There are very few things that really stop me in my tracks and I can watch and listen to for hours on end without ever getting tired - one of these things is anything Space and Cosmos. I could live on Nasa.tv and steamed broccoli. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, talks about Newton and the importance of keeping the lines of thought and conversation open. He says when open conversation ratchets up - you make discoveries and you make discoveries rapidly..
Uncategorized on Purpose
My favorite story from "The Power of Myth" /
There is a wonderful story in the Upanishads about the god Indra. Now it happened at this time that a great monster had enclosed all the waters of the earth, so there was a terrible drought, and the world was in a very bad condition. It took Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts and that all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt on the monster and blow him up. When he did that, the waters flowed, and the world was refreshed, and Indra said. "What a great boy am I".
So, thinking, "What a great boy am I", Indra goes up to the cosmic mountain, which is the central mountain in the world, and decides to build a palace worthy of such as he. The main carpenter of the gods goes to work on it, and in very quick order he gets the palace into pretty good condition. But every time Indra comes to inspect it, he had bigger ideas about how splendid and grandiose the palace should be. Finally, the carpenter says, "My god, we are both immortal, and there is no end to his desires. I am caught for eternity. So he decides to go Brahma, the creator god, and complain.
Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace. The lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the sleeping god, whose dream is the universe. So the carpenter comes to the edge of the great lotus pond of the universe and tells his story to Brahma. Brahma says, " You go home. I will fix this up." Brahma gets off his lotus and kneels down to address sleeping Vishnu. Vishnu just makes a gesture and says something like, "Listen, fly, something is going to happen."
Next morning, at the gate of the palace that is being built, there appears a beautiful blue-black boy with a lot of children around him, just admiring his beauty. The porter at the gate of the new palace goes running to Indra, and Indra says, "Well, bring in the boy." The boy is brought in, and Indra, the kind god, sitting on his throne, says, "Young man, welcome. And what brings you to my palace?"
"Well, says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon, "I have been told that you are building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built."
And Indra says, "Indras before me, youn man - what are you talking about?"
The boy says, "Indras before you. I have seen them come and go, come and go. Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, and the lotus of the Universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being, governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eye, and a world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is four hundred and thirty-two thousand years. When he dies, the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. And Indras? There may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans of the world or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those Bramin, let alone those Indras."
While the boy is talking, an army of ants parades across the floor. The boy laughs when he sees them, and Indra's hair stands on end, and he says to the boy, "Why do you laugh?"
The boy answers, "Dont ask unless you are willing to be hurt."
Indra says, "I ask. Teach."( That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.)
And so the boy points to the ants and says, "Former Indras all. Through many lifetimes they rise from the lowest conditions to the highest illumination. And then they drop their thunderbolt on a monster, and they think, 'What a good boy am I.' And down they go again."
Were-Rabbit on the wall, a Bulgarian style feast, with a twist /
As part of an Action Art project over the holidays, I invited my artists friends over for a Bulgarian style feast, with a twist.. As Bulgarian tradition dictates, you have to paint on the walls for food:) The twist was that my friends and participants didn't know that all the walls were tarped for painting.., I advertised the event as a sit down dinner with all the trimmings of a family event. I wanted to completely detach the action from a specific result and let things unfold.
..and here are the results
\\ Ink, brushes, charcoal, sharpies, pastels on butcher paper, red lights
The next day, I took photographs of all the walls in natural lighting..
In addition to drawings, there Were-Rabbits, poems and cryptic messages..
even a Were-Man..
Occupy Wall Street and Magritte also showed up.. with parts of a Christmas tree
So what was best of 2011.. /
.. My brother taught me how to fish.
And how do the grand Satyagraha at the Met Opera, the De Kooning exhibition at the MOMA, the La Carte D'Après Nature show at Matthew Marks gallery, moving studio 4 times, shaking hands with 470 people in three days during Open Studios compare to my brother's fishing - they don't even come close second.
Fishing is a philosophy and also a sport, a very zen way to gamble and a fusion of the Romantic and the Classical way of thinking. You could be well prepared, in a Classical way, to fish.. but fish has the very Romantic approach of not getting caught.
the Plank constant /
Insofar as we understand the universe - if it can be understood - our doings must have some desire for order in them; but from the point of view of the universe, they must be very grotesque. As a matter of fact, the idea of "order" reminds me of something Jack Tworkov was telling me that he remembered of his childhood.
There was the village idiot. His name was Plank and he measured everything. He measured roads, toads, and his own feet; fences, his nose and windows, trees, saws and caterpillars. Everything was there already to be measured by him. Because he was an idiot, it is difficult to think in terms of how happy he was. Jack says he walked around with a very satisfied expression on his face. He had no nostalgia, neither a memory nor a sense of time. All that he noticed about himself was that his length changed!
Willem De Kooning, written in 1950 for a lecture series at Studio 35 on Eighth Street in New York.
What do Ultra Violet, Quantum tunnelling and Bhagavad Gita have in common? /
Surmounting Uncertainty. Ultra Violet
says 99 percent certainty is 100 percent certainty.
Quantum Tunneling
Quantum Mechanics says a particle has a definite probability of being anywhere in the entire universe. Although any real distance from the particle’s expected classical path is infinitesimally small, since Quantum Mechanics is a statistical theory those small probabilities must be counted! Quantum Tunneling is a fascinating effect that arises out of these small probabilities. ( I certainly, 100 percent didn't write this )
Bhagavad Gita
Philip Glass' Satyagraha is based on Bhagavad Gita and sung entirely in Sanskrit, without titles for the audience. Bhagavad Gita says the world is not for the doubting man.
Math for Artists: Exponents and Radicals /
A friend of mine I used to work with at Lucasfilm recently shared this.. He is a brilliant technical mind, the guy behind the most advanced technology of special effects simulations created by Pixelux Entertainment. Naturally, artists and engineers at Lucasfilm were locked in eternal friendly battle of the minds, where engineers of course always had the upper hand since entertainment industry today is essentially a high-tech industry. So we had many inside jokes regarding the math abilities of artists. Math is a language, and choosing Peet Mondrian's colors is no accident, for Math is not only an abstract language but also a visual language. Visualization in mathematics, or mathematical notation, was invented in the 16th century and it immensely liberated mathematical discovery. Like musical notation, modern mathematical notation is strict and a few symbols could convey very complex ideas.
I went to mathematical high school and participated in a few Mathematical Olympiads, although I am the worst student of math as I relied mostly on my pattern recognition ability rather than study. When I moved to the States I did some of the comprehensive IQ tests and scored pretty high; but my pattern recognition was the highest at 147. I have my own definition of pattern recognition and it's the ability to predict an outcome based on two or three reference points. As in life and math, trouble is if you think you have two or three reference points but in fact only one is a solid ground and the rest.. simply conjectures.
A rare book of nothing /
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University published the Voynich manuscript online, which scientists assert (with 95% confidence) was made in the 15th century. It has about 240 pages of text and illustrations that have never been deciphered as to their meaning. The writing looks like a language, the illustrations look like plants, biological or cosmological diagrams but with no ...meaning. In the context of the 21st century this clearly is a work of art.
Chief Seattle's letter to the US Government /
What is it to have, to own something, do you really "have".. your body, your heart, abilities, things, dreams, desires, your family, the ground under your feet? The following is the best poetic prose on having that I have ever come to read: "The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? "Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. "We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family. "The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. "The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. "If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. "Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. "This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. "One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. "Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbyevto the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. "When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left? "We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. "As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all."
A few common sense and quantum physics cliches /
More is less, but less isn't more - more lines on the paper don't a better piece make. I discover this first hand and decide to take comfort in the foreign territory of quantum physics, I often feel good in foreign places. I come back to quantum physics by listening to Leonard Susskind of Stanford after I discovered a random fact about certain "work function" - this explains why you get sunburn, and this is the threshold frequency in order to kick an electron out of an atom. I think it's pretty simple to understand that low frequency light like infrared heats you up but it takes high frequency light like ultraviolet to get you skin burned.
There are a few quantum physics cliches I really liked even before understanding what they mean, like Quantum entanglement, destructive interference and the uncertainty principle. The great thing about the latter is that on the scale of people and cars it still exists, it's just too small to be critical. I take great comfort in the fact that things that we really thought are quite obvious, like your speeding ticket, are just assumptions and approximations of certainty.
The abstract thought in physics and abstract thought in art became simultaneously apparent in the West. The Zen monks who designed these gardens in Kyoto, however, were already abstract 5 centuries before. When I sat on the wooden floors contemplating these gardens I came very close to feeling like an atom, a particle:
New Work - the leap of faith into creating a new piece /
Starting a new work is a leap of faith. After the initial decoupling with solid ground, all traditional notions cease to exist. You are in a state somewhere between free fall and zero gravity except the center of the pull is unknown. New work is a trip into the subconscious masquerading as a constructive act. At certain moment you feel like the clock from a Dali painting sliding down a glass surface. Somewhere along the way is a mirror which you eventually smoothly slip through and it marks the boundary of the world of the painting. Until then you travel with an intent to make the painting, beyond the mirror you and the painting travel together. Once through the mirror the old universe no longer exists.
A Great poem that inspired me /
The Seventh (A hetedik) by Attila József translated by John Bátki
If you set out in this world, better be born seven times. Once, in a house on fire, once, in a freezing flood, once, in a wild madhouse, once, in a field of ripe wheat, once, in an empty cloister, and once among pigs in sty. Six babes crying, not enough: you yourself must be the seventh.
When you must fight to survive, let your enemy see seven. One, away from work on Sunday, one, starting his work on Monday, one, who teaches without payment, one, who learned to swim by drowning, one, who is the seed of a forest, and one, whom wild forefathers protect, but all their tricks are not enough: you yourself must be the seventh.
If you want to find a woman, let seven men go for her. One, who gives heart for words, one, who takes care of himself, one, who claims to be a dreamer, one, who through her skirt can feel her, one, who knows the hooks and snaps, one, who steps upon her scarf: let them buzz like flies around her. You yourself must be the seventh.
If you write and can afford it, let seven men write your poem. One, who builds a marble village, one, who was born in his sleep, one, who charts the sky and knows it, one, whom words call by his name, one, who perfected his soul, one, who dissects living rats. Two are brave and four are wise; You yourself must be the seventh.
And if all went as was written, you will die for seven men. One, who is rocked and suckled, one, who grabs a hard young breast, one, who throws down empty dishes, one, who helps the poor win; one, who worked till he goes to pieces, one, who just stares at the moon. The world will be your tombstone: you yourself must be the seventh.
I love the number seven plus you can find more great poems here: visit http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/590
St. Marina day /
A hot day in New York and a big holiday in Bulgaria, St Marina's day is my grandfather's and my name day. In the Orthodox Christian tradition and in the old days in Bulgaria, the name day was considered a personal holiday bigger than the actual birthday of the person. Wikipedia says that Name days in Bulgaria are important and widely celebrated. By an ancient Bulgarian tradition, everybody is welcome on name days; there is no need to invite guests.
My grandfather was a successful businessman and a self-taught painter. After 1947 his fortune was nationalized and he was declared an enemy of the state. I always remember him glued to the BBC and Voice of America. I grew up in my grandparents' house and remember that a mustached person from the Party also always lived there. My grandfather drew and painted well into his 80's and had a great sense of humor, sang beautifully and had a very laid back attitude for just about everything. An anecdote says that one of his aunts warned him that his apprentices are stealing... and he said:" There is something for me and something for them."
Manufactured Realities /
As an artist I am in the business of manufactured reality - when I draw or paint or make 3d worlds I destroy pristine surfaces, sacrificing the blank page, the white canvass and the empty page for imaginary creations.
Most beautiful thing /
Most beautiful thing happened to me at the Met - I went looking for "the Nose" ticket from the scalpers and in the confusion got... a standing room ticket... for La Boheme. Sometimes greed and unfavorable circumstances guard the doors to most wonderful places. Seeing opera, like art, moves me beyond the obvious, profane and the mundane and, of course, the most beautiful things happened while I wasn't looking. I got to meet absolutely delightful couple art collectors from Denmark and My standing room neighbors were ardent opera fans - There was the orthopedic surgeon exchange student from Tokyo, an ardent opera lover, and on right was an IT guy from HBO.
After first act we were standing around chatting about what we thought we liked so far when a really nice couple handed us their tickets on the way out.. leaving early. My Tokyo friend and I were grateful to the really nice people and got to see the rest of La Boheme first class ! La Boheme was the most moving music and singing I heard this year so far - it inspired me beyond the visual and the sensual. The soprano was world class and Rodolfo was great too. But most of all, I got too see the power of high class art to turn a "light" story into a grand excursion of the imagination and emotion.
Before.. and after:)
For unconditional love and other things /
When someone tells you repeatedly they love you - you get used to it and when this is gone you terribly miss it. Unconditional love is a very hard thing to get over and I have been trying to come to terms with that loss this past week. I will never forget this black monday, I hope the worst is over and I can keep my head up moving forward. My grandfather Spas passed away in the morning of September 28, 2009 bulgarian time and I was absolutely powerless to do anything to be able to see him for one last time. I spent endless summers with him, family and friends and these were the happiest days of my life. Once I found out I sent heartbreaking letters to friends who knew him. This is what a friend of mine wrote back:
mirena -
so sorry to hear of the passing of dear diado spas - such a wonderful vital man full of genuine good spirit - i think he must have had a terrific life and earned a lot of good karma to have continued to enjoy everything as he did at a ripe old age - that plus eating a whole lemon every day!
you are a lucky lady to have had such a real connection to this kind of spirit - so seldom in our world today -
i am sure that his positive vitality will continue to inspire you your whole life - this is when memories can truly have meaning -
please give my condolences to nicki his daughter your dad and your whole family -
my heart is with you!
And he attached this picture from my birthday a couple of years ago - Grandpa Spas is in the middle:
Lucidity is out and beautiful /
Lucidity has been announced by Lucasarts and the ign preview is here. There is one essential quality to beauty and it is the fact that it doesn't need champions. People always aspire to beauty because it is a window to a pure world - it lifts them up and makes them aspire to things bigger and better than themselves.