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Audrey Kawasaki is an artist originally from LA. I stumbled upon her work looking for “gaze” on google images but her artwork has amazed me. Her blog is definitely a bookmark I will revisit often. This kind of art makes doing science seem so so boring. Here is her popular “She Who Dares”:
And here are my picks from here February 08 exhibit which she posted all online.
“Karamari”
“If Only You Were Here”
“After It’s Done”
“Tear me”
“Not the Only One”
You could also call it “Knowledge and explanation through reason, faith, or feeling (the mind, the soul, or the heart) in space and time” but my editor wouldn’t like that too much.
Somewhere in the common space connecting philosophy, religion, science, and art lies an earnest search for a sensible worldview. There is a gaze.
On the most basic levels, there are two questions: What can we and do we know? How do we and can we explain what we know? This is MY post-structuralist summary of world thought:
Egypto-Judeo: You can’t explain everything outside yourself but you can know (through faith) what you cant explain.
Chinese: You don’t need an explanation for anything.
Indian: When you reach Nirvana, you will know again all you knew before. But you can’t explain any of it to anyone else.
Greco-Latin: Before and while in the process of explaining, explain the process of explaining.
Explaining = Showing = Teaching.
MY path forks in two here: Eastern and Western:
Eastern.
Jesus: If you know love (God), He explains everything to you and makes everything perfect. Love is the ultimate knowledge and explanation. Pure beauty, pure theory.
(Some) Muslims: Knowledge is only from God. Explanation from us.
(Some) Sufis: All the knowledge and explanation you seek are in you. Look with your heart’s mind. Look with your soul, and not at it, and you will see the beautiful. I am the beautiful, therefore I am God.
http://www.phantasmaphile.com/2007/07/kako-ueda.html
Western.
Vatican Theology: Let’s try to know and explain everything through God and God through everything.
Renaissance Art and Science: I am only sure I know myself (I know I exist) so let me see what else I can know?
David Hume: Knowledge is an illusion. Explanation, an illusion of an illusion.
Keirkegaard: “The individual is the category through which, in a religious aspect, this age, all history, the human race as a whole, must pass.” I should try to explain myself first. Since only God knows me, only He can explain me.
Nietzsche: There will be a man who can explain himself, the ubermunch. Man is an abyss.
Modernist: I know myself but can I explain myself? Let me be confused for a bit.
Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy:
The tools of explaining need to be examined. What we can’t explain, we must pass over in silence. (Original: “what we can’t speak of, we must pass over in silence.”)
“The world is all that is the case” : What is your collection of facts? What is your world?
Absurdist: Explain this!
Heiddeger: Even the simplest concept, Being, is an enigma.
We don’t know our tools of explaining well. Let’s deconstruct them; the pieces of language tell us more about history than philosophy. Only then the Truth (Aletheia) may unfold.
Post-Structuralist.
Foucault: Our languages tools hint at a changing underlying meta-system of thought. They carry within them the discourse between ideas which is the closest thing to the truth (one may hope for).
pomo: I know what my tools of explantation may tell me and I will try to find out what they have concealed. Many stories (expose) many systems of thought (hence) many explanations (hinting at) many knowledge (equals) many truths. This reminds me of the tower of Babel (Babylon).
Derrida: The language tools were not made for explaining. Their purpose was only socio-political/poetical: to construct a grand narrative. Do I want to deconstruct a grand narrative?
New age: Whoever you are, know with your heart and explain to me.
I know some of these might seem narrow-minded but that’s the price of compactness. Perhaps I will expand on this soon. If you feel there are essential links missing in this grand narrative of mine, let me know. I am often ready to see new perspectives.
Some people like Jean-Luc Godard say we live in a commercial age where the gaze have collapsed. Should we ask then: What is the next step in this path? What is your next step? What is mine?
Late Night Wanderings 