The City

Slowly, inevitably, as out of a moving mist, he could begin to distinguish form. They blurred and retreated, then advanced again, gradually becoming more distinct. He was experiencing things as a man just reviving from unconsciousness after a hard blow on the head, or as a man who has drunk too much might slowly and with effort attempt to establish once again a mental contact with the world of time and space. The again, perhaps this was not it at all; perhaps this slow revelation was really taking years; perhaps he was passing through the first years of life and seeing things as a child might see them

Sketch Vision: Artificial Intelligence with Sight for Imagination

Visual design relies on seeing things in different ways, acting on them, and seeing results to act again. Parametric design tools are often not robust to design changes that result from sketching over the visualization of their output. We propose a sketch to 3d workflow as an experiment medium for evaluating neural networks and their latent spaces as a representation that is robust to overlay sketching.Comment: Written for 4.453 Creative Machine Learning at MIT, Spring 2023. 9 pages, 9 figure

Letter Written by Norman A. Garrigus to the Bryant College Service Club Dated December 9, 1943

[Transcription begins]UNITED STATES NAVY December 9, 1943 Dear Friends: I received your Christmas package before I left the states but am just now getting the pleasure of thanking you for it. Seeing as how Santa Clause [sic] has already been good to me I hope you won\u27t think that my asking for more candy is an attempt at a second celebration. But when my name comes up on the list again I would appreciate anything you sent. You might be interested to know that the first day I hit port I happened to meet Shirley Dyer and I hope to see her again soon if they aren\u27t going to work me too hard. Things are going to be fine in this duty from all that I can judge in my first few days of it. Many thanks to all and a Merry Christmas. SincerelyNorman A Garrigus[Transcription ends

An American in Ireland

When I moved to Ireland just over four years ago, I went through my fair share of culture shock. There were the big things – like struggling to understand what everyone was saying (to be fair, I was living in Drogheda!) – and a million little ones, like seeing grated cheese in a cold sandwich (so…odd) and realising that you can’t buy liquor on Good Friday. Life was quite different here than what I was used to in Los Angeles, my adopted hometown. I say “adopted” because I was actually born in Japan and lived there until I was five years old. With my mom’s entire family still living there, we go back to visit when we can, and a couple of weeks ago I went back again, this time bringing my Irish husband along for the first time

UA37/44 Tidbits of Kentucky Folklore

Tidbits of Kentucky Folklore nos. 1500-1600: 1935-1965 – 165 A Folk Drugstore – 49 A Shrinking World – 27 A Tater on the Spout – 175 A Valuable Acquisition – 9 Adjusting to Our Times – 79 Ashamed to Play – 23 Autumns of Long Ago – 191 Barefoot Boy – 179 Becoming a Passing Institution – 31 Calling Animals – 193 Calling the Animals – 21 Cash on the Barrel Head – 139 Cats & Saurians – 55 Chores – 105 Contradictory Signs – 135 Country-School Alumni – 181 D-Day Plus One – 47 Don’t – 195 Explaining a Figure of Speech – 177 Folkishness in the Suburbs – 91 Folks Gotta Be Born – 5 Friday – 197 Galluses – 121 Getting Educated – 13 Getting Grown – 3 Giving Up the Past – 87 Going Somewhere – 19 Goodby, Anderson School – 45 Grow We Must – 41 Hogs & Horses – 133 Home-Made Playthings – 59 How Did We Survive? – 61 Junior – 203 Keeping Up with the Joneses – 39 Kinfolks – 109 Knowing Animals – 129 Leaves, Barks, Roots – 93 Letting Go – 151 Like Father, Like Son – 149 Lizards & Saurians – 37 Meet Me in the Forum – 57 Modern Drugs – 43 Neighborhood Loyalties – 25 Never Before – 157 No Shaves on Saturday – 161 Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things – 153 Poetic Justice – 107 Professor of Things in General – 83 Queer People – 199 Quoting the Bible – 111 Recreation, Then & Now – 85 Regional Words – 113 Scary Critters – 131 Seeing Life Steadily – 103 Side By Side – 137 Sideboards – 173 Small Potatoes – 69 Some Beliefs About Plants & Animals – 125 Some More Plants & Animals – 127 Some More Times & Seasons – 185 Some Old Aches & Pains – 187 Songs of My Own Childhood – 81 Status Symbols Again – 95 Suburbs – 77 That Ain’t the Way I Heered It – 189 That Drugstore Again – 51 That Front Room Again – 123 The Big Cave – 171 The Boogerman – 117 The Country Store Again – 89 The Feist Dog – 119 The Homely Appeal – 101 The Home-Town Paper – 29 The Hootenanny & the Folklorist – 53 The Lion & the Lizard – 155 The Night, UP & Down – 65 The Old Maid – 63 The Old Order Changeth – 97 The Poor Man’s Job – 35 The Temple of Learning – 33 The Two Fidelities – 169 The Washboard – 99 There Ain’t No Sich Animal – 67 There Are Two of Us – 147 Times & Seasons – 183 To Back a Letter – 115 To Watch the Cars Go By – 163 True to the Breed – 11 Voices in the Wilderness – 159 Wallink & Gumbo-Whackum – 145 We Are Still Human – 7 Weren’t There Any Ordinary Folks? – 143 What Is a Blacksmith? – 15 What Is a Weed? – 71 What’s In a Name? – 201 When Us Old Codgers Are Gone – 141 Where Is Fidelity? – 167 Which Folkways? – 1

A study of space, object and reality

About six years ago I was making constructions to incorporate objects and words (my poems and those of others). In these constructions the objects found in everyday existence and the poems were to coexist as visual and psychological compliments. All the while I was drawing from life. Gradually drawing the objects became more interesting; than rearranging them. I was less interested in making than seeing. So the writing went one way and the objects another. The psychological vision seemed too fixed as if I were working from the outside of things. I tried to become more objective and less aware of self while working. These present drawings are a response to the need for understanding what is before me. I am not interested in forming theories or conclusions, for I believe in the voice of the drawings. Much of my direction has come from a tenacious involvement with drawing and seeing, being as objective as possible and giving liberty to intuition which I have found to be one of my assets in working. Other insights have come from artists — most notably and constantly Giacometti. I have considered the work of Degas, Rembrandt, Chinese ink drawings in general, Whistler and Corky. My chief concerns are distances (object to object and object to viewer), space as both environment and limit, and the relationships of object and space. The placement of the object or the entire drawing on the page in relationship to the edge of the page is as important as the relationship of distances among objects themselves. The line quality is either positioned often in regard to contours or searching as objects dissolve, reappear, stabilize and dissolve again

Naïve Realism, Seeing Stars, and Perceiving the Past

It seems possible to see a star that no longer exists. Yet it also seems right to say that what no longer exists cannot be seen. We therefore face a puzzle, the traditional answer to which involves abandoning naïve realism in favour of a sense datum view. In this article, however, I offer a novel exploration of the puzzle within a naïve realist framework. As will emerge, the best option for naïve realists is to embrace an eternalist view of time, and claim that in the relevant case, one sees a still existent star‐stage located somewhere in the distant past

Sun and Lightning: The Visibility of Radiance

A long chapter for The War of Appearances: Transparency, Opacity, Radiance (V2_Publishing, 2016) building on the findings of “Charis and Radiance,” an essay published two years earlier. It discusses the inherent connection between visibility and radiance within the framework of Plato’s sun model as the source of reality. The argument develops a system where transcendent verticality and earthly horizontality together construct an “arena of presence” in which things flood each other with light, absorbing and returning portions of it in a circular economy similar to gift exchange