Interdependent plains

It was recognized in ancient times that one should represent things in multiple ways: Aristotle: "[One person might describe a house) as "a shelter against destruction by wind, rain, and heat', while another might describe it as 'stones, bricks, and timbers'; but there is a third possible description which would say that it was that form in that material with that purpose or end. Which, then, among these is entitled to be regarded as the genuine physicist? The one who confines himself to the material description, or the one who restricts himself to the functional description? Is it not rather the one who combines both in a single formula?" [1]

-On the Soul, I, I.

In a lecture by Marvin Minsky, on the functioning of the brain, he uses the above proposition by Aristotle to describe how we perceive things. [2] When I look at this quote I see a very distinct correlation to Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology, a philosophy that provides the framework to my practice. Harman states that if we reduce something to its parts, atoms or literal description, we can see in Minsky’s reference a connection to “stones, bricks and timber.” For harman this is what he calls ‘under-mining’. If we go in the upwards direction to the description of the object’s affect, we are ‘over-mining’. So in this case that would be the effect of safety or shelter in Aristotle’s house. What Minsky describes as the combining, and closest to Aristotle’s view of what he calls a true physicist - in our case Harman’s “Duo-miner”, that which combine the description of an object and its effect - We get to what I call the “Metaform.” Metaforming is a term I have developed in my CCS. It combines latency, that which is concealed or ‘beyond’, therefore “meta”. And ‘forming’, the coming together of constituent self-referential parts that distinguish themselves from the object in our view. Therefore, Metaforming is looking beyond an object, into the gap between description and effect and using the terms of what we find as a basis to articulate the deeper essential happenings we find. Due to our coming into contact with the self same descriptions and their performative amplifications we can assume until this recognition they were in a state of latency. Therefore, the noun form of what we find becomes the verb form of what laid in a reserve of potential. One way I want to explore this further, is by taking a series of recordings of police helicopters I have been making over the course of this term, and looking into the verticality of placement and description we find. In an earlier blog, I spoke about plateaus -(https://www.stuleeart.com/the-gap/2021/11/27/deleuzian-plateaus) - in this case, the method of extracting the findings of an object “that affirm a vitality or creative power of bodies and forces at all ranges or scales.” [3] The scales in this sense, follow on from my ceramic investigations into levels and strata. But also thinking about the “arrangements between actions” - filming/being filmed, investigate/uncover. [4] So, if I film this helicopter (see fig. 1) what happens beyond that which is over? What metaforms in our watching of an object in the act of watching? And what is the potential of terms any findings predicate? Now one thing we can say of the “accidental properties” [5] of that which is extracted from this film is the absence of the other. Therefore the other is presented in an oblique way, brought out from behind and beyond. This forming of the other is now a materiality whether in concept or form. Thus the work has set out to achieve its objective and that is to bring the viewer into contact with something that exists in a place elsewhere beyond description or despite effect.

Fig. 1 Stuart Lee, Sur - Over (2021)

[1] Aristotle, On the Soul: Book 1, trans. by J. A. Smith (Cambridge MA, MIT Classics, 2009) <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html> [accessed 02/03/2022]

[2] Marvin Minsky, ‘Introduction to 'The Society of Mind'‘, MIT OpenCourseWare, YouTube, Autumn 2011, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pb3z2w9gDg> [accessed 02/03/2022]

[3] Jane Bennett, ‘Systems and Things: A Response to Graham Harman and Timothy Morton.’ New Literary History, 43 (2012) 225 – 233, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/23259373> [accessed 04/04/2022]

[4] Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, ed. by Gabriel Rockhill, (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2004), p. 32.

[5] Ishii Robertson, Teresa and Philip Atkins, ‘Essential vs Accidental Properties’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta (Winter 2020 Edition) <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/essential-accidental/> [accessed 21/10/2021]