(((N O T E S)))

Supplemental annotations provided for the edification of the curious visitor

Link to Musée Patamécanique Bibliography

 

1 The previous line of text is a quote from Exploits and 'Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician' by Alfred Jarry. Exact Change, Boston: 1996. p. 21 - 22.

 

2 ibid

 

3 From the Latin word "inutilis" – It is hoped that the museum is one day recognized as a public inutility.

 

4 From Michael Focault’s 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' in which he writes  "For many years now, historians have preferred to turn their attention to long periods, as if, beneath the shifts and changes of political events, they were trying to reveal the stable, almost indestructible system of checks and balances, the irreversible processes, the constant readjustments, the underlying tendencies that gather force, and are then suddenly reversed after centuries of continuity, the movements of accumulation and slow saturation, the great silent, motionless bases that traditional history has covered with a thick layer of events"

 

5 It is interesting to note that Focault goes on to argue that historians should seek to reconstitute "phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity" outlining the impossibility of an overarching meta-historical position. 

 

6 This notion of the rupture could also be referencing Michel de Certeau’s concept of the rupture, or breakage as part of the process of historiography: “First of all, historiography separates its present time from its past. But everywhere it repeats the initial act of division […]. In their respective turns, each ‘new’ time provides the place for a discourse considering whatever preceded it to be ‘dead’, but welcoming a ‘past’ that had already been specified by former ruptures. Breakage is therefore the postulate of interpretation (which is constructed as of the present time) and its object (divisions organizing representations that must be reinterpreted). The labor designated by this breakage is self-motivated. In the past from which it is distinguished, it promotes a selection between what can be understood and what must be forgotten in order to obtain the representation of a present intelligibility.” 'The Writing of History', Columbia University Press: 1992

 

7 Given that a word like “storm” or “typhoon” would be better suited to the nautical theme of the text, one is led to believe that the author wants his readers to draw an association with William Shakespeare’s 'The Tempest' in which The Bard describes the whole world as an illusion: "the great globe ... shall dissolve ... like this insubstantial pageant" and later 7b “These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, THE GREAT GLOBE ITSELF, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded. Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

 

8 Hero of Alexandria, who lived during the first century A.D., supposedly created a whole automata theater that gave a performance ten minutes in length. According to accounts, the device was controlled by a series of ropes with knots tied in them. As the rope was pulled through the device, the knots moved levers which caused actions to happen on the miniature stage. 

 

9  "In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called metaphorai. To go to work or come home, one takes a “metaphor” – a bus or a train. Stories could also take this noble name: every day, they traverse and organize places: they select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them."

— Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

 

10 The term "bachelor machine" was first used by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 in connection with pieces of work that would later be assembled in the Large Glass of 1915-1923. (Also known as the bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even) For Duchamp, the term refers specifically to the lower portion of the glass, the realm of the bachelors, which contains, among other things, the chocolate grinder, the cemetery for uniforms and liveries -- Priest, Delivery Man, Gendarme, Cuirassier, Policeman, Pallbearer, Footman, Stationmaster and Page Boy -- and the témoins oculistes. The Large glass consists of two distinct realms, the realm of the bride above, and the realm of the bachelors below, both desiring and imagining one another without any possibility of mutual comprehension. See also note 91

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11 “There can be no doubt that by transferring this ingenious trickery, this clever simulation to the intellectual plane, one can enjoy, just as easily as on the material plane, imaginary pleasures similar in all respects to the pleasures of reality; no doubt, for instance that anyone can go on long voyages of exploration sitting by a fire, helping out his sluggish or refractory mind, if the need arises, by dipping into some book describing the travels on distant lands. As a mater if fact, artifice was considered by Des Essaintes to be the distinctive mark of human genius.” – Joris-Karl Huysman,  A Rebours (Against Nature) 1884, Translation by Robert Baldick, this edition Penguin 1971, p 35 and 36.

 

The Symbolists, Huysmans in particular, were interested in exercising the senses, the aim of which is to create a memorable re-imagining of experience in an attempt to set art free from the material preoccupations of industrial society. Le Musée follows in this tradition by creating an inorganic world and luxuriating in its rarefied artificiality through both the artifice of words and toying with the mechanism of our senses themselves. It is this friction generated by sensory pleasure entwined with artifice and illusion that is the foremost muse of Musée Patamécanique. 

 

12 “I need you, dear reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”  ― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita 

 

13 Impey and Macgregor; 'The Origins of Museums, the Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe', Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 220 Laurence Weschler points out this same quote in his book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Pronged ants, horned humans, mice on toast, and other marvels of Jurassic Technology, First Vintage books, 1995, p. 76.-

 

14 Disney didn't call his inventions automata, but actually trade-marked the name "Audio-Animatronics" as he saw them as a three-dimensional extension of animation. Disney's first major automata attraction was "The Enchanted Tiki Room", (a major source of inspiration for Musée Patamécanique) which opened in Disneyland in 1963. For more on Disney and Patamechanics, see note 19

 

15 For more on the Mechaverse, see note see note 64

 

16 Punny humor arises from seeing incongruity in language - "The incongruity observed is not complete, but only partial; because a likeness as well as an unlikeness must exist in the bogus...” ”The mind half accepts, half rejects what is being offered to it for recognition. At one in the same moment, it sees a darkness and a light, a nothingness and a something-ness; it becomes simultaneously aware of its own madness and its own sanity.” L. Feeney’s, The Menace of Puns. London: Longman, 1943, p. 169

 

17 Joseph Faber took 25 years to make his famous automata Euphonia. The automata produced sounds similar to the human voice. It started by reciting the letters of the alphabet and then said "How do you do ladies and gentlemen". It asked and answered questions, whispered, sang and laughed. - even spoke in an German accent.

 

18 The Brothers Grimm, Jakob (1785 – 1863) and his elder brother Wilhelm (1786-1859) were German academics well known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales. They are among the best known fairy-story tellers of novellas from Europe, enabling the widespread knowledge of such tales as 'Snow White', 'Rapunzel', 'Cinderella', and 'Hansel and Gretel'. In 1812, the Brothers published a collection of 86 German fairy tales in a volume titled 'Kinder- und Hausmärchen' ('Children’s and Household Tales'). They published a second volume of 70 fairy tales in 1814 which together make up the first edition of this collection, containing 156 stories. The original story that inspired Disney is titled 'Ashputtle'.

 

19 To clarify; a version of Cinderella’s Castle originally existed as a virtual palace in the 1950 Disney film 'Cinderella', inspired by the Grimm’s fairy tale, 'Ashputtle'  (see note 18). Patamechanically speaking; by giving the virtual Castle a physical presence, Disney essentially validated the existence of Cinderella’s world. The concrete castle thus bridges the gap between the virtual and physical domains.

 

Most forms of advertising utilize Patamechanics. An effective advertisement elicits a desire for a product or service through carefully thought-out campaigns transmitted via web, tv, radio print ads, commercials and the like. The viewer is then invited to empower themselves by enhancing their experience by giving the imaginary product physical presence by purchasing the physical version of the said product or service. This too, was part of Disney’s marketing genius.

 

Jean Baudrillard's ideas about Disney and his world also apply to le Musée: “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle. The imaginary of Disneyland is neither true nor false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp.” 'Simulacra and Simulation', translated by Sheila Faria Glaser (Originally published in French by Editions Galilee, 1981), The University of Michigan Press: 1994

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Musée Patamécanique is a kind of deterrence machine.

 

20 See Raymond Roussel

 

21 See Flann O’Brien

 

22 See Ana Gram - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagram

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23 Martin Heidegger, "Existence and Being" - slightly altered 

 

24 Miss Edison’s line of Petrola Fragrances has transformed and redefined the tradition of perfume. Deliberately embellished with a palette of Petro – the symbol of wealth and prosperity. Petrola is an unexpected essence, once referred to as ‘Black Gold’, it is rich, dark and mysterious. A miraculous gift from the depths of our earth. In all of its precious form, the deliberate disregard for the future of the planet and the health of its unfortunate human and animal inhabitants is effortlessly felt throughout the fragrance. It is a dark elixir that will lead to nose and throat irritation; respiratory problems; blood in urine, vomit and rectal bleeding; seizures; nausea and violent vomiting episodes that last for hours; skin irritation, burning and lesions; short-term memory loss and confusion; liver and kidney damage; central nervous system effects and nervous system damage; hypertension; and miscarriages for most – but pure euphoria for all those who prosper from it. Available at an automotive service station near you.

 

25 The fuel that runs The Brides engines of desire - See Duchamp note 10

 

26 See Jonathan Swift

 

27 On his voyage to Laputa Gulliver was permitted to see the Grand Academy of Lagado, in which he spent many days. The Academy occupied many buildings and over 500 rooms. One researcher or “projector” captured his attention. What follows is a description of this encounter; “The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the Academy. His face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace (a compliment I could have well excused) his employment from his first coming into the Academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gaul, making the odourexhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel. - 'Gulliver’s Travels' into several remote nations of the world. In four parts', Rinehart and Winston:1967 (see also Rabelaisian Humor, note 87)

 

28 If you would like to learn more about Chipperace, please email our Curatorial Department.

 

29 Sources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_'n'_Dale  and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberace

 

30 For more on Heinrich Graum, See Steven Millhauser

 

31 Much of the above text on Graum is paraphrased from his biography included in Steven Millhauser’s collection - “The Knife Thrower”, Vintage: 1999

 

32 Perceptions of "reality" through the lens technology along with technological enablement and disablement are well-known and often recurring themes in Mr. Spinnermen's work.  (It is Mr. Spinnermen’s wish that his poem not be heavily noted, though many layers of meaning may be sought.)

 

33 Mixotricha Paradoxa is a species of Protozoan that lives in the belly of the termite species Mastotermes Darwiniensis and has multiple bacterial symbionts. The name originated when Australian biologist J.L.Sutherland first described Mixotricha in 1933 as “The paradoxical being with the mixed up hairs”. The paradox is that this creature may be defined as being either a single celled organism, or an entire colony of more than five hundred thousand bacteria representing several different species. In other words, Mixotricha is an entity that defies traditional methods of classification.

Image source - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Mixotricha_paradoxa.png/220px-Mixotricha_paradoxa.png

 

Also in reference to Mixotricha Paradoxa, it is interesting to note this quote from Cyrano de Bergerac’s 'The Other World, The Societies and Governments of the Moon' (1657), “Just as we appear to be a huge world to these little organisms, perhaps our flesh, blood and bodily fluids are nothing more than a connected tissue of little animals that move and cause us to move. Even as they let themselves be led blindly by our will, which serves them as a vehicle, they animate us and combine to produce this action we call life.”

 

34 If one looks up at the sky on a clear evening, and sees the full moon shining brightly, they are witnessing an event called syzygy. Carl Jung used the term syzygy to denote an archetypical pairing of contra-sexual opposites, which symbolized the communication of the conscious and unconscious minds. Dr. Faustroll used the term to describe laughter as saying “Laughter is born out of the discovery of the contradictory.” Implying that there is a mysterious eruption of energy that surfaces when dissonant elements are somehow aligned. (see also Puns, note 16)

 

35 One can further this reduction of written language to dots and dashes  –  or even the repetition of a single symbol with spaces or variable increments of time surrounding it.  

 

36 See George Berkley-(Bishop Berkeley) more

 

37 This text is a quote from Alfred Jarry’s, 'Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician'..., Exact Change, Boston: 1996.

 

38 Friend, collogue, source of inspiration; http://andrewhugill.com/

 

39 Collège de ’Pataphysique web site (English Page)  http://www.college-de-pataphysique.fr/presentation_en.html

(French) http://www.college-de-pataphysique.org/college/accueil.html

 

40 A glance into 'Chambers Dictionary of Etymology' (2005 edition) reveals that the word absurd has come in English to mean ridiculously inconsistent, preposterous and nonsensical. Its original derivation from Latin has to do with being offensive to the EAR, thus the absurd connotes that which is difficult to hear - is difficult to accept.

 

41 “The Janus word makes of human speech a slippery instrument. It is, however, the reflection of the double nature of man himself, at the contradiction that lies at the very heart of humanity. In Eden, man knew no ambiguity, but when he fell, he became Janus faced, a parus mundus of opposites, perilously poised at the juncture of nature and spirit, the riddle of the crossroads, the glory of the jest of the world.” N. Jacobs, 'Naming Day in Eden', Gollancz, London: 1958 p. 150

 

“I and Christ are Janus. I have no need to turn around to show my double face. A being with intelligence can see two simultaneous opposites, two infinities which co-exist and could not exist otherwise.” Alfred Jarry, Ceasar-Antichrist, Scene seven.  'Adventures in Pataphysics: Collected Works 1', Atlas Press, London: 2001, p. 190

 

42 In 'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”'by Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is sought by using the super-mega-computer, Deep Thought. After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought provides the answer: “forty two.” The reaction: “Forty two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?” “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is. Unfortunately, Deep Thought was not powerful enough to provide the Ultimate Question for which forty-two was the ultimate answer.“ Coincidently, there is no reason for this 42nd endnote.

 

43 Rube Goldberg’s improbable, whimsical inventions are well known for their pataphysical properties.

 

44 Raymond Roussel (1887- 1933) was an author of works of unsurpassed complexity and brilliance. His work inspired Marcel Duchamp, who, along with Appollinaire and Picabia, attended a performance of Impressions of Africa. Duchamp later credited Roussel for the inspiration for his Large Glass.

 

“His is a universe, existing within, yet exceeding beyond the confines of language. Roussel provides us with a parody of the mechanized nature of human logic and thus reveals a telling glimpse of our pataphysical existence.” Daren Elsa Nibelly, 'More Pipe-Lines to the Infinite (with Mr. Eddy Othermen)', Imaginary Press, Bristol: 130 E.P., p 44.

 

Or, as Michel Foucault put in his 1963 book on Roussel titled 'Death and the Labyrinth' (translated by Charles Ruas, Continum, NewYork/London) ”It is rather an anxiety about the nature of language. Roussel’s unreason, his derogatory play on words, his obsessive application, his absurd inventions, communicate doubtlessly with the reasoning of our world."

 

45 The Earolin, actually, does not speak, but fiddles itself, that is, it bows its soft outer cartilages, or laps, like a fiddle.

 

46 This term refers to Teledildonics, (Currently defined by wikipedia on 3/14/08 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics   - Webster’s has no current definition) also known as Cyberdildonics is the hypothetical integration of telepresence with sex, or sex with a machine. The term was coined in the 1980s by Ted Nelson. Recent technical  advancements in the arena suggest that the fantasy imagined in Jarry’s novel Supermale ago may not so be fantastical at all!

 

47 In reference to Edward Witten’s M-theory - which lives in eleven dimensions, the maximum allowed by super-symmetry of the elementary particles. The “M” sometimes is said to stand for Mystery, or Magic, Mommy, Mucus, Missing, Mini Mouse, Monstrous, Made Up, Meatball, Marvelous, or even Murky…

 

48 Max Tegmark is a Swedish American research fellow currently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tegmark’s area of specialty is called Precision Cosmology, which is described as a discipline in which the most advanced tools are used to come up with the most precise measurements that place the most refined constraints on cosmological models, which are then developed and studied. Through his meticulous modeling techniques, Tegmark has concluded that the existence of other universes is not only a possibility, but is a direct implication of current cosmological observations. In a 2003 Scientific American article (Parallel Universes, May issue), he presents a clear and comprehensive summary, describing the set of related concepts which share the notion that there are universes beyond the familiar, traditional one, and goes on to provide a taxonomy of parallel universes organized by levels. This is called the Multiverse (or meta-universe) Hypothesis. Located here: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/popular.html accesses 4/14/13. The systematic toying with the arrangement of mathematical abstractions and their significance can make comprehensible a realm or entity that exists “supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, will describe a universe which can be - and perhaps should be - envisaged in the place of the traditional one!” - Jarry

 

49 In reference to Alan Turing’s paradoxical proposition put forth in his 1939 paper titled 'Systems of logic based on ordinals:' “Let us suppose that we are supplied with some unspecified means of solving number-theoretic problems; a kind of oracle as it were. We shall not go any further into the nature of this oracle apart from saying that it cannot be A “machine,” or “a machinery” is defined as: (1) an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). Likewise “a machinery” may be: a living organism or one of its functional systems. (Webster’s, ibid, etc. for more definitions). Thus a “machine,” or “a machinery,” has parts that move. An archaic definition is “a constructed thing whether material or immaterial.” Alan Turing, Systems of logic based on ordinals, Proc. London Math, 1939, p. 167. So then, if an oracle cannot be an assemblage of moving parts, nor a living organism, it would seem to render Turing’s Oracle Machine “immaterial,” and its nature may only be sought in those realms beyond physics.

 

50 100 years ago it was thought that the power of mathematics was limitless. 'Principia Mathematica' is a three-volume work on the foundation of mathematics by Alfred Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, published in 1910 and 1913. It represents a desire to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic. That dream died on November 17, 1930, when Kurt Gödel published his 25 page paper titled 'On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems' which stated that certain mathematical statements can neither be proved, or disproved. Essentially, Gödel’s Theorem attacks a central problem that resides at the core of mathematics.

 

Gödel was aware that Bertrand Russell was never able to fully resolve the problem presented by the paradox he himself had discovered: the paradox of the set of all sets that does not include itself. He also was impressed by the views presented in David Hilbert’s, 1899 book, Foundations of the Theory of Logic. Hilbert’s ideas were contrast with Russell’s in that he realized that definitions, rules and operations, like the ones proposed in Principia, could be used in an infinite number of ways to generate an unending series of mathematical truths and that any formal logical system, such as that presented in Principia Mathematica were also subject to epistemological considerations of completeness and consistency.

 

Page 57 (of this Dover edition) proposition VI of Gödel’s first 1931 paper states: “To every W-consistent recursive class C of formulae there correspond recursive class signs R, such that neither V Gen R nor Neg (V Gen R) belongs to Flg (C) (where V is the free variable of R).” Roughly speaking, the Gödel statement, G, asserts that: “G cannot be proved within the theory T”. If G were provable under T’s axioms and rules of inference, then T would have a theorem, G, which effectively contradicts itself, and thus the theory T would be inconsistent. If one were to suppose that G were provable (from the theory) then the theory would be saying the opposite of what was just supposed. So, we are forced to conclude that G is not provable; Ha ha! Ernest Nagel and James R Newman have a succinct way of putting this across in their book, 'Gödel’s Proof', (Forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter) Revised Edition, University Press, New York, New York: 1958/2001. “Gödel showed that it is impossible to give a meta-mathematical proof of the consistency of a system comprehensive enough to contain the whole of arithmetic (like PrincipeaMathematica) unless the proof itself employs rules of inference different in certain essential respects from the transformation rules used in deriving theorems within the system. Gödel’s argument makes it unlikely that a finitistic proof of the consistency of Principia Mathematicacan be given.” p. 58

 

Gödel’s second main conclusion is even more surprising and revolutionary because it demonstrates a fundamental limitation in the power of the axiomatic method. - to put it simply, If Principia were augmented by an infinite number of new axioms and rules, there would always be further arithmetical truths that are not formally derivable in that (perpetually) augmenting system. John Bagely and James T. Oldman also have their own spin of what Godel discovered. On page 58 of 'Gödelian Elucidations', (Forward by Adam S. Stetson) Uqbar University press, Zahir: 117,. On p. 59 they write: “While it should be stated that Gödel’s Proof(s) are theorems about first order logic and must ultimately be understood in this context, In the most broad and general terms, what Gödel also demonstrates is that the set of assumptions which provide the foundation for logical certainty have an arbitrary basis because they can be shown to produce inconsistency. Formalized knowledge derived from logic is in itself an inconsistent proposition. One cannot help but see how incompleteness theorems support by analogy, ideas which go beyond mathematics and logic. Viewed from this position, the logic of dreams the Surrealists spoke of sits on equal footing as the logic of atomic theory, and grade school arithmetic”. Given this assumption, Gödel’s theorem could be an examination of the incongruity of our (or any other) language to explain or describe the universe. YET, somehow we are able to comprehend these limits and create art that celebrates the human intellect and spirit.

 

“In the beginning was Thought? Or, in the beginning was Action? Thought is the foetus of Action, or rather, it is already juvenile action. Let us not introduce a third term, the Word, into the equation; for the word is only thought perceived, either by the person it inhabits, or by the passers-by of the exteriorized world. But let us note it down all the same.” -  quotation from Jarry’s 'To Be and to Live', 'Adventures in ‘Pataphysics', Collected Works 1

 

51 In his 'Surrealist Manifesto' of 1924, André Breton’s puts forth an encyclopedic definition of Surrealism: “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. He goes on,  "I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality “ One of the techniques surrealism utilizes is the willful rearrangement of and re-fusion of forms in order to release the mind from the prison-logic of reason.

 

52 See Duchamp

 

53 In reference to Lewis Carroll’s seemingly nonsensical poem, 'Jabberwocky', included in his 1872 classic tale, 'Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There'. The poem is particularly interesting to Mr. Spinnermen because, although it appears to contain many nonsensical words, there remains a story that is somehow discernible. Alice puts this idea of sensible nonsense across most eloquently, “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are!”

 

54 In reference to Michel Foucault’s 'Archaeological Analysis', a method of describing specific discursive formations in an attempt to uncover the rules that govern their specific formation. Foucault states that the task of archaeology is “to define discourses in their specificity; to show in what way the set of rules that they put into operation is irreducible to any other.” 'The Archaeology of Knowledge'. Translation, A.M. Sheridan, London: Tavistock Publications: 1972, p. 139. (see also notes 4 and 5 on Foucault)

 

55 The phrase “All words being equal.” Is a playful prod at the often cited heuristic maxim attributed to William Ockham (c. 1285–1349), Occam’s Razor, which is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation. For in ‘Pataphysics, all words, and all things, are equal - and may be appropriated as art.

 

56 Michel Foucault’s description of the rhythmical linguistic mechanisms created by Raymond Roussel is interesting because it seems to apply to Mr. Spinnermen’s use of rhyme. “It is a system which proliferates with rhymes in which not only syllables are repeated, but also words, the entire language, things, memory, the past, legends, life, - each separated from and connected to itself by the fissure of death.” What Roussel said must be heeded: “The Process is in short related to rhyme. In both cases there is unforeseen creation due to phonetic combinations. It is essentially a poetic Process” Poetry is the absolute division of language which restores its identically to itself, but on the other side of death; it is the rhymes of things and of time. From the faithful echo is born the pure invention of verse.”  Foucault, Death and the Labyrinth, 1963, (see also note 44 on Roussel)

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57 In reference to Hans Spinnermen’s 'The Dream of Timmy Bumble Bee' http://museepata.org/bees1.html

 

58 In reference to the Hookah-smoking caterpillar in Lewis Carroll’s, 'Alice in Wonderland' that gives Alice the means to change size, and in turn, her perspective, at will.

 

59 In reference to Hans Spinnermen’s 'Singing Mixotricha Paradoxa' https://www.museepata.org/untitled-cuet

 

60 In his book, 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' (Rutledge; Reissue edition (March 1996), Quantum Physicist David Bohm described a language he called the Rheomode. Translating from the Greek Rheo meaning “to flow,” Rheomode literally means “flowing mode” or “flowing language.” Bohm thought that any attempt to order the universe into individual fragments misses the essence, “Rather, it implies that any describable event, object, entity, etc., is an abstraction from an unknown and indefinable totality of flowing movement” Bohm, 1980: p. 49.

 

61 See Alfred Jarry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jarry  

 

62 The above text is a paraphrased version of deSelby’s treaties on the illusory nature of travel, originally published in 'Golden Hours'. Amended and republished in 'Codex'. The concept appears again in the notes of Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman'.

 

63 See Duchamp.

 

64 The following excerpt is from an interview with Daren NiBelly titled: 'Ghosts in the Patamachine', published in Patamechanics Review: August 2013. “The guiding doctrine of the scientific revolution is what I would call the “mechanical philosophy”, which spanned much of the 17th, 18 and early 19th century. This view saw the world as a grand machine – essentially a grander version of cutting edge science of the time. Like a great clockwork, an exquisitely complex automaton. Devices, like Vashon’s duck that imitated the digestion, or devices that could be found in the royal gardens – automatons that could talk, walk, play chess and the like. These devices stimulated and reframed what was the CURRENT thinking about the workings of the universe. This Mechanical philosophy, at its most extreme, prophesized that if we could harness the workings of this incredibly complex mechanical universe we could effectively become masters of it!

 

Today’s ubiquitous computers are descendants of the automatons of yor, and cyberspace, the Google-verse or the coming Singularity (pick your poison) is the great grandson of the Mechaverse. Because of the exponential growth of computational power the working parts of our machines have become very tiny and very, very fast - so small and speedy that they have become ubiquitous filters that shape and reframe our experience.  So it’s hard to see - or hear, this correlation between the ticks and tocks of ancient clockwork automatons and the quiet hum of todays sophisticated computing machines. But if you listen very carefully…”-

 

65 “The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio, rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and new mown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord, a whiff of kidney pudding, and the faintest suspicion of pig’s dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began.” Aldous Huxley, 'Brave New World', Chapter 11

 

66 “A Chinese prose writer has observed that the unicorn, because of its own anomaly, will pass unnoticed. Our eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing." Jorge Luis Borges

 

67 Miss Maxine is referencing the saturnine blowpipes from Faustroll’s 'Exploits and Opinions', “…come like magpies to suck life (their own, exclusive) from the syrupy and smoking jet emanating from the saturnine blowpipe...”

 

68 In reference to Miss Maxine’s colleague, Luca Turin, and his rediscovery of Malcom Dyson’s 1938 proposal “Our noses have the spectroscopic power to detect vibration.” In his book, The 'Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession and the Last Mystery of the Sense's, (New York: Random House, 2003) author Chandler Burr traces Turin’s heroic attempts to gain a foothold in the scientific community by attempting to prove his theory that odor perception is based upon molecular vibration rather than upon molecular shape.

 

69 “Perhaps, see if it is necessary to choose an essence of wood, (The fir tree, or then polished mahogany)” The writings of Marcel Duchamp, edited by Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, Da-Capo Press, New York: 1973, p. 27.

 

70 The above text is a paraphrased version of Dr. Faustroll’s' Practical Construction of the Time Machine', Adventures in ‘Pataphysics, Atlas Press, London, 1992.  

 

71 For more on the notion f a Pataphysical Phantasmagoria​ - https://www.museepata.org/skel-key

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72 Groucho was a prominent member the Collège de ‘Pataphysique .

 

73 See Duchamp

 

74 See Eric Satie

 

75 See Alfred Jarry’s “Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, ‘Pataphysician”

 

76 See James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”

 

77 See Flann O'Brien’s “The Third Policeman”

 

78 See Paul Feyerabend’s “Against Method”    

 

79 See Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”

 

80 See Raymond Roussel’s “Impressions of Africa”

 

81 Jarry attended classes with Bergson at the Lycée Henri IV – and was no doubt influenced by Bergson’s far reaching ideas related to time, memory, laughter and free will

 

82 See Rabelais (note 87)

 

83 The Vice-Curator of the Collège de 'Pataphysique is Her Magnificence Lutembi - a crocodile

 

84 See Borges

 

85 See Italo Calvino

 

86 Alfred Jarry’s last request

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87 To be Rabelaisian means to be totally outrageous, raunchy, crude in every way, relentless against hypocrisy, and against all forms of popular opinion; but, also, in a more profound way it means AXIOM BUSTING.

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François Rabelais (149?-1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, humorist, monk and Greek scholar. Best known for work is work Gargantua and Pantagruel, he is regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs. Because of his literary power and historical importance, Western literary critics consider him one of the great writers of world literature. The word Rabelaisian has been coined as a descriptive inspired by his work and life. Merriam Webster defines the word as describing someone or something that is "marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism.

 

His works are also known for being filled with sexual double-entendres (see also - Puns, note 16). 

 

Alfred Jarry performed, from memory, hymns of Rabelais at Symbolist salons and worked for years on an unfinished libretto based on Pantagruel.

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Le Musée employs Rabelaisian humor (fart jokes, mild scatology, and a dick joke or two) as a means to reveal imbedded social morays and conditioned behaviors that would otherwise be imperceptible  - thus making unseen and deeply embedded social constructs suddenly and surprisingly visible. It's NOT that we're a museum against normality, culture or good taste, but rather see ourselves as a museum that endorses a freedom of vision, feeling and thought that only PLAY can produce.

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88 “Here (in Phrenology) we have a virtual representation (this very thought) of a physical representation (the Phrenologist instrument) of a virtual state (ones mental characteristics as defined by the phrenology instrument) of a physical occurrence (the bumps on the head). The Phrenologists of yore were Patamechanics par excel-lance! ” From Sal’lien and Brelly, Storia ed origini dei metodi patameccanici nel sedicesimo secolo Europa: - (History and Origins of Patamechanical Methodologies in 16th Century Europe) Imaginary Press, Cittàgazze: 100 E.P., p 111. Phrenology is/was the study of how the shape of one’s skull would determine intelligence and personality, popular in the early 19th century.

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89 While all thinking is Pataphysical, few realize this. The words you are now reading are the product of conscious Pataphysics (note omission of apostrophe) more patadata here.

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90  “...the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental, pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of general. 'Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, will describe a universe which can be—and perhaps should be—envisaged in the place of the traditional one.” 

 

“DEFINITION. 'Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.”

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The quote above is taken from "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician" A novel by French Symbolist author Alfred Jarry (born Sept. 8, 1873, Laval, France—died Nov. 1, 1907, Paris) - Published after Jarry's death in 1907. For more on See Pataphysical Resources 

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91 Duchamp argued that both the artist and the viewer are necessary for the completion of a work of art. He posited that the creation of art begins with the artist—often working in isolation in the studio—and is not completed until it is placed out in the world and viewed by others. “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act,” - YOU, dear reader, are invited to complete us - because we really don't exist if you don't. See also note 12

 

92 Lepidus. What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?

Anthony. It is shaped sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hadth bredth: it is just as hight as it is, and it moves with it’s own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it: and the elements once out of it,it transmigrates.

Lepidus. What color is it of?

Anthony. It is of its own color too sir. - William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, scene VII

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"A work of art is a stuffed crocodile." - Alfred Jarry

 

93 In a 2007 interview with Greg Cook for his Boston Globe article, "Next Stop Wonderland", Neil Salley notes that within Pataphysics resides “... the underpinnings of our entire society.” He also goes on to sum up the museums primary mission statement - “Musée Patamécanique attempt(s) to stir up ideas and blur those distinctions we make between science or art, reason or unreason, truth or deception, the real and the illusory. It’s a playful reassessment that for me solicits a heightened awareness of the human mind’s capacity for tolerating epistemological dissonance. That is not a bad place to be.” Source: for the completed article: Boston Globe, Next Stop Wonderland, (Arts section cover story) August 12, 2007. e-source http://gregcookland.com/journal/2007/08/muse-patamcanique.html

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94 Paraphrasing the words of Paul Feyerabend; “The answer is clear: we cannot discover it from the inside. We need an external standard of criticism, we need a set of alternative assumptions or, as these assumptions will be quite general, constituting, as it were, an entire alternative world, we need a dream world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit (and may actually just be another dream world).” Against Method, Verso, London, New York: 1975, (third edition) p.22.

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95 "On one hand we hold the idea that language often fails in its description of  history and reality, but on the other hand language seems able to create history and all of reality." Daren Elsa NiBelly, Further Extensions and Analyses, Imaginary Press: 131 E.P. p 33.

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96 Ballet Mécanique is the name of a 1922 film by French painter Fernand Léger and cinematographer Dudley Murphy and the unaccompanied musical score by George Antheil. The idea for collaboration between these artists was hatched during the artistic explosion in Paris during the 1920s. Léger, Murphy and Antheil set out to create a piece as outrageous as the works around them. Antheil conceived of a score to celebrate machines as makers of music. He initially went so far as to proclaim his piece; “The first piece of music that has been composed OUT OF and FOR machines, ON EARTH.” The result was a score set for 16 player pianos, which were to be accompanied by two grand pianos played by musicians, as well as three xylophones, four bass drums, a gong, three airplane propellers, seven electric bells, and a siren. Léger’s film is a spellbinding collage of images of the human form mixed with elements of the machine. Cut after cut juxtaposing legs and clocks, arms with camera cranks, faces showing mechanically contrived emotions cut to lights flashing, a spinning egg beater, a woman on a swing, whirling prisms and gears in motion. The rhythm of this film is astonishing and has an incredible amount of cuts per second for its time. The film, projected on a large screen along with its accompanying musical score, the loudest piece of concert music ever composed, was to be the most riveting art experience ever conceived. Ballet Mécanique was meant to evoke the synergistic rhythm between the human/biological viewer and the mechanical/cinematic machine. However, the music and film were never presented together in the artist’s lifetime. While writing his autobiography, Antheil, George, Bad Boy of Music, Samuel French Trade edition p. 139 – 140, Antheil went on to describe his idea of Ballet Mécanique as being a mechanistic dance of life. He wrote “I had no idea of copying the machine directly down into a piece of music, so to speak. My idea, rather, was to warn the age in which we were living of the simultaneous beauty and danger of its own unconscious mechanistic philosophy.” 

 

Musée Patamécanique takes part of its name and much inspiration from Ballet Mécanique.

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97 Musée Patamécanique is more immaterial than material. That is, it's not so much a place – but a playful state of mind. However, the museum has been known to occasionally commingle with the physical realm. This rare and speculative phenomenon is known as “reimmaterialization”.