. . . to every story there belongs another.
The LODE project of 1992 and the Re:LODE project of 2017 is activating, and instigating, a socially based process of the formation of questions, questions that begin with places.
For example, this place, on the west coast of Ireland, situated on a geographical boundary, with a headland that has its old Gaelic name, Ceanne Sleibhe, and another name, Slea Head.
Already there is a story connecting to the fact there are two names for the same place.The creation, in situ, of a simple magnetic compass through the assembly of a bowl, filled with water, local materials, in this case sand from the beach, and a floating object, in this case a cross of St Brigid attached to a magnetized strip of iron, was documented using a Super8 camera and film, and providing a point of reference and navigation along the LODE Line.
This point of reference allows documentation of the "view" along the LODE Line, looking in one way, in one direction, towards Liverpool, and then looking the other way towards Hull. LODE - old English, and means "a way".
The Information Wrap
This is a video of current members of Yellow House opening the crates in of the LODE cargo in October 2017, twenty-five years after a previous generation of Yellow House members had replaced the objects and newspaper packing and secured them within these same crates. It is clear in the responses and the conversations taking place in the sequence of "opening" the "cargo of questions" that the objects from places along the LODE Line attract a special kind of attention and engagement. It is also clear that the newspaper wrapping has a different, but equal, value to the "things" used to assemble the LODE compasses. This is the Information Wrap. Material used for "packing" is "unpacked", is read as "found information" with the "found objects" and used to connect to these stories, stories that are contemporaneous with the creation of the compasses and their documentation.
For Re:LODE in 2017 the Information Wrap is unpacked from the internet. The places along the LODE Line are the points of reference, and the starting points for research in a global setting, where information is global and accessible to some extent. Re:LODE reminds us that the different degrees of access to information along the line are significant. Where information comes from, these information sources in themselves are part of the story. Wikipedia, as a sharing community, in the sharing of information and knowledge, requires the application of a criticality for this common resource to work. If there are questions about the content of this encyclopedia of a digital era, that is part of using information in a critical way, but the key value of Wikipedia is not necessarily the CONTENT of the pages. This is because pages and content can be monitored, moderated, changed, so check the information, follow the references, ask questions about the nature of the sources, but the value is in the FORM, the quality of hypertext that allows a page to connect to a matrix, a matrix of nodes of information. The intellectual and perceptual practicalities of LINKING, of CONNECTING, and being mindful that the GAPS are as significant as the STUFF, all of this is presented in the Re:LODE posts and pages for YOU - THE AUDIENCE.
An audience interested in a multiple set of interconnected views of places elsewhere, and a view of the world from LIVERPOOL or HULL, or ANYWHERE?
This cargo of questions results from a process of laying out the territory as best as possible so that any audience for LODE and Re:LODE are
able to use their own intellectual powers to determine for themselves
what may or may not be taking place and what is right and what is wrong.
The
purpose of this cargo of questions is not to persuade, but where it is
clear that a question has been formulated in such a way that it becomes
rhetorical, please consider the fact that the idea of neutral
objectivity is at best misleading and often fraudulent.
Information retrieval
In 1992 the information retrieval process in LODE begins with the newspapers wrapping the objects, but also the decisions and choices involved in the journey to the place where a LODE compass was assembled. These decisions included journeying to geographical boundaries, and places along the line that might relate to other kinds of boundaries, political, cultural, linguistic, both contemporary and historic, boundaries made for people by people. This aspect of the project was designed to contextualise the "stories" found in the newspaper pages, and required research in libraries as much as in travel. So, while understanding Michel Foucault's advice;
"travel, NOT books" . . .. . . but the library was, and is, a place where journeys can take place, after all, as stated in the LODE pamphlets and hand-outs;
"journeys are part of our mental life" . . .. . . and so books and articles, information from many different sources, helps build a context, a context instigated by a place.
For Re:LODE in 2017 the information retrieval process begins with the places and the questions formulated in journeying to points along the LODE Line, but instead of books and newspapers the "place to go" is the world wide web, with all its problems, and problems we cannot deny.
A new verb - "to google" - so, google world wide web . . .
World Wide Web - Wikipedia
"We have to grit our teeth and hang on to the fence and not take it for granted that the web will lead us to wonderful things"
The spread of misinformation and propaganda online has exploded partly because of the way the advertising systems of large digital platforms such as Google or Facebook have been designed to hold people’s attention.
“People are being distorted by very finely trained AIs that figure out how to distract them”In some cases, these platforms offer users who create content a cut of advertising revenue. The financial incentive drove Macedonian teenagers with “no political skin in the game” to generate political clickbait fake news that was distributed on Facebook and funded by revenue from Google’s automated advertising engine AdSense.
The top of the Wikipedia page on AdSense has the Wikipedia window pointing to the article having "multiple" issues, including:
- Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. (October 2016)
- This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (June 2011)
Nevertheless . . .
Without access to search engines and the world wide web it would have been difficult to access the stories of 2017, found on a range of very different websites across the world, and then see how they could be "thrown together" for the Re:LODE 2017 A Cargo of Questions.
Juxtaposition, apposition, superposition, parataxis . . .
The Re:LODE site has a section on Methods and Purposes with a number of articles on the use of juxtaposition as part of the LODE and Re:LODE artistic methodology.
Q. How can LODE and Re:LODE create new "symbols"?
A. Throw things together!
The section on Methods and Purposes, mentioned above, does not discuss the idea of throwing things, either throwing at, or throwing things together, so here is the deal.
Since Sputnik put the globe in a "proscenium arch," and the global village has been transformed into a global theater, the result, quite literally, is the use of public space for "doing one's thing."
The world itself has become a probe.
(Page 12, From Cliché to Archetype by Marshall McLuhan with Wilfred Watson)
Most people confuse single objects with symbols. It helps to note the original meaning and structure of the term "symbol" as a juxtaposition of two things. Originally, parties to a contract broke a stick and each took half. Upon completion of the relationship, the parties juxtaposed the two sticks, creating the symbol. It is from symballein, Greek for "throwing together."
(Page 36, From Cliché to Archetype by Marshall McLuhan with Wilfred Watson)
Parable; from parabola!
The word that is sometimes used as a name for stories that make us think, and also "wake up," as in the Christian New Testament for example, is "parable." Parable, as in parabola, means "throwing against," Latin parabola ‘comparison’, from Greek parabolē, 'placing side by side application’, from para- ‘beside’ + bolē ‘a throw’ (from the verb ballein). A parabola - the path of a projectile under the influence of gravity follows a curve of this shape.
In this Physics video lecture in Hindi we derived the equation for trajectory i.e., the relation between the abscissa and the ordinate of any point on the path in a projectile motion. Trajectory of a projectile is a parabolic trajectory. This explanation and the equation are very useful to class 11 students and IIT JEE aspirants. During the derivation we found, if a projectile is thrown with sped 'u' and at an angle θ with the horizontal, y = x tanθ / ( 2 u^2 cosθ^2). During this video lecture we also discussed how a projectile motion is a combination of a vertical and a horizontal motion. If we are going to locate the position of a projectile, its abscissa is determined by the horizontal component of its initial velocity and its ordinate is determined by the vertical component of the initial velocity.
Ballistics!
Is there a story behind (or in front of) "to every story there belongs another"?
Language as gesture and cadence and rhythm, as metaphor and image, evokes innumerable objects and situations which are in themselves nonverbal. The extent to which the nonverbal world is shared by language is obscure but no more so than the effect of human artifacts and technological environments on language. We are taking for granted that there is at all times interplay between these worlds of percept and concept, verbal and nonverbal. Anything that can be observed about the behavior of linguistic cliché or archetype can be found plentifully in the nonlinguistic world.
Those masterful images because completeW. B. Yeats, "The circus Animals Desertion"
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
(Page 20, From Cliché to Archetype by Marshall McLuhan with Wilfred Watson)
If the world of kettles and bottles and broken cans and the world of commerce and money in the till are fragmentary specialisms of man's powers, it becomes easier to see the bond that remains between verbal and nonverbal cliché or archetype. The specialist artifact form has the advantage over language of intensification and amplification far beyond the limits of word or phrase.
The archetype is a retrieved awareness or consciousness.
It is consequently a retrieved cliché - an old cliché retrieved by a new cliché. Since a cliché is a unit extension of man, an archetype is a quoted extension, medium, technology, or environment.
The cliché, in other words, is incompatible with other clichés, but the archetype is extremely cohesive; other archetypes' residues adhere to it. When we consciously set out to retrieve one archetype, we unconsciously retrieve others; and this retrieval recurs in infinite regress.
(Page 21, From Cliché to Archetype by Marshall McLuhan with Wilfred Watson)
So, it is, it might seem, with stories related to a place, stories that tend to cohere with others in the matrix of possible connections. One story leads to another.
LODE is Old English for "a way", that leads.
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags,
Old newspapers, used for packing and un-packing,
Old stories, thrown away,
Now retrieved,
Stories that, once again,
Carry us to seeing the world,
As it is, and NOW!
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