encapsuled: var(semic) consists of a conversation between Michelangelo, the artist known as encapsuled and Elisabeth Sweet grounded in philosophical texts by David Hume & Ludwig Wittgenstein. each movement culminates with a question inviting the algorithm made by encapsuled to give the final word.
read INVISIBLE VALENCE, the second movement of encapsuled: var(semic) below.
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Elisabeth Sweet (ES): in this conversation, we’ve explored the illusion of randomness, the miscalculation of newness, and the incoherence of miracles. still, these three propositions – randomness, newness, and miracles – maintain a firm grip on the human mind. the fear or yearning for some random event to change one’s life, the revelatory impact of experiencing something new, and faith in the occurrence and possibility of miracles serve as conscious guides to life, singularly or in combination.
randomness, newness, and miracles all carry a tremendous amount of uncertainty, but not necessarily doubt. Hume argues vividly against the tyrannical doubt which Skeptics hold dear, and Wittgenstein sums up the cruelty of doubt (through the English of G.E.M. Anscombe): “Just try — in a real case — to doubt someone else’s fear or pain.”
what makes uncertainty a better philosophical guide than doubt?
Michelangelo (M): the two phenomena are quite similar, as they both refer to a lack of knowledge about something, some missing associations between perceptions we had or between a perception and its context. with both, our mind does not have a path and it’s working hard to create one.
the main difference between doubt and uncertainty is our inclination to form the path. in the case of uncertainty, we want to create it, while in the case of doubt, we are more inclined to reject it. so uncertainty is the result of an open attitude while doubt is a reflection of our inclination to stick to our current paths.
in this light, uncertainty is decidedly a better philosophical guide as it’s more adaptive and makes us incorporate new inputs, resulting in more complete and malleable theories and less dogmatic beliefs.
ES: in “Of Standards of Taste” (1757), Hume writes, “The object of eloquence is to persuade, of history to instruct, of poetry to please by means of the passions and the imagination.” eloquence, history, and poetry are transmitted through embodied language, spoken and written.
in Philosophical Investigations (1953) Wittgenstein (through the English of Anscombe) writes: “It would never have occurred to us to think that we felt the influence of the letters on us when reading, if we had not compared the case of letters with that of arbitrary marks. And here we are indeed noticing a difference. And we interpret it as the difference be- tween being influenced and not being influenced.”
asemic writing may be defined as a mix of symbols and lines written without meaning, or even perhaps as “arbitrary marks,” as Wittgenstein describes above. as your practice is heavily rooted in the asemic, and considering the statement and sentiment of Wittgenstein alongwith the significance inculcated by Hume, what is the influence of “arbitrary marks” where one might expect a codified language?
M: it’s all about the significance of the marks. a symbol is something that stands for something else, and one needs a way to decode the symbol to understand what it stands for. in the case of arbitrary marks there is no decoding possible, and so the marks are not symbols and as Wittgenstein points out they cannot influence us.
when asemic writing is used how I use it, the decoding is not explicit, but possible. there is an intent in my creative process, an idea behind the order that can be found. this makes my asemic marks symbols. in action painting, for example a painting by Pollock, there is no idea or order, hence nothing to decode. it simply is and it doesn’t stand for something else, so it cannot be a symbol.
asemic writing invites the viewer to decode in private. the endeavor activates their imagination, which is often sleeping, and they complete the process by returning to the original message, finishing the art- work themselves.
ES: “Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived,” writes Hume in the final section of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). nine years later, Hume writes, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves.” beauty felt may be followed with the hope of making its impression indelible on the mind, body, or soul. whether we develop an affinity or a fear, as Rainer Maria Rilke writes of the terror born in beauty, it may be said that we are guided by what creates a sense of beauty within us.
I cannot help but connect beauty in this context to intuition: the feeling of knowing what is right or wrong without evidence stronger than an internal sense. intuition is our greatest guide through uncertainty. of intuition, Wittgenstein (through Anscombe) writes, “If intuition is an inner voice—how do I know how I am to obey it? And how do I know that it doesn’t mislead me? For if it can guide me right, it can also guide me wrong.” Wittgenstein highlights how challenging it can be to hear and follow one’s intuition, if in fact it is a source of deep knowing.
if beauty only exists in the mind of the perceiver, might uncertainty bear the same weight? is uncertainty, like beauty, more properly felt than perceived, thus exerting its influence more on our senses rather than on reality?
M: our senses and reality can never be separated, together they form our experience, so what influences one inevitably influences the other. we can never be in contact with the naked reality, it always comes to us through a lens and with a context.
uncertainty in particular is subjective as it pertains to a judgement we make towards some perception – we are not certain of what will happen next. it may be because the context is not familiar or because our senses are not receiving the expected inputs. a missing path that is not within reality itself but in our mind.
beauty is very similar, as it’s a judgment we make pertaining to a specific object or experience. while there may be some generic property that is often associated with beauty, I’d argue that it’s a result of our previous experiences. we are taught from the very beginning of our life what is beautiful and what is not, and our concept of beauty evolves in response to our experiences.
ES: what is the sound when a mind transitions from uncertainty to certainty?
encapsuled:
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read the first and second movements of encapsuled:var(semic) here.