OCTOPUS

following the Futuro House meeting 20 January 2016:

 


LIFE ON THE EDGE
WE ARE OCTOPUS


Futuro House gives sensingsite the opportunity to think other ‘ futures’ without the pressure of short term gain and an economy of repetitive re-production.

Futuro sits on the edge, a temporary space whose obsolescence re the modernist dreams of a utopian future, allows for a crisis of thinking and doing  to be aired.

Futuro is a meeting place of colliding thoughts, frustrations and musings which does not ‘push against’ but rather ‘pushes towards’ avoiding oppositional thinking. A mesh is not a network (Ingold).

Sensingsite in Futuro house considers the enriching powers of a poverty of means rather than accumulation of cultural capital.

We are thinking animals, we are octopus, possibly, not Major Thom.

Susan Trangmar


No solace in done senses


Owed to war, we construct ourselves a world we've learned to fight from afar.

To kill and take occasional showers.

Staunchest consumption is presented as the helping of others: the ideal vaccine.



Accident issues Manifesto. Historic kitsch Futurism. There's a certificate for that.

He sent these to me and a few others because we're going to bring things down, and start anew.

I like the coldness of you and your speeding. Is that your car?

Offend and connection. Certain clues to undermine the system.



The Temple as a graphical space?

You're making it sound quite utopian.

Here's a now where everything is exactly as it was in the city. Here's a now to take and develop from.

There is no actuality, only probability - a continual colonisation of the previous iteration.



King's Cross disparaging loveless move against a form of Marxist caution.

Make the sharp left turn. It’s one of those things that's become a bit trendy.

It’s all about a confusion of temporal connections, carried on the leftovers that you sent me.



And so it becomes a totally different project.

How do we perform within this framework, the customers who work on the other side?

You have to readdress it, your intention in the square corner.



Formative zoos and misting film - a cycle of kindness.

How to do that fission while the venture is merely an exploration of pretty fabric?



Spiritual particle physics.

Resilience and matter - the different register is more survivable.

Sciences are like particular words. If you push them as fast as you possibly can, they will eventually break.

The magic of problematics is the making of the thing. Is it space, is it time?

You know, maybe I don't know, and that’s why it becomes interesting.

 

Sam Burford



Futuro Writing 1
We are not they, we are Octopus, inside the Futuro, we do not care about they; it is time to leave the capsule if you dare...


We are billion year old carbon. Atoms fall through the sky, swerving and colliding across never ending galaxies. Plant Earth's magnetic journey around the Sun, bumps and grinds off kilter, because of human influenced global warming. The Earth's next predestined Ice Age falters and stalls. The Ice Age is unwilling to engage with the proliferation of human industry warming the plant, since the 1790s.


We not they, question the pursuit of deliberate work creation productivity. We seek alternatives, the unsuccessful outcome with no agenda. The ceramic Octopus had at some point broken. The Octopus fragments were carefully assembled and stuck, reforming the containers surface. Star Men / persons float across the sky. Prog rock Gentle Giant's Octopus sends out tendrils, time passes, and the Octopus tendrils still unfurl through blue rays surround sound waves.


We are stardust. We are golden. We are performing. Are the circuits dead? Is there something wrong? We are sitting in the fabricated tin can. The site contains us. What is retro, can become future dwelling formats, as shifts in perception occur. The valued bygone object allows ones generation of thoughts, words and conversation. The retro object is almost mythic, grasping at a purposeful reality of its own desire, not on the margins of society, but assisting a redirection of society. Groups of humans, they not we, construct desired lists directing values, sequencing transactions of products and services. Hawking argues science and technology fuelling progressive consumption of resources and Earth’s erosion will soon perpetuate the humans’ need to find habitation on other planets. Science and technology becomes a self-propelling imperative to fulfill the expenditure of Planet Earth.


How is it, suddenly, a much larger planet might exist beyond Pluto, unseen by humans on previous occasions? Did the Starman have to die in order for this information to be released? Art non-conforms where ever and whenever it can, elsewhere, in forms of activism, both seen and often unseen, stored on external hard drives. The stack of hard drives turns in to a mountain, reforming the Earth's surface, reconstructing Earth over a short space of time in Earth-time continuum. We have to get ourselves back to the garden, (to plant potatoes).


This conversation exists in an extended given moment, propelled as discourse through cybernetic technology. Human hands rearrange atoms of material in order to make this possible. Even the recording device looks like a retro component from a bygone era, and signifies itself as a desirable, collectable object.


The Octopus and Squid are part of Cephalopod taxonomy. The Giant Squid is hard to observe in deep water. Conversation is temporal but can continue over space and time. We are Octopods. Our (one’s) thoughts are tendrils reaching out to join or access other segments of Octopus mind. If we sat under a large Stargate (a copper energy device), would our conversation be the same or is it a particular to an individual site? Does Futuro, although circular, base its self on a crystalline construction (a geodesic dome perhaps), producing a higher vibrancy than an angular object? Crystals are arrangements of atoms. Some report crystals are not alive, yet paradoxically crystals grow. Crystals create energetic fields. Architecture is often angular. Through the oval windows our surroundings are glimpsed as ellipses. Inside Futuro it is calm. We avoid anxiety. Do curves constructed in the built environment allow for more bohemian, alternative thought and living; a possibility of thought influenced by architecture? Thrifty economy can be curved or angular directed by they or we the Octopus. We are counter-productive, but cultivating research, filling a black hole.


References:
Jean Baudrillard, "Subjective Discourse or The Non-Functional System of Objects", (1968).
David Bowie, "Space Oddity", (1969), "Starman", (1972).
R. Buckminster Fuller, "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth", (1968).
Gentle Giants "Octopus", (1972).
Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock", (1970).
Stephen Hawking, Reith Lecture (2016).
Stih & Schnock, “Who needs art, we need potatoes”, (1998-2009).


Kate Corder





 

Octopus

Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro', you have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon, hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we break
Cracked by scattered needles, the little minute gong coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand, hey ho, never be still
The old original favorite grand, grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is "In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro', you have no word
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood
Meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed

Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo, it's true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

The madcap laughed at the man on the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their bag, the seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep, the wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats, the squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never meet, so merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!


Syd Barrett