TheWhy/Wish

This project, though conceived of generally as the desire to address the WTC-9-11 Memorial, took form through attractions to the mood of the wishbone, to a set of images and meanings unfolded by Greg Ulmer and Linda Marie Walker in their "Wishing" cyberpidgin experiment.

The strongest initial image attraction was the wishbone and its attendant tradition, perceived through the Ulmer Website on the Internet. Further reading in the "Wishing" correspondence and further inquiry on the Internet as well as at the WTC Ground zero site revealed the Y formation, right side up or upside down, to be the underlying attractor. This image then became the guide/conduit for the city street configuration, website and performance, functioning fully as icon, index and symbol, as text, image and activity.

The question of "why?" or "not why?" (Ulmer's Contast) and consequently the "wishing" gesture seem to me to be the strongest propellants to this Memorial, especially as one of that both commemorates and becomes a starting point for forward movement.

Since this strange attractor was revealed to me, the number of Y formation recognitions and significations is difficult to summarize.

From Ulmer’s website text:

“CYBERPIDGIN
The Ulmer-Walker email correspondence was initiated as an experiment in
cyberpidgin: taking Internet English as a postcolonial pidgin discourse,
emerging through netizen interactivity. The exchange tests the idea that
quotidian folk and popular customs provide a vernacular code of oral
wisdom capable of supporting cross-cultural understanding and
communication. The custom of making a wish, having many variations, is
just one example, a relay for a thesaurus of other customs that may
provide a readymade universal semiotic. The wishbone images a virtual
dialogue, with the scene of two wish-makers, each one holding an end of a
"wishbone," evoking a many-to-many collaboration in global hope and
desire. The optimism of the pidgin interface metaphor for the digital
apparatus is that pidgin languages mutate into creoles (full-featured
languages) for second-generation practitioners.

CONDUCTION
The wishing custom is explicitly invoked as a supplement to empirical
problem-solving. The wish takes up where practical utility leaves off.
The wish does not replace empirical reason, but resonates with the
Holocaust imperative of Warumverbot ("here there is no 'why,'" said of
the concentration camps). As a consultation, the wish draws upon the
fourth mode of inference--conduction (after abduction, deduction,
induction)--the reasoning specific to image. Image inference moves from
the given to the unknown along an associative chain of shapes: in this
case, the Y shape of the initial wishbone. Image inference opens
conceptual idea or eidos ("shape" as "topos" or topic) to any natural or
designed shape, as a possible category or place for gathering
heterogeneous bits of information into an order (chora). Thus the
wishbone Y traverses other semantic domains such as the Pythagorean Y,
dowsing (the Y-shaped dowsing rod), the switch in all its embodiments
(from railroad "frogs" to routers), the Y contrails formed by the
Challenger shuttle when it exploded, and bifurcation points in chaos.
The resulting (temporary) eidos may be used as an image classification
system (a metaphysics) to re-articulate reality. The consulting premise
is that what constitutes a "problem" (and possible solutions) is
determined by what a category system renders thinkable.”

Mystory:

"Glass Blowing for Boys," video, 60 minutes, 1997 text modified from the 1909 manual, “Experimental Glass Blowing For Boys,” by Carleton J. Lynde and Alfred C. Gilbert

"The why of it?"

In an earlier video work I explored relationships to my father/science /humanist dialects as a series of magical scientific experiments. The method of inquiry appears to be the classic instructional model for a sequence of deduction: problem, empirical experiment and abstracted conclusion. However, each experiment develops a teleology, as if the answer was always already present, known by a higher at scientific authority. Simultaneously, the experiments are referred to as magic and they develop an irrational mood which moves towards a preposterous sets of conclusions. The subject/analysis of different disciplines is applied to these experiments to confound the category of science. "The why of it?" mimics/evokes both the audacious gesture of humanist knowledge and the magic of unexplainable events and trajectories.

"The why of it?" expresses the path of conduction, navigating linkage and accumulating significance towards some unforeseen multidimensional place.

From the script:

"Experiment 3: Cartesian Divers

Find a large bottle made of clear glass with a tight rubber stopper. Fill the bottle with water till it overflows, insert the glass balloons into the water, and then the stopper. Now press down on the stopper. Do the balloons sink in a most magical manner? Release the stopper. Do the balloons rise in an equally magical manner? Now try it again. Are some faster than others? Try a balloon race.

The “why” of it:

You boys who have read about Decartes will understand this experiment. Since air is like the thoughts in your mind and water is like everything in nature you can easily compress your ideas but you cannot easily change the space of nature. Because the two cannot really be in the same place a once, the bodies sink as the mind starts to be compressed. You can say that the more ideas the balloon has, the lighter it gets than nature, and so it floats to the top."


Secrecy:
Wish and desire vs. Govt. practice/Protection

7/17/02: WNYC/PBS Discussion, “Secrecy is Good”
Secrecy as a value in the Bush admin.
A belief of the Bush cgovt.
Politics and Ethics of Secrecy
National Security
Bush administration comes in wanting making less govt. info available. Reaction to openness of Clinton Admin and dating back to Watergate. Now in a time of ware it is “in the National interest of the American People.”
Creation of Homeland Security Dept.