Multiplicity

Deleuze and Guattari capture my imagination in A Thousand Plateaus pages 32-3,
“Let us return to the story of multiplicity…It was created precisely in order to escape the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one, to escape dialectics, to succeed in conceiving the multiple in the pure state, to cease treating it as a numerical fragment of a lost Unity or Totality…continuous multiplicities…multiplicities of distance, which are closer to the intensive…rhizomatic multiplicities…micromultiplicites…libidinal, unconscious, molecular, intensive multiplicites composed of particles that do not divide without changing in nature, and distances which do not vary without entering another multiplicity and that constantly construct and dismantle themselves in the course of their communications, as they cross over into each other…their quantities are intensities, differences in intensity.”

multiplicity
I was reminded of Deleuze and Guattari’s description of Freud and Jung while watching the birds

PhD Induction

The induction presentations as part of Research Fest today were very informative. Alot of advice on supervision, research management, conferences, publishing and networking. We were told to write thoughts down each morning before reading (or practical efforts) to become habitual about it as writing is the most difficult part. This writing could be in the form of small papers or exploratory essays. In addition keep an interactive plan from the beginning that evolves into a chapter outline. Read critically and always write down responses (follow practical work with evaluations too).

Goodbye possum, hello kangaroo

Unfortunately the possum was taken by a hungry predator, probably a fox who dragged it out from under the wire.
But ranger Murray was there to provide me with another recent car fatality, a lovely female kangaroo. I had canvas just the right size, and he placed her on the canvas suggesting black plastic and wire over her. Adam helped me by covering her with a very secure plastic and wire covering. We hope she will not be disturbed. I will leave her two weeks before my first inspection. The male kangaroo shroud I created on the about page was left uncovered for a month. But as you can see below, his head had already been partially eaten.

summerkang11crop

Poetic science

Isaac Newton opticks 1704-“Between the parts of opake and clour’d bodies are many Spaces, either empty or replenish’d with Mediums of other Densities…in whose interstitial zones slender Arcs of Colours shaped almost like the Conchoid grow, violet, blue, which. bended more and more about the transparent spot are completed into Circles or Rings.”

endnote and networking

I have begun using  endnote to store references and it is a very useful research tool. I have discovered that images stored under figures or artwork can be inserted into a word document with a label and the figure number is automatically placed in the text and a reference is added. But a list of illustrations is unfortunately not generated.

Attended a lecture by Dr Susan Lowish concerning the integration of indigenous art into Australian art history as an introduction to her RSH Visiting Fellowship at ANU focusing on Gunbalanya in Western Arnhem Land and Ernabella in South Australia. Noted the presence of anthropologist Prof. Howard Morphy, director of RSH and Prof. Sasha Grishin, Head of Art History at ANU and realised the importance of networking.

I felt privileged to meet artist/tattooist eX de Medici at the Australian War Memorial, currently employed as a war artist in PNG. Her intricate tattoos and watercolours featuring moths and weaponry inspired me to explore both mediums.