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<eyebeam><blast> The Fissiaultian Paradigm
The FISSIAULTIAN PARADIGM
CONTENTS
The Turing-Fissiault Random Cross-Reference Generator
The Hermenutics of Alpha-Dog Intelligence Testing on the Internet
The Fissiault Constant Revealed
The Lost Films of Mia L'Amar Recovered
Notes from the FIVE LAWS OF RANDOMNESS
Arthur Black's Catalogue Raisonne
Secrets
Theory & Entertainment Section
Under/Out of Control
Ants
The Evolution of jodi.org from jodi.com
Pynchon on Excluded Middles
--------------------------------------------------
THE TURING-FISSIAULT RANDOM CROSS-REFERENCE GENERATOR
On April 13, 1998 , Bill Jones wrote:
>at Rockedyne, Yves Fissiault's
>discoveries had been turned to a darker purpose. For the better part of
>a decade Fox Simpson, Rockedyne's chief of Thanatomical Research had
>been working on a quantum computational device based on Fissiault's
>random map - a machine that could think, but had no feelings, no
>ethics, no soul.
Bill, as you allude to in your message, the postwar era was
choreographed with regulations and controls: the CIA, the "balancing" of
superpowers, the UN, zones of secrecies....... a new device was "needed"
(to meet complex military and corporate controls) which was capable of
archiving, recording, memorizing and processing information and
statistics on just about everything.
>A machine to be used to make decisions men could not. What Mia
>and Thomas did not know was that Yves' security clearance had been
>revoked because hidden in the stained satin lining of his alligator
>bound valise was the following document:
"The quantum measurement device
consists of an artificial crystal of potassium cyanide
with its molecules aligned in a lattice arrangement."
The document was signed by Alan Turing, and was the last piece of
writing attributed to him before his untimely suicide on June 8, 1954.
There is speculation that Turing swallowed the crystal of potassium
cyanide to halt the completion of the device. If the crystal had been
installed,
>This effectively creates an Ising glass in
>which the spin-state of each electron is coupled to the spin-state of
>its neighbors. A proprietary mechanism is used to maintain coherence
>of
>the quantum states for a minimum of 10 milliseconds to allow
>measurement and evaluation.
Turing knew that Fissiault's optical comparator, when fitted with the
crystal would allow him to realize a very different objective. Turing
and Fissiault intended their work to undermine the universal claims of
symbolic logic. And yet, if this device were ever to reach the hands of
the military....
>The energy available to the lattice is controlled by
>MMF (the meta-matrixial force)
>which allows the speed of the evolution of the system to be controlled
>by the neural net. Increasing k increases the speed of evolution of
>the system, thereby increasing the computational speed of the entire >device, but at increased risk of decoherance. Initially the evolution
>speed was
>controlled by the operator, after version 3.4, QANDAM was allowed to
>choose and adjust the value of this parameter itself.
Bill, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Turing's theories on
the relationship of the computer to the brain influenced countless
scientists studying "cybernetics" in the term coined by Norbert Wiener
to mean "control and communication in the animal and the machine." In
1949 Turing had accepted a position of assistant director of the
Manchester Automatic Digital Machine (Madm) allegedly the first
stored-program computer ever built. While discussing the machine with
Maxwell H.A. Newman of Victoria University, Turing noted that:
"I couldn't take part in the discussion and it was one of many that had
passed over my head"
(Marguerite Zientara, "The History of Computing: A Biographical Portrait
of the Visionaries Who Shaped the Destiny of the Computer Industry. pg.
34)
The fact that the brilliant Turing himself could not keep up with
discussions on his own theoretical developments intrigued the
geographer, Lee A. Mavere, to study the methods employed by the
"information rich" to keep the "information poor" in their place. This
research led to her eventual Ph.D dissertation on "Dominance and
Affection: The Hermeneutics of AlphaDog Intelligence Testing on Internet
Discussion Forums" dealing with authoritarianism and
intellectualism/anti-intellectualism as cultural
geographic determinants. Her study of deluxe hyperbolated academic
fellatiations from the usual cast of characters is arguably the best
test of the deep and involuntary growlings of mankind's attempts to
deectoplasmize critical art practice.
Brian Holmes wrote:
>Under these conditions it becomes important to characterize what one
>might call the "flexible personality," to sketch out its dynamics and
>its dialectical contradictions.
Given that Fissiault is about as flexible a personality as anyone could
hope to conjure, may I offer up a few questions he posed shortly before
his death:
Have "authoritarian personalities" really faded away, or do they just
have new uniforms and/or camouflages? Why can an artist more easily
assimilate into this discussion with less friction if they are versed in
the apparatuses of French and German intellectual thought? How does it
happen that meanings and domains of knowledge are so often (if not
always) nonexistent until we coax them into existence?
------------------------------------------------------
THE FISSIAULTIAN CONSTANT REVEALED
On Wed, 08 Apr 1998 10:08:32 -0400
Joy Garnett of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote:
>Unfortunately, eyebeam listserve does not support jpegs or any other
>picture file, hence, I'm sending to you direct the following attachment
Attachment converted: Deleuze:hvema.jpg (JPEG/JVWR) (0000AEF5)
>Eve Laramee wrote:
>>Fissiault argues convincingly for the desirability of a spatial
>>framework for random events that is both uniform and topologically
>>meaningful. Unfortunately, he failed to convince his colleagues at the
>>time (1962) that his approach was capable of being realized. The
>>dismissal of his alternative methods and narrow consideration of other
>>approaches left the impression (amongst many of his colleagues at
>>Rockedyne during the Cold War Era) that viable theories for mapping
>>randomness simply did not exist. We know now that this is far from
>>being the case.
>...and then wrote:
>
>>From Puerto Vallarta they head for Guadalajara to meet with Dr.
>>Professor Octavio Ruiz de Leon, at the Museo de Anthropologia. Ruiz de
>>Leon was trained as a engineer/neurophysiologist (who later spent 15
>>years studying global intelligence based on beetles)
>Correct me if I am wrong, Eve, but I was under the impression that
Fissiault was engaged briefly in a collaborative effort with the great
neurophysiologist, and that it was during their brief encounter that
Fissiault's Constant -- Fcº -- was finally realized. The mapping of
coincidal, or culled random events, had only been up until that moment,
a brilliant, if not freakish, extrapolation. I did some research and did
manage to find a facsimile of one of the mid-to-late maps, which I
enclose as an attachment. But I would dearly love to get a hold of some
of the earlier work in this vein. Any ideas?
Interestingly, Joy, one of the research trips Fissiault made with
Professor Ruiz de Leon was to the archaeological site of Sayil near
Xlapak on the Yucatan peninsula. Sayil, in the Mayan language means
"ants place", and Ruiz de Leon was convinced there was a connection
between the site, the enormous ant colony underlying the palatial
terraced ruins, and the work he was doing on the "field intelligence" of
insects. This factored into Fissiault's Constant -- Fcº, which you
mention, which I will go into at length shortly.
To all who expressed interest:
I am pleased to report that the footlocker full of film stock found in a
garage in Hermosa Beach, California arrived today via Fed Ex and IS in
fact film footage of out-takes from films of the late Mia L'amar. (If
you remember, L'amar was the wife of Yves Fissiault, the electrical
engineer/artist who was intricately involved with the history of the
internet (by way of DARPA and ARPAnet).
What is of even greater interest to the Eyebeam Forum is the fact that
in the footlocker were two bound volumes, one a small, 3-ring black
leather binder of notes by Fissiault on his (now famous) FIVE LAWS OF
RANDOMNESS, and a set of Verifax copies of the the beginnings of a
catalogue raisonne of Fissiault's visual works by an art historian,
Arthur Black. Additionally, a drawing (unfortunately quite water
stained) of crab glasses, believed to have been stolen years ago and
never recovered, was also found in the footlocker, with the inscription,
"pour Yves F. - Marcel Duchamp 1956". As reported in this month's
Artforum magazine (April, 1998,
pg. 10), in a book review entitled, "Schwarz Schrift", Duchamp made the
drawing in the summer of 1956 at the MacDowell Colony for Denise Browne
Hare to give as a birthday present to Clifford Odets. Evidence now
suggests that there are two versions of the crab glass drawing, as the
one uncovered in the Hermosa Beach footlocker matches the illustration
on a matchbook cover from Max's Crab Shack at the Santa Monica Pier
where Fissiault and Duchamp, along with the local artists George Herms
and Wallace Berman and the beat poet, Jack Hirshman, would frequent.
More on this later.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES FROM THE FIVE LAWS OF RANDOMNESS
Here is an excerpt from the recently recovered notebook of Fissiault's.
The notes are written in longhand on 5"x7" graph paper, yellowed with
age. There are numerous erasures and revisions and a small diagram
illustrating the concept of "non-nested hierarchies" which looks a
little like an exploded diagram of Johannes Kepler's drawing of the
nested Platonic solids.
----
the question
of questions (RANDOMNESS)
placement of the boundary between
predictability under invariant law
and the multifarious possibility
of historical contingency.
(randomness)
equilibrium based explanations
non-equilibrium based explanations
1. viability of hypothesis
2. consistency of hypothesis
3. confirmation " "
*****NON-NESTED
HIERARCHIES****
open and connectable in all dimensions
fine-scale manifestations of the more general processes of
randomness in which fragmentation
promotes diversity across spatial and temporal scales
EVIDENCE?
Where does the boundary
between determinism and
contingency lie?
(it depends)
evidence:
models of successional dynamics
Clemientsian relay floristics model (weeds, grasses)
Eglerian initial floristics succession------------------------rhizomes
---stochastic processes in successional pathways
depend primarily on the pool of available propagules present
following a disturbance.
(sensitive dependence on initial conditions)
SITE FACTORS
might determine which pathway post-disturbance succession takes (?)
accident?
(suseptible to constant modification)
Y.F.
-------------------------------------------
THE CATALOGUE RAISONNE
The date of Arthur Black's notes is 1969, (and reflects a twenty four
year
long acquaintance with the engineer/artist, Yves Fissiault). Apparently,
Black's account of Fissiaults's work was slated to make its initial
appearance with the first edition of a book to be entitled, "The
Complete
Works of Yves Fissiault in Two Volumes: V1: Chronocomplexificationism,
V2:
Somaticatastrophicationism. I must note here that Black became estranged
from Fissiault after a draft of the catalogue was circulated under the
unfortunate spelling error: "Somaticastrationificationism", which
disturbed
Fissiault to no end.
Arthur Black was apparently delighted with the discovery of Yves
Fissiault's works on paper, paintings, sculptural devices and his audio
recordings made in collaboration with Conlon Nancarrow, Francis Vincent
Zappa, Don Van Vliet and Harry Partch. (The audio material has never
surfaced, it has only been referred to in secondary material). Flawed as
it
may be, Arthur Black's account of the work of Fissiault is a tremendous
piece of the puzzle which I have only begun to assemble since being
named
executrix of Fissiault's estate in 1991.
As a young man Arthur Black had gone from Paris to Egypt, to spent a
year
as an apprentice to the physicist, Bodo Muscatti, who developed a model
of
the universe consisting of four actualized potentials of an
all-encompasing
"force" which he called "meta-matrixial force" (MMF). Muscotti
mathematically described the progression of these potentials in terms of
a
complex "Affective Reciprocal Interaction" as a correspondence between
levels of a system in which one level of influences (determines) the
other
which reciprocally influences (determines) the level which is its
determinant. It is Muscotti's theories which form the foundation of
Fissiault's FIVE LAWS OF RANDOMNESS, and hence is the origin of Black's
life-long interest and inquiry into Fissiault's work. The year was 1939
and
Black had gone to Egypt on the recommendation of Andre Breton (who had
kindly written him a letter of introduction). Breton had promoted
Muscotti's theories on chance operations and automatic hypothegenesis
amongst his fellow Surrealists.
When Black initiated a correspondence with Fissiault in 1945 (the year
Fissiault immigrated to the US from Montreal), he had followed
Fissiault's
investigations into optics, music theory and the beginnings of his
theories
on randomness, and he (Black) began to develop the project of a complete
catalogue raisonne which he intended to complete by the mid 1950's.
Although Fissiault worked with Black, he never fully confided in him,
did
not give him power of executor, and did not, in his particular "border
culture" way (Montreal-Tijuana) trust him. Arthur Black was simply too
much
of an " incessantly overcoded academic"(sic) "who defines away any
potentially uncontrollable difference" to understand the complex
cosmological theories Fissiault had woven through his life and work. He
would still have a friendship with Arthur Black, and help him with
information that made possible the first (and ultimately unpublished)
catalogue raisonne, but never paid much attention to the interpretations
of
his work that Black was preparing. Fissiault had always hoped that it
would
be his dear friend Thomas Pynchon who would write his biography and
catalogue raisonne, but as we all know, Pynchon is a fiction writer, not
an
art historian. Yet he believed that only Pynchon's mind was capable of
capturing the spirit and complexity of the Fissiaultian Paradigm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SECRETS
Greg Ulmer wrote:
>Question. I have no idea WHAT the science is hiding. tell me, then what
>is your experience EXPERIENCE that is of science/research/scholarship?
Greg, this is a question effectively answered by Fissiault in 1968,
after
struggling for years as a wage-slave in the scientific
military/industrial
complex. He writes:
"What is science hiding?
Secrets, secret secretions."
I think the biologist and historian of science, Evelyn Fox Keller makes
a
pretty good argument in her essay "From Secrets of Life to Secrets of
Death" that much of scientific creativity -- specifically "the urge to
fathom the secrets of nature, and the collateral hope that, in fathoming
the secrets of nature, we will fathom the ultimate secrets (and hence
gain
control) of our own mortality. This motif, like mortality itself, has
two
sides...both of which are evident throughout the history of science:
They
are the search for the wellspring of life, and simultaneously, for
evermore
effective instruments of death."
(see E.F. Keller: _Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on
Language,
Gender and Science_ Routledge, New York, London 1992)
------------------------------------------------------------------
"When Amor leaves Psyche, he says to her:
You will bear a child who will be divine if you remain silent
but will be human if you betray the secret."
---Soren Kierkegaard
------------------------------------------------------------------
"One of my diseases, one of my things in life,
is that anything that is secret, I try to undo."
--Richard Feynman (as a young physicist at Los Alamos)
------------------------------------------------------------------
"The strategy invented by modern science to deal with the threat of
nature's secrets is the scientific method -- "a *method* for "undoing
nature's secrets: for the rendering of what was previously invisible,
visible -- visible to the mind's eye if not to the physical eye." The
project of scientific enlightenment--"the illumination of the reality
behind appearances -- is an inversion of surface and interior, an
interchange between visible and invisible, that effectively routs the
last
vestigages of archaic, subterranean female power."(.. between
procreativity
and productivity. ) (EFKeller)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Words sometimes (perhaps always) harbor secrets. A secret is, of course,
that which is "kept from knowledge or observation; hidden, concealed."
....
The word "secret" derives from the Latin *secretus* (separate, out of
the
way), which, in turn, comes from *secernere* (to put apart, separate).
Joseph Shipley lists three roots for secret: *ker*, scratch, cut, pluck,
gather, dig, separate, sift; *sek*, cut, scrape, separate, sife; and
*sue,
se*, personal relations, one's own; his, hers, its. "*Se*, by oneself,
came
to mean apart, without; in this sense it is an English prefix to
innumerable words, as *secret, secrete*; secure (whence *sure*);
*seduce*:
lead astray; *segregate*: part from the herd; *separate, sever,
several*:
existing apart; *sex*, cut apart, as Eve from Adam."
---- Mark C. Taylor, in his book, Tears, State University of New York
Press
(1990)
--------------
This separating or cutting off of secrets, the dividing, separating, and
secluding is a manifestation of control which is in contradistinction to
the connecting up, the linking, the meshing suggested by the rhizomatic
Fissiaultian Paradigm.
---------------
Steven Kurtz wrote:
>biotechnology has been much more secretive about its progress and
>deployment. .........{it} is contextualized within the
>legitimizing mantles of science and medicine to keep the public calm
DJ Spooky wrote:
>To me the two engines driving technology are entertainment and
>warfare...The web and the internet, as we always tend to forget,
>came out of military systems research
Michael Rees wrote:
>Technology does not equal military.
Brian Holmes wrote:
>The scientific release from the spell of myth is
>held spellbound by a new myth of science. Unmasterable technology
>proliferates through the quasi-biological growth cycles of capitalism.
Joy Garnet wrote:
>The primary problem which afflicts the sciences... is not a lack
>in terms of tools of facilitation or technological prowess;
>the problem is a lack of substance to the inquiries actually
>undertaken, and a tremendous failure to support individuals
>who do have substantive ideas. A lack of desire
>to do good, or to support those whose research is to do good......
-----------------------
Just look at what happened to Fissiault & Pynchon's early ARPAnet
recombinant poetic works. Where did that trajectory go? Into the
W.A.S.T.E.
bin?
But seriously, much of history is an assemblage of stories which get
fossilized into hardened, "scientized" texts. Haraway (and others)
have
written that "Science is about knowledge and power." I think it is
important that we remember that technology is "a way of doing" --
technology is not something solely invented by human beings. Beaver
dams,
termite mounds and weaver ant habitats are manifestations of
technologies
-- the residual formations of techniques of the body. Computer
technologies
are intricately intertwined with specific biological characteristics
(language, desire, procreation-production, control) operating within
specific geographical parameters (cultures, places, economies). The
"scientization" of technology raises its cultural value, mystifies it,
heightens its status.
Technoscience is not neutral. "Pure research" is always usurped by the
military/industrial/commercial complex. A lot of good work in science
and
technology goes on to kill a lot of people. Perhaps we are alluding to
(in
our own codified languages) the necessity for technoscience to negotiate
a
compromise between the things that science does very well, such as the
investigation of wonder, mystery and discovery, the pursuit and
construction of knowledge, the collection of data, the making of
hypotheses, and between the responsibility of members of the
technoscientific community and the corporations and institutions that
fund
them, to publicly acknowledge the implications of how their work might
be
used towards mass destruction and the apparatuses of political control.
Which is to say I think the human species has a long way to go in the
evolution of consciousness. I think that our big brains are there to
develop us into a more creative, compassionate, altruistic beings. I
believe we've got to work for life, not work for death. In my opinion,
those are the only two choices we have in our lifetimes, and I generally
don't polarize things too much. But this is one issue where postmodern
ambivalences and ambiguities break down for me....I can talk about
blurring
boundaries, slippery facts, and grey zones on and on to poetic delirium,
but the bottom line is still: are we working for life, or are we working
for death? Keeping an eye on historical contingencies and seeing our own
complicity in it all keeps us working towards a solution despite the
fact
that we are part of the problem. ...Tracing the complications of our
actions.
"The greatest intellectual feats may yield no more than the picturesque
musing of myth makers and magicians. Humans remain in awe before the
vastness of the universe and in the face of multiple visions. They
proceed
*as if* they know something true and believable, as if they have a
handle
on reality. But at best they come in contact with the fringes of
reality,
with its surfaces and edges. So they in fact proceed *despite* what they
know and do not know, doing the best they can to keep the ball rolling,
to
keep the process going." (Raphael Sassower: Technoscientific Angst:
Ethics
& Responsibility)
"In our time, natural science defines the human being's place in nature
and
history and provides the instruments of domination of the body and the
community. By constructing the category nature, natural science imposes
limits on history and self-formation. So science is part of the struggle
over the nature of our lives." (Haraway 1991)
--------------------------------------------------------
ANTS
The queens of some ant species use a subtle method of control. They do
not
challenge their rivals to combat, but instead pull their eggs from the
brood pile and eat them. Those who destroy the largest number of
opponents'
eggs while losing the fewest of their own are in effect dominant, at
least
by Darwinian standards: their daughters will be disproportionately
represented among the workers and in the next generation of queens.
(Wilson
& Holldobler, 1994)
-------------------------------------------------
THE EVOLUTION OF jodi.org FROM jodi.com
The origin of jodi.com was reported in a previous episode of the
Fissiaultian Paradigm. There have been numerous inquiries as to whether
jodi.com has anything to do with jodi.org. The two programming languages
(jodi and dot-com or .com) were merged into a self-replicating
pseudo-intelligence or UVESC (Ultra-low voltage electro-synaptic code)
entity known as jodi.com. Over time, a morphogenesis began to take
place,
and hence a recodification. Spontaneously, over a period of years, the
jodi.com UVESC began to differentiate into a polymorphic organism with
thousands of millions of electro-synaptic "cells", that developed into
"organs" each with a different function. Jodi.com had evolved into
jodi.org, a multi-cellular "organism", with each of its "cell" groupings
acquiring more and more specific determinations, opening up pathways of
flows and breakages of information and multiple intelligences. The
resulting complex "Being" (referred to in late 20th C. English as a
cyborg) is a "Juncture-Of-Discursive-Indeterminacy Organism" , or a
jodi.org.
-------------------------------------------------------
MORE ANTS
Life in the Harpegnathos ant colony is not always filled with conflict.
There are periods of apparent complete tranquility, in which no
dominance
interactions are to be observed. The peace is eventually broken,
however,
as one worker or another rising in rank from the lower classes decides
to
challenge a member of the top class. Her action precipitates a frenzy of
ritual dueling among the dominant workers, who scurry about as if to
cement
their own high status among their peers. At the same time these workers
also attack any nestmates from among the lower ranks who dare challenge
them. In this endeavor they do not always prevail. Some are demoted to
the
mated middle class and their places are taken by former subordinates.
(Wilson & Holldobler, 1994)
--------------------------------------------------------
On January 6, 1966, in Barney's Beanery at 8447 Santa Monica Boulevard,
Francis Vincent Zappa posed the rhetorical question to Gail Sloatman,
Yves
Fissiault and Mia L'amar: "Who are the brain police?" I was ten years
old at the time, and happened to be sitting at the adjacent table at a
birthday party, and never dreamed I would encounter Fissiault again
years
later (as a research assistant while a college student). I have mulled
over
this question for 32 years.
---------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Pynchon wrote:
"She had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad shit, to be
avoided; and how had it ever happened here? With the chances once so
good
for diversity? For it was now like walking among matrices of a great
digital computer, the zeros and ones twinned above, hanging like
balanced
mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the
hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or
only
the earth." (CL49)
Thank you, Thomas. You know they say the earth was just a swirl of
gasses
at first. And this swirl spiraled in on itself and compressed and the
nuclei of the atoms fused to form heavier metals and pretty soon you
have a
gelatinous mass of fire and molten rock, which is still spinning,
although
more rapidly now, and this spinning mass became more sphere-like and
solid
and made big spirals around a star which moves in its own way through
space.
EVER ONWARD...
All best regards,
Eve Andree Laramee
-------------------------------------------------------------
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