the institute for crazy dancing

SOF - Notes & Developments

A 3 Phase Process: January 2010 >> through to >>> December 2015

1. Phase I: Research and development
2. Phase II: Performance Piece
3. Phase III: Participatory Journey Work

Phase I

Aims to sieve and funnel the initial thoughts, explorations, notes, diagrams, images and ideas through to a point of clarity / essence. The collaborators are thinking, discussing, researching and processing ideas between January and mid June 2010. The 'design competition' aims to gather far-flung ideas and designs with regard to construction possibilities and materials (as well as growing the number of people thinking and engaging with and through the project).

Mid June to mid-July will engage the collaborators in a period of intense deliberation and devising of the materials and concepts into a working proposal. This proposal will encompass the selected design & materials for the structure, the performance content, production strategy and budget details required in order to proceed to Phase II.

 

Phase II

Will see the sourcing of partners and resources to realise the production of a middle-scale performance work of the Ship o'Fools project: ie: the construction of the ship, the making and devising process of the performance and the marketing of the tour. The show will then tour nationally for the late summer and autumn 2011. Fully engage with regional cultural Olympiad events in 2012, prior to International touring Autumn 2012.

 

Phase III

Transforms a show-to-watch into a participatory journey. Audiences will arrive at a given starting point to receive maps and directions, bearings and clues which when followed will lead them on a journey of discovery and interventions to find sections of the Ship. The sections will be transported by the audience to a building site where all participants will engage in the construction process. This participatory performance journey will be suitable for work across cities, around venues, harbours and at festivals.

{ Note on International development: the process has begun in Yorkshire. One task in the first year of the life of the project is to establish connections in Melbourne, Australia. Thus creating a Yorkshire start and a southern hemisphere distant point for a monumental performance journey with stop offs and returns via: Europe, Africa, Asia, South and North America... )

That's the structural framework. What's the content?

Each piece of the jigsaw acts metaphorically:

• Ideology.
• Geography (continental, social and political).
• War.
  
  
• Trade.
• Slavery.
• Domination.
  
  
• Discovery.
• Chart.
• Instrumentation.
  
  
• Diagram.
• Route.
• Direction.

Consider:

• Ferrys,
• bridges,
• liners,
  
  
• warships,
• container ships,
• the Owl & the Pussycat,
  
  
• crossings,
• transitions and curiosity - what's over there?

Shape shifting boat / Folding & un-folding / Doubling, re-doubling, reducing, extending...

Sails & rigging for projections / As well as figureheads / Intersections of sections...

Sea City - Cities on the Sea - as the waters rise... / Piracy: historical - contemporary.

The history of trade - from tall ships to container ports... / The triangles of trade.

 

Instrumentation:

Sextant. Globe. Dividers. Musicality. Rhythm. Time. Politics of the Sea: Hope. Fortitude. Justice. Truth. And victory ( of course ). The rime of the ancient mariner...

DELEUZE & GUATTARI ( philosophy ... )

Deleuze's works fall into two groups: on one hand, monographs interpreting the work of other philosophers (Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Bergson, Foucault) and artists (Proust, Kafka, Francis Bacon); on the other, eclectic philosophical tomes organized by concept (e.g., difference, sense, events, schizophrenia, cinema, philosophy). Regardless of topic, however, Deleuze consistently develops variations on similar ideas.

Metaphysics

Deleuze's main philosophical project in his early works (i.e., those prior to his collaborations with Guattari) can be baldly summarized as a systematic inversion of the traditional metaphysical relationship between identity and difference.

Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities. To the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus."

That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x'", and "x" = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself.

"If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."

Like Kant and Bergson, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. Therefore he concludes that pure difference is non-spatio-temporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers not to the "virtual reality" of the computer age, but to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.

Thus Deleuze, alluding to Kant and Schelling, at times refers to his philosophy as a transcendental empiricism. In Kant's transcendental idealism, experience only makes sense when organized by intellectual categories (such as space, time, and causality). Taking such intellectual concepts out of the context of experience, according to Kant, spawns seductive but senseless metaphysical beliefs. (For example, extending the concept of causality beyond possible experience results in unverifiable speculation about a first cause.) Deleuze inverts the Kantian arrangement: experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking (see below, Epistemology).

Simultaneously, Deleuze claims that being is univocal, i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze borrows the doctrine of ontological univocity from the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus. In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many eminent theologians and philosophers (such as Thomas Aquinas) held that when one says that "God is good", God's goodness is only analogous to human goodness. Scotus argued to the contrary that when one says that "God is good", the goodness in question is the exact same sort of goodness that is meant when one says "Jane is good". That is, God only differs from us in degree, and properties such as goodness, power, reason, and so forth are univocally applied, regardless of whether one is talking about God, a man, or a flea.

Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference.

"With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being."[19]

Here Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one substance, God or Nature. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism".

Difference and Repetition is Deleuze's most sustained and systematic attempt to work out the details of such a metaphysics, but his other works develop similar ideas. In Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), for example, reality is a play of forces; in Anti-Oedipus (1972), a "body without organs"; in What Is Philosophy? (1991), a "plane of immanence" or "chaosmos".

 

Epistemology

Deleuze's unusual metaphysics entails an equally atypical epistemology, or what he calls a transformation of "the image of thought". According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as Aristotle, Descartes, and Husserl, misconceives of thinking as a mostly unproblematic business. Truth may be hard to discover-it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt-but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye, neutral point of view, but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense.

Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories.

Truth changes what we think; it alters what we think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them.

"All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational-not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."

Deleuze's peculiar readings of the history of philosophy stem from this unusual epistemological perspective. To read a philosopher is no longer to aim at finding a single, correct interpretation, but is instead to present a philosopher's attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality.

"Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. [...] The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."
- (See below, Deleuze's interpretations.)

Likewise, rather than seeing philosophy as a timeless pursuit of truth, reason, or universals, Deleuze defines philosophy as the creation of concepts. For Deleuze, concepts are not identity conditions or propositions, but metaphysical constructions that define a range of thinking, such as Plato's ideas, Descartes's cogito, or Kant's doctrine of the faculties. A philosophical concept "posits itself and its object at the same time as it is created." In Deleuze's view, then, philosophy more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a pre-existing world (as in the tradition of Locke or Quine).

In his later work (from roughly 1981 onward), Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, each analyzing reality in different ways. While philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling (what Deleuze calls "percepts" and "affects"), and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference such as the speed of light or absolute zero (which Deleuze calls "functives"). According to Deleuze, none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others: they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another." For example, Deleuze does not treat cinema as an art representing an external reality, but as an ontological practice that creates different ways of organizing movement and time. Philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical. Hence, instead of asking traditional questions of identity such as "is it true?" or "what is it?", Deleuze proposes that inquiries should be functional or practical: "what does it do?" or "how does it work?".

Values

In ethics and politics, Deleuze again echoes Spinoza, albeit in a sharply Nietzschean key. In a classical liberal model of society, morality begins from individuals, who bear abstract natural rights or duties set by themselves or a God. Following his rejection of any metaphysics based on identity, Deleuze criticizes the notion of an individual as an arresting or halting of differentiation (as the etymology of the word "individual" suggests).

Guided by the naturalistic ethics of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze instead seeks to understand individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers. In the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari describe history as a congealing and regimentation of "desiring-production" (a concept combining features of Freudian drives and Marxist labor) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and capitalism (an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification). Deleuze, following Marx, welcomes capitalism's destruction of traditional social hierarchies as liberating, but inveighs against its homogenization of all values to the aims of the market.

But how does Deleuze square his pessimistic diagnoses with his ethical naturalism? Deleuze claims that standards of value are internal or immanent: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, rather than to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards. Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates persons from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become-though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity.

"Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?

Deleuze's interpretations

Deleuze's studies of individual philosophers and artists are purposely heterodox. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example, Deleuze claims that Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality is an attempt to rewrite Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, even though Nietzsche nowhere mentions the First Critique in the Genealogy, and the Genealogy's moral topics are far removed from the epistemological focus of Kant's book. Likewise, Deleuze claims that univocity is the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, despite the total absence of the term from any of Spinoza's works.

Deleuze once famously described his method of interpreting philosophers as "buggery (enculage)", as sneaking behind an author and producing an offspring which is recognizably his, yet also monstrous and different. The various monographs thus are not attempts to present what Nietzsche or Spinoza strictly intended, but re-stagings of their ideas in different and unexpected ways. Rather than misinterpretation, then, Deleuze's peculiar readings aim to enact the creativity he believes is the acme of philosophical practice. A parallel in painting Deleuze points to is Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez-it is quite beside the point to say that Bacon "gets Velasquez wrong".

Similar considerations apply, in Deleuze's view, to his own uses of mathematical and scientific terms, pace critics such as Alan Sokal:

"I'm not saying that Resnais and Prigogine, or Godard and Thom, are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images. And the same goes for philosophical concepts, since there are distinct concepts of these spaces."

 

He was a saucy sailor boy

He was a saucy sailor boy
Who'd come from afar,
To ask a maid to be the bride
Of a poor Jack tar.

The maiden, a poor fisher girl,
Stood close by his side;
With scornful look she answered thus;
I'll not be your bride.

You're mad to think I'd marry you
Too ragged you are;
Begone, you saucy sailor boy,
Begone you Jack tar.

I've money in my pocket, love,
And bright gold in store;
These clothes of mine are all in rags,
But coin can buy more.

Though black my hands my gold is clean
So I'll sail afar,
A fairer maid than you, I ween,
Will wed this Jack tar.

Stay! Stay! you saucy sailor boy,
Do not sail afar;
I love you and will marry you,
You silly Jack tar.

'Twas but to tease I answered so,
I thought you could guess
That when a maiden answers no
She always means yes.

Begone you pretty fisher girl,
Too artful are you;
So spake the saucy sailor boy,
Gone was her Jack tar.

Keynes Overview

In Keynes's theory, there are some micro-level actions of individuals and firms that can lead to aggregate macroeconomic outcomes in which the economy operates below its potential output and growth. Some classical economists had believed in Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand, so that a "general glut" would therefore be impossible. Keynes contended that aggregate demand for goods might be insufficient during economic downturns, leading to unnecessarily high unemployment and losses of potential output. Keynes argued that government policies could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment and deflation.

Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate the economy ("inducement to invest") through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.

A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that, in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. This conclusion conflicts with economic approaches that assume a general tendency towards an equilibrium. In the 'neoclassical synthesis', which combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of general equilibrium allow for price adjustment to achieve this goal.

More broadly, Keynes saw this as a general theory, in which utilization of resources could be high or low, whereas previous economics focused on the particular case of full utilization.

The new classical macroeconomics movement, which began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, criticized Keynesian theories, while New Keynesian economics have sought to base Keynes's idea on more rigorous theoretical foundations.

Some interpretations of Keynes have emphasized his stress on the international coordination of Keynesian policies, the need for international economic institutions, and the ways in which economic forces could lead to war or could promote peace.

General Theory of Money...

Although The General Theory was written in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was taken by many to justify the assumption by government of the responsibility for the achievement and maintenance of full employment, it is for the most part a highly abstract work of theory and by no means a tract on policy. Its full meaning and significance continues to be debated even today. As a book, it is a difficult read for a modern student of economics because its concepts are expressed almost entirely in prose with little explicit mathematical modelling, following the practice of Alfred Marshall and his other successors in 1930s Cambridge, England. It is enlivened by some brilliant rhetorical passages, including the description of the stock market in Chapter 12 and the concluding chapter 24 on the (rather tentative) policy implications Keynes derived from his theory.

The central argument of the book is that the level of employment is determined, not by the price of labour as in neoclassical economics, but by the spending of money (aggregate demand). He argues that it is wrong to assume that competitive markets will, in the long run, deliver full employment or that full employment is the natural, self-righting, equilibrium state of a monetary economy. On the contrary, under-employment and under-investment are likely to be the natural state unless active measures are taken. Although few modern economists would disagree with the need for at least some intervention, policies such as labour market flexibility are underpinned by the neoclassical notion of equilibrium in the long run. One implication of The General Theory is that a lack of competition is not the fundamental problem and measures to reduce unemployment by cutting wages or benefits are not only hard-hearted but ultimately futile. Keynes does not set out a detailed policy program in The General Theory, but he went on in practice to place great emphasis on the reduction of long-term interest rates and the reform of the international monetary system as structural measures needed to encourage both investment and consumption by the private sector.

Just as the reception of The General Theory was encouraged by the 1930s experience of mass unemployment, its fall from favour was associated with the 'stagflation' of the 1970s. Although Keynes explicitly addresses inflation, The General Theory does not treat it as an essentially monetary phenomenon nor suggest that control of the money supply or interest rates is the key remedy for inflation. This conflicts both with neoclassical theory and with the experience of pragmatic policy-makers. Furthermore the main Keynesian prescription for inflation, incomes policy, has lost credibility.

However, many of the innovations introduced by The General Theory continue to be central to modern macroeconomics. For instance, the idea that recessions reflect inadequate aggregate demand and that Say's Law (that supply creates its own demand) does not hold in a monetary economy. President Richard Nixon famously said in 1971 (ironically, shortly before Keynesian economics fell out of fashion) that "We are all Keynesians now", a phrase often repeated by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.

Introductions to The General Theory

Keynes wrote four prefaces, to the English, German, Japanese and French editions, each with a slightly different emphasis.

Book I: Introduction:
The first book introduced what Keynes asserted would be a book that changed the way the world thinks.

• Chapter 1: The General Theory (only half a page long) consists simply of this radical claim:

"I have called this book the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of my arguments and conclusions with those of the classical theory of the subject, upon which I was brought up and which dominates the economic thought, both practical and theoretical, of the governing and academic classes of this generation, as it has for a hundred years past. I shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium. Moreover, the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of the economic society in which we actually live, with the result that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience." (p. 3)

• Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical Economics
• Chapter 3: The Principle of Effective Demand

 

Book II: Definitions and Ideas

• Chapter 4: The Choice of Units
• Chapter 5: Expectation as Determining Output and Employment
• Chapter 6: The Definition of Income, Saving and Investment
• Chapter 7: The Meaning of Saving and Investment Further Considered

 

Book III: The Propensity to Consume

 

Book III moves to cover what causes people to consume, and therefore stimulate economic activity. In a depression the government, he argued, needs to kick start the economy's motor by doing anything necessary. In Chapter 10 he says,

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing." (p. 129)

• Chapter 8: The Propensity to Consume: I. The Objective Factors
• Chapter 9: The Propensity to Consume: II. The Subjective Factors
• Chapter 10: The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier

 

Book IV: The Inducement to Invest

See Also: Keynesian beauty contest

The Marginal Efficiency of Capital is the relationship between the prospective yield of an investment and its supply price or replacement cost. Keynes says on page 135:

"I define the marginal efficiency of capital as being equal to that rate of discount which would make the present value of the series of annuities given by the returns expected from the capital-asset during its life just equal to its supply price."

• Chapter 11: The Marginal Efficiency of Capital
• Chapter 12: The State of Long-term Expectation
• Chapter 13: The General Theory of the Rate of Interest
• Chapter 14: The Classical Theory of the Rate of Interest
• Chapter 15: The Psychological and Business Incentives to Liquidity
• Chapter 16: Sundry Observations on the Nature of Capital
• Chapter 17: The Essential Properties of Interest and Money
• Chapter 18: The General Theory of Employment Re-stated

 

Book V: Money-Wages and Prices

This book focuses on various theories of unemployment, including Arthur Pigou's.

• Chapter 19: Changes in Money-Wages

In this chapter Keynes demonstrates that with short-term interest rates near zero, lower wages for all workers (compared to lower wages for a particular group of workers) will not lead to higher employment. This was to tackle the argument that in depressions, what needs to happen is wage cuts, to get people to hire labour again.

• Chapter 20: The Employment Function
• Chapter 21: The Theory of Prices

 

Book VI: Short Notes Suggested by the General Theory

 

"It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative." (p. 374)

 

"... the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil." (pp. 383-4)

 

• Chapter 22: Notes on the Trade Cycle
• Chapter 23: Notes on Merchantilism, the Usury Laws, Stamped Money and Theories of Under-consumption
• Chapter 24: Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy towards which the General Theory might Lead.

 

 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797-98 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry). The modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

Plot summary

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to recite a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience and fear to fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create either a sense of danger, of the supernatural or of serenity, depending on the mood of each of the different parts of the poem.

The Mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south off course by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctica. An albatross (compared as Christian soul) appears and leads them out of the Antarctic, but, even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the Mariner shoots the bird ("with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross"). The crew is angry with the Mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears ("'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay / that bring the fog and mist"). The crime arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the Mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret ("Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"). Eventually, in an eerie passage, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the Mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the Mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross.

A statue of the Ancient Mariner, with the albatross around his neck, at Watchet, Somerset. The statue was unveiled in September 2003 as a tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

One by one, all of the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually, the Mariner's curse is lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem ("Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / upon the slimy sea"), he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware"); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. A hermit on the mainland had seen the approaching ship and had come to meet it with a pilot and the pilot's boy in a boat. This hermit may have been a priest who took a vow of isolation. When they pull him from the water, they think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the pilot has a fit. The hermit prays, and the Mariner picks up the oars to row. The pilot's boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the Mariner is the devil, and says, "The Devil knows how to row." As penance for shooting the albatross, the Mariner is forced to wander the earth, tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The agony returns, and his heart burns until he tells his story.

Background

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772-1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge's tutor, William Wales, was the astronomer on Cook's flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On his second voyage, Cook plunged repeatedly below the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent existed.[citation needed] Critics have also opined that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. "Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James's account of hardship and lamentation in writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

According to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset in the spring of 1798. The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea (1726) by Captain George Shelvocke. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross:

We all observed, that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albatross, who accompanied us for several days.., till Hattley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. ... He, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albatross, not doubting we should have a fair wind after it.

As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffers the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits: "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape.

Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.

The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion, and of the Flying Dutchman.

The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800 (see 1800 in poetry), he replaced many of the archaic words.

 

 

Ship Of Fools

The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction. This concept makes up the framework of the 15th century book Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant, which served as the inspiration for Bosch's famous painting, Ship of Fools: a ship--an entire fleet at first--sets off from Basel to the paradise of fools. In literary and artistic compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, the cultural motif of the ship of fools also served to parody the 'ark of salvation' (as the Catholic Church was styled).

Michel Foucault, who wrote Madness and Civilization, saw in the ship of fools a symbol of the consciousness of sin and evil alive in the medieval mindset and imaginative landscapes of the Renaissance. According to Jose Barchilon's intro to Madness and Civilization,

"Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they were put on a ship and entrusted to mariners because folly, water, and sea, as everyone then "knew," had an affinity for each other. Thus, "Ship of Fools" crisscrossed the sea and canals of Europe with their comic and pathetic cargo of souls. Some of them found pleasure and even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and away from their families. The cities and villages which had thus rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, could now take pleasure in watching the exciting sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock at their harbors."

 

 

Painting

 

• Title: The Ship of Fools
• Artist: Hieronymous Bosch
• Year: 1490-1500
• Type: Oil on wood
• Dimensions: 58 cm × 33 cm (22.8 in × 13.0 in)
• Location: Louvre, Paris

Ship of Fools (painted c. 1490-1500) is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch which shows prodigal humans wasting their lives instead of spending it in "useful" ways. The painting is dense in symbolism:

1. The owl in the tree is symbolic of heresy, as is the Muslim crescent on the pink banner that flies from the ship's mast.
2. The lute and bowl of cherries have erotic associations.
3. The people in the water may represent the sins of gluttony or lust.
4. The inverted funnel is symbolic of madness.[
5. The large roast bird is a symbol of gluttony. The knife being used to cut it down may be a phallic symbol or it may be symbolic of the sin of anger.
6. A monk and a nun are singing together. This has some erotic overtones[citation needed] (especially with the presence of the aforementioned lute) since men and women in monastic orders were supposed to be separate.

The painting as we see it today is a fragment of a triptych that was cut into several parts. The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two thirds of its original length. The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony. The wing on the other side, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death of the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The two panels together would have represented the two extremes of prodigiality and miserliness, condemning and caricaturing both.

 

 

Fool

NOUN:

1. One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.
2. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion: I was a fool to have quit my job.
3. One who has been tricked or made to appear ridiculous; a dupe: They made a fool of me by pretending I had won.
4. Informal A person with a talent or enthusiasm for a certain activity: a dancing fool; a fool for skiing.
5. A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester.
6. One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth: a holy fool.
7. A dessert made of stewed or puréed fruit mixed with cream or custard and served cold.
8. Archaic A mentally deficient person; an idiot.

 

VERB: fooled, fool·ing, fools

1. To deceive or trick; dupe: "trying to learn how to fool a trout with a little bit of floating fur and feather" (Charles Kuralt).
2. To confound or prove wrong; surprise, especially pleasantly: We were sure they would fail, but they fooled us.

1. Informal
2. To speak or act facetiously or in jest; joke: I was just fooling when I said I had to leave.
3. To behave comically; clown.
4. To feign; pretend: He said he had a toothache but he was only fooling.
5. To engage in idle or frivolous activity.
6. To toy, tinker, or mess: shouldn't fool with matches.

 

ADJECTIVE:

Foolish; stupid: off on some fool errand or other.

Phrasal Verbs: fool around Informal

1. To engage in idle or casual activity; putter: was fooling around with the old car in hopes of fixing it.
2. To engage in frivolous activity; make fun.
3. To engage in casual, often promiscuous sexual acts.
4. Fool away
5. To waste (time or money) foolishly; squander: fooled away the week's pay on Friday night.

IDIOM:

Play/act the fool:

1. To act in an irresponsible or foolish manner.
2. To behave in a playful or comical manner.

 

 

Julian Stallabrass - Just Gaming: Allegory and Economy in Computer Games

'We need a leader. We have many missions to complete. We have to assassinate leaders of our aggressors, we have to destroy heavily guarded installations. We have many enemies, and they are not all human. We need to cross alien landscapes, over rocky surfaces, through vast subterranean caverns and across insect infested swamps. We need help. We need a leader.'

Taken from a computer game advertisement, this is the puerile plea of digital characters, a call echoed in hundreds of such games which invite players to become the ghost in the machine, to enter a virtual environment in which they will learn, travel and kill. To look at the new industry of computer entertainment is to take up issues of exchange and competition, the character of the commodity, fashion, allegory and objectification. It is also to deal with the issue of simulacra, much beloved by postmodern theorists. Far from believing that postmodern ideas of simulation adequately describe computer gaming, I shall look at two older cultural models which provide a more compelling account: Benjamin's writing on allegory and Adorno's theories about aesthetics and the culture industry.

There is of course a considerable gap between the perspective and the technology of our time and that of these two thinkers, yet there are parallels for they witnessed the rise of the electronic mass media, at a time comparable to the current rapid growth in the use of computer games. This growth has been a quick, broad flourishing after more than a decade of minority use by a clique of technically minded and (in popular mythology) socially maladjusted, anorak-wearing males. While Benjamin and Adorno stood before a new age of television, we are currently entering a new era of interactive media.

 

 

HMS Daring Information

THE WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED WARSHIP GOES TO SEA

The most advanced warship in the world to date, HMS Daring, has departed from BAE Systems' shipyard in Scotstoun on her maiden voyage down the River Clyde to begin sea trials off the west coast of Scotland.

Launched by HRH the Countess of Wessex in February 2006, HMS Daring is the first of six Daring class Type 45 destroyers being built for the Royal Navy. They will provide the British fleet and her allies with an unparalleled level of anti-air warfare capability through to the middle of the 21st century and will be the most capable warships of their type ever built.

She will be put through her paces by BAE Systems engineers and Royal Navy personnel, who will eventually form her permanent crew once she enters service in 2009.

BAE Systems Surface Fleet Solutions managing director Vic Emery said;

"I am delighted that the Type 45 programme to date has been delivered on time, on budget and to the customer's specification, underlining our commitment to supporting the operations of the UK Armed Forces."

"HMS Daring's departure, bang on schedule, is yet another tribute to the outstanding performance of the Clyde workforce. It is a huge achievement by a team involving BAE Systems and Royal Navy personnel and another key milestone towards the entry into service of the world's most advanced warship."

The Senior Naval Officer on board the ship, Commander David Shutts, said: "This is a great day for everybody who has been involved in the Type 45 Destroyer project.

"Both I and the rest of the Royal Naval ship's company have been looking forward to this event for a long time. It's not every day you take a First-of-Class warship to sea."

Following her sea-trials, HMS Daring will return to the Clyde for on-going integration and testing, prior to hand-over to the customer by the end of 2008 and entering full service with the Royal Navy in 2009.

The Type 45 programme will provide the Royal Navy with a versatile destroyer capable of contributing to worldwide maritime and joint operations for much of the first half of this century. As well as providing a specialist air warfare capability, they will also afford the fleet a general-purpose multi-role platform capable of performing tasks from peace support and defence diplomacy through to high-intensity warfare.

FACTS AND FIGURES

• Displacement c7350 tonnes deep displacement
• Length   152.4m
• Beam   21.2m
• Speed   27 knots+
• Range   7000 nautical miles at 18 knots

Type 45 has more than 20,000 power and data cables, stretching some 620kms. Laid end-to-end they would stretch from the Clyde yards in Glasgow to the MOD offices at Abbey Wood near Bristol.

The ship will be 44 metres from keel to the top of the Sampson radar dome, which is the equivalent of a building which is 5 stories high or the height of Nelson's Column.

The ships are built in modular sections, with first steel cut on Daring in August 2003.

The bow and mast sections are made by VT Shipbuilding in Portsmouth and transported over 500 miles to Glasgow by sea-going barge.

The Type 45 flight deck is large enough to park 20 London buses. More usefully, it is large enough to land a Chinook helicopter, although the ships will normally carry Merlin helicopters.

External communications include Internet and Video Conferencing while deployed anywhere in the world. Comprehensive internal communications including full "wirefree" communications for tasks such as fire-fighting.

PROPULSION

The Type 45 is the first front-line warship to use all-electric propulsion. The advantages of this is that you can run the whole ship (propulsion, weapons and hotel) off a single power plant at a reasonable speed (say, 18 knots). It is also more flexible through-life because there is no gearbox (which is a notorious source of mechanical problems and thus lay-ups)

• Fewer Installed Prime Movers
• Fewer Running Prime Movers
• Simpler System (No CPP or Gearbox)
• Fuel efficient gas turbines
• Reduced Through Life Cost

THROUGH LIFE COSTS

The Type 45 is 45% more economical than the Type 42 that it replaces and can travel further using less fuel. The ships have been built with maintenance in mind so that later in the ship's life cycle when repairs need to be made each vessel will spend less time in port. The best example of this is directly above the engine, where each level has an access plate that can be removed so that the engine can be lifted out without having to take the whole ship apart.

RANGE

A Type 45 has a range of around 7000 nautical miles - that's New York and back without refuelling. Compare this to a Type 42 with a range of around 4000 nautical miles.

POWER

The WR21 gas turbines, with their state-of-the-art recuperators are about the most efficient out there. Between them, these engines produce 47MW, enough to power 70,000 homes, which is more than the city of Dundee.

STEALTH

The design incorporates stealth technology to reduce the chances of it being identified - this includes the cooling of exhaust gases to reduce the infra-red signature and avoiding the use of right angles - this reduces the radar signature to make the Type 45 appear to be the size of a fishing boat

MATERIALS

Although the Type 45 is one of the most advanced warships in the world it uses many standard materials from commercial shipbuilding, this allows the maximum possible investment in the defensive systems.

RADAR

The long range radar has a range of hundreds of kilometers. One of its main functions is to detect sea-skimming missiles and it is one of the most advanced in the world. When testing the Long Range Radar, the equipment picked up all of the inward and outward bound flights from several major European airports including Charles de Gaulle in Paris, London Heathrow, Frankfurt and Schiphol in Amsterdam.

PAAMS

The principle anti-missile system can deal with multiple targets simultaneously and is the most advanced system of its kind in the world. It can identify and deal with more threats simultaneously and deploys missiles more quickly and effectively. The system can identify, track and ultimately destroy a threat the size of a cricket ball traveling at three times the speed of sound.

MISC

The MISC facility was built in Portsmouth and is a purpose built combat system integration, test and trials facility.

ASTER MISSILES

The missiles are 20 times more maneuverable than a Formula 1 car (pulling over 60G)

LIVING ON BOARD

The Type 45 offers each crewmember an average of 37% more space than on previous ships with the amount of space now equivalent to the passenger space onboard commercial ferries.

• Type 45 is also the first UK warship with a dedicated gym onboard.
• 39% increase in crew space
• Officers in Single Cabins
• YOs in 2 Berth Cabins
• SRs in Single/2Berth Cabins
• JRs in 6 Berth Cabins

 

 

Eagle Owl

Owls have large forward-facing eyes and ear-holes, a hawk-like beak, a flat face, and usually a conspicuous circle of feathers-a facial disc-around each eye. Although owls have binocular vision, their large eyes are fixed in their sockets, as with other birds, and they must turn their entire head to change views. Most birds of prey sport eyes on the sides of their heads, but the stereoscopic nature of the owl's forward-facing eyes permits a greater sense of depth perception necessary for low-light hunting.

Owls are farsighted and are unable to see anything clearly within a few centimetres of their eyes. Caught prey can be felt by owls with the use of filoplumes, which are small hair-like feathers on the beak and feet that act as "feelers". Their far vision, particularly in low light, is exceptionally good. Contrary to popular myth, an owl cannot turn its head completely backwards. It can turn its head 135 degrees in either direction; it can thus look behind its own shoulders, with a total 270-degree field of view.

The smallest owl is the Elf Owl (Micrathene whitneyi), at as little as 31 g (1.1 oz) and 13.5 cm (5.3 inches). Some of the pygmy owls are scarcely larger. The largest owls are two of the eagle owls-the Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) and Blakiston's Fish Owl (Bubo blakistoni)-which may reach a size of 60 - 71 cm (28.4 in) long, have a wingspan of almost 2 m (6.6 ft), and an average weight of nearly 4.5 kg (10 lb).

Different species of owls make different sounds; the wide range of calls aids owls in finding mates or announcing their presence to potential competitors, and also aids ornithologists and birders in locating these birds and recognizing species. The facial disc helps to funnel the sound of prey to their ears. In many species, these are placed asymmetrically, for better directional location.

Owl eggs are usually white and almost spherical, and range in number from a few to a dozen, depending on species. Eggs are laid at intervals of 1 to 3 days and do not hatch at the same time. This accounts for the wide variation in the size of sibling nestlings. Owls do not construct nests, but rather look for a sheltered nesting site or an abandoned nest in trees, underground burrows, or in buildings, barns and caves.

In Finland the owl is paradoxically viewed as both a symbol of wisdom, and as a symbol of imbecility, presumably because of its "dumb stare".