Fish / birds / quantum dot evolution

151017 elovution in a qdot

There are things we get to
see as scientists/
observers.
and these things we
don’t get to see
the undescribeable

I hope that this therefore
Is what this painting
Is describing
The inherent order
And energetics of things
Making events /
Moments likely
And allowing them
To transition one
Into another

The activity in this painting
Is inspired by events
In a quantum
Dot.

Where we
Are trying to
Describe interaction
Of entities that withhold
Much of their information
Like Schrodingers Bird
We are not allowed
Into the Quantum Dot
Or Box.

In this box.. fish and birds
Are transitioning
into each other
sometimes causing energy shifts
sometimes appearing
and disappearing / formed
by
collapsed by
the energy clouds that
are at once the wombs
of creation
also the cauldron of
of entropy’s inexorable
walk

Uncertainty and all its minions (comment on my painting: Imperial Hotel Mt. Victoria)

While painting on the street.. I am just painting.. putting paint down on the canvas.. like a recent cold morning on the highest part of the blue mountains.. Mount Victoria.. I was painting the Imperial hotel at 6am.. afterwards I looked at the painting and I could see all the things that are on my mind about how we live and who we might be.. and all the things I think about that give this world its energy and make it unbounded.. I think about the things that excite me.. ideas about resolution and its counterpart… incompleteness.. I think about the fact that we love things to get resolved but resolution is an impossibility a constantly yearned after place – eden… yearning is itself.. a creative force.. as things ride that ever diminishing asymptotic wave to completeness.. but we never get to that place.. death is the closest we can come..

I also see in my painting the struggle between order and chaos.. we like order… it is safe for us.. chaos suggests death.. life is the fine balancing act between order – indifferent death.. and chaos – wild death on the other side.. it is interesting that life exists on a narrow plane between the these two forms of death… this plays out in the painting where things are vacillating between holding onto a form / structure.. or giving into an unresolved sense of form.. but not holding on to that idea too tightly.. not giving in to the safety of death…

in the painting.. as in life the other great force is a synthetic force.. and this is pitted against an entropic destructive force… both are necessary for the painting… things are never created cleanly there is always destruction in the midst of creation you see this in cellular systems.. for structures to emerge in complex organisms cells need to die – usually in a controlled way to yield a functional form..

The phenomenon that governs these forces is Uncertainty.. no structures are certain… the edges of things don’t exist in any real way.. Cezanne seemed to discover that in his paintings.. when you get up close to one.. you get a sense that all the colours or possibilities are somehow contained in the finite space held by the form.. we are fooled into a sense of certainty by the way our brains interpret the data presented to them by our senses… in this case the eye… but in truth things are not as they seem and when I feel a painting has worked it is usually because it has given me some insight into the possibilities about how things really are or might be.. and I find that exhilarating..

Image

Treatise on Lined paper and Thomas Moore and something I once heard on the radio about aboriginal culture

Image

Western culture sees art as some

separate thing from life..

i.e. we separate ourselves

into the seclusion of the

studio or the garret if you

are a poet and you make

art ABOUT life

but art tries to BE  life with

my Lined paper

as I move through the

world with its shopping

lists I want art to fall

onto that page as I

move

the lined paper is

what I move around

with

it does not demand a

separation from the

now

it is the now

I don’t have to do studies

on it then move to the

unlined paper; to the

studio

the art is the life is the

lined paper

I heard on the radio once

that aboriginal culture

could not quite understand

why we separate music

from life

people play music while

moving about their life

‘they do not formally

Learn a  musical instrument

and Thomas Moore said:

“about spirituality, art

and the everyday sacred…

in Care of the Soul

‘… and thus in a small but significant way can make the everyday sacred.  This kind of spirituality, so ordinary and close to home, is especially nourishing to the soul.  Without this lowly incorporation of the sacred into life, religion can become so far removed from the human situation as to be irrelevant. “

quote from Thomas Moore

I am trying to get more reading done.. so I now sometimes pick a book off the shelf and  read from anywhere in the middle of the book.. I figure books are like rivers anyway.. to know the whole river is a big job.. find the source; where it meets the sea.. and all the bits in between.. but you can also jump in the middle somewhere.. and soon you will have a sense of the character of that particular river.. after all something is carried through.. but I stray.. this book.. Thomas Moore’s Care of the soul.. I read this bit: ‘Do we need to understand all mysteries? We are used to hearing about the great revelations of science: the discovery of atoms, particles and DNA – and so quite naturally we think that mysteries are there to be solved.  The alternative seems strange, but at the same time it has its own appeal: use our intelligence and skill to preserve the mysteries.’ I think that is one of the reasons I moved away from an academic life.. I felt I had lost that sense of wonder for the world.. that had so viscerally got me into science when I was 13 years old.. paging through and looking at the images of bygone prehistoric eras in David Attenborough’s Life on Earth.. it was the mystery that engaged me.. it is a tricky one.. we are curious animals.. and want to solve the mysteries.. but.. how do we do that that without losing our deep sense of mystery and wonder.. which for me operates no less than another sense… 

Image

 

Bakri ‘Id Hyderabad

when I was in Hyderabad..

 in the middle of the festival of Barkri ‘Id..

a festival where the Muslims celebrate Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael..

but he doesn’t..

Allah intervenes and a goat is slaughtered
instead.. in Hyderabad..

there were goats everywhere

… 100 000 of them.. lining the street..

 seamlessly with people.. all over…

.. in/on laps just all over.. and it was

a beautiful visceral thing

humanity was seamless with the animal..

all aspects happened in front of your eyes..

the slaughter..

 the herding..

the boy leading

the goat.. sharing

a seat on an overloaded truck.. there was a goat…

not like here.. where the animals that serve us

for food.. don’t really exist

they are far away …

we see

them as neatly wrapped up things on supermarket shelves…

safely away

from our children.. we grow up

detached..

safe..

and it is not safe…

we need to know our animals again…

we are part them.. we are not

some separate thing .. …

and we need to share space and intimacy with them again..

so we can learn how to feel..

Image

© Copyright Sid Sledge Artist