"This is how civilization ends"

The following is a facebook post from our member Chris, that I've decided to repost here as a stimulus to discussion----

AI tools to paint your art, write your books, finish your poems, process your photographs, edit your films, develop your ideas, do your thinking for you, do your learning for you.

This is how civilisation ends: absorbed in the spectacle of its own atrophying competence in a world defined against all preceding epochs by the total absence of human craft.

No-one will experience the glory of mastering artistic disciplines. No-one will believe it necessary to engage the practice of deep thought. Never again will learned, wise, complete beings who sacrificed decades of life to realise their genius exist in our world.

We will stumble on, of course, but as a sort of vestigial organ addicted to the infinite self-regurgitation of machine-generated culture until, lacking rationality, lacking solid ground, lacking any sense at all of our own infinite potential, we are whipped into a storm by a misunderstood joke or a convincing duplicate and commit acts of genocide against one other without quite understanding why.

Fight back. Study poetry. Learn an instrument. Write novels. Resist the temptation to replace any component of your humanity, any portion of your soul whatsoever, with an algorithm.

Processing on Language

 Language is a technology.  

Every technology we acquire changes who we are,

like a substrate lying beneath the possibilities of culture.  

Language is a diverse technology.  Like the wheel

we’ve used it in lots of ways

Now we can use it to type in a phrase and generate a painting.  

Hey, that debate’s over now—

a picture is worth a couple words.  

Right now I’m exploring.

This is a way most people don’t know you can use language.  

Language is the history of symbols overlapping abstractions.

This is the result of Socrates’ word games:

we exclude examples from an abstraction to get a clear idea

and then add new examples to alter the idea 

such that the history of the transformations of an abstraction 

ends up telling us how the technology was altered.  

Painting was never one thing.  It was one word overlapping the history 

of the transformations of an abstraction.  

All great technologies undergo this process.  

Language is a great technology.  

For some reason I find myself drawn to poetry, or the word poetry.  

It appears more ultimate than the other language words.  

It says: I live in a moving sphere.  

Poetry is a program for language.

How would someone know—not an expert—but just someone, know 

that I’m writing a poem and not something else?  

Honestly one of the first ideas might be “it doesn’t make sense” 

or “it rhymes.”  

Can this technology be saved?  

Or am I looking for a new transformation of language?  

Perhaps that is poetry itself.  

The true transformation of language.  

Such that all prose and philosophy that is transformed in time is poetry.

Therefore its ultimacy.  

Meaning that poetry is in a sense beyond tradition.  

It is the art of language super omnia

the governing principle behind the transformation of the technology of language.  

Alright.  That’s been a ream of abstraction.  What do I want to do with language?

Where is the poetry?  

The question has always been: what do I want to communicate? 

Transfiguration of Mirrors pt. 2

 

Flight  path:

Motivation 1: The expression of the best of contemporary psychology, in particular, positive psychology. Dangers of happiness culture. Importance of larger vision of “the good life.”

Motivation 2: Express  a tale of spiritual transformation as experiential transfiguration.

Guiding Questions:

1: -Ideological/interpretive vs. historical/contextual split.  -Contemporary/plain prose vs. poetic/old time.  

2. Reconciling ambiguity and specificity.  (Narrative that means nothing and everything.)  

Things to try:

1. Creating new lines. Disrupting syntax. Total novelty.

2. Headnotes instead of footnotes

3. Total contemporaneity and total Boccaccio

4. The Kramer Cut

5. As a reader: highlight the development or the change of usage of terms

6. Try out meters

Postscript

As I approach the end of translating book 4, I am going to turn my sights elsewhere once again. The science fiction novel churns in the Promethean chaos, and this translation work has made me more deeply understand the source material. I also intend to return to another devotional piece, my rendering of “waiting for Godot” in comics form. This fall, I hope to complete issue 4 and do a printing of issues 1-4 that I can send out to people which will be roughly 100 pages and about ⅓ of the way through the play.

Captain's Log [From Training for Space (Holly Star Edit)]

Entry 45 – The Scream [by Holly Star]

I am assuming the Captain’s chair. There is an emergency on the ship. The historical network is failing. The Captain’s records have been corrupted.

“Why?” said Wai Wind.

The Order of Time. That is the beacon.

The beacon that Akbar Lightning commandeered to make first contact with the code hunter. The chase is on. 

Jacob Kramer Update 10/1/22

Hey friends,

Just wanted to post here and share a straightforward update.  First, the extensive, esoteric project I had begun a half-year ago has slipped off my radar for the time being.  I've been spending my time making these Youtube videos.  Who knows how that will go, but for the time being it feels like good, honest work.  My hope is that it will catch some minor audience for myself and those of us here.  Certainly it is already a different feeling having around 300 views on some videos compared to the usual dozen friends I share my work with.  

I don't want to lose track of the deeper process of art, and I don't think I will, but right now these videos have felt like the authentic thing to be doing.  I do know that I will return to my literary-quest Lighthouse project, or something like it, likely after my return to Asheville.  

Meanwhile I know some of you have been plugging away at your projects, others haven't quite found the time or inspiration to jump in, and more or less we've been stumbling along.  I knew from the beginning that this group would be a multi-year process, with periods of low and high intensity.  That kinds of projects we are working on are years-long projects.  

I just want to say that I still have the dream that when these projects are completed, and as my Lighthouse or whatever has met with some considerable construction checkmarks, these works will find a home together and us weirdos can attract other weirdos and help each other to weather the storm.  Then in 2,000 years an AI simulation of Dan Brown can write about us as goofy Templars.  

Right now we're in a lull and a transition.  Within the next month let's meet again.  I think it will be good to stay in touch just to honor the phenomenon of The Order of Time.  

Jake

Translation Continues

 

Six Tuscan Poets

Giorgio Vasari

Transfiguration of Mirrors Pt. 1

 8kbo and I have been on another side of the lab.

I invite you into the mirrored hallways of translation. Step into each column and experience its world. Take as much time as you like.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wL1L-3-Uyo8LIE627oqWDSazMKM4owdI95K-3xS98-k/edit?usp=sharing

What does it mean to guide a light through time? Where is the line between open ambiguity and the coalescence of meaning? Who do you see in that mirror?