Stefan Arteni

The Science Of Art

SolInvictus Press 2006

Stefan Arteni, The power of art is enduring (Seal Script), 38 x 14 inch [98.5 x 37.5 cm]

Visual art, evolutionary game theory, cybernetics, logic of distinctions, polycontexturality: a heuristic musing. [Notes for a lecture-demonstration; March 9, 2006, QCC Art Gallery CUNY, New York] The aim of this presentation is to create a bird's eye view from which one can unify, under a systematic new paradigm, the understanding of both local issues of artistic structure and organization, and global issues of artistic style configuration and its diachronic change. Einstein could not accept the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory because of his deep conviction in the rationality of the universe. In his view, the statistical laws necessary to explain the subatomic world can only compel God to throw the dice in each case. Aion [time, eternity] is a child at play, playing draughts [pesseia, a board game which employs dice/knucklebones,] said Heraclitus. Sophocles, in a fragment, ascribed the invention of draughts and knucklebones (astragaloi) to Palamedes, who taught them to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Athena was credited with the invention of divinatory dice made from knucklebone. In short, and paraphrasing Heidegger, the Gods do indeed throw the dice of dasein.

Roman sculpture, Game of Knucklebones "Playfulness is the simultaneity of multiplicity," writes Don Handelman. Play is adaptive potentiation [Brian Sutton-Smith.] Regarding science, Jean-Michel Salanskis says: "Axioms are an inaugural and prescriptive throw of the dice." One of the attributes of humans is the propensity to engage with worlds that are imaginary

- cognition about non-veridical scenarios, represented verbally, visually or kinetically. Art making may be considered a human propensity that has been exapted to other functions - it is the result of a functional shift. Preexisting behaviors receive a secondary function through exaptation and ritualization [Daniel Nettle.] Ritualization increases impact through the use of repetition, high intensity, strong contrasts, alerting signals, and stereotypy in basic units. Syntax may be defined as distributed sets of structural and dynamical rules. Syntax may be a trait exapted to multi-tasked processing. .As William Calvin puts it, syntax is not the only type of structured thought, and perhaps not even the first to evolve. Other structured aspects of thought are multi-stage planning, games with rules that constrain possible moves, chains of logic, structured music and a fascination with discovering hidden order, with imagining how things hang together. One compelling indication of the need for syntax [or morphosyntax, that is rules governing construction, that could be used for recursive compositional constructs] were the patterned scratchings [grammata] that forked both into art and writing [William Calvin] - that is a combinatorial (syntactic) structure determined by the medium constraints and by the force of convention. An adequate ontology must contain a qualitative topology, a theory of boundaries and interiors, of connectedness and separation, which is integrated with a mereological theory of parts and wholes to form a mereotopology [to paraphrase Barry Smith.] "The motor for the drawing of fiat boundaries in commonsensical reality is, on the one hand, human perception, which - as we know from our experience of Seurat paintings - has the function of articulating reality in terms of sharp boundaries even when such boundaries are not genuinely present in the autonomous physical world" [Barry Smith.] Proper parts are delineated or carved out [by fiat] within the interiors of larger bona fide objectsfiat objects may be scattered: they may be such as to circumclude constituent bona fide objects within a larger fiat whole [Barry Smith.] By drawing lines, that is crisp and/or indeterminate boundaries, one draws painterly objects, their parts and boundaries, which may be construed as the products of arbitrary or fiat delineation within an extended whole, including perhaps also negative parts [holes.] "Things are brought into being out of no thing by distinctions being drawn which insist on boundaries. That these, in as far as we external observers can tell, are illusions does not make them any less real or necessary. Such illusion-ness ephemerality ungraspably shimmering quality we often forget, especially in laying down the laws of the bounds of the imagination" [Ranulph Glanville, Francisco Varela.] Or, to put it differently, not quite identical things [e.g. prototype and artificial image] are treated as if they were similar on the basis of visual cues and topological invariants. We treat observing as if it were of Objects. The as if gives the ability to postulate/construct Objects such that we believe they are held in common between observers. We can treat observing by different observers as if shared [Ranulph Glanville.] As in the case of exaptation, repertoires, initially shaped under one set of conditions, may be recruited by a quite different set of conditions into a new function and eventually into a radically new repertoire. The Pythagoreans realized that by drawing a line between two points one could create space out of nothing - some-thing emerges from no-thing [distinctions ontology.] Pythagoras saw the chance to enjoy a game for the sake of the spectacle ," playing the game unencumbered by any taint of game-external meaning, playing the game for the beauty of the play alone, for

"what was done and how it was done. Players can and do enjoy the exploration and contemplation of the rules, of the algorithm as much as or more so than of the ultimate goal achievement [atelic play and game-meaning.]

Game Theory Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics. It has recently drawn attention from computer scientists because of its use in artificial intelligence and cybernetics. Some game theorists have turned to evolutionary game theory which includes both biological as well as cultural evolution and also models of individual learning (for example, fictitious play dynamics.) These models presume either no rationality or bounded rationality on the part of players. Evolutionary game theory does not necessarily presume natural selection in the biological sense. Game theory has been put to several uses in philosophy. David Lewis used game theory to develop a philosophical account of convention. In so doing, he provided the first analysis of common knowledge. In addition, he first suggested that one can understand meaning in terms of signaling games [signaling games as games of imperfect information.] This later suggestion has been pursued by several philosophers since Lewis. The emergence of cultural behavior in multiple games One appeal of evolutionary game theory is that it allows for relaxation of the traditional game theoretical fully-informed rational actor assumption. The evolutionary models presume that people, or agents, are myopic, and that individuals may make errors in the sense that strategy selection is driven by natural selection, imitation, or genetics, and not inductive reasoning. Within the framework of evolutionary game theory, players may not know all the rules, games are repeated, agents play multiple games simultaneously and evolve or choose separate strategies in each. Agents can also apply similar strategies to distinct games [Jenna Bednar and Scott Page.] Complexity emerges: the whole differs from the sum of the parts. The hallmarks of cultural behavior are consistency within and across individuals, variance between populations, contextual effects, behavioral stickiness, low rationality, and suboptimal performance. The framework rests on two primary assumptions: (i) agents play ensembles of games, (ii) agents have finite cognitive capacity. Evolutionary game theory provides a dynamic framework for analyzing repeated interaction. These replicator dynamics may cause local conventions to emerge [Jenna Bednar and Scott Page.] In The Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith defines plays function as "the reinforcement of the organisms variability," so that its evolved behaviours dont become too rigid and predictable. This variable behaviour goes from "the actual to the possible" that is, from physical play to the play of the mind. Psychologically, Sutton-Smith defines play as "a virtual simulation characterized by staged contingencies of variation, with opportunities for control engendered by either mastery or further chaos." Jesper Juul describes the conceptual framework for two types of games: Progression Games. Game type where variation happens by introducing new elements and features as the player progresses in the game, that is serially introduced challenges. The opposite of emergence games [Jesper Juul.] Emergence Games. Game type where variation appears by the interaction between elements in the game. Emergence games often surprise players and even the designers of the game. The opposite of progression games [Jesper Juul.] However most games can be regarded as a combination/blend of the two types: emergent, but with embedded progression structures. There is more to the relation between progression and emergence - emergence may have a strong disposition to develop towards progression, and the

progression of the player with every game as well as the player expanding the repertoire must also be taken into consideration [Joris Dormans.] One may speak of finite and infinite play. James Carse argues cogently that infinite play is paradoxical - infinite play is played to play, the purpose being to continue the game. The time of the play is time created within the play. Carse has clearly indicated that an infinite game means the infinite use of finite means - infinity arises out of radical finitude. Martin Heidegger might cast this as an interpellative act, a calling-into-being within a world whose modality is grounded by play. "Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries" [James P.Carse.] Knowing what the rules delimit, the player can then build upon them, constrained only by the bounds of his/her creativity. Additionally, the infinite player can then create new rules based on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic orders of the existing ones. These new rules have the advantage of sharing a common system between them, thereby making them intelligible to other players despite their originality. Therefore, the infinite player always uses rules as means for play continuation, as opposed to allowing them to constrict his/her play. Since finite games can be played within an infinite game, infinite players do not eschew the performed roles of finite play. On the contrary, they enter into finite games, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players. They embrace the abstractness of finite games as abstractness, and therefore take them up not seriously, but playfully. As has become clear by now, culture is an infinite game, an intricate kaleidoscope of games being played. Culture is poiesis-autopoiesis, and all its participants are poietai - makers. Autopoiesis generates boundaries - infinite play plays with boundaries and rules. There is a nexus of supportive relations between formalization and play as well as within their chiastic reversal, the play of formalizations [David Lidov.] Gao Jianping draws an analogy between painting and the game of go. He also suggests that ''Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them" [Gao Jianping.] Rules /emergence of conventions /constraints In systems-theoretical parlance, visual art is a symbolically generalized communication medium. Instances of communication can be viewed as fundamentally game-theoretic processes, accounting for stimuli, overlaps among stimuli, receiver bias, common knowledge of players, incomplete information, and sensitivity to the form of the signal, such as ornamentation and ritual, especially in highcontext cultures. Art constrains perception. Art is a fuzzy rule-based system, where rules are performative and prescriptive. Graphical interaction games suggest the emergence of graphical conventions or conventional graphical schemata within a community [culture immanent interactional context.] Conventions are culturally evolved higher order cognitons. Over several thousand years the original Chinese character that represents 'mountain' has evolved into its current, less complex, form. The change is not arbitrary. It is a result of global coordination that took place over time and space, culminating in a refined, conventional form that promotes rapid communication with reduced effort. This is an example of an evolutionary process where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts [Nicolas Fay, Simon Garrod, John Lee.]

Representations retain a degree of iconicity. They exhibit a degree of systemacity that make them easily differentiable. Through interaction partners minimize their collaborative effort, stripping away unnecessary graphical information, leaving only salient properties. Graphical interaction frequently figures in everyday communication. Examples include sketch maps, explanatory diagrams, and plans. The basic research findings advance understanding of some basic aspects of human communication: emergence of conventions, co-ordination of interpretation, and effectiveness of representations [Simon Garrod.] "Semiotic dynamics is a novel field that studies how semiotic conventions spread and stabilize in a population of agents. In these models, a positive feedback loop causes some naturally occurring variation to propagate and eventually dominate. Recent work on complex adaptive systems has shown that self-organisation can explain how a group of distributed agents can reach a coherent set of conventions and how such a set can be preserved from one generation to the next based on cultural transmission. These investigations continue by exploring the presence of stochasticity in the various aspects of communication: stochasticity in the non-linguistic communication constraining meaning, the transmission of the message, and the retrieval from memory. We show that there is an upperbound on the amount of stochasticity which can be tolerated and that stochasticity causes and maintains variation" [Frederic Kaplan.] Cristiano Castelfranchi distinguishes between signification [getting a meaning.] communication [getting a message] and

A sign-system is non-universal. Attractor network models of associative memory may explain the dynamics of pattern and structure recognition [J.J.Hopfield and Igor Yevin.] Roy D'Andrade [cognitive anthropologist] has introduced the idea of cultural schemata or cultural models, patterns that make up the meaning system of a cultural group. Pursuing the idea of ontological incommensurability, cultural schemata or models provide a continuity and coherency in a given culture's systems of belief. Culture-embedded formal conventions [formal affordances and constraints]: Canons of proportions [iconometry] Systems of proportions [Jay Kappraff] Projective transformations

Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon System-wide constraints: Medial constraints Physiological constraints: Sight: myopia [blurred shapes] astigmatism [image is not clearly focused either in the horizontal or in the vertical plane and in some cases vertical lines may appear to be leaning over] accomodation problems/eyes are affected differently Resulting in: a lack of depth perception/ dissociation of outline and color patch

Raoul Dufy http://echos-de-mon-grenier.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

Image "Image is taken as a giventhey do not distinguish the image formation solicited by a medium. Image always implies poiesis" [Ivan Ilich.] Opsis [the Greek word for gaze] - an active virtue of looking - has been replaced by instruction for correct viewing through scientific optics [Ivan Ilich.]

Curiously, Quantum Picture, a company developing software for image recognition, has formulated an elegant definition of the artificial image, by grasping the subtleties debated earlier during the iconoclastic controversy: an image consists of a collection of a finite number of discrete [distinct, noncontinuous] features. The image recognition problem suggests that some features have to match. Image may be also defined as an autonomous system [David Vernon] which, though existing in a context, is self-specifying and self-determining and implies formal equivalence relations. The image may be defined as designed conventional and learned perceptographic patterns specialized as signs. "Pictorial objects are 'real' in a different sense than physical objectsthey exist only in the mind of the beholder" [J.J.Koenderink.] "The image is capable of generating a form of perception that combines the perception of similarity with the experience of difference" [Klaus Krueger.] Stored hypotheses can be triggered by visual cues, an array of feature matches, or saliency. Nicephorus applies Aristotelian logic to the image question and lays stress on the image as a representation and as such distinct per se from that which it represents. The artificial material image belongs to the category of relation, a relational connection of similarity. He writes that the iconoclast refuses to understand the meaning of equivalence and homonymity. The image of the emperor on a coin is an example of homonymity. By making a distinction between graphe and perigraphe, Nicephorus recognizes the autonomy of graphe: visual art has a domain of its own [Stefan Arteni.] Variety: a central question in lexicography is its domain in terms of formal varieties defined in terms of situational or contextual constitutive factors. There are many dimensions of variation, both historical and synchronic, and the terminology for formal variation is extensive, ranging from wellknown terms such as style and genre through idiolect/idiopraxis. Style may be described as "...a replication of patterning, whether in human behaviour or in the artefacts produced by human behaviour, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints"[L.B.Meyer.] Cultural examples may be characterized by synchronic divisions, but they may also be used for diachronic comparison, showing how a visual system has changed over time, or with contact with a different system. An image construct , a visual trope [in the sense of figurative use of an expression,] has usually been an interpretation/appropriation of a previous construct type. J.P.Lewis [who proposes a Creation by Refinement model] suggests that fuzzy structures or class of patterns specified by example may lead to novel visual constructs. This is achieved by means of a sort of creative computation which ''refines' random creations in correlation with the input pattern [formal visual core repertoire.] The archetypal imagic constitutive similarity and otherness coexist within a sequence of constructs, a chain of signifiers, concrete diachronic instantiations of visual construct category prototypes.

Stefan Arteni, Adam and Eve [Seal Script]

Stefan Arteni, Theosis [Greek; carved soapstone seal impression] "... every signifier is related to another signifier so that there is nothing outside the significant chain, which goes on ad infinitum" [Umberto Eco.] The transmission of sets of images, the recurrence of constructs, the chain of constructs that function as antecedents, as links, as products of artistic conventions, as elaborated versions of models where diachronic changes add new layers to the visual palimpsest, replication by repeated instantiation paradoxically underscoring the impossibility of invariant repetition, are a conscious process involving free and purposeful re-thinking and re-interpreting of the tradition, and an imagery that is re-imagined [polyvariance, appropriation, substitution, transposition, metamorphoses and attenuations, interpretation, adaptation, quotation and self-quotation, reuse, hidden and stylistic quotations, transposition, de- and re-contextualization.] There can be no secure rules by which such a process can be reversed to regain the lost originals. The most one

can attain is a kind of generalized set of images in which the differences of individual sets have been artificially reconciled. The object of a sign is more than a mere reflection of reality [Augusto Ponzio.] An object or referent of the sign can be a sign itself, a sign refers to a sign whose origin has become increasingly difficult to trace. The aesthetic sign functions as such due to its own quality [Winfried Noeth.] There is an Intentional interpretant and there may be an Unanticipated interpretant [Peirce] and there may be also an immediate object and a dynamical object [Peirce.] What someone believes to be the referent, does not determine the actual referent [or object]. The Pygmalion syndrome consists in the fallacy of taking an artificially created model not only to be representing reality but to be just another instance of reality [Claus Emmeche] Often one detects evidence of what might be called a 'cultural filter.' There are empirical psychological data showing that humans and animals are sensitive to the form of signals [such as ornamentation and rituals] and not just to the information they convey. Spectacular cultural phenomena can evolve that convey little meaningful information, but still have strong impact on spectators: signal forms or ''visual displays are highly redundant spectacular cultural phenomena convey little information one is sensitive to the form of the signals" [Magnus Enquist - ethology.] High-context cultures will focus on 'how' something is done and on the extensive use of cumulative rhetorical style. For instance, it is well known that by altering specific aspects of a familiar stimulus, supernormal effects stronger reactions can usually be produced, even when the new stimulus does not provide the receiver with more information [Magnus Enquist.] The stimulus is data rich, and information poor.

All Saints church, Parhauti, 16 century, Romania turism-center.ro/category/biserica-din-parhauti/

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Moldovita monastery, Annunciation church, 16th century, Romania http://moldovenii.md/library/photo/album/185/id/2595

Ostrov hermitage, 16th century, Romania pelerinaje-valcea.ro/manastiri/21

Dormition church, Vacarescu Calimachi court, Manesti, Romania, 18th - 19th centuries romaniape2roti.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Dormition church, Vacarescu Calimachi court, Manesti, Romania, 18th - 19th centuries romaniape2roti.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Dormition church, Vacarescu Calimachi court, Manesti, Romania, 18th - 19th centuries romaniape2roti.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Ascension church, Voloiac, Romania, 1808 http://www.biserici.org/index.php?menu=BIMH&code=16176&criteria=&quick=&radio=b&order=P. TOWN,C.NAME,P.NAME

Ascension church, Voloiac, Romania, 1808 http://www.biserici.org/index.php?menu=BIMH&code=16176&criteria=&quick=&radio=b&order=P. TOWN,C.NAME,P.NAME

Ascension church, Voloiac, Romania, 1808 http://www.biserici.org/show_photo.php?id=45404&w=1280&h=738

Jgheaburi hermitage, Ilie from Teius and Constantin from Zmeurat zographers, 1826-1828, Romania http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/43718784.jpg "An increase in signal complexity may also allow qualitatively different stimulation to be effective...the ability...to recognize patterns in time may favor signals that are variable in time over monotonous repetitions of the same signal" [Hartmut Winkler]. Costly signals may evolve for a number of reasons. Biases in receiver's recognition mechanisms can promote the evolution of costly exaggeration in signals. Learned recognition gives rise to more exaggerated signals than inherited recognition. Recipients repeatedly view certain programs. In terms of system theory, Niklas Luhmann describes familiarity as a genuinely human means for reducing systemic complexity: "Familiarity ... enables relative secure anticipations and thus absorbs remaining risks ..." (Luhmann.) Game theory is used as a tool for understanding interactions between individuals but advertisement and persuasion are phenomena that game theoreticians have had problems explaining. A helpful bridge is Luhmann's understanding of information: once information is expressed it is no longer information per se; it has exhausted itself. Though, this "automatic mechanism does not exclude the possibility of repetition." Repetition itself is a form of meta-information that can be interpreted as indicating the value of the repeated (now) non-information. Consequently, James Carey seems to be arguing that the ritual view focuses on the communication of this metainformation of commonality, instead of novelty. Ritualization sees the original or highest manifestation of communication not in the transmission of intelligent information but in the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world that can serve as a control and container for human action [James W.Carey.]

Ritual is the communication in a mythic tongue, the expression of a universe of experience, compressed into an economy of symbols overloaded into archetype. Ritual is the performance of myth that binds (religare) the individual and the specific to the universal and archetypal. This model has its origins in the research into oralityoral-formulaic high-context cultures of presence vested in repetition and ritual. From a contemporary perspective, this is a technique of cyclical rejuvenation, which, as Friedrich Nietzsche put it, literally burns memory into humans [Hartmut Winkler.] "the stability of repetitive cycles can be explained (and is already observable in the animal world) through habit, the proclivity for repetition and schemata, as well as the economy that comes with such repetitionConventions are congealed practices: sedimentations, deposits of, actually, fluid acts and events that accrue and accumulate, and eventually transmute into a structure Through the notion of convention, we open up an entire universe of theoretical problems that can now be linked to the model described here: first off, theories of schemata, which have become important in the analysis of visual media: all the approaches ranging from Gestalt psychology to the theory of stereotypes and from iconography in fine arts to the notion of aesthetic form center, at bottom, around what semiotics would subsume under the notion of a codeit should be seen in the context of the interplay between a pattern and its reenactment, a moment of action and a moment of persistence. Deposited in material fashion, and hence 'monumental,' the pattern awaits its reactivation and renewalThe notion of condensation is the core of the model and its real theoretical gain. What characterizes condensation is that it combines a quantitative with a qualitative aspect" [Hartmut Winkler.] The high-context nature of oral society allows individuals to use inferences and indirect references. A viewer may require little more than reminders to recall, as much has been absorbed through osmosis in the culture. It is equally important, however, to consider the ''execution' of works, that is the visual production techniques especially in high-context cultures where communication is often based merely on symbols. Models of pattern perception suggest that, with increased familiarity, subjects become able to reconstruct a previous representation from very small, unique segments of the pattern. Prototype theory indicates that some category members are more representative of the category than others or that categories are defined by prototypical members. In the case of prototypical image constructs, diachronic graphic condensation of the iconographic topos [location/in rhetoric topos refers to a standardized method/ repertoire of formal potentialities] is available in a permanently editable form [paraphrasing Hartmut Winkler.] The relation of a construct to its instances is that of a type to a token. One can detect hidden patterns and structural changes or see similarities in patterns and convergence to a pattern, based on topological invariants and visual attractor patterns. Context may be diachronic and/or polychronic [many strands of time are moving at once.] Polychrony [the many different temporalities of the constituting elements] is being introduced here in addition to synchrony and diachrony. One may infer that it involves reproductivity, which only means that it can be repeated or reduplicated in a variety of contexts without losing either its meaning or its autonomy, while relationally expressions containing it necessarily modify each particular instance of it. Polychronic cultures rely more on implicit and nonverbal information as opposed to monochronic cultures that seek explicit communication. There is a looseness of reference of signs. A high-context communication is one in which most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit part of the message [Edward T.Hall.]

Games define possible worlds landscapes that players traverse. The dynamics and rules of a game shape its possible worlds landscape. Rules and dynamics constrain player input, limit reachable game states, limit transitions between possible game states, and automate game state transitions. A games rules are a web of constraints which hold its moving parts and experiences together, enable and prompt action on the part of the player, give intelligibility and plasticity to the system, imbue a miniature world with dynamics and life, generate the experience of responsibility, enable problem solving and contests, and give value to particular game states. One of the key principles in game-play, a cybernetic principle, is feedback.

A play of potentialities and constraints Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics, from the Greek word for steersman, to refer to any system that has built-in correction mechanisms, i.e. is self-steering. Let us harken back to the original meaning of the word "kybernetes". Kybernetes, that is steersman, helmsman, pilot, guide, is related to techne, that is 'doing with the hands', and in a more abstract sense, kybernetike stands for the ability to move through a changing environment or a steering space, or to self-steering within certain limits. Cybernetics may be defined as a play of potentialities and constraints. "This is how we must read the theory of those medieval philosophers," Giorgio Agamben writes, "who held that the passage from potentiality to act, from common form to singularity, is not an event accomplished once and for all, but an infinite series of modal oscillations." Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas previous sciences dealt with matter and energy, the new science of cybernetics focuses on form and pattern. Cybernetic concepts are relational. Fundamental to all these concepts is that of drawing a distinction. A distinction can be seen as an element of cognitive structuration which focuses on patterns and connectedness - strictly speaking they are purely formal transformations and precede any conception of representation. G. Spencer-Browns Laws of Form is an exploration of the syntactical possibilities of drawing a distinction and of covert conventions. There is an interaction between kinesthetic/spatiomotor and visual input. The traces of medium-specific actions are defined by Peer Bundgaard as exploitation of ontic constraints. Improvisation may involve repetition and revision, embedded in which are appropriative allusions to and fragmented citations of previous historical practices - it is up to the painter to reactivate the past. Ranulph Glanville describes art as an iterative and circular process with the unknowable and concludes: Art is deeply cybernetic. Both cybernetics and Buddhism can be said to characterize the world as a nonlinear dance of mutually adjusting feedback loops, and Spencer-Brown's distinction ontology, a non-numerical arithmetic, works with a Buddhist inspired theory, that is codependent arising. The cosmogonic and cosmostructural conception of the process of painting was formulated and summarized in Shi Taos (Yuan Jis) theory of painting. Its essence lies in the method of one stroke (yi hua, yi bi) that was conceived by Shi Tao as the sign of the transformation of being and non-being, embracing all the universe and bringing out the idea or principle (li) nurtured inside. The one stroke "concentrates the space" and "energizes" the emptiness by its polysemous allusions. The one stroke is the microcosmic embodiment of the macrocosm, as it reveals what is great through what is small. The One may be associated with Dao, the absolute, which was talked about in Laozi, Zhuangzi, Yijing. It is hidden in and beyond every thing, giving birth to the two (yin and yang, the strong and weak line) wherefrom ten thousand things spring up. The variety of their configurations is expressed through the sixty-four hexagrams of Yijing, understood as the transformations of the one stroke (yi hua) [Loreta Poskaite.] This is why the emotional power and spirituality of art resides in its form.

Such a model of a process will be called a dynamical representation. A representation should here not be understood in the sense of a homomorphic image of an objective, external reality, but as a system designed to give a more or less precise, mathematical shape or structure to the associations between different observations [Francis Heylighen.] The distinctions can be conceived as elementary structurations of a domain of experience (Spencer Brown,) hence as elements or units of representation. A representation as a whole can then be analysed as a network of distinctions connected by certain relations, i.e as a distinction system [Francis Heylighen.] we must understand the constraints which will select the actually occurring processes out of the potential ones, that is the dynamics of possible distinction processes, the dynamics of attractors and that of attractors and distinction destruction [paraphrasing Francis Heylighen.] Art learns new ways and associations from the way it is used.

Self-reference I will attempt to explore this question in two registers: first, the specific paradoxical function of form as understood in Niklas Luhmanns work, where form renders the world [unmarked space] observable, but only by means of distinctions that exclude precisely what we call world, thus rendering the world unobservable; and second, Luhmanns contention that works of art stage a re-entry into communication of the difference between perception and communication. Following a dictum of Luhmann, "self-reference possesses indeterminable complexity in the form of paradox." The play with perceptions is the main process of art's autopoietic becoming: art communicates by using perceptions contrary to their primary purposeart seeks a different kind of relation between perception and communication - one that is irritating and defies normality and just this is communicated. As Ranulph Glanville puts it, "distinctions are taken to be self-distinguishing." Put very briefly, and oversimplifying here for the sake of convenience, George Spencer-Brown's calculus of indications [or logic of distinctions] develops the idea of something as being (a) difference (with something else), and (thus) eventually different from itself. All something, or form is explained as the residual of a more fundamental level of operations (namely the construction of difference), including the calculus of indications explaining the very Laws of Form. The calculus compellingly uses latency, i.e. it is attentive to the importance of unmarked states for the construction of anything at all. Thus the side-effects, spillovers, and the seldom outspoken selfreference of all communications are always a paramount concern. Joseph Goguen defines a sign system as a system of distinctions. G. Spencer-Browns injunction is strongly visual: the mark as visual operator draws a distinction - perceptual, notational, spatial - and an indication of one or the other side of the distinction. The first distinction is contingent. Distinctions function as elements of structuration. The form of the distinction is the form, the unity of the operation that places what it distinguishes, the marked space, against the unmarked space. While making something visible, art makes, simultaneously, something else invisible. And yet, as Louis H. Kauffman admits, the one mark unifies the sides that it divides. Paradoxically, by means of a sort of performative apophasis, the mark affirms this unity by severing it. The cut or mark, argues Floyd Merrell, indicates (indexes) what it is only insofar as it is something other than the possibility of everything else. The former unity of the void [a formerly unmarked space] is made invisible and the observing system operates as a "recursion in the sense of a re-entry of functions as arguments of themselves" into the system, "primary arguments, if there are any, make room for eigenvalues, that are confirmed by any new step of the circular process..."[Andrea Leo Findesein]

One may argue that on the level of second-order observations all statements become contingent. Second-order cybernetics is more concerned with morphogenesis and positive feedback loops, a behaviour which is recursive and generates variety. "An observer is the link between himself and his observing self," suggests Ernst von Glasersfeld. Emergence typically produces its own principles of organization, which we can refer to as rules. "The more important structures of command are sometimes called canons [in the sense of sets of rules]. They are the ways in which the guiding injunctions appear to group themselves in constellations, and are thus by no means independent of each other. A canon bears the distinction of being outside (i.e., describing) the system under construction, but a command to construct (e.g., 'draw a distinction'), even though it may be of central importance, is not a canon. A canon is an order, or set of orders, to permit or allow, but not to construct or create" [George Spencer-Brown.] Self-organization of visual communicative interactions plays a major role in the emergence of symbolization. Complexity theory suggests that the Edge of Chaos is more than a balance point instability with order - it is also a point of unpredictable emergence within the context of a ludic cybernetic view of art. Simple rules, non-random events, act on random events and can produce complex patterns. The details of these applications have various connections to the ideas of convergence toward eigenvalues seen as attractors. Eigenvalues or perceptual regularities are stable self-produced values that result of recursive operations and thus imply circularity. "Eigenvalues [stable structures] represent the externally observable manifestations of the introspectively accessible cognitive operations," writes Heinz von Foerster. "A cybernetic model works by setting up constraints," remarks Ernst von Glasersfeld. Art operates with constraints rather than with efficient causes - it only eliminates what does not fit, and this means learning the viable path. "Forms are created from the concatenation of operations upon themselves andarerather indications of processesThe closed loop of perception occurs in the eternity of present individual time," writes Louis H. Kauffman. Thus one may speak of circular operationality, of the recursive self-implication of form, and also of indirect recursion when two or more procedures cyclically call each other. Form implies itself as a meta-distinction, as a form of form. The carrying out of algorithms or action chains are only algorithmic at the operational level - visual chunks [pieces of information that often appear together] or patterns of recall which are refinable are netted within a range of flexibility in automatized skills [tacit knowledge] and within the acquired repertoire of formal frameworks.

Stefan Arteni, The Thinker as Poet (poems by Martin Heidegger), artists book

Calligraphy by Mus Soseki, 1275 - 1351, Japanese Zen master, poem writer, garden designer.

Zen, on the other hand, goes beyond unity and duality in the sense that it transcends all concepts and relies solely on experience the expression and the experience also being considered one. Buddhahood would entail the ability to be continuously aware that signs do not in fact actually refer to the objects to which they purport to refer [Mario D'amato]: form is empty; emptiness is precisely form. Reentry occurs through feedback processes whereby products of one statebecome the content for the next state. Each sign becomes the object of another sign, and these contain each other[Terry Marks-Tarlow.] In reference to the distinction that is co-actualized in every designation, real is what is practiced as a distinction, what is taken apart by it, what is made visible and invisible by it. Knowledge as, in a different way, art - serves to render the world invisible as the "unmarked state," a state that forms can only violate but not represent - heteroreference must always be construed as an 'as if' or a 'seeing as'. Any other attempt must be content with paradoxical or tautological descriptions (which are meaningful as well.) Like science and religion, art makes the invisible visible, but not in the same way [Niels Albertsen and Buelent Diken] - art creates within reality a virtual irreality, an interactive fiction the invisible unmarked state becomes paradoxically visible as potentiality and contingency, as the potentiality of other contingent forms, both vertically and horizontally - in the total order of forms the invisible is declared by the visible , or, to abuse Luhmann's terms,art is mediation of the inexpressible, of the unrepresentable. Mutual complementarity of the hidden and the manifest: this refers to an almost gestalt emphasis on the mutual necessity of figure and ground, or event and the background against which it stands out. [Buddhist patriarch Fa-tsang] The Gods speak through the marks drawn by the artist [Setsuzan Tanaka Sensei] the sanskrit alphabet is called 'devanagari' which literally means 'cities of the gods.' - e.g.

As a perceptual phenomenon art is, then, an attempt to render permanent and tangible that which was formally intangible and fleeting, the seeking of order in the midst of disorder, the expression of the sense of pattern, harmony and symmetry synthesized from the immediate, ambient confusion. This definition need not exclude cultural interpretations [Derek Hodgson - cognitive archaeology.] The genesis of art has to be seen from the perspective of evolutionary time, that is, slowly unfolding, with many false starts, retrogressions, important developmental accomplishments and long plateaus of achievement, reinforcement or recapitulation but still continuing to evince a discernible trend [Derek Hodgson.] It may be construed as punctuated equilibrium. Complexity theory borrows and incorporates concepts from many disciplines. One key idea is the theory of punctuated equilibrium. It holds that evolution is marked by surges of speciation and avalanches of extinction. For example, species often develop quickly, endure with

little change for a long time, and then die out suddenly not gradually. Thanks to mutation and self-organization, some members of the species may find a niche and hang on to it. When their environment changes, they must adapt or disappear. The complexity theory notion of fitness helps account for punctuated equilibrium. Repetitive mark-making would, however,in itself, have constituted a novelty in the face of the flux of nature [Derek Hodgson.] It may be construed as an exponential process whereby the coordinated integration of abstract schema into representational forms led to less time-specific constraints on communicative expertise an expertise which was to culminate in symbolic depiction [Derek Hodgson.]

Creativity Art is the opposite of life [Danilo Kis.] In a lecture on the relationship between chance and creativity, Niklas Luhmann puts it the following way: "In many ways, the effects of creativity are products of chanceIn the terminology of theoretical systems, such facts are described as 'morphogenesis', 'order from noise' or 'dissipative structures.' One does not have to assume or demand unity , one has to take an interest in differences. Creativity is the effect of boundaries or discontinuities. It depends on the difference between chance and structure"( in: Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 10th 1987.) The dissociation of explicit and implicit knowledge implies that explicit memory is invoked when the individual recalls an event in the past. In this case, memory is used as an object. Explicit memory requires a conscious and intentional recall and is often slow and uncertain in its final form. Implicit memory, on the other hand, occurs when we use our past knowledge, that is our tacit knowledge (for example in problem solving) without conscious awareness that we are using it. Implicit learning occurs through the tacit detection of covariation (things that occur together) [Thomas Dowd.] This is why changes in games may effectively stall the growth in the learning process. Showing and demonstrating are communication acts - BIC [Behavioral implicit communication] such as teaching by example. Stigmergy [stigma-outstanding sign and ergon-work] may be defined as "incitement to work by products of work" or as "the production of a certain behaviour in agents as a consequence of the effects produced in the local environment by previous behaviour Stigmergy is a special form of BIC where the addressee does not perceive the behaviour [during its performance] but perceives other post-hoc traces and outcomes of it. To be sure, perceiving behavior is always perceiving traces and environmental modifications due to it, it is just a matter of perception time and of duration of the trace" [Cristiano Castelfranchi.] One should heed that story of Correggio standing before some great masterpiece and crying: Anchio son pittore ["I too, am a painter!".] This is how 'art constructs art' [S.J.Schmidt.]

Radical Constructivist epistemology Radical Constructivism is the view that knowledge and reality are constructed culturally, that is that two independent cultures will likely come up with different categorizations. Ernst von Glasersfeld is the prominent proponent of this form of constructivism. Radical Constructivism claims that knowledge is the self-organized cognitive process of the human brain. That is the process of constructing knowledge regulates itself, and since knowledge is a construct rather than a compilation of empirical data, it's not possible to know the degree to which knowledge reflects upon an ontological reality.

Thus, any specific instance of observation will still be the result of an indefinite succession of cognitive operationsThe particularity of this expression is that it is recursive and without any particular starting point, or initial conditionswe have the (possible) utilization of the set of attractors (eigenvalues) as referents for some aspects of the interaction of the dynamical system itself with its environment (e.g. the pattern recognition abilities of neural networks.) "Peter Cariani has developed the notion of emergence relative to a model [that is emergence as manifestation of new forms, e.g. syntactic emergence as a new combinatorial ability.] I see emergence relative to a model as an observer's possibility of switching between different models offering different modes of explanation. I argue that the syntax should be treated operationally in second-order cybernetics" [Luis M.Rocha.] During symbol formation, large amounts of information are filtered out of perceptual representations to form a schematic representation of a selected aspect. During productivity, small amounts of the information filtered out are added back. Thus, schematicity makes productivity possibleProductivity is not limited to filling in schematic regions but can also result from replacements, transformations, and deletions of existing structure symbol systems produce typetoken mappings the degree to which a symbol's content resembles its referent is neither sufficient nor necessary for establishing reference Similarly, it is not necessary for a symbolto bear any similarity to its referent [ Lawrence W. Barsalou.] The model may change without affecting the system itself in any way. What remains at the end is a scenario of emergence which takes place entirely on the observer's side. Here emergence would seem to bee in the eye of the beholder.

Polycontexturality An art object itself is polychronic, multitemporal, it reveals a time that is gathered together [Michel Serres.] The complex sign's indeterminacy and instability can be formally described, like most selforganization processes, through the calculus of indications introduced by George SpencerBrown. His attempt to set proper foundations for mathematics and descriptions in general views descriptions as based on a primitive act and accounts more specifically for the dynamic unfoldment of self-organizing systems. It may therefore be consistently applied to an adequate description of form mobility. By looking at writing as a performance practice, I have offered some examples of how finite gestures enact differentiable, abstract, or objective entities via finite traces. The taking in of forms of an alien contexture [contexture means a complex underlying pattern or structure, weaving parts into a whole, or warp and woof] transforms the receiving contexture. Conceptual and/or structural integration [blending] consists in the creation of a new space (the

blend) from the projection of elements and relations of, at least, two input spaces (also called contributing spaces.) The operations of composition (of elements in the blend), completion (of the blend by recruitment of other frames) and elaboration (dynamical elaboration of the structure in the blend) develop an emergent structure that is not available from the contributing spaces. The new blend structure leads to the construction of new connections. Algebraic semiotics views sign systems as abstract data types, because the same information can be represented in a variety of different ways or the same sign system can be realized in different ways. Being an autonomous semiotic domain means having a different tradition, variety of methods, problems and approaches to developing solutions. Semiotic sets overlap. Here we take the approach of basing signs on human social activity. We claim that signs do not have meanings in themselves, but only have whatever meaning we give to them [Joseph Goguen.] By means of the metaphor of polycontexturality one enters artistic 'multi-languageness' - cultural polyglotism - a plural and dynamic heterarchy of contextures and their playful synchronicity, diachronicity and polychronicity. Relativizing semiotics, the process introduces the concept of keno-sign [empty sign]. In regard to signs, Floyd Merrell contends: "Their balance may become precarious, and, deprived of equilibrium, dissipation can erupt, which then makes them likely candidates for a new form of order." The Latin word limes originally indicated the path between two fields, an in-between marginal space which connects and separates, a space of indeterminacy that is undefined and never fully definable. Cultural contextures set in the borderlands of cultures, from remote periods and modern ones, are spaces of parallelism, intersection, overlap, disjuncture and transjunction. How to comprehend the semiosphere (Yuri Lotman's notion) of the borderland? The boundary is a zone of semiotic polyglotism, it represents co-existence of differences, and encourages switches of contextures and a meta-artistic interplay of incongruent traditions and mutually incompatible form systems. A translocal multi-identiy web and a recursiveness of identity recreation, a being between and astride cultures and moving across visual contextures set side by side, imply a second-order perspective, an experiential metacultural sensibility - that is to say a polycontextural stylistic matrix. An inner metalanguage, multiple inheritances and multiple codings, are at work. The polarities of inside and outside are continuously reversed. The boundaries turn inside out, and the inside is the outside. Self-referential cybernetic systems offer the conceptual categories of an outside interior and an inside exterior. The work becomes a palimpsest of chiastic overlaps. Polychronic time is the eternal now, where everything occurs simultaneously: the play of interweaving multi-simultaneous artistic contextures, their ludic inter-tanglings, the move from a contexture to another, the decontextualizing/recontextualizing operations, and transcontextural operations. Form troping and troping tropes are often employed as a systems of connections of dissonant entities and of graphic interruptions, in analogy with the use of tropes in medieval music, where the troping principle [Greek tropos, turn] describes the mechanisms of suppression, addition, extension or interpolation of material at micro and macro levels, that is multiple modes of stylistic transposition. A polychronous model for formal syntax consists of heterogeneous models assembled for design refinement. In and by this property of seeming to visually self-entextualize, the formal plenitude-in-itself of the complex graphic sign is made figurally real in the experienceable here and now. Only through the power of its visual potential can the cultural function of graphic notation be explained.

"Heidegger's unveilingis the originary actThe world showing itself through techne is the originary chiasmus of Dasein. Techne provides access to the unveiling, the possibility for which itself simultaneously provides the condition of possibility for techne" [Paul Tulipana.] One should keep in mind the notion of game-meaning [Spielbedeutung], which is the meaning signs have by virtue of the fixed rules of a game. Spielbedeutung is thus meaning as use in a rule-governed gameThe sign in its semiotic function is defined by means of other signs. A semiotic system is a closed system in that the signs in it do not refer to anything outside the context of the gametheir semantic function either does not exist or tends to be forgotten [Edmund Husserl.] In connection with Husserls views on formal systems, one can distinguish the meaningintentions or ideal meanings that can be associated with signs in a formal system from the games meaning that one can attach to signs in formal systems solely on the basis of manipulating sign configurations according to sets of rules It is as though we are playing by the rules of a particular game and we need not be concerned with what the signs are about.

Conclusion And during my skimming of several other articles, I came upon Louis H. Kauffman's 'Fibonacci Form and Beyond.' Kauffman develops a context for self-referential forms: the Fibonacci sequence, the Golden Section, fractal forms, the logic of distinctions, dynamic systems, and quantum field theory, that is the natural appearance of the Fibonacci Form as a result of patterns of self-interactions of the mark [patterns of non-intersecting marks are called expressions.] For Michael Polanyi, we are invited, by a succession of detachments informed by the via negativa, to locate a meaning that is immanent in the form and that is not able to be attained conceptually. Cybernetics has circularity, circular interlocking, recursiveness, as its central concern, though as Gregory Bateson pointed out, circularity does not mean a precise circle in which events repeat themselves in the same circular path. This important theme is discussed in Bateson's concept of aesthetics. In his writing - unique in modern scholarship - aesthetic unity, incorporating a sense of the sacred, lies at the interface between the named (the maps) [our means of describing the world arises out of notions of difference (or what G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form calls "distinction" and "indication"),] and the unnamed (territory). Aesthetics is the unifying glimpse that makes us aware of the unity not able to be described in prose or prosaic consciousness. The sacred is the integrated fabric of mental processes that envelops all our lives.' The sacred implies tacit recognition that there are gaps; that the maps that we create will never provide a complete description of the territory. The essence of communication lies in the relationship between perceptual redundancy (which creates pattern{s}), metaphor, which cognitively links levels, and the sacred which lies at the interface of map and territory. Thus the sacred implies tacit recognition of an immanent aesthetic unity derived through current practices which embody patterns of relations. Aesthetic wholes derive from the pattern which connects. Redundancy is a vital clue to patterning - the patterns that connect and their recursive nature - it involves convention, habit, repetition and practice [Kathy M'Closkey.] Discontinuity and distortion are part of the recursive process. The edges or the boundaries between subsystems of aesthetics and consciousness, aesthetics and morality, unconsciousness and consciousness, are where both gaps and interconnections occur. Here difference is to be found and the differences that make a difference lie at the interface of sub-systems. Only here can the pattern of differences - together with change in this pattern - be perceived.

"...we see that our journey was, in its preconception, unnecessary, although its formal course, once we had set out upon it, was inevitable" [George Spencer-Brown.]

Stefan Arteni, A line from Li Sao: a circle does not fit with a square design (Seal Script), 132.7 cm x 48.3 cm

Excursus

Buddhist logic Nagarjuna's tetralemma: (1) X and non-X are identical, or interdependent; (2) X and non-X are different, or mutually independent; (3) X and non-X are both identical and different; (4) X and non-X are neither identical nor different. Nagarjuna: Tetralemma A ~A Both A and ~A Neither A nor ~A Emptiness

Speaking about the play of distinction, Thomas J. McFarlane remarks: Taken together, we see that the void is represented in form by more and more elaborate forms. In words, these levels may be interpreted as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. Emptiness is Form Emptiness is not Form Emptiness is both Form and not Form Emptiness is neither Form nor not Form

Francisco Varela has extended Spencer-Brown's work from a 2-value logic to a 3-value in which self-reference joins the void and distinction as the three primary entities that constitute all reality.

Handwriting Some authors view handwriting, like drawing, as a sequence of cyclic movements J.M.Hollerbach's oscillation handwriting model - the pen moves from left to right and oscillates vertically. Selection of Primitives: According to the harmonic oscillator description of the muscle action involved in handwriting production, cursive handwriting generation can be viewed as a sequential modulation of two coupled oscillations; one in the vertical direction and one in the horizontal direction. Hollerbach assumes that handwriting can be described as a modulated oscillation in both the horizontal and vertical directions with a constant factor added to the horizontal velocity.

Henri Matisse, Jazz, artists book

Henri Matisse, The Poems of Charles of Orlans, artists book

Stefan Arteni, aletheia, , Greek calligraphy

Stefan Arteni, Gefhrten (a poem by Martin Heidegger)

Stefan Arteni, Cantique de Saint Jean (poem by Stephane Mallarme), artists book

Chiasmus The Byzantine chora [land, country, space] was a kenotic space erased and 'crossed through' [Nicoletta Isar.] Chiasmus chi X [criss-cross]/chiastic reversal Chiasmus infused the thought and speech patterns of mind (from Ugaritic and Semitic to Christian culture), and if we are to believe Plato (Timaeus) it reflected the very structure of the universe, the cosmic soul. In ancient times, being and mind, cosmos and vision of the cosmos seem to have been organized according to a common ontological pattern. Chiasmus was a paradigmatic pattern of cohesion binding the community together as a living entity around the center [Nicoletta Isar.]

Indra's net Indra's Net was a metaphor for universal structure and was used by the Buddhists to exemplify the 'interpenetration and mutual identification' of underlying substance and specific formthere is "no question of the purpose of it all" then to become completely groundless is to become completely grounded. Indra's Net may appear as a philosophical analogy for various concepts, from the broad interconnected nature of the known universe, to more specific ideas such as self-similarity, and for the incommensurable and yet paradoxically inseparable, intersecting and interplaying artistic domains. Indra's net is formed from the superimposition and mutual penetration of countless such totalities.

Morpho-chromatic Structure Color and shape appear to be coded independently. Contrast is a metacomplementary relationship. The colors of the spectrum, or hues, are in practice represented as a color circle, where complementary color pairs form opposites at the circumference. The color circle comes about in that the visible extremes of the wavelength spectrum, purple and violet, meet and overlap in the perception of colors. Thus the hue dimension is a polar coordinate. Colors are always actual substances, i.e. paints. If two colors and/or white and/or black are mixed, the result will be called a tint. A scale consists of a series constructed according to a specific scheme and it is a member of the gamut in which it plays a role, e.g. value scale - lightness [tone, value, tonal value.] Hues reach their maximum saturation at different values. Classical primary, secondary, tertiary color [equal mixtures of a primary with a secondary next to it on the color wheel/old definition: mixture of two secondary colors in equal proportions.] The complementary is inferred from complementary afterimages of paint samples. Split complementaries: a color plus the color on each side of its complementary [orange, green, violet.] Double split complementaries: four colors, one from each side of two complementaries. Gamut stands for the span of all possible colors of a given work, i. e. the constrained color gamut of a given medium or for the mixtures of two colors and/or white and/or black, in which case one may speak of dominant gamut and one or more subdominants. The relational nature of color [adjacencies, color opponency] suggests that the logic of colors is a systemic one and the general trend in a system is to transgress all principles of classical logic [Solomon Marcus.] Dead color is different from the final layer but has a particular desired effect

on the surface layer. "The word cesia has been coined to refer to the visual sensations aroused by different spatial distributions of light: sensations of transparency, translucency, matte opacity, specularity, gloss, darkness, etc." (J. Caivano) Andre Lhote describes the methods used to subordinate, through the use of passages, the individual elements to the unified whole. The emphasis is on the emergent pattern which is hypothetically in a dynamic equilibrium, that is the play of fiat boundaries [the limit of a pattern and system is a fiat determination i.e. a distinction] and bona-fide boundaries, in short on constrained randomness of a morpho-chromatic structure of the color model including out-of-gamut transposition.

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Andre Lhote Vitruvius calls perspective scaenographia. Scenography is a way of "view-planning," that is coordinating the real with the visual, the rational with the painterly, usually conventionalized as a system of screens: foreground, middleground, background. Artifice creates new stage settings, painted stage-settings , and painted representations, artifice creates plays of visual constructs. One may assign a value to each screen, e.g. dark, light, grey, respectively, or one may follow Jacques Villons idea and assign a dominant color to each screen. Lhote himself writes of the function of "screens" in the composed landscape: "This mechanical system of light on dark, dark on light, animates all the great traditional landscapes. . . . If a light plane pushes forward the dark plane in front of it . . . a succession of waves is started up. . . an incessantmovement of values which cancel each other out only after they have given the spectator the sensation of depth".

Stefan Arteni