Completed Painting: 'space_time_07 [Wave Function]'

 

'space_time_07 [Wave Function]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ball Point Pen & Paint Pen on Panel,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here's the latest of my 'space_time' panels. As is often the case, anyone needing an explanation may find certain clues below...

"Conceptually, the Schrödinger equation is the quantum counterpart of Newton's second law in classical mechanics. Given a set of known initial conditions, Newton's second law makes a mathematical prediction as to what path a given physical system will take over time. The Schrödinger equation gives the evolution over time of a wave function, the quantum-mechanical characterization of an isolated physical system. The equation was postulated by Schrödinger based on a postulate of Louis de Broglie that all matter has an associated matter wave. The equation predicted bound states of the atom in agreement with experimental observations" [1.].

"Schrödinger himself suggested in 1952 that the different terms of a superposition evolving under the Schrödinger equation are 'not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously'. This has been interpreted as an early version of Everett's many-worlds interpretation. This interpretation, formulated independently in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes" [2.].

“In order to give an account of these practices [of everyday life], I have resorted to the category of ‘trajectory’. It was intended to suggest a temporal movement through space, that is, the unity of a diachronic succession of points through which it passes, and not the figure that these points form on a space that is supposed to be synchronic or achronic. Indeed, this ‘representation’ is insufficient, precisely because a trajectory is drawn, and time and movement are thus reduced to a line that can be seized as a whole by the eye and read in a single moment, as one projects onto a map the path taken by someone walking through a city. However useful this ‘flattening out’ may be, it transforms the temporal articulation of places into a spatial sequence of points. A graph takes the place of an operation. A reversible sign (one that can be read in both directions, once it is projected onto a map) is substituted for a practice indissociable from particular moments and ‘opportunities’, and thus irreversible (one cannot cannot go backwards in time, or have another chance at missed opportunities). It is thus a mark in place of acts, a relic in place of performances: it is only their remainder, the sign of their erasure. Such a projection postulates that it is possible to take the one (the mark) for the other (operations articulated on occasions). This is a quid pro quo typical of the reductions which a functionalist administration of space must make in order to be effective [3.].

West Leicester, January 2024

[1.] & [2.]: Wikipedia, 'Shrodinger Equation'.

[3.]: Michel de Certeau, 'The Practice of Everyday Life', Berkeley/L.A./London, University of California Press, 1984/1988.

Completed Paintings: 'space_time_05 [Undertaking]' & 'space_time_06 [Green Light]'

 

'space_time_05 [Undertaking]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Paint Pen, Ballpoint Pen, Ink
& French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here are the latest of my 'space_time' panels, along with a few relatively facile clues. It doesn't feel like too much further explanation is necessary at this point. A few further insights into this little run of small-scale works can be found here, and here.

'space_time_06 [Green Light]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Paint Pen, Ballpoint Pen, & Ink
on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning..." [1.]

Inner Ring Road, Leicester, February 2024

Inner Ring Road, Leicester, January 2024

[1.]:  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby' London & Dublin, Penguin, 2000/1925

Completed Paintings: 'space_time_03 [Perdu]' & 'space_time_04 [Memento]'

 

'space_time_03 [Perdu]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments, Paint Pen,
Ball-Point Pen, Ink & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

My creative energies mostly turned towards painting as 2023 turned the corner into 2034, and these little panels have been appearing relatively rapidly (by my standards). As a body, they seem to be serving as a kind of test-bed for various motifs, which will (I hope/assume) continue to evolve and mutate as more such pieces appear. Those layered motifs (and texts) themselves represent the numerous theoretical and emotional responses which emerge, along with subsequent (possibly quite arbitrary or capricious) associations, as I repeatedly haunt the same relatively overlooked corner of inner Leicester.

So far, so customary. This is essentially the same modus operandi that I've adopted for many years now. It is clearly what I do. And, as cartography continues to play an active role just now, any amateur sleuth with access to Google maps can easily detect that the territory under examination is still that portion of West Leicester traditionally known as St Augustines/Blackfriars. Bordered by the River Soar to the west, and the inner gyratory road to the east - and with Great Central Street and the ghost of a long decommissioned rail route running through its heart, this little zone is one to which I have been drawn repeatedly for longer than I can remember. Indeed, numerous posts on here can attest to that.

I suppose this might lead one to  suspect that things have all just become a bit stuck - or even that I'm (literally) raking over the same old ground with diminishing returns. And yet, these little panels (along with the slightly larger associated works from last year) actually feel surprisingly fresh to me, just as my own responses to the terrain continue to provoke and delight me. I think this is for two key reasons.

'space_time_04 [Memento]',  Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments, Ball-Point Pen,
Paint Pen, Ink, Spray Enamel & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Firstly, the neighbourhood itself has undergone such massive transformation and redevelopment over recent years (and continues to do so), that it hardly resembles the same landscape I traversed just five or ten years ago. As a result, the possible narratives and emotional responses it may have one engendered are themselves continually refreshed. The strata of history buried beneath newly-laid tarmac and paving may prevail, but the present (and future) are up for grabs in ways that could not have been predicted when I first began to perambulate there. As the titling of these panels attests, space and time are inextricably entangled, and past/present/future all remain nested within each other in a multi-dimensional exchange.

The very processes of transformation, along with their associated memories (real, imagined and constantly emerging), are the real 'subject' of the work, as much as anything more specifically defined. The lines of the street plan may remain (relatively) stable, but the spaces and flows between them are where the real drama lies.

The second point worth making relates to that idea of continual flux - and in particular to the manner in which my emotional responses and thought-processes may be activated during/following any given journey along well-trodden routes. As work from a decade ago demonstrates, the key process remains relatively unchanged. Back then however, the use of found texts was often enough to elicit a kind of ambiguous frisson, with any further shoe-horned associations being perhaps a little 'route one' (in my mind at least).

Since then, my readings into such relatively pop philosophical ideas as Hauntology and Psychogeography have themselves led to the somewhat more elevated ideas around Situationism or the even more deliciously abstruse writings of Deleuze & Guattari et al. If much of the stuff at the apparent Philosophical 'top-end' remains pretty obscure to me, it has, I believe, started to liberate the nature in which my own thought processes flow around those cartographical delineations. Key to this are the ideas of trajectory and the 'line of flight', as well as the notion of rhizomes as the preferred model for explaining experience and knowledge to ourselves.

If the Situationist notions of the 'drift' and the city as an intellectual/emotional playground essentially validate my own humble activities, then it is perhaps D&G who point to more organic, less 'organised' ways of freeing the mind once immersed within it. Any point at which one's feet/wheels/lens/attention come to rest is essentially just a taking-off point for ideas and associations which may fly-off in a million different directions at any given time. These may themselves entangle with each other in a potentially endless complex of shifting nodes and new combinations. Coincidence, chance, tangentiallity, transverse shifts and apparent arbitrariness are all grist to this mill. Essentially there is only one map, and any pathway (be it neural or geographic) might ultimately connect to another - as we move around it in a perpetual state of becoming. In this context, perhaps one might traverse the entire globe, or simply the same small patch (through time), to much the same effect - providing one remains openly engaged.

Or something like that...