I receive a small note from Kathryn:
Dear Lisa,
I’m reading Godel, Esher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadler right now. I read this sentence and thought of you:
“A formal system does not live in a society of other formal systems, mirroring them inside itself, and being mirrored in turn inside its friends.”
Firstly – system here means sets of symbols in/through/by which we make meaning/understand things.
Secondly – while this sentence talks about formal systems, I think I thought of the following diagram in terms of an informal system but have come to see it as a formal system because the rules haven’t changed:
Thirdly – I hope I make some sense; I’m finding this idea exciting and really helpful for understanding the reality of context…anyway take a look…
This makes me think of your thesis.
You are attempting to demonstrate that no one person or even group of people can lay claim to total understanding of anything – in this case Antarctica, and largely land. What you are trying to demonstrate is that each interaction between those who are responding to an aspect of the same physical reality helps to create a new and unique ‘place’ each time the interaction occurs. Therefore the place can never be understood as static. Which makes your use of animation to discuss the cultural phenomenon of place and space, or should I say space becoming place, absolutely necessary. The discussion would be false without the animation.
I am now doubting the corrections in the diagram! I hope that something here makes sense.
Kathryn Yeo, Dubai, 2007-12-19
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Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of “meaningless” elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of “meaning” itself.
Hoftstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how consciousness and thinking emerges from well-hidden neurological mechanisms.
Dear Kathryn,
You help me see what I am doing from another perspective.
I find it really interesting to see your annotated map assume meaning within the context of your thinking, how it can change as you think. The act of drawing can clarify our intentions, as our lines and words suggest further lines of thought.
I can see how the words crossed out, placed in the centre of your map – can enhance its meaning. As central ideas they are appropriately placed.
To show examples of interactions and responses, I would add to the centre (as words or symbols) ‘drawing’, ‘object’, ‘poem’, ‘music’, gesture’, etc. to your ‘conversation’. These are all ways we can respond.
I could imagine the diagram animated, to show some examples of interactions that have happened already through this research.
Our responses reflect much about ourselves. For example your response to Fred Elliott’s annotated drawing, Masson Range, reflects your feeling about the space he made into place, through his text. Your words bring to his text a quality of excitement that is different from the quality he brought to the original landscape. This is something I could look into more deeply.
How I build this inquiry as a website is reflecting another quality of response to Antarctic landscape, which I am struggling to articulate.
With its interacting objects and animations, it evolves through such interactions as we are having now, and I am becoming aware that I select and change what I write, make, and how I position things – in ways that reflect my own changing positions of thinking about Antarctica, and the responses others have made to it.
I find it very difficult to verbally explain these shifts in thinking and feeling, but that is part of my challenge. Attempts to verbally explain never feel adequate. What is lost in translating the creative process into the language of linear inquiry is like what is lost in our verbal articulations of individual experiences.
This idea is reflected in Jack Ward’s Mawson dairy, and is further articulated in AA Davis’s concrete poem, Iceberg.
This website is an evolving text, shaped by such interactions.