Two parts

My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. (Letter to Ludwig Ficker of circa September-October 1919, tr. McGuinness and Furtmüller)

Time out. Drawing. Wittgenstein again.

The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (Wittgenstein, TLP: 6.52)

If there is cinematic poetry...

"Music articulates forms which language cannot set forth" - Susanne Langer (from G. L. Hagberg Art as Language. Wittgenstein, Meaning and Aesthetic Theory)

"Music articulates forms which language cannot set forth" - Susanne Langer (from G. L. Hagberg Art as Language. Wittgenstein, Meaning and Aesthetic Theory)

If there is cinematic poetry, this must be it. Do watch it to the end, if you have not seen it before. And get yourself a copy of the film - Spirited Away.

This must be the most beautiful scene from any film. Chihiro boards this train. It's a spirits' train - she is in the spirit land, trying to rescue her parents. The train only runs one way. It travels through the vast spaces of water. The music is sublime. So atmospheric.
I have travelled once on the slow train in winter across Lithuania. And this is how it felt. The land was vast and white; the stops seemed all in the middle of nowhere; the people were silent, pensative and carried baskets and old cases. I could almost hear that music!






PS. Apparently the magnificent soundtrack to this magnificent film is by Joe Hisaishi - one more name to add to my favorite Japanese artists, alongside Araki Takako, Yohei Nishimura and - of course - Hayao Miyazaki.

Drawing: the world is independent of my will.

"The world is independent of my will" (TLP, 6.373)

I had this A3 drawing ready for the MA Xmas party. Unfortunately, Lambeth dug up our road without warning today. Resurfacing. As a result I could not get to Camberwell.
Suddenly, Wittgenstein's quote seems very relevant.

ESSAY. Yeppee! and the problem of borders (book arts)

Essay submitted, done and dusted!

That essay research was certainly hugely beneficial for me: it answered a few important questions. Unfortunately, it has also revealed a few problems. For example, it is not helpful to come to this area of books from linguistics, having had focused on language and meaning structure  all those years (a bit like arriving to the wrong religion school: god is the same, but perspective is different). While it might be exploratory to question where the book/text/page/etc. starts and where it ends, I see those things distorted by the cognitive linguistics. Aristotelian classification does not work. Mental categories have prototype structure and fuzzy edges (uh. clever me.). Therefore, my category of books can extend right into periphery without questions about borders: no starts, no ends.

Well, this looking for borders is what I  find frustrating. Once they are established, some things become "in" and others - "out". For example, Johanna Drucker offers an alarmingly narrow view of what a book is. All of the stuff of my previous pages about the burnt books would be "out". Alternatively, it could be called "periphery".

Instead of trying to build the walls, to keep the wrong kind of books "out", it might be more productive to establish prototypes for the categories, so the rest of the group could locate itself somewhere around it. Just a thought.

Sure - it is not as simple as that. I was reading Stephen Davies recently. He mentioned "disjunctive definition". It sounds very Wittgensteinian, but - certainly more to the point (from my point of view).

"Introducing Wittgenstein" to those who get easily bored

That could be me :-)

Heaton and Groves show, that one does not have to bore readers shitless when dealing with the "serious" philosophy. Fantastic illustrations and a great sense of humor throughout the book.

In Introducing Wittgenstein we meet a strange man, a rigorous logician who prized poetry above philosophy, who inherited a fortune and gave it away, who sought death in the trenches of the First World War, a great teacher who advised his students to give up philosophy, a solitary man who nonetheless inspired lifelong friendships. We are also given a clear and accessible guide to Wittgenstein's central works.

88 Constellations for Wittgenstein

Witgenstein has been extremely well written about and painted about. As a result, it is hard to come across something fresh. Especially, because a lot of the visual artists seem to have a very bleak grasp of Wittgensteins ideas (or any other language matters, in fact). I will get back to this subject later.

Anyway, here's what I have found and I thought it was really good and really well made.

“88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand)” is an interactive artwork by David Clark. The piece is a sprawling, non-linear contemplation of the life and work of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein consisting of 88 interactive flash animations each corresponding with one of the 88 constellations in the night sky. The viewer is invited to navigate through a maze of interconnecting narratives – moving from association to association – in a way that brings Wittgenstein’s work into conversation with our contemporary digital culture. As a nod to Wittgenstein’s concert pianist brother Paul who lost his right arm in World War One but continued to perform work for the left hand, the piece invites the viewer to ‘play’ with the collages using the left hand on the computer keyboard.

At the centre of piece is the number 88. It is both the number of keys on the conventional piano and the number of constellations in the night sky (as determined by contemporary science). Music and the night sky both seem to me to stir up the limits of our understanding of existence. The constellations also provided me with a structure. The work is like a ‘connect the dots’ portrait of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have drawn the facts of his life together and numbered them but it is up to you to connect the dots.