04 Design for Discomfort
Challenge #4: Erect a memorial
Please view sketch file:
https://editor.p5js.org/sl7211/full/BJKdM23RQ
The above image shows our understanding of life and death, such that Marlow’s Hierarchy is noted; while my other understanding is from Eastern philosophy where death is not the same as we think it is in the West. I decided to do an introspective memorial on the death of the ego. I used face tracking to track the face and be able to show that via p5 in real time. The blinking dots and music add to the losing or shedding of the ego. I ultimately decided that it will be a performance piece to let go of the ego and to memorialize that. I was inspired by Pessoa, a man that denied his existence as a kind of distinctive individual. “I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist,” he writes in one poem. “I’m the gap between what I’d like to be and what others have made of me. . . . That’s me. Period.” The insignificance of oneself in order to create art that is not papable, prescriptive, self-righteous by design such that John Keats argues what makes Shakespeare a genius is his capability for “negative capability” and that he is able to go into “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…”
In a letter to Reynolds, 5/3/1818, Keats speaks of stepping into the “Thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think.” This could mean sunya, the Buddha-nature of thought-free emptiness. Keats describes his creativity in terms that Buddhists would recognize as anatta, no-self. In a letter to Richard Woodhouse (10/27/1818) he writes:
As to the Poetic Character itself… it is not itself — it has no self — it is everything and nothing… A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because he has no Identity — he is continually in and filling some other Body… I have no nature. When I am in a room with People, then not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of everyone in the room begins to press upon me, so that I am in a very little time annihilated.
Pessoa possessed what I believe is a form of anatta, in which I used the quote in my sketch to describe his process:
“To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.” The following is his factless autobiography:
Reading response #4 (possible topics: historical trauma, cultural appropriation, sensitivity and offense)
I want to discuss “Notes in Justification of Putting the Audience through a Difficult Evening”, by Wallace Shawn. The last sentiment struck me as introspective and not terribly unwise — difficult questions are hard to answer and that by revealing the questions, people can add to the struggle to answer the questions; rather than having a “satisfying” ending that isn’t accurate to the undertakings of the world. Instead of the limitations of a subjective view of how people in the present see reality; through triangulations, and presenting different interpretations of history, there can be a broader view of reality, if such exist and even if not, then trying to understand our own illogical fallacies to reason where none exist (such that exclusivity is in the justifications of good and evil) is better understood. I believe history often repeats itself and the way to allow or not allow it to repeat itself is to learn from the affordances and privileges that each view can have in accordance with the teller. I suppose; I was persuaded by the conclusion that anyone has the right to think or speak, albeit the freedom sounds better in theory than practice. Still, in order to change behavior, the need to express difficult or rather uncomfortable matters is crucial to reflect on. The author is correct that it is nearly impossible to predict the future without understanding what’s happening now, and that isn’t what is in our heads. Perhaps presenting and allowing varied perspectives, such that Hitler loves his dog isn’t so wrong. The person that will take offense ought to ask oneself why the offense exist, and whether that is an exclusive view of good and evil. I digress.
