Nora and Stella were hurt in the explosion. Nora has a piece of the device embedded in her brain that's more or less in the shape of the letter T. Right so far?
What does that have to do with the T-shaped map that contained the watermark codes and street names on it? And how are both related to the footage? Is the "T" reflected in the footage somehow?
Feeling dumb, Diana
"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned . . ."
Either William Gibson knows something about neurology that I don't know (which is VERY bloody likely and no joke, because I'm not a neurologist, and Gibson knows, um, a LOT of stuff) ... or ... it was all sort of a magical realism thing, where connections can be assumed to exist without having to be proven in any way.
Oh, I think I tried to say something about this a while back. Here's my take on it:
I think that the nora/detonator symbiote is more than the sum of its parts. that the Artist is really a result of this relationship between nora and her injury, the injury simply being the phsyical, metal, sticking into her brain actualization of the relationship. The schrapnel is working its way out, through nora, through the footage. And so while obstensibly the footage is about the girls' parents, or their childhood, or some other easily graspable thing, it's actually about this event, an explosive, damaging event that has wounded nora, changed her, made her both more and less than she was before.
Man, I shouldn't explicate when I'm hungry. Think of it like this. Nora isn't the artist, the detonator in her brain is the artist, working through nora. That's how I approach it, at least.
Posts: 2467 | Location: Chicagoish | Registered: January 07, 2003
Er, yeh, Shadoth, that's the magical realism I meant -- but Diana here is wondering why a T-shape could evidence itself in the pattern with the watermark codes on it, which would have more to do with neuroscience than with magic, unless of course the mine-fragment is a sentient being itself, which is not really a theory I'm ready to subscribe to.
Let's (anyone who's interested!) start researching brain trauma to find evidence of cases similar to Nora's! RALLY HO!
The T shaped detonator and its manifestation in the footage is informed by the idea that there is a thing or place very deep within you that is the source of all artistic endeavour. Some have called it the muse, or the unconscious or inspiration. It's that thing that artists channel and otherwise work in cooperation with to do what they do. Combine that with Iain Sinclair's ideas about psychogeography and you've got it. As an aside: Sinclair once recieved a letter from one of his readers who had superimposed the xray of his brain tumor upon a map of London and was walking the corresponding streets as a sort of treatment!
There are also some very suggestive links to the general context of industrialized, ideological wars of the 20th century and how people deal with such histories. But ah, it is all up to you. Gibson I feel almost worked these together, he was gathering up the intent but but but...
Anyway, I'd definitely lean more on the side of magical realism than neurology.
Yeah, what plastic said. I don't think this has a damn thing to do with neurology, I think it's all about the identity of the artist and the internal dialogue that is artistic expression. Anyway...
Posts: 2467 | Location: Chicagoish | Registered: January 07, 2003
Yeah that was a wonderfully engaging piece. It was great to see him connecting the dots and recombining some older stuff in new and revealing ways. Great acrobatics and done effortlessly.
"Their fridges will remind them of appointments and the trunks of their cars will, if need be, keep the groceries from thawing."
This is the only part I took issue with. Given the trend towards suburbanization it is doubtful that groceries would ever be in the trunk long enough to melt. Everything will be a short drive away. I do however picture smart cars that remind you to perform errands and even send orders to stores and pay for them enroute. "Hey since it is practically on the way maybe you should pickup some coke a cola which I see you've almost run out of. Oh I see Cutty Sark is on sale, should I get some of that too?" sez the Daihatsu Sneaker. One can imagine whole new economical niches rising up out of such a technology.
<plastic>
Posted
But to get back on topic there is always so unmistakeably and decisively personal about someone's art (when it's done properly) that you could swim up the river and sort of reconstruct who the maker is and what drove him/her to create, how did he/she do it. Something like that.
Diana: I think Gibson leaves these issues deliberately vague. He's said himself that he prefers to find questions rather than just spelling out the answers that he's able to spell out. So it's right and proper that you asked yourself those question - it's part of the experience!
I don't have the book here, but I seem to recall a mention of an x-ray or cat-scan of the thing in Nora's brain? Maybe I'm conjuring it up from nothing, go me, but I assumed that Nora had seen her own x-rays or scans and worked the image in, the way she worked lots of other images in -- in her own autistic way.
quote:Plastic said: As an aside: Sinclair once recieved a letter from one of his readers who had superimposed the xray of his brain tumor upon a map of London and was walking the corresponding streets as a sort of treatment!
This also is a crucial scene in CITY OF GLASS by Paul Auster when the detective figure realises the man he is following is not walking aimlessly around the streets of new york, but actually ecah dau spelling out one letter that over the weeks adds up to a phrase, "The Tower Of Babel" crucial to the story. Spooky. But to get back on topic, like HS I also think Nora would have seen that X-ray of her brain and the embedded metal and literally had that image burnt into her consciousness. It would be impossible not to.
Yes! I totally forgot about that stuff in City of Glass!
I wonder what's going on here, what're these guys getting at really? It's great to see so many different authors circling around the same imagery. But I wonder y'all think is there.
The T fragment is imbedded in her skull. I'm reminded of the way an oyster would continually worry at a violating foreign object. The object is causing it pain, it responds by coating it with whatever it is they excrete to coat the intruding matter. Over and over again.
Creating a pearl out of it's grievances.
deny everything
Posts: 420 | Location: brisbane, qld, australia | Registered: May 21, 2003
used to post a column in The Invisibles, as it was being published. I remember him apologizing once for an issue being even later than usual. He had been hospitalized with a bacterial infection that almost killed him.
Here's the interesting bit - he had had this infection for some time without knowing it, but during that time, the story arc of the Invisibles turned strangely, incorporating these giant bugs as the enemy. I remember Morrison writing that he believed that arc directly reflected his physical state, even though he hadn't been aware of it at the time.
Nora keeps reminding me of Van Gogh, for more than one reason. But mainly because his infirmity also contributed to the passion/perfection of his artistic vision.
So, I don't see Nora having to be aware of the fragment in her head at all. I believe it could impact her work, even without her having a conscious visualization of it.
The pychogeography theme has a very strong resonance here in London because so much of the city's structure/s - the major buildings/points of convergence for public meetings, roads, waterways and walks - are essentially in the same places as they were five, six, seven hundred years ago. Lots of people are particularly taken with the study of churches; most famously St Paul's Cathedral is sited on top of a major Druidic temple. It was always the tradition of Christians to site their churches on top of pagan temples to obliterate them but many believe there is a greater cosmological/spooky spritual significance too. Anyway, Iain Sinclair seems to have made his life's work out of his obsession with this, but he can require a lot of historical background to get all the references he layers into his writings. I think an easier way into this is HAWKSMOOR by Peter Ackroyd, ostensibly a biography of one of the most famous and influential church builders while also a page-turning ripping yarn as well as a history lesson. Great stuff. Once you get into this area of study you will notice the same dozen names popping up again and again...
quote:Originally posted by hostile seventeen: I don't have the book here, but I seem to recall a mention of an x-ray or cat-scan of the thing in Nora's brain? Maybe I'm conjuring it up from nothing, go me, but I assumed that Nora had seen her own x-rays or scans and worked the image in, the way she worked lots of other images in -- in her own autistic way.
I like this idea. It never occurred to me. I assumed the shape of the object inside the brain had a direct influence on the emerging patterns in the art -- not that Nora, in any human way -- even a handicapped human way -- could be making a deliberate reference.
Now that it's been said, it seems so obvious. I can't help but wonder what Gibson would think of it, though ...
Conversely, leela/tigerstripes has drummed up exactly the kind of evidence I was looking for at the beginning of the thread. Aah, which way to turn ...?
[QUOTE]Originally posted by wax: I like this idea. It never occurred to me. I assumed the shape of the object inside the brain had a direct influence on the emerging patterns in the art -- not that Nora, in any human way -- even a handicapped human way -- could be making a deliberate reference.
Now that it's been said, it seems so obvious. I can't help but wonder what Gibson would think of it, though ... QUOTE]
The fact that a third party was used to watermark the film with the T image seems to me to prove that the T image is deliberate and conscious. But since Nora is virtually catatonic, how did she relay the order to watermark the film?
