As "Crusty Curmudgeon" I seemingly represent a primeval variant of the original, CC Beck, who wrote the original "Vanishing Point" for Astonished Science (1959).
In the story, the inventor of the machine is trying to figure out whether the scientists are right - that reality is unapproachable - or the artists. He switches it on and a tiny tesseract appears.
"Who was right?" asks the narrator, noting his shock.
"The artists! It's all a fabric of illusion we've created ourselves.."
It's a good gag, but is it conceivable the modern world is in reality an illusion, one that is ultra-convincing to the senses - if nor the psyche?
I approached this topic back in C6, noting that Newton's inductive universe of the particular (experiment) negates a universe of the general (proportions). The trees, the stars, the moon and sun are part of the proportionate universe, but not of the experimental universe that creates an illusory (parallel) world.
This illusory universe of straight-lines and perspective is always approaching the vanishing point of technique. The way this was visualised in P43 was through a camera attached to a speeding motorcycle.
It's easy to see that a speeding object always approaches the vanishing point when it is in perspective space (of straight lines). To see where this argument is going, consider that Musk is building a Tesla giga-plant in Berlin-Brandenburg.
He excitedly proclaimed he wanted a "rave café under the giga-floor". People can drink coffee at breaks to choreographed sequences of ambient noise of " mucho mocha".
Musk inhabits the inductive universe of experiment where the prize is a psyche of empty excess. Coincidentally, Brandenburg was where JS Bach composed his legendary concertos (3&5), at the time (and still.largely) a physical milieu of pine and church spires.
Slower pace and genteel proportions are signs of the dream of the universe, where technique is mellowed by psychic emanations from pine and church spire.
As has previously been noted, woodland breaks-up light so that straight-line perspective (resolved space) becomes entangled in the proportions of trees.
Resolved space (light) becomes more convincing the less it is broken-up; less fertile, less rustic, more hygienic, more electromagnetic.
The tesseract could represent a convincing geometry (to the ego) that has no relation to reality. In a likewise way, Relativity is the gateway to a geometrical world (Minkowski) that is read by electromagnetic monitors (CERN).
The hermetic pseudo-space is electromagnetic order (light). Disorder happens when light is destroyed by trees and one is in the world of a leaf-dappled forest.
Destruction creates order through the strength of the eternal flame of renewal. Flaming leaves fall to the ground (see The Sterile Cuckoo, prev) and Diana the huntress lopes over the springy turf.
Materials flame with an inner radiance; the tints of stained glass, or of flesh in candlelight. The red of flesh, or the green of leaves, the azure tints of stained glass falling on icons. The elusive area where the physical reacts with the psyche; physical colour that has psychic meaning.
The Tesla plant may be renewable, but it is not green. Light is an illusion whithout the destruction that presages renewal. The entire area of the strong underworld of decay and regeneration is missing; the Noto-esque female blood that mixes with roots and dirt. The Eleusian mysteries of the rise of Persephone from Pluto's dark domain to greet her mother, Demeter of the harvest.
What is this but the subtle simplicity of the rotation of Earth; the physical realism of the cosmos? The physical substance of Earth - the carbon-cycles of land and sea - are born of simple repetition that gives music to the cosmos.
The pace of place that lends story to the art of living; a psychic demeanor of fortitude. Instead, Musk gives us the illusion of perfection through the vanishing point of technique, which is just another name for the Almighty Dollar.
We are approaching the vanishing point (of technique) from the fact that a giga-plant is ultra-convincing to the ego of acolytes.
The monetary system runs the information system through the spokespeople for electromagnetism. Loudness (Trumpet) replaces the silent meandering places; the springy turf that supports myriad roots and the loping feet of Diana of the moon.
In a world where information is a belief, there is no belief in strength and therefore the fertility that arises from strength. The electromagnetic cosmos is the information cosmos - radio-telescopes of the dumbverse - without story; the technical cosmos without balance or proportion.
As has also been noted, modern techniques work, whereas in Bach's day he had a bodged operation on his eyes that may have contributed to his death. In those days they pulled teeth, now we use antibiotics.
Yes, but dodgy eyesight and toothache have to be set against a world where information is a belief (DNA, see prev) and all movement is in resolved space.
Empirical reason suspends belief in dirt and cleanliness, which is physical well-being. Belief is a psychic phenomenon, and reflects the fertility of the Earth which is strong and pure. A compost-heap is sweet-smelling and pathogen-killing. Ancient beliefs - whether Hyborian-cults or medieval-Christian - reflect an empirical tradition whereby information that is strong is valued and verified by custom.
The physique is strong and inhabits a world of decadence and revival. The gaiety of peasant song. Brandenburg is the gateway to the old world of proportionate strength and gaiety, where resolved space is broken-up by steeple and steep pined slopes.
Likewise, the flame of flesh and psyche are seen in candlelight; blood and spirit.
"You walk into the early Italian section of the National Gallery, where you see fragments of art that have been sawed off, cut out and stuck up in a white room. That's not what they were painted for. You walked into an Italian church, and there at the end, lit by the glimmer of candles, was the gold shimmering, the Virgin Mary.. The image is what counts, not the artist. (Joe Tilson, DT)
If everything is nothing it can come across as sameness, as we approach the vanishing point of technique in resolved space. There is a scene in Tarkovsky's Solaris of an extended car journey where it is forever approaching the vanishing point through flyovers and tunnels, possibly as a counteraction to the bloody female psyche of the living planet of the title.
Blood, flesh, flame, decadence and revival and a simple compost-heap are the counteraction to the conviction of an electromagnetic universe of information in resolved space.