CosmiKnot

Face to face Dogs are like human beings That is why after centuries They have been selected As man’s best friend Er that’s what we do We see ourselves as the default The building block Projecting tech The electrical circuit  Cog or dog Dog cog cog dog What am I responsible for? Don’t forget to take all your belongings with you Evolutionary approach The mathematical theory of information Informational process Sudden emergence of language Biology to language The web exploits means We’re entering a new age of transparency Oh my god Ludwig Mies van der Blair’s revenge Or what?

Tomorrow there will be an eclipse An eclipse that is almost sure to be total But not quite The only way to look will be up But not directly at the nearest star Which by happy coincidence Is exactly four hundred times further away Than the nearest satellite Which is four hundred times smaller I say happy because tomorrow I also international happiness day The man from that band who flogged new labour The only way is up (or was it things can only get better?) He said that he saw an eclipse in 2009 In Indian. In India. And it made him feel like he was on a planet It revealed the mechanics of the universe Is this like someone lifted up the bonnet? He said we should listen to starman By David Bowie I could imagine him smiling as he said this. Once upon a time I was falling in love. Moon, sun, sun, moon. Once upon a time I was falling in love. Moon, sun, sun, moon. repeat to fade ...

A short way into the History is Now Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery there is some work by Lucia Nogueira which the labelling describes as having a “preternatural potency”. I like this. But due to the context and positioning (stuck in a corner) the chances of you feeling this effect in the gallery are pretty slim. But hey it says it on the label so that’s ok. This is not to say that the original work does not have this preternatural potency but in this context it is there as a signifier of the actual work. Which is a pretty amazing stunt to pull off, you know having the original thing as a symbol of itself. Nogueira’s work is not about metaphor because it is metaphor and both inhabits and creates a realm free of the “mind forged manacles” of the Newtonian occident. In case you were wondering (and I certainly was) preternatural is like supernatural but having an earthly although extremely unlikely explanation – freak of nature. So this work serves as a reminder of what we are missing ...

So the debate goes like this We had the scaremongers about the industrial revolution But we got through that didn’t we!? So this hollowing out of the middle class Is nothing to worry about We’ll all still have things to do When the jobs of educators are digitally outsourced Drones can drone and clones can clone That’s how the argument goes Holy shitting fuck We are still stuck on the riff that we are complex machines Mechanisms – cause and effect The A grade students The quiet reasonably hard working ones Who are good at the secretarial skills Get bumped up the ladder Then we go Ooh oh noo look people are alienated and doing very bad things Better do a survey Better collate data Then process the data and carry on believing in the plan We’ll all still have things to do When life is a series of abstract decimalised codes The cynics can still find time to guffaw At believers in the inef...