Frequently Asked Questions

This is the Archive no.I from the Frequently Asked Questions Collection. Follow...

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:51:00 -0400

This is the Archive no.I from the Frequently Asked Questions Collection. Follow us to faqonespionage.wordpress.com/

CITIES & THE DEAD I

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:55:00 -0400

At Melania, every time you enter the square, you find yourself caught in a dialogue: the braggart soldier and the parasite coming from a door meet the young wastrel and the prostitute; or else the miserly father from his threshold utters his final warnings to the amorous daughter and is interrupted by the foolish servant who is taking a note to the procuress. You return to Melania after years and you find the same dialogue still going on; in the meanwhile the parasite has died, and so have the procuress and the miserly father; but the braggart soldier, the amorous daughter, the foolish servant have taken their places, being replaced in their turn by the hypocrite, the confidante, the astrologer.

Melania’s population renews itself: the participants in the dialogues die one by one and meanwhile those who will take their places are born, some in one role, some in another. When one changes role or abandons the square forever or makes his first entrance into it, there is a series of changes, until all the roles have been reassigned; but meanwhile the angry old man goes on replying to the witty maidservant, the usurer never ceases following the disinherited youth, the nurse consoles the stepdaughter, even if none of them keeps the same eyes and voice he had in the previous scene. At times it may happen that a sole person will simultaneously take on two or more roles—tyrant, benefactor, messenger—or one role may be doubled, multiplied, assigned to a hundred, a thousand inhabitants of Melania: three thousand for the hypocrite, thirty thousand for the sponger, a hundred thousand king’s sons fallen in low estate and awaiting recognition.

As time passes the roles, too, are no longer exactly the same as before; certainly the action they carry forward through intrigues and surprises leads towards some final denouement, which it continues to approach even when the plot seems to thicken more and more and the obstacles increase. If you look into the square in successive moments, you hear how from act to act the dialogue changes, even if the lives of Melania’s inhabitants are too short for them to realize it.

(Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)

The Reading Room

Sun, 06 May 2012 07:44:00 -0400

he Reading Room is a project based in private spaces in Berlin, with the aim to maintain, archive and represent products of contemporary art practices evolving within printed and published formats. The project presents a curated selection of over 50 artist’s publications (books, zines, magazines and newspapers) and related projects (such as fold-out posters or published audio projects), from a range of internationally based artists, both established and emerging.

In addition to the traditionally known artist-made books, artist monographs or exhibition catalogues, the published format itself is now regularly viewed as a primary site for an artist’s engagement. While often considered as secondary to the more prevalent presentation space of the gallery, the act of publishing has developed itself into a self-contained and highly resonant method of artistic expression. The Reading Room focuses on the publication utilised as medium and context for art practices, in which the artists choose deliberately and critically to engage with the format, using its materiality, edges and frame as tools for both visual and semantic communication.

The Reading Room project is based on well-known institutional “reading rooms” (such as the one of the British Museum in London), and functions as such: it is open for public viewing, but with those wishing to use it being required to make an appointment, and in return being granted solitary time to explore the collection. The Reading Room also takes its initial presentation format from the idea of the “salon”, gathering its printed matters and materials under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host. The visitors and readers of The Reading Room ring the bell of a private apartment, climb up the stairs to it, and then are able to sit in a separate study room within an otherwise domestic space, engaging themselves with the many publications and projects of the collection.
Refreshments will be served.

http://www.thereadingroom-index.com/

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Horse (INVENTORY)

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:54:00 -0400

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Horse

(INVENTORY)

Non-Site

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:26:00 -0400

Non-Site, Robert Smithson, 1968

An Anthology, 1970 (New York 2nd edition, 1st edition 1962)...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:00:00 -0400

An Anthology, 1970 (New York 2nd edition, 1st edition 1962) director La Monte Young, edited by La Monte Young and Jackson Mac Low, conceived by G. Maciunas, 21 x 23cm

TAGS: composition, score, mail art, perception, invitation, briefing, music, design, conceptual art, etc

collections

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:03:00 -0400

CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

«An encyclopedic collection of types of objects where categorical boundaries are yet to be defined.»

(yet to be defined)

artificialia

ALMANAC

ENCYCLOPEDIA

naturalia

SYSTEM

exotica

PERCEPTION

LABYRINTH

scientifica

Experience - experiment

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:47:47 -0400

«Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment.»

[more]

Ratio

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:46:14 -0400

«In mathematics, a ratio is a relationship between two numbers of the same kind (e.g., objects, persons, students, spoonfuls, units of whatever identical dimension), usually expressed as “a to b” or a:b, sometimes expressed arithmetically as a dimensionless quotient of the two which explicitly indicates how many times the first number contains the second (not necessarily an integer). In layman’s terms a ratio represents, simply, for every amount of one thing, how much there is of another thing. For example, suppose I have 10 pairs of socks for every pair of shoes then the ratio of shoes:socks would be 1:10 and the ratio of socks:shoes would be 10:1.»

[more]

ARCHIZINES LIVE

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:27:00 -0400

Friday, April 20, 2012 and Saturday, April 21, 2012

Storefront for Art and Architecture

ARCHIZINES LIVE: Symposium on Publishing Practices

6 Manifesto Series on: MEDIUM / SPEED / HISTORY / CRISIS / DESIRE

In conjunction with the exhibition Archizines, Storefront hosts a 2-day symposium on publishing practices as part of its Manifesto Series. Throughout its exhibition tour, Archizines has provided platforms for architectural research and debate, and demonstrated the residual love of the printed word and paper page – providing an antidote to digital publishing. Made by architects, artists and students, the publications included in the exhibition add an important, and often radical, addition to architectural discourse that will be furthered explored through the Manifesto Series.

Storefront will live-stream the symposium at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/archizines-live.

The Manifesto Series consists of a series of presentations by the editors of the publications on display in the exhibition together with editors of some of the most established publishing magazines.

melancholia (lars von trier 2011)

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:12:00 -0400

Melancholia’s first approach and final collision with Earth, as described (and shown briefly in a similar diagram) in the film

entropy (order and disorder)

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:08:22 -0400

«In thermodynamics, entropy is commonly associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system. This stems from Rudolf Clausius’ 1862 assertion that any thermodynamic processes always “admits to being reduced to the alteration in some way or another of the arrangement of the constituent parts of the working body” and that internal work associated with these alterations is quantified energetically by a measure of “entropy” change, according to the following differential expression.»

Inventory

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:23:00 -0400

«Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose»

Video

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:39:00 -0400

A LBUM

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:36:00 -0400

A LBUM (1)

by Charlotte Cheetham, published by OMMU / year — 2011

«With the publication published by OMMU, the purpose was to compose a compendium of paintings that inspired this exhibition: from Kunstkammers to Cabinet of Curiosities representations, and finishing with the vanities paintings.

To give form to this compendium, to design the trace of this documentation, Charlotte Cheetham worked with Pierre Vanni who make the publication a graphic curiosity itself.»

khipus (communication)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:56:00 -0400

«Quipus (or khipus), sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords. The cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Quipus might have just a few or up to 2,000 cords.

Most information on quipus is numeric, and these numbers can be read. Each cluster of knots is a digit, and there are three main types of knots: simple overhand knots; “long knots”, consisting of an overhand knot with one or more additional turns; and figure-of-eight knots. In the Aschers’ system, a fourth type of knot—figure-of-eight knot with an extra twist—is referred to as “EE”. A number is represented as a sequence of knot clusters in base 10.

Powers of ten are shown by position along the string, and this position is aligned between successive strands.
Digits in positions for 10 and higher powers are represented by clusters of simple knots (e.g., 40 is four simple knots in a row in the “tens” position).
Digits in the “ones” position are represented by long knots (e.g., 4 is a knot with four turns). Because of the way the knots are tied, the digit 1 cannot be shown this way and is represented in this position by a figure-of-eight knot.
Zero is represented by the absence of a knot in the appropriate position.
Because the ones digit is shown in a distinctive way, it is clear where a number ends. One strand on a quipu can therefore contain several numbers.

For example, if 4s represents four simple knots, 3L represents a long knot with three turns, E represents a figure-of-eight knot and X represents a space:

The number 731 would be represented by 7s, 3s, E.
The number 804 would be represented by 8s, X, 4L.
The number 107 followed by the number 51 would be represented by 1s, X, 7L, 5s, E.» [more info]

heteroglossia

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:48:42 -0400

«The term heteroglossia describes the coexistence of distinct varieties within a single “linguistic code”. In Greek hetero = different + glōssa = tongue, language. In this way the term translates the Russian разноречие [raznorechie] (literally “different-speech-ness”), which was introduced by the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1934 paper Слово в романе [Slovo v romane], published in English as “Discourse in the Novel.”

Bakhtin argues that the power of the novel originates in the coexistence of, and conflict between, different types of speech: the speech of characters, the speech of narrators, and even the speech of the author. He defines heteroglossia as “another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way.” Bakhtin identifies the direct narrative of the author, rather than dialogue between characters, as the primary location of this conflict.» [more info]

Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel, The...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:26:30 -0400

Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. This well-worn book, now housed in the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, is filled with Kubrick’s notes and comments. Many passages are highlighted, and Kubrick has filled the margins with hand-written notes that run the gamut from notating passages that inspire him, to crossing out sections he found silly.

escher's Mouroborobius

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:11:00 -0400

OUROBORUS + MOEBIUS STRIP

«Actually, it’s just Escher’s four-block wood engraving print Möbius Band I, circa 1961, which gives the appearance of being both a double and a triple ouroboros/Möbius strip combo: Two loops, two strips; three creatures, three twists.» [more info]

squaring the circle

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:55:00 -0400

«Squaring the circle is a problem proposed by ancient geometers. It is the challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge. More abstractly and more precisely, it may be taken to ask whether specified axioms of Euclidean geometry concerning the existence of lines and circles entail the existence of such a square.

In 1882, the task was proven to be impossible, as a consequence of the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem which proves that pi ( $π$ ) is a transcendental, rather than an algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients. It had been known for some decades before then that if pi were transcendental then the construction would be impossible, but that pi is transcendental was not proven until 1882. Approximate squaring to any given non-perfect accuracy, in contrast, is possible in a finite number of steps, since there are rational numbers arbitrarily close to pi.

The expression “squaring the circle” is sometimes used as a metaphor for doing something logically or intuitively impossible.

The term quadrature of the circle is sometimes used synonymously, or may refer to approximate or numerical methods for finding the area of a circle.» [more info]

[image:Kochański’s approximate construction]