(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 1

Binary Structures
In this essay I’ll be running a thread of binary structures through waves of holistic,
scientific, creative and anecdotal examples, against my own developing practice that
brings the concept of this very basic structure to the surface, this while asking myself
whether my own personal feelings about structure and composition in my life’s experience
might be informed in varied, (and even potentially unlikely ways.) My growing interest in
this theme has been fairly recent in culmination, and the process of piecing together my
increasing awareness in considered binary examples that defines my sense of creative
identity expands in a range of ways, I believe speaks volumes to how I navigate through
information, then act/create accordingly. Influenced by the artful ambiguity I become so
mindful of in communication, this essay progresses through these examples and
considerations in an attempt to illustrate a deeper form at its core of what I’ve set my
sights in continuing my project, and to at very least plant a seed that in many ways
suggests to exist between points of certainty, in a creative realm where communication,
(indeed much more aside,) occurs on an internal level of constant fluctuation… And so,
begins.

Time and time again I find a stubborn, seemingly desperate persuasion to render things
into their simplest observable forms. There is however an inquisitive side of me, one that
feels free form and intuitive, one that effortlessly takes over when I do all the good things,
the things I most value. The other space in which I suspect many people can question
these things, and question themselves against them, just because they can and yet I fear
that I cannot indulge in such questions. Not that I live a life without questioning, only that
the questions I’d be occupying within that space, would be no more than practically
relevant to show how I should best do those Good Things again. Allowing for values,
empathy and compassion; allowing that my Things can fit in neatly with everyone else’s
things.

Though I can greatly appreciate the vastness of worldly contemplation that I’ve fleetingly
dipped my toes into when presented to me, the natural inclination is to do what I was
taught, and have adapted over time since first receiving support for dyslexia and
dyspraxia. This informs the same methods I use in my current job, supporting students
with similar learning difficulties, most communally relating to issues with comprehension of
written and sometimes spoken information, as well as challenges in coordination and
organization of one's self accordingly, in order to keep up. One method of information
extraction I’ve come to depend on is: repeat the information back to myself until near
nausea, hearing and picturing the words alternately, take what key points or words bubble
up after, and simplifying it to the point it can’t be simplified any more.

By the time I’ve done this process of extraction, something, some Good Thing, can start to
happen, where quite often with learning difficulties it takes for more time. Despite this
obstacle I have, for instance when helping a student comprehend an eleven-page project
proposal, there is something about those core pieces of information, the real meat and
bone, the most essential detail that lays beneath. Once identified, everything around it is
arbitrary white noise, a by- product of what's actually there, bought about by the individuals
who composed the documents on their own creative tangents. These are like the
suggestive lines I've always used in life drawing and portraiture, with a visual style that is
often observed as loose and distorted/suggestive lines, just about marking the essential
visual form, while also being fairly ambiguous. My drawings, like the text in a proposal and
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 2
many such requisite academic documents, follow a strict binary order of black and white,
space and content, but then partakes in a game of elaborate suggestions where no part is
clear in isolation. Much as I (and many of my students) crave clarity in communication that
the written or spoken material will not easily offer, I am with my own visual background,
and training in the art of NLP and Hypnosis, more than aware of the power that ambiguity
and suggestion can have in every medium of communication.

https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/brainhemispheres/

In ‘Monsters and Magic Sticks’, a book illustrating the mechanics of hypnosis through its
artful ambiguities of communication, Hellers assessment of the “two separate, distinct,
different and equal realities.” Taking place from the two half brain hemispheres of left and
right: “The left hemisphere specializes in verbal skills, numbers, analytical thinking and
linear, digital reasoning. The right”- “in spatiality, visual imagery, imagination, colour,
rhythm, kinesthetic experience and creativity.” Curiously enough, having partaken in
many assessments through childhood, and some to present day, I recall results of
hemispheric brain tests suggesting my focal point landed towards the center, from a
therapeutic standpoint. This suggests greater synergy between these two modes of
observation and maintains diverse channels of thought through which we navigate our
experiences. This can only be a good thing. Even so my impression of such suggestions
can in some circumstance cause me a mild sense of indecisive anxiety that I may be
juggling two realms while giving others inaccurate expectations of me. Nothing seems to
cause me more social frustration than what I find to be premature assumptions of my
agency and ability, whether of a negative or even positive nature.

Beyond my own subjectivity, we all (as described in Monsters and Magical Sticks) navigate
our way through this “consensual reality” exchanging metaphors and maps through
language that informs our experience. Nero Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis, the
therapeutic courses I undertook, seek to construct metaphors and maps from the
information we observe to redefine it by our own values of good and bad. Unpacking these
same conditioned distinctions of the consensual realm, where something either is or isn’t a
chair, (or whatever else it is or isn’t,) much like the subject of binary oppositions. The
implications to society and the individual experience that deconstructing what is true or
false, right or wrong is something I hope to acknowledge in this essay, but my ultimate
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 3
sentiment wishes to be one where like the dynamic between hemispheres of thought, the
binary and analogue systems of thought and experience I identify in my pursuits, can
never stray too far apart. It is for me, the revisions they attempt to make of each other, that
is a highly fragile marriage vulnerable to any more than one question at a time.

However, much vagueness and ambiguity I express and partake in my own world, I crave
the comfort and function of certainty more and more in the words I hear and read. There is
a ridged code traversing my issues of comprehension and coordination, beneath all the
fluidity of progressive thought and expression, that becomes ever more evident and
overpowering; where things are or aren’t, with no grey area. Without this input from the
outside world, there can be no fluidity for me to exist upon. And so, time and time again, I
begin to observe the patterns of binary fluctuations, the vague and fluid streams of code
present in all my creative material and the numerous themes I give them.

There has been some reoccurring visual language in my work where lines of suggestive
form take on different roles of certainty. Like my photograph collages where I explored the
visual space between seemingly unrelated certainty of form, or drawings like
Miscellaneous Content Within, obscuring the form of text by expanding on it, and a few
other works where used more obscene language in the same manner. People may
observe the abstract forms, unaware of its less
pleasing content. Dyslexic artist Nick Fagan’s ‘Come
Come’ breaks down this same visual language he’s
Nick Fagan: Come Come found challenging, in an “attempt to find the area where
communication breaks down into something more
abstract.” Much of his work seems to attempt this
breaking down. From when I first used text, to
photography and then other forms of visual conductors
of abstract work like hands, eyes and nude figures,
most of my visual work of explosive patterns and
shapes likes to remain anchored by some universal, or
perhaps consensual communication; something people
can identify with certainty I like to think of a devise to
invite them into my internal realm. A realm that’s far
less easy to track. Hence my prior focal point on
anatomical themes. Funny (and quite perplexing) how
easy it is for me to express this process through my
practical work and appreciate other music and visual
work that has the same fluid or anarchic quality. Yet
when these qualities emerge in the written and spoken word, absent of the universal
anchors described through an NLP lens of communication, my mind shuts down
disoriented in the grey area. When words aren’t exceptionally persuasive by method, they
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can hardly seem there at all. Here lay the mental gymnastics that brings about the enquiry
into my manner of thinking.

Martin Baker: Miscellaneous Content Within

I can’t help but ask myself: Am I so self-absorbed with my creative endeavors that I can’t
accept complexity from apparent simplicity? When as a passionate creator of Things, I'll
gladly build as much variation, nuance and complexity as I realistically can. That is
incidentally the type of question I might avoid like the plague before attempting to answer.
But I might begin to explore creatively why I'm actively choosing a life of ignorance, simply
attempting some order to emit my internal chaos of non-specific/analog thoughts with my
fine line work that strongly hints of geometric abstraction but feels akin to me equally with
the loose and blurred vibrancy of impressionist painting. In spite any compulsion to think of
things in a stubbornly essential way, I might be forgiven for regarding myself somewhat as
a freethinker, open minded on most things, that gladly embraces notions of diversity, and
the range of possibilities in this privileged world I partake in. Yet I only feel I can do so,
built upon a more ridged and binary structure of internal navigation, this foundation layer,
that allows me the sense of space in which to learn and create Things. As diverse a mind
as two different digital photographs, representing entirely different things, but constructed
from the same essential blueprint. This is by many applications how I construct my
creative identity: Narrowing my field of vision across this range of contextual possibilities
agreeably with what I hope is a practical and intellectual liberation of simplicity.

The possible binary patterns in my work most notably go back to experiments with music,
after having developed a body of drawn work, of the loose and analogue nature, and
experimented further into the realms of artful ambiguity with language. In my degree in
Music and Visual Art, I pulled further towards the musical elements of trance induction in
the hopes of broadening back out into multimedia compositions. Applying techniques of
brain wave vibrations using in a lot of hypnosis and meditation practice to evoke certain
mental states, I came to generate a platform of pulsing sounds, and stereo tones of
incrementally different pitch that while played together, created a wobbling sensation, with
an illusion of a new frequency of sound, a sound that one hallucinates by internalizing the
difference between the information in each ear. There was an emphasis on creating music
from that grey space that occurs between two prerequisite elements put in place. This
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 5
process was exciting but due mostly to technical limitations was eventually shelved, to be
revisited some other time. I had intended to sync these tracks to video material, where
images came in and out of focus to the pulses. Something that would give the observer a
pleasant but stimulating experience, where they would subconsciously fill in the gaps in
their own perceived space between the Things. This suggestion of universality in my art
has remained a key quality for me. But now, I am becoming ever more aware of something
in my art that reflects this manner of processing.

I recently encountered the work of Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese, electronic and visual
composer of “mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics” with his hypnotic,
immersive installation ‘Test pattern [N°12]’ at Store Studios in London. Composed a
torrent of barcode/binary patterns, “the project aims to examine the relationship between
critical points of device performance and the threshold of human perception.” This
installation, (which I noticed was quite overwhelming for some) with rapidly fluctuating
patterns of line and sound, had an instant sense of humanity to it that I could have
affectionally observed for longer than I had time available. This work, though very
mechanized and binary in composition, progresses at such rapid rate of varying widths
and fluctuations taped into a sense of consciousness as I aspire to evoke with varying jolts
of imagery, so dense and fast in succession it occupies a measuring grey area of infinite
possibilities, while the black and white/plus and minus binaries charge on beneath like a
heartbeat.

Ryoji Ikeda: Test pattern [N°12]

An intriguing signifier of a consciousness that the structured rhythms of heartbeats and

brainwaves of life takes place, though it is hard to imagine a precise point at which a
natural pules in time exists within our minds, reliably identifying patterns based on an up
and down motion when it comes to beats and waves. Very interesting effects can take
place using vibration in methods of sound therapy I mentioned earlier and given the power
of these physiological ripples that I experienced from Ikeda's installation, I was reminded
how powerful these pules and ripples can be in evoking something at one's core. The use
of these brainwaves offer a somewhat untapped resource for artists using sound and all
manner of experiment musicians. No longer a standard domain of just therapeutic
practices there are now computer programs and phone apps that allow you to customize
to one's own requirements. Binaural beats, that make use of stereo signals on the ears
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 6
and delver two separate tones (depending on the mental state intended to evoke,) of very
incremental difference, entice the listener to mentally internalize a tone in-between,
essentially hallucinating the tone that would exist between the two, activating this process
that can be likened somewhat to the purring of a cat, creates an immersive state, while
Monaural and Isochronic tones are used for the same means but in the form of a cohesive
sound that doesn’t require a stereo medium. Having experimented a lot with these
methods of pulsing and immersive sound-scapes there is a great creative potentially, but
potentials that require some basic awareness of the range of the brains Gamma, Beta,
Alpha, Theta and Delta frequencies involved in everything from focus, problem solving,
creativity and relaxation.

Be it black and white, colour or straight and curved lines that have their own unique
qualities in terms of visual effect, this enquiry was born of the process searching beneath
the visual language of my work. Earlier in the course I had an interest in the dynamics of
masculine and feminine, and initially from a point of human anatomy as a visual conductor
for developing fine line abstraction, continuing the anatomical thread through that of
physical gestures, (predominantly hands), the themes of male and female reproductive
polarities has remained a driving force in considering producing work involving two
gestural points interacting with each other, e.g. two animated hand forms, each positioned
at fixed points, (frames) showing awareness of each other's motions. As with my visual
work, my contextual interest in reproductive dynamics are more some evident of abstract
aesthetics than political or ethical enquiries into inclusivity and diversity. Though some
mention is inevitable, my broadening the contextual parameters to notions of binary in
general fits more with my line of interest. The idea that composition of an organic or
artificial nature could at least appear to be deconstructed within some two-sided spectrum
speaks volumes, having identified with that mode of thought and its implications prior to
and beyond my evaluations of male self- identity, and now unravelling all the is or isn’t, ins
and outs, ups and downs, negatives and positives that have informed the core of my
creative expression.

While photographing rapid hand movements, and exploring visual structure within the
blurred forms, I considered how these human gestures pose a space between two points
in time that if composed in a sequence where two of these structures appear to respond to
each other, where one binary process can be identified beneath another, and potentially,
this visual unpacking can go on and on as far as one wills it. I wanted to unveil deeper
levels of older, simpler code from as far back as one can investigate examples to see what
conceptual threads then presented themselves to me.

When first searching for a contextual starting point through my binary lens that appears to
jolt everything else into being, seeking a sense of greater meaning and purpose being how
far back this conceptual thread might reach. I found an evocative lens of thought after
thinking on the evolutionary lines of true code, a Genetics Professor refer to a "dizzying
leap in evolution" taking place that made possible the complex and driven composition of
life I partake in today. A question of what (if any) substance does a role of binary dynamics
really have, had sent me up the path of reproductive nature to find some greater
pressurizing event of synergy between two fundamentally different things. In this case it
appeared: “a curious marriage of two cells,” two quite simple, very ancient but crucially
differing types of prokaryotic cells happen upon each other, the larger of which, the
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 7
Archaea, (meaning old one,
which appears to be quite a
stubborn cell in nature, often
found now in hostile and savage
environments unfit for much life),
envelopes a smaller bacteria
cell, however this consumed
bacteria then begins a symbiotic
relationship with the larger cell it
is inside, rather than just being
devoured by it. This apparent
defiance of convention illustrated
by the endosymbiotic theory
begins a chain of events that
creates the eukaryotic cells,
more complex, dynamic in
energy sources and expansive a cell than all its Archaea (meaning old one,) counterparts
that preceded them. These cells are units of code that formed the mitochondria of complex
life. My reaction to this late lesson of evolution began to take on a romanticized and
possibly far out nature.

The wheels set in motion for cellular processes I’m profoundly unqualified to unpack, but
considering this turn in prehistoric events, its simplest description of something so
fundamental to life evoked wildly playful thoughts, where my focus instantly turned to the
clique ‘chicken or the egg?’ question, indulgently inferring that some singled celled proto-
egg ate a nearby proto-chicken, (or visa- versa) And now as a consequence, here I am,
projecting my own character concepts onto these ancient cells as if one ate the other out
to just disrupt a sense of tedium (a billion or so years in progression), or perhaps to
promote better inclusivity in the cellular work place, ushering in a diversity of life and being
that we still attempt socially to appropriate against limiting notions of binary identities in our
own species.

And perhaps the crucial building blocks of life are laid out at first on a foundation of
stubborn persistence of singular or binary roles, but then on that foundation, those unique
digressions such as one definite thing swallowing another thing in an apparent defiance of
the evident conventions, gives way for me and countless others to take these imaginative
flights of fancy and act upon them in how one identifies oneself. With that my binary take
home of life, is an intriguing dynamic of convention and diversion, drew me to meditate on
Deleuze and Guttari's analysis of Rhizomatic Structures, giving way between points to
some freeform process of creation in nature, but it could be argued I'm very much
dependent on a simple and discrete manner of hierarchy.

When first considering my visual aesthetic application, the first focal point was the
animated work of German artist Oskar Fischinger: A quality likened in Adrian Searle's
Guardian art column as if where "Mondrian's Pier and Ocean paintings animated, or Hans
Hartung's charcoal drawings doing a dance." Works like his ‘An Optical Poem’
demonstrate many interesting dynamics of aesthetic polarities, but with its classic score
left me reminiscent of Kandinskys colour experiments with synesthesia, and then
emphasis on “inner necessity” along with his creative relationship with a music composer
Shoenberg. Synesthesia is a subject that has long interested me, where considering how
music can evoke and perhaps inform a person's subjective visual imagery as well as
crossing the boundaries or sensory filters we develop in early life. Another element of
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 8
exploration between in the blurred lines or grey area, only the unpacking of which reveals
a holistic process of wholeness beneath our means of perception. Yet the mind will always
learn or relearn distinguishing filters, to move us forward, or to where we’ll regard as
forward, yet when the proposition emerges in works that marry two things we identified as
separate things, only then does the wholeness of natural incite complexity seem to reveal
itself fleetingly. Then I find myself restructuring a little before the process repeats in new
ways. Fischinger, who had some brief involvement with Disney’s Fantasia film before
being removed from the project, (deemed to be perhaps a bit more abstract than they were
going for) does at least earn his work more mainstream presence at a relatively early
stage in the medium of animation.

Kandinsky: Impression III Concert 1911 Oskar Fischinger: An Optical Poem

Blurring these lines in the anatomical grey realm,

artist Stelarc with a long interest in evolutional
architecture of the body, makes use of “medical
instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality
systems, the Internet and biotechnology to
engineer intimate and involuntary interfaces with
the body. He explores Alternate Anatomical
Architectures with augmented and extended body
constructs.” Works like ‘Third Hand’ and
‘Exoskeleton’ illustrates an evocative dynamic
between artificial and natural agencies, the two
elements depend on each other in function.

As with my use of human signifiers in my

work moving forward, especially with
recent hand rotoscoping animation,
these augmentations of body parts
present another example of the
augmentation from universal images,
perhaps signifiers, inviting the viewer to
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 9
float thought between two realms in their own manner. “Performances” he once explained:
“might be structured, but not scripted”

Norman Mclaren's work ‘Dots’ and Len Lye’s Free Radicals, have qualities from Oskar's
abstract work but refined to purer aesthetic elements both visually and auditory. The sound
and picture are part of the same and partake in a dance of space and content, much as I
built up my sound and visual material into more potentially elaborate structure upon
evident rules of binary distinction. A collision of two certainties to illustrate realms of
unrestrained fluidity. Watching these absorbing works I’m reminded of the discussions
amongst scientists over the merits of digital physics. Being asked if the universe could be
digital? The answers that are given take on their own dance of certainty and space, where
the panel between them asses the digital and analogue qualities, “a thing can either be
here or there” in one sense but then quantum physics in mind is described with a “funky”
analogue quality where an electron can either be here and there at the same time. This
discourse while ultimately inconclusive in verdict makes both approaches seem equally as
plausible, yet the general digital concept like “the little pixels on the screen” giving the
discreet illusion of continuousness, appears demonstrate itself in grander iterations since
Democritus the Atomist talks of tiny things in matter that cannot be “Cut” any further.
Mclaren's later work Boogie Doodle starts off setting a similar tone with text and sound, but
then takes on more dynamic range of aesthetics with multiple colors, forms and
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instrumental music. How far that may reflect on my own progress remains to be seen, but I
am very mindful of crucially having a sense of order at the core.

Dots

Free Radicals

Jumping forward to Phil Mulloy's animations, far less abstract in composition, but telling
stories of a visceral nature through course and bleak means of binary aesthetic, sticking
mostly with black and white colour, there's an evident intention to pick apart often sensitive
aspects of the human experience. This “satirical grotesque” approach echoes in David
Shirley's and Chris Shepherd's animation ‘Who I am and What I Want’, another somewhat
crude black and white depiction of story- telling. Although straying away from the more
sensually pleasurable immersion of human experience I have in mind, I can describe my
inclination as more unpacking some elegantly simple yet complex mechanics occurring in
the background of the realm in which one considers human narratives. As Claud Levi-
Strauss spoke of the implications and limitations of linguistics, it is this encoding with
words I remain fearful of falling into while suggesting some greater,
simpler form of navigating nature. As was enthusiastically reminded in
Phill Mulloy
NLP theory, that the map is not the territory
and the menu is not the meal, but the
simpler, more ambiguous either these
templates become, the more accurate they
might appear in what they are depicting,
thanks to one's instinct to fill in the gaps
subjectively. Also, subjectivity given Lacan's
description of subjective identification of the
signifier and signified, taking place in a “web
of signification” -“composed of two distinct
realms that never meet.”

When attempting to appropriate these

themes through a lens of post-modernist
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 11
anxiety where it's hard to imply any absolutes, there’s little room to observe a grounded
code or platform in my work without some clear attempt to then defy that. The heart of my
creative drive strives to elicit beauty from simplicity, watching an exchange of moving
imagery play out, born of and elevated from the apparent limitation of two. Rather mixing
things up and finding unlikely synergy as more centric with my own series of 'Intersection'
works.

And so, with the aesthetic options in mind I look back at the recent idea of hands and
gestures on my mind in recent months, these visual experiments with hand movements
combined with an abstract experiment limiting my visual code to curved or straight lines,
lead me by an appropriate intersection of twos Things to my initial interests in the binary
theme. Now having stretched my contextual focal point in a number of intermittent
directions, the reassessment of the hand gestures as polarized devises reacting against
each other seems to leave some stones unturned. I was inclined to think by then that a
piece with far more simple and abstract shapes or forms situated against each other would
feel more in keeping with the theme. But as an artist who wants to make something
beautiful, it would be hard to resist the aesthetic potential of hand gestures. Drawing
people in to my realm of thought with a universally familiar devise is important to me.
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After being introduced to artist Hanna Lees use of hand forms in work like ‘The Turning of
Existence Into Its Opposite’ I asked what interests relating to hand gestures informed her
Hannah Lees, The Turning of
Existence into Its Opposite
material: Her sorted ranged from the diverse catalogue
of Italian hand gestures to story- telling devises in
Indian dance. However, though her iterations she
described her work “a shift or complete falling-away of
context’”. It's easy to see how drawing from her varied
cultural sources of human expression through this
physical devise compliments an enquiry into the idea of
“miss-communication.” And perhaps given my
approach of seeking some universal common ground in
my work, (though inevitably open to interpretations
anyway) a key distinguishing factor with my implication
of hands is that they are only really present, to
represent what they are: Just hands, more fixed in
position, and the patterns that play out between them,
are more basic ideas of potential gestures, waves or
pulses of energy like a charge of electricity between its
plus and minus components. After considering this, I
realized that hands may only in-fact need feature as
ghostly figures of blurred movement between two dots.

Contemplating cultural iterations and implications of sexual polarities in my previous

essay, I’ve come now to identify my driving inclinations around what the concept that the
ancient Chinese Yin Dynasty refers to as Yin and Yang: “yin is characterised as feminine,
still, dark, negative, and an inward energy.” - “yang is characterised as
masculine, energetic, hot, bright, positive, and an outward energy.” While comparing this
to modern day culture and theory, (particularly with gender), has highlighted flaws with
these concepts informing binary distinctions, and through my prior enquires of male
identity were my initial cause of interest, I don’t consider the further unpacking of yin and
yang relationships in nature as a means to make a topical statement on gender identity.
(At least not directly). Although the potential blurring of lines in making art that suggests
infinite variants taking place, could perhaps send the observer on that train of
contemplation, I want to encourage those contextual details of variation vs order, or
synergy of variation and order to be composed subjectively.

The themes of yin and yang do reveal themselves in curious ways in nature and our
consensual reality. In the DNA code we’re composed of, Adenine only binds to Thymine,
and Cytosine only binds to Guanine. You get two identical copies of DNA when a copy
unzips, because all the bases attract their counterparts.

The process of assembling a theme of structure and fluidity, while inviting myself upon
constant iterations of compromising looseness or rigidity, leaves me hyper aware of the
manner in which I play out my own fluctuation between areas of interest. The
segmentation I navigate between conceptual application and the vast implications of
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 13
nature and reality, I hover between leaving my own distorted sequence in attempt to
construct an accessible order of things, (getting the essence), a question of divisive
structure, by deviating from one point to the other. I am now, reminiscent of the seemingly
never ending, open ended progression of words at the heart of NLP theory where,
continuing to traverse content in an artfully ambiguous quality that now, I am persuaded to
play out with a rundown of further scientific and theoretic focal points. This followed in
succession with more conceptual deviations until an order surfaces (like the signifying
forms in those life drawings) within the necessitated points of this essays beginning and
inevitable end, I look now at the meat and bones, or ones and zeros where I find
substance in making a case for this ceaseless beauty of twos.

Beauty in the manifestation of this yin-yang type synergy is a feeling I’ve contemplated
allot while reflecting on this train of thought, I’ve come to identify (perhaps in some eyes it
may seem confess) a deep personal affection I seem to withhold for an abstract archetype
of masculine and feminine dynamic, but most specifically for things in art and culture that
have before signified a synergy that occurs between the sexes, I say this with some cation
as I’m mindful how may be interpreted as a love (and therefore) defense of some gender
binary conventions, and it’s this caution of a conflicting process of how to articulate my
thoughts on the matter which was a driving force of enquiry in my previous essay.
Essentially trying to distinguish subtle and discrete binary commonalities in the human
sexes, from any attempt to propagate prejudice or rejection of the variations in gender
identity and sexual persuasions. In such a potentially volatile period of time as this for
gender issues and sexual misconduct it feels quite necessary to underline that point.
Given personal experience and lines of enquiry in the last few years caused me to
contemplate my own internal heterosexual male self-identity, I find at my core a
romanticized appreciation for the heterosexual male and female dynamic, what I do enjoy
to observe as another instance of intriguing binary roles, especially in light of my earlier
research on genital composition and the knock on qualities those difference can make, is
that males and females on a basic sensory experiential level of sexual enjoyment alone,
do appear as a result of those anatomical differences, experience and enjoy sex in quite
notably different ways, and yet in balance, the fact they both are able to enjoy it, is where
there lays a fascinating solidarity, one that I find has a poetic sense of seemingly unlikely
synergy to it, reminiscent of the array of complex and diverse binary template signals that
sit discreetly in nature. The mistake is then to attempt to use such an analysis to insight
prejudice and propaganda towards anything that appears to deviate, especially mistaken
when deviation itself has had such an essential role in evolution and much more.

Such deviations give way to new synergy with its own qualities: consider that a
homosexual relationship seems to carry its own unique advantage of binary synergy, that
two people who share the same basic anatomical genital composition and attributed
sensory functions would have synergistic advantages through an intuitive familiarity. And
so, there is no reason therefore that one is to be observed more perfect or beautiful than
another. That would imply that any basic binary system is perfect, whether its real or just
our way of navigating nature, Male and female, as imperfect a base code as anything else,
(in its evolutionary abstract) signifies a code that naturally deviates and flourishes in the
wider diversity of nature. There is to me (in this as in every other aspect covered) some
basic pull toward an elegant code at the heart of things, my contemplations of male and
female roles and identity illustrates another example, not as code too condemn or limit our
horizons, simply that set a discreet and interesting platform for everything to play out. The
damaging impact of imposed gender roles in society, is something I equate to a failure to
cast our minds forward in a world where war and mass human production are still glorified
things, things that there is no reasonable need now for men to dispose of themselves to
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 14
reverse the local gene pool, protecting the women who’re then expected to isolate their
life's efforts on rearing the children that will merely repeat the process. Long past that age
of scarcity and continuous survival, our current surplus of people and wasted recourses
lakes an appreciation for diversity.

In discussions of Digital Philosophy: “computation is the single substance of a monist

metaphysics, while subjectivity arises from computational universality"
Mathematician/philosopher Rudy Rucker using the term “fact-space” in describing the
natural composition of things. Returning back to the subject of Digital Physics that I
inferred from the process involved in Norman Mclaren's animation: Theoretical physicist
John Wheeler introduced a popular term: ’It from Bit’ “All things physical are information-
theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe” writer/blogger Maria Popova quotes
Wheeler in her Brain Pickings entry: “Observer-participancy gives rise to information.”
Physicist Brian Greene talks on Digital physics, (In a vein I found similar to the Atomists of
Ancient Greece,) describing an investigation beyond the known layers, “maybe,
underneath the molecules and atoms and particles, there’s another Layer of reality coming
to light, a layer that’s based on information.” - “maybe we should describe reality in terms
of how those zeros and ones evolve over time.”

There is another theory: likened to the two super computers in Hitchhikers Guide to the
Galaxy, Deep Taught and the Planet Earth, the latter being created to figure out the
ultimate question of life the universe and everything after Deep Thought delivered the
answer of “42”. Following the theoretical threads from digital physics it has been
suggested that our universe, (much like Planet Earth in Douglas Adams sci-fi) is an
elaborate ongoing computation of some question/answer, or discovery of purpose, much
in keeping with the assertions that we as thinkers are the universe experiencing itself
subjectively, there is maybe some overall equation taking place, which besides opening
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 15
up long lines of discussion over God and reality, curiously enough when it comes to a later
instalment of The Hitchhikers radio series it transpires (predictably enough):

This all be it not strong

enough grounds on its own for an intellectual

enquiry on the computational universe theory,
does tie up the whole idea in a neat little bow of a
persistent binary theme, perhaps one that this
writer felt his own intuitive inclination toward a
persistent binary theme while diving into such an
idea even if it was comedic: that everything not just on the most minute level, but the most
entire, is a composition of two fundamentally opposing forms, (for whatever function it may
be believed to be), in Adams case: two crucially different universes define each other by
their inability to coexist together, and if they somehow where to, then everything would
replace itself with God knows what.

Contemplating these expanding areas of awareness from a focal point of contextual

pulses, I am not situated at a point of where the expanse of increasing information
revealing itself to me, is when taken in chunks of random isolation, hard to determine, but
the core thought that takes greater shape in my mind at every reflective turn, remains the
very process of creatively suggesting a sense of infinite, disordered entirety, that can’t be
mapped, yet revel itself on the platform of the most basic, predetermined and structure and
order. Everything, and every suggestion of every potential Thing, off a crucial devise of
binary interaction.
(Finished Post submission) Martin Baker 16

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