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Amy
Hill

Invisible Paperclips and the Complexity of the Theory of Everything

Project details

Year
2020
Programme
fine-art
Practices
Autonomous
Minor
Honours /Visual Culture

A transparent book as a constellation of language/thought map, as the base of the intersection of Visuality, culture, consciousness and their development from a priori analogue big data.

Nominee Drempelprijs Autonomous Practices

A Cryptographic Man!festo by Amy Hill

The capacity of humans to understand themselves and others rely on a vast collection of variables. These capacities vary greatly from individual to individual as well as from one social group to another (Rhodes and Baron). There are countless scientific studies and journals where cognition, artificial intelligence, psychology and philosophy intersect, dissecting what the mind is and how experience determines the way in which reality is processed. Experience on a meta-level is also the processing of reality (“MRA”).

What this paper aims to achieve is an in-depth investigation into overcoming otherness, by analyzing some of the many layers of a more general Visual Culture. Globalisation enabled easy access to view the world in a carefully curated and orchestrated frame. The frame itself is the meta-landscape of cognitive archaeology. The frame is yet another intangible filter providing a boundary to the public from systemic authority, which by this time is probably administered by an AI.

The rhizome extends far beyond the frame and attributes countless invisible values to the perception of self and other. At present, xenophobia is a struggle between the grassroots and enforcement of Western infrastructure. The unrest would not be at such a boiling point if it were not for the very things that brought it to life.

Invisible Paperclips is an overarching term I use to describe my research. It refers to the structure of how things are organised, kept together and linked without being visible. There is some tangibility in the concept; an invisibly bent and shaped wire that holds pages together.

The process of writing my theory paper, physically making an artist book and summarizing it here, are culminations of my bachelor study. It needs to be considered parallel, every step impactful on the next and the future events impacting the reflection on how they came to be. Coming full circle. And continuing to come full circle, for it has always been a full circle. When is something complete? This implies that there is a starting point; and an endpoint. These two points are constructed by thinking of a process as something that can be completed. It is neither incomplete nor complete. In this document, I will include some seemly unrelated supplementary information on how this process unfolds and folds. Sometimes hyperspace frameshift jumps were made without explanation. In poetic essence, it proves time travel and space travel is not only possible, but it has existed forever.

Invisible Paperclips is an overarching term I use to describe my research.

Using found objects/things have conceptual value for my working methodology. The methods (research tools) I use include letter transfer, copy/paste, templates, defunct objects, repurposing waste/old material, reorganizing existing systems, moving things around, auto-generated text, found text, etc. The methodology (justification of using these specific tools) becomes a method, which becomes a methodology that becomes yet another method for developing itself into a practical/artistic/poetic statement in the form of a question. Etcetera.

The cryptobook was initially developed as a dictionary, explanatory and exploratory. Instead, it has become more of a codex, a manifesto and a question. The only visible and written text is on the second last page. A dialogue between Wendy and Taylor about the psychology of selling your soul, from Billions season 5, episode 3 (13:25-14:40). Rational thought, rational action and the layers beneath, above, in between, the layers piercing through the layers themselves. The book is overladen with easter eggs, some things borrowed static electricity and everything that, I believe, is everything.