On Superstructures
"Wherever we go, we are friends" -Sloth and Manatee
Sloth and Manatee
Our lil universe here has just been blooming and blooming, giving rise to things, and those things give rise to more things, and so on and so on, from galaxies to whatever might be growing in your refrigerator right now.
This phenomenon of structures creating superstructures, then crashing into one another and fragmenting and then making more structures, might apply to humanity in ways we may not contemplate.
For example: we ourselves and our families and communities and other organizations are made up of loads (trillions!) of cells, but in our turn we are also cells within greater structures, which build themselves from the things we are and do. Our behaviors, decisions, nature as animals, evolution, place in the ecosystem. Our screwing around with the ecosystem. All of it.
What do we get from these nested realities? It might be anthills. Or simple social organizations for farming. Or it might be multi-national corporations.
The Terminator movies suggest this superstructure concept in a dystopian way, of course. In Terminator 2 it is reported that Skynet, a technology based super-intelligence, becomes self-aware at 2:14am, EDT, on August 29, 1997.
That’s interesting and scary, and you could certainly say corporate and ideological and religious structures, aided by technology, are headed in this direction. But I’d offer that not all of it is corporate or capitalistic or based on dogma.
Perhaps, Art is a superstructure. A great conversation about ourselves, and our world, like an extra consciousness.
Sometimes I feel like I am walking around with a bunch of other artists, alive and dead and not around yet, near and far, sharing with them the experience of seeing or perceiving and making something of this. Using our consciousness to respond and to put something into the universal discussion.
Recently I was at a lil comic con in my hometown, and I had some comics up on an easel, and a little girl came over and was there for a long time, just reading my cartoons. It felt direct, and pure, and like something beyond her and beyond me.
I also got to visit the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, an old church just packed with antiquities and art from thousands of years ago and from this year. There’s an actual loaf of bread from an Egyptian tomb. The tag listing the materials used to make it says, “Bread Dough.” Everything in there represents the Great Conversation, in which we make religious imagery and react to our environment and record historical events and make portraits and generally coexist in this plane of ours.
When we despair (unfortunately a frequent sentiment currently) over the ways that these systems that we don’t control seem to be wreaking havoc and destruction upon us and erasing us from our own Conversation, perhaps we ought to turn our gaze toward these superstructures we contribute to, that are vast, and magical, and transcendent, and are made in large part from our art and expression.
Brainwaves
Best of Brainwaves Volume One: The Fountain of Stuff
Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat
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Art!
Clearly I have various generative globular whatever on my mind
BunnyFrogCatSnake
I wonder if the sun ever gets depressed
Things Of The Week
The Vera Rubin Observatory’s site is posting the brand-new-tons-of-images that are now being generated and will probably blow physics outta the water to some extent
Somebody is doing the hard work of studying the world’s oldest boomerang. Which brings to mind of course this important joke:
Q: What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?
A: A stick.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA
Have I already shared this? I don’t know. Who cares. Here’s a site where you can simulate all the old Mac operating systems and software. I went and found my old Quadra machine and an early version of Photoshop and a ton of other stuff.
Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.
May you see something very very big, may you see something very very small, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy
HELLO AND THANKS FOR READING!!
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