almost something insider forum

The first chunk of reports from Dr. Minskoff:

Location 01: Objectively a segment of concrete floor in which arcs are discernible from the initial pouring and smoothing. Subject Eleanor G. described "A sea captain, looking over his shoulder at me. He is angry." Two subjects found nothing in the area, but Christian identified "a funny little man in a hat," and giggled at the figure. Both of these episodes were cataloged photographically with subject's help.

physiognomization

"You might be particularly tired, or anxious, or simply relaxed. From the wood grain, from the pattern of folds at the curtain's base, in the mottled concrete floor - a face emerges. Sometimes it slips away immediately, sometimes you stare at it until it transforms into something else, or a group of faces appear, but if your attention (half attention?) is taken away, there will be only randomness when you look for the face again. Everyone experiences this to one degree or another; if it happens to a degree that is problematic, it is labeled "physiognomization."

Please click on the image, to view it large, and notice an artists rendering of the process.

I’ll take up now the question of the conjurer. Does the conjurer see or know or neither? Does the conjurer take something you know and change it into something you WANT to believe in, devolving it in a way? How much invention goes along with belief? How much playing-along? Will ideas strike us like lightning or must we always be searching and seeking them out? Frank O’Toole’s Physiognomization demonstrates the mind’s ability to see unexpectedly and its willingness to play the part of the conjurer. It asks to what end do we seek out likenesses? Do images attest to the persistence of the mind to keep thinking, to know more, to stay alive? Nietzsche asks a similar question as he walks through the logic of dreams in Human, All Too Human, “How is it that the mind of the dreamer always errs so greatly, while the same mind awake tends to be so sober, careful, and skeptical about hypotheses?” Nietzsche then decides: Dream-thought is so easy for us now because, during mankind’s immense periods of development, we have been so well drilled in just this form of fantastic and cheap explanation from the first, best idea.

Frank O'Toole, Yuji Oshima, Eric Baudart

One of the important concepts for semi-essentialism is that of second nature. Human beings have second nature. It's the nature we make for ourselves versus the nature we’re given. The structures of social life are the structures of human nature. But second nature isn't always easy to acquire. It's an achievement.

The works of Frank, Yuji, and Eric explore the ways in which the process of naturalizing our own cultural products can sometimes create weird after-effects. The process of achieving second nature sometimes gets stuck in overdrive and can’t turn itself off.

pattern3

pattern1