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Jon Spayde:
...Many of us are interested in the ways that science and art illuminate, or even constitute, each other. Some of us dream of resurrecting
the Renaissance ideal of the mutuality of these two spheres. As the Haitian painter
Hector Hyppolite wrote over the lintel of a bar he decorated in Port-Au-Prince (a
bar he covered with bright birds and symbols from both voodoo and Catholicism), "ICI
LA RENAISSANCE".
Many of us are interested in a science of the concrete: how the mysteries and histories
of real objects and places, integrated into our sense of self, can advance our thinking
as well as our creativity.
And many of us wonder what a MYTHOLOGY might mean to someone in 1986. Are all modern
mythologies personal ones? Can, as Aragon believed, gas pumps turn into deities?
Or is it all just gas?
A spirit hovering over our gathering, I am sure, is that of Paul Friedlein, from
Jolly Ridge, Iowa: sculptor, stonemason, memorialist, wrestler, lover of geology
and astronomy, bachelor, atheist, German, American, Iowan, who used a crippled and
elderly body to carry heavy rocks together into a great assemblage on the bank of
the Mississippi. Steven Ohrn, state folklorist of Iowa, has written an account of
Friedlein's work which stands on its own as an enticement and encouragement to us.
I want to dedicate this talk to the memory of Paul Friedlein and to all of you.
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Pow-Wow '86
detail, cover of pow-wow '86 book
1987
Pow-Wow '86 took place at the Terra Incognita loft, over a three-day weekend. I transcribed and edited the recorded conversations and voluminous correspondence myself, typing them into a primitive single-purpose word-processing machine with a dedicated printer, manually pasting up the graphics and layout, "printing" copies on the office photocopier, and binding them by hand with handmade rice-paper covers.
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| Jack |
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Let's assume that for some reason WE DON'T HAVE A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST.
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| Crowd |
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Ha, ha, ha
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| Jack |
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Don't worry. There are enough things IN PROCESS that will probably do us in. I'll
give you a good example.
When I was at Wisconsin I worked for a professor who did evaluations of DDT use.
1965. And we stopped using DDT in 1968. Want to know why we stopped using DDT in
1968?
Because this guy had predicted that the maximum amount of DDT in the ocean lagged
- you put the DDT on the land, then it rains, then it goes down the Mississippi River,
then it gets reconsolidated by the life cycles in the Gulf of Mexico - he predicted
that the maximum amount of DDT in the ocean was gonna occur TEN YEARS after the amount
used on land.
That meant that when we stopped using DDT in 1968, we basically had to wait until
1978 to find out if we were dead - whether or not we'd killed the oceans.
There are tons, TONS of such things in our environment which we are precipitating,
such that when the ocean starts dying, it's gonna get worse for ten years before
it gets better.
So what I'm saying is that whereas we're willing to put these things in motion, we're
not willing to understand what we're doing.
We're incapable of utilizing incoming information - and creating FEELINGS.
Three levels: You need temporal conservation to gather the information from the incoming
streams. Two: You need temporal conservation just to manipulate it, to create these
mental simulations. Three: You need temporal conservation to give a prediction, YOUR
prediction, influence in your decision-making, to make it a BELIEF.
At all three levels, we're cognitively deficient.
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| Terri |
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I'm wondering, though - if we had this temporal understanding, how would that connection
make it easier to accept mortality?
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| Jack |
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Mortality?
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| Terri |
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Because I think a lot of this is linked to not wanting to accept that.
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| Jack |
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You've got a really good point. Think about this: what I want people to do is have
the ability to say - This is what I'm gonna do, and this is gonna be the result.
And in their mental model they crank through the behavior - I'm not gonna wear my
seat belt for 5,328 times and on the 5,329th - Ohhh, God, that's awful! - okay, now
I can wear my seat belt.
So that means that you can see every benefit and every liability in your life NOW.
Which means that YOU HAVE ALL OF THE JOY - AND - ALL OF THE PAIN.
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