A Little Gallery of M. C.

Escher
(For those interested in his litho prints and wood cut
prints.)

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 I wasn’t going to shrink this one; only. . .
. . . Wow! OhmiGod. Some things just have no plane of
dimension; because all planes are relative to the angle
from which the image has been rendered and
presented. Like the Relativity Print of everyone in the
hall walking up a differently inclined staircase. They
aren’t wrong; thus, the angle of the viewer must

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therefore be discontiguous. I’m only filling this page so I
don’t have to add another picture and shrink this one.

“What a Paradise! Here, have an apple! How bad could

it be?”

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 Again, another of Escher’s famous Improbable
Geometries. Note the use of Improbable rather than

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Impossible. Perspective, parallax shifting and vanishing
points in space are the keys.

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 Another of Escher’s postulations: pay attention to the
spirals (it’s easy to forget that any spiral flowing in one
direction is actually unflowing in the other – Greek:
Flux, Reflux.)

It almost puts one in mind of the Japanese painter,

Hokusai.

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 Herendeth the lesson.

As I said at the beginning of this document; it isn’t about my

opinions. It isn’t even about each picture’s NAME, since names seldom are
either invocative or evocative of the kind of emotional simulacra the act of
studying them actually builds. These have always been the weapons in
the artist’s arsenal; misdirection, unease, making people feel challenged
and unsure of what they think they know – since too much of what we
know in life has been set in stone by the preconceptions we absorb from
others without even realising it. It might be a very different world if people
would learn to act from their own instincts as determined by a child’s
natural development and ways of learning from what they find, rather
than by swallowing the lessons they are taught whereby; sometimes
someone hasn’t worded something helpfully – either by accident or design
– and has passed over a mixed message, or a message that hasn’t
properly sunk in because it is doubtfully accepted from second-hand
information, rather than investigated by first-hand information, for
whatever reason.

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 From this point of view, artists are legitimately very external; and
incredibly internal at the same time. And Escher is, no doubting it, a very
good example of this. Look at the perspectives and the landscapes; there
is more than enough fine details in any one part of a drawing to absorb
the time of the most imaginatively challenged and anally retentive of
students for a long time; but also, there is a greater form of beauty to be
gleaned by looking as a bird or a cloud would look at things, rather than
as a worm might look at them.

In making images for years, I suspect that many people have tried –
possibly in vain, perhaps not; only time will tell for certain – not to ignore
the fine details; but neither to sacrifice the attempt to understand a
larger, more all-encompassing view of the collective whole.

How many of us have found ourselves in life, unable to see past our
own problems; because for some times when depressive tendencies
engulf us, we’re unable to connect with the empathies and sympathies
that we need to remind us that in their own ways, no-one is truly ever
really happy; and every single thing’s problems are actually a mirror of
everything else’s. Why is this? Because we are all travellers in time and
space and dimension and plane; and to understand the minute workings
of all things; we have to balance the needs of the natural and the
synthetic; the analytical and the artistic; the thinking and judging and the
feeling and emoting.

If we were asked as artists and designers, to come up with a new

insect; then some really fine knowledge of micro-engineering would be
required. The world is huge; but no less micro-engineered. The only
distinction is that the layers of it that happen are so compressed and so
fine in ever-decreasing scale; that in the end, the distinctions between
solidity, liquidity, and gaseousness are all lost in a principle known as
energy flow (Greek; flux – flowing forwards, like the expanding spiral of
light and the Universe itself, and reflux – flowing backwards, like the
dissipation being spread through ever smaller and more refined layers,
and that because energy is more volatile in temperament and motion than
even time; the physical stuff it passes through is continuously destroyed
and remade to help with the stipulations of housing and purposefully
directing it.

Space is infinite; numbers are infinite; time is infinite, but more

transitory, as demonstrated more properly by sound waves. A word or a
musical note can be heard and repeated in sequence, and then; after the
compression wave has dissipated, it is lost. But having been received, the
right KINDS of compression wave act with a Force known simply as

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Resonance. Which means that if they are worthy of it, some minds will
analyse and re-analyse; ripping apart and rebuilding, and never once
managing to find a shred or grain of what we might call ‘common sense’
in any of it; but if something has inspired and taught us, then its own
rhetoric becomes a more Spiritual or Universal Common Sense; because
the separation or division between different minds cannot find a ground
for argument in it except for deliberately creating a differing platform of
opinion to be able to argue the toss from.

Such reasons beyond such arguments are ultimately self-serving;

and in such cases it becomes ‘a wash’; and the only lessons such
arguments need take their cues from the hierarchical pecking order;
which state that the higher ground is usually the better vantage-point to
have (as Escher’s own landscape prints seem to demonstrate) and they
who hesitate are lost. But then, this is also just another matter of fighting;
as in winning by having the sharpest riposte and foil, and knowing the
softest spot at which to lunge and press an attack for an advantage! In
this case, the sharpest blade is always the sharpest synapse that gets the
most concise and quickest word in which can leave another feeling
flummoxed.

This is part of the reason why I’m not fit to comment too much on
his work; not to be objective about the subjective, anyway. Besides, what
can I tell another’s perception that they haven’t already noticed as mine
has, just by looking and making internal notes and evaluations? These
works are all really fine and really good; and those who think any of them
crude haven’t understood the time and effort necessary in the original
production methods to end up with the finalised prints.

But Escher remains, for me, a potent platform for my own ideas. We
share many whimsical notions about form and the way perception plays
around with what is really there. And, of course, sometimes the implicit
mathematical order displayed through crystalline growth and the matrices
of ‘crystal- stars’ for instance, would make a planetoid parallax which
would make it difficult to understand any shape being seen through it;
because of the way the planes shift in the prism, to distort the space
between the object being viewed through it and the prism. Or the
reflections of things in water almost being astral in their representation;
not solid, and the ripples in the water represent how solid things would
appear if their substance wasn’t truly solid and the ambient fields of
energy flowing in the air around us would have as much influence on the
reflected object’s evidently projected ‘self’ as the energy has – through
such forces as wind and impact – on the amorphous substance of the
water.

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 The three dimensional artist is a Mathematician First Grade and First
Rate. Why? By being able to spline the dimensions so that another can
understand implicitly and explicitly what they’re trying to depict. It
doesn’t even matter if it exists or not as long as the balance of light and
shadow and the feelings of flow and direction, and the hidden
explanations of contour and form are intact and relevant to the image.
This is how any of us can take things out of the Dream-World (which is
only the Communal Juxtaposition Point between the Manifest and the
Unmanifest, the Potential and the Kinetic anyway; where order and chaos
converge and probability and improbability manage to pull a blind-fold
over both possibility and impossibility.

This is all I’m going to say; I have to apologise to anyone I may be

unaware of who may still be earning an income from the late, great Mr.
Escher; but I’m simply spreading around what he’s done – not for profit;
but to help reconfigure people’s minds to different ways of thinking and
perceiving things. These people are to be respected and revered, and
admired; but not taken for granted or being complacent about. They
aren’t the be-all and end-all which make it unnecessary to do any other
work forever afterwards; they instigate temporal conversations – or
arguments, like storms – and they have already given us the first word; so
it’s up to us to take on board their perceptions and add them to our own
life lessons, so that our response is worthy of having studied them, to be
able to offer as educated a reply – only the hope for originality and
individuality should be ours; it doesn’t matter if someone says, “oh, that
looks like a piece of work by so-and-so and so-forth”, all that matters is
that the strands of the lessons their souls carry through our minds and
hands have allowed us to properly depict the images our own minds have
felt the need to seek expression of.

What I hadn’t considered is the ramifications on what we term as

‘reality’ of such thoughts and ideas. I’m skipping back to a point where I
said that within any dynamic vortex that spirals outwards; to enable the
dynamic flow of energy spiralling outwards, the counteracting force must
apply within the spaces where the vortex isn’t. Why? Because Nature
abhors a vacuum; nothing is allowed to remain static, and everything is
seen and perceived from more than one angle at any given time. This
linkage might actually help to clarify the idea that water reflection is a
more accurate estimation of the reality of the dynamic properties of
energy flow, swell, and dissipation through any one thing, because if the
physical matter didn’t shackle it; the dynamic energy flows in the air
would have MUCH more noticeable influence over it. Don’t forget; trees
DO bend in the wind; as long as the prevailing dynamic force is available

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and amassed against the seemingly immoveable object to alter its natural
growth rhythms and move it.

This also helps to give us a more clear understanding of something I

believe Escher was hinting at through his art with regard to the processes
of Evolution and Natural Selection, as denoted in Darwin’s work. Again;
the energy has much flow and influence over the solid forms – whether
they have realised this effect and influence or not – which depends on the
measurability of any given reaction to any given antagonistic force which
washes against it. The Solid World of Living Forms is influenced by both
the flows of energy and the flows of liquid passing through it; and the
Forces we might justifiably call “Natriation” or Nutrition. This is true
because every individual unit exists as a complex balance of sub-systems
of varying degrees according to mass and energy expenditure and
absorption. This is a theorem that helps give ‘solid-weight’ or ‘resonance’
to such things as Chaos Theory.

We already have the inkling that all forms – no matter what gifts;
properties; skills; or attributes they possess – are all linked at the level of
the subatomic or quantum. How is this? Because the Fifth Dimensional
form is the Living Spirit of All Things since the first explosion of energy;
through which all other waves have been unified, but divided by being
divergently spread across the infinite and incalculable number of different
forms spread across the Universe. That spark is no different for a Sun than
it is for a Star or a Comet, or a Planet, or an individual organism as part of
any divergently and widely linked system (such as us!); and to any who
doubt something’s validity in existence, they only have to remember that
Existence is ANYTHINGS validity for being here in this shared experience
we call Life, Time, Dimension (whatever words you want to use to
adequately try to describe it).

The simplistic explanation of Chaos Theory, therefore; states that a

butterfly flapping its wings in New York can begin a swell of energy with a
single wing-beat which is amplified across the atmosphere to rain
hurricanes down on Japan. I actually started to write a comedy skit about
this; where some unwise fool of a ten-year old Emperor of Japan has
disbanded the Samurai and sent them all to New York to earn daily
incomes with their families as Japanese restaurants, and secretly gaining
the riches of Imperial Japan by catching and eradicating any butterflies
and sending back evidence of this – presumably not by carrier pigeon,
since this might well precipitate what they are trying to avoid – to keep
their Natural Homeland safe. The Secret Ninjas of Central Park, the sketch
is called. I deliberately thought as perversely about the error of

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misunderstanding a complex theorem as baked into a barely sufficient
nutshell as I could.

I don’t believe that the literal interpretation was what the author of
said theorem was actually talking about – although I haven’t read the
Chaos Theory Codex for myself yet – and I suspect that the intimation
implicit in the subtext is therefore that small energy dissipations can have
large results; but also that everything is Chaos because there are so many
different forms on Earth. Energy spread and dissipation can only be
properly measured when calibrated equipment is sufficient to measure it;
the facts of Evolution and Natural Selection have meant that so many
forms have evolved which assimilate and dissimilate energy at so many
different rates, and each form that does this by design represents a
different calculation and set of variable equations that have to be factored
into the overall working; and the more of these individuals there are, the
more impossible – or improbable, at the very least – the task of predicting
the outcome of any given indicator then becomes. The amount of variable
is too great and no system really could measure the effects of the
spiralling forces of energy through them all simultaneously. I also believe
this is why the Theory works so well as a hypothetical; whilst sometimes
becoming so hard to divine in practice. Its meaning has become a Chinese
Whisper.

This spiralling of dynamic forces in both the forward and the

backward explains another phenomenon that humans are experiencing –
and presumably animals must be experiencing as well – whereby they find
it hard to articulate their feelings. I’ve heard it said by some that they find
some emotions troubling and confusing and hard to accurately pin down
and express. But then, how easy it is to forget that feeling the first tinges
of an emotion and letting it flow through you aren’t the same as trying to
analyse it and break it down; because as soon as we get to the latter
point, the act of analysing and dividing factors in the things that make up
the emotions have already had enough influence on them to change
them; because in applying the logical mind, suddenly the subconscious
flashes the warning up that the opposite side of any coin may also be
applied at any given instant. So many married couples love each other so
much that they are the other half of each other; as their bodies are met,
so their souls are met and conjoined, as well – even though, the
manifestation of this love often seems to be a point of numerous grating
exchanges that seem to imply to the casual onlooker, that they might
actually hate each other instead.

Familiarity does this; and positive or negative polarity acts similarly

to the same effect. How? Because depending whether the analytical mind

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has supplied a positive or negative energy force to something it’s been
given to cogitate on, the reaction will be proportionate to the action –
hopefully. When it isn’t, we call it dissonance or disharmony. Resonance
and dissonance. Agreement and Argument. Two halves of the energetic
Cosmic Conversation; I was about to say light and sound, but for those of
us who can accept the Universe as a Phoenix, and Nature as hating things
that remain the same, then the sound is the extensive part of the big
bang that breaks apart Dark Matter to reorganise it as light spreads
throughout the broken structures in tandem with rotary or spiralling forces
to reorganise them into the Universe’s ‘Forms’, then we know that these
two forces coexist and work together; and Natural Selection within the
argument or conversation is that which provokes new ways to exist, to
think, to be; and spurs on greater understanding of things in their context.

People also tend to be driven – on occasion – by forces that are

equivalent to Chaos Theory; on facebook, some of my friends posted
pictures and said ‘bloody hell, that was twenty years ago’, and others said
they had to tag people before they forgot. Instantly, my mind churned up
the more accurate estimation of the situation, which is this; the more time
passes, and the more things our mind has come into contact with and
been filled with and sometimes concerned by, the harder it gets to
remember those things temporally located further back towards the
beginning of our cycle; of course, just becoming aware of new things in
the world doesn’t necessarily exclude anything that is already there
unless we receive some conclusive report that can tell us otherwise. It’s
another case of saying, the more things our own mental systems are
aware of; the harder the things we thoughts of as more ‘fixed’ when our
system had less to deal with remain in our awareness sometimes; they
become more ‘variable’ in Nature to our minds which are dealing with the
energy vortex of more information. The more variables a system contains
the harder it is to see the resulting factors on any one independently. I
remember Terry Pratchett coining what he comically called “Heisenberg’s
Uncertainty Principle”, involving an animal called the Ambiguous Puzuma
who could travel on the Disc’s Magic Field at near light-speed, which
meant no-one ever saw one because, if they did; it wasn’t there. Also,
there was the problem of it becoming harder to know WHO you were and
WHERE you were simultaneously, the faster you approached the speed of
light; which was a seesawing loss of equilibrium, which meant most
Ambiguous Puzumas either died of acute ankle strain caused by chasing
females who weren’t there anyway; or reached a state of demise when
coming to rest, usually about a mile into the rubble of the mountain they
ran into at near light speed! Chaos Theory rhetoric at its finest!

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 My thanks to Escher for helping small and narrow-minded people
like me grasp the concepts of the Over-Logic as divined in his Geometrical
Practical Guides shown here. The partial bits are important; but more so is
the whole. More light; more power. LOL. X. Don.

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