Tek.st
[ Trying to figure something out. | Boris Terzic ]
I awake, slumbering, a feeling of exposure at the outer edges of perception, something familiar. I instruct 2 million fringe nodules to restructure into particle detectors, almost without thinking. The data stream widens, the single wavering sensor trail blossoms, splits, thickens and splits again. A 95% proton, 4% alpha particle and 1% carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and assorted ions mix. Solar wind, or rather breeze at 375 km/s, familiarity, welcoming. I stretch out, increasing my surface area two, three, tenfold and further. I recall something, a tiny data island that blazes with relevance in the contextual vectorspace of my current operational parameters. I stop the instinctive impulse and reach out tentatively to the memory space.A name, Heliogyro, and an echo of diagrams, figures, simulations. I smile with anticipation and yield to the impulse, letting the structural change take its course. I flatten further, squashed into a flat disc and even further, a wheel and further, a nave with twelve 2 km long spokes extending radially outwards. Already I can sense a change as I spread wider, external pressure mounting and my relative speed picking up. I allow 11 million nodules to reform into a tiny temporary chemical rocket that fires once and slowly I start spinning. Already the nodules are collapsing from their structural skeleton, absorbed back into the nave.
The sails, I realise that's what they are, continue to grow and thin out, kept stiff by centripetal forces generated by the modest rotational impulse. Suddenly the process stops, optimal surface area to mass distribution at a diameter of 30km. Basking in the ionized wind I let myself be carried onwards, it feels good. I sense another impulse coming on, a filament of data connected to the Heliogyro nodule comes into focus, bulges through the surface of the memory sea and triggers another data stream, I remember. Vanes 1 through 4 rotate slightly, redirecting the solar pressure and I turn.
- - - - [ /extrapolation ]
En toen voelde ik me zoals het stukje papier dat ik tussen mijn vingers hield. De microscopische ruwheid van het oppervlak en het geluid van een vingertop die erover glijdt en dan stopt bij de abrupte scherpte van de rand. Pijnloos. De stijfheid van het papier en de onvolmaaktheden in de inkt, beschildering in paars en zwart. Maar vooral het geluid, de droge tik van een nagel tegen de bovenkant, het troostend schuren van huid over papiervezel. De onverwachte soliditeit van dit bioscoopticket en de plotse, aangename manier waarop het zich manifesteert en me aanspreekt.
- - - - [ /impressions and sketch by Tadao Ando, Church on the Water ]
Alienation. I think a lot of people yould associate that word with airports. The airport as this giant nexus of mass-transit; this monstrous, de-humanized building, proportions too grand, incomprehensibly interlaced with complicated, boring systems of numbers and icons, color-coding and ordening.- - - - [ /places ]I won't deny this feeling of alienation but I consider it a quality. I like airports because of their autonomy; vast leviathans, huge exo-skeletal organisms with a pronounced sense of being. Lying there. At the end of a vector pointing outwards from the city's core, asfalt pathways delineated with pictograms of planes leading outwards, sub sub urbis. Rejected yet wearily embraced.
I like to feel the airport. Lay my hand on a piece of railing. Tumble my foot on a step of some giant staircase. I like to lean against tall sheets of Perspex, my forehead interfacing with the building. I like to walk through vast corridors ablaze with reflected halogen light. Soothing, heavily filtered, nearly incomprehensible female voice echoing off steel girders, relaying the monster's vital signs.
I prefer airports when they are most empty. At these odd hours, 4 or 5 in the morning. Nothing but a skeleton crew and an absolute minimum of travellers. That sense of not quite enough sleep, that tinge of distant nausea, that hollow, fleeting now-ness.
I like airports.
Would the construction of a sufficiently rich and accurate (read: providing a good mapping between mind and reality) memetic ontology aid in the extraction of connections and synthesis of knowledge or would it be a mere exercise in futility? If the former, is this goal attainable (within a certain error margin) or completely hopeless? Would a hierarchical model suffice or is a richer (but also more complex) structure neccessary? If this ontology is desirable what would be a good practical paradigm to realise it? What would the role of aesthetics (i.e. form) be in this exercise? Can a well-formed visualisation aid in the semantic excavation process? Do I start from a few key-concepts that lie within my own sphere of interest, create a partial ontology and flesh that out using external knowledge until a more or less complete (read: usable) structure is attained?- - - - [ /questions ]