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I levitate. What's Next

Edited by Aleksandra Kosti.
Association for Culture and Education KIBLA, Slovenia, 2000.
192 pp. Illus. b/w & col.
ISBN: 961-6304-03-8.
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell, University of Wales College, Newport, Caerleon Campus, Newport NP18 3YH, Wales.
E-mail: pepperell@cwcom.net


This further edition of the TOX series ("a contemporary presentation of art, science, technology and social sciences") follows from the volume devoted to the works of Eduardo Kac that was reviewed here recently. Invited contributors to this dual language publication include Dr Rachel Armstrong, Martin Jay, Stelarc, Mario Romiro, Simon Biggs as well as Eduardo Kac. The contributions take the form of short, illustrated essays held together by the theme of 'gravity'. More accurately, the essays tend to deal with (what might be called) the 'cultural resistance to gravity' exemplified through activities such as human flight, levitation, kinetic art, time machine construction and bodily suspension.

Martin Jay's lively paper weaves together strands of ideas about photography, memory and time with some of our varying cultural and scientific perceptions of light, the measurement of its velocity and the way it connects us with distant time and deepest space. From within this discussion he builds an argument against one of the primal beliefs of post-modern theory propagated by writers such as Jean Baudrillard, namely the autonomous and self-referential nature of signs. For Jay, such simulacral binarism (the divorcing of signs from their referents) cannot account for our experience of a Universe in which remote events in space and time are indivisible from their delayed consequences here on Earth. Speaking of astronomical imaging Jay writes: "Like the memory traces in Freud's 'optical apparatus' version of the unconscious, such images are not made entirely out of whole cloth existing only in an atemporal cyberspace, but are parasitic on the prior experiences that make them meaningful for us today." (p. 44). For N. Katherine Hayles, whom Jay cites, the apparently natural oppositions between states such as presence and absence no longer hold in our contemporary world. Virtual realities and remote simulations "flicker" between their material supports and our witnessing bodies: "They are thus ultimately dependent on the material embodiment that they seem to have left behind, especially those that interact with the human sensorium and its environment. They are, we might say, reminiscent of those other flickerings of information that come to us from the twinkling of the starsS" (P. 44).

In another essay the sculptor Mario Ramiro wonders what opportunities might be afforded to the artist by conditions of zero gravity. Using examples of his own levitational sculptures and Schlieren photography he suggest new conceptual and formal properties of space might be might be explored once artists are freed from the prior constraints of gravity. Ramiro notes that, unlike birds who can move through three different axes of space, humans primarily exist on a two dimensional plane: "The moment it becomes a truly three dimensional object detached from the plane, sculpture will acquire new dimensions sprung from new structural relations." (p. 106). He also observes that we tend to think of 'weight' as a property owned by a specific body (such as a rock) whereas the gravitational effect is, in fact, a relation between two or more bodies as they each exert force upon the other (the rock and the earth): "According to Dr Carl du Prel, our language masks this attraction by "ascribing to a rock the source of the weight that is extrinsic to it.""(p. 110).

In his essay Eduardo Kac amplifies Ramiro's review of "anti-gravitational art". Describing the work of artists like Takis and Thomas Shannon, he goes so far as to suggest: "The inevitable conclusion is that zero gravity is the next frontier. " (p. 92), in particular the scope offered to artists and designers released from "gravitropism". He concludes: "The creation of new alloys and compounds in zero gravity and the prospect of interplanetary colonization suggest that space exploration is more than a metaphor in art. It is a physical and conceptual challenge that must be met." (p. 96).

Rachel Armstrong meditates upon alien abduction stories, astral travel, out of body existence and their implications for human progression. Aside from an interview conducted with a performance artist in 1977 as part of a "Mass Alien Abduction Experiment" much of the discussion is of a general and unsubstantiated kind. While this does not necessarily detract from the interest of her assertions it does mean they have the air of speculation rather than the solid force of reason.

Even more speculative, but brilliantly surreal, is the description of how to build a "magnetic resonator" by an anonymous author. This resonator, it is claimed, can be used to experiment with "astral projection, invisibility, the spiritual time machine, the physical time machine, inter-dimensional journeys and teleportation" (p. 114). Using a combined field theory where space, gravity and electromagnetism are continuous, the author describes with a certain amount of precision the arrangement of components needed to manipulate so called "web knots" in the Earth's structure. We are advised to follow the instructions with care: "WARNING! The use of quartz crystal in combination with the magnetic resonator is extremely dangerous. If the crystal is installed without prior cleaning, there is a danger that the device develops its own consciousness, which means it will operate arbitrarily without the experimenter's control." (p. 126). By combining Tesla coils, the I Ching, crystals, chakras and home electronics the device would seem to transcend the material/spiritual divide to operate in some multi-dimensional universe of which most of us are only dimly aware: "The newly constructed capacitor can be placed in the hexatron device. Its purpose is to strengthen the field of belief, which resides on a universal cosmic scale. It is evident that the device consists of three crystals to be set on the third chakra." (p. 138).

Like other books in this series, "I Levitate, What's NextS" contains more than its share of provocative ideas for its size. And although the general lack of verification and reference might frustrate those of a hardened, sceptical frame of mind, for many others it will be a source of poetic inspiration and, not least, amusement.

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Updated 13 September 2001.




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