Node Thinking

Node thinking is the visualization of the world as diagram, graph or bullet list. It is the physical manifestation and the shape of data, an act of self-fulfilling prophecy that presents itself as proof of itself. The popularity of the world as data and the packaging of the world as data belies a desire to believe that the world is and can be represented as a simple object. This diagrammatic gestalt, perhaps a defensive reaction to the over-abundance of information, choice, desire, frustration and satisfaction, represents the desire for mastery. Data filth becomes data flesh.

Node thinking is endemic because it is a powerful and useful paradigm – paradigm in the way Kuhn uses it: once acquired there is no turning back. In technological terms, data is grouped in parent and child elements. Groups of servers combine to become networks. Networks combine to create more networks. The problem with this model of information is that Node thinking rapidly becomes conflated with its own structure: desire and understanding are simplified to binary choice.

Nodes are attractive and repellent to me because they are the modern version of Barthes's Eiffel tower effect. Barthes believed that the reason the Eiffel tower was so popular was not because it was an engineering feat but because a person looking out over Paris felt they could master the city's complexity by mastering its layout. In gridded cities this desire is even more easily fulfilled. The illusion and desire to believe that we master the chaos that we have created, and from which many feel utterly alienated, is node thinking. The desperation and pathos is that we use the very technologies that created this abyss to try and solve it. This is where I insert my work.

Graphs, charts and data diagrams are the new rhetoric of rationalization. PowerPoint is the means of amplifying it. We care about data because it is our god of objectivity; it is the forces of chaos converted. Perhaps part of my curiosity about Node thinking is that it intersects with my long-standing interest in the Gnostic gospels. The Gnostics (2nd CE) believed the world was irrational, a mistake and salvation was the rationalization of it. There were lords of chaos and they represented heavens and death; androgyny was the figure for the divine because it resolved the difference between the sexes. My Node diagrams represent the interplay between structure (code) and the random (words, shapes, data) as a figure for chaos rationalized. Data is the Yaldaboath – the parent creator – reconciled with Sophia (wisdom) through the forces of life – the rationalization of the world as mistake. The hope for artists is to be the saprophytes – the fungus – of data, eating the data filth and creating new life there. To achieve the release from bitterness we must embrace the lords of chaos to combat defensive reductive patterning and rolling amnesia.


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Thus when the prime parent of chaos saw his son Sabaoth and the glory that he was in, and perceived that he was greatest of all the authorities of chaos, he envied him. And having become wrathful he engendered Death out of his death: and he was established over the sixth heaven, for Sabaoth had been snatched up from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was achieved. Then Death, being androgynous, mingled with his own nature and begot seven androgynous offspring. These are the names of the male ones: Jealousy, Wrath, Tears, Sighing, Suffering, Lamentation, Bitter Weeping. And these are the names of the female ones: Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, Quarrelsomeness. They had intercourse with one another, and each one begot seven, so that they amount to forty nine androgynous demons. Their names and their effects you will find in the "Book of Solomon". And in the presence of these, Zoe, who was with Sabaoth, created seven good androgynous forces. These are the names of the male ones: the Unenvious, the Blessed, the Joyful, the True, the Unbegrudging, the Beloved, the Trustworthy. Also, as regards the female ones, these are their names: Peace, Gladness, Rejoicing, Blessedness, Truth, Love, Faith. And from these there are many good and innocent spirits. Their influences and their effects you will find in the "Configurations of the Fate of Heaven That is beneath the Twelve".

From The Origin of the World, Nag Hammadi Libray


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Vertexlist

138 Bayard Street, between Graham and Manhattan
646-258-3792

Williamsburg / Greenpoint

Luke Murphy and John Parker
May 7 - June 1, 2005

Luke Murphy and John Parker
138 Bayard Street, between Graham and Manhattan
646-258-3792

Williamsburg / Greenpoint

May 7 - June 1, 2005
Opening: May 7, 7:00PM-10:00PM

An exhibition by digital artist Luke Murphy and sound artist/sculptor John Parker.

Murphy will present "Everything Made Pretty," a digital installation of
projected kaleidoscopes dynamically created out of internet images.

John Parker will contribute four sound sculptures made of pre-fabricated plastic elements, and a multimedia computer piece based on commercial mail print patterns.

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Interventions: Photographs/Projections
559 West 22nd Street
212-242-0035

Chelsea

May 25 - June 25, 2005
Opening: May 25, 6:00PM- 8:00PM

In the Project/Video Room. Score by Elizabeth Grajales and Billy Annaruma.

Above the Trendy, the Down & Out
559 West 22nd Street
212-242-0035

Chelsea

May 25 - June 25, 2005
Opening: May 25, 6:00PM- 8:00PM

What Sound Does A Color Make?
540 West 21st Street
718.222.3982

Chelsea

May 26 - July 16, 2005
Opening: May 25, 6:00PM- 9:00PM

Featuring:
Scott Arford
Jim Campbell
D-Fuse
Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) in collaboration with D-Fuse
Granular Synthesis (Kurt Hentschlager and Ulf Langheinrich)
Gary Hill
Thom Kubli
Fred Szymanski
Atau Tanaka
Steina & Woody Vasulka
Steina Vasulka
Stephen Vitiello
Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut

Curated by Kathleen Forde and organized by ICI, What Sound Does a Color Make? includes artists who likewise use technology to inspire a renewed consciousness of highly un-technological experiences: physicality, human cognition, and perception.

What Sound Does A Color Make?
540 West 21st Street
718.222.3982

Chelsea

May 26 - July 16, 2005
Opening: May 25, 6:00PM- 9:00PM

Featuring:
Scott Arford
Jim Campbell
D-Fuse
Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) in collaboration with D-Fuse
Granular Synthesis (Kurt Hentschlager and Ulf Langheinrich)
Gary Hill
Thom Kubli
Fred Szymanski
Atau Tanaka
Steina & Woody Vasulka
Steina Vasulka
Stephen Vitiello
Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut

Curated by Kathleen Forde and organized by ICI, What Sound Does a Color Make? includes artists who likewise use technology to inspire a renewed consc

What Sound Does A Color Make?
540 West 21st Street
718.222.3982

Chelsea

May 26 - July 16, 2005
Opening: May 25, 6:00PM- 9:00PM

Featuring:
Scott Arford
Jim Campbell
D-Fuse
Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) in collaboration with D-Fuse
Granular Synthesis (Kurt Hentschlager and Ulf Langheinrich)
Gary Hill
Thom Kubli
Fred Szymanski
Atau Tanaka
Steina & Woody Vasulka
Steina Vasulka
Stephen Vitiello
Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut

Curated by Kathleen Forde and organized by ICI, What Sound Does a Color Make? includes artists who likewise use technology to inspire a renewed consciousness of highly un-technological experiences: physicality, human cognition, and perception.

Artistic interest inspired by the phenomenon known as synesthesia, a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation evokes the sensation of another, can be traced as far back as the seventeenth century. For contemporary audiovisual artists, the possibilities inspired by this phenomenon have expanded with the advent of recent digital technologies that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer bits.

What Sound Does a Color Make? is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International, New York and curated by Kathleen Forde. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, bygrants from The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Institut fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; and by an in-kind donation from Philips Electronics North America.

The artists’ panel discussion is supported, in part, by a grant from the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and mediaThe Foundation.

      



 
   
 
>> sarah bowen gallery

     sarah bowen gallery features artists who create contemporary art in all mediums. The gallery is pleased to be part of the thriving Williamsburg art community.
   
 
 
>> upcoming exhibit
 
     May 20, 2005—June 17, 2005

Medium Rare:
Works on Paper  
 
Reception on Friday, May 20, 2005
7pm—9pm
 
[ learn more ]
  
  
>> gallery hours
 
     sarah bowen gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday,   12 – 6 pm and by appointment.
 
 
>> location
 
     The gallery is located at 210 North Sixth Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, 11211.
 
 
>> directions
 
     L Train to Bedford Avenue stop, take Driggs exit, walk one block south to Sixth Street, and then ½ block East.

The gallery is located between Driggs and Roebling on the right hand side.
 
 

     © sarah bowen gallery. new york, 2005

website designed by Tim Kau | Graphic Design
     

‘Boost in the Shell’
De Bond
21 May-31 July 2005

In 2005 the city of Bruges in Belgium stands again on the international art calendar with the important festival Corpus. The human body is a universal theme and the arts festival Corpus brings together the most recent artistic forms.

The Cultuurcentrum participates with the important exhibition of contemporary art ‘Boost in the Shell’ en the dance- and performance festival Body Stroke.
The last seven years the Cultuurcentrum organized a large number of renown exhibitions with artists such as Marcel Broodthaers, Wim Delvoye, Marina Abramovicz, Jacques Charlier, Jan Fabre, Joel-Peter Witkin, John Isaacs, Gregory Green, Santu Mofokeng and many others.

Recently we are relentlessly reminded of the fact that we are free, to do move, act and think. Apparently we are independent citizens, we have a freedom of speech, travel where we want to, we consume, buy what we want, etc..
But is this true ?
To what degree do we really control our mind and body ?  To what extent are we controlled ? Aren’t we forgetting all to easily the many forms of education, even conditioning which we have undergone for years ? What is the impact of influences of genetic or cultural origin, for e.g. publicity or the media,  on our behaviour, thinking, feeling, acting ?

For centuries the Cartesian split between mind and body, whereby the second was clearly subordinate to the first, was used.
But more and more specialists point now at the relative autonomy of our body to the mind. The body is not only a sort of interface between subject and society, it reacts independently from the mind to social and cultural impulses and pressures.
In ‘Boost in the Shell’ the human body is depicted as a canvas for this contemporary subject, but also as an evolving biological organism.

In this exhibition the curators Michel Dewilde and Jerome Jacobs tackle some of the  essential questions about human freedom on the one hand, and conditioning on the other through more than fifty works of art.
In a labyrintic exhibition structure they push the visitors to the limits of being a human in the 21st century.

‘Boost in the Shell’
Curators  : Michel Dewilde, Jerome Jacobs
Artists : see list enclosed (in progress)
Exhibition site : De Bond,
Address : Buiten de Smedepoort 1, 8000 Bruges
Dates : 21 May -31 July 2005.
open : Wednesday-Sunday : 10.00-17.00 hrs
Free entrance        Catalog : 8€
Websites : www.boostintheshell.be   www.cultuurcentrum.be & www.corpusbrugge05.be
Guided tours : on demand
Info : +.(32).50.44.30.40
Fax : +.(32).50.44.30.50






iousness of highly un-technological experiences: physicality, human cognition, and perception.

Artistic interest inspired by the phenomenon known as synesthesia, a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation evokes the sensation of another, can be traced as far back as the seventeenth century. For contemporary audiovisual artists, the possibilities inspired by this phenomenon have expanded with the advent of recent digital technologies that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer bits.

What Sound Does a Color Make? is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International, New York and curated by Kathleen Forde. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, bygrants from The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Institut fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; and by an in-kind donation from Philips Electronics North America.

The artists’ panel discussion is supported, in part, by a grant from the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and mediaThe Foundation.

Artistic interest inspired by the phenomenon known as synesthesia, a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation evokes the sensation of another, can be traced as far back as the seventeenth century. For contemporary audiovisual artists, the possibilities inspired by this phenomenon have expanded with the advent of recent digital technologies that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer bits.

What Sound Does a Color Make? is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International, New York and curated by Kathleen Forde. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, bygrants from The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Institut fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; and by an in-kind donation from Philips Electronics North America.

The artists’ panel discussion is supported, in part, by a grant from the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and mediaThe Foundation.