New Address

johnmartinbell.tumblr.com

June Pressings

Living in Time

The motion of oscillation...introduces temporal pulse in living organisms, and is its basic pulse, or measure. Indeed, it can perhaps be said that internal temporal organisation is a fundamental requirement, as well as symptom, of life. Trying to answer the question posed by Erwin Schrodinger, which was simply 'What is life?', a mathematician, Jonathan D. H. Smith, posits that 'biological systems' are 'systems complex enough to isolate their component space-times' -- in other words, to structure the indeterminate flow of time and space through internal dynamics. Organisms are highly organised forms, and the internal structuring of time through regular motion seems to be among the earliest and most universal features of organic life. This, in fact, corresponds to what we actually know through simple observation: living organisms are entities which move of their own accord, while inanimate matter moves only under the application of external force. The measurement of organic time through oscillation also echoes philosophical intuitions dating back to Aristotle, who thought that time is the measure of motion ('the numeration of continuous movement').

-- from Time by Eva Hoffman

via The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

Milwaukee

Two Sculptures

Always Hungry

I have been very busy in the studio. I have three new large paintings for my shows this spring. They're getting close to done.

Minds Without Brains

Is it correct to say that plants forage for light, or that they actively avoid shade? Should we say that plants decide where to send out their roots, that they know that they should send roots down into the ground and stems up toward the sky? Is the plasticity and growth of plants to be compared with the free movement and action of animals? These are interesting and important questions that deserve our attention. I won't comment on them any further here other than to notice that if plants have minds, then perhaps they show that you don't need a brain to have a mind, and that's a strange and exciting possibility.

--Alva Noë, writing here

Ghost Birds

Composition

Pressings

Description of a struggle

I started this painting in August, 2010. After months of work, neglect, a little work, lots of neglect, and then a little more work, I think it is done.


Triptych.

the regenerating organism

Cancer stem cells have acquired the behavior of normal stem cells by activating the same genes and pathways that make normal stem cells immortal -- except, unlike normal stem cells, they can not be lulled back into physiological sleep. Cancer, then, is quite literally, trying to emulate a regenerating organ -- or, perhaps, more disturbingly, the regenerating organism. Its quest for immortality mirrors our own quest, a quest buried in our embryos and in the renewal of our organs. Someday, if a cancer succeeds, it will produce a far more perfect being than its host -- imbued with immortality and the drive to proliferate.

--- from The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

via The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

Exchange

Like the phoenix, it rises:

johnmartinbell.com!

I'm trying something new out with this one, dudes. So, I've never really had luck selling artwork. Partly this is because I'm awkward at it and don't put much effort into it. Partly it's because I don't like it and it makes me feel weird. I have a job, and I like keeping my art production separate from my livelihood because I don't want to place any burdens on it. If I want to hot glue flowers and weeds and trash together for a week, I like not having to feel like whatever results should have monetary value.

So I've got this "Exchange" page. I want a more structured way for people to ask for paintings through trades, barters, or even just because they like them. Sometimes I worry that people feel weird about wanting art-- they feel like its beyond them or somehow degrading to bring it up. Anyway, I want my paintings to go to different places. There's no set parameters for this, it's totally up to individual negotiation. And I, for one, am open to all offers. I hope that people feel comfortable engaging if they're interested (a big IF!)

I want a way to more directly engage with people that look at and would like to live with my artwork.

I think it's also that I like getting email from people through my website and wish I got more of it.

THE DREAMER

Snapshots before a move

I've been packing up to move to a new studio space. I've been so lax about posting new projects, I thought I should take a few snapshots. A couple of them are finished, but most are still in progress.

non-human entities, non-human goals

Posted: Visualizing US expansion through post offices by Derek Watkins

"Invaders from Mars" by Charlie Stross

"...Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.)

Corporations have a mean life expectancy of around 30 years, but are potentially immortal; they live only in the present, having little regard for past or (thanks to short term accounting regulations) the deep future: and they generally exhibit a sociopathic lack of empathy.

Collectively, corporate groups lobby international trade treaty negotiations for operating conditions more conducive to pursuing their three goals. They bully individual lawmakers through overt channels (with the ever-present threat of unfavourable news coverage) and covert channels (political campaign donations). The general agreements on tariffs and trade, and subsequent treaties defining new propertarian realms, once implemented in law, define the macroeconomic climate: national level politicians thus no longer control their domestic economies.

Corporations, not being human, lack patriotic loyalty; with a free trade regime in place they are free to move wherever taxes and wages are low and profits are high. We have seen this recently in Ireland where, despite a brutal austerity budget, corporation tax is not to be raised lest multinationals desert for warmer climes.

For a while the Communist system held this at bay by offering a rival paradigm, however faulty, for how we might live: but with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 — and the adoption of state corporatism by China as an engine for development — large scale opposition to the corporate system withered.

We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.

In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion."

The Charlie Stross text was obtained from mentholmountains. The amazing video is by Derek Watkins.

all the rest is silence

I should say a little more about this, about not writing. A lot of people ask me about it, and I ask myself. And asking myself why I do not write inevitably leads to another, much more unsettling question: why did I ever write? After all, the normal thing is to read. I have two preferred answers. The first, that my poetry was- without my knowledge- an attempt to create an identity for myself; having created and assumed this identity, I was no longer concerned to throw myself into every poem I set about writing, which is what fascinated me. The other, that it was all a mistake: I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem. And to a degree, an unfortunate degree, I have achieved this; like any reasonably well-crafted poem, I am all need and internal submission to that tormented tyrant, that insomniac, omniscient and ubiquitous Big Brother: Me. Half Caliban, Half Narcissus, I fear him most when I hear him interrogate me, next to an open balcony: "What's a boy of 1950 like you doing in an indifferent year like this?" All the rest is silence.

-Jaime Gil de Biedma

via MentholMountatains

Finished Paintings, Vol. 2

These are a few of my favorite paintings from the past year. A few other selections are below as well.

Finshed paintings, vol. 1

Hello. I wanted to post some of my favorite finished paintings from the past year. It's been a pretty lousy year for me, painting wise, but I like each of these individually.

May Pictures

I started this painting and then the next day I found an old wood frame that looked like it belonged to it. Now I just have to finish it. I have been having a hard time finishing.