In the Beginning was Space

Dear Citizen,

 

“The information content and some material properties of incoming information is changed inside the space. This space can be considered as a content transformer, it digests the incoming material / information. Taken to the extreme all material is a form of information, and taken even further all information is a form of computation. Thus space computes information. […] The space is full of more or less active components, many of them communicating with each other, […] and many of them interacting in real time. I see people as drivers of the space when looking at it from a certain distance.” (Excerpt from the entry of ‘Space’ in one of the earliest editions of the vast and evergrowing Encyclopedia Strangeburiana)

 

How many drafts of existence is Nature in need of before human beings begin to acknowledge the inherent creativity of Space? Human beings are in Space – as a matter of fact they are themselves nothing but spaces. Just as Leibniz would have it (i.e. that inside the pond there are fish, inside fish there are ponds, etc.) human beings and Space go together, they are co-extensive, you might even say. Thus, human beings ought to be called human spaces, and societies ought to be designated as human spaces spaces – sociality is the space for human spaces. The social space of human beings (i.e. society) is always a place of creation. Societies are nothing but workshops where some things are being devoured whereas others are coming into existence for the first time. ‘Monism’, ‘pantheism’, ‘transcendental empiricism’ are but some of the labels that Space has given itself through the writings of philosophers. The philosopher is nothing but the necessarily obscure voice of Space – philosophy is the dialect of reality.

 

Now, in Strangebury things are looking bright these days. Hope has been kindled once again due to the succes of entrepaneur John Ruin (Ph. D., Sc. D.) whose recent work has been to provide an improved version of the software being used for the mosaic of high-resolution LED-displays on the inside of the Urban Hemisphere (UH) safely sheltering the citizens of Strangebury. (See Fig. #1 below.) UH has undergone dramatic changes in appearance due to dr. Ruin’s work, and especially the achievement of ‘hyper realism’ has been celebrated. (The leaders of the Idioteque have marked this crowning achievement by making the 21st of December into an official holiday.) We wish you happy new year, and look forward to provide you with the newest updates concerning the scientific progress of Strangebury’s finest. To you, to all!

 

– Greetings, Strangebury Outreach

 

Fig. #1

The Oil Age

 

 

Welcome to the future, traveller. Are you staying for long?

Iagttag terningernes slutspil

Kendsgerningerne er indtastet.

Horror Vac[…]i

“Alt er tomhed”

Endeløs tomhed” sagde Prædikeren “Endeløs tomhed, alt er tomhed.

Hvad udbytte har et menneske af alt, hvad det slider med under solen?

Slægter går, slægter kommer, og jorden er bestandig den samme.

Solen står op, og solen går ned, den skynder sig hjem, og dér står den op.

Vinden blæser mod syd, den drejer og går mod nord, den drejer og drejer, og vinden bliver ved at dreje.

Alle bække løber ud i havet, og havet bliver ikke fuldt; dér, hvor bækkene løber ud, bliver de ved at løbe ud.

Alt, hvad der bliver sagt, udmatter, ingen bliver færdig med at tale, øjet mættes ikke af at se, øret fyldes ikke af at høre.

Det, der var, er det samme som det, der kommer, det, der skete, er det samme som det, der vil ske; der er intet nyt under solen.

Hvis nogen siger: »Se, her er noget nyt!« så har det, vi har for øje, allerede været for længst.

De tidligere ting huskes ikke, og de fremtidige, som vil ske, bliver heller ikke husket af dem, som følger efter.”

As Above, So Below

“I see no God up here.”

– Yuri Gagarin

Abridge the History of Ideas

“[…] metaphors are therefore not well-suited for relaying new information, even though they are indispensable  in comprehending the incomprehensible. It is paradoxical. Metaphors are unscientific, but there is no scientific understanding beyond them. They are necessary for communication, but in relation to new insights, they can only be used as half-truths.”

– Robin Engelhardt

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[A] Being [hovers] over [the Spirit of the] Time[s]

“Any honest poetics

must be a theory of materials,

a ledger of an inventory of effects

and as such not a principle of composition

for a best fit line

or a mathematical metagrammar,

which insist on the import

of the order of facts.” [citation needed]

Jaws of Life

Sky Archaeology

What is Strangebury, you ask again? Fortunately, one can be told what Strangebury is.  Strangebury is something strange which has been buried under the precipitation of time; a point of origin in the history of ideas, like so many other cosmological myths. It is a singularity located in the preternatural prehistory of modern man, a blasted moral landscape from which uncanny debris has been flung far and wide, tracing trajectories in contemporary thought. Strangebury is the dawn and dusk of consciousness, a politics of energy on the order of metaphysics. Strangebury is simultaneously under construction and excavation and as we dig deeper into the cloudscapes, we will report back here for the good of all mankind, as we feel indebted to the kindness strangers have already shown us.  Who are we, then? Simple. We are archaeologists in search of the garden of Eden. We are that we are.

‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).’ – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

‘Jeg frygter det upersonlige mellem os, ting vi kaster fra os uden at tåle og bære, ting hvis historier vi ikke mere prøver at huske.’ – Inger Christensen, Græs

Incipit Strangebury

Welcome!

Henceforth this will be the site for the ongoing recondestruction of Strangebury. What Strangebury ‘is’ is not something we can simply tell you on one fine day – it must be experienced by yourself. For the time being Strangebury can only be said to exist within the borders of the bodies bearing the names ‘Rasmus Varnich Blumensaat’ and ‘Martin Hauberg-Lund’ respectively. Of course we have to remember and celebrate what Nietzsche meant when he spoke of the body as “eine große Vernunft, eine Vielheit mit einem Sinne, ein Krieg und ein Frieden, eine Herde und ein Hirt.” We will show you our bodies, our intestines, our organs, etcetera. To carry out this task is the sole purpose of this blog.

RM Xx