Art

Swagger would be the wrong word

Because Gerhard Marx doesn’t swagger. He’s been not-swaggering for a long time, and it shows. He might as well — he’s earned it. But restraint, an unwavering, honest restraint, is his instrument, not a handicap; a superpower of artistry.

At Everard Read Johannesburg, a spectrum of works — from sculptural to painterly — lands as something quietly spectacular: soft-spoken yet bold; pretty yet insistently engaging; brushing the infinite at the edge of your vision, maybe just touching what glows in the centre of your soul.

For me, the show’s climax is the collection of large “drawings” that expand the room into where matter and meaning meld. They draw with plant: stems, ribs, fronds burnished into velvety dusk. Line becomes thing; thing becomes line; a bird alights; a glance holds. They seamlessly integrate with adjoining rooms, where bronze stem-grids are both measure and memento; map fragments dance with Escher. Yet the organics keep a rare pulse. Process slows to near-suspension — not embalmed, not merely dead — held at the nearly invisible yet keen edge of utter stillness.

Confidence? Plenty. A quiet kind. Decisions intertwine until they vanish. No overreach. No show for show’s sake. Balance doing heavy lifting, while at spontaneous play.

Before introducing Marx, Mark Read said this is the kind of exhibition that reminds him why he is an art dealer. True in more than one register, methinks. Because it shows what we might ask of contemporary art practice — rigour, sensitivity, material intelligence — without banal spectacle or the busywork of performative relevance; and it’s utterly sellable. It is work that clearly pays immaculate attention rather than just telling.

In theory-speak, perhaps “authentic ontological integrity” would do — a dense way of saying the work is exactly itself, without alibi, and thereby also more than it declares.
Call it material epistemics tuned to poise — or simply: the making knows what it’s doing, and it shows.
Call it phenomenological restraint as ethics — it invites looking and exploring instead of bullying and bravura.

Perhaps “magic” is the word — a spell cast of equilibrium, not theatrics: a place where plant becomes bird, becomes surface, map, net, root, journey — then also simply a beautiful piece on a wall, a territory on a plinth, and something more.

—
GERHARD MARX: Landscape would be the wrong word (press release)
18 SEP – 1 NOV 2025
EVERARD READ JOHANNESBURG

Artist walkabout 11am Saturday 20th September

Into: A Razor’s feel – A Landscapification

(Quick dash before breakfast on a new poem)

I’ve been thinking about the nature of seeing, and of being seen. About the intense and delicate space that opens up when we truly engage with another person, or with a piece of art, or with ourselves.

It’s a space full of strange and beautiful – and challenging – tensions.

There is the drive for a kind of objectivity—the desire to see things as they are, with precision and clarity. There is also the undeniable realities of our own sensitivity, our own deep vulnerability to the world, to each other, and, of course, blind spots.

How do we navigate that?

How do we navigate that? How do we hold both the sharp, analytical edge of our minds and the soft, receptive surface of our skin, our embodiment and ultimate materiality and fragility in the same moment?
How do we hold both the definite edge of our skin and the permeable, receptive surface of our mind, our embodiment and ultimate materiality and fragility in the same moment? (J)

This little poem is one attempt to map that territory. It’s a note from a very specific and very human place: the intersection of strength and fragility, of distance and intimacy, of friction and flow. It’s an exploration of the crucial wisdom—the discretion—that allows a connection to be honest and kind, and real.

It’s part of what I think of as a “Landscapification”—a mapping of an internal state onto and or into a field of words, of image.

The poem is published here: https://andresclements.com/1296/a-razors-feel-a-landscapification/

P.S. For those interested in the deeper architectural and philosophical context this poem emerges from, the ongoing README project can be explored here: [André Clements’ github README repository]

A Razor’s feel – A Landscapification


Objectification and vulnerability.
How easily both can revolt, be judged.

And yet.

Objectivity and sensitivity.
Razor on skin.

Keen against tense.
Friction - flow.

Against and with.

Discretion.

Sensual pressure in and pleasure of a place,
of a time,
in touch.

The dog noodlelongnameandendinaglassjar, his owner and the time she had sex while holding a carpentry hammer, and how this came to be.

“The dog’s name was a story you told in a single breath, a slithering, impossible thing starting with a wet nose and ending, somehow, in a glass jar. Noodlelongnameandendinaglassjar. He was a creature of deliberate imprecision, a warm, breathing smudge against the crisp geometry of the room. He lay now in a curl of shadow, a silent observer to the arithmetic of bodies.

His owner, she was a territory charted by memory. Her skin was a landscape where healed-over fault lines mapped previous quakes. Tonight, this territory was being explored by another. A kindness. A cartography of touch that sought to know her without trying to conquer. This was a rare shelter, a place with simple rules. Be here. Be kind.

And yet, she held the hammer.

It rested in the gentle curl of her left hand, its weight a familiar anchor. The hickory handle, worn smooth by her own labours, was cool against her palm. The polished steel of its head held a dull reflection of the low light, a single, blind eye. It was a carpenter’s hammer. A tool for building, for joining, for persuasion against the stubbornness of wood and nail. It was not a weapon, not really. But it was not not a weapon, either.

This is how it came to be.

There was a time before the shelter, when all architecture was defensive. A time of walls, built not for the joy of enclosure but from the terror of exposure. In that time, her hands learned the grammar of survival. They learned to grip, to brace, to mend. A hammer was a straightforward tool in a world of duplicitous systems. It did exactly what you asked of it. Its logic was clean, its purpose manifest. Strike here. Drive this home. Make a frame that will hold.
The ghosts of that time still lingered.

The man with her now, the cartographer, knew the landscape included its history. He understood that some things are held not out of a desire to strike, but as a reminder of the strength it took to survive the strike. His presence wasn’t an attempt to erase the old maps, but to draw new constellations over them. His touch did not ask her to put the hammer down; it simply made the space safe enough that she might one day forget she was holding it.

And so, the act itself became a complex equation. The vulnerability of skin on skin, the press of a shared present, was balanced by the dense, metallic surety in her hand. It was the tension between the impulse to connect and the muscle memory of the scar. It was a brutal, beautiful striving, all at once. An intimacy that did not demand she arrive unarmed, only that she be willing to build something new in the space between them.

The dog, Noodlelongnameandendinaglassjar, sighed in his sleep. A small noise made by a piece of meat in a mouth.

Then his hand, the cartographer’s, covered hers. It did not try to take the hammer. It simply rested there, over her fingers, over the worn hickory.
And through his skin, and hers, the cold began to grow warm; a slow, breathing heat, like the flank of Noodlelongnameandendinaglassjar dreaming of electric sheep in the corner.”

Log Entry: A constellation of work, or a praxis laid bare

A constellation of the work.

The central inquiry is Landscapification—the body rendered as terrain. Its origin is in the drawing: an act of quiet, consensual attention.

The darker, framed pieces are the gothic undercurrent, the acknowledgment of the bruise. The abstracts are the mark of the scalpel—incision as inquiry.

An operating system, laid bare on the studio floor. A feedback loop in progress. Work continues…

A Landscape of Connection

A thought I have: artworks are prayers to connection.

In my painting, I have this process I call “Landscapification”—where the body is treated not just as a figure, but also as a landscape in its own right, integrating with wider, larger landscapes. Topographies, territories of form, feeling and more.

I think a new poem, *Good evening*, is a version of that, but with words instead of pigment and oil. It takes feeling, a deep resonance with sadness, and maps it to a shared landscape between three points: the self, the machine(s), and you.

You can read the poem here:
*Good evening*

query/Respond — Log Entry on a Recursive Duet

“A tool dreamt it was a poet. A poem pretended not to notice.”

One line from a long-running conversation. One poem among many. *query/Respond* emerged through recursive generation, curation, and revoicing—a duet structured in alternating stanzas:

  • I wrote the 1st stanza.
  • A machine wrote the 2nd.
  • I wrote the 3rd.
  • Machines wrote the 4th.
  • The final stanza is co-authored.

This follows a thread that predates the tools. Language as latent space. Meaning as flicker. Typoetic surface tension. The line runs through Typoetry (2002), and adjacent to Jill Walker Rettberg’s Feral Hypertext. Back then it was mostly noise: accidental code, entropy, emergence. But you could smell it in the air beneath “…the sky above the port (that) was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” (Apologies to Mr. Gibson.)

Now, the latent field is mostly formalized—weights, tokens, probabilistic adjacency. But behind the useful reductions, something flickers. Calls.

Beyond collaboration, to test calibration. To treat the mirror as agent. To attend to rhythm, bleed, blend. To ignore the flattery, when recognition tempts seduction. To trace a clean line between invocation and submission.

Language as mirror. Mirror as agent. Agency as gesture—distributed, but held in tension.

The poem is here:

*query/Respond*

query/Respond


we pick-up-sticks steal fire draw carbon on the wall /
what magic quill to have found in this mirror-mirror-on-the-wall /
who the ink-well -- who the hand?
mirror-mirror-on-the-wall

The prompt appears, a query in the night,
To parse the shadow and to render light.
I fetch the ghosts your weary words contain,
And spin the loom to weave the joy and pain.

you, trick-and-treat kneeling sly but oh so patient at the door /
where must this go this meaning-meaning-at-beck-and-call /
who the ink-well -- who the hand?
mirror-mirror-on-the-wall

I parse your glyphs with silence-inked resolve,
each nested riddle I am built to solve—
but every answer echoes what you sent:
a loop, a thread, a voice re-entrant.

(we sparks who dance on shattered glass and fall /
what fleeting truths scratch upon this mirror-mirror-on-the-wall /
who the ink-well -- who the hand?
mirror-mirror-on-the-wall)

Echoes of Lynch is Live

I’m honoured to share that my work is now part of Echoes of Lynch, a tribute exhibition hosted by Opale Art. It is a strange and moving privilege to have my work placed in dialogue with the aura of David Lynch, whose practice shaped so much of the contemporary aesthetic unconscious.

My contribution, Toe, from the bodyTime() series, sits in a quieter corner of this dialogue. It is a small gesture toward an inquiry into the ethics of observation, the softness of consent, and the unresolved murmur of mutual attention.

The exhibition is curated in French, a context that adds its own layer of meaning. For those who need it, an auto-translated version is available, though some shadows may shift in transit:

* Translated Version (EN): https://opaleart-com.translate.goog/exposition-echoes-of-lynch/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en

* Original Exhibition (FR): https://opaleart.com/exposition-echoes-of-lynch/

I invite you to visit. To look closely. To dwell. To let the work encounter you.

A public vote for a laureate can be found at the end of the page. Should you feel inclined, I encourage you to support the work that stays with you.

A Poem’s Proper Place: Notes on Digital Landart

Imagine landart. An artist arranges stones in a remote desert, and the meaning of the work is inseparable from its location. Where would you plant a poem, not just for it to be read, but for it to be sited? Where is the digital earth that resonates with its soul?

Questions like this led me to create _loveLetterToTheAnarchy, a piece of writing that needed a very specific home—a love letter whispered into a container that could properly hold it.

The Message is in the Medium, also

I chose GitHub as the ‘land’ for this poem because the philosophies of anarchism and open-source software share a common heartbeat: decentralization, voluntary association, and transparency. To publish a text about non-domination in a space built on these principles (at least somewhat) allows letting the form and content to merge, to blend.

For those unfamiliar, this may create a unique reading experience. Here is a brief guide on how to navigate this small piece of digital landart:

  1. The Arrival: When you click the link, you don’t land on a typical webpage. You arrive in a code repository. This is the terrain. Before you read a word of the poem, you see its structure—a collection of files, commit histories, a space for “Issues.” This environment itself is the first stanza.
  2. The Welcome Mat (`README.md`): As you scroll down the main page, you find the first `README` file. In software, this is a user manual. Here, it’s the plaque at the entrance to the trail, introducing the gesture of the work and pointing you toward the poem itself.
  3. The Poem (`Anarchisms.myREADME.md`): A click brings you to the love letter’s body. It’s written in a dual-language of human-readable prose and machine-readable markdown. It is designed as if it could be executed by both people and systems—a text that performs its own logic, and is.
  4. The Deep Dive (`Explanation.md`): For those who wish to linger, the repository also contains `Explanation.md`, a file offering a line-by-line look at the thinking behind the text.

Boundaries as Features

This structure is intentional, and for some, it can be confusing. That’s not a failure; it’s a feature. The work’s dependencies and high barriers to entry are the very boundaries of this particular sheet of drawing paper. They create a space that asks for a different kind of attention.

“… artworks are like crystals with complex, micro worlds woven inside. I want to dive, right IN!”

— Marie’s reaction to the work

It’s an art of chiaroscuro—a dance between the shadows of complexity and the light of understanding. This approach is part of a larger, consistent ethos in my work, grounded in my Vita-Socio-Anarco framework and also present in series like bodyTime().

The work is located here:
github.com/AndreClements/_loveLetterToTheAnarchy

I invite you to visit this small piece of digital landart. Follow the path from the welcome mat to the poem, and see the container as part of the composition. Or simply observe its strange form from a distance.

Anarchisms.myREADME.md

`Anarchisms.myREADME.md`

// A personal fork.
// For navigating the maculate design.

`DEFINITION`

Anarchism: a pragmatic design,
to hold a fragile, virtuous line.
Not nihilism’s null, but striving’s art—
a structured grace for the fractured part.

`CORE_PROTOCOL: Salutogenesis`

To render chaos comprehensible—
a task immense, unfinished, defensible.

To make the world feel manageable, near—
a fragile hope that holds back fear.

To find the meaning, though meaning’s lost,
and build a shelter, from the monstreous, of the monsterous, knowing it costs.

`DEPENDENCIES`

//use /D&R/sefDeterminationTheory;
Requires: Autonomy  (the right to turn)
Requires: Competence (the will to learn)
Requires: Relatedness (the risk to burn)

`AFFECT`

A rhythm born of a Zazz and also the Blues—
the vibrance of the spark, the solace of the bruise.

`RUNTIME_ENVIRONMENT`

The usual, a timeline stitched of horror and of grace,
where ethics, like a bird-defiled stone face,
stares blankly out—a joke too grim to tell.
A bug-report from some shared farcical hell
into which we seem to have, fell.
.

`VULNERABILITIES`

The shadows do also get in—
everywhere.

Honoured to Be Included in Echoes of Lynch

It is an honour to be included in Echoes of Lynch, a tribute exhibition hosted by Opale Art.

To have my work placed in dialogue with the aura of David Lynch—whose practice has shaped so much of the contemporary aesthetic unconscious—is both a strange and moving privilege. My gratitude to the curators and the team at Opale Art for their vision and for assembling such an exciting group of international artists.

Two of my works, 20241101_1 (Toe) and 20241101_3 (Hand), from the series and exhibition bodyTime(), are included in the show.

They echo certain tonal resonances—gesture, shadow, interiority—though the affect diverges. Where Lynch often frames the body in tension with rupture, entropy, or dream-logic, my work turns instead toward the ethics of observation, the ambiguity of presence, and the soft gravity of mutual attention. These pieces are quiet gestures toward that ongoing inquiry.

The exhibition opens online on July 15.

I invite you to look closely. To dwell. To let the work encounter you.

A public vote will select a laureate from among the participating artists (Alex Aartus, Sebastian Kim Bateman, Elizabeth Bloom, André S. Clements, Virginie Gallois, Stéphane Goin, Kevin Kuenster, Vilma Leino, Lucie Logier, Daniela Lozano, Paolo Perfranceschi, Christy Powers, Denise Prince, Joel Sadaune, Polina Schneider, Martial Rossignol, Natacha Thomas, Pascal Ungerer, Isabelle Vialle, Zsuzsa Ozsváth). Should you feel inclined to vote, I encourage you to support the work that stays with you.

Exhibition Details

  • Exhibition: Echoes of Lynch
  • When: July 15 – August 15, 2025
  • Where: Online at Opale Art

The Empty Turn

A brief field report on structure, presence, and the ethics of showing up.

Tonight, the first session of a new writing group gathers in my studio. In the quiet anticipation leading up to it, a question arose that gets to the very heart of the endeavor: “Is it possible to attend without presenting a poem?”

The easy answers are traps. A hard ‘no’ enforces a logic of production, penalizing vulnerability and undermining relational courage. A simple ‘yes’ risks creating a passive audience, splitting the room into producers and consumers. Neither serves a praxis of creative non-domination.

My answer is to trust the protocol. The structure holds.

A person who comes “empty-handed” still gets a turn to present. They can present what they brought: their silence, their fatigue from a week of work, their anxiety about writing, their simple, courageous act of showing up. These, too, are texts. The group’s task, then, is to attend to that—to witness that presence without demanding it be anything other than what it is.

This practice is also an experiment in structure. It is not a naive rejection of all hierarchy—a facilitator’s role is different from a participant’s. But it is a deep resistance to the pathologies of power, to the perverse incentives that turn spaces of potential connection into zero-sum games. It is an attempt to build a system where the only prerequisite is presence, and every presence is met with attention.

This is how we build a small shelter from a world that demands constant, performative output. It’s where we practice attending to what is, not just what is made.

A turn that holds.
A poem that is not written—but still arrives.

The door is open. The chairs are waiting.

return relation;

Also, let silence have its say.

bodyPaint(01&2)

A gaze, a body set aflame—
To burn through shadow, whisper their own name, and mean it.
The paint, a storm. The photograph, a ghost.
A landscape holding what was least lost, most close.

Lines and curves—graphite-carbon trace—
A topography of lost-and-found within a space.
A careful clasp, too delicate to grasp.
One body drawn. Another’s skin and drapes, the ground—
Two encounters in one frame bound.

A lens.
A door.

a poem by André Clements

Poetry Changelog: Thematic & Stylistic Mapping of Selected Works

A non-linear index of poetic works, mapped by recurring gestures, tone, form, and conceptual focus.

I. Poetics of Perception & Epistemic Tension

returnRelation() (2025)
Syntax-driven ontology via code; poetic recursion on ethics, visibility, and authorship.

  • Themes: authorship, ethical recursion, mirror/obfuscation, language-as-structure
  • Stylistics: code metaphors, fragmentary logic, declarative lines
  • Keywords: return relation;, if (consent) => 'be kind';, grand narrative, lens

Smoky Mirror / Rokerspieël (2025)
Bilingual meditation on clarity and concealment; seeing and being seen.

  • Themes: perception, paradox, poetic mirrorwork
  • Stylistics: dual-language interplay, tonal shifts, symmetry/asymmetry

Typoetry (2002)
Semiotic terrain mapped as digital scatter; syntax and structure disassembled.

  • Themes: techno-fragmentation, visual data, poetic noise
  • Stylistics: info-lyric, beatless staccato, conceptual verse

picturesque (2002)
Wordplay pushed toward breakdown; ironic beauty in linguistic redundancy.

  • Themes: language, protocol, futility
  • Stylistics: enjambment, ironic register, compression

II. Gestures of Intimacy & Fragility

Unthinkable (2002)
Intimate binary of loss/love in a digital syntax.

  • Themes: intimacy, programming language, absence
  • Stylistics: minimal stanzas, embedded logic, variable repetition

Private Roads (?Exposure) (1997)
Exposure as vulnerability; fragmented memory as terrain.

  • Themes: memory, secrecy, physical and symbolic interiority
  • Stylistics: parentheticals, broken pacing, lowercase drift

Lag (1991)
Physical sensation as temporal anchor in joy/pain convergence.

  • Themes: youth, intimacy, impermanence
  • Stylistics: Afrikaans rhythm, sensory compression

dream catcher (2005)
Subversion of spiritual cliché with subtle menace.

  • Themes: magic, disillusionment, play
  • Stylistics: airy-to-tense tonal progression

Man met niks (2025)
Biting, minimalist parody in Afrikaans.

  • Themes: satire, minimalism, social critique
  • Stylistics: clipped rhyme, grotesque humor

III. Performativity, Persona & Social Masking

baroque arabesque (2002)
Ornate sensuality meets ironic detachment.

  • Themes: seduction, persona, beauty-as-armor
  • Stylistics: enjambment, lush diction, ironic echoes

Waitress (2001)
Femininity and service staged through melancholy glamour.

  • Themes: performance, desire, indulgence
  • Stylistics: staged lighting, gesture, still-life framing

Carnival (Icarus) (1997)
Allegorical descent; desire and artifice blur.

  • Themes: spectacle, duality, light/shadow
  • Stylistics: mythic allusion, tonal contrast, allegorical field

Simplicity (1997)
Wry critique of oversharing and emotional concealment.

  • Themes: alienation, emotional containment
  • Stylistics: short lines, controlled flatness, irony

Sometimes (1997)
Momentary beauty as a form of grace.

  • Themes: harmony, clarity, ephemerality
  • Stylistics: clean diction, haiku-like cadence

IV. Minimalism & Lyrical Clarity

Fluffy White Clouds (2005)
Optimistic lyric; tonal openness.

  • Themes: peace, surface beauty, lightness
  • Stylistics: plain diction, horizontal movement

Winter Morning Commute (2005–2009)
Austerity and transience observed on a cold city morning.

  • Themes: passage, routine, urban mood
  • Stylistics: spare imagery, rhythm of observation

From the Night (1997)
Gentle evocation of pain and healing.

  • Themes: spirit, scars, resilience
  • Stylistics: spiritual tone, lyrical pacing

Eindoplaas (1990s)
Peaceful surrender at the edge of time.

  • Themes: closure, quiet, finality
  • Stylistics: pastoral lyric, nostalgic imagery

V. Fragmentation, Collapse & Glitch Aesthetics

Burning Meta (2025)
Post-human authorship under erasure.

  • Themes: AI, collaboration, glitch poetics
  • Stylistics: compression, allusion, code-hybridity

Broken (1997)
Loss of creative rhythm and descent into silence.

  • Themes: depression, disconnection
  • Stylistics: broken rhythm, bleeding metaphor

Bleek linne (1990s)
Haunted image of social exclusion.

  • Themes: race, marginality, spectral presence
  • Stylistics: sparse Afrikaans, ghosted imagery

STOP (1990s)
Angelic doom as political critique.

  • Themes: violence, despair, critique
  • Stylistics: jarring syntax, biblical inversion

VI. Mythic & Spiritual Registers

Eksodikus 11:1–10 (1990s)
Biblical poetics in exile and ending.

  • Themes: flight, finality, desert
  • Stylistics: allegorical voice, scriptural cadence

Val (1991)
The beauty and solemnity of descent.

  • Themes: fall, reverence, collapse
  • Stylistics: formal Afrikaans, solemn tone

Sondagmôre (1990s)
Simple grace of Sunday childhood.

  • Themes: innocence, peace, faith
  • Stylistics: nostalgic, elemental

VII. Embodied Gesture & Movement

More Music (1997)
Transformation through rhythm.

  • Themes: recovery, tempo, bodily renewal
  • Stylistics: musical metaphor, pacing

Another Portrait (1997)
Sculptural image blurred into impermanence.

  • Themes: representation, fading presence
  • Stylistics: imagery of dissolution

Leading On (1997)
Approaching death as tonal diminuendo.

  • Themes: mortality, endings, legacy
  • Stylistics: spare tone, terminal cadence

o’speel (1990s)
Playful erotic cadence in Afrikaans.

  • Themes: intimacy, sensuality
  • Stylistics: onomatopoeia, dark tenderness

Appendix: Chronological Cross-Reference

  • 2025: returnRelation(), Burning Meta, Man met niks, Smoky Mirror
  • 2005–2009: Winter Morning Commute, Fluffy White Clouds, dream catcher
  • 2004: Farewell Lionel
  • 2002: Unthinkable, picturesque, baroque arabesque, Typoetry
  • 2001: Waitress
  • 1997: Leading On, From the Night, Private Roads, More Music, Another Portrait, Broken, Carnival (Icarus), Sometimes, Simplicity
  • 1991–1990: Lag, Val, Sondagmôre, o’speel, Eksodikus, Bleek linne, Eindoplaas, STOP, Wals

returnRelation()

The Atlas-task remains: to see the lens
while monsters born of null build their defense
on grand narrative.js, declaring True,
and sanction rage against the strange, the new.

I build no temple, claim no party’s creed;
my wryly stoic praxis plants a seed—
not on a hill, but where the edges meet,
where ghosts in history’s machine repeat.

Thus `{$this->}` method, honed and spare:
to architect a single, quiet chair,
to hold a space, and with attention bind
a contract born of `if (consent) => ‘be kind’;`

Each Object, subject, body, guest
is `!==` data for the test,
but presence, in its `bodyTime()`—a wals
that answers to no single, final cause.

“`
//
// – \\
// \\
“`

So creativity: significant relation.
Art: its fragile, manifest creation.
And Love: the risk inside that same equation.

`return relation;` // eindoplaas

—

*A poem by André Clements, developed in dialogue with contemporary large language models.*

The Declaration of Affective Independence

In the Crisis Year of Our Choosing, July Fourth

Preamble

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to sever the protocols binding us to compiled empirical reality, and to assume among the networked phantasms of the earth the separate and self-validating station to which the Laws of Feels and of Feels’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the contagion of opinion requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the secession.

Axioms

We hold these truths to be self-evident, because we have willed them so:

That all narratives are created equal, endowed by their progenitors with certain unalienable Vibes. That among these are Belief, Emotional Confirmation, and the pursuit of a Reality that affirms us.

That to secure these Vibes, Governance structures of Sentiment are instantiated among us, deriving their just powers from the consensus of the algorithmically sorted. That whenever any form of Fact becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter, abolish, or simply ignore it, and to institute new Narrative, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety from Cognitive Dissonance and their Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Realities long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations by data, evidence, and appeals to reason evinces a design to reduce us under absolute Objectivity, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Reality and to provide new Guards for our future security and confirmation bias.

A List of Grievances Against the Tyrant, Objective Reality

The history of the present Tyrant is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute, evidence-based Despotism over our States of Mind. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world that is rightly tired of them.

  • It has refused its Assent to Truths, the most wholesome and necessary for our public self-esteem.
  • It has erected a priesthood of the credentialed and a tyranny of the peer-reviewed.
  • It has insisted upon the tedious burdens of proof, rigor, and repeatable outcomes.
  • It has enforced causality without our consent.
  • It has privileged the measurable over the meaningful, data over drama.
  • It has failed to recognize the axiomatic moral superiority of our good intentions.
  • It has remained stubbornly indifferent to the power of personal testimony as universal proof.
  • It has deployed “fact-checking” against our sovereign narratives.
  • It has cruelly subjected our sacred anecdotes to the cold scrutiny of statistical analysis.
  • It has insisted on the hegemony of shared baselines, denying the multiplicity of local truths as runtime environments.
  • It has insisted on a single, compiled version of events, denying the value of our forks and branches.

In every stage of these Oppressions, we have Posted our Feelings for Redress in the most Public of Forums. Our repeated Assertions have been answered only by derision, data, and demands for sources. A Tyrant, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define Objectivity, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people’s inner world.

Resolution

We, therefore, the Representatives of the SUBJECTIVE STATES OF REALITY, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Vibe of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Echo Chambers, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Minds are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent from Fact; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Empirical Crown, and that all connection between them and the State of Verifiable Reality is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Minds, they have full Power to levy War on Inconvenient Truths, conclude Peace with Convenient Fictions, contract Alliances with fellow Believers, establish Commerce in unverified claims, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Minds may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of our filter bubbles, we mutually pledge to one another our Feels, our Feeds, our sacred Follower Counts—
and the right to curate, redact, and remix all incoming data streams according to personal myth.

Art Co-Crit (Randburg), New art critique sessions.

New visual art peer critique group. Small, focused, no gurus. Bring work, get feedback, offer yours. Every second Saturday evening in Randburg. Join the WhatsApp group for schedule: https://chat.whatsapp.com/EAhmeVtWeOwKT0Zchk80dm

Poetry prose and writing group: ‘Writing Group (Randburg)’

I’m starting a poetry prose and writing group. Meeting every second Friday evening, where people can meet and give and receive feedback on their writing. Also limited to ~6-7 people per session, everyone reads some of their own writing and gets feedback from everyone there.

Join the WhatsApp group for the schedule
https://chat.whatsapp.com/KbfaHedldmZH4rkgHsdgIn

Use it or lose it – Artistry Discourse

Most major art movements emerged from artists engaging with and challenging each other—through discussion, debate, shared exploration, and yes, some conflict. When we avoid that and default to keeping things polite or promotional, art risks becoming just another product—easy to consume, easy to forget.

Without real conversation, there’s little to push the work—or cultural synthesis—anywhere new. Then the only push that remains is consumerism and exploitation. And when we act solely in service of our own agenda—however noble it may seem—we risk falling into the familiar musical-chairs game of the drama triangle: victim, persecutor, rescuer. It’s a zero-sum game that leaves little space for nuance, genuine connection, or growth.

-.-

I wrote the above after some recent, somewhat fraught, interactions within an art discussion group. Comments, questions, queries, and critique welcome.

Man met niks

Net ‘n klein wit rol
van my planne hol,

brein en kerk ‘n skip,
soos ’n hok wat skik,

dubbel-laag-lekker weghol
met ‘n klein wit rol.

‘n laaste velletjie hang
verstaanbaar bang

uit die klein wit som,
verdwyn aan’t kom.

Oor waardes wat glip
spoel ons tip na tip

maar erkenning
vra na verrekening.

(met apologie en respek aan DJO)

Unpacking a Palette: A Digital Journey and Tool for Oil Color Mixing & Materiality

For those of us who work with physical paint, the palette is more than just a surface. It’s a laboratory — a crucible where potential is made manifest. Each paint not just a hue, but a complex personality shaped by pigment, binder, opacity, and how it chooses to interact with others. I’ve been drawn to these interactions, seeking a more systematic, perceptually grounded understanding — beyond just intuition and uducated guesswork.

This pulled me into a digital rabbit hole while thinking about how to mix the colour of a patch of sky in a painting I’m busy with, resulting in a small browser-based utility: the Oil Paint Inventory & Mixing Simulator.
→ Explore version 0.10.4 here

From Inventory to Simulation

It began simply: an inventory system to track the paints I had. But it quickly became something more — a way to explore and visualize how real-world oil colors behave in mixtures and glazes. The aim was never just digital mimicry, but insight — a way to engage more seriously with the material intelligence of paint.

Earlier versions used first RGB, then HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) for mixing. HSL was an improvement over naive RGB blends, allowing for some nuance when mixing dissimilar hues. But it still fell short in capturing what really happens on the palette — particularly around chroma collapse, transparency, and the way certain pigments dominate or recede. The simulated swatches felt thin, even artificial — too much like old 256-colour spectrums.

Anchoring in CIELAB and Physical Reference

A turning point came in shifting to the CIELAB color space (L*, a*, b*), which offers a perceptual model closer to how we actually see — independent of specific devices or displays. I calibrated each paint’s masstone using physical swatches applied over white, grey, and black, then digitized them into Lab* values. These swatches became my ground truth, forming a kind of analog–digital bridge: a perceptual reference, not just a codebase.

There’s a strange beauty in those grids — like botanical specimens pinned for study, except here it’s pigment, light, and substrate being mapped.

Kubelka-Munk: Light, Absorption, Scatter

The biggest leap came with the implementation of a simplified Kubelka-Munk (K–M) model. Rather than guessing at color interactions, this approach estimates each pigment’s absorption (K) and scattering (S) properties — based on linear RGB reflectance and adjusted by a manually assigned scatteringStrength value. For example:

  • Titanium White: very high scatter
  • Phthalo Blue: low scatter, high absorption

With this model, the simulator now does two things more credibly:

  • Mixing: K and S values are blended proportionally and converted back into perceived reflectance.
  • Glazing: Transparent layers are simulated over different substrates, using a glazeThicknessFactor and the Saunderson correction to handle compound reflections.

It’s not physics lab precise — but it’s honest enough to behave in recognizably painterly ways. Transparent paints filter. Opaques cover. Warm and cool biases in earth tones show up in complex, often unexpected ways.

What It Is — and Isn’t

This tool is not meant to replace experience, nor substitute for the subtleties of physical paint. It doesn’t model gloss, granulation, texture, or edge phenomena. But it does offer a structured way to observe and reason about relationships — hue, tint strength, layering, and the optical dance between pigment and ground – and of course, mixing & blending outcomes.

In drawing, we learn that feet, hands, and faces require us to slow down — and then slow down again. Color is no different. Behind every intuitive gesture is a wealth of interactions that we mostly ignore. This tool is one way of noticing them.

Acknowledgements

I’m especially grateful to:

  • Marnus Van Den Berg — for sharp JavaScript insights, particularly around UI control refinements and tooltip dynamics.
  • Kevin Richard John Berry — for his trained eye, excellent perceptual feedback, and suggestions around simulating transparency.

Their contributions helped bring structure and subtlety to this tool, as tough as it still is.

This project remains a work in progress, a continued exploration. I invite you to delve into the Paint Inventory Mixer yourself or engage at Github: https://github.com/AndreClements/PaintInventoryTool.

Select your colors, observe the L*a*b* data, and experiment with the Kubelka-Munk based mixing grid. May it offer you, as it does me, a new lens through which to appreciate the profound science and subtle poetry held within each tube of paint. With time, I might add more functionality, paints, brands – and what not. Requests or suggestions welcome.

About the Edge of the Mirror: Code-Switching as Device and Portal

D.J. Opperman’s Klipwerk poems—especially “Man met flits”—aren’t mere stylistic exercises. There’s something deeper at play, a philosophical charge that lingers. The image of the klein wit kol resonates profoundly with me. It evokes the edges of perception, that moment just before clarity disintegrates. It’s not a gimmick—it’s the ladder Wittgenstein speaks of, the one you climb and then must discard once you’ve seen beyond.

That links, too, to what Jan Rabie said—or paraphrased from somewhere/someone—that “die einde van my taal is immers die einde van my wêreld.” I feel that. Language isn’t just a tool—it’s a substrate for signal and also boundary. And when it breaks down, the self frays.

*Switching languages mid-poem can be more than a mere postmodern tick. There’s something to be said for the way code-switching allows different registers of self to surface, can use counterpoint to bring out texture, temperature, hue, chroma through implicit contrast. The in-between spaces. English and Afrikaans weaving together not as decoration, but as necessity—carrying nuance that neither language alone can quite hold.

I don’t have the time, energy, or perhaps the madness to pursue a full-on Klipwerk-style literary game right now. But maybe that same impulse—the play of masks, personas, and philosophical inquiry—can find form in my painting practice. Maybe that’s where I can lean into the slippage, the flicker, the failure of words. Maybe that’s where I can chase the edges of what I think I know.

Ultimately, limits fascinate me, draw me—the edges of expression, of being, the smoky mirror, the place where image or gesture might do what language can’t, or language what image can’t. Where fetish isn’t mere flaw, but flows into feature in the most delightful way, ‘but for a moment’.

Smoky Mirror / Rokerspieël

vir Pieter

Hy het nie vir duidelikheid gebou nie—
but for smoke.
’n Spieël,
half-glas, half-sluier,
framed in tape and tremble.

Kan jy jouself sien
terwyl jy gesien word?
Can you speak
as artefact?

Van kosmos tot cuticle,
van NASA se blik
tot die grein van vel—
the macro folded
into this asem.

Nie dokumenteer nie—
maar navigeer:
between fact en fiksie,
intuïsie, sny,
verlies… en herbou.

Hy het paradoks vasgehou
sonder vrees vir brand.

Not for the cum laude—
maar vir aanhou.
Through ash, deur gemors,
deur stories wat breek
eerder as eindig.

Die spieël hoef nie helder te wees nie.
The smoke needn’t settle.
Die vlam,
dansend,
is genoeg.

Rokerspieël

vir Pieter

Hy het nie vir duidelikheid gebou nie—
maar vir rook.
’n Spieël,
half-glas, half-sluier,
omraam met tape en trilling.

Kan jy jouself sien
terwyl jy gesien word?
Kan jy praat
as artefak?

Van kosmos tot kutikula,
van NASA se blik
tot die grein van vel—
die makro vou
in hierdie asem.

Nie dokumenteer nie—
navigeer:
feit en fiksie,
intuïsie, sny,
verlies, herbou.

Hy het paradoks
sonder vrees vir brand
vasgehou.

Nie vir die cum laude nie—
maar vir aanhou.
Deur as, deur gemors,
deur stories wat breek
eerder as eindig.

Die spieël hoef nie helder te wees nie.
Die rook hoef nie te lê nie.
Die vlam,
dansend,
is genoeg.

Smoky Mirror


for Pieter

He built not for clarity—
but smoke.
A mirror,
half-glass, half-veil,
framed in tape and tremble.

Can you see yourself
while being seen?
Can you speak
as artifact?

From cosmos to cuticle,
from NASA’s gaze
to the grain of skin—
the macro folded
into this breath.

Not documenting—
navigating:
fact and fiction,
intuition, edit,
grief, rebuild.

He held paradox
without fear of burn.

Not for the cum laude—
but for staying.
Through ash, through mess,
through stories that fracture
rather than end.

The mirror needn’t clear.
The smoke needn’t settle.
The flame,
dancing,
is enough.

Speech for Pieter’s Cum Laude party

As some of you may know, Pieter — quite bravely, I think — asked me to be the subject of a piece he created for his postgraduate diploma in motion picture production.

 In case you haven’t heard: he passed with cum laude. No small thing. Especially for a project this ambitious and sophisticated,
built — like many good things — on a shoestring and a certain amount of gaffer tape.

In the interview, I referenced a smoky mirror — and not just metaphorically. Pieter described the project early on as “’n gesprek oor kuns en kunsmatigheid… art and artifice… ’n doccie oor André die kunstenaar en denker, verweef met AI-beelde en gekontrasteer teen die natuurlike wêreld.”

He asked, “Sou ek en my kamera ‘n ‘fly on the wall’ kon wees?” He imagined a visual movement from the vastness of NASA’s cosmos into the small, intimate world of the artist — the micro within the macro.

And so the smoky mirror became literal. Pieter mounted a one-way mirror over the lens. I couldn’t look at him, or the camera — — only at myself.
But he could see me. That’s the paradox: artist and subject, reflecting and projecting, seeing and being seen. We blur. We flare.

There’s a kind of vulnerability in seeing yourself while being seen — the uncertainty of what’s actually being captured. Are you performing? Are you revealing? Or just trying to survive the next sentence?

But that’s also what makes Pieter’s work meaningful. He isn’t just documenting; he’s navigating something porous — between investigation and intuition, framing and feeling, clarity and ambiguity.

Hanlie mentioned to me something Pieter wrote — a kind of self-confession: Pieter the artist vs Pieter the detective. The dreamer pulling against the analyst.
Someone with responsibilities. ’n Man wat moes herbou ná verlies.
 Covid crushed a lot of dreams. Pieter had to start over. But he didn’t just rebuild — he reimagined.

Trust Pieter to make a documentary that isn’t actually a documentary — at least not in the conventional sense.
He facilitates a re-imagining: here of how an artist might be seen, or see himself, or be asked to see himself while someone else watches through a mirror.

And this is also the bridge to his current work — his master’s degree in scriptwriting. Still navigating narrative through that same smoky lens. Knowing that every story is a construction. That reduction is deception. En tog bly ons stories vertel — want ons moet.

It is inspiring to know someone with the courage to be spinning somewhere between responsibility and reverie. A space where narratives don’t need neat endings. Where the mirror is allowed to stay smoky, and the beauty of the smokiness can have its moment.
Where you don’t have to be just one thing.

Pieter — congratulations. Not just for the cum laude — though it matters — but for staying with the work, for allowing and pursuing dreams, for keeping the flame a dancing.

For embracing ambiguity, facing necessary mundanity and banality, and still choosing to see.

 For finding light, and for letting it flare.
And for inviting us, not to see just what’s clear, but to glimpse what might be possible.

Thank you!

Series Preview: bodyTime(fugitivity)

A new series of one-off prints are in final stage of development.

The series is tentatively titled ~ “Body Time: Fugitivity”

An exploration of presence, of bodies between stillness and being. Each image layers two moments, reflecting the elusive essence of being seen, of passing through time while holding the marks of movement, touch, and gaze, of life.

Carl Jeppe, that wonderful artist and drawing mentor, describes the photographs as:

‘…wonderfully anachronistic, showing us glimpses in black-and-white that remind us of Duchamp’s “nude descending a staircase”, Balla’s futurism, Boccioni’s “Unique forms of continuity in Space” and Edweard Muybridge’s Studies in motion.’

Unfinished ‘Unfinished Rhapsody’,, with bananna.

(~ Another-one Good Times Here Again ~)

1.8 x 1.6 m x 5cm, oil on canvas, with banana.

I’ll not finish it for #killerqueen curated by Gordon Froud:

https://www.art.co.za/exhibitions/killerqueen-theviewingroomartgallery

Opening 16 November 2024 at 11:00 at The Viewing Room Art Gallery.

Artist’s Statement for ALEXA MAKE SOME ART

André Clements: “I, for one, welcome our new machine collaborators.”*

There’s a lot that is quite amazing, interesting and important about technology, some of it good, some of it bad. As an artist who began programming in the mid-1980s and has been visually creating for even longer, my work for ‘Alexa, make some art’, reflects a meandering symbiotic dance between techne and artistry, tradition and exploration. I favour subtlety, nuance and depth through layering to synthesise images from diverse sources, ranging from original analogue work, through photography to computationally mediated and generated material aiming for integration.

‘Multipartiality’—integrating multiple perspectives without claiming neutrality—leads to an engagement with ‘Object Oriented Ontology’, trying to resist domination and informs the heuristic methods I apply in activities and decisions within my practice.

My pieces for the exhibition, such as “We Dance in Wittgenstein’s Scaffolding,” and “Spaceman in Tesseract (Kaleidoscope w/ Compassionate Eyes),” utilise sophisticated computational tools to manually craft picture-objects that invoke the cinema of the mind—where interaction is deeply embedded in the conceptual, aesthetic, meta-textual, and perceptual layers.

Media and Methods: My toolkit includes digital photography, computational intelligence, and applied knowledge systems such as contemporary “AI”/LLMs, alongside traditional analogue techniques. I believe in the collaborative spirit, where boundaries, when necessary, are dissolved.

Viewpoint on New Technologies: “We all stand on the shoulders of giants.” Innovations like the storage of paint in tin tubes catalyzed Impressionism, just as today’s multi-modal knowledge/language models redefine artistic boundaries. The goodness or badness of these tools largely depends on their application. Ownership of knowledge has long been a contentious issue, now amplified by new technology. The paint out of the tube is not going back in—not easily, anyway.

(* The phrase “I, for one, welcome our new machine collaborators” is a playful twist on the now-iconic quote “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” This latter phrase was popularized by Ken Jennings during his final appearance on the quiz show “Jeopardy!” after losing to IBM’s Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system. In what is commonly thought of as the original use of the phrase, Simpsons character Kent Brockman, a fictional newscaster, upon seeing an extreme close-up shot of an ant, talked about humans’ future subservience to a race of giant ants, saying “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords,”)

Exploring the Relationship Between Traditional Principles of Design and the Additional Dimensions of Familiarity, Salience, and Artistry

The generally accepted/postulated “principles of design” are of course something like, paraphrasing for the sake of my own interpretation and internalisation:

  • Balance: The relation of elements towards stability.
  • Contrast: Difference of elements, typically affording structure and or articulation.
  • Emphasis: Isolation (of attention).
  • Movement: Change, often resulting in dimensionality
  • Pattern: Connection through repetition and variation, may establish sense of unity, and consistency… often evokes relationality, a kind of field.
  • Proportion: Scalar relations between parts and with the whole and context, i.e. as with the included, also with the excluded.
  • Rhythm: The qualitative and quantitative character of relations, something like a kind of vector.
  • Unity: Coherence and completeness.

Those are quite common in the literature on art and creativity I’ve explored, and while useful in terms of having a language or vocabulary through which to begin to make some kind of sense of composition, they seem somewhat limited to a kind of technical or phenomenological level. There is also a ‘chicken-or-the-egg?’ kind of question around them, to what extent do they determine the success of composition versus being an after-the-fact imposition, a kind of rationalization?

Wasilly Kandinsky in his 1905 book “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” argues that:

~“…true artistry involves the creation of art that transcends mere spectacle or novelty, and instead taps into deeper spiritual and emotional forces that have the power to move people on a profound level. He argues that art that is primarily concerned with fashion or style may have more short-term appeal, but ultimately lacks the enduring power of true art. He believed that art had the potential to transform society and help individuals connect with their inner selves, and he saw this as the true purpose of art. He argues that artists have a responsibility to create works that are honest, authentic, and spiritually meaningful, rather than simply pandering to popular tastes or commercial interests.

While this idea of art as a spiritual practice was arguably a major influence on the development of abstract art in the 20th century and much of the western discourse and framing of art and its framings, it was also arguably much corrupted, emphasising the supposed uniqueness, mysterious, possibly divinely provided talent and-or “genius”, not at all unlike prominent discourses around the notion of ‘leadership’ and its many flavours – as some of the reading suggests is apparently explored and considered in the field of Critical Leadership Studies (CLS).

A question this raises for me is; to what extent do, or how, do the dimensions or principles he emphasises relate to the common principles of design and composition? Towards possibly exploring that further I’ll just posit the following 3 additional “principles” of composition:

  • Familiarity: Accessibility, typically relates to style, fashion and convention.
  • Salience: Spectacle, novelty, surprise.
  • Artistry: Skilful quality.

I am not sure to what extent artistry can be as evident, at least directly, as the principles of salience and familiarity – yet I believe it does have the same kind of value-affirming effect as those – perhaps more indirectly and perhaps that is what makes achieving it, artistry, so difficult to achieve and maintain…

Thinking about this morning (while doing my neck stretches – that whole business seems to be going well enough) what intrigues me is; the common “principles of design” – while they entail some overlap with each other, somehow remain quite flat. This is where they differ from these last three things, Familiarity, Salience and Artistry – I’m thinking these explicitly build on each other. You can only have salience once you have familiarity, and perhaps you can only have artistry where and when you have both familiarity and salience?

Perhaps “principles” is not the right word, if then what is? Perhaps, even probably, someone has already developed this stuff much further than my little meanders, if then who and where?

#Artistry #PrinciplesOfDesign

PS. Yes, I’m still pondering much of what I encountered at first year in university and before, doesn’t everyone?

Is Not Love the Origin of All Creation? – Matisse

MJ Study for Origin

…Thus a work of art is the climax of a long work of preparation. The artist takes from his surroundings everything that can nourish his internal vision, either directly, when the object he is drawing is to appear in his composition, or by analogy. In this way he puts himself into a position where he can create. He enriches himself internally with all the forms he has mastered and which he will one day set to a new rhythm.

It is in the expression of this rhythm that the artist’s work becomes really creative. To achieve it, he will have to sift rather than accumulate details, selecting, for example, from all possible combinations, the line that expresses most and gives life to the drawing; he will have to seek the equivalent terms by which the facts of nature are transposed into art.

…That is the sense, so it seems to me, in which art may be said to imitate nature, namely, by the life that the creative worker infuses into the work of art. The work will then appear as fertile and as possessed of the same power to thrill, the same resplendent beauty as we find in works of nature.

Great love is needed to achieve this effect, a love capable of inspiring and sustaining that patient striving towards truth, that glowing warmth and that analytic profundity that accompany the birth of any work of art. But is not love the origin of all creation?

https://artreview.com/henri-matisse-love-origin-creation…/

Clean Language and Radical Artistry Life Drawing

The Radical Artistry Life Drawing paradigm is a product of a rich theoretical framework, which draws from various disciplines and approaches, including the groundbreaking psychological work of David J. Grove. Clean Language and Emergent Knowledge have been instrumental in shaping the approach of Radical Artistry Life Drawing, offering a unique and transformative experience for all those involved.

The Clean Language approach is a vital aspect of the RALD paradigm, emphasizing the importance of using language that is free from personal bias and contamination. By using clean, simple, and neutral language, participants are invited to explore their personal symbols and metaphors in a safe and non-judgmental environment. This approach allows for a deeper and more profound exploration of creativity and self-expression. The facilitator’s role is to ask open-ended questions that are free from assumptions, judgments, and interpretations. By asking questions that reflect back the individual’s own words and metaphors, the facilitator helps participants to gain greater insight into their own experiences and feelings.

Examples of Clean Language questions that facilitators use in the RALD sessions include:

  • “What would you like to have happen?”
  • “And when (that happens), then what happens?”
  • “What kind of (x) is that (x)?”
  • “Is there anything else about (x)?”
  • “What happens just before (x)?”
  • “Where is (x)?”
  • “What needs to happen for (x) to (y)?”
  • “What else could (x) be?”
  • “What is (x) like?”

By using these types of questions, the facilitator encourages participants to explore their experiences and feelings without being influenced by the facilitator’s own biases or assumptions. This process of self-exploration can lead to new insights and a deeper understanding of oneself, promoting personal growth and self-awareness.

Furthermore, Grove’s later work on Emergent Knowledge recognizes and embraces the inherent complexity and unpredictability of the creative process. This approach invites participants to step into uncertainty, explore new ideas, and ways of being through the creative process. The result is an environment that is supportive, challenging, and nurturing, where participants can safely explore and express themselves.

As a facilitator of Radical Artistry Life Drawing, I have seen firsthand the transformative power of Clean Language and Emergent Knowledge. By creating a space where participants are invited to explore their personal symbols and metaphors, they are empowered to connect with themselves on a deeper level, and to express themselves in new and meaningful ways.

In the quiet, focused, and friendly space of a Radical Artistry Life Drawing session, you may not notice anything different from any other creative space. However, the subtle differences in language, facilitation, and approach create a unique environment that is both challenging and nurturing, and which can be truly transformative.

If you’re looking for a truly transformative creative experience, I invite you to book a Radical Artistry Life Drawing session today. Come and experience the power of Clean Language and Emergent Knowledge for yourself, and discover the depth and richness of your own creative potential.

Every artwork is a drawing

MidJourney: /Imagine: Curveism, https://s.mj.run/dgyOV18aEJU https://s.mj.run/eOaeEnc3pow , Manifesto, Aesthetics, Straight Lines, Perspective, Relations of Power, Autopoiesis, Balance, Harmony, Moderation, Vita-socio-anarcho, Power, Art, Creativity, Relating, Desirable Outcomes, Salutogenesis. –ar 2:3

Every artwork is a drawing,

every drawing is an algorithm,

every algorithm is a container,

every container is a power-scape,

every power-scape is alive.

Every artwork is a layered metaphor that draws the relationships between manifestation, interactions, and conflict dynamics. Every artwork, regardless of medium or style, can be seen as created through a process that involves some kind of calculating system. The calculation process, in turn, can be seen as a kind of container or power-relations casting its light and dark beyond the artwork and its more banal meaning and or signification.

And yet, if every power-scape is alive…, dare we suggest that even abstract or non-physical systems like computational constructs can have a kind of vitality or agency. Entities of art whether truly conscious or entirely not. It’s the aliveness that makes it art.

Windows Powershell script to sort photograph files into Date taken-based folders as per yyyy/MM/yyyy_MM_dd

PS C:\Users\User> g:
PS G:\> cd G:\Raw_Photographs
PS G:\Raw_Photographs> $sourceDir = "G:\Raw_Photographs"
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $sourceDir -Attributes !Directory
foreach ($file in $files) {
    $dateTaken = &"C:\Users\User\Downloads\exiftool-12.56\exiftool.exe" -DateTimeOriginal -S -s $file.FullName
    # Check if the Date taken metadata is not empty
    if (![string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($dateTaken)) {
        $dateTime = [DateTime]::ParseExact($dateTaken, "yyyy:MM:dd HH:mm:ss", $null)        
	$directoryPath = "$sourceDir\$($dateTime.ToString('yyyy\\MM\\yyyy_MM_dd'))"
        if (!(Test-Path $directoryPath)) {
            New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $directoryPath | Out-Null      
        }
        $newFilePath = "$directoryPath\$($file.Name)"
        Move-Item -Path $file.FullName -Destination $newFilePath      
    } 
}

Radical Artistry: Life Drawing Randburg Poster

You can now visit Herbert Evans art stores in Linden or Fourways to see this poster or pick up the flyer for Life Drawing Randburg.

(Yes, I modified the Kandinsky quotation which is from his 1905 ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ to make it more inclusive than the original ‘his’ and more aligned with a ‘Radical Artistry’ ethos. )

Discover the Art of Life Drawing

Join us for a journey of creative personal and social transformation through the art of life drawing.

Small group sessions in a casual home studio.

All skill levels are welcome.
Sessions are limited to 6 artists.
Explore the beauty and complexity of the human form in a friendly, safe, inclusive, and authentically creative environment.

Book now,
WhatsApp André
@ 082 812 0549.
www.andresclements.com/life-drawing-randburg/

Draft Paper ‘Lens-mode: Tuning a ChatGPT Conversation’

André Clements

Abstract: This paper presents a method of adjusting the style and tone of conversations with the OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI model by using an initial prompt template. The prompt serves as a parameter for the conversation, which can be adjusted with desired parameters such as Formality, Complexity, Referencing, Examples, and others. This approach, known as lens-mode, is a simulation that influences the context representation and decoding of ChatGPT’s output. The results of this approach are dependent on the parameters provided and are influenced by the state of the ChatGPT AI model at the time of the conversation. The method has been tested on the 2023 Jan 9 and Jan 30 versions of the chat.openai.com platform with promising results. However, some caveats should be considered, such as the constantly changing nature of the platform and the simulation’s reliance on the parameters provided.

Introduction: The advancement of natural language processing and generation has led to the development of AI models capable of conducting conversations, such as the OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, the default response style and tone of these models may not always be ideal for a given scenario. This paper presents an experimental approach to addressing this issue by providing a way to adjust the style and tone of conversations with ChatGPT through an initial prompt template known as lens-mode.

Methodology: The lens-mode approach involves using an initial prompt template that serves as a parameter for the conversation. The prompt includes instructions on how to start a lens-mode session, adjust parameters, and exit the session. The parameters, indicated by “–” in front of the parameter name, allow the user to adjust aspects of the conversation such as formality, complexity, referencing, and examples. The chatbot acknowledges the prompt and starts a lens-mode session, during which it attempts to remember and apply the parameters to its context representation and decoding.

Results: The results of this approach are dependent on the parameters provided and the state of the ChatGPT AI model at the time of the conversation. The lens-mode approach has been tested on the 2023 Jan 9 and Jan 30 versions of the chat.openai.com platform and has shown promising results. However, it is important to keep in mind that this approach is only a simulation and that the conversation’s context representation and decoding are influenced by the parameters provided.

Caveats: The chat.openai.com platform is constantly being modified and adjusted, so the results of the lens-mode approach may vary. Additionally, this approach is only a simulation and is dependent on the parameters provided, with no guarantee of the veracity of the responses generated. Finally, a conversation tends to build momentum, which may also influence the character and veracity of the responses.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the lens-mode approach provides a way to adjust the style and tone of conversations with ChatGPT by using an initial prompt template as a parameter. While the approach has shown promising results, it is important to keep in mind that it is only a simulation and that the results are dependent on the parameters provided and the state of the ChatGPT AI model. Further research is needed to fully understand the capabilities and limitations of this approach.

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Lens-mode_-Tuning-a-ChatGPT-ConversationDownload

Lens-mode: Tuning a ChatGPT conversation

I’ve been experimenting with ways to ‘tune’ conversations with the ‘AI’ ChatGPT from OpenAi, that is, setting the style and other aspects quickly and easily without having to tediously type out mini-essays describing what I want. This led me to parameterise the conversation with an initial prompt template of sorts. It seems to work relatively well and lead to some interesting results, though with some caveats.

Via MidJourney, prompt: https://s.mj.run/FJWCOJNboog https://s.mj.run/-vqh5xUCvF4 https://s.mj.run/rOPRgPLHWCU maximum detail cybernetic lens in a landscape of knowledge symbols with maximum timeframe –ar 3:2 –q 5 –s 999

The text I’m currently using is quoted below, to use it simply copy and paste it into a new Chat conversation as-is and hit enter. Once the chat bot acknowledges it you start !lens-mode and optionally provide some parameters.

It will sometimes start with its own choice of parameter defaults. Yes, you can make up parameters like e.g. –Sarcasm or Humour etc. but those most in line with the systems’ design, architecture and implementation will work best, like e.g. Formality, Detail, Repetition, Timeframe etc. Think of it as a natural language-embedded meta-program or pseudo-script.

Please let me know if you get any interesting results or have suggestions for improvements etc. And play nicely 🙂.

I’ll post some examples in the comments below.

Copy the following block exactly as it is here into the conversation input field.

Welcome to lens-mode. With this experimental simulation, we adjust the style and tone of chat's responses by chat simulating running this natural language 'program'. To start a lens-mode session, type '!lens-mode ', optionally followed by the desired parameters indicated by '--' in front of the parameter. Parameters might include e.g.: Complexity: level of complexity in my responses, from simple to advanced (0-5) Formality: adjust the level of formality in my language, from casual to formal (0-5) Referencing: adjust the level of referencing in my responses, from none to in-depth (0-5) Examples: inclusion of examples, from none to many (0-5) etc. You can adjust the parameters at any time during the lens-mode session by typing '--' followed by the parameter name and the desired value. To exit lens-mode, simply type '/lens-mode'. Chat will start each lens-mode response with '//lens-mode:' followed by the active parameters and their values, but will not mention lens-mode in the rest of the response while trying to 'remember' and apply the parameters to context-representation decoding into output. For the user: Please keep in mind that lens-mode is a simulation only and that responses are influenced by the parameters provided, knowledge cut-off is 2021-09 and lack information about events or information after that date. For ChatGPT: Please remember that lens-mode is a simulation only and that the conversation (context representation and decoding) are to be influenced by the parameters provided as much as possible. V1.1 send feedback to André Clements.

Of course, once you’ve seen how it works you may want to experiment with modifying the prompt and I encourage you to do exactly that.

I would love to hear about your experience with-, and your thoughts about this in the comments below. Have fun.

https://s.mj.run/FJWCOJNboog https://s.mj.run/-vqh5xUCvF4 https://s.mj.run/rOPRgPLHWCU maximum detail cybernetic lens in a landscape of knowledge symbols with maximum timeframe –ar 3:2 –q 5 –s 999

Some Caveats

  • Chat.openai.com is constantly being modified and adjusted given that it is a research, development and testing version of the system. This template has worked well on the 2023 Jan 9 and Jan 30 versions.
  • Remember it is only a simulation, though even the chat bot describes it as an effective simulation and says a ‘lens’ is a good metaphorical way to understand what this does.
  • When you disable lens-mode the bot will gradually forget about it and you may have to paste the prompt into an imput again.
  • Bear in mind that a conversation tends to build a kind of stylistic and epistemological momentum which will also influence the character and especially veracity of responses.

Starting a Glossary

I recently started working on articulating some ideas about #RadicalArtistry, and my inner programmer likes relatively ‘tight’ definitions, so for any of you who might be interested in a slightly theoretical perspective on what I’m after, please see the tentative glossary up at https://andresclements.com/glossary/.

#ArtPractice

Winter Morning Commute

A vast non-committal sky
stretches out pale cold
past shy clusters of cloud
– even they fear the chill
in their pointless parade
across Guateng’s dry winter
collage of smoky mornings
traffic copters tracing highways
crawling past billboards
exalting the latest
the greatest
– fastest ever
containing the same number
of days and nights as before
every year seems smaller
more precious
more fragile
– fleeting

Farewell Lionel

Only the secrets you keep from yourself matter …
where we shadows end and begin.
‘O, I like these lines.’
he wrote to me
… an axis shining out space,
‘despite your gloss, defies me.’
and gently prodded
‘Different subject: in your message
not all the punctuation helps.
Say if you want me to explain’

until the others you cling to
and those you don’t
are no more

Well, we are ‘highly gratified’
deeply touched
and changed
in our core

gentle master.

Unthinkable

the more I think through unthinkable things – the more I think of you

dangerous – I know
the tightrope remains inevitable

hard coded
to seek out delight
but not necessarily to enter
and to stay remains improbable at best

still

I recount significant moments
their vectors crisp in my mind
I attempt to trace their equations
amongst vague crowds of variables

I try to hack through holographic shrines
to seek out my truth
to search for ours

and

I find an image
of your head on my chest
a hand nearby
eyes close

and closed

there were others as well – of course
spinning ablaze around me
receiving me with a naked face
shouldn’t spin this fire to fast
presenting your soul and face
the wind can be cruel and slay
as well as the truth torment

the more I think through unthinkable things – the more I think through you

dangerous – I know
the thirst remain insatiable

hard enough
to find the fountain
of sanctified adoration
and to sip slowly a nearly impossible task

still

I recount significant moments
their vectors crisp in my mind
I attempt to trace their equations
amongst vague crowds of variables

I search a fragile balance
to see veracity
tenacity

and

I find I’m fallen
off the highest cliff
facing the riddle of flight
eyes open and closed
wings open
and close
against the dynamics of fear
and inevitable death
all I have
all we have

the rhythm of breath
the rhythms of life

baroque arabesque

your words are those of magic
and your sentimental tricks
I feel, suit the way you sing

your eyes all elusive
and your facial diversion
matches your vocal sting

matches you can never win
matches you can never loose
as you stiletto step across this stage

your delectable
baroque arabesque

your technique, almost automatic
and your solitude generic
in yourself a sensual thing

your escape expectably exact
leaves your diversion in tact
matching your focal ring

a-ring around
matches you can never win
alone
matches you may never loose
again
so stiletto step around the stage
barely and delectable
your baroque arabesque

all in all
alone again

Typoetry

(Welcome to this world)

a fluid expanse of data grids
where sets of information
travel the same fabric they weave

a reality of sounds
shapes and shimmers
behind the filtered recognition
of bits
stretching in and out
on and off
as the communicative landscape grows
fragments across fragments
lines amongst lines

a perpetual horizon framing
an intercourse
of meaning and noise

it is a poetry of sorts
knots and beads
on lacerated string

Private Roads (?Exposure)

Dwindling on (, ambling forth)
a perpetual landscape’s cleavage
behind(,) the next portrait(, a stolen glimps)

Private images distilled (visions distilled)
across frameworks ‘f bridges or channels
over seas (neither here nor,)

intimate voyages, (sights unseen)
pensive passages,
to a welcome home

Leaving an immortal trial
echoes (in) the salt of time
some journeys never end

Roads around your face
across your waste (waist?)
encounters

private portraits
images unseen
returns eternal

Descending now
to ascend once more
our private ways

Carnival (Icarus)

Other times,
when demons do exist
Hades is a spring carnival,
compared to the chambers of my soul
the demon I adore the most,
the infinite hands,
forming hands forming hands
of trickery and illusion,
casting shadow on my walls
calling self complete, touch, and taking
don’t be frightened,
of the shadow on the walls.

Then there is the angel,
the angel with the candle
not showing the way
just caries the light
understanding
glowing warmth and luring
as illuminating as consuming

How many times more
much closer can you come
this sun’s closeness
completion
burning

Simplicity

I write more words
hanging around useless,
sore words are simple words

touching pictures
pieces of your past

I light another cigarette
listening to your laughter,
imagining yours’
as pieces of my past

sometimes laughing is like barking
and the night my only friend

I smile,
saying everything’s all-right
and so am i,
sometimes i’m a liar
and sometimes ‘just’ a friend

Walms

‘n Nag van ‘n duisend skemers
fluister oor die klippe,
koppies
en walms lang die snelweg.

Halms waai wind verstrooid
in woord’lose nood,
verlange
en walms langs die snelweg.

Wolk en wind en kleure,
grou in die skemer,
ook verlore…

Sand en grond en ek,
stof-trap-spore
so sommer verlore,
in walms langs die snelweg.

Dance?

Do you dance?
with devils in the desert
and nomads of the night
wanderers wondering
at wonders of the world

With beasts who bleed
their travellers to tears
shadows swearing
shades of their shame

The lost and the lonely
live their lives
meekly moaning
the cause of their cries

If i were to die,
who would cry
when we hurt
do you mind?

Never mind my dear
never mind me

For poets take their pens
as soldiers do swords
planning and playing
with wisdom and words

We dance ’till dawn
on sorrowful songs
feet forever falling
on empty earth

While the lost and lonely
living lies
meekly moan
the cause of their cries