Monday, July 9, 2012

Notes on the Possibility of an Equation



Looking at Richard Hamilton's 1952 painting _d'Orientation_ this morning, (which I can't find a web picture of!)* I was struck with the idea for an equation for syntaxis.

Let $ = Syntaxis
Let Mp = Map
Let Ty = Territory

So then Syntaxis is $ = Mp / Ty, but for those perhaps more skilled at living, the equation can take on more bizarre forms, and as the territory is often informed by the map, and the map by the territory, all 3 terms are fluid, and are actually avatars of a single agency N, Creation.

Let's imagine an agent and draw an equation from his behavior.

A poet watches a small stream pile up leaves and debris behind a small stone barrier at a waterfall
until it gives way, then later leaves the home of his family to journey to Paris and begin a series of bizarre
episodes resulting in fame, fortune, disease, death, and travel, etc..

$(N=MpTy)= $^1, $^2, $^3, ...


meaning, the agent, noticing the echo between natures, takes a signal from the territory, gleans a feeling
of identification between his own agent, and the umwelt's, and transposes a feature, or gleans a model,
so that feeling, identification, and modelling become types of a conduitry existing between Map and Territory
which allow Action or Syntaxis. The Umwelt would probably be an N with a subscript like Nb for Brittany.


Poetry, or Art, or any of the reflective arts, or sciences for that matter, would then be a field of reflection which can be represented as both Map or Territory to another agency, but which are also, as part of the original agent's stream, a refractive index, or valenced inductive noise. More or less, all art, all creative output can be reduced to an array like this one, let's call it a blog-post. Here is one called "koronkowa robota natury," which features 'mem(e)bers' of the Bonnot gang among other things. 


Q: Does Syntaxis need a new name? Or is this just an art thing? 
A: Not sure.
Q: Aren't you really just talking about "Aboriginal Computationalism"?
A: What is computationalism?


Look here: Computational Theory of Mind. 


A computational theory of mind is a philosophical theory that the mind functions as a computer or symbol manipulator. Such theories have taken several forms, among which the most common is the theory that the mind computes input from the natural world to create outputs in the form of further mental or physical states. A computation is the process of taking input and following a step-by-step algorithm to get a specific output. The computational theory of mind claims that there are certain aspects of the mind that follow step by step processes to compute representations of the world.

Look at Duchamp's famous _Network of Stoppages_:


or this Computationalist Tea-Cozy after Wolfram's work:


Yesterday, listening to NPR, I heard about an AI project in which noise was used like a drug to cause a program to "hallucinate", thus creating a structuralist inflected form of instrumental creativity:

Stephen Thaler says he’s cleared that hurdle. His Creativity Machine is an artificial neural network that’s able to learn by itself. Thaler’s breakthrough is that he occasionally disrupts the Creativity Machine by introducing mathematical noise that trips up the system, forcing it to generate new solutions to problems. “And therein is where discovery takes place,” he explains. “It's not in the rote memories that we have committed to memory, it's in the generalization of all those memories into concepts and plans of action.”


Right there, I think is where we can slip in our furtive yawp (term), syntaxis. Syntaxis is a sort of computational transform operation, where generalizations project into multiple domains, syntaxis is praxis based on sign, and praxis as sign, or rather the unity of the cognotional elementalry.


And you might return to the question:
Q: Does Syntaxis need a new name? Or is this just an art thing? 


Richard Hamilton was, in the 1950's very interested in someone called James J. Gibson. This quote from wikipedia seemed especially nice:


I seem to be, to my surprise, a member of a large profession. There are some 20.000 psychologists in this country alone, nearly all of whom have become so in my adult lifetime. They are all prosperous. Most of them seem to be busily applying psychology to problems of life and personality. They seem to feel, many of them, that all we need to do is to consolidate our scientific gains. Their self-confidence astonishes me. For these gains seem to me puny, and scientific psychology seems to me ill-founded. At any time the whole psychological applecart might be upset. Let them beware!

According to David Mellor in the essay, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Modernity: Vision, Space, and the Social Body in Richard Hamilton, Gibson's conception of orientation (syntaxis proper) reveals exactly a cognotional elementalry:

Gibson's conception of human orientation made a deep impression on Hamilton, its summoning up the image of a species negotiating a dense envelope (see Umwelt, mine) of information - the profane, crowded, heteromorphic universe of Joyce - "the human habitat consists of millions of things to which a person can find their way".

So I think it is in this way, that we can give Art a concrete computationalist teleology as as refractive experiential index used for potential orientation modulations, or syntaxis fuel.

Art is the noise that fuels change, and Change is the noise that fuels art. Nature is the noise of changes.
Change is our eternal Umwelt.



Chang Es (Chang is):

From Persian چنگ, A traditional harp of central and southwest Asia, or çeng.
Or from the Mandarin (as an irronic array, or field of reflection):

伥: ghost of one devoured by tiger 倀: bewildered; rash, wildly 借: borrow; lend; make pretext of 娼: prostitute, harlot 昌: light of sun; good, proper 晿: 淐: 猖: mad, wild, reckless, unruly 琩: 菖: iris, sweet flag, calamus 裮: 錩: vessel 锠: 閶: gate of heaven; main gate of palace 闛: 阊: gate of heaven; main gate of a palace 鯧, 鲳: the silvery pomfret, Stromateoides argenteus 鼚: drumming

仧: 倕: 偿: repay, recompense; restitution 償: repay, recompense; restitution 兏: 嘗: taste; experience, experiment 嚐: taste 嫦: name of a moon goddess 尒: you, your 尚: still, yet; even; fairly, rather; a surname 尝: taste; experience, experiment 常: common, normal, frequent, regular 徜: walking and fro; lingering 瑺: 瓺: 甞: taste; experience, experiment 肠: intestines; emotions; sausage 脷: (Cantonese) tongue 腸: intestines; emotions; sausage 膓: intestines; emotions; sausage 苌, 萇: averrhora carambola; used as a surname 裳: clothes; skirt; beautiful 鋿: 鏛: to polish; iron rim on a wagon wheel 長: long; length; excel in; leader / master / chief 镸: long 长: long; length; to excel in; leader 鱨: codfish 鲿:

场: open space, field, market 場: open space, field, market 僘: 卸: lay down; retire from office 厰: factory, plant, workshop, mill 圱: 堩: 填: fill in, fill up; make good 廠: factory, plant, workshop, mill 惕: be cautious, careful, alert 懿: virtuous, admirable, esteemed 敞: roomy, spacious, open, broad 昶: a long day. bright. extended. clear 氅: overcoat; down feathers 淌: trickle; flow down; drip 鋹: sharp; a keen edge; sharp point 鷥: the egret 場: open space, field, market 塲: open space, field, market

倡: guide, leader; lead, introduce 唱: sing, chant, call; ditty, song 怅, 悵: disappointed, dissatisfied 昶: a long day. bright. extended. clear 暢: smoothly, freely, unrestrained 淌: trickle; flow down; drip 焻: breath 玙: 瑋: type of jade; rare, valuable 畅: smoothly, freely, unrestrained 畼: 誯: 韔: a wrapper or case for bow 鬯: sacrificial wine; unhindered

In Mapudungan,
chang is leg.

In Romani, knee.

Ah, the mosaic of Chang!

**

And then there was my own hickallectual yawp from my teen-age years. I used to say this all the time from like age 15-19:

CHANG-LANG!
which roughly meant, 

Onward! Thus! It is!
Do it! Right Now!
BE!


* my homage to Richard Hamilton's _d'orientation_... 

**I find it odd that this Chang harp looks to be made from a sort of letter L (as A)
whose upright is a volcanic gyre, and its transversal leg, a striatal iteration reflecting
the strings...

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Irrony Observes The Earthing.