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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.

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

SolInvictusPress 2007

From the well-known sixteenth hymn of the fourth book of the Atharva-veda [translation by Sir Monier Monier-Williams]:

Yea, all that is beyond, King Varuna perceives. The winking of mens eyes are numbered all by him. He wields the universe, as gamesters handle dice.

Varuna holding a noose or lasso

Varuna and consort

The aim of this presentation is to create a bird's eye view from which one can unify, under a systematic new paradigm, the understanding of both local issues of artistic structure and organization, and global issues of artistic style configuration and its diachronic change.

***
Einstein could not accept the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory because of his deep conviction in the rationality of the universe. In his view, the statistical laws necessary to explain the subatomic world can only compel God to throw the dice in each case. Aion [time, eternity] is a child at play, playing draughts [pesseia, a board game which employs dice/knucklebones,] said Heraclitus. Sophocles, in a fragment, ascribed the invention of draughts and knucklebones [astragaloi] to Palamedes, who taught them to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Athena was credited with the invention of divinatory dice made from knucklebone.

In short, and paraphrasing Heidegger, the Gods do indeed throw the dice of Dasein.

Stefan Arteni, A Portrait of Fate

"Playfulness is the simultaneity of multiplicity," writes Don Handelman.

Play is adaptive potentiation, observes Brian Sutton-Smith.

Regarding science, Jean-Michel Salanskis says: "Axioms are an inaugural and prescriptive throw of the dice."

astragaloi (knuckle bones)

Vase used for pouring (turned on its side) in the form of a knucklebone

Two girls playing with knucklebones (astragaloi). Perhaps from Taranto. Terra-cotta, 340-330 BCE. British Museum.

Knuckle-bones players, Roman monochrome on marble

Ajax and Achilles at draughts, Greek vase painting

One of the attributes of humans is the propensity to engage with worlds that are imaginary - cognition about non-veridical scenarios, represented verbally, visually or kinetically. Art making may be considered a human propensity that has been exapted to other functions that it now fulfils - it is the result of a functional shift. Preexisting behaviors receive a secondary function through exaptation and ritualization [Daniel Nettle.]

Ritualization increases impact through the use of repetition, high intensity, strong contrasts, alerting signals, and stereotypy in basic units.

Frits Staal contends that ritual action is performed for its own sake, that it constitutes its own goal the ritual of art making as a self-referential form, which works continuously through its internal complexity to establish and transform visual configurations.

All art is nostalgia for God. Alexei Jawlensky

l'abstraction comme capacit rflchir l'nigme de la visibilit. [abstraction as capacity of reflection on the enigma of visibility] Serge Poliakoff

Roman mosaic

Byzantine mosaic

Byzantine mosaics

Sveta Gora, Byzantine wall painting

Russian icons

Decani Monastery, wall painting

Alexei Jawlensky

Alexei Jawlensky

Alexei Jawlensky

Byzantine mosaics

Byzantine mosaic

Decani Monastery, wall painting

Byzantine mosaic

Decani Monastery, wall painting

Chora Monastery, mosaic

Byzantine enamel Byzantine mosaic

Manuel Panselinos, wall painting

Alexei Jawlensky

Syntax may be defined as distributed sets of structural and dynamical rules. Syntax may be a trait exapted to multi-tasked processing. As William Calvin puts it, syntax is not the only type of structured thought, and perhaps not even the first to evolve. Other structured aspects of thought are multi-stage planning, games with rules that constrain possible moves, chains of logic, structured music and a fascination with discovering hidden order, with imagining how things hang together.

According to William Calvin, one compelling indication of the need for syntax [or morphosyntax, that is rules governing construction, that could be used for recursive compositional constructs] were the patterned scratchings [grammata] that forked both into art and writing - that is, a combinatorial (syntactic) structure determined by the medium constraints and by the force of convention.

Palaeolithic grammata

Indus Valley Seal

AN INDUS VALLEY CYLINDER SEAL

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Hieratic Egyptian script

Cuneiform script

Cuneiform script

Evolution of Chinese characters

Pictograms - "Xiangxing Wenzi" (around 2800- 2600 BC)

China, bronze inscriptions

Stone Drum inscription

Wu Changshi, Stone-drum script

Zhang Meng Long Bei

Calligraphy by Yan Zhenqing

Ho Shao Ji

Yi Bin-So

Jiun

Greece, hieroglyphic pre-linear A (upper left), Linear A script (upper right) and Linear B (bottom)

Digitally enhanced image, [from www.goddessmystic.com/PathActivities/ MatricentricCultures/crete-language.shtml]

Greece, Linear B script

Sengai

Zao Wou Ki

Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi

An adequate ontology must contain a qualitative topology, a theory of boundaries and interiors, of connectedness and separation, which is integrated with a mereological theory of parts and wholes to form a mereotopology [to paraphrase Barry Smith.] "The motor for the drawing of fiat boundaries in commonsensical reality is, on the one hand, human perception, which - as we know from our experience of Seurat paintings - has the function of articulating reality in terms of sharp boundaries even when such boundaries are not genuinely present in the autonomous physical world [Barry Smith.] Proper parts are delineated or carved out [ by fiat ] within the interiors of larger bona fide objectsfiat objects may be scattered: they may be such as to circumclude constituent bona fide objects within a larger fiat whole [Barry Smith.]

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat

By drawing lines, that is crisp and/or indeterminate boundaries, one draws painterly objects, their parts and boundaries, which may be construed as the products of arbitrary or fiat delineation within an extended whole, including perhaps also negative parts (holes.)

Andr Derain

Le dessin est un rythme spirituel qui va incessamment du contenant au contenu. C'est le rythme de la limitation et le procd d'intgration des entits. [Drawing is a spiritual rhythm which incessantly moves from the containing to the contained. It is the rhythm of limiting and the process of integration of entities.] Andr Derain

A Greek vase painting of Danae

Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci)

Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci)

Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci)

Alexei Jawlensky

Georges Rouault

"Things are brought into being out of no thing by distinctions being drawn which insist on boundaries. That these, in as far as we external observers can tell, are illusions does not make them any less real or necessary. Such illusion-ness ephemerality ungraspably shimmering quality we often forget, especially in laying down the laws of the bounds of the imagination [Ranulph Glanville, Francisco Varela.] Or, to put it differently, not quite identical things [e.g. prototype and artificial image] are treated as if they were similar on the basis of visual cues and topological invariants. We treat observing as if it were of Objects. The as if gives the ability to postulate/construct Objects such that we believe they are held in common between observers. We can treat observing by different observers as if shared [Ranulph Glanville.]

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) Mademoiselle Gachet, 0,458 m x 0,550 m, detail Paris, Muse d'Orsay

Nicolas de Stal, paint or charcoal traces configurations

Filippo De Pisis, a configuration of brushstrokes

Tessellation is a way of making patterns out of smaller shapes. The word comes from 'tesserae' - the small cubical tiles or square pieces of stone used to make mosaics. Since a mosaic extends over a given area without leaving any region uncovered, the geometric meaning of the word tessellate is "to cover the plane with a pattern in such a way as to leave no region uncovered." By extension, space or hyperspace may also be tessellated.

Antakya Roman mosaic, Dionysos and Ariadne (Photo Dick Osseman)

Antakya Roman mosaic, Dionysos and Ariadne, detail (Photo Dick Osseman)

Antakya Roman mosaic, Dionysos and Ariadne, detail (Photo Dick Osseman)

Antakya Roman mosaic, Dionysos and Ariadne, detail (Photo Dick Osseman)

Antakya Roman mosaic (Photo Dick Osseman)

Antakya Roman mosaic (Photo Dick Osseman)

Ink brushstrokes configuration

Chinese character ho [fire]

By Ho Shaoji

Ink brushstrokes configurations

Five interpretations-instantiations of the character wang [king] by Ho Shaoji


[from Leon Long-Yien Chang and Peter Miller, Four Thousand Years of Chinese Calligraphy, 1990]

As in the case of exaptation, repertoires, initially shaped under one set of conditions, may be recruited by a quite different set of conditions into a new function and eventually into a radically new repertoire.

Minoan wall paintings

Cycladic figure Andr Derain

Andr Derain

Andr Derain

Byzantine mosaic

Byzantine mosaic El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

Andrea da Firenze (Andrea di Bonaiuto)

NARDO DI CIONE

Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi

Roman wall painting, The Birth of Venus

Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti), Venus

Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti), Venus

Andr Derain, Model

Andr Derain, Model

Raoul Dufy, Model in the Studio

Raoul Dufy, Model in the Studio

Henri Matisse, Odalisque

Ichi [one] by Jiun

The Pythagoreans realized that by drawing a line between two points one could create space out of nothing - some-thing emerges from no-thing [distinctions ontology.] Pythagoras saw the chance to enjoy a game for the sake of the spectacle , playing the game unencumbered by any taint of game-external meaning, playing the game for the beauty of the play alone, for what was done and how it was done. Players can and do enjoy the exploration and contemplation of the rules, of the algorithm as much as or more so than of the ultimate goal achievement [atelic play and

game-meaning.]

Ichi [one] by Hakuin

Paul Klee

Julius Bissier

Game Theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics. It has recently drawn attention from computer scientists because of its use in artificial intelligence and cybernetics. Some game theorists have turned to evolutionary game theory which includes both biological as well as cultural evolution and also models of individual learning (for example, fictitious play dynamics.) These models presume either no rationality or bounded rationality on the part of players. Evolutionary game theory does not necessarily presume natural selection in the biological sense. Game theory has been put to several uses in philosophy. David Lewis used game theory to develop a philosophical account of convention. In so doing, he provided the first analysis of common knowledge. In addition, he first suggested that one can understand meaning in terms of signaling games [signaling games as games of imperfect information.] This later suggestion has been pursued by several philosophers since Lewis.

The emergence of cultural behavior in multiple games


One appeal of evolutionary game theory is that it allows for relaxation of the traditional game theoretical fully-informed rational actor assumption . The evolutionary models presume that people, or agents, are myopic, and that individuals may make errors in the sense that strategy selection is driven by natural selection, imitation, or genetics, and not inductive reasoning. Within the framework of evolutionary game theory, players may not know all the rules, games are repeated, agents play multiple games simultaneously and evolve or choose separate strategies in each. Agents can also apply similar strategies to distinct games [Jenna Bednar and Scott Page.] Complexity emerges: the whole differs from the sum of the parts. The hallmarks of cultural behavior are consistency within and across individuals, variance between populations, contextual effects, behavioral stickiness, low rationality, and suboptimal performance. The framework rests on two primary assumptions: (i) agents play ensembles of games, (ii) agents have finite cognitive capacity. Evolutionary game theory provides a dynamic framework for analyzing repeated interaction. These replicator dynamics may cause local conventions to emerge [Jenna Bednar and Scott Page.]

In The Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith defines plays function as "the reinforcement of the organisms variability," so that its evolved behaviors dont become too rigid and predictable. This variable behavior goes from "the actual to the possible" that is, from physical play to the play of the mind. Psychologically, Sutton-Smith defines play as "a virtual simulation characterized by staged contingencies of variation, with opportunities for control engendered by either mastery or further chaos."

Jesper Juul, specialist in video game theory and design, describes the conceptual framework for two types of games: Progression Games. Game type where variation happens by introducing new elements and features as the player progresses in the game, that is serially introduced challenges. The opposite of emergence games [Jesper Juul.] Emergence Games. Game type where variation appears by the interaction between elements in the game. Emergence games often surprise players and even the designers of the game. The opposite of progression games [Jesper Juul.] However most games can be regarded as a combination/blend of the two types: emergent, but with embedded progression structures. There is more to the relation between progression and emergence - emergence may have a strong disposition to develop towards progression, and the progression of the player with every game as well as the player expanding the repertoire must also be taken into consideration [Joris Dormans.]

One may speak of finite and infinite play. James Carse argues cogently that infinite play is paradoxical - infinite play is played to play, the purpose being to continue the game. The time of the play is time created within the play. Carse has clearly indicated that an infinite game means the infinite use of finite means infinity arises out of radical finitude. Martin Heidegger might cast this as an interpellative act, a calling-into-being within a world whose modality is grounded by play. "Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries [James P.Carse.] Knowing what the rules delimit, the player can then build upon them, constrained only by the bounds of his/her creativity. Additionally, the infinite player can then create new rules based on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic orders of the existing ones. These new rules have the advantage of sharing a common system between them, thereby making them intelligible to other players despite their originality. Therefore, the infinite player always uses rules as means for play continuation, as opposed to allowing them to constrict his/her play. Since finite games can be played within an infinite game, infinite players do not eschew the performed roles of finite play. On the contrary, they enter into finite games, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players. They embrace the abstractness of finite games as abstractness, and therefore take them up not seriously, but playfully.

As has become clear by now, culture is an infinite game, an intricate kaleidoscope of games being played. Culture is poiesis-autopoiesis, and all its participants are poietai - makers. Autopoiesis generates boundaries infinite play plays with boundaries and rules. There is a nexus of supportive relations between formalization and play as well as within their chiastic reversal, the play of formalizations [David Lidov.] Gao Jianping draws an analogy between painting and the game of go. He also suggests that ''Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them" [Gao Jianping.]

Rules /emergence of conventions /constraints

In systems-theoretical parlance, visual art is a symbolically generalized communication medium. Instances of communication can be viewed as fundamentally game-theoretic processes, accounting for stimuli, overlaps among stimuli, receiver bias, common knowledge of players, incomplete information, and sensitivity to the form of the signal, such as ornamentation and ritual, especially in high-context cultures. Art constrains perception. Art is a fuzzy rule-based system, where rules are performative and prescriptive. Graphical interaction games suggest the emergence of graphical conventions or conventional graphical schemata within a community [culture immanent interactional context.] Conventions are culturally evolved higher order cognitions. Over several thousand years the original Chinese character that represents 'mountain' has evolved into its current, less complex, form. The change is not arbitrary. It is a result of global coordination that took place over time and space, culminating in a refined, conventional form that promotes rapid communication with reduced effort. This is an example of an evolutionary process where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts [Nicolas Fay, Simon Garrod, John Lee.] Representations retain a degree of iconicity. They exhibit a degree of systemacity that make them easily differentiable. Through interaction partners minimize their collaborative effort, stripping away unnecessary graphical information, leaving only salient properties.

Evolution of the character Shn (mountain)

Oracle Bone Script

Seal Script

Clerical Script

SemiCursive Script

Cursive Script

Regular Script

By Hakuin

Shan Mountain

Zhang Zhengyu [Chang Cheng-yu] (1903-1976)

Kamijo Shinzan

Shan Mountain

Wang Chong Jin Nong

Huang Tingjian

He Zhuo

Graphical interaction frequently figures in everyday communication. Examples include sketch maps, explanatory diagrams, and plans. The basic research findings advance understanding of some basic aspects of human communication: emergence of conventions, co-ordination of interpretation, and effectiveness of representations [Simon Garrod.]

Villard de Honnecourt

Villard de Honnecourt

Villard de Honnecourt

Leonardo da Vinci, perspective diagram

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Correggio (Antonio Allegri)

Correggio (Antonio Allegri)

This ancient tablet from the 7th Century BC depicts a plan of the world at the time of Sargon (2300 BC) as a circle surrounded by oceans, with Babylon and the River Euphrates at its center.

Roman mosaic map of Jerusalem

Giovanni Antonio da Varese, The Western Hemisphere, The Loggia della Cosmografa, The Vatican

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos,) View and Plan of Toledo

"Semiotic dynamics is a novel field that studies how semiotic conventions spread and stabilize in a population of agents. In these models, a positive feedback loop causes some naturally occurring variation to propagate and eventually dominate. Recent work on complex adaptive systems has shown that self-organisation can explain how a group of distributed agents can reach a coherent set of conventions and how such a set can be preserved from one generation to the next based on cultural transmission. These investigations continue by exploring the presence of stochasticity in the various aspects of communication: stochasticity in the non-linguistic communication constraining meaning, the transmission of the message, and the retrieval from memory. We show that there is an upperbound on the amount of stochasticity which can be tolerated and that stochasticity causes and maintains variation" [Frederic Kaplan.]

Cristiano Castelfranchi distinguishes between communication [getting a message] and signification [getting a meaning.]

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

A sign-system is non-universal. Attractor network models of associative memory may explain the dynamics of pattern and structure recognition [J.J.Hopfield and Igor Yevin.]

Roy D'Andrade [cognitive anthropologist] has introduced the idea of cultural schemata or cultural models, patterns that make up the meaning system of a cultural group. Pursuing the idea of ontological incommensurability, cultural schemata or models provide a continuity and coherency in a given culture's systems of belief.

Su Shi (Su Dongpo )

Zhao Mengfu

Wen Zhengming

Wang Duo

Fu Shan

Zhao Zhiqian

Kamijo Shinzan

Kamijo Shinzan

Tanaka Setsuzan

The stroke patterns are reduced to eight different strokes in calligraphy. The character (see picture) contains all different stroke patterns.

"Eternity"

The "calligraphic" use of the brush became in China and Japan an art form, and one that exerted great influence on painting. Foregrounding the medium and the technique, it makes a strong statement that it is nothing but ink and the artist's hand.

Nantembo

Honami Ketsu (calligraphy) and Tawaraya Statsu (painting), Poem Card (Shikishi)

Yamamoto Gempo [from the Shambhala Zen Art Gallery]

Yamagida Seizan

Xu Wei

Japan, ceramic bowl

Ogata Kenzan, ceramic bowl

Appropriation of Far Eastern visual production techniques:

Chgyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan calligraphy [from www.shambhala.org/teachers/vctr/calligraphies-ges.html]

Appropriation of Far Eastern visual production techniques:

Chgyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan calligraphy [from www.shambhala.org/teachers/vctr/calligraphies-ges.html]

Teacher with writing tablet, Greek vase painting

Greek Lapidary Writing, 5th century BC

Byzantine era Greek handwriting

Greek Dedicatory Inscription in the center of a mosaic floor - decorative writing

Roman era mosaic - Greek writing integrated in the composition as graphic decorative design

Greek and Runic script on gravestone - decorative writing

Decorative writing: Byzantine enamel medallion with Greek inscription The Mother of God

Writing as interlaced ornament

The Book of Kells

Writing as interlaced ornament

The Book of Kells

Writing as interlaced ornament

Page from the Book of Nunnaminster with a zoomorphic initial 'd'.

Follower of Hugo van der Goes - writing as interlaced ornament

Medieval musical notation system

11th century hymn to John the Baptist

Medieval musical notation system

Fragment of an Antiphonale after 1250

European Gothic Style

Simone Martini Saviour Blessing (tympanum) and Madonna of Humility (lunette) 1341 Third sinopias Palace of Popes, Avignon

European Gothic Style

Simone Martini Saviour Blessing (tympanum) and Madonna of Humility (lunette) 1341 Fresco Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon

Renaissance

Manner Of Francesco del Cossa Carlo Crivelli

Mannerism

Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci)

Mannerism

Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci)

Baroque

Gerard ter Borch

Culture-embedded formal conventions [formal affordances and constraints]: Systems of proportions [Jay Kappraff] Canons of proportions [iconometry] Projective transformations System-wide constraints: Medial constraints Physiological constraints: Sight: myopia [blurred shapes] astigmatism [image is not clearly focused either in the horizontal or in the vertical plane and in some cases vertical lines may appear to be leaning over] accommodation problems/eyes are affected differently Resulting in: a lack of depth perception/ dissociation of outline and color patch

Gino Severini Root 3 based composition [From Maurizio Nicosia, Il Lato Operaio dellArte. Severini e la pittura murale.]

Various editions of Severinis essay

Since man was made in the image and likeness of God, it was believed the human proportions would reflect a divine cosmic order. Drawings by Francesco di Giorgio Martini illustrate this notion .

Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Illustration from the Trattato di architettura c. 1470

Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Illustrations from the Trattato di architettura c. 1470

Albrecht Drer,
proportions diagram

Albrecht Drer,
proportions diagram

An 1851 print

Analytic Diagrams of Proportion and the Human Body: From L'idea della architettura universale (book 1, part 1, page 40), 1615 Author: Vincenzo Scamozzi (Italian, 15521616)

The Byzantine canon expressed in face units: on the left, a figure of 9; on the right, the Paleologan canon of 9 units Hjalmar Torp The Integrating System of Proportion in Byzantine Art, Acta Ad Archeaologiam Et Artium Historiam Pertinentia, Volume 4, Giorgio Bretschneider 1984 Diagram by Hjalmar Torp

Manuel Panselinos, circa 1300

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) and the possible use of the Paleologan canon

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) and the possible use of the Paleologan canon [on the left a figure by Panselinos]

face face

Rosso Fiorentino and the Mannerist canon of 9 faces according to Giovan Paolo Lomazzos Idea del Tempio Della Pittura

face

Francesco Primaticcio Royal Staircase (detail) 1530s Stucco Apartments of the Duchesse d'tampes, Fontainebleau:

the Mannerist canon of 10 faces according to Giovan Paolo Lomazzos Idea del Tempio Della Pittura

17th century Byzantine Icon, mixed perspective system

Barnaba da Modena: mixed perspective system

Niccol di Buonaccorso: mixed perspective system

Juan Gris (Jose Victoriano Gonzalez): mixed perspective system

Pietro Perugino (Pietro di Cristoforo Vanucci): central (linear) perspective

Francesco di Giorgio Martini: central (linear) perspective

Roman wall painting: reverse perspective

Andr Derain: reverse perspective

The intentional use of inclined vertical lines

Milton Avery

Raoul Dufy

The intentional use of inclined vertical lines

Henri Catargi

Raoul Dufy and the intentional dissociation of outline and color patch

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Image
"Image is taken as a giventhey do not distinguish the image formation solicited by a medium. Image always implies poiesis" [Ivan Ilich.] Opsis [the Greek word for gaze] - an active virtue of looking - has been replaced by instruction for correct viewing through scientific optics [Ivan Ilich.] Curiously, Quantum Picture, a company developing software for image recognition, has formulated an elegant definition of the artificial image, by grasping the subtleties debated earlier during the iconoclastic controversy: an image consists of a collection of a finite number of discrete [distinct, noncontinuous] features. The image recognition problem suggests that some features have to match. Image may be also defined as an autonomous system [David Vernon] which, though existing in a context, is self-specifying and self-determining and implies formal equivalence relations. The image may be defined as designed conventional and learned perceptographic patterns specialized as signs. "Pictorial objects are 'real' in a different sense than physical objectsthey exist only in the mind of the beholder" [J.J.Koenderink.] "The image is capable of generating a form of perception that combines the perception of similarity with the experience of difference" [Klaus Krueger.]

Stored hypotheses can be triggered by visual cues, an array of feature matches, or saliency.

Roman wall painting

Roman mosaic

Roman mosaic

Roman mosaic

Gino Severini

Gino Severini

Jean Metzinger

Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Fausto Pirandello

Fausto Pirandello

Nicephorus applies Aristotelian logic to the image question and lays stress on the image as a representation and as such distinct per se from that which it represents. The artificial material image belongs to the category of relation, a relational connection of similarity. He writes that the iconoclast refuses to understand the meaning of equivalence and homonymity. The image of the emperor on a coin is an example of homonymityBy making a distinction between graphe and perigraphe, Nicephorus recognizes the autonomy of graphe: visual art has a domain of its own [Stefan Arteni.] Variety: a central question in lexicography is its domain in terms of formal varieties defined in terms of situational or contextual constitutive factors. There are many dimensions of variation, both historical and synchronic, and the terminology for formal variation is extensive, ranging from well-known terms such as style and genre through idiolect/idiopraxis. Style may be described as "...a replication of patterning, whether in human behaviour or in the artefacts produced by human behaviour, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints"[L.B.Meyer.] Cultural examples may be characterized by synchronic divisions, but they may also be used for diachronic comparison, showing how a visual system has changed over time, or with contact with a different system.

Style and idiolect

Theophanes the Greek

Style and idiolect

Theophanes the Greek

Style and idiolect

Theophanes the Greek

Style and idiolect

Theophanes the Greek

Style and idiolect

Ohrid, Byzantine wall painting

An image construct , a visual trope [in the sense of figurative use of an expression,] has usually been an interpretation/appropriation of a previous construct type. J.P.Lewis [who proposes a Creation by Refinement model] suggests that fuzzy structures or class of patterns specified by example may lead to novel visual constructs. This is achieved by means of a sort of creative computation which 'refines' random creations in correlation with the input pattern [formal visual core repertoire.] The archetypal imagic constitutive similarity and otherness coexist within a sequence of constructs, a chain of signifiers, concrete diachronic instantiations of visual construct category prototypes.

Stroganov Podlinnik, a Russian collection of image diagrams for the Icon painter

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Architecture and Grotesques from the Domus Aurea

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Architecture and Grotesques from the Domus Aurea

Peter Paul Rubens, Study after Laocoon

Peter Paul Rubens, Study after Leonardo da Vinci

"... every signifier is related to another signifier so that there is nothing outside the significant chain, which goes on ad infinitum" [Umberto Eco.] The transmission of sets of images, the recurrence of constructs, the chain of constructs that function as antecedents, as links, as products of artistic conventions, as elaborated versions of models where diachronic changes add new layers to the visual palimpsest, replication by repeated instantiation paradoxically underscoring the impossibility of invariant repetition, are a conscious process involving free and purposeful re-thinking and re-interpreting of the tradition, and an imagery that is re-imagined [polyvariance, appropriation, substitution, transposition, metamorphoses and attenuations, interpretation, adaptation, quotation and self-quotation, re-use, hidden and stylistic quotations, transposition, de- and re-contextualization.] There can be no secure rules by which such a process can be reversed to regain the lost originals. The most one can attain is a kind of generalized set of images in which the differences of individual sets have been artificially reconciled. The object of a sign is more than a mere reflection of reality [Augusto Ponzio.] An object or referent of the sign can be a sign itself, a sign refers to a sign whose origin has become increasingly difficult to trace. The aesthetic sign functions as such due to its own quality [Winfried Noeth.]

Gerard David

Gerard David

Cosm Tura

Andrea di Bartolo Solario

Georges Rouault

There is an Intentional interpretant and there may be an unanticipated interpretant [Peirce] and there may be also an immediate object and a dynamical object [Peirce.] What someone believes to be the referent, does not determine the actual referent [or object]. The Pygmalion syndrome consists in the fallacy of taking an artificially created model not only to be representing reality but to be just another instance of reality [Claus Emmeche.] Often one detects evidence of what might be called a 'cultural filter.'

Stefan Arteni, Adam and Eve [the sketch is based on four Chinese characters: tree, woman, man, snake.]

Western visual production techniques employed for Far Eastern calligraphy

Stefan Arteni, Works in the Mobile Museum of Art collection, Mobile, Alabama, U.S.A.

Western visual production techniques employed for Far Eastern calligraphy

Stefan Arteni, Work in the collection of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan

Western visual Production techniques employed for Far Eastern calligraphy

Stefan Arteni, Work shown at the "Energy and Diffusion Main Exhition, Seoul Calligraphy Biennial: Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of History, Gongpyung Art Center, Gallery La Mer, Gong Gallery (Seoul, Korea), 2005

Stefan Arteni, Work shown at the World Calligraphy Festival, Gong-pyung Art Center (Seoul, Korea), 2006

There are empirical psychological data showing that humans and animals are sensitive to the form of signals [such as ornamentation and rituals] and not just to the information they convey. Spectacular cultural phenomena can evolve that convey little meaningful information, but still have strong impact on spectators: Signal forms or ''visual displays are highly redundant spectacular cultural phenomena convey little information one is sensitive to the form of the signals" [Magnus Enquist ethology.] High-context cultures will focus on 'how' something is done and on the extensive use of cumulative rhetorical style. For instance, it is well known that by altering specific aspects of a familiar stimulus supernormal effects stronger reactions can usually be produced, even when the new stimulus does not provide the receiver with more information [Magnus Enquist.] The stimulus is data rich, and information poor. [In the two paragraphs above, the term information refers to the subject matter of the signal.]

Domenico Ghirlandaio's Capella Sassetti (1482-85) in SS Trinita (Florence)

Moldovita monastery

Voronet monastery

Francesco del Cossa and Cosm Tura, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara, Hall of the Months

Francesco del Cossa, Allegory of March

Francesco del Cossa, Allegory of April

Francesco del Cossa, Allegory of April, detail

Cosm Tura, Allegory of June

Cosm Tura, Allegory of August

"An increase in signal complexity may also allow qualitatively different stimulation to be effective...the ability...to recognize patterns in time may favor signals that are variable in time over monotonous repetitions of the same signal [Hartmut Winkler] Costly signals may evolve for a number of reasons. Biases in receiver's recognition mechanisms can promote the evolution of costly exaggeration in signals. Learned recognition gives rise to more exaggerated signals than inherited recognition.
Recipients repeatedly view certain programs. In terms of system theory, Niklas Luhmann describes familiarity as a genuinely human means for reducing systemic complexity: "Familiarity ... enables relative secure anticipations and thus absorbs remaining risks ..." (Luhmann.) Game theory is used as a tool for understanding interactions between individuals but advertisement and persuasion are phenomena that game theoreticians have had problems explaining.

A helpful bridge is Luhmann's understanding of information: once information is expressed it is no longer information per se; it has exhausted itself. Though, this "automatic mechanism does not exclude the possibility of repetition." Repetition itself is a form of meta-information that can be interpreted as indicating the value of the repeated (now) non-information. Consequently, James Carey seems to be arguing that the ritual view focuses on the communication of this meta-information of commonality, instead of novelty.

[In the four paragraphs above, the term information refers to the subject matter of the signal.]

Medieval capital

Anonymous, stained glass window panel

Decani, Byzantine wall painting

Moldovita, Byzantine wall painting

Giotto (Ambrogio Bondone)

Unknown Spanish master

Gothic relief

Vittore Carpaccio

Anonymous Swiss master

De Grey Book of Hours

Duccio di Buoninsegna

Luca di Tomm

Giovanni di Paolo

Giovanni di Paolo

Lorenzo Monaco

Juan REIXACH

Anonymous northern master

Anonymous German master

Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro da Mugello)

Gerard David

Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro da Mugello) and Fra Filippo Lippi

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Luca Signorelli (Luca dEgidio di Ventura)

Raffaello Sanzio

Anonymous Flemish master

Anonymous Flemish master

Greek relief

Greek vase paintings

Etruscan vase painting

Roman mosaic

Roman mosaic

Roman mosaic

Liberale da Verona

Pieter Paul Rubens, The Rape of Europa, copy from Tiziano Vecellio

Henri Matisse

Stefan Arteni

Ritualization sees the original or highest manifestation of communication not in the


transmission of information [the term information refers to the subject matter] but in the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world that can serve as a control and container for human action [James W.Carey.] Ritual is the communication in a mythic tongue, the expression of a universe of experience, compressed into an economy of symbols overloaded into archetype. Ritual is the performance of myth that binds (religare) the individual and the specific to the universal and archetypal. This model has its origins in the research into oralityoral-formulaic high-context cultures of presence vested in repetition and ritual. From a contemporary perspective, this is a technique of cyclical rejuvenation, which, as Friedrich Nietzsche put it, literally burns memory into humans the stability of repetitive cycles can be explained (and is already observable in the animal world) through habit, the proclivity for repetition and schemata, as well as the economy that comes with such repetitionConventions are congealed practices: sedimentations, deposits of, actually, fluid acts and events that accrue and accumulate, and eventually transmute into a structure Through the notion of convention, we open up an entire universe of theoretical problems that can now be linked to the model described here: first off, theories of schemata, which have become important in the analysis of visual media: all the approaches ranging from Gestalt psychology to the theory of stereotypes and from iconography in fine arts to the notion of aesthetic form center, at bottom, around what semiotics would subsume under the notion of a codeit should be seen in the context of the interplay between a pattern and its reenactment, a moment of action and a moment of persistence. Deposited in material fashion, and hence 'monumental,' the pattern awaits its reactivation and renewalThe notion of condensation is the core of the model and its real theoretical gain. What characterizes condensation is that it combines a quantitative with a qualitative aspect" [Hartmut Winkler.]

Prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane, the Gracanica monastery

Ohrid, Byzantine wall painting

Giovanni di Paolo

De Grey Book of Hours

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopolous), The Agony in the Garden

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), The Agony in the Garden

Stefan Arteni

The high-context nature of oral society allows individuals to use inferences and indirect references. A viewer may require little more than reminders to recall, as much has been absorbed through osmosis in the culture. It is equally important, however, to consider the ''execution' of works, that is the visual production techniques especially in high-context cultures where communication is often based merely on symbols. Models of pattern perception suggest that, with increased familiarity, subjects become able to reconstruct a previous representation from very small, unique segments of the pattern.

TANAKA SETSUZAN

Prototype theory indicates that some category members are more representative of the category than others or that categories are defined by prototypical members. In the case of prototypical image constructs, diachronic graphic condensation of the iconographic topos [location/in rhetoric topos refers to a standardized method/ repertoire of formal potentialities] is available in a permanently editable form [paraphrasing Hartmut Winkler.] The relation of a construct to its instances is that of a type to a token. One can detect hidden patterns and structural changes or see similarities in patterns and convergence to a pattern, based on topological invariants and visual attractor patterns.

Armenian miniature

13th-century manuscript illustration from a monastery near Mosul, Iraq

Greme Museum, Buckle Church, Cappadocia (Photo Dick Osseman)

Greme Museum, Buckle Church, Cappadocia (Photo Dick Osseman)

Greme Museum, Karanlik Church, Cappadocia (Photo Dick Osseman)

Context may be diachronic and/or polychronic [many strands of time are moving at once.] Polychrony [the many different temporalities of the constituting elements] is being introduced here in addition to synchrony and diachrony. One may infer that a construct involves reproductivity, which only means that it can be repeated or reduplicated in a variety of contexts without losing either its meaning or its autonomy, while relationally expressions containing it necessarily modify each particular instance of it. Polychronic cultures rely more on implicit and nonverbal information as opposed to monochronic cultures that seek explicit communication. There is a looseness of reference of signs. A high-context communication is one in which most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit part of the message [Edward T. Hall.] Games define possible worlds landscapes that players traverse. The dynamics and rules of a game shape its possible worlds landscape. Rules and dynamics constrain player input, limit reachable game states, limit transitions between possible game states, and automate game state transitions. A games rules are a web of constraints which hold its moving parts and experiences together, enable and prompt action on the part of the player, give intelligibility and plasticity to the system, imbue a miniature world with dynamics and life, generate the experience of responsibility, enable problem solving and contests, and give value to particular game states. One of the key principles in game-play, a cybernetic principle, is feedback.

St Luke, Byzantine miniature

St Luke, Byzantine miniature

St Luke, Armenian miniature

Stefan Arteni, St Luke

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 Czanne

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 (Niccol di Liberatore)

L'ALUNNO (Niccol di Liberatore)

L'ALUNNO (Niccol di Liberatore)

L'ALUNNO (Niccol di Liberatore)

L'ALUNNO (Niccol di Liberatore)

L'ALUNNO (Niccol 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 Czanne

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-Browns 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.

Andr 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 nonnumerical 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 Taos (Yuan Jis) 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)

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 Luhmanns 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, Luhmanns contention that works of art stage a re-entry into communication of the difference between perception and communication. Following a dictum of Luhmann, "selfreference 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 purposeart 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 selfdistinguishing." 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 itselfA 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-Browns 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, 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 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 Galileos 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: bshn; Japanese: hitsujun or 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 andarerather indications of processesThe 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 statebecome 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 Vina culture (6th-5th millennia BC)

Common symbols used throughout the Vina period

[www.omniglot.com/writing/vinca.htm]

Marija Gimbutas on the symbology of Old 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."

Old European Culture

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 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.

Trtria tablets

The script on these "oracle bones" is known as (jigwn) - 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 chanceIn 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 Czanne

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 Czanne

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 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

Zhao Zhiqian 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 by Kwon Myongwon

Pierre Bonnard at work. Photo: Brassa, Gilberte Brassa

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 operationsThe particularity of this expression is that it is recursive and without any particular starting point, or initial conditionswe 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 possibleProductivity 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 symbolto 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 Gnther calls the gap between contextures discontexturality .

Chinese characters are written withbasic strokesThe strokes themselvesdont 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 memoryThere 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 Derridas Machines Part IIIPolylogics http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/PolyLogics.pdf

[Note: a particular sequence of kenograms has been called by Gotthard Gnther 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 artists gestures. They are said to reveal the artists level of skill, the artists mood when creating the work and even the artists character and personality.

Buddha By Jiun

Man

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 Gnther)

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.]

Andrs 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 unveilingis the originary actThe 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 agame 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 generalisedlogic where various forms of informational dependencies and independenciescan 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 gameThe 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 gametheir semantic function either does not exist or tends to be forgotten [Edmund Husserl.] In connection with Husserls 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 nonintersecting 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 artists name, ARTENI, and also the signs for woman and man)

Excursus

Buddhist logic
Nagarjuna's tetralemma: (1) X and non-X are identical, or interdependent; (2) X and non-X are different, or mutually independent; (3) X and non-X are both identical and different; (4) X and non-X are neither identical nor different. Nagarjunas tetralemma: A ~A Both A and ~A Neither A nor ~A Emptiness Speaking about the play of distinction, Thomas J. McFarlane remarks: Taken together, we see that the void is represented in form by more and more elaborate forms. In words, these levels may be interpreted as follows: Emptiness is Form Emptiness is not Form Emptiness is both Form and not Form Emptiness is neither Form nor not Form

Francisco Varela has extended Spencer-Brown's work from a 2-value logic to a 3-value logic in which self-reference joins the void and distinction as the three primary entities that constitute all reality.

Handwriting

Some authors view handwriting, like drawing, as a sequence of cyclic movements - J. M. Hollerbach's oscillation handwriting model - the pen moves from left to right and oscillates vertically.

Selection of Primitives: According to the harmonic oscillator description of the muscle action involved in handwriting production, cursive handwriting generation can be viewed as a sequential modulation of two coupled oscillations: one in the vertical direction and one in the horizontal direction. Hollerbach assumes that handwriting can be described as a modulated oscillation in both the horizontal and vertical directions with a constant factor added to the horizontal velocity.

Chiasmus The Byzantine chora [land, country, space] was a kenotic space erased and 'crossed through' [Nicoletta Isar.] Chiasmus - chi X [criss-cross]/chiastic reversal Chiasmus infused the thought and speech patterns of mind (from Ugaritic and Semitic to Christian culture), and - if we are to believe Plato (Timaeus) - it reflected the very structure of the universe, the cosmic soul. In ancient times, being and mind, cosmos and vision of the cosmos seem to have been organized according to a common ontological pattern. Chiasmus was a paradigmatic pattern of cohesion binding the community together as a living entity around the center [Nicoletta Isar.]

Indra's net Indra's Net was a metaphor for universal structure and was used by the Buddhists to exemplify the 'interpenetration and mutual identification' of underlying substance and specific formthere is "no question of the purpose of it all" - then to become completely groundless is to become completely grounded. Indra's Net may appear as a philosophical analogy for various concepts, from the broad interconnected nature of the known universe, to more specific ideas such as self-similarity, and for the incommensurable and yet paradoxically inseparable, intersecting and interplaying artistic domains. Indra's net is formed from the superimposition and mutual penetration of countless such totalities.

Indra riding Airavata, (Cambodia) Indra's weapon is the thunderbolt (Vajra), though he also uses a bow, a net and a hook. He rides a large, four-tusked albino elephant called Airavata. When portrayed having four arms, he has lances in two of his hands which resemble elephant goads. When he is shown to have two, he holds the Vajra and a bow.

Felix Klein proposed that group theory, an algebraic approach that encapsulates the idea of symmetry, was the correct way of organising geometrical knowledge; it had already been introduced into the theory of equations in the form of the [Evariste] Galois theory. Secondly, he made much more explicit the idea that each geometrical language had its own, appropriate concepts, so that for example projective geometry rightly talked about conic sections, but not about circles or angles because those notions were not invariant under projective transformations (something familiar in geometrical perspective). The way the multiple languages of geometry then came back together could be explained by the way subgroups of a symmetry group related to each other. [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Indra's Pearls. The Vision of FELIX KLEIN David Mumford, Caroline Series, and David Wright Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. From the publisher:
In Hindu mythology, the heaven of Indra contained a net of pearls. Each pearl was reflected in its neighbour so that the whole universe was mirrored in each pearl. This idea was rediscovered by mathematicians, first by Felix Klein, one of the great geometers of the late nineteenth century, who started with infinitely repeated reflections and was led to forms which are the chaotic images of symmetry generated by interacting spiral flows. For a century the images, painstakingly drawn by hand, barely existed outside the mathematical mind. In the 1980's, the authors embarked on the first computer exploration of Klein's vision, and in doing so, found further extraordinary images of their own. This book leads the reader on a journey from the arithmetic of complex numbers to the simple algorithms which create these delicate fractal filigrees in extraordinarily beautiful forms. It explains the pictures at a variety of levels, starting with basic algebra, continuing through do-it-yourself programs and explorations of the mathematics behind them, to the forefront of modern research.

a Kleinian group whose limit set consists of circles

a degenerate Kleinian group

Peter Liepa, http://www.brainjam.ca/fractals.html

Morpho-chromatic Structure
Color and shape appear to be coded independently. Contrast is a metacomplementary relationship. The colors of the spectrum, or hues, are in practice represented as a color circle, where complementary color pairs form opposites at the circumference. The color circle comes about in that the visible extremes of the wavelength spectrum, purple and violet, meet and overlap in the perception of colors. Thus the hue dimension is a polar coordinate. Colors are always actual substances, i.e. paints. If two colors and/or white and/or black are mixed, the result will be called a tint. A scale consists of a series constructed according to a specific scheme and it is a member of the gamut in which it plays a role, e.g. value scale - lightness [tone, value, tonal value.] Hues reach their maximum saturation at different values.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Classical primary, secondary, tertiary color [equal mixtures of a primary with a secondary next to it on the color wheel/old definition: mixture of two secondary colors in equal proportions.] The complementary is inferred from complementary afterimages of paint samples. Split complementaries: a color plus the color on each side of its complementary [orange, green, violet.] Double split complementaries: four colors, one from each side of two complementaries.

Gamut stands for the span of all possible colors of a given work, i. e. the constrained color gamut of a given medium, or for the mixtures of two colors and/or white and/or black, in which case one may speak of a dominant gamut and one or more subdominants being used in the given work. The relational nature of color [adjacencies, color opponency] suggests that the logic of colors is a systemic one and the general trend in a system is to transgress all principles of classical logic [Solomon Marcus.] Dead color is different from the final layer but has a particular desired effect on the surface layer. "The word cesia has been coined to refer to the visual sensations aroused by different spatial distributions of light: sensations of transparency, translucency, matte opacity, specularity, gloss, darkness, etc." (J. Caivano)

Andr Lhote

Andr Lhote Andr Lhote describes the methods used to subordinate, through the use of passages, the individual elements to the unified whole. The emphasis is on the emergent pattern which is hypothetically in a dynamic equilibrium, that is the play of fiat boundaries [the limit of a pattern and system is a fiat determination, i.e. a distinction] and bona-fide boundaries, in short on constrained randomness of a morpho-chromatic structure of the color model including out-of-gamut transposition.

Andr Lhote

Byzantine Icon

Melissenda Psalter

Romanesque wall painting

Jacopo da Verona

Altichiero da Zevio

Pesellino (Francesco di Stefano)

Pesellino (Francesco di Stefano)

Pesellino (Francesco di Stefano)

Alessio Baldovinetti

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto)

Francesco del Cossa, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara, Details of the Allegory of April after restoration

Francesco del Cossa, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara, Details of the Allegory of April after restoration

Francesco del Cossa

Cosm Tura

Cosm Tura

Cosm Tura, Allegory of August: Triumph of Ceres (detail)

Piero di Cosimo

GIOVANNI BELLINI

GIOVANNI BELLINI and TIZIANO VECELLIO

Tiziano Vecellio

Tiziano Vecellio

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Paolo Caliari Veronese

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti)

El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos)

El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos)

JACOPO DI GIOVANNI DI FRANCESCO called JACONE

Annibale Carracci

Jacob Jordaens

Jacob Jordaens

Willem Drost

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Hans von Mares

Ubaldo Oppi

AMEDEO BOCCHI

AMEDEO BOCCHI

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Theodor Pallady

Achille Funi

Achille Funi

Felice Casorati

Felice Casorati

Felice Casorati

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy

Serge Poliakoff

Serge Poliakoff

Serge Poliakoff

Serge Poliakoff

Vitruvius calls perspective scaenographia. Scenography is a way of "viewplanning," that is coordinating the real with the visual, the rational with the painterly, usually conventionalized as a system of screens: foreground, middleground, background. Artifice creates new stage settings, painted stage-settings , and painted representations, artifice creates plays of visual constructs. One may assign a value to each screen, e.g. dark, light, grey, respectively, or one may follow Jacques Villons idea and assign a dominant color to each screen. Lhote himself writes of the function of "screens" in the composed landscape: "This mechanical system of light on dark, dark on light, animates all the great traditional landscapes. . . . If a light plane pushes forward the dark plane in front of it . . . a succession of waves is started up. . . an incessantmovement of values which cancel each other out only after they have given the spectator the sensation of depth".

Andr Lhote

Joachim Patinir

Joachim Patinir

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Franois Millet

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

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