hdh-lacan

Current Events! DNA Double take (if you haven't read this times article yet, it's worth it! very calcutta chromosome) DNA chimeras and mosaics "scientists are discovering that — to a surprising degree — we contain genetic multitudes... that it’s quite common for an individual to have multiple genomes. Some people, for example, have groups of cells with mutations that are not found in the rest of the body. Some have genomes that came from other people." "Science’s changing view is also raising questions about how forensic scientists should use DNA evidence to identify people." "'It’s pretty likely that any woman who has been pregnant is a chimera,' Dr. Randolph said." "In 2012, Canadian scientists performed autopsies on the brains of 59 women. They found neurons with Y chromosomes in 63 percent of them. The neurons likely developed from cells originating in their sons." "Last year, for example, forensic scientists at the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory Division described how a [|saliva sample and a sperm sample] from the same suspect in a sexual assault case didn’t match."

Lacan - Zizek - Art



Often cited as an example of one of the earliest forms of "interactive art"

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"The skull achieves its true shape if you view it from the right hand side and very close to the plane of the painting. //To view it on a computer screen, close your left eye, and put your right eye next to the screen, about half way up the painting and about 5-10 cm. to the right of it."//======

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By means of the metaphor of anamorphosis, Bushy tries to convince the Queen that her sorrow has no foundation, that its reasons are null. But the crucial point is the way his metaphor splits, redoubles itself, that is, the way Bushy entangles himself in contradiction. First ("sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears, / Divides one thing entire to many objects"), he refers to the simple, commonsense opposition between a thing as it is "in itself," in reality, and its "shadows," reflections in our eyes, subjective impressions multiplied by our anxieties and sorrows. When we are worried, a small difficulty assumes giant proportions, the thing appears to us far worse than it really is.======

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The metaphor at work here is that of a glass surface sharpened, cut in a way that causes it to reflect a multitude of images. Instead of the tiny substance, we see its "twenty shadows.'' In the following lines, however, things get complicated. At first sight, it seems that Shakespeare only illustrates the fact that "sorrow's eye. . . divides one thing entire to many objects" with a metaphor from the domain of painting ("like perspectives which rightly gaz'd upon show nothing but confusion; ey'd awry distinguish form"), but what he really accomplishes is a radical change of terrain—from the metaphor of a sharpened glass surface, he passes to the metaphor of anamorphosis, the logic of which is quite different: a detail of a picture that "gaz'd rightly," i.e., straightforwardly, appears as a blurred spot, assumes clear, distinguished shapes once we look at it "awry," at an angle.======



Zizek p. 19 The "reality" (white background surface, the "liberated nothingness," the open space in which objects can appear) obtains its consistency only by means of the "black hole" in its center (the Lacanian das Ding, the Thing that gives body to the substance of enjoyment), i.e., by the exclusion of the real, by the change of the status of the real into that of a central lack.



Zizek p. 19 "All late Rothko paintings are manifestations of a struggle to save the barrier separating the real from reality, that is, to prevent the real (the central black square) from overflowing the entire field, to preserve the distance between the square and what must at any cost whatsoever remain its background. If the square occupies the whole field, if the difference between the figure and its background is lost, a psychotic autism is produced. Rothko pictures this struggle as a tension between a gray background and the central black spot that spreads menacingly from one painting to another (in the late 1960s, the vivacity of red and yellow in Rothko's canvases is increasingly replaced by the minimal opposition between black and gray). If we look at these paintings in a "cinematic" way, i.e., if we put the reproductions one above the other and then turn them quickly to get the impression of continuous movement, we can almost draw a line to the inevitable end—as if Rothko were driven by some unavoidable fatal necessity."



Zizek p. 19 In the canvases immediately preceding his death, the minimal tension between black and gray changes for the last time into the burning conflict between voracious red and yellow, witnessing the last desperate attempt at redemption and at the same time confirming unmistakably that the end is imminent.

~ ** Dreams ** ~ 9/16 1. I was having a face to face meeting with someone who is supervising a project I am working on. Last time we met I was so upset with what he sad and the way he said it, I almost burst into tears. In my dream I told him exactly how I felt, that I thought he was out of line, that the way he spoke to me was inappropriate and disrespectful. 2. My boyfriend was eating a giant bowl of really thick yogurt with M&Ms and raisins on top, in my parents' kitchen.

9/17 the fox I am in a pastoral setting, tending to a garden of fruits and vegetables. Behind me, and further behind a gate, a man (who I know) is rummaging in the weeds. Suddenly he holds up a large animal in his arms. He calls it a fox although it looks like some hideous hybrid between a fox and a coydog, it's enormous. He says to me "I should probably get rid of this..." I agree although I don't want him to leave.

9/18 the chess game a male and female character (perhaps famous actors?) separated somehow spatially, are playing chess ala duchamp and cage, on a flat magenta background as if in a video shoot.