As an example, I will begin with Great Women Artists,  a rich resource published by Phaidon in 2019.

Here is a photo of the cover.

The book is large: 10 X 11¾ inches with 464 pages. Notice the book almost is square and does not emphasize the vertical. The book cover is yellow. There are five parallel horizontal lines (red, green, red, blue, and orange), four of which do not span the page. The center line (red) crosses the title word WOMEN, using strike through text, WOMEN, throughout the text. There are many more design features, but these will be sufficient to make the points I want to emphasize.

Typography is inherently symbolic, as are all design elements. This must be kept in mind when trying to discern the design messages conveyed by the designer's decisions.

The color yellow is used for the entire field of the book cover (front, back and spine). The most common symbolism of the color yellow is the sun. Solar imagery is typically associated with male.  So here, this male element is pushed to the background. The color is so prominent that this aspect might be missed. Against this yellow background, the black text becomes prominent and is made more prominent by the use of all capitals, type that is bold and without serifs. Why a non-serif font? It is used only for the cover. All interior text is set in serif type. Well, there is a design rule that says: Don’t use serifs if you want to appear futuristic or modern. So, here, with the male solar element pushed to the background, the theme of great women artists is forgrounded, boldly. and with a modern and futuristic intention. What about the horizontal parallel lines? In symbolic terms, the horizontal is associated with the feminine and the vertical with the masculine. So here, the feminine is emphasized. Parallel means "side by side" and here we see that lines of different dolor are in parallel, side by side. A strong element pointing to diversity (different colors) belonging side by side, belonging in parallel. Why are all but one of these lines "complete," that is traversing the entire cover. Because these aspects of diversity are not yet complete.

And, now, what of that solid line through the word WOMEN that traverses the entire field. This is a bold declaration that the gendered adjective (women) is no longer applicable in speaking of greatness. It is not a distinction that belongs. As Gombrich said: "There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists."

There is rarely any mention of design in a published book. Perhaps this little note will trigger some deeper looking.

Here is a description and a video link to some recent work by Russian media artist Vadim Epstein.

I'm working on a post about the psychological significance of AI contributions to art. I would

appreciate your sending any comments about this post and video to me directly at ral@ralockhart.com

Many thanks,

Russ

With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy

Warning: this film features visual effects that could be unsuitable for photosensitive viewers.

Ghosts is part of an ongoing project in which the Moscow-based media artist Vadim Epstein explores AI technology via animation. Epstein created the video’s trippy, shapeshifting visuals through a program called StarGAN v2, which uses a neural network to generate new images by pulling from a user-created dataset. The image-to-image technology is similar to what’s used to change one’s hair colour or age à la Snapchat face filters, but anyone who has tried re-inputting a filtered image back into a feed multiple times, as Epstein does here, knows that the results can get pretty strange. For the piece, Epstein built a dataset consisting of celebrity faces, cats, paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, pencil drawings and other artworks, creating a feedback loop of abstract art and digital information that builds upon itself in uncanny, unexpected ways. With StarGAN v2 given almost full control over the process, the result is an ever-changing wave of obscure and expressive visuals that seem unbound from the world of human art and aesthetics. It’s hard to predict what neural networks like StarGAN v2 will produce as machine learning technologies continue to develop, but Ghosts cleverly shows how far the technology has come, and how weird the results can (already) get.
Director: Vadim Epstein

Here is the link:

https://aeon.co/videos/with-human-help-ais-are-generating-a-new-aesthetics-the-results-are-trippy?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=85c061c897-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_09_20_12_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-85c061c897-70343981

“The Wounded Healer”

A conversation with Thomas Moore, Murray Stein, and Russell Lockhart

with questions from Rob Henderson

ralockhart.com/WP/Wounded Healer Interview.pdf

...in the dream, the voice from the speakers announced that it has been decided at the highest levels that because of the inherent weaknesses of humans, they no longer would be the keepers of state secrets but that this responsibility would now be the sole prerogative of state computers. All levels of security clearance for humans have been canceled and appropriate levels of security for computers has been completed. All government employees, appointed officials, and elected officers have been assigned specific computers to which they must now consult in the course of doing their official duties. It has been further announced that this policy is not subject to change.

The NEXT Method

One of the first courses I taught in university was “Theories of Learning.” The most common question among students whenever I taught this course, was “how can I learn better.” This question was not confined to the course material; the discussion showed that this was a general life question. So, I made a point of teaching to this question. The key was always to increase the degree of active learning. Many such strategies were easy to generalize from the learning theory the students were learning, and the students became more adept at becoming active learners not just in class, but in other ways reported by them.

One of my favorite ways of active learning I taught was what I called the Next Method. The basic idea is simple, but the range of application is unlimited. Suppose I give you the first sentence from an introduction I wrote on science and psychology for a book entitled Contemporary Readings in Psychology, edited by John Foley, Russell Lockhart, and David Messick, and published by Harper & Row, in 1970. This was a “reader” to accompany introductory psychology texts and the articles selected were ones on the cutting edge of the field at the time and were not yet incorporated into current psychology texts. For the three editors, it was our first book publication.

The first sentence I wrote was this:

Most introductory textbooks do not give much information

about what is happening at the frontiers of the field.

Now imagine you are the student and instead of just reading on, I ask you to write the next sentence. Students invariably balk at this assignment, claiming that how could they know what to write if this is something they are supposed to be learning? Fair enough. So, then I begin to raise questions. Did you understand that first sentence? Everyone says “yes.” Does the sentence seem beyond your capacity? Everyone says “no.” Can you imagine yourself writing a “next” sentence? Here the responses become uncertain. “How is this learning?” one student might ask. “I would be writing what I already know.” “Yes,” I answer and tell them about tacit knowledge, the knowledge they already have but likely do not know they have. And then I talk about how they can now compare their own second sentence with the author’s second sentence. What is the same or similar? What is different or unexpected? Do they actually learn something? What? At this point, the whole process becomes engaging in a way that is surprising in many ways.

I have used this method with analytic candidates in relation to dreams and dream work as well as in understanding texts. Imagine, for example, hearing the first sentence of a dream and being asked to supply the next. Or consider some book or essay of Jung’s and follow this procedure. Or with a novel you are reading. Or a poem. I have used this method in many ways and continue to do so even now. It is a powerful and rewarding method and I encourage you to give it a try. And, I find it endlessly entertaining!

The Coming of the Left Outs

When Paco and I decided to make Fex & Coo available, we knew we had to “choose” from the mass of material. So, we chose a way that had some semblance of a “linear” storyline. Of course, I use “semblance” in the sense of giving the appearance of something that it really isn’t. So, essentially, we “pretended” at order. This was the basis of leaving out much that had been written. What we have come to now is that this is not fully in the spirit of the Fex & Coo project. So, we aim to do something about this. And what we are going to do is now publish what we can call the “left outs,” that is, all the material that has been written but not so far been available. Please do not expect any linearity or any other “arity.” The only thing we aim for is that these coming left outs will provide you as much enjoyment as they have provided us in writing them.

To Subscribe to Fex & Coo visit fexandcoo.website and register.

Russ and Paco

Quoted from Classic Fm

Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
What is it?
Possibly the most emotionally draining piece of music ever written.

Why it will change your life:
There’s a reason Polish composer Henryck Górecki called his third symphony the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Each movement features a solo soprano singing texts inspired by war and separation, but it’s the second movement that really stands out. The text is taken from the scribblings on the wall of a Gestapo cell during the Second World War and, as you can imagine, it’s pretty harrowing stuff – but Górecki makes it sound so transcendental that it’s hard to believe it was written in such dire circumstances. He said himself that he wanted the soprano line “towering over the orchestra”, and it certainly does that.

Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
What is it?
Possibly the most emotionally draining piece of music ever written.

Why it will change your life:
There’s a reason Polish composer Henryck Górecki called his third symphony the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Each movement features a solo soprano singing texts inspired by war and separation, but it’s the second movement that really stands out. The text is taken from the scribblings on the wall of a Gestapo cell during the Second World War and, as you can imagine, it’s pretty harrowing stuff – but Górecki makes it sound so transcendental that it’s hard to believe it was written in such dire circumstances. He said himself that he wanted the soprano line “towering over the orchestra”, and it certainly does that.

Russ, your penchant for whimsy, silliness, and all the other synonyms you unearthed—insofar as they lead to moments of innocent humor and joy—will always be welcome guests in this world we stand to inherit or bequeath. (See Russ's post "Whim, Wham, Whimsy" at fexandcoo. website)

In fact, I am grateful to have a comedy-mask to wear, in between my Saturnine stints of wearing a tragedy-mask while tracking vectors of doom-and-gloom. But even such a comic interest—if set against our many crises in social, political, and economic systems, our endless recourse to military “solutions,” our religious manias, guns, our terribly confused categories, our deep conflicts over self-governance, and so forth—comic interest, as I say, must work up a fine sweat to avoid brain-shutdown.

But that’s exactly what I’ve been experiencing recently, a kind of brain-shutdown in the face of crisis overload. I’m not proud of it, not bragging about it, but I’m sure I’m not alone. In fact, I would guess that a great many people, whether they realize it or not, are undergoing something similar. In my opinion, this is a new psychological syndrome for which we have no name.

This is not a scientific diagnosis, of course. I ran no studies, calculated no statistics, and invoked no theory. Nor did I eschew feelings and intuitions, the way scientists often do (cf. James Hansen’s references to scientific reticence). Quite the contrary, I revel in those unorthodox functions. I feel that, believe it or not, they ground me.

At any rate, for several days I found myself shambling around like one of Stephen King’s zombies, my mind seemingly blank, unable to write, lurching hither and yon, preoccupied with peripheral matters, wondering what’s happening now, and so forth.

Without a name, our new syndrome—a word derived from the Greek compound for “running together”—is bound to sneak up from behind and catch us flat-footed. That may sound like hyperbole, but the “shutdown,” or whatever it was I underwent, really did occur. I thought I was immune to such conditions—but apparently not.

And if my appraisal was accurate, many people would be suffering a virtual derangement, some worse than mine, thanks to this widespread phenomenon. That does not bode well for our ability to come to terms with the Approaching Unprecedented.

In this context, a neologism—a newly coined word or expression—spontaneously occurred to me when I realized what was happening to me. It was unbidden, as we say.  The term was ecotastrophe. The word had a certain cachet attached to it, like a form of prestige. It even gave the appearance of having been torn apart and then stitched back together again as if it had gone through a battle. I’m not offering it as a blockbuster, exemplary coinage, just a simple sample of a complex process. It just came to me, with that creative autonomy of words which allows us to connect with the deeper agencies—the word wisdom—we all carry somewhere in our depths, whether we know it or not.

As a simple sample, ecotastrophe at least gets the ball rolling, like Jung’s spontaneous stone-carving of the bear rolling a ball, which he “saw” in the stone and executed in his garden—brought to life, we might say.

Jung has already trodden this unblazed, neologistic trail by coining the term “the Coming Guest,” which I take as his expression for the unknown “thing” that is happening to the world—a stunning choice, in my opinion.

And decades ago, Russ, you determined that, whatever else it may imply, the image of the Coming Guest resonates with the archetypal principle of Eros. That was forty years ago, and I see nothing since then to unwind that spool of yarn that you spun so skillfully. The need for more neologisms today is all the greater.

My call for neologisms is an invitation to our readers to carry out what amounts to their own active imagination in words, opening up to the psychic layers below consciousness. There we enter the train station, perhaps, where dreams come chugging in to greet us. There is where words well up, to take their place in the sun.

I don’t know if anything will come of this experiment, but I know how powerful words can be. So did the Greeks, who, long before the New Testament was written, understood that Logos and Sophia were virtually identical—both standing for the creative feminine wisdom-aspect of God.

So, dear readers: What shall we call this new, unprecedented syndrome? What neologisms come to your mind? Will you share them on our website?

https://aeon.co/essays/what-do-the-dreams-of-nonhuman-animals-say-about-their-lives?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4fe83d9434-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_06_07_02_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-4fe83d9434-70343981