Over at Naught Thought, Ben Woodard (sorry, Ben, for the earlier misspell) wants “to know what the Process/Relational folks think” of his thoughts about philosophies of process versus philosophies of objects or substances (or something like that). What follows is one quick and dirty way of thinking of a certain key difference between these two approaches.
And while we’re on a grassy, shooty, growthy theme (and in the midst of a rare spurt of blog activity)… I’ve been wanting for years to write a book about “Laughing Stock,” the stunningly beautiful final album from Talk Talk, so many worlds beyond where they started, and the epitome of a process-relational musical ethic. Perhaps for the 33-1/3 series. (I’ve suggested as much to a couple of collaborators, including a Ukrainian friend who’s written a long piece on the album already. Now it’s just a matter of finding the time to do it.)
Since my take on the album is all about thirdness — the generative emergence of beauty from beauty, insight from insight, meaning from the shimmering percolation of lively interactivity — feel free to email me your own experiences of the album. Some of the comments here are a nice window onto this flowering world: for instance, the guy who “cr[ies] like a baby everytime i hear this song.” Or the one who finds it “very hard to keep myself together when new grass comes on.” Superlatives upon superlatives, and yet no 33-1/3 book on the album yet. Must rectify.
(Note: It’s all underbrush; no towering redwoods among us.)
He is, of course, right on all these counts. I’ve been a little nomadic over the summer (including spending beach time on Martha’s Vineyard this week with little rinpoche) and unable to spend much time online. I haven’t even managed to stay up to date with the Integral Ecology reading group (which hyper-prolific Tim has thrown several smoke-bombs into, and Michael will be wrapping up). And being program director in the fall will not make things much easier. But I am wrapping up my Ecologies of the Moving Image manuscript, which has been priority #1.
Okay, it’s just an ad… and for a book that focuses on a single node within a complex, multi-scaled set of relations. But that node ought to be obvious, and the fact that it isn’t tells us as much about the last 40 years as we need to know to start fixing things.
I’m helping to organize this conference. Nature, Hollywood, eco-apocalypse, and the Malibu coast (the one that Mike Davis says we should let burn)… Can you resist?
The first half of the article is an early version of the paper I gave at the recent Moving Environments conference, which encompassed material from the first two chapters of my forthcoming book Ecologies of the Moving Image. While the Film-Philosophy version is several months old now, it is the best statement published to date of my film-philosophy, which is expanded on at great length in the book. The article’s second half features an extended treatment of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker.
Henry Fox Talbot famously described photography as the “pencil of nature.” Although this metaphor refers to photography’s special relationship to the real, to the indexicality that makes it suited for naturalist representation, Talbot’s evocative phrase also raises important questions about photography’s relationship to nature. Beyond naturalism and nature appreciation, however, how has photography approached nature?
Environmental Humanities and the Challenge of Multidisciplinarity
A Workshop at the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, “The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity: Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy”
1. Find where nature and culture (river and engineering) slam into each other in a passionate wave. Ride it.
Observations: To enjoy it at all, you have to be good. Some of these guys (and women) are really good. If you stay up for more than the first couple of seconds, you’re in. 15 seconds, you’re good. 25 seconds, you’re great. A minute would be awesome; I didn’t see it, but some came close (into the 40s). Finally, when you gotta go down, find a graceful way to do it.
Here are my notes from Day 2 of the Moving Environments workshop in Munich. The same caveats apply as yesterday: they’re hastily typed up and reflect only my own interpretation of what transpired. If any of the participants would prefer not to have their ideas shared in this way, I will be happy to remove them upon request.
