Sculpture
(No Audio) Mechanical Drawing Machine
The Weight of a Word.
A collection of scenarios that simultaneously exist and interweave, bearing no connection except the weight of a word.
Beginning in space; with a hypothetical cosmological theory of the origins of the universe.
“The universe is made of constantly fluctuating space and time”(Dr. Qindi Wang), a continuous process of expansion and contraction, this theory also creatively known as the ‘big bounce’. Wherein the process of the ‘big bang’, a singularity of zero volume and infinite energy meets the loop quantum cosmology theory and as the effects of gravity are so strongly repulsed it bounces back outwards. This outward speed of matter slowly decreases over time due to its’ gravitational attraction of each other and so the ‘big crunch’ begins, the planets orbit suns gradually getting closer and in due course is swallowed by the sun. This star gradually moves towards other stars, colliding and ultimately pulled towards black holes and eventually consumed into a dense singularity. And like this, we expand and contract and expand and contract.
It is interesting that Willem De Sitter, Carl Friedrich Von Weizsäcker, George McVittie and George Gamow collectively quote “from the physical point of view we must forget entirely about the pre-collapse period”. An omission of history, an erasure, a blotting out (for convenience of theory). We remove all possibility of what has come before or happening concurrently with us and narrow our focus to what only we can comprehend.
And so, within this jostling of matter within the universe that the dark vacuum energy is pushing further out. Neutron stars are formed and collide, exploding and forming gravitational waves, a squeezing and stretching of space time [within the fabric of space]. A by product of this explosion is the expelling rich heavy metals, such as gold. Throughout the known observable universe this is estimated to happen once every minute or two.
So through this theory of expansion and contraction we reconfigure this idea to Earth and its appropriation to known lived human experience. We observe land masses and the oscillation of mental and physical borders. Something that can be perceived as a participation in tolerance, the capacity or willingness to endure continued subjection to conditions or simply, a threshold.
As it is conceived that a billionth of an atom can be responsible for the reoccurrence of the big bounce, we also create our own ripples within time through our actions.
Here we have a land mass, can maybe be considered, for this purpose, a singularity and within it we see an expansion and contraction, referenced as borders.
A line of time:
In 1787 the colony of New South Wales is formed. 1810 Maguire Island comes under the of the control of New South Wales. 1825 New South Wales extends border westward. And controls less of New Zealand,1839 NZ is annexed and in 1840 becomes its’ own colony. 1825 the island is officially known as Van Diemen’s Land.1829 The West is renamed ‘Swan River Colony’ from New Holland, by ’32 is renamed Western Australia. 1836 the province of South Australia. ’46 North Australian province emerges and in ’47 merged back to NSW. 1851 The colony of Victoria. 1856 Van Diemen’s Land is renamed Tasmania. The province of Queensland emerges in the East in 1859. ’61 South Australia extends border to Western Australia. ’62 Queensland’s border is extended. Throughout this time various islands such as Macquarie and Norfolk Islands propriety rights between states. In 1863 South Australia’s border extends into NSW. 1872 - 79 Queensland annexes islands lying just under 100 km away from the coast, specifically the Torres Strait Islands, until 1997 there is a bunch of to and froing, annexing and re-establishing with a range of islands including Papua New Guinea, actioned predominately from the United Kingdom and Queensland. In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia is formed and the evolving borders, begin to settle, with the exception of the creation of the Federal Capital Territory in 1911.
As we see this fluctuation over time until this point, it is known this is one observable truth. As it can be speculated that the two properties of the big bounce can be happening simultaneously, so can these particular borders, although only observable by a line drawn on a map that warps or distinguishes perceptions of locality on a rotating sphere. Here is an alternative mapping, eliminated from compulsory education systems of these physical examples and in mental and socially constructed borders. Simultaneous fluctuation of a line that is not the singularity it is treated to be, the removal and erasure of one type of line makes for a much smaller known quantity of the ‘unknown’. Determining a new singularity point that eradicates and then ignores all that came before it.
Other borders, others ways of filing, documenting zones and possession, immigration flows, perimeters created within the ground and under it from things such as water and minerals.
One of Zeno’s many paradox is his arrow, and we can contribute this theory to a way of understanding a mentality surrounding borders. As he quotes “If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.” In flight this arrow does not change shape, it is not moving, there is no direction. In every instance of time there is no movement.
Looking back toward space; from the far reaches of explosions of neutron stars to the creation of meteorites that then hit the crust of the Earth, leaving buried equal parts curse and reward. Zoom in towards a desert and within in it a huge hole within the area known as Boulder and referred to as the ‘Super Pit’ a product of a rush present today, a physical formation of trying to find the answer to questions, material to hunger, shine to pain. Actions of the panned, the sluiced, the dredged is melted and reformed and melted and reformed and melted and reformed. From the 50 square meter room filled with gold from the far reaches of Peru by the Incas under King Atahualpa rule given to Pizarro in exchange for his life in 1532, 34 days of melting, a history dissolved and taken to Spain used for a new repurposed history. Used from this date, previously and concurrently to give hierarchical social perimeters. Bared gifts religiously, politically or family, a transactional metal, a physical form that provides solutions to wants or used as the solution itself as a reward. As King Midas starves while staring at his precious, lifeless and heavy golden daughter, there are golden apples purposed as distractions, bribes, used to start wars and as practical jokes, the ‘sweat of the sun’ is removed from the ground and overwhelmingly turned into adornments. From the by product of an explosion in far reaches unseeable to the naked eye, we encase our bodies, bury ourselves within, eat the leaves, cover our limbs and necks, implant in our mouths and extract all this from others, then shoot parts back towards the possible location of origin.
Extracted and restored and melted and expanded and contracted.
As the gold rush brought a new form of expansion and simultaneous contraction. Wealth, dislocation, camaraderie through bull and bear fights, governmental neglect, dispossession of identity and sense of history of self. Gold is taken from the ground and taken from the body. A mass dispersion. A tailrace to another but yet same location, leaving too little behind.
A quiet story often left under stones, the only thing not wanting to be dredged from the land - tales of greed. As Snowy Rowles brings forth the weight of words into being, from the ‘Sands of Windee’ to the length of a Rabbit Proof Fence. A perfect series of action. A bodiless murders only to be foiled by an 18 Carat mended ring.
And so as the lungs expands and contracts and air passes up and down the throat, the lump of the apple stays. As the story is told the forbidden fruit is taken from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and bitten into, a piece is stuck and a lump, of prominent and enlarged cartilage is formed within the larynx of all descendants, paying for the origin of choice, interest, knowledge and curiosity. The apple is desire and destruction, all the love and attention of an eye, placed under the pillow for dreams of future lovers and a Russian orange. The choice of forbidden fruit is a potential mistranslation or generous creative licence to convince the Greeks who believed in the Kallisti Apple.
And so this swelling within the throat is made aware of by the mind and constricts, air does not flow easily through the passage, words form below, rise and catch on the toffee apple lump, stick to it and encouraging growth, preventing sound, communication, thought and emotion. As the Mulga tree produces an ‘apple’ or gall, a combination of plant and animal, the plant harbours the wasp and so expands the outgrowth, with a synchronicity of breath. As the tumour grows and ripens, as a large animal stumbles across it and eats the malignancy.
As a tumour grows it is inherently pushed outward, within an axolotl, the body separates the growth from the rest of the functioning systems via a membrane and continues to function and live.
Regarding a growths visibility, is external. Its relative the weight of all choice, the consequence of a word is internal, both feeding and influencing each other.
Considering the swelling of an imminent ending we can consider resonance catastrophes. The example of Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester; in 1831 an iron chain suspension bridge where troops on a march four a-breast march in step across this bridge. The steps in time create vibrations on the bridge, it’s natural frequency is amplified and creates its own frequency audio, as these frequencies oscillate, the troops whistle in tune with this sound made by the bridge reaches its limits of flexibility, its’ cataclysmic extremity, causing the bridge to collapse. Consider the fate of this bridge within a social situation, out in a public setting - a restaurant, bar, a sonorous room of some sort, with active sounds being created each second through different vessels. Sitting with a group of people afraid of silence, consistent questions with no answer are asked and fill a void, a frequency begins to resonate and continues to amplify, vibrating the liquid within the body, raising the core temperature until the head becomes flushed, there is no jacket to be removed, the focused point of the eyes blurs and recognition of edges is no longer possible. Step up and remove the body to an area of free flowing air and inhale smoke.
And then we go larger and smaller in scale at the same time. To shift a focus to the theory of eternal recurrence. A process or product of the big bounce where a self-similar universe is formed an infinite number of times out of a bounce. We parallel this model to the ancient greek myth of Sisyphus who pushes a rock up hill for eternity, Albert Camus came to the conclusion that ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’ within this inherently meaningless task, for the moral of the ‘courage to be’ or perhaps the idea of knowing that there is nothingness of yourself without the rock or the task of getting it up an incline and potentially down the other side? But has it been considered that you would know, is it a reset of knowledge each time the rock rolls back down the hill or a continuation or adding of knowledge each time Sisyphus pushes this insurmountable weight up the elevation? What if you did not know? Just as the eternal return, in theory, will happen, could it be assumed I will be writing/saying/thinking these thoughts again and again over an infinite amount of instances, with or without the knowledge of this happening before?
Inside the Longshan Temple, amongst GuanGong (the patron saint of police and gangsters), Wenchang Dijuu (of literature), Matsu (goddess of the sea) and the people milling and praying. In lieu of the lunar new year, they jostle with vigour to buy and secure good luck for another of the Earths rotation, as if there is a limited supply. A woman amid all this company, with a scrubbing brush under her shoe attempts to remove a build up of dirt while onlookers lean on various vessels. An undertaking of choice; what parts of history should remain, are celebrated and what are removed, not talked about and forgotten, a by-product of previous actions of through intentionality. Erasing a recent piece of physical history/memory within a structure admired and attended for its own history, a structure whose predominant materials are not original and rebuilt many times over the course of colonisers and wars.
Is it unavoidable? Is it a truth of the Gay Science, that of Fredrick Nietzsche mind?
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you : 'This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine. ' If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, 'Do you want this again and innumerable times again?' would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for no thing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”
Is this the heaviest word? The word with the most weight?
As the ‘fool who holds up the sky’ within the Longshan Temple; the colonisers, self-righteous, self appointed - here to aid, to change and most importantly be adored for this unsolicited fracture - to the point where, happy to play the role of the dunce, as long as it is immortalised front and centre within a sacred building of a culture that isn’t understood. This self similar loop of actions passed down from generation to generation, an eternal recurrence of cursed gifts, bestowed and inevitable to follow out. This unremitting construction and destruction, continuous and simultaneous. Something that must still feel as if we are in control by giving it a shape. A spiral, a circle, a loop, a sphere, a closed wormhole.
As our past is in front of us and our future is behind, we are only to know what we have seen. Is it luck or determinism that is favoured. And is it a choice, dependant on which the thought processes favours?
Luck: ‘the success or failure brought about by chance rather than through ones own actions’. A chance to find or acquire, letting go, embracing improbability, lacking control, thinking wishfully. A form of probability taken personally.
What a mess.
Blaming luck circumstantially; where you were born, your genetics. Blaming Lady Luck constitutionally; her haphazard nature causing accidents and epidemics. Blaming Fortuna in ignorance; unknown factors only perceivable from a particular angle, that of hindsight, through distance, looking straight ahead into what is behind.
We take this, blame the personified female figure all the while bestowing offerings. I give to you explicit colours and numbers, sides of coins and straw sizes. All placebos, gamblers and objects.
And as there is Rota Fortunae, spinning parallel is Atrox Fortunae.
Shirking all responsibility to fate, a predetermined flow you cannot swim upstream from, as all pre-existing causes are the deciding factors of events. Cause and affect. ‘All events are caused by past events, such that nothing that does occur could occur.’ All eyes always gravitate to the unfortunate Oedipus, where in always treated with a fine line between pedestal sympathy and a sycophantic mirror.
Moving on to a new facade is the ‘Agent Causation - to be propelled by a mind that can start a chain of causality that wasn’t caused by anything else.’ This agent is a strange character to think about, the idea of a random and original thought, to create a peak in a wavelength, a ripple or tear in space time fabric. An anomaly within something so repetitive (like the witnessing of a star being born.)
A linear progression to comprehend: A thought, that morphs and grows, matures and travels through synapses, triggering a long wet muscle to roll around in a cavern where it is transposed into “a wave of compression and rarefaction, by which the sound is propagated in an elastic medium such as air”. It is forced out into the open and travels bouncing into many canals and reformed into a semblance of its original formation, a thought, although now cloned. To discern or draw parallel is best quoted from The Ticket That Exploded “The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten-seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.” (William Burroughs)
And so how does a word have weight? Through context, mouth movement or literal gravitas? As audio is not affected by gravity the medium in which it travels through is, the denser the medium the increased speed of sound. When sound is subject to gravity, it is travelling through a host, parts are deployed to various sending and receiving stations but the vibrations continue to be carried by the vessel. Continuing to proceed, a beacon ready to be received and replicated at any given interval, a time capsule of an existence sent out every time a synapse is fired. Every word used for the first time when it rolled around uncomfortably in the mouth and used it any way, to gain solidarity on the ground of the social landscape, to edge closer to a fickle form of capital. A cacophony of a thorough fare of perceptions.
And what if sound didn’t lose heat and bounced around eternally. Like a reverberation in the Inchindown oil tanks in Invergordon, Scotland. The closest example to understanding Echo, forced forever to repeat the thoughts of others and never her own, throwing it back at us to confront our voices, a reality of self-perception, a demanding of self-awareness.
Like the dream of Mr.Kreideers of friend; “About a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”
And so as minimal vibrations create thoughts causing actions, rippling out as receiving beacons throughout the atmosphere, past the Karman Line and further on than the Exobase. Projecting pulses that eventually decrease over time as they morph and join others through mutual gravitational attraction, just as “a star represents a temporary balance between gravity trying to shrink a ball of gas and its’ internal heat pushing outwards.” Just as the interweaving of the big bang and big crunch continues to expand and contract. The planets orbit suns gradually getting closer and in due course is swallowed by the sun. This star gradually moves towards other stars, colliding and ultimately pulled towards black holes and eventually consumed into a dense singularity.
And like this, we expand and contract and expand and contract.