1972
works on display: Grande Tropo, How do you feel?, U.S.A., Presenza/Assenza, Omaggio a Borges: Finzioni
liquid crystal projected on the walls
What I want to express is not the conscience of a specific shape, but the possibility for conscience to expand. What I am really interested in is meditation; illusionistic, dynamic space, shape-space increased and offered as new, the conscience of the object that expands.
Amalia Del Ponte, agosto 1970
THE ABILITY TO CHANGE
One thing I find exciting is the work done in the field of scientific research by those who try to approach a possible unifying principle of evolution. With my work, I try to create an alteration of perception similar to that produced in my brain by these phenomena of conscience-expansion.
Based on intuition alone, we can create an easy access to different facts and geometrical problems. Often, it is possible to include research methods and demonstrations producing scientific knowledge, but as a kind of insight, with no need to delve into details of abstract theories and calculations. [….]
WHY CRYSTALS
Because they stimulate my brain to imagine shapes that are archetypes of the reality of matter […]. In 1880, Leonhard Sohncke (1842-97), and then, in a more explicit way, Paul von Groth (1843-1927), suggested that crystals were the result of complex lattices made up of many congruent simple lattices, intertwined: at the crossings of each simple lattice were the atoms of one single element.
In 1912, Max von Laue (1879-1960, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927) provided scientific proof of this intuition. Very soon, it became clear that such phenomenon would offer new resources for the study of matter. Liquid crystals were discovered by Friedrich Reinitzer (1857-1927) in 1889. Our body is partly made of crystals fulfilling important functions (red blood cells, sperm, and so on).
Our brain is a complicated system of liquid crystals. Deoxyribonucleic acid, which preserves and passes down the hereditary information of a living organism, forms lyotropic liquid crystals. We found out that our brain works with a speed and capacity way higher than those of our mental operations: the potential of cerebral association is something like 13.000.000.00025 per second. And yet, we think – i.e., we perform rational experimentation, at a pace of no more than 3 concepts – 10 phenomena – per second. The paradox could be expressed as such: we need to get out of our minds in order to use our brains”.
“Creation from scratch. Time and space are joined together in the final form of point-shaped unity: bindu, point, dot, zero, drop, germ, seed, sperm. A primordial oudad.
Freedom is poetry, it’s taking liberties with words, breaking down the terms of common speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence.
Not things, but flashes in the void.
Meaning is a continuous creation of a nothing that evolves into nothing.
If it’s not faint, it is alive.
Everything is symbolic, transient, unstable.
The stabilization of meaning creates idols; stable meanings have turned into stones.
Meaning dwells in the play, or interaction, of light.
As in schizophrenia, all things lose their limits, they become brilliant with multicolored meanings. Not things, but flashes, the effect of a rainbow.
An indirect reflection, or refraction: broken light, or an enigma”
Unlike human intelligence, which is discrete and intermittent, and requires a social effort to integrate a shared heritage, the sidereal intelligence of crystals would present some benefits, compared to ours. Some people’s revulsion for the cold, insensitive intelligence of crystals is unjustified… One could even find a certain kind of humor in it. Some ridiculous mistakes in the elaboration of external information, an inaccurate recovery of data from memory could cause infectious laughter among the community of crystals.