Saturday, May 30, 2009

A shift

There has come apparent recently a certain and dire necessity for immediate action in moving towards energy efficiency and environmental awareness. For those who know, considering the prospect of a peak oil induced cataclysm most undoubtedly evokes urgency that refuses to be quashed. Most unfortunately, if not unsurprising, is that the entire issue has been sugarcoated by the unknown fundamental forces of information dissemination. And such a description is apt, as the instead phrased issue as one of global warming is a consequence maybe not lacking in capacity to devastate, but certainly unequivocally void of the sense of extreme urgency of its counterpart. Personally I don't find this sugarcoating in any way surprising given the utterly failed state of that media delivered in technicolor to masses of unwitting bystanders that passes as modern journalism. It surprises me every time I see Wolf Blitzer or Larry King, just the same with Bill O'Reily, that they aren't wearing big red noses that squeak. How can anyone expect to be informed when the news is irrelevant and somehow massively uninformed? And it is depressing on a spiritual level to know that the popular misinformed have been largely corralled into falling for cheap gimmicks, behaving antagonistically to our own cause by being tricked into thinking it is our cause (oh, it's so green, it's all natural, a hybrid), a cut and dry case of being bamboozled by that force that wants to take our money. This gives rise to, in particular for today, the idea that our news is interpreted as sugar coated because it lacks any and all science, instead giving the impression that they know what they're talking about by using jargon-turned-buzzwords. Strange, this lack of science, given that it is such a particularly scientific problem. I can tell you, as a preview, that the energy situation is pretty rough. But at the same time, every so often there comes somebody who really seems to know what they're talking about, who has some remarkably keen insight and a lot of pretty good things to say, things good to hear. Even better, his name is Amory Lovins! Notice that this was filmed in 2005, it seems to me that if Big Auto were listening to this guy whole heartedly back then their situation might be at least a little bit better now.





PS, the new Prius's solar panel will maybe, after a full sunny day, run your headlights for an hour, maybe. After watching that video you may realize this as self evident, but putting two engines in a car is a stupendously poor step forward. While I don't like the continuation of fossil fuel nor the suggestion of bio-fuel or wind turbines, none of that really matters, because he's run the numbers and it is at least a viable solution, one that we might be able to imagine easier than other of the more radical shifts proposed.

Update: I took a quick glance at the Prius article on wikipedia and it turns out that the new solar panel can't even run the headlights. All the extra weight and expense of the large panel is done so that a small fan can circulate air while the car is off, which is the ONLY thing it can do. I implore anyone who reads this: please, don't purchase/sell an image of environmental friendliness, work for the real thing. It's really not that difficult.

Friday, May 22, 2009

visual expressions of the inexpressible

These paintings (roughly in reverse chronology) are conceived as a part of an ongoing project, the root problem, from which this place's ideas and name arise. They are done in effort to communicate the essence alternatively, perhaps more effectively as if by some smaller infinity, than those attempts prior. Regrettably these photographs entirely fail to capture the fullness of these paintings, particularly in terms of color accuracy, texture, and accordingly the overall movement of each piece. This is a notable deficiency because most have layers of pigmentation obfuscated entirely by progressive layers, but which remain on the edge of perception as a texture incongruous with the foremost. Likewise, the capture renders the colors a perceptible degree more demur and indistinct, though such is hard to believe for a few, and this deficiency is one of particular detriment as there is often a vastness of variably distinct vibrancy.

I must make a note on method, essential for the link between the thoughts prior and these that follow: these are not abstractions. I do not know what is contained upon or expressed by each, nor have I ever thought that any less than innumerable interpretations were satisfactory. Indeed, this is exactly the effect I am for, that is to visualize the enigma, the root problem, in a way that the previous explication can be seen as a poor attempt to approximate. As procedure, I expend all mental effort on not painting anything particular, to divorce myself as much as possible from the motions that produce the final product. As a consequence then, I often feel unjustified in claiming them as my own; instead, I think of them as products of reality expressed through my temporal vehicle. With that perspective, even if one were to consider the product as one produced by my subconscious, this one must then acknowledge that the subconscious is a product of this existence; one not possibly produced, ultimately, by anything other than the cosmos/existence/reality/strange timespace gyre in which we obliviously perne. The whole breadth of my rumination concerning these far exceeds the capability of a single post, and on the whole I hate to constrain the magnitude of conceptualization of these by others with my own. So:












The rest, as follows, are photographs which I think lend themselves to the exposition of the root problem, though it is of course in any and every photograph that could or couldn't be taken, just the same as those above.











I am now, more able than ever before to understand this place; this specific understanding, no less essential, far more than essential, that which fundamentally opposes the likewise essential anti-understanding understanding of it, it being it of course. Most days maybe a butterfly's wing wind flapped, but this May be instead the air which winged the butterfly to wind. My sincere thanks, Mr. Bynum.