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Paper for Thursday

Dalí’s surrealist activities and the model of scientific experimentation

Abstract (from author)

This paper aims to explore relationships between Salvador Dalí’s practices at the end of the 1920s and during the 1930s, and models of scientific experimentation. In 1928 Dalí took a growing interest in André Breton’s automatism and elaborated his first conception of surrealism which was based on the model of the scientific observation of nature. Dalí’s writings of this period mimicked protocols of botanic or entomological experiments and reformulated in an original way Breton’s surrealist project: they simulated the conditions and practices of scientific observations of nature. Paradoxically, this documentaristic and hyperobjective attitude led to a hyper-subjective and surrealistic description of reality: objects were taken out of their context, they were broken up and no longer recognisable. When Dalí officially entered Breton’s group and conceived the paranoiac-critical method, he focused his attention on another scientific model: Albert Einstein’s notion of space-time. Dalí appropriated a concept which defined the inextricable relationship between space-time and the object and which became, in his view, the mental model of the interaction between interiority and exteriority, invisible and visible, subjectivity and objectivity. Significantly, the Catalan artist almost rewrote one of Einstein’s own papers, by pointing out the active dimension of Einstein’s space-time and by conferring new meanings on his notion of the space-time curve. I will track down the migration of this concept from physics to Dalí’s surrealist vision by considering its importance in writings where the artist uses his method to interpret the most varied phenomena, from the myth of Narcissus, to English pre-Raphaelitism and the
architecture of Antoni Gaudí.

Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918 (excerpt)

This is the essay I talked about today. It has refreshingly concise descriptions of cubism and futurism, as well as subjectivity in art. The whole manifesto is available here.

Cubism was born out of a simple manner of looking at objects: Cezanne painted a cup twenty centimetres lower than his eyes, the cubists look at it from above, others complicate its appearance by cutting a vertical section through it and soberly placing it to one side. (I'm not forgetting the creators, nor the seminal reasons of unformed matter that they rendered definitive.) The futurist sees the same cup in movement, a succession of objects side by side, mischievously embellished by a few guide-lines. This doesn't stop the canvas being either a good or a bad painting destined to form an investment for intellectual capital. The new painter creates a world whose elements are also its means, a sober, definitive, irrefutable work. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, rocks, or locomotive structures capable of being spun in all directions by the limpid wind of the momentary sensation...

What constitutes Proof?

We worked very hard during the first few weeks of this semester to address this question. I listen to the radio, watch television, and hear people chatting in truck stops and dimly lit roadside diners often enough to know that people accept all sorts of claims with no proof whatsoever. Unfortunately, this indicates to me that an alarmingly large portion of our world a) have no idea what it means for something to be proven (or even supported), or b) don't care if things are demonstrably true or not Does repeating a claim represent proof? Of course not. What about my particular belief that a claim is true? Nope.

Without some reproducible, falsifiable framework for investigating reality, we are basically left with about 50% "I never thought about whether or not that was true" and 50% "I think it's true because I think it's true."

It's this notion of a "framework of inquiry" that we have been interrogating ruthlessly since august.

Conspiracy Theory Recursion

Something seems wrong about the way people instinctively make sense of the world. There seems to be a universal need in humanity for novel experience, for there always to be another layer behind what we think the world is. Perhaps some selective pressure in our evolutionary history predisposes to such thinking, or it is an expectation in light of the seemingly limitless progress of science...there we are thinking of deeper explanations. There is also bias in the way people come to know ideas, for much of what influences whether you buy an argument is determined by the person that expresses it. As written by Dostoyevsky in The Possessed, “you cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts!”

You didn't really think this post was about flaws in human perception, did you? You aren't that naïve. This post is about David Icke. He would have you believe his fall from British national spokesman of the green party to arch-alien-crackpot-conspiracist was the result of lots of drugs or a brain tumor that won't close the deal. You wouldn't fall for that one, would you?

Ostensibly Icke had nothing to gain by his supposed revalation. His meager sales in books will not make up for his salary at the BBC or restore his tattered reputation. If shapeshifting reptiles actually do exist, they now know they can breed within the human population without any threat of people finding out, for Icke's conspiracy theories are shamgasms of froth and fear mongering. They are caricature. You could even call it a smokescreen.

David Icke is an alien. The same flesh eating, shape shifting reptile from the constellation Draco that he writes about. Any reports of his scaly plans will be laughed off by the unwitting public, the herd he preys on. Sheeple.

Let the Physicist Beware

One of the classic and apparently still-popular conspiracy theories is that of a flat Earth. Notwithstanding the grandiose elements of myth and legend that are so often highlighted by the existence of a planar disc-shaped world (stories ranging from medieval sea tales to Tolkien's epic The Silmarillion), the modern proponents of a flat earth have quite a number of physical phenomena to account for.

A "convincing" flat earth model would necessitate a complete restructuring of how we view the universe, involving everything from a 32-mile-diameter sun to a universe-wide upwards acceleration at 9.8 m/s/s to a Wall of Ice [sic] guarded by the Government in an attempt to keep its Conspiracy under wraps.

More (mis?)information than you could ever want on the topic can be found at The Flat Earth Society Forum.

But who's to say the Earth isn't really shaped like a 21-dimension pentagonal orthoborotunda?

Conspiracy Theories, Part 1

Conspiracy Theories Part One: "What the Government/Nasa/A Baffling Network of Unlikely Cohorts United only in their Compulsive Desire to Mislead You Don't Want You to Know"

Conspiracy theories are marvelous things. By marvelous, I mean entertaining, bizarre, and often devoid of any link to what we in the Biz call reality. Unconstrained by things like evidence, logic, or reason, they are able to grow in spite of all contrary data. In a perfect world, a conspiracy theory's lifespan would be brief and brutal.

Step 1) Hypothesis is presented
The only reason the government refuses to address the shadow people dilemma is that our government ARE shadow people!

Step 2) Data is checked
Is there even a shadow person dilemma? No. Wait, what is a shadow person? Are you just making things up?

Step 3) Hypothesis terminated with extreme prejudice.

Sadly, in the real world, with its pundits, cable news stations, late night radio hosts and an internet absolutely bursting with literally anything anyone wants to say about anything, this sort of claim can grow exponentially as time passes. Every news cycle represents another chance to fill 30 seconds of empty air time with a passing mention of "the shadow person agenda"or the "neocon denial of a shadow revolution." This in no way represents proof or data, but conspiracy theories don't need those to survive--they only need continued exposure.

The proponents of conspiracy theories often use what appear to be evidence-based methods to establish their points. In class, we have been covering various forms of fallacious argument. Fallacies are the food, water, and sunlight of conspiracy theories.

(to be continued)