Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang

VR is less a change of levels than a mutation of circuitry; a matter of additive sensory-motor reloopings, compressing anthropohistorical consensus reality into a menu option as it denaturalizes the brain. - Nick Land, "Meat (or How to Kill Oedipus in Cyberspace)" [p. 203, Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment; eds. Featherstone and Burrows; 1995]

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Acknowledging: At the Chanorth residency in the fall of 2013, Jaime Bird lent me the remarkable book Duelling in America by Benjamin Cummings Truman. Brad Harris photographed the finished Old Hickory paintings in late June of this year. Shane Kennedy was a tremendous in-studio collaborator during the execution of the abstract/large format pour and pull phase of the CD series. He also contributed a substantial number of painted and raw substrates, supports and other vital materials for the OH painting series. DLG Nashville Director Dane Carder formulated terrific presentation strategies for the ink on polyester pieces and "Trail of Tears." In the run-up to the exhibition (continuing through the present) Dane has been a great ally and friend to me and my work. The positive influence of the Novads pervades this and most projects I've undertaken over the past couple years. For all those others, you know who you are, probably, for all the good that does us. - PJM [2 July, 2014, from Bushwick]

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Convergences: In the final stage of preparations for this essay on Paul McLean's "Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang," I watched Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem and read a few dusty cyber-oriented books like the one quoted and cited above. Let's be real, dear reader. I might argue, and you might disagree, that the Snowden saga substantially makes up the context for "Code Duello, Old Hickory & a Big Bang." As far as I can tell, any and all American citizens ought to be in outright revolt over this, and maybe doing art shows doesn't make sense in such uncertain times. But I hear a lot of folks in my extended array of concentric circles, my rhizomoidal communa, which resembles the antikythera mechanism, admitting to despair, to being overwhelmed by the quantity of perils, and their seeming to come at one all-directionally. In truth the crisis of evaporating civil liberties for American citizens, such as the destruction of (cyber-)privacy by the NSA and its corporate multinational cohort, is only amplified by the Crisis of Everything for democracy, in the whirlwind that the New York Times' Neil Irwin described fluxinomically as an Everything Boom versus Everything Bubble binary scenario. Not that economy, even a rigged one that's anything but "free," can be conflated with functioning democracy of the version Andrew Jackson tried to install in America, very imperfectly. Irwin was discussing Fed chair Yellen's report, and one might only wonder what Jackson might have to say on all that. In the Everything crisis and pandemonium, the 24/7/365 datastream carried by the monopoly/corporate media complex is spewing horrifying man-made small-to-large disaster narratives like a hose under too much pressure. One minute a toddler is baked in a car by a terrifyingly bad dad. The next minute four kids are blown apart on a Gaza beach by Israeli bombs, about the same time that a passenger jet is falling out of the sky in the Ukraine. Forget about gridlock in DC, or the immigrant kids streaming across our borders for a hot summer second, or suing our President. Let's get serious. If we add climate-gone-wild to our Catalog of Catastrophe, and climate is a sign of the World, so: it seems we humans are in general at the epicenter of an Everything Crisis that extends beyond our too-expensive and precarious homes, our smartphones and computer-enhanced (and, at least for now, driver-driven) cars and other peripherals in the Internet of Things, through our vast wired social networks - that still leave us feeling lonely from time to time, and into the dense and virtual macro-environment, the World, and its Beyond, the Cosmos. At least space, for now, doesn't seem aggressively against us. I haven't heard of any asteroids on their way to erase humanity, like they did those poor dinosaurs. As the yogi says, Take a Breath. If you have to, put a hashtag in front of it.  

From this multidisciplinary artist's perspective (speaking for myself here, not Paul), and I am not alone in this view, the most important stuff of #LifeWorthLiving is at stake, and therefore, as always, we find ourselves in a great time to make art. Free art. The opportunity to create meaningful and valuable object-artifacts for #TimesLikeThese is loaded with portent. Just ask former comedian-now artist Mike Myers. He outted himself, admitting he's making portraits of Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame. Myers' paintings are eerily reminiscent of former President-now artist George W. Bush. The oddity is how insignificant art seems to be in the scheme of things, but how important it seems to be when Everything seems to be scheming against itself and Everything else, which is what an Everything crisis is. [By the way, #IQuitTwitter when I heard what GCHQ was up to there.] Hardly anyone is even willing to say what art is at the moment, much less what it might be useful for. Everyone is encouraged to be an artist, or at least a natural creative prosumer user. The gadget hucksters meanwhile are simultaneously pushing the above-mentioned "Internet of Things," since "the Cloud" has been revealed to be little more than a godsend to spies, hackers and for-profit TIA exploiters. One thing art has going for it, in Hard Times, is you don't have to be much of a thinker while you're doing it. All the newly self-minted and "art world" enabled celebrity actor/singer/comedian/etc. artists, even public drunk ones like Shia Lebeouf, and especially W, prove this. But so does art star Jeff Koons! Go figure! He's being rewarded with a major retrospective, LOL! I guess, post-Pinketty and post-Occupy, there's still a market for no-sense, or irrational, art when paradigms are shattering all around us, while new social formations arise, as movements congeal and revolutions foment. At least contemporarily... Emphases on boring, banal and just plain dumb.

At the root, for most of the rest of us, the old questions sustain. Who are we? Who am I? What's worth fighting for? What's the meaning of the universe, of existence? What is freedom, and is it possible? And so on. Vision is the linchpin of art. It is humane to persist in seeking a reliable Answer to those big questions. While disciplines like science, mathematics, and the Humanities, especially philosophy, also persist in the pursuit of the Answer(s), more and more the seeking for Truth(s) is subsumed in other, arguably corrupting, concerns. Context is what an essay like this one, for a show like Paul's is about. I'll give it a shot, actually more of a sequence of cryptic truisms, all of which can easily be converted to #hashtag-isms. Anytime Justice is waning, the notion of Truth appears to be fungible. Anytime Art is insufficient, the product of art looks and feels derivative. Anytime Freedom is most used to describe and prop up markets, slavery is on the uptick. War and pervasive lack, misery and displacement abide as systemic givens at such times. In American history, we, when we find ourselves in trying times - or parabolically "interesting" ones - such as these, have manifested homegrown heroes. Unfortunately, today, or at least the last time I checked Lexus/Nexus, the suppression of the heroic is epitomized in the lame Superhero blockbusters streaming out of Hollywood, and I find that depressing. I suppose in hindsight that my interest in Old Hickory, which I share with Paul, emerges from a silly kind of American optimism, along these lines. Which isn't to minimize the value of wishing for a great figure to present him- or herself as a Person for the Times. I daresay that wish, that a Hero will appear at the right time, with just the right type of Superhero attributes to save us, is as ancient as ourselves. That wish is as human and as old as our deep, even cellular, fear of Monsters. Hear that Gaga? 

One conjecture worth examining, in this vein, is "What kind of human being and what kind of human action, human doing, justifies the existence of the cosmos?" At first blush, this query may seem ludicrous. After all, science and the Big Bang have flipped our long standing convention, the one that puts mankind in the middle of Everything. I believe the very core of portraiture and storytelling, both expressive relatives in a family that indicates our kinship with representation and illustration, perform vital functions as modes of transmission for our commons. By this I mean to get at meaning and values, not just means and value. The conflation of those four qualities, or rather two qualities and two quantifiables, point to a flaw in the American psyche, one that is artificial and manufactured, a product of decades, maybe centuries of propaganda. Is a thing really only as valuable as its purchase price? Because I'm a dimensional artist, too, and a #CitizenOfTheRealWorldOfThings, it is easy for me to differentiate between the pairs, and to distinguish what is divergent in their aspects. I have found Andrew Jackson to be an excellent example of the confounding and contradictory profile of a man who somehow managed over the course of his life to contain all four, in his immaterial or energetic nature. He was a man who adhered to his codes of meaning, his values, but one who resorted to pragmatism, of the kind that we can attack and judge in the hypothetically progressed present, as banal, or outright evil. Future past-perfect moral analysis is wrought with tension, and I will argue, fraught with the hypocritical and the facile.

There are reasons Old Hick terrified the aristocratic and financial elite of Europe in his day, reasons worth revisiting in ours. I think Paul is on to something here. As ever, with his work, the Spirit is the mechanics, or so White Buffalo used to say. My favorite is the Bazooka Joe Pink Old Hickory. Possibly a unique combination of elements. Truly American, and bloody good. In closing, I know I barely touched on the Code Duello and a Big Bang, here. I suffer from PTSD, because in addition to being an artist, I am a combat veteran. The subjects of close quarter slaughter on the basis of Honor, and the #ExplosionToKickstartItAll, or conflagrations of any kind, I'll leave to others better qualified to comment dispassionately, if not objectively. - Milo Santini [4 July, 2014, from Santa Fe, via encrypted email]

"An Urbane Savage"

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Fiction: "You won't get anywhere in New York painting burning banks, Andy." Jackson was barely listening, as his former dealer, Mihai, prattled on. "Have you noticed the splash that Parker, Artie and Brad are making? Do something like them. Start a collective." "They're all rich and unhappy. They've all moved away. The rents in Bushwick are too damn high, and all the artists are desperate. The ones who make it in the specu-llector rings and rackets get sick of the fawning ex-student-(now)debtor-artist sycophants and crowing internationals and cut and run." Andy was focused on Mihai's tee shirt, which read "BAZOOKA" in the typeface of the bubble gum. "Anyway, the Novads think my shit is cool, and that's good enough for me." Mihai gave him a bored, resigned look. "Good luck getting Jerry Saltz to review your next show, or better yet, poop on your new work." "So what - Jerry only hates who he steals from." Andy walked out of the dingy gallery into the dingier LES street, took a breath of foul air and sighed. He caught the L and got off at the Morgan stop for a Swallow coffee and a felafel on Bogart, and to check out the openings at 56. He spotted a couple of artsy people he knew and mostly managed to avoid them. Mark Tribe was showing at Momenta, weird hyperreal animated landscapes. Studio 10 had a sound and graphic array by Stephan Moore. Gorzo was on at SLAG. All of it was fine and friendly, even fun. He still left feeling perturbed. On his way out, Agostino couldn't cheer him up - not for lack of trying - which made Jackson close to morose. The long walk down Flushing in the cold Bushwick winter night added to his ennui. It's now or never, he thought, over and over, like a mantra.  

Dodging whirring e-cars had a whittling effect on his concentration levels. Add some biopathic marketing push modules, some blasts of cloudy dopamite from the dispensers on the filament-lit sidewalks, catcalls from the sex workers prowling the neighborhood during the art crawl, the incessant noise cycles emanating from his wristputer and pocketpad and implant, and Andy was a jittery dude by the time he made it to his 4th floor loft-studio. The domi stockpiled a rig reminiscent of the one in Pi, with a dense array of bleeping terminals, RZ-4 wires and peripherals galore, all pulsating in the modulated lighting schematic he'd had designed to enhance his productivity. Sense-saturation and enviro-immersion, he'd told the landlord-corp. That's what I need. I'm an artist, and I have to be submerged. As a Class 5 operator, he enjoyed the benefits of his station, which included a plethora of incidentals, including spatial control and semi-determinant status. The attached studio came with a holotank and a dimensional output printer set, supplemented by the latest thought conductor app. You can imagine how unhappy he made management by wasting a good third of his transmission window painting burning banks on poly plasti-sheets of documatter. 

He punched the kitchipad code for buttery synth-popcorn and a beaker of well-juice spiked with exaspimite and settled in for a session of dispersion. Andy's last metered thought was, I wonder when Rachel's getting back from OAS. He punched the blue blinking button on the main console and jacked in to the sounds of bagpipes. What happened next altered his trajectory forever. In his mind's ear he heard, The challengee has no option when negotiation has ceased, but to accept the challenge. The visi-screen erupted in blooming rays of spectral color and the sensation of total displacement washed through him in waveform, erasing density and volume and the binding of matter. Instantaneously he comprehended the 4D numerologic matrix. The power surge very nearly destroyed his synapsis. It's a miracle his spine didn't snap. Fortunately, Andy had taken up e-yoga, at Rachel's insistence, so when he arched his back into an ersatz eta shape, his breath pattern saved him. Andy would share later that the one image he remembers from the experience was a white lotus plant. The flower seemed to undulate. It made no difference to him in that auspicious nanosecond that the whole thing was virtual in nature, whatever that means anymore.

He came-to to Rachel wiping sweat from his forehead with a cold damp cloth, whispering encouraging indecipherable words that comforted him nonetheless. His breath was hissing through his drawn lips and clenched teeth. Andy's fists unfurled, and he reached for her, half-turning his body toward hers, and Rachel cradled him, gently. The two lovers stayed like that for a while. Gradually he returned to a semblance of awareness, his consciousness locating itself again in his flesh body, and the process was like a cup filling with water. Rachel intuitively understood what to do. Every so often he would peer into her eyes, and she knew to hold his gaze, stroking his palms or hair or cheeks, patting his shoulder, kissing his forehead. He began to notice his surroundings. The rig was thrashed. Smoke and sparks periodically spouted from the components. The receiver emitted a stream of bizarre commands. ...EAT PROGRAM... ...SHUTTING DOWN BALLOON... ...LAUNCH MOIST... All the monitors were locked into a bright and cheerful animation sequence that seamlessly bounced from one to the next. It reminded him of the early screensavers he had seen at the Digital Museum. The patterns were massively complex and the gradients set to impossible resolution. The animation was he realized a projection of triadic shifting quasitron-PoV eyebeamers performing consistency analysis on a stupendously huge, maybe limitless, faceted and/or all-directional datafield, or something like that. He was positive nothing like that existed outside a couple of theoretical laboratories. Andy tried to rise to a seated position, but the effort exhausted him. Confused, he closed his eyes again and slept. 

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The interstices resembled a dream, but in point of fact, Andy spent the next several hours transiting a dimensional wireframe, a manifold grid of infinite variation, more or less map-able or quantifiable in a dimensional system only. Obviously, any attempt to represent the structure in which his consciousness traveled is insufficient in this 1-2-/3D languistix. [See attached appendix (200-120-20039x)] Early analysis through DX4x8x16 Protocols revealed that Jackson's virtual corpus underwent a complete end-to-end reboot. Coming back online, somehow the drivers autonomously reconfigured his mainline warez to the extent our sensor array no longer recognizes any of his inner, outer or classified profiles, and all that data has been lost, and we believe is unrecoverable. One weird thing about that: the data loss occurred on all files anywhere they were stored, regardless of interconnectivity among the nodes in question. We have not encountered a similar instance previously. Jackson's new wireframe is unique, in our estimation. We continue to search for explanations for the anomalous phenomena contained in this case. We have many concerns and questions that have not been satisfactorily resolved. We may have a Snowflake on our hands. If true, all our predictive models do not apply. It has been posited that an incremental program of reconstitution might over time restore the original settings of the subject, but we have no reference that supports that approach or qualifies that as an expectable outcome. Most of the staff advocate observation, with ready intervention measures in place. We have to be prepared for any sign of contagion. Module 3x-FF has already been alerted and is enacted.***

***[Off-COM transmission 3902384056027802 beg10:28:38]: Jaron, you have to check out this guy's numbers!!!! INSANE!!! Never saw diagnostix like his; doesn't even read *HUMAN*.... Only other case I ever heard of as crazy as AJ's is that so-called "DIM TIM" episode, but that was like 100 years ago. Think there's any connection? Call into  Agency Nanø to run algo on the subj-scans to do wideframe comparative. Will get back to you, if anything surfaces... NUTS@@ [Off-COM transmission 3902384056027802 end10:28:40]***

4

Andy and Philrod Newton sat and sipped their coffees on the bench in front of OSLO staring at the children playing in the schoolyard across Roebling. 

AJ: Man, this dream was unlike anything. I floated in a medium that reminded me of the Myriad. The colors and forms were out of this world. Pyrotechnic oranges and the richest, deepest lavendars. When I would look at my hands, they shimmered luminescent blue. Giant cotton bolls floated past. I remember a gigantic obelisk. At some point I had a long blade. Whichever direction I pointed it, we would fly as fast as light through the ether that way. At another point, I had a flintlock pistol. When I pulled the trigger, the ball stayed in place, and I flew backward through space. Eventually, I found a path, through fields, into meadows, and there were houses and shadow people, a spring, and here and there I noticed markers. I realized I was crossing a topology that was its own map, essentially, which changed constantly. An enormous semi-transparent head, like a Roman bust, materialized, and when he spoke I began to weep and couldn't stop until he finished. I wish I recalled what he said: something about the Spirit and the mechanics. I don't know what language he used, but I received all the information perfectly, no lossy effects. I've never experienced such profundity, and I did not want it to be over. Toward the end, in spite of my resistance to a conclusion, I encountered two guides, a wolf and a bird. One spoke in my right ear, the other my left, alternating verses. 

PN: Sounds like you're lucky you woke up at all.

AJ: Thank God for Rachel. She never left my side. She drew an ice bath for me. It probably saved my life. She knew not to call the Rx-medix. 

PN: Can you think of anything the Big Head said, at all?

AJ: He was talking about Freedom. He was telling me I was forever free. The part that made me cry was that he was assuring me I always had been.