almost something insider forum

"What is above is like what is below"

I use everyday objects to represent fragments of the physical world found in the landscape. My landscape sculptures/installations illustrate the ancient principle of the Tabula Smaragdina: "What is above is like what is below." Laundry drying racks remind me of electric transmission towers. I am building a personal transmission tower. Through its elaborate circuitry, its radiating transmission lines will channel information to me about the universe. I am tuned to the right frequency, but unfortunately fail to hear anything.

Materials: Wooden drying racks, string, paper

Research
Central to the Chinese analysis of energy and its behavior is the concept of Chi, an expression which is most commonly used to represent the concept of "energy" or "vital essence." In the human body, Chi is the fundamental energy that sustains life and is present in the vibrating biological processes of cellular life. Not uniquely human, this energy drives all the activities throughout the organism. Every being shares in and is a natural manifestation of the vast Chi or fundamental energy of the universe.

Just as modern science attempts to demonstrate the elegant unity and constant inter-relationship of all matter and energy in the elemental structures and processes of our planet and the known cosmos, the cumulative Chinese understanding of Chi is based on minute observation of a correspondingly delicate and interdependent web of energy patterns flowing through and forming the basis of all that exists.

Research has shown that the human body emits a variety of electromagnetic radiations across the emission spectrum. DNA has been shown to have the ability to conduct electricity and displays bioluminescent properties when bombarded with laser light.

The flow of libido, or psychic energy, is generated by the polarization of opposites in the same way as electricity flows between the positive and negative poles of an electrical circuit.

The media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, who was once referred to as the "Oracle of the Electronic Age,"espoused a philosophy that was influenced by the work of the Catholic philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who believed that the use of electricity extends the central nervous system.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote that, "...essentially, all energy is psychic in nature."

Teilhard's radial, spiritual, or psychic energy may be equated to 'information' or 'information content' in the sense that has been made reasonably precise by communication engineers.

According to Wolf, "McLuhan's mysticism sometimes led him to hope, as had Teilhard, that electronic civilization would prove a spiritual leap forward and put humankind in closer contact with God." Wolf went on to write that McLuhan later reversed himself, calling the electronic universe, "an unholy impostor,...'a blatant manifestation of the Anti-Christ'."

As McLuhan notes in the final paragraph of his book, The Medium and the Light, "At such times it becomes crucial to hear properly and to tune yourself to the right frequency."