I mean the power of specifically growing out of one's self, of

making the past and the strange one body with the near and the
present, of healing wounds, replacing what is lost, repairing
broken molds.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Stefan Arteni

Visual art, evolutionary game theory,

cybernetics, logic of distinctions,
polycontexturality: a heuristic musing.

IV
[Notes for a lecture-demonstration; March 9, 2006,
QCC Art Gallery CUNY, New York]

SolInvictusPress 2007
It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

Quand on peint un tableau, a chaque touche il change tout

entier…
[When one paints a picture, every new brushstroke changes
it entirely…]
Paul Cézanne

Because art is a complex

system, it contains a kind of
circularity where the system is
created by the marks, it
constrains them and in turn is
modified by them.
Cosimo Rosselli,
Virgin and Child with Young St John the Baptist [on the left]
Portrait of a Woman on the back of the painting [on the right]
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
L'ALUNNO (Niccolò di Liberatore)
A play of potentialities and constraints

Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics, from the Greek word for
steersman, to refer to any system that has built-in correction mechanisms,
i.e. is self-steering. Let us harken back to the original meaning of the word
"kybernetes". Kybernetes, that is steersman, helmsman, pilot, guide, is
related to techne, that is 'doing with the hands', and in a more abstract
sense, kybernetike stands for the ability to move through a changing
environment or a steering space, or for self-steering within certain limits.
Cybernetics may be defined as a play of potentialities and constraints.

"This is how we must read the theory of those medieval philosophers,"

Giorgio Agamben writes, "who held that the passage from potentiality to
act, from common form to singularity, is not an event accomplished once
and for all, but an infinite series of modal oscillations."
 There is no light painting or dark painting,
but simply relations of tones.
Paul Cézanne

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas previous sciences

dealt with matter and energy, the new science of cybernetics focuses on
form and pattern.

Cybernetic concepts are relational. Fundamental to all these concepts is

that of drawing a distinction. A distinction can be seen as an element of
cognitive structuration which focuses on patterns and connectedness -
strictly speaking they are purely formal transformations and precede any
conception of representation.
G. Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form is an exploration of the syntactical possibilities of ‘drawing a
distinction’ and of ‘covert conventions.’ There is an interaction between kinesthetic/spatiomotor
and visual input. The traces of medium-specific actions are defined by Peer Bundgaard as
‘exploitation of ontic constraints.’ Improvisation may involve repetition and revision, embedded in
which are appropriative allusions to and fragmented citations of previous historical practices - it is
up to the painter to reactivate the past. Ranulph Glanville describes art as an “iterative and circular
process with the unknowable” and concludes: “Art is deeply cybernetic.”

André Derain Piero Marussig

Both cybernetics and Buddhism can be said to characterize the
world as a nonlinear dance of mutually adjusting feedback
loops, and Spencer-Brown's distinction ontology, a non-
numerical arithmetic, works with a Buddhist inspired theory, that
is, codependent arising.
“The cosmogonic and cosmostructural conception of the process of painting was formulated and
summarized in Shi Tao’s (Yuan Ji’s) theory of painting. Its essence lies in the method of one stroke
(yi hua, yi bi) that was conceived by Shi Tao as the sign of the transformation of being and non-being,
embracing all the universe and bringing out the idea or principle (li) nurtured inside. The one stroke
‘concentrates the space’ and ‘energizes’ the emptiness by its polysemous allusions. The one stroke
is the microcosmic embodiment of the macrocosm, as it reveals what is great through what is small.
The One may be associated with Dao, the absolute, which was talked about in Laozi, Zhuangzi, Yijing.
It is hidden in and beyond every thing, giving birth to the two (yin and yang, the strong and weak line)
wherefrom ten thousand things spring up. The variety of their configurations is expressed through
the sixty-four hexagrams of Yijing, understood as the transformations of the one stroke (yi hua)”
[Loreta Poskaite.] This is why the emotional power and spirituality of art resides in its form.

Such a model of a process will be called a dynamical representation. A representation should here
not be understood in the sense of a homomorphic image of an objective, external reality, but as a
system designed to give a more or less precise, mathematical shape or structure to the associations
between different observations [Francis Heylighen.] The distinctions can be conceived as elementary
structurations of a domain of experience [Spencer Brown,] hence as elements or units of
representation. A representation as a whole can then be analysed as a network of distinctions
connected by certain relations, i.e. as a distinction system [Francis Heylighen.]

…we must understand the constraints which will select the actually occurring processes out of the
potential ones, that is the dynamics of possible distinction processes, the dynamics of attractors and
that of attractors and distinction destruction [paraphrasing Francis Heylighen.]

Art learns new ways and associations from the way it is used.
Shi Tao (Yuan Ji)
石涛
Zhu Da (Bada Shanren)
 Meditation
with the brush

Hakuin
TOREI ENJI

KOGAN GENGEI
Anonymous Japanese
Nakahara Nantembo, Bamboo
[from zenart.shambhala.com]
Self-reference
I will attempt to explore this question in two registers: first, the specific
paradoxical function of “form” as understood in Niklas Luhmann’s work,
where form renders the world [unmarked space] observable, but only by
means of distinctions that exclude precisely what we call “world”, thus
rendering the world unobservable; and second, Luhmann’s contention that
works of art stage “a ‘re-entry’ into communication of the difference between
perception and communication.” Following a dictum of Luhmann, "self-
reference possesses indeterminable complexity in the form of paradox." The
play with perceptions is the main process of art's autopoietic becoming: art
communicates by using perceptions contrary to their primary purpose…art
seeks a different kind of relation between perception and communication -
one that is irritating and defies normality - and just this is communicated.
As Ranulph Glanville puts it, "distinctions are taken to be self-
distinguishing." Put very briefly, and oversimplifying here for the
sake of convenience, George Spencer-Brown's calculus of
indications [or logic of distinctions] develops the idea of
‘something’ as being (‘a’) difference (with something else), and
(thus) eventually different from itself. All ‘something’, or ‘form’, is
explained as the residual of a more fundamental level of
operations (namely the construction of difference), including the
calculus of indications explaining the very Laws of Form. The
calculus compellingly uses latency, i.e. it is attentive to the
importance of unmarked states for the construction of anything at
all. Thus the side-effects, spillovers, and the seldom outspoken
self-reference of all communications are always a paramount
concern [Ranulph Glanville].
Recursion is the concept of the well-defined self-reference,
and a way of specifying a process by means of itself…A
recursive procedure is a procedure that uses itself as one of
its parts…
Geometric patterns design with
recursive pursuit relative motions

Guan-Ze Liao and Chun-Wang Sun

[www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/liao/index.html]
Joseph Goguen defines a sign system as a system of
distinctions. G. Spencer-Brown’s injunction is strongly visual:
the mark as visual operator “draws a distinction” - perceptual,
notational, spatial - and an indication of one or the other side of
the distinction. The first distinction is contingent. Distinctions
function as elements of structuration. The form of the distinction
is the form, the unity of the operation that places what it
distinguishes, the marked space, against the unmarked space.
While making something visible, art makes, simultaneously,
something else invisible. And yet, as Louis H. Kauffman admits,
“the one mark unifies the sides that it divides.” Paradoxically, by
means of a sort of performative apophasis, the mark affirms this
unity by severing it. “The cut or mark”, argues Floyd Merrell,
“indicates (indexes) what it is only insofar as it is something
other than the possibility of everything else.”
Ricordava Galileo: il vero libro della filosofia, il libro della natura, è scritto
in caratteri estranei al nostro alfabeto. Questi caratteri sono: triangoli,
quadrati, cerchi, sfere, piramidi, coni e altre figure geometriche. Il
pensiero galileiano lo sento vivo entro la mia antica convinzione che i
sentimenti e le immagini suscitati dal mondo visibile, che è mondo
formale, sono molto difficilmente esprimibili, o forse inesprimibili con le
parole. Sono infatti sentimenti che non hanno alcun rapporto o ne hanno
uno molto indiretto con gli affetti e con gli interessi quotidiani, in quanto
sono determinati appunto dalle forme, dai colori, dallo spazio, dalla luce.
(Giorgio Morandi, 1957)

[Galileo remarked: the true book of philosophy, the book of nature, is

written with characters different from our alphabet. These characters are:
triangles, squares, circles, spheres, pyramids, cones and other geometric
figures. I feel that Galileo’s thinking is alive in my old idea that feelings
and images produced by the visible world are difficult to express, or
may be cannot be expressed, by words. In fact, these are feelings which
have no connection or have a very indirect one with daily affects and
issues, as they are determined only by forms, colors, space, light.]
Giorgio
Morandi
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi
Girolamo Romanino
Girolamo Romanino
Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi
Giorgio
Morandi
Gino Severini
The former unity of the void [a formerly unmarked space] is made invisible and
the observing system operates as a "recursion in the sense of a re-entry of
functions as arguments of themselves" into the system, "primary arguments,
if there are any, make room for eigenvalues, that are confirmed by any new
step of the circular process...“ [Andrea Leo Findesein]

One may argue that on the level of second-order observations all statements
become contingent. Second-order cybernetics is more concerned with
morphogenesis and positive feedback loops, a behaviour which is recursive
and generates variety. "An observer is the link between himself and his
observing self," suggests Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Emergence typically produces its own
principles of organization, which we can
refer to as rules.

"The more important structures of

command are sometimes called canons
[in the sense of sets of rules]. They are
the ways in which the guiding
injunctions appear to group themselves
in constellations, and are thus by no
means independent of each other. A
canon bears the distinction of being
outside (i.e., describing) the system
under construction, but a command to
construct (e.g., 'draw a distinction'),
even though it may be of central
importance, is not a canon. A canon is
an order, or set of orders, to permit or
allow, but not to construct or create"
[George Spencer-Brown.]
Self-organization of visual communicative interactions plays a major role in
the emergence of symbolization. Complexity theory suggests that the Edge of
Chaos is more than a balance point - instability with order - it is also a point of
unpredictable emergence within the context of a ludic cybernetic view of art.
Simple rules, non-random events, act on random events and can produce
complex patterns. The details of these applications have various connections
to the ideas of convergence toward eigenvalues seen as attractors.
Eigenvalues or perceptual regularities are stable self-produced values that
result of recursive operations and thus imply circularity. "Eigenvalues [stable
structures] represent the externally observable manifestations of the
introspectively accessible cognitive operations," writes Heinz von Foerster.
Stroke order (Chinese: 筆順 bǐshùn;
Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順
kaki-jun) refers to the way in which
Chinese characters are written. The
stroke order of a character gives the
order and direction in which the brush
strokes, or simply "strokes", are
written.

Hakuin Ekaku
"Nichi Nichi"
by Hakuin Ekaku
[From Owen Taylor,
www.gtk.org/
~otaylor/kanjipad/
demo.html]
"A cybernetic model works by setting up constraints," remarks
Ernst von Glasersfeld. Art operates with constraints rather than with
efficient causes - it only eliminates what does not fit, and this means
learning the viable path. "Forms are created from the concatenation
of operations upon themselves and…are…rather indications of
processes…The closed loop of perception occurs in the eternity of
present individual time," writes Louis H. Kauffman. Thus one may
speak of circular operationality, of the recursive self-implication of
form, and also of indirect recursion when two or more procedures
cyclically call each other. Form implies itself as a meta-distinction,
as a form of form.
The carrying out of algorithms or action chains are only algorithmic at the operational
level - visual chunks [pieces of information that often appear together] or patterns of
recall which are refinable are netted within a range of flexibility in automatized skills
[tacit knowledge] and within the acquired repertoire of formal frameworks.

Zen, on the other hand, goes beyond unity and duality in the sense that it transcends
all concepts and relies solely on experience – the expression and the experience also
being considered “one”.

Buddhahood would entail the ability to be continuously aware that signs do not in fact
actually refer to the objects to which they purport to refer [Mario D'amato]: form is
empty; emptiness is precisely form.

Reentry occurs through feedback processes whereby products of one

state…become the content for the next state. Each sign becomes the object
of another sign, and these contain each other…[Terry Marks-Tarlow.]
In reference to the distinction that is co-actualized in every designation, real is
what is practiced as a distinction, what is taken apart by it, what is made visible
and invisible by it.

Knowledge - as, in a different way, art - serves to render the world invisible as
the "unmarked state," a state that forms can only violate but not represent -
heteroreference must always be construed as an 'as if' or a 'seeing as'. Any
other attempt must be content with paradoxical or tautological descriptions
(which are meaningful as well.)

Like science and religion, art makes the invisible visible, but not in the same way
[Niels Albertsen and Buelent Diken] - art creates within reality a virtual irreality,
an interactive fiction - the invisible unmarked state becomes paradoxically visible
as potentiality and contingency, as the potentiality of other contingent forms,
both vertically and horizontally - in the total order of forms the invisible is
declared by the visible …, or, to abuse Luhmann's terms,…art is mediation of the
inexpressible, of the unrepresentable.
Mutual complementarity of the hidden and the manifest: this
refers to an almost gestalt emphasis on the mutual necessity of
figure and ground, or event and the background against which
it stands out. [Buddhist patriarch Fa-tsang]
The Gods speak through the marks drawn by the artist [Setsuzan
Tanaka Sensei] - e.g. the sanskrit alphabet is called 'devanagari'
which literally means 'cities of the gods.'
 Letter A in siddham script Stroke order
of the Siddham Om

The Siddham script is a descendent of the Brahmi script and an ancestor of the
Devanagari script. The name Siddham comes from Sanskrit and means
"accomplished or perfected"
[www.omniglot.com/writing/siddham.htm]
Old European Culture

Symbols dating from the oldest period of Vinča culture (6th-5th millennia BC)

Common symbols used throughout the Vinča period

[www.omniglot.com/writing/vinca.htm]
Marija Gimbutas on the symbology of Old Old European Culture
Europe: "They constitute a complex system
in which every unit is interlocked with every
other in what appear to be specific
categories. No symbol can be treated in
isolation; understanding the parts leads to
understanding the whole, which in turn leads
to identifying more of the parts."

Marco Merlini discusses a few characteristics

of the Danube script (features and
standardization of its signs; principles
characterizing the organization of the
inscriptions; sort of messages which were
transferred by it; the semiotic system based
on the very peculiar relation between script,
decorations and symbolism) while presenting
some signs and inscriptions of the most
recent, not very well known or unpublished Tărtăria tablets
objects (Supska torso, Giannitsa seal,
Cyclope sherd) and the first results of the
"Focus on Tartaria tablets" of the Prehistory
Knowledge Project which is analyzing the
signs by microscope.
The script on these "oracle
bones" is known as 甲骨文
(jiăgŭwén) - literally "shell
bone writing". They were
used for divination, a
process which involved
heating them then
inspecting the resulting
cracks to determine the
answers to one's questions.
The bones were then
inscribed with details of the
questions and the answers.
NAXI DONGBA MANUSCRIPT, Yunnan, China. The Naxi lived in the outskirts of the Himalaya in the
Chinese province of Yunnan. Their priestly language was Dongba. The use of the literature was
reserved in daily life only for the priest. They used the manuscripts to cite from on special
occasions such as birth, sickness and funeral.
As a perceptual phenomenon art is, then, an attempt to render permanent and tangible
that which was formally intangible and fleeting, the seeking of order in the midst of
disorder, the expression of the sense of pattern, harmony and symmetry synthesized
from the immediate, ambient confusion. This definition need not exclude cultural
interpretations [Derek Hodgson - cognitive archaeology.] The genesis of art has to be
seen from the perspective of evolutionary time, that is, slowly unfolding, with many
false starts, retrogressions, important developmental accomplishments and long
plateaus of achievement, reinforcement or recapitulation, but still continuing to evince
a discernible trend [Derek Hodgson.] It may be construed as punctuated equilibrium.

Complexity theory borrows and incorporates concepts from many disciplines. One key
idea is the theory of punctuated equilibrium. It holds that evolution is marked by surges
of speciation and avalanches of extinction. For example, species often develop quickly,
endure with little change for a long time, and then die out suddenly — not gradually.
Thanks to mutation and self-organization, some members of the species may find a
niche and hang on to it. When their environment changes, they must adapt or
disappear. The complexity theory notion of fitness helps account for punctuated
equilibrium.

Repetitive mark-making would, however, in itself, have constituted a novelty

in the face of the flux of nature [Derek Hodgson.] It may be construed as an
exponential process whereby the co-ordinated integration of abstract schema
into representational forms led to less time-specific constraints on
communicative expertise — an expertise which was to culminate in symbolic
depiction [Derek Hodgson.]
Palaeolithic Art is generally thought to be based primarily upon the explicit
conscious aspects of recognition and memory. Recent research into
perception and cognition, however, has revealed a ‘hidden’ substructure of
processing, known as implicit perception and memory, that functions in a
different way to overt modes of cognisance but, yet, by dovetailing with
consciously defined determinants helps to define how these are structured.
As the making of Palaeolithic Art would have been contingent on the
perceptual/recognition/visual memory system, it is therefore admirably suited
to an understanding from the standpoint of implicit processes.

Seeing the ‘Unseen’: Fragmented Cues and the Implicit in Palaeolithic

Art
Derek Hodgson
Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2003), 13: 97-106
Having acquired a high degree of tactile proficiency during eons of
tool making and tool use, the production of simple marks — possibly
“discovered” through the rhythmic manipulation of tools — would
have resulted in a permanent, visually perceptible pattern which
could be duplicated, examined and contemplated. Such marking
behaviour would have a potential for expanding conceptualization
and the attendant proliferation of mental constructs, and the
establishment of new mental structures.
Robert Bednarik, Neurophysiology and Paleoart,
[www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/rbednarik6.pdf.]

Native American marks 'Oldest' prehistoric art unearthed

Cueva Pintada, Sierra de San Francisco
El Castillo wall painting
Altamira
wall painting
Creativity

Art is the opposite of life [Danilo Kis.]

In a lecture on the relationship between chance and creativity, Niklas

Luhmann puts it the following way: "In many ways, the effects of creativity
are products of chance…In the terminology of theoretical systems, such
facts are described as 'morphogenesis', 'order from noise' or 'dissipative
structures‘. One does not have to assume or demand unity , one has to
take an interest in differences. Creativity is the effect of boundaries or
discontinuities. It depends on the difference between chance and
structure"( in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 10th 1987.)
Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

Paul Cézanne
Thomas Dowd remarks that the dissociation of explicit and
implicit knowledge implies that explicit memory is invoked
when the individual recalls an event in the past. In this case,
memory is used as an object. Explicit memory requires a
conscious and intentional recall and is often slow and
uncertain in its final form. Implicit memory, on the other
hand, occurs when we use our past knowledge, that is our
tacit knowledge (for example in problem solving) without
conscious awareness that we are using it. Implicit learning
occurs through the tacit detection of covariation (things that
occur together.)

This is why changes in games may effectively stall the

growth in the learning process.
The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read…
One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

Paul Cézanne
Showing and demonstrating are communication acts - BIC [Behavioral
implicit communication] - such as teaching by example.

Stigmergy [stigma - outstanding sign and ergon - work] may be defined as

"incitement to work by products of work" or as "the production of a certain
behaviour in agents as a consequence of the effects produced in the local
environment by previous behaviour… Stigmergy is a special form of BIC
where the addressee does not perceive the behaviour [during its
performance] but perceives other post-hoc traces and outcomes of it. To
be sure, perceiving behavior is always perceiving traces and
environmental modifications due to it, it is just a matter of perception time
and of duration of the trace" [Cristiano Castelfranchi.]

One should heed that story of Correggio standing before some

great masterpiece and crying: Anch' io son' pittore ["I too, am a
painter!".]

This is how 'art constructs art' [S.J.Schmidt.]

Jin Nong 金农
Jin Nong's calligraphy was
strongly influenced by
stone carved steles and he
attempted successfully to
transfer the strength of the
stone carving to his brush.
Zhao Zhiqian 赵之谦
Zhao Zhiqian 赵之谦
Zhao Zhiqian developed his own interpretation of the
official or clerical script based on influences of stone
steles dating from the Northern Wei (386-534).
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Edouard Manet
Edouard
Manet
Stefan Arteni
Tiziano Vecellio
Edouard Manet
 Mokurai (1854 – 1930)
"Enso"

Hakuin Sengai
 Teaching by example

Hangul calligraphy demonstration Pierre Bonnard at work.

by Kwon Myongwon Photo: Brassaï,
© Gilberte Brassaï
Radical Constructivist Epistemology

Radical Constructivism is the view that knowledge and reality are constructed
culturally, that is to say that two independent cultures will likely come up with
different categorizations.

Ernst von Glasersfeld is the proeminent proponent of this form of

constructivism. Radical Constructivism claims that knowledge is the
self-organized cognitive process of the human brain. That is, the process of
constructing knowledge regulates itself, and since knowledge is a construct
rather than a compilation of empirical data, it is not possible to know the
degree to which knowledge reflects upon an ontological reality.
Thus, any specific instance of observation will still be the result of an
indefinite succession of cognitive operations…The particularity of this
expression is that it is recursive and without any particular starting point, or
initial conditions…we have the (possible) utilization of the set of attractors
(eigenvalues) as referents for some aspects of the interaction of the dynamical
system itself with its environment (e.g. the pattern recognition abilities of
neural networks.)
"Peter Cariani has developed the notion of emergence relative to a model
[that is emergence as manifestation of new forms, e.g. syntactic
emergence as a new combinatorial ability.] I see emergence relative to a
model as an observer's possibility of switching between different models
offering different modes of explanation. I argue that the syntax should be
treated operationally in second-order cybernetics“ [Luis M.Rocha.]

During symbol formation, large amounts of information are filtered out of

perceptual representations to form a schematic representation of a
selected aspect. During productivity, small amounts of the information
filtered out are added back. Thus, schematicity makes productivity
possible…Productivity is not limited to filling in schematic regions but can
also result from replacements, transformations, and deletions of existing
structure… symbol systems produce type-token mappings… the degree to
which a symbol's content resembles its referent is neither sufficient nor
necessary for establishing reference… Similarly, it is not necessary for a
symbol…to bear any similarity to its referent [ Lawrence W. Barsalou.]

The model may change without affecting the system itself in any way. What
remains at the end is a scenario of emergence which takes place entirely
on the observer's side. Here emergence would seem to be in the eye of the
beholder.
Polycontexturality

An art object itself is polychronic, multitemporal, it reveals a time that is

gathered together [Michel Serres.]

The complex sign's indeterminacy and instability can be formally described,

like most self-organization processes, through the calculus of indications
introduced by George Spencer-Brown. His attempt to set proper foundations
for mathematics and descriptions in general, views descriptions as based on
a primitive act and accounts more specifically for the ‘dynamic unfoldment’
of self-organizing systems. It may therefore be consistently applied to an
adequate description of form mobility.

By looking at writing and painting as a performance practice, I have offered

some examples of how finite gestures enact differentiable, abstract, or
objective entities via finite traces.
By means of the metaphor of polycontexturality one enters
artistic 'multi-languageness' - cultural polyglotism - a plural
and dynamic heterarchy of contextures and their playful
synchronicity, diachronicity and polychronicity. Relativizing
semiotics, the process introduces the concept of keno-sign
[empty sign]. In regard to signs, Floyd Merrell contends:
"Their balance may become precarious, and, deprived of
equilibrium, dissipation can erupt, which then makes them
likely candidates for a new form of order."

Contexture means the act, process, or

manner of weaving parts into a whole and
also a structure so formed.

Each contexture is logically finite. But their

respective ranges are infinite because one
can generate, within the respective
domain, a potential infinitiy of forms.
Gotthard Günther calls the gap between
contextures discontexturality .
Chinese characters are written with…basic strokes…The strokes
themselves…don’t have a meaning. They are the conditions of the
possibility of meaning at all. In polycontextural terms they are not
signs but kenograms inscribing morphograms which can be
thematized…
The matrix has to be read, involving different viewpoints and
memory…There is a multitude of truths space-ing multiple ways of
practice. The play of differences has to be written in a mundane
game of traces and marks…
A further step is introduced with the ‘abstraction’ [subversion] of
morphizing contextures. This is realized by Morphogrammatics and
Kenogrammatics, the grammar of kenos, the game of emptiness,
studying the invariance of dynamical patterns.

Rudolf Kaehr
Derrida’s Machines Part III…Polylogics…
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/PolyLogics.pdf

[Note: a particular sequence of kenograms has been called by

Gotthard Günther a "morphogram“]
A calligraphic work can be read, but the traditional way of appreciating calligraphy
consists in dissociating the ‘meaning’ of the text and even the fact that there is a text
from the form. One simply gazes at the formal configuration of brushstrokes, at the
traces of the artist’s gestures. They are said to reveal the artist’s level of skill, the
artist’s mood when creating the work and even the artist’s character and personality.

Buddha Man

By Jiun
Kamijo Shinzan
Kamijo Shinzan
Kamijo Shinzan
Kamijo Shinzan
Tanaka Setsuzan
Ning Fucheng
To paraphraze the eminent German mathematician David Hilbert,
in complete formalization, painterly or graphic expressions are
regarded simply as empty signs. The structures or configurations
constructed from the system of signs (called a calculus) are
simply sequences of meaningless marks which are combined in
strict agreement with explicitly stated rules. The derivation of
further structures can be viewed as simply the transformation of
one set of such sequences into another set, in accordance with
precise rules of operation.
Formalization reveals visual relations in naked clarity ... One is
able to see the structural patterns of various "structures" of signs:
how they hang together, how they are combined, hot they nest in
one another, and so on. A page covered with the "meaningless"
marks of such a formalization does not assert anything - it is
simply an abstract design or a mosaic possessing a certain
structure. But configurations of such a system can be described,
and statements can be made about their various relations to one
another. One may say that a "structure" resembles another
"structure," or that one "structure" appears to be made up of three
others, and so on.
“We are not yet in possession of an ontology supporting a concept of being
where `being` would not only refer to something that just is but to one that, at the
same time, has an image, because it is capable of sustaining `objective`
processes of hetero-reference ... the integration of discontextural elements ...
does not exhaust itself in the simple distinction between prototype and its
hetero-referential image (including the image-making process) The phenomenon
fills more than two ontological loci.”

(Gotthard Günther)
The taking in of forms of an alien contexture [contexture means a
complex underlying pattern or structure, weaving parts into a whole, or
warp and woof] transforms the receiving contexture. Conceptual and/or
structural integration [blending] consists in the creation of a new space
(the blend) from the projection of elements and relations of, at least, two
input spaces (also called contributing spaces.) The operations of
composition (of elements in the blend), completion (of the blend by
recruitment of other frames) and elaboration (dynamical elaboration of
the structure in the blend) develop an emergent structure that is not
available from the contributing spaces. The new blend structure leads to
the construction of new connections.

Algebraic semiotics views sign systems as abstract data types, because

the same information can be represented in a variety of different ways or
the same sign system can be realized in different ways.

Being an autonomous semiotic domain means having a different

tradition, variety of methods, problems and approaches to developing
solutions. Semiotic sets overlap. Here we take the approach of basing
signs on human social activity. We claim that signs do not have
meanings in themselves, but only have whatever meaning we give to
them [Joseph Goguen.]
Andrés MARZAL DE SAX,
compartmentalized composition
and a detail of the composition
Tomioka Tessai,
Landscape and
detail
Tomioka
Tessai
Stefan Arteni,
compartmentalized composition
Stefan Arteni,
compartmentalized
composition and
the use of
Far Eastern
calligraphic visual
production
techniques
The Latin word limes originally indicated the path between two fields, an in-between
marginal space which connects and separates, a space of indeterminacy that is
undefined and never fully definable. Cultural contextures set in the borderlands of
cultures, from remote periods and modern ones, are spaces of parallelism, intersection,
overlap, disjuncture and transjunction. How to comprehend the semiosphere (Yuri
Lotman's notion) of the borderland? The boundary is a zone of semiotic polyglotism, it
represents co-existence of differences, and encourages switches of contextures and a
meta-artistic interplay of incongruent traditions and mutually incompatible form
systems.

A translocal multi-identiy web and a recursiveness of identity recreation, a being

between and astride cultures and moving across visual contextures set side by side,
imply a second-order perspective, an experiential metacultural sensibility - that is to
say a polycontextural stylistic matrix. An inner metalanguage, multiple inheritances and
multiple codings, are at work. The polarities of inside and outside are continuously
reversed. The boundaries turn inside out, and the inside is the outside. Self-referential
cybernetic systems offer the conceptual categories of an outside interior and an inside
exterior. The work becomes a palimpsest of chiastic overlaps.
Stefan Arteni
Stefan Arteni
Julius Bissier
Polychronic time is the eternal now, where everything occurs simultaneously:
the play of interweaving multi-simultaneous artistic contextures, their ludic
inter-tanglings, the move from a contexture to another, the
decontextualizing /recontextualizing operations, and transcontextural operations.

Form troping and troping tropes are often employed as a systems of connections
of dissonant entities and of graphic interruptions, in analogy with the use of tropes
in medieval music, where the troping principle [Greek tropos, turn] describes the
mechanisms of suppression, addition, extension or interpolation of material at
micro and macro levels, that is multiple modes of stylistic transposition.

A polychronous model for formal syntax consists of heterogeneous models

assembled for design refinement. In and by this property of seeming to visually
self-entextualize, the formal plenitude-in-itself of the complex graphic sign is made
figurally real in the experienceable here and now.

Only through the power of its visual potential can the cultural function of graphic
notation be explained.

"Heidegger's unveiling…is the originary act…The world showing itself through

techne is the originary chiasmus of Dasein. Techne provides access to the
unveiling, the possibility for which itself simultaneously provides the condition of
possibility for techne“ [Paul Tulipana.]
Transjunction is seen to be motivated from a game-theoretic perspective, emerging from
a…game of imperfect information...This game-theoretic approach yields an interpretation
where partiality is generated as a property of non-determinacy of games. Over-defined
values are produced by adding a weak, contradictory negation... In general, particular
forms of extensive imperfect information games give rise to a generalised…logic where
various forms of informational dependencies and independencies…can be studied.
(Gabriel Sandu, Ahti Pietarinen)

Transjunctional jumps don't exclude the possibility to stay in the primary system at
the same time of the jump…
The possibility of metamorphosis is given by the interlocking mechanism of the
chiasm.
(Rudolf Kaehr)

One should keep in mind the notion of game-meaning [Spielbedeutung], which is the
meaning signs have by virtue of the fixed rules of a game. Spielbedeutung is thus meaning
as use in a rule-governed game…The sign in its semiotic function is defined by means of
other signs. A semiotic system is a closed system in that the signs in it do not refer to
anything outside the context of the game…their semantic function either does not exist or
tends to be forgotten [Edmund Husserl.] In connection with Husserl’s views on formal
systems, one can distinguish the meaning-intentions or ideal meanings that can be
associated with signs in a formal system from the ‘games meaning’ that one can attach to
signs in formal systems solely on the basis of manipulating sign configurations according
to sets of rules… It is as though we are playing by the rules of a particular game and we
need not be concerned with what the signs are about.
Conclusion

And during my skimming of several other articles, I came upon Louis H. Kauffman's
'Fibonacci Form and Beyond.' Kauffman develops a context for self-referential forms:
the Fibonacci sequence, the Golden Section, fractal forms, the logic of distinctions,
dynamic systems, and quantum field theory, that is the natural appearance of the
Fibonacci Form as a result of patterns of self-interactions of the mark [patterns of non-
intersecting marks are called expressions.]

For Michael Polanyi, we are invited, by a succession of detachments informed by the

via negativa, to locate a meaning that is immanent in the form and that is not able to be
attained conceptually.
Cybernetics has circularity, circular interlocking, recursiveness, as its central concern,
though as Gregory Bateson pointed out, circularity does not mean a precise circle in
which events repeat themselves in the same circular path. This important theme is
discussed in Bateson's concept of aesthetics. In his writing - unique in modern
scholarship - aesthetic unity, incorporating a sense of the sacred, lies at the interface
between the named (the maps) [our means of describing the world arises out of notions
of difference (or what G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form calls "distinction" and
"indication"),] and the unnamed (territory). Aesthetics is the unifying glimpse that
makes us aware of the unity not able to be described in prose or prosaic
consciousness. The sacred is the ‘integrated fabric of mental processes that envelops
all our lives.' The sacred implies tacit recognition that there are gaps; that the maps
that we create will never provide a complete description of the territory. The essence of
communication lies in the relationship between perceptual redundancy (which creates
pattern{s}), metaphor, which cognitively links levels, and the sacred which lies at the
interface of map and territory. Thus the sacred implies tacit recognition of an immanent
aesthetic unity derived through current practices which embody patterns of relations.
Aesthetic wholes derive from ‘the pattern which connects.’ Redundancy is a vital clue
to patterning - the patterns that connect and their recursive nature - it involves
convention, habit, repetition and practice [Kathy M'Closkey.] Discontinuity and
distortion are part of the recursive process. The edges or the boundaries between
subsystems of aesthetics and consciousness, aesthetics and morality,
unconsciousness and consciousness, are where both gaps and interconnections
occur. Here ‘difference’ is to be found and the differences that make a difference lie at
the interface of sub-systems. Only here can the pattern of differences - together with
change in this pattern - be perceived.
"...we see that our
journey was, in its
preconception,
unnecessary, although
its formal course, once
we had set out upon it,
was inevitable" [George
Spencer-Brown.]

Stefan Arteni,
calligraphic studies:
Greek (theoi and sphynx),
Linear B (the artist’s name,
ARTENI, and also the signs
for woman and man)