PHILLIP HANSON
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Recent Writing

3/22/2021

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03.22.21 Passage

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Areas replicate and change their meaning with only the most superficial differences in appearance. The bulging white shape on the left becomes the floor beneath the passageway in the center. A mycelium-like triangular blob connects to a line in the upper left and directs visual traffic toward the passage. Another triangular blob on the right, just above the flat reflective plane, directs traffic toward a dotted line of escape. Each of these triangle blobs is connected to a series of larger amorphous blobs above. Passage is a glitch space.

03.21.21 Three works: Forbidden Seas, Rocking the Billows, Stirring the Lee

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These three images are part of a series called Gates. Gates is about overcoming fear by taking courageous leaps of faith. It is about connecting with and trusting something greater than ourselves and returning home to connect with and support others. Forbidden Seas, Rocking the Billows, and Stirring the Lee are inspired by Melville’s quote about the subtleness of the sea and all the violence it contains. They are imagined as the frightful threshold at the beginning of a heroine’s or hero’s journey. It is far easier to stay on our own private islands of comfort and peace than to set sail into the unknown, especially when there is a begging chorus of the fearful insisting not to leave the comfort of land.

References:
  • “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick​
  • “A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.” ― John A. Shedd
  • https://medium.com/@cmmhartmann/what-to-do-with-good-art-from-reprehensible-people-b547c8f7666a
  • ​“Paintings are sacred objects in some sense …. and we gaze at them in ignorance and wonder. And the reason for that is that the unknown shines through the mattes in partially articulated form. …… Well that’s the rule of art …. and that’s the rule of artists. Real artists are contending with the unknown and they have a personality trait – openness – that makes them do that (creativity) – they can’t even help it. …… Open people have to be creative. They have to be, otherwise they die. They don’t have any vitality and so they’re cursed with the necessity of putting a foot out into the unknown and making sense of it. They’re also cursed with the necessity of trying to make a living while they’re doing that which they can’t because it’s almost impossible to monetize creative action. It’s not that creative action is without value: creative people are entrepreneurs; creative people revitalize cities; creative people make things magnificent and beautiful. …… A real piece of art is a window into the transcendental. And you need that in your life because you’re finite and limited and bounded by your ignorance and your lack of knowing. And unless you can make a connection to the transcendental, then you don’t have the strength to prevail. Without beauty, there’s no call to higher being. Life is too dismal and tragic with the absence of the sublime.” https://arts-lab.co.uk/why-you-need-art-in-your-life-j-peterson/ --Jordan Peterson
  • “We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”― Henry David Thoreau



03.20.21 (Vernal Equinox) Cherry Bomb (v1), Cherry Bomb (v2 - digital concussion)

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Whenever I see fireworks I remember a particular scene in Cao Xuegin’s, Dream of the Red Chamber. The firecracker is a dark omen in the novel. Its true potential cannot be realized without brilliant, awe-inspiring self-destruction. Fireworks are both spectacle and specter. As a child I enjoyed the colorful spectacle of light and sound. I still enjoy this, however, as an adult I am reminded of conflicts past, present, and future.  The darker side of fireworks became even more evident after my brother-in-law returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Within half a second of hearing a neighborhood celebratory blast he lay flat on his face on my mother-in-law's carpet, a veteran's reflex. Cherry bomb address the firecracker’s duality. In an instance, the beauty and power of luminous destruction makes way for the eerie aftershock of change and loss.

References:
  • Solving riddles written on lanterns is another popular activity during the Lantern Festival, which dates back to the Song Dynasty. In the novel (Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xueqin (c. 1715–1763)), after returning to the imperial palace, Yuanchun asks a eunuch to send over a lantern riddle to the Rong Mansion for the youth to solve. The author intentionally gives a hint of each main character’s destiny through their riddles. Those riddles—ambiguous and yet suggestive—contain the predictions of the characters’ future tragedies. For instance, what Yuanchun describes in her riddle is the firecracker, which disintegrates and turns to ash after a single explosion, implying that Yuanchun only enjoys a short moment of glory and then dies young. Her death is a sign of the end to the family’s privileged position at court. The riddle recited by Jia Xichun (Yuanchun’s younger cousin) is about a temple lamp, which also contains an unfavorable allusion. At the end of the novel, Xichun gives up her worldly concerns and becomes a Buddhist nun after the fall of the Jia family. http://www.csstoday.com/Item/6480.aspx
  • “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that one way or another.” J. Robert Oppenheimer https://www.atomicarchive.com/media/videos/oppenheimer.html
  • “to Independence where the old man's still alive who loosed the bomb that's slaved all human consciousness and made the body universe a place of fear…” From Alan Ginsburg Wichita Vortex Sutra 1966 https://chriscander.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Allen-Ginsberg-Wichita-Vortex-Sutra.pdf

​03.19.21 Prior to the Chessmens’ Arrival

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This image is about the casual nature of our constructed realities. Specifically, how we follow basic visual cues and function (necessarily) in a kind of autopilot. It would be impossible to function if we were trying to carefully interpret every little spatial cue. The title refers to the manufacture of place, the chessboard of our daily moves. I’ve added a second image with some color coding to outline specific instances where spatial cues are used inconsistently. An exception is red dots which indicate horizontals that have been placed over the blurred surface. These horizontals compress as they recede from the viewer and help to indicate the surface plane’s spatial depth. The green loops show how the object on the back wall is not reflected in the surface while the blue loops show a reflection independent of an object. The Yellow loops show how a strong reflective anchor can carry the experience and override the inconsistencies previously mentioned. The magenta loops help to enhance the sense of reality by suggesting a change in light quality and temperature to coincide with the overlapping planes of space. In spite of all of these inconsistencies, the system of space and depth cues wins the day and the sense of space feels remarkably consistent.

03.18.21 Shell Game

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Light dancing on the retina is almost never processed as raw information. It is biased by previous stimuli and conditions. A repeated exact shape and color may be interpreted as something entirely different based on a myriad of contextual clues. Our consciousness rearranges and anticipates pulses of light as reality. We track and anticipate the placement but in our bones we know we are complicit in the construction of reality itself.

References:
  • shell game, Noun NORTH AMERICAN, a game involving sleight of hand, in which three inverted cups or nutshells are moved about, and contestants must spot which is the one with a pea or other object underneath.  A deceptive and evasive action or ploy, especially a political one. Plural noun: shell games. "officials played a shell game by loading prisoners onto buses during population counts at the jail" Definitions from Oxford Languages
  • https://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see?language=en​
​

03.17.21 Ancient Eye

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A missing relic
A solitary, disembodied ancient eye
A god’s eye
Fossilized calculations grind on immortal
Like Janus on this present’s edge
Peering back to the great flash
Beaming forward into ultimate darkness

03.16.21 Synapse ​​

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​Moss grows on heaving stones that merge sympathetically with excited electric light reflected in a crystalline sky. Matter and energy collide, transforming in the crucible of an instance, a lifetime of men, synaptic firings between unknowable realities.

03.14-15.21 Forest Bathing

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Initially my children and I visited the forest to escape domestic confinement without fear of the virus and to expend an unhealthy load of pent up energy. Before long we noticed improvements in all spheres of our lives. The forest heals. The Japanese call the act of spending time in the forest for healing purposes, “Shinrin-yoku,” which translates as “forest bath”. We weren’t just walking, we were forest bathing.  I longed to bring the peace I felt in the woods into my home which eventually reminded me of the Farnsworth House designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The cold, cerebral, a priori qualities - the mathematical steel and glass construction of the International Style interfaces with the a posteriori sensations of natural life and personal experience. Similarly the goal of my image “Forest Bathing” was to merge and to juxtapose the sensations of the warming natural forest space with the pervasive digital spaces, spaces to which my children are native.

References:
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  • https://images.dwell.com/photos-6166648977860894720/6566485711244447744-large/pictured-is-the-rear-of-the-farnsworth-house-designed-by-ludwig-mies-van-der-rohe-the-homes-structure-is-based-on-three-horizontal-steel-planes-lifted-out-of-nature.jpg
  • “The Farnsworth House, designed and built in the International Style by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for Dr. Edith Farnsworth from 1949-1951, is one of the world’s most widely-recognized and studied structures constructed in the 20th century. “ https://farnsworthhouse.org/
  • ​“Shinrin in Japanese means “forest,” and yoku means “bath.” So shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses.” https://time.com/5259602/japanese-forest-bathing/
  • “A priori and a posteriori ('from the earlier' and 'from the later', respectively) are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. A priori knowledge is that which is independent from experience. Examples include mathematics,[i] tautologies, and deduction from pure reason.[ii] A posteriori knowledge is that which depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori

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  • Home
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