander Gerner (Eds.). Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis. (=Logic and Cognitive Systems,Studies in Logic 24) London, College Publications.

new insight in HIV antbodies may prevent 90% of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells

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No Future triggers violence: Might Not Be A Tomorrow

Mr Pink: Did you kill anybody?

MR White: Just a view cops

Mr Pink: No real people?

Mr White: Uh-Uh, just Cops.

Might not be a tomorrow: Youth anticipate early death

Robot Ethics -from work partner to bed partner?

No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

Mind, Brain & Consciousness Seminar Jan 14-15th 2010 India

Mind, Brain and Consciousness

The future is...

Light from the wallpaper: forget the light bulb get the wallpaper !

Bridging the natural and synthetic world (I) : Red blood cell-mimicking synthetic biomaterial particles

Climate change catastrophe took just months (and could take just months)

Tool Use in Invertebrates (Octopus)

Vision of Europe. Notes on the 1st of December 2009 (The activation of the Lisbon Treaty)