Shahree Vyaas's Blog, page 22

Civilization and Cosmos. Part 4: Terra

In this post I want you to bring part 4 of my latest project (for those who missed out on part 1, more info at the bottom of this post). If you want to hear the audio, just click on the image (duration 115 sec).

Terra. Mixed technics on canvas 45 x 45 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023). Collection Civilization and Cosmos part 4

On the Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead,
That is Terra´s voice
who takes the lead In summer luxury
she has never done With her delights, for when tired out with fun
She rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stone there shrills
The goddess´ song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost;
The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

My latest project concerns itself with a multimedia installation that consists of a rotating rhombicuboctahedron that is suspended in a magnetic field. The twelve square faces of the rhombicuboctahedron are carrying an image that represents the mythological aspects of the main celestial bodies that make our planetary system. While the installation makes every two minutes a turn to bring another planet in focus, a melody is played that consists of a classical music tune that is derived from the electromagnetic waves emitted by this particular celestial body mixed with a poem that refers to a specific phase that occurs in every civilization cycle with a reference to the classic European mythology that backs it up. The installation measures about 3 meters over 3 meter. The concept of this installation is founded upon the idea of how the cyclical nature of a multitude of phenomena mirrors circulatory cosmological and biological patterns

Civilization and Cosmos. Part 3: Venus

In this post I want you to bring part 3 of my latest project (for those who missed out on part 1, more info at the bottom of this post). If you want to hear the audio, just click on the image (duration 141 sec).

Venus. Mixed technics on canvas 45 x 45 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023). Collection Civilization and Cosmos part 3

Eight hours by Isaac G. Blanchard

Labor wants to make things over, tired of toil for naught,
With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for thought;,
Their hands and hearts weary, and homes are heavy with dole ;
A life filled with drudgery, kills the human soul!,
wanting to feel the sunshine, and wanting to smell the flowers.
And Venus said: you will have eight hours.
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for leisure!
Enjoy the fruits of labor and fill your life with pleasure.
Capital respect Labor! for it shall arise in might;
It has filled the world with plenty, it shall fill the world with light!

My latest project concerns itself with a multimedia installation that consists of a rotating rhombicuboctahedron that is suspended in a magnetic field. The twelve square faces of the rhombicuboctahedron are carrying an image that represents the mythological aspects of the main celestial bodies that make our planetary system. While the installation makes every two minutes a turn to bring another planet in focus, a melody is played that consists of a classical music tune that is derived from the electromagnetic waves emitted by this particular celestial body mixed with a poem that refers to a specific phase that occurs in every civilization cycle with a reference to the classic European mythology that backs it up. The installation measures about 3 meters over 3 meter. The concept of this installation is founded upon the idea of how the cyclical nature of a multitude of phenomena mirrors circulatory cosmological and biological patterns.

Civilization and Cosmos. Part 2: Mercury

In this post I want you to bring part 2 of my latest project (for those who missed out on part 1, more info at the bottom of this post). If you want to hear the audio, just click on the image (duration 130 sec).

Mercury. Mixed technics on canvas 45 x 45 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023). Collection Civilization and Cosmos part 2.

Mercury forms the newly made race,
making voice the proper wrestling place.
The people he faithfully instills
With lust for beauty, greed for skills.
Their clocks and organs are the best,
Excellent scribes, they take no rest.
Dextrous goldsmiths, painters good,
People praise him – and they should.
They are a smart, hardworking lot,
When asked for help they give it not

My latest project concerns itself with a multimedia installation that consists of a rotating rhombicuboctahedron that is suspended in a magnetic field. The twelve square faces of the rhombicuboctahedron are carrying an image that represents the mythological aspects of the main celestial bodies that make our planetary system. While the installation makes every two minutes a turn to bring another planet in focus, a melody is played that consists of a classical music tune that is derived from the electromagnetic waves emitted by this particular celestial body mixed with a poem that refers to a specific phase that occurs in every civilization cycle with a reference to the classic European mythology that backs it up. The installation measures about 3 meters over 3 meter. The concept of this installation is founded upon the idea of how the cyclical nature of a multitude of phenomena mirrors circulatory cosmological and biological patterns.

Civilization and Cosmos: part 1

My latest project concerns itself with a multimedia installation that consists of a rotating rhombicuboctahedron that is suspended in a magnetic field. The twelve square faces of the rhombicuboctahedron are carrying an image that represents the mythological aspects of the main celestial bodies that make our planetary system. While the installation makes every two minutes a turn to bring another planet in focus, a melody is played that consists of a classical music tune that is derived from the electromagnetic waves emitted by this particular celestial body mixed with a poem that refers to a specific phase that occurs in every civilization cycle with a reference to the classic European mythology that backs it up. The installation measures about 3 meters over 3 meter.

The concept of this installation is founded upon the idea of how the cyclical nature of a multitude of phenomena mirrors circulatory cosmological and biological patterns.

In this post I want you to bring the prologue. If you want to hear the audio, just click on the image (duration 100 sec).

UPON a time yet uncreate,
Amid a chaos inchoate,
An eternal being sate;
Beneath it, time,
Above it, space.
And the space was time,
And the time was space.
The time then growing strong and warm,
caused space to take a form,
A form chaotic, vast and vague,
Which issued in the cosmic egg.
Then the Being radiated
And the egg incubated,
And thus became the incubator;
And of the egg did emanate,
the Sun who became the instigator;
And the instigator was potentate,
But Eris was potentiator.

Civilization and Cosmos: part 0

My latest project concerns itself with a multimedia installation that consists of a rotating rhombicuboctahedron that is suspended in a magnetic field. The twelve square faces of the rhombicuboctahedron are carrying an image that represents the mythological aspects of the main celestial bodies that make our planetary system. While the installation makes every two minutes a turn to bring another planet in focus, a melody is played that consists of a classical music tune that is derived from the electromagnetic waves emitted by this particular celestial body mixed with a poem that refers to a specific phase that occurs in every civilization cycle with a reference to the classic European mythology that backs it up. The installation measures about 3 meters over 3 meter.

The concept of this installation is founded upon the idea of how the cyclical nature of a multitude of phenomena mirrors circulatory cosmological and biological patterns.

In this post I want you to bring the prologue. If you want to hear the audio, just click on the image (duration 100 sec).

UPON a time yet uncreate,
Amid a chaos inchoate,
An eternal being sate;
Beneath it, time,
Above it, space.
And the space was time,
And the time was space.
The time then growing strong and warm,
caused space to take a form,
A form chaotic, vast and vague,
Which issued in the cosmic egg.
Then the Being radiated
And the egg incubated,
And thus became the incubator;
And of the egg did emanate,
the Sun who became the instigator;
And the instigator was potentate,
But Eris was potentiator.

Waving

Between the 4th and the 6th of November 2022 I attended a conference called Waving, organized by the department of intermedia art of the Art Academy in Krakow. I wrote and designed this small contribution to explore the theme of the conference as a call for action.

Waving as a verb relates to a new insight where the ultimate model of the universe in natural science pictures the All as a projection of informational modulated energy waves emanated by a cosmically horizon on the time-space continuum. The origins of the whole universe can be reduced to a two-dimensional model on a cosmological horizon where information is gathered and grows in complexity with time. Following this theory, everything we can experience in our physical reality can be reduced to vibrating algorithms that keep fractalizing in seemingly random complexity over time. In this context, humankind is living in a matrix where everything is the product of mentally modulated vibrations and where the degree of consciousness of an object depends on the complexity of the underlying algorithm. In this scheme, the more complex algorithms are feeding upon the simpler ones. The degree of our understanding of the cosmological horizon also sets the scale of the universe we can observe. In this sense, future events could already be influencing the present, depending upon the scale of the applied horizon.
The Tao of Physics is inside the artistic community elevated to an almost biblical status due to its comprehensive approach of the latest insights into the structure of the reality.
The emergence of new technologies also changed the ways the artistic activity is conducted. There is a growing insight into the binary matrix of the everchanging brain and how technology is changing the ways we perceive and give shape to our reality. The human condition is not anymore perceived as something that stands above the reality, but as a phenomenon that is part of the reality. This is even more valid for the artistic community.
In this context Artur Tajber pronounced: “Art into society, society into art”. Tajber is a conceptualist who likes to apply general tendencies upon a particular object and mixes that with a dose of artistic activism.

Artur and the Knights of the Rectangular Table. Pen on paper L 46 x H 31 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023). Artur Tajber has engaged in performance since the 1970’s, sporadically working with the table as a friend and object to explore an acute awareness of the body in conjunction with a deep contempt for the circumstances, bureaucracies and establishments which plague and agitate collective and subjective consciousness.

The artistic concept of waving tries to emulate these insights into the artistic praxis. In this context the geometrical language is considered to be more communicative in comparison with the logical or algebraical formulas.
Piotr Madej illustrated how rhythms and oscillations are breaking out their musical context to become perceived as an intermedia phenomenon. He gave examples of geometrical designs based upon a algorithmically interpretation of sound, or vice versa, how sound can be generated by an algorithmically interpretation of movements.

Software codeveloped by Elaine Chew yielded this visualization of a tonal analysis of P. D. Q. Bach’s Fugue No. 6 from The Short-Tempered Clavier

The most controversial topic was how the latest evolutions in the information technology introduced the artificial intelligence as a new player into human society, and by consequence, also into the artistic community. Not only are AI’s producing a wide variety of digital art: due to their almost inexhaustible capacity of self-correction through feedback, they do it often better than most humans. By many artists the AI’s are experienced as an existential threat and plagiarists, while others are experimenting with the new horizons AI’s are opening for the human perception and the artistic praxis.

Last Supper on Utila

This painting stands at the cradle of my becoming as an artist. It is inspired by a painting of Dali (The Last Supper) and contains all the main actors that have got a heavy influence upon the way I developed my personal style and philosophy. In the center figures Leonardo da Vinci, which I consider one of the last universal minds that embodied both the analytical approach of the scientist as the synthesizing method of the artist. He is surrounded by Salvador Dali, Marie Curie, James Joyce on his left, and by Ada Lovelace, Lao Tzu and Valentin-Yves Mudimbe on his right. In the foreground play Albert Einstein and Frank Zappa a duet. It is painted upon the background of the Island of Utila, a Caribbean Island that is part of the Bay Islands, an archipelago that belongs to the republic of Honduras. This island functioned as a catalyst that facilitated my mental distillation process.

Twilight Utila

Twilight Utila is in the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. Its boundaries are those of imagination and it lies behind a door that you unlock with a key of magic.

What is the Utila Twilight Zone about? In a word “US”. Like all art, it deals with our on-going struggle to be human and what that all means. We are complex biological beings with complicated emotional needs, intellects that continue to question life, and spirits that continually fight to be free of any form of oppression. That is the tapestry of the human condition that we all share and relate to and what all great writers, from Shakespeare to Serling, struggled to illuminate.

Relaxing at Utila’s South Shore

The South shore of Utila is separated by a small channel and a lagoon from the main part of the island. Not astonishingly it’s the residency of Utila’s most recluse and privacy minded expats.

It has however a popular beach bar called Neptune’s that can only be reached by boat from the main part of the island during daytime (no late night parties there). There is also an exclusive resort called Utopia Village that caters to a more upscale kind of customers who have very little in common with the casual tourists that are visiting this little rock.

What makes you most anxious?Once you accept your mortalit...

What makes you most anxious?

Once you accept your mortality, the only thing that can make you anxious is that you will not be remembered. And that is really not important since it will not concern you anymore. Ask the non-existent Vincent Van Gogh.