Why Collect Digital Art? What Do You Believe? (Gen Art)

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Ian Rogers November 19, 2024

On the 14th of November, I received a text message from the Digital Art Curator Grida Hyewon Jang asking if I would mind giving an answer to three questions she had posted on X. She told me she planned to use the responses in a lecture she would be delivering to art students in Korea who are not particularly familiar with digital art. “Who knows – your comments might inspire a future artist!” she wrote.

That same day I was traveling from Paris, France to Marfa, Texas, for ArtBlocks annual community gathering (for more on ArtBlocks please read my earlier Tetragrammaton piece, Chimera: The Not-so-Still Life of Mpkoz). I had many thoughts bouncing around in my head that morning regarding digital art, a medium much maligned in the aftermath of FTX yet somehow still living and gaining momentum again. Grida’s request was a welcome opportunity to put those thoughts here on digital paper. I’m very happy for the opportunity to save these thoughts for posterity and present them to you, dear Tetragrammaton reader.I welcome your feedback and discussion.

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“Basquiat's work increases in value because the number of people who know the story increases while the supply does not. Luxury brands are trading on heritage and storytelling, not only products. Similarly, if you are wondering if the value of Cryptopunks will increase over the next 25 years you only need to ask: Will people still talk about them in 25 years?”

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Collectors: Why collect? What do you believe?

Modern, digital technology is a tool, created and wielded by humans, ostensibly under our control. Throughout history, the adoption of new technologies has driven profound shifts in society and this has been especially true when the technologies connect humans in new ways (shipping, telephony, trains, airplanes, internet, mobile connectivity) that lead younger generations to live differently than those who matured ahead of them.

Today, most of us are living in two worlds at once: physical and digital. We breathe in the physical world where we hug our children, eat, sleep, make love, run, ride skateboards, and play vinyl records. Often simultaneously, we email, DM, scroll, heart, create, share, shitpost and type with thumbs in a world of small-yet-powerful computers connected to one another via TCP/IP. We value the opinion of our network neighbors far more than our physical ones. We operate in dual worlds most of our waking moments, and share data with the cloud while we sleep. 

In my lifetime, as the five-year-old recipient of my brother's KISS vinyl, a teenage collector of VHS tapes about skateboarding and music, and MP3-trader-turned GM of Apple Music, I've lived through the digitization of all information. Obscure performances once mail-ordered from the classified ads in a newsprint magazine are now available to 5.52 billion Internet users with a simple keyword search on YouTube. 

Now, we have begun the digitization of all value. The "renting services on the Internet" business (internet-services business) has a current marketcap of about $4.75 trillion. The "owning digital value" business (cryptocurrency) is currently valued at $3.2 trillion. I believe the "owning digital value" marketcap will be at least an order of magnitude larger than this "renting digital services" industry within the next 25 years, and if Instagram hadn’t chickened out of their digital collectible market the lines would already be beginning to blur. The value of Internet services is centralized with the shareholders of companies whose product is the user. The marketcap of cryptocurrency will at least partially belong to the world's digital citizens held in permissionless digital self-custody.

The digitization of value, however, has a cold start problem. Asset value is relative to network effect -- it only exists if we all agree it does. Adoption curves to new technologies always takes time but the emerging Internet of Value has a different foe than the 1990s Internet of Information. In 1999, digital media was challenging an $895 billion traditional media market;today, the crypto industry is challenging a $9 trillion banking industry. Replacing 3% credit card surcharges is inevitable but will take a long time and digital ownership is much more than just finance. It's trustless proof of humanity, identity, and anything else.

www.beastieboys.com in December of 1998.

Music apps hold "early adoptor" status in online history. Many of the first CD-ROMs, Shareware, Web and mobile applications were applications to find and listen to music. "Self-publishing" music platform IUMA pre-dates the World Wide Web. CD Baby bridged digital and physical self-publishing ten years before Amazon started allowing authors to publish their own books. The iPhone wouldn't have come into existence without the success of the iPod.  There are many reasons music was the tip of the proverbial spear, among them relatively small file sizes, artist/album/track/genre being a remedial database challenge, and every college-age computer programmer loving and listening to music while they code. 

Similarly, Digital Art is the tip of the digital value spear. Someone creates something. Someone else likes it. They exchange value. It's the simplest form of a digital economy. Scale helps, but isn’t required. As with traditional art and luxury goods, the number of market participants can be small relative to value. It only took two bidders to drive the value of Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucien Freud to $142.2 million dollars. 

In the 1990s I was the conduit between the band Beastie Boys and their online fans. I posted tour dates, press articles, and photos from the stage. I kept the FAQ up to date and moderated the message board and IRC channel. We shared information about the band's not-for-profit and indie record label. As a "market" the fanbase was relatively small, but extremely passionate and dedicated. It felt as if the internet was made especially for communities like this to gather. I used to say my job was "to turn a casual listener into an obsessed fan".

Similarly today, the "obsessed fans of Kim Asendorf market" (who gather in a private Discord of which I am part) is very small. Yet if you enter you will find it is indeed a market with rising prices due to demand growing faster than supply. 

When talking about value people often get stuck trying to puzzle out intrinsic value instead of simply admitting the obvious fact: Storytelling + Time = Value. Basquiat's work increases in value because the number of people who know the story increases while the supply does not. Luxury brands are trading on heritage and storytelling, not only products. Similarly, if you are wondering if the value of Cryptopunks will increase over the next 25 years you only need to ask: Will people still talk about them in 25 years? If yes then you have Storytelling + Time, which amounts to more value. If everyone forgets about Cryptopunks and stops talking about them, the value will decline. Intrinsic value be damned.

I'm not arguing that everything digital has value any more than I'm arguing that every song on Spotify is worth hearing. But I believe digital art holds and will continue to hold "early adopter" status as online economies grow because the barriers to creating very small test markets are very low. 

Crypto Punks from higallery’s collection, paired with Egon Schiele sketches, c.1912.

A value exchange between a creator and a collector is a beautiful thing, especially relative to the business models of stealing and selling attention or speculating and gambling.

What’s the biggest difference from the traditional art scene?

I'm the least qualified to answer this question. In the traditional art world I rate as "museum-goer and collector of work from skateboarders I know". 

Which is exactly why I've enjoyed the digital art world so much.

I love peering into the mind of a creator through their output.

I love being a patron.

I love the opportunity to get to know or even assist an artist in some way.

I studied and practice computer science; I'm more qualified to appreciate a generative art piece than a painting.

The digital art world is small and self-selecting, full of creative, intelligent, and often downright weird people. Those still participating in 2024 believe in something most do not with enough conviction to weather being negatively judged by their peers. I remember being called a "gayboarder", laughed at for wearing bermuda shorts and growing long bangs. But I can’t imagine my life without skateboarding and the people I met through it. I'm very comfortable in a crowd of idealistic, thoughtful, creativity-loving outcasts. 

In 2022 my wife Hedvig and I were sitting around our dining table with FVCKRENDER and his wife, OSF, Farokh, and Raoul Pal. Raoul said, when talking about this moment in digital art and the digitization of value,  "We will always remember that this was the time when everyone knew each other." I love that time. I'm proud to have been a skateboarder long before it was allowed in the Olympics and a punk rock fan long before The Offspring. I learned much more building pieces of the Internet than I do today as one its 5.52 billion consumers. I guess my preferred moment in any market is the one decades before "traditional".

Thanks for asking me to reply. I’m sure this isn’t the response you were expecting. I guess it’s dangerous to ask an idealist “what do you believe?” I hope it’s useful anyway!

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Ian Rogers

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Film

Terry Reid - Silver White Light (Live at the Wight 1970) (Out of Print)

Matt Sweeney November 18, 2024

This raw “off the board” tape of British Rock’s finest singer features astonishing interplay between Reid and his band, and Terry’s ripping and flowing singing and guitar work is just staggering. The recording shows why Terry Reid was Aretha Franklin’s favorite rock singer. I wonder if this is the kind of band interplay Deadheads think they are hearing at Dead shows. Only one track from this can be heard online and that is a shame.

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Matt Sweeney is a record producer and the host of the popular music series “Guitar Moves”. He is a member of The Hard Quartet (debut album out Fall of 2024). Rick reached out to Matt Sweeney in 2005 after hearing his “Superwolf” album, and invited him to play on albums by Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Adele and many others. Follow Matt Sweeney via Instagram.

Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain

Hannah Peel Playlist

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Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah Peel joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music.

The Seven of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Futility, the Seven of Swords
Number: 7
Astrology: Moon in Aquarius
Qabalah: Netzach of Vau

Chris Gabriel November 16, 2024

The Seven of Swords is a card lost in its own imagination. It symbolizes daydreaming, brainstorming and the material consequences that come of it. 

In Rider, we find a clownish thief, sneakily walking off with five swords. He dons a fez, fuzzy boots, and a polka dot tunic. He warily looks to see if anyone has seen him. In the distance is a circus, three tents, and a group of people.

In Thoth, we have a single solar sword being struck and chipped by 6 smaller planetary swords. This is the singular idea destroyed by a restless mind, countless thoughts erode the strength of one good idea. As the Moon in Aquarius, this is the mind set upon the Strange.

In Marseille, we have a singular sword in the midst of 6 intersected swords. Four flowers sit at the intersections. Qabalaistically, it is the Love of the Prince, and the Love of the Prince is Futile

As it is the Love of the Prince, consider this card as a comedy of errors: the Prince plots out exactly what he’s going to do to win his love, everything that can go wrong and, because of this way of thinking, he fails to even take the first step. It is the paralysis that comes from analysis.

The card suggests there is a sort of cowardice in daydreaming and planning. This is explicitly clear when we contrast this card with Valour, the Seven of Wands: It shows a man willing to fight thoughtlessly without the consideration even of victory. With Futility the fellow would never have picked up his sword in the first place. The foolish courage of Valour can win honor, but the intelligent cowardice of Futility gains nothing, not even experience. 

With Rider, we can see intelligence applied negatively and the scheme works out. The circus goers, lost in fantasy, lose their swords, the thief wins them through his scheming logic.

This card is both schemers and suckers - the good idea undone. 

This is of course how we learn. We get tricked, and then we become better so as not to get tricked again. In its highest form, Futility is the lived comedy of errors, the countless mistakes that form and shape our lives. As I have compared the suit of Swords to Hamlet, here we find his countless mistakes, his failed romance with Ophelia, but most importantly his overthinking and failure to act. This is Hamlet as “John-a-Dreams”.

When we pull this card we may be given a confusing situation that requires planning and brainstorming. We may hesitate and procrastinate and miss our chance. When we properly utilize this energy, we can pull off a well thought out scheme. Don’t overthink - think just enough and then act!

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

Mediating Planetary Co-Existence

Yggdrasill, The Mundane Tree. From a plate of the Prose Edda, Oluf Olufsen Bagge. 1847.

Tuukka Toivonen November 14, 2024

Heather Barnett, an artist who works with slime mold, recently told me she viewed herself not simply as a practitioner of art but as a mediator. Through years of collaborative experimentation she had found herself, without intending to, acting as an intermediary between two mutually foreign forms of intelligence — slime molds and human beings. Curating the often astonishingly clever behaviors of these oatmeal-loving, network-making slime molds for human audiences, she uncovered new synergies and creative connections. In live performances, she invited audiences to mimic the physical movements of such ‘lesser beings’, resulting in surprising patterns of group behavior. This workconjured up a kind of interspecies awareness and relationship in Heather, and those who saw it, where none had previously existed. Another experienced artist I spoke to, Julia Lochmann, expressed a similar ethos of intermediation — in this case, one focused on seaweed-human relations. Both practitioners had set up collectives for like-minded slime mould and seaweed enthusiasts that brought artists together with scientists, students, designers and even entrepreneurs. These conversations prompted me to reflect further on the significance of those who mediate immersively between different organisms or environments. Could their experimental, connective engagements open up new possibilities for a deeper planetary co-existence? And what could those of us with less experience in this area learn from seasoned intermediators? 

At a basic level, to mediate is to form a link between two previously disconnected or estranged entities. By occupying an intermediary position, one takes on the task of facilitating an agreement or reconciliation of some kind, and fostering mutually beneficial forms of co-existence. Mediators of various kinds abound in our daily lives; people who introduce us to opportunities and ideas we did not know about or familiarize us with technologies we knew not how to operate. Those who teach us novel languages mediate a new relationship between us and other cultures. With a little help from such fluent speakers and cultural mediators, it becomes far easier to pick up the meanings, structures and nuances — even the perceptual and aesthetic inclinations — of new languages and cultures. What once seemed indecipherable becomes more and more intelligible, accessible and rich in meaning. We gradually enter a shared world. and then, for a moment, we feel awed by the uplifting resonance — a sense of synchrony, agreement or correspondence — that we discover between ourselves and an aspect of the world that used to be alien to us. 

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“We have long positioned humans as the only ‘intelligent’ species while denying the cognitive abilities, agency and aliveness of every other life-form. We now possess the opportunity to change course…”

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In their revelatory book on the search for planetary intelligence, one that involves animals, plants, and machines, the author James Bridle dedicates a chapter to exploring how plants perceive the world and what scope might exist for us to relate to them at a sensorial and existential level. Bridle recounts an experiment by two biologists from the University of Missouri during which a recording was made of the sound of cabbage white caterpillars feeding on a cress plant (Arabidopsis thaliana). The scientists subsequently removed the caterpillars, playing back only their sounds to the cress plant, which caused the plant to switch on its chemical defenses for deterring predators, despite their absence. Having ensured this reaction arose exclusively in response to the specific sound of caterpillars, there was only one conclusion to be drawn: the cress plant could hear. Bridle reads this and other eye-opening experiments on ‘plant sensing’ as suggestive of 

multiple distinctive worlds and as expressions of common ways of being and perceiving that cross species lines: 

‘We share a world. We hear, plants hear; we all hear together. We all feel the same sun, breathe the same air, drink the same water. Whether we hear the same sounds in the same way, whether they are meaningful to us in the same way, is beside the point. We exist, together, in the shared experience and creation of the more-than human world’ (Bridle 2023: 69-70).¹

Atlas des Champignons, M. E. Descourtilz. 1827.

Bridle’s work engages in acts of mediation that takes notable interspecies experiments and discoveries, and translates them into relational transformations. It reveals how profoundly illusionary our prior assumptions of a disconnected existence have been, and how false the idea that plants, animals, fungi and ourselves inhabit essentially separate worlds is. By submitting to a vacuous kind of objectivity, Bridle shows we have tried to make the world conform to our man made, fixed conceptualizations, and in doing so have limited the full use of our own perceptual capabilities. We have long positioned humans as the only ‘intelligent’ species while denying the cognitive abilities, agency and aliveness of every other life-form. We now possess the opportunity to change course, and to whole-heartedly cohabit the shared world Bridle so animatedly writes about. We can do this through updating our mental constructs and discovering new resonances between ourselves and the living world. Much like the feelings of connection we gain when learning a new language, might we feel a similar (or perhaps an even greater) sense of enchantment and resonance as we regain the ability to participate fully in the more-than human world — a world where intelligence is present everywhere? 

I suspect that mediators — whether nominally classified as artists, writers, scientists, naturalists or entrepreneurs — matter precisely because they have the power to help us see such novel possibilities for planetary co-existence. They awaken us to ways of being, to a new type of sensing and relating that we have struggled to notice or thought could not be accessed within the confines of contemporary society. And not only that: they often perform intermediation work not only in theory but in practice, experimentally and at scale. Such practical work can range from the curation of intimate group experiences within local forest ecologies to masterfully finding correspondences and agreements between the seemingly incompatible tendencies of financial interests and living systems. 

It strikes me that today’s mediators may have something fundamental in common with the healers and shamans whom the ecological philosopher David Abram encountered in Nepal and Indonesia at the end of the last millennium. Focused on maintaining harmonious and mutually nourishing relations between human settlements and the wider ecologies they were part of, these traditional practitioners of magic and medicine could ‘slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular culture’ while exhibiting a ‘heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations—songs, cries, gestures —of the larger, more-than-human field’ (Abram 1996:9).² There is a certain perceptual kinship between these traditional practitioners and the contemporary mediators I have discussed, one found in a shared style of viscerally inhabiting and bridging multiple worlds. It is remarkable that for the traditional shamans and magicians Abram observed, their role as human-nonhuman intermediaries appeared to be their primary function, while healing activities were of only secondary importance. 

Surely the kinds of mediators — whatever their formal identities — who can radically shrink the distance between us and myriad other life forms that constitute this planet have a far more important role to play than we have hitherto realized. And surely it will be through myriad acts of intermediation, whether initiated by seasoned practitioners or ourselves, that we will find it easier to once again experience the more-than-human world as intelligible, rich in meaning, even wondrous — and, perhaps most importantly, as truly shared. 

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Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us to reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world. Alongside his academic research, Tuukka works directly with emerging regenerative designers and startups in the creative, material innovation and technology sectors. 

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¹  Bridle, James. 2023. Ways of being: Animals, plants, machines: the search for a planetary 1 intelligence. London: Penguin Books. 
²  Abram, D. 1996. The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human 2 world. New York: Pantheon books.

Film

On The Nature of Visions

Before the First World War and the infliction of politics into the art movement, the Austro-German Expressionist artists were concerned with, above all else, The Spirit. Oskar Kokoschka was a painter and poet whose intensity of emotion bled through into everything he produced, finding harmony with Nature and God in the untamed, free, and innocent soul of the artist. He offered a way into the self through religious experience, and payed respect to dreams and imaginations as visions of the inner eye just as valuable as optical sight. The true artist, Kokoschka believed, saw no difference in value between perceptions of the inner and outer world. This essay was originally delivered as a lecture in Vienna in 1912, before being transcribed into essay form for an early Monograph of the artist.

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Oskar Kokoschka November 12, 2024

The state of awareness of visions is not one in which we are either remembering or perceiving. It is rather a level of consciousness at which we experience visions within ourselves. 

This experience cannot be fixed; for the vision is moving, an impression growing and becoming visual, imparting a power to the mind. It can be evoked but never defined. 

Yet the awareness of such imagery is a part of living. It is life selecting from the forms which flow towards it or refraining, at will. 

A life which derives its power from within itself will focus the perception of such images. And yet this free visualizing in itself - whether it is complete or hardly yet perceptible, or undefined in either space or time - this has its own power running through. The effect is such that the visions seem actually to modify one's consciousness, at least in respect of everything which their own form proposes as their pattern and significance. This change in oneself, which follows on the vision's penetration of one's very soul, produces the state of awareness, of expectancy. At the same time there is an outpouring of feeling into the image which becomes, as it were, the soul's plastic embodiment. This state of alertness of the mind or consciousness has, then, a waiting, receptive quality. It is like an unborn child, as yet unfelt even by the mother, to whom nothing of the outside world slips through. And yet whatever affects his mother, all that impresses her down to the slightest birthmark on the skin, all is implanted in him. As though he could use her eyes, the unborn receives through her his visual impressions, even while he is himself unseen. 

The life of the consciousness is boundless. It interpenetrates the world and is woven through all its imagery. Thus it shares those characteristics of living which our human existence can show. One tree left living in an arid land would carry in its seed the potency from whose roots all the forests of the earth might spring. So with ourselves; when we no longer inhabit our perceptions they do pot go out of existence; they continue as though with a power of their own, awaiting the focus of another consciousness. There is no more room for death; for though the vision disintegrates and scatters, it does so only to reform in another mode. 

“Bride of the Wind”. Oskar Kokoschka, 1913. Oil on Canvas.

Therefore we must harken closely to our inner voice. We must strive through the penumbra of words to the core within. 'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.' And then the inner core breaks free - now feebly and now violently - from the words within which it dwells like a charm. 'It happened to me according to the Word”

If we will surrender our closed personalities, so full of tension, we are in a position to accept this magical principle of living, whether in thought, intuition, or in our relationships. For in fact we see every day beings who are absorbed in one another, whether in living or in teaching, aimless or with direction. So it is with every created thing, everything we can communicate, every constant in the flux of living; each one has its own principle which shapes it, keeps life in it, and maintains it in our consciousness. Thus it is preserved, like a rare species, from extinction. We may identify it with 'me' or 'you' according to our estimate of its scale or its infinity. For we set aside the self and personal existence as being fused into a larger experience. All that is required of us is to release control. Some part of ourselves will bring us into the unison. The inquiring spirit rises from stage to stage, until it encompasses the whole of Nature. All laws are left behind. One's soul is a reverberation of the universe. Then too, as I believe, one's perception reaches out towards the Word, towards awareness of the vision.

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“Consciousness is the source of all things and of all conceptions. It is a sea ringed about with visions.”

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As I said at first, this awareness of visions can never fully be described,  its history can never be delimited, for it is a part of life itself. Its essence is a flowing and a taking form. It is love, delighting to lodge itself in the mind. This adding of something to ourselves - we may accept it or let it pass; but as soon as we are ready it will come to us by impulse, from the very breathing of our life. An image will take shape for us suddenly, at the first look,  as the first cry of a newborn child emerging from its mother’s womb. 

Whatever the orientation of a life, its significance will depend on this ability to conceive the vision. Whether the image has a material or an immaterial character depends simply on the angle from which the flow of psychic energy is viewed, whether at ebb or flood. 

Illustration from “The Dreaming Boys”. Oskar Kokoschka, 1908. Photolithograph.

It is true that the consciousness is not exhaustively defined by these images moving, these impressions which grow and become visual, imparting a power to the mind which we can evoke at will. For of the forms which come into the consciousness some are chosen while others are excluded arbitrarily. 

But this awareness of visions which I endeavour to describe is the viewpoint of all life as though it were seen from some high place; it is like a ship which was plunged into the seas and flashes again as a winged thing in the air. 

Consciousness is the source of all things and of all conceptions. It is a sea ringed about with visions. 

My mind is the tomb of all those things which have ceased to be the true Hereafter into which they enter. So that at last nothing remains; all that is essential of them is their image within myself. The life goes out of them into that image as in the lamp the oil is drawn up through the wick for nourishing the flame. 

So each thing, as it communicates itself to me, loses its substance and passes into the hereafter which is my mind. I incorporate its image which I can evoke without the intermediacy of dreams. 'Whenever two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in their midst' [Matt. 18:20]. And, as though it could go out to men, my vision is maintained, fed, as the lamp is by its oil, from the abundance of their living. If I am asked to make all this plain and natural the things themselves must answer for me, as it were, bearing their own witness. For I have represented them, I haw taken their place and put on their semblance through my visions. It is the psyche which speaks. 

I search, inquire, and guess. And with what sudden eagerness must the lamp wick seek its nourishment, for the flame leaps before my eves as the oil feeds it. It is all my imagination, certainly, what I see there in the blaze. But if I have drawn something from the fire and you have missed it, well, I should like to hear from those whose eyes are still untouched. For is this not mv vision? Without intent I draw from the outside world the semblance of things; but in this way I myself become part of the world's imaginings. Thus in everything imagination is simply that which is natural. It is nature, vision, life. 

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Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was an artist, poet, playwright, teacher and theorist from Austria. His writing and ideas on vision formed a basis for Vienesse Expressionism and brought a new focus on the role of the imagination in artworks.

Iggy Pop Playlist

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Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

The Analects

Questlove Playlist

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Questlove has been the drummer and co-frontman for the original all-live, all-the-time Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group The Roots since 1987. Questlove is also a music history professor, a best-selling author and the Academy Award-winning director of the 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.

The Empress (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Empress
Number: III
Astrology: Venus
Qabalah: Daleth

Chris Gabriel November 9, 2024

The Empress is maternal, feminine power. In each depiction we find the Empress crowned, enthroned, and bearing a scepter. She is the perfect balance to the masculine Emperor.

In Rider, she wears a flowery white dress marked with red flowers, and a crown of 12 stars resting atop her laurels. She wears a pearl necklace and her blonde hair falls down to her shoulders. She is looking calmly ahead. Her raised wand is topped with an orb while her other hand rests upon her knee. She is seated on voluptuous red cushions, and near her feet, a stone heart bears the mark of Venus. Behind her flows a waterfall.

In Thoth, we find the Empress in a pink blouse adorned with bees and flowers. Her skirt is emerald and her crown is a curved mitre with a Globus Cruciger. Her girdle is the wheel of the Zodiac. She has pale, almost white, blonde hair, and we see her only in profile. She is expressionless, with aLotus wand in one hand, and her other held out beneath. This posture forms the Alchemical sign of Salt. Waxing and Waning Moons emanate from spirals to her left and right, each topped with a pink and white bird. At her feet there is a shield with a double headed white bird. Beside it is a Pelican pecking her breast to feed her blood to the chicks. This is the ultimate maternal sacrifice.

In Marseille, she wears a royal dress marked with a triangle. Her crown is of gold, and topped with a Fleur de Lys and she has a triangular necklace. She holds her wand, topped by the Globus Cruciger, and cradles the eagle marked shield beside her. A plant grows at her feet.

In each of these cards, the Empress serves as a balance to their respective Emperor. Where the Emperor is the Father of the Nation, the Empress has an altogether different role? Thoth provides the most direct explanation - , she gives her blood, sweat and tears for the sake of Love. This is the role of the Good Mother who, just as the Good Father, sacrifices her desires for the sake of her children, even to the point of bodily harm.

The Thoth card also reveals the tripartite components of the feminine, as the tripartite Moon we saw in the Priestess. The Empress is the full Moon, the Maternal.

As Venus, she is the feminine ideal of beauty, the sensual and aesthetic. She is a Lover of life, children, art, and even men. Her willingness to sacrifice for the sake of her children shows that it is not a simple equation, but a weighted, meaningful one. The symbol of Venus is the Mirror, something Venus is often holding, but as the Empress, the Goddess of Love will scar her breasts to feed her young.

When the Empress is pulled in a reading, I find it tends to relate directly to a significant woman in our lives, a mother, lover, or dear friend. Appreciate the sacrifices she has made for you, and reciprocate her Love.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

David Whyte (Part 2)

Peter Carroll’s 5th Dimension And The Pentagram

Geometrical Psychology, or, The Science of Representation an Abstract of the Theories and Diagrams of B. W. Betts, Louisa S. Cook. 1887.

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Molly Hankins November 7, 2024

As the idea of a fifth dimension continues to percolate through the spiritual zeitgeist,  it is worth looking to the prolific occult writer and chaos magician Peter J. Carroll for his insight on 5D as it pertains to magic. In his famous treatise  Liber Null & Psychonaut, Carroll explains how we seem to live in a world of effect rather than cause, where we measure effects to speculate towards details of cause. 

The 5th dimension, for Caroll, is the causal plane,  also known as the aether or chaos, where forms arise and all magical practice begins. He references  Kabbalist thought that the causal world exists in a hidden dimension, and contends that this is the fifth dimension to which we have limited access. If we were able to reach it, it  could  explain all occult phenomena, and even some of the mysteries of quantum mechanics.  

Take, for example, fundamental particles and quarks that can’t be continuously observed in our reality - could it be because they’re flickering in and out of a causal plane? Could they be carrying the information that creates our shared and individual realities in and out of this dimension? And what if we’re generating that information consciously? By Carroll’s explanation, this could very well be the underlying mechanism of effective occult practice and ritual.  

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““As above, so below.” By that  logic, if this is how mathematical proofs and computer networks behave, shouldn’t it stand to reason that the fifth dimensional causal plane mirrors our reality?”

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He describes the information load required for effects to manifest using the example of how  much less information is required to generate the magical effect of causing someone to fall  under a 16-ton weight than to make a 16-ton weight fall down on someone. Fewer variables are required to create the first effect, and therefore it has a smaller information field and thus  can manifest in this reality more quickly and easily. Lightening the information load needed to generate the desired effect when setting intentions for magical practice makes working with the 5D causal plane consciously efficient. 

Included in the Liber Null & Psychonaut explanation of Carroll’s theory of higher dimensionality is the concept of the pentagram as a symbol for 5D, a term he interchanges with cosmic mind, the hologram, acausality, hyperspace and the quantum realm. In physics, information has sometimes been proposed as a possible fifth dimension, and in computer network science, the  idea of information as the fifth dimension refers to the temporal aspect of information flow in complex networks. Throughout the book the reader is reminded of the occult axiom, “As above, so below.” By that  logic, if this is how mathematical proofs and computer networks behave, shouldn’t it stand to  reason that the fifth dimensional causal plane mirrors our reality? As information flows, systems are affected, and magic is the science and art of causing change in accordance with our will. Whether it’s technically accurate or not, and Carroll admits he’s partial to the theory, the  concept of 5D even just as a metaphor has great utility as a tool for understanding effective  magical expression. 

We’ve barely scratched the surface of Liber Null & Psychonaut and there is much more wisdom hiding in its pages. As Carroll writes, "He who is doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the  universe." Perhaps our true will generates the optimal information structure, and thus the necessary subatomic momentum in the fifth dimension, to create our desired results in the third. 

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Molly Hankins is a Neophyte + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum

David Whyte (Part 1)

Film

Form Follows Phenomenon

Peter Cook, Island City. 2011-12. Work on paper.

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Robin Sparkes November 5, 2024

Architects should draw more. Marking ideas across a page connects the mind and body. It mobilises psychological and motor functions in synchronicity. Hand-drawing activates areas in the brain responsible for spatial reasoning and visual perception, bringing an architect’s imagination into form through movement. In this way, each line becomes a cognitive exploration, organising space and activating intuition. Drawing is a method of representing and organising ideas, bridging thought with physical action. Drawing is a dance, moving the arm and hand in coordination with the mind is a method of "finding"— it is an act of discovery.

Everything starts with a plan. To begin designing a building, you need a plan. It is in the act of sketching by hand that the mental processes involved in acquiring understanding, memory, and problem-solving come to life. It encompasses how we process information, make decisions, and learn. The physical act of drawing plays a formative role in ideation. In architectural design, using our physical bodies to conceive ideas is a tool for intuitive spatial understanding.

Zaha Hadid, The Peak. 1983. Work on paper.

"I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square".¹ So says Juhani Pallasmaa. To exist in physical space is to become aware of our surroundings through sensory experiences—smell, touch, sound, sight—all of which shape our understanding of place. Drawing with our hands allows us to translate these sensory impressions into physical form, capturing and communicating how we perceive space. This act allows us to explore  the relationship  between the tangible and intangible. Through this tactile process of perception, we can visualise and interpret the way we experience and position ourselves within a spiritual space.

Zaha Hadid’s approach to Architecture was rooted in her drawings. In her formative years in Baghdad, she grew up writing Arabic calligraphy. The stroke of an alphabet composing words to communicate ideas as linguistic curves and lines across a page established her relationship to drawing. To draw is to communicate. After moving to London to Study at the Architectural Association, Zaha developed a method of communicating spatial perspective through her drawings. Her eye for line weights that developed in her formative years of writing calligraphy became her hand in expressing depth and perspective in her drawing and painting.

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“When our brains choreograph the arm and hand to communicate our cognitive expression, we build a portal between our mind and space. We become an embodiment of space".”

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Calligraphy characterised her architectural drawing, it emphasised the fluidity and dynamic forms that later emerged in her painting work. Plans and sections weren't enough to describe new thinking in architecture. Her sketches and paintings informed the approach to form and space but also led to the development of her distinctive architectural style— where she reimagined architectural enclosures as fluid. “I have always been interested”, said Hadid, “in the concept of fragmentation and with ideas of abstraction and explosion, deconstructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production.’’²

André Masson. Automatic Drawing. 1924. Ink on paper.

In this sense, drawing becomes a kinesthetic act. Drawing invites uncertainty and allows chance to emerge, encouraging a dialogue with space and form that goes beyond predetermined calculations. Drawing architectural sketches as a means of starting an idea parallels the Surrealist art movement in the beginning of the 20th century. The Surrealist concept of automatic drawing, also known as automatism, was developed by André Masson, a French painter who was fascinated with the subconscious. Exploring themes of chaos, violence, and nature Masson developed "automatic drawing," a method of creating art by allowing the hand to move freely across the canvas without conscious control. These techniques reveal how free motion and fragmentation can invite unexpected ideas, with the subconscious playing a vital role in creative expression. In architectural design, this means introducing elements of indeterminacy, a concept explored in the 1960s Fluxus movement, where chance disrupts rigid planning, giving space for spontaneous ideas to emerge. Hand-drawn designs embody this philosophy, as the marks made reflect human touch and open possibilities in form and structure.

In the same way  live music resonates differently from a recording, the fingers dancing across piano keys creates an experience that resonates deeply with those who inhabit it. Drawing with our hands allows architects to embody space through the process of defining their composition. As technology progresses, the design process becomes more automated and the body becomes more removed from the processes of making. When our brains choreograph the arm and hand to communicate our cognitive expression we build a portal between our mind and space. We become an embodiment of space through movement as a means of architectural drawing. This physical interaction embodies both the spiritual and spatial relationships, introducing an intuitive measure to the design process. When architects sketch, the choreography of the body moving through and experiencing space manifests a spatial intuition that translates the cognitive experience of being in space into a tangible perception. The way an architect's hand moves across the paper, the pressure applied, and the speed of gestures all contribute to the fluidity and emergence of space.

As we create by hand, we initiate a dialogue between mind, body, and the architecture itself. Through this dance, space begins to materialise, thought and movement merges, and abstract concepts become grounded. By sketching, we access the language of our subconscious. If we are present in time, then hand-drawing offers a means to manifest space—connecting the fluid continuum of our intentions with the permanence of form. In this interplay, space and time converge, shaping environments that hold both memory and potential.  Einstein once said "matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved spacetime tells matter how to move".³

We should all draw more.

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¹The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Wiley, 2005.

²Zaha Hadid: Complete Works. Thames & Hudson, 2004.

³Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Translated by Robert W. Lawson, Methuen & Co., 1920. 

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Robin Sparkes, a is spatial designer, studying the kinesthetic experience of architecture. Her design, research, and writing practice traverses the relationship between the body, temporality, and the acoustics of space.