centre of gravity

In 1910 inventor Antonio Biehl of El Paso Texas registered a patent for an advertising chair of the rocking variety whose back and forth motions caused a mechanism to scroll through a series of sponsored notices. Presumably such seating accommodations might be featured in the reception area of doctors’ offices or other antechambers and demonstrates that our age isn’t the first to pervasively plaster advertisements or to recognise them as a necessary nuisance and counter-balance to creativity.

arc of narrative

From Three-Toed Sloth’s recommended reading list, we encounter the mathematical dissection of the narratology of comparative myth-making in Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1928). Drawing on the canon of Russia fairy stories, Propp’s treatment abstracts motifs into thirty one categories (that merit enumerating since that act alone tells a story) and assigns them their own transformative function, distributive property, designed for analysis, as did the Brothers Grimm and Joseph Campbell, and for formulaic writing.

One of the members of a family absents himself from home (β)
An interdiction is addressed to the hero (γ )
The interdiction is violated (δ)
The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (ϵ)
The villain receives information about his victim (ζ)
The villain attempts to deceive his victim in order to take possession of him or of his belongings (η)
The victim submits to deception and thereby unwittingly helps his enemy (θ)
The villain causes harm or injury to a member of a family (A) or One member of a family either lacks something or desires to have something (a)
Misfortune or poverty is made known; the hero is approached with a request or command; he is allowed to go or he is dispatched (B)
The seeker agrees to or decides upon counteraction (C)
The hero leaves home (↑)
The hero is tested, interrogated, attacked, etc., which prepares the way for receiving either a magical agent or helper (D)
The hero reacts to the actions of the future donor (E)
The hero acquires the use of a magical agent (F)
The hero is transferred, delivered, or led to the whereabouts of an object of search (G)
The hero and the villain join in direct combat (H)
The hero is branded or marked (J)
The villain is defeated (I)
The initial misfortune or lack is liquidated (K)
The hero returns (↓)
The hero is pursued (Pr)
Rescue of the hero from pursuit (Rs)
The hero, unrecognized, arrives home or in another country (o)
A false hero presents unfounded claims (L)
A difficult task is proposed to the hero (M)
The task is resolved (N)
The hero is recognised (Q)
The false hero or villain is exposed (Ex)
The hero acquires a new appearance (T)
The villain goes punished (U)
The hero marries and ascends the throne (W)

The bracketed Roman and Greek letters and symbols are the functions to be combined and recombined, which Propp definitely, exhaustively tries. What stories do you recognise that follow this structure?  It’s well worth a look at the permutations and further commentary at the link up top.

second nature

Regardless if you refer to the messy bundle of influences, incidents and accidents that make up one’s inheritance luck or grace—the question of nature versus nurture ought to be flattened out since those factors that inform our trajectories are just as much outside of our agency as winning or losing the genetic lottery—its role in one’s success ought not to be discounted.  Though I’d like to consider myself enlightened and gracious enough to acknowledge—with due humility—that fact, reading this essay from David Roberts writing for Vox confronted me with an important reminder that my relationship to my own legacy and that of my peers, neighbours and strangers isn’t as generous and empathetic as it should be.
The goal post for that is always being set further back—as it should be too. Agency and willpower are not empty concepts and are what elevates us, but they are nonetheless secondary and demand to be formed and reinforced through habit—just as it is that the majority of merit and honour is to be found in overcoming those baser instincts and snap judgments whose pedigree have obviously paid off over the generations but can be ill-suited for most modern settings. What do you think? It was particularly provoking how the reasoning that removes one from the cycle of bad habits is the same one that generally remains quiet and tardy when greed and sloth are making the executive decisions and comes calling after the fact as regret and recrimination. The ability to stare into the middle distance and muddle through reflecting on that receding goal post is of course influenced by those same heirlooms that are beyond our control and the clarity of vision and resolve is determined by our peers and their willingness to not forgive but rather overlook our trespasses.

lucid

Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals, we are dazzled by a brilliant collaboration among a London-based start-up that specialises in making flying screens, choreographer GMUNK and dancer Zakiya. See the full credits and take a peek behind the scenes at Stash magazine.

8x8

contemporary scolds: take this quiz and guess whether writers’ are complaining about e-scooters or new-fangled velocipedes

art house cinema: a look at some of the experimental documentaries that defined Icarus Films

dabangs: South Korean “stress cafés” are a revival of an older tradition supplanted by the invasion of Western chains

anatomy of the ai: a smart speaker depicted as an anatomical chart intersected by natural resources, data and human labour by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler

tunteet: a large Finnish research project to identify, classify and map the range of human feelings

slithery sam: the life and work of printmaker, illustrator and upholsterer Enid Marx

a soft murmur: adjustable background noise for any occasion, via Dave Log 3.0

lenticular lens: this thousand piece jigsaw puzzle changes colours depending on the viewers’ angle—via Kottke’s Quick Links  

finger in every pie

Ernie Smith from Tedium has a thoughtful column that argues the case in favour of reducing rather than trying to expand one’s exposure to the unrelenting barrage of information available at one’s finger tips by closing one’s browser tabs.
Like the cult of Inbox Zero or the compulsion to have everything marked as read, it’s an exercise of course emblematic for the search for tranquillity and quiet in whatever context and any given setting and artefacts are bound to change. I really liked how the introduction referenced the concept of tsundoku (積ん読)—letting unread books like good intentions pile up—with a twist on the aggressive panopticon of happenings and updates in tab-sundoku, and I appreciate such mediations, especially when I catch myself getting irritated or anxious or feeling delinquent over things of my own making. Most (if not all) of these sorts of pressures come from within.

inter alia

While only briefly a signatory to the Treaty of Rome during the final years of the Clinton administration, Bush II withdrawing America along with Israel and the Sudan with the US being only an observer state during the Obama years under contingent provisions that US soldiers were immune from its verdicts or prosecutions, it is still far out of bounds for the US to excoriate the International Criminal Court (ICC) as irrelevant and capricious.
Beyond the gesture of refusal to cooperate (previously here and here), the US government is threatening dire consequences against the ICC should it move forward in investigating allegations against the US for war crimes perpetrated in Afghanistan to include sanctions and criminal charges against the members of the court and any parties cooperating with their case. A parallel inquiry into human rights violations and practising a policy of apartheid on the people of Palestine resulted in the US closing off all diplomatic outlets for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)—evicting the group from its offices in Washington, DC—a move also characterised as an assault on sovereignty and a country’s right to self-defence undermined.