Science and Nonduality

Dr. Stuart Hameroff Photo credit: Google images

I've been a fan of Stuart Hameroff's work at the University of Arizona (his comment about quantum science looking a lot like Zen, got my attention). An MD, he began his quantum scientific explorations through the field of anesthesia. His website is always packed with brilliant and insightful writings. He'll be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Science and Nonduality Conference in October.

The organisers description of the conference is an exciting signal that a "quantum" relationship between these disciplines, artifacts and sciences, is now being acknowledged:

...the discoveries in quantum physics, brain sciences, consciousness studies, biology, cosmology, psychology and other fields have revealed nonduality in science as well, suggesting mysticism and science share a common source. Applying nondual perspectives in science, and scientific perspectives in Eastern spiritual approaches are the twin goals of this, the first public conference on the Science of Nonduality. Join us for three days seeking fundamental oneness in quantum physics, philosophy, consciousness studies, cosmology, art, Buddhism, psychology and spiritual metaphysics.

The Anniversary of Colouring Outside The Lines

Painting with my son, 2002, Gabriel Knecht (7 yrs.) and L. Vandegrift Davala

Harry Chapin recorded "Flowers are Red" on August 19, 1980. Eleven months later, he was dead. His heart wrenching and poignant song beautifully captures our individual and collective struggle about our creative needs and worth, and the way we pass this on to our children. I think that Chapin would endorse this beautiful, very short film; if you follow no other link in this post, please have a look at this.

I wonder what Harry would make of our present information and tech-centered culture, which increasingly incorporates "design thinking" and the creative approaches of artists into the management and production of products and services. An how about the artists and creatives themselves? The concept of the "portfolio career" for creative professionals is now mainstream. Artist's are now sharing the benefit of their whole brain approach, molding and shaping space, concepts, technology, speaking at TED. What does your creative "portfolio career" look like? Comment and let me know what you are doing.

Maybe our guilt about not spending every waking moment in the studio can be lessened when we realise we are embodying Harry's message: we don't colour between the lines, for that matter, we can't even keep it all on the canvas.

Gaudi's String Theory

Photo credit MIT.edu, Gaudi Catenary arch model

The Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi was equally admired and ridiculed for his, some might say, obsessive and eccentric practices. Ultimately his unique vision, nourished by a generous patron, won the hearts of the citizens of Barcelona - and beyond. Can he possibly have been tuned into something more quantum when he developed the Catenary string models for his re-design of arches? Do we mirror the patterns that are now being described as string theory and fractals, when we work in a state of "flow"?

Apparently the same sort of Catenary system of arch design and construction had been used in the Catalan region of Spain for centuries. Gaudi's innovation enabled him to achieve complex and demanding specifications which exceed modern technical tools. A group of MIT students (Dan Chak, Megan Galbraith and Axel Kilian) took on the challenge to create a technological solution akin to Gaudi's which could be used by architects, and wrote the following in their presentation on CatenaryCAD: An Architectural Design Tool about the traditional centuries-old Catalan technique

...if a Catalan stair has to be constructed it is not detailed by the planners or architects. Instead, the masons on site hang a rope between the point of departure and the point to be reached, trace the shape and flip the curve over to use as the guide for constructing the masonry arch that carries the stairs. The rope is in pure tension, as it can not take any compression due to its flexibility. Therefore the form it finds contains the pure tensile force within the envelope of the string.

That gives you the basis of the original Catenary theory. Here is Gaudi's innovation:

A design technique created by Antonio Gaudi allows an architect to design complex structures based on Catenary systems, whose curves are formed by perfectly flexible, uniformly dense strings suspended from their endpoints and weighted under gravity. He created many amazing structures with pieces of string that architects would be at a loss to reproduce using today’s most advanced design tools.

Antonio Gaudi developed the system of catenary string statics into a spatial design system. He constructed scaled models of his design ideas by developing forms through a weighted string form-finding method. In his case, the models are spatial and are much more complex then the catenary staircase example. Gaudi achieved the desired forms through the control of three variables - anchor points of the strings, the length of the strings, and the weights attached to them. By designing his forms this way, Gaudi knew that the resulting geometry would act purely in compression when inverted. He also had a pretty precise estimate of the loads necessary on the different members of his construction. Beyond structural form finding, Gaudi also used this method for rendering the interior and exterior shapes of the buildings. He imagined them by painting and tracing over the “wire frame” models of lines in photos.

As the photo above illustrates, Gaudi used a very tactile, haptic (no-mind, mushin) approach to achieve this innovation. He made this model with little weight bags, and string covered in pork fat!

Within a week - mice ate most of his original model.

This, That and the Other

That "theory of everything" is looking very plausible. I thank Lea Walters for sending me the link to this exciting article, The Spooky World of Quantum Biology by Michael Garfield published in June by h+ magazine. Well worth the read. An excellent companion to this piece is the short an very inspiring TED conference video of Janine Benyus on bio-mimicry.


Photo credit Fern by Gabriel Knecht

Edges, Fractals and Doorways

The first doorway I have to acknowledge tonight is the one enabled by the brand new satellite dish outside my window, which, after a three year wait for this piece of technology (and the broadband company that was finally able to provide it) enables me to blog in relative technological comfort. Apologies for the infrequent postings of late.

Richard Taylor, associate professor of physics at Oregon University, has discovered a relationship between the "drip" paintings of Jackson Pollock and Benoit B. Mandlebrot's geometric fractals. Using a computer program the "repetitions of patterns at different magnifications" became apparent. Taylor went on to say:

Pollock wouldn't have known that fractals were out there, and he certainly wasn't a mathematician. He must have tuned into some natural process to create these.

Taylor also inferred that his exploration into Pollock's fractal-like working method could help scientists to authenticate works of art.

From my work in making marks and images, there certainly is a point at which you arrive, a tuning-in to a natural process or a state of no-mind (mushin). You feel it much in the way that you know you are "in the zone", intention, action and energy unite. Previously undreamed of possibilities emerge. And yeah, it will be authentic in every sense. This transcendence in Pollock's work from the time of the "drip" paintings onwards has always bothered art historians. The aesthetic progression and development of this artist just didn't jive with the sudden greatness of his achievement. I believe that Jackson Pollock attained mushin (the no-mind, fractal-like zone) that has been the conduit of many of the arts, artifacts and disciplines I have discussed in Dear Charmides. These paintings were the byproduct of that experience. We have all experienced these moments, if only briefly.

Celtic culture abounds with quantum/chaos/fractal references. Several years back I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mary Pat Mann's article Doorways to Other Worlds, The Infinite Fractal Edges of Faery (Parabola, Fall 2003). In it she says:

Rational order is not a prominent feature in Celtic myth. Heroes and seers who deliberately sought out other worlds in quest of power, inspiration or both, inevitably found the strange and unpredictable. Those who returned told tales of beautiful people who never aged, but also of sheep that changed from black to white and back again by jumping over a fence, shouting birds, giant ants and wondrous beasts that twisted their bones within their skins and their skins over their bones. Among Celtic people today, the doorway between ordinary reality and these other lands are still ajar. At any time, ordinary people can find themselves, suddenly and without warning, in the presence of magic.

She goes on to say:

Edges are rich environments...setting the stage for interactions and exchanges that happen nowhere else. In Celtic legend, the opening between this world and another is always an edge. These include the meeting of water and land, but also the hilltops (where earth and sky meet) or openings in the earth like caves (the boundary between above and below).

There is in painting another stunning example of the magic of edges in the work of Johannes Vermeer. In his paintings Vermeer created each of the edges, or meetings between objects, surfaces, materials and people in a way which also taps into all of the comments above. He made an edge, not by drawing a boundary, but by approaching that meeting place from each side, in turn, with its own touch, its own sensations, its own level of focus, truly "setting the stage for interactions and exchanges that happen nowhere else."

Pollock, Mural On Indian Red Ground, 1950, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Vermeer, Girl with a Red Hat, c. 1666-1667, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Luminata

Living in Ireland, I am very aware of the relationship between people and nature. The weather, the lunar cycle and the light and landscape are never out of consciousness. Each year at this time I also began to think of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Not alone because I love the man and his work, but also because of his descriptions of the annual celebration of Luminata each April.

Brancusi was a devout Roumanian Orthodox who was also never far from the teachings of the poet and Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa. On April 23rd each year, St. Gregory's day or Luminata, light in the ascendant, is celebrated. Winter is "done and dusted", and the gratitude for surviving it is expressed within the community. Brancusi's own accounts of Luminata at the little Roumanian church at Jean-de-Beauvais in Paris lead me to that same place and celebration.

Everything about the environment was intimate and easy, yet sacred and real. The parishioners roamed around the open sanctuary, negotiating confessions and penance with priests out in the open, each animated and bargaining. Above us, members of the choir arrived in their own time, as if responding to a casting call from heaven, beginning to sing in ever more complex harmonies while throwing off their coats along the way. Each voice was added at the right moment. As the incense and choir of voices continued to grow, the effect was mesmeric. Although every surface of the interior was lined with oriental carpets, nothing could muffle or impede the rich voices of the singing above, while all around us, more and more candles illuminated the celebration. Hours later the final gesture to Spring consisted of loaves of freshly baked bread, broken and passed around amongst the milling congregation, as they caroused the sanctuary engaged in equal measure with eating, laughing and praying.

Light, mystical spirituality, and poetry were united at that celebration, a mirror of the vision of Brancusi the artist. Many of the artist's aphorisms have been published over the years; as revealing and uncompromising as his works. Here are just a few:

They who have preserved in their souls the harmony residing
in all things, at the core of things, shall find it very easy to understand modern art, because their hearts shall vibrate in keeping with the laws of nature.

There is a purpose in everything. In order to achieve it, one must detach oneself from an awareness of self.

Don’t look for obscure formulas or mysteries. It is pure joy that I am giving you.

They are imbeciles who call my work abstract; that which they call abstract is the most realist, because what is real is not the exterior form but the idea, the essence of things.

My innovations come from something that is extremely old.

Beauty is absolute balance.

Following my first visit to this celebration, I began a series of works entitled Luminata Celebrant. With these works I saw, again, that an image can be a vessel, containing an essence, and be both empty and full. Recently, a visitor to the studio chose to acquire one of the Luminatas. "She" will now reside in a beautiful part of Belgium. In our conversation that evening, we spoke about image and essence, light and new life, re-affirming a belief that humans can invest the things we make with "the essence of things". Happy Luminata!

Image credits:
1. Brancusi's Bird in Space, 1923, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
2. Sketch of Brancusi's Maiastra, charcoal, L. Vandegrift Davala, 1995
3. To Luminata, photo, Justin Knecht, 1993
4. Luminata Celebrant, monotype, L. Vandegrift Davala, 1992

चक्रं The Chakras

The energetic and philosophical concept of the chakra (wheel or disc) belongs to a variety of cultures: such as Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Malay, and has even been acknowledged in the West. As we have polluted, stressed, and drugged our bodies, now may be a good time to realise that we are more than physical beings. Located at 7 (or 8, in some systems) centres of the body, here are just a few of the attributes of each:

Chakra: Age of resonance, Colour, Musical note, Element

1. Root: conception to 7 years, red, C, earth
2. Sacral: 7-14 years, orange, D, water
3. Solar plexus: 14-21 years, yellow, E, fire
4. Heart: 21-35 years, green/pink/gold, F, air
5. Throat: 28-35 years, turquoise, G, the ethers
6. Brow: 35-42 years, indigo, A, the cosmos
7. Crown: 2-49 years, violet, B, the cosmos

These energy centres are associated with health and organ functions, spiritual and philosophical awareness, a veritable energy filtration system which also corresponds with psychological development, life cycles, seasons, foods, and colours spanning the complete spectrum.


With much of this in mind, I recently built a model for a public art commission proposal at a hospital, requiring an approach sensitive to health, mental well-being and balance. The clear cast acrylic coloured rods of this sculpture will glow in daylight, reflecting onto the surrounding 4 walls of glass, moving across a spectrum of colour, revealing at its base, a flower. At night from an underground brilliant white LED array, each rod will light individually, forming a gently shifting and swaying field of vibrantly coloured, glowing rods. The model above represents a work which would stand about 1 meter high and 8 meters long, and reside in a sealed glass enclosed courtyard. If Paradise is defined as an enclosed space looking to heaven, I am praying for this bit of it.