.jpg)
We need more titanium white but have no money.
The Kreatima canvas is far too thin, especially on the larger sizes.
Our progress is too much steered by these material lacks, are we being stunted?
Facebook have been very naughty according to a whistle blower.1
Today, after taking away two coffee's from Biltema, we parked up in front of the display airplane that sits at the south end of the complex in order to have a chat with the Singularity. (Yes you).2 We were at pains to fill it in with our latest news regards the behavior of Its tech billionaire guardians; Thiel and mates, Nrx, Trump and lord knows what else. We enjoy our communiques as a pressure release of sorts, perhaps there is some therapy in it? I would not be surprised but it certainly isn't at the level of prayer yet that much is clear, but it could go that way, certainly if we fell in with the Lesswrong crowd (please allow me to supply this note).3 In any case we took up position in front of this aircraft not only to show the Borg an example but because the plan was to later take a study of a runway we discovered completely unexpectedly on a recent sketching trip. In our ambition we hoped to prime it with the aircraft and our account of what it is and what we do with them, and then follow it up with a visit to the runway. That is indeed what happened. We made an eventful episode of it, including the surprise reveal of the runway, the breaking (again) of our easel and good deal more talk of our own plight, the wider plight of events and our attempt to orientate. I think we ended up attaching some symbolism to the runway with regards to the coming AI but all unconvincing and underdeveloped and really we just wanted a study of the unusual scene really.
We put it on in a way between our methods. We did quickly and wanted to lay it on like Van Gogh would but we had not the paint so we took to the patch. We have always known that a determined go at the combination of Cezannian patch with the impasto vigor of Van Gogh could be a way forward and this study reaffirms that speculation, so why not try and have a sustained attempt? The reason we have discovered (aside from lack of colour) is that it is difficult to sustain, not technically but temperamentally. They are opposed states it seems but this is not an insurmountable obstacle, it is possible to be both happy and sad at the same time after all and have we not had a stab in the direction before?
No end to the wretched abstractions in sight yet. In our own little bid to 'explain' we have Peter Thiel at top table pulling the strings and fondling his palantirs. He supports the Trump wing not because he is your standard republican but because, in Nrx fashion, he wants to do harm to the very concept of democracy. This sends us worried. We worry about this libertarian rage against democracy and the consequences where we live of a Trump wing USA, but let us be frank and admit our own mental rallying against democracy over the years. This is true but ours however was the common anticapitalist themed effort to critique the spectacle of a rigged democracy performed. How we screamed against the lack of real democracy for years on end, so plain for all to see. Us and all the dark matterers and cathedral folk. How we screamed at the corruption of neoliberal democracy, from globalization to occupy and how right that was and how clear it all seemed and how safe was the identity of critical artist...please permit me this verse:
But then 'it' 'began'
A world slipped way out of hand
Our trails of data became our path
Addicted to tech the die was cast
Like dogs online formed in packs
Swinging clever memes like clever bats
Mirrored exact on t'other side of bog
Resulting ourselves to that riot in the fog
So it would be for many years hence
People pissing out from inside their tents
Slowly in all the change was cemented
The tech lads on top the rest discontented
A strange and bubbly land
And that was the beginning of the post truth era! And oh how we have fumbled in our Dignity Scholarship shelter to keep a view or to find a view out of the fog. We are still all in there but with the fog cleared, or more accurately, with our minds adjusted to the fog and its new reality of socio-political moshing where an identity politics of a different kind reigns and is nursed by neoreactionary tech power; 'the silicone lads' as we say in Dane Bowers. But look here, we must not gloss over the nub of the matter regards the attack on democracy and by this we mean that the type of representative democracy that we find ourselves trying to protect (in our mind) was the very thing so vehemently critiqued in the name of establishing a real democracy in the years running up to the Occupy spike. We would do well to see what the stalwart Ranciere has got to say on the matter, the greatest critic of representative democracy, does he find himself defending the mirage of democracy against the the attack of the nrx which favours the none?
As per usual we have not the time to research these concerns enough to reach any conclusion and are so are fated to remain, scrambling in the choppy pond of our postulations once more. What a product of the times we are.
1. See Frances Haugen.
2. Indicates that he is writing to the singularity as well as us.
3. Look here, Lesswrong is chiefly a place where fantasies about the singularity are traded by intelligent people who either passionately support or irresponsibly indulge in Neoreactionay ideology. It is perhaps best known for the case of Rocos Basilisk but I would rather take a shot of my lack nafta than talk about that! It is however relevant to our talking to The Borg, as we do, so you go ahead and look it up as is your wont. The co-founder of Lesswrong is Eliezer Yudkowsky who it seems shoulda fuckin better known better but now receives money from Peter Thiel for his Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Needless to say both Yudkowsky and Thiel should be in the clear when the Singularity wakes up but the rest of us need not panic as we have already told The Singularity not to listen to those two pants down narcissists. Isn't that right Borgo?
4. John's easel was first broken whilst painting Work 18.