T Y P E O N Emichael selby

elisa martin

Paradoxes are greater than the sum of their parts. If one and one is

three, that last third is the conceptual leap that connects them. It’s

where insight lives, and it’s what causes my delight.

To understand paradoxes is to be able to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. And maybe to give both equal credibility. It’s about merging two things that seem incongruent into something that, some how, makes sense. To me, it’s probably the highest act of creativity and is the most ready manifestation of curiosity and understanding. It’s mental dexterity made tangible, and it produces the creative output I respect the most. To know how square pegs can go into round holes is to understand that the world, and the perception of it, is a play thing. The world, and how we view it, is malleable.

Often times paradox and absurdity are mistaken for one another. I think there’s a subtle, but important difference. Absurdity is paradox’s immature little brother. Absurdity is spineless. Two incongruent things are placed side-by-side. The supposed value is amusement from the randomness.

Absurdity often seems a pale imitation of paradox. The Simpsons is paradox. Family Guy is absurdity. There’s a big difference between saying “Sleep, that’s where I’m a viking!” and showing a chicken fight scene for 5 minutes. Paradox has insight, absurdity lacks it. Paradoxes have meaning. (Which is confusing, in and of itself.)

Paradoxes are greater than the sum of their parts. If one and one is three, that last third is the conceptual leap that connects them. It’s where insight lives, and it’s what causes my delight. It’s why Seinfeld is, and will always be, funny. It’s why Jennifer Daniel is clever (and funny). It’s why I miss the old Simpsons. It’s about curation, choosing wisely, and presenting an audience with something new. “Here, look at this thing you didn’t notice.” “Here, consider this thing in a way you haven’t before.” A good paradox broadens our scope as people. It makes us question, but I think it also allows us to accept.

What the hell were they doing with a car on the moon?

You’re on the moon already! Isn’t that far enough?

— Jerry Seinfeld

no image is as compelling as“The paradox of reality is that

the one which exists only in themind’s eye.”

Shana Alexander

To understand paradoxes is to be able to hold two conflicting

ideas in your head at the same time.

I think one of the most odd things about learning is the moment where you know enough to realize how much you don’t know. It’s scary as hell, because of how vulnerable it makes you feel. The sensation of this virgin thought might only be on par to when you are a child and you realize you only have a one and only life, or when you are a little older and realize that other people can hurt you in a way that no one else can see, and you can do the same to them. Understanding these things is a weight, and it makes you feel very tiny. So small, like that particle.

There is a reach to knowledge and skill. You know what you know, and through time and effort and diligent focus, you’ve also come to realize a few of the things that you don’t know. You begin to understand that those unknowns are within reach if you stretch a

bit. That’s learning. And then the thought occurs to you that puts the fear of God in your bones: there are things out of your reach, (Important things! Crucial things!) that you will never know that you don’t know. It’s a darkness too dark to pierce.

It feels a bit like walking through a cave with a really crummy torch. The torch gives enough light to see a couple feet in front of you. We’re told that’s enough to get out, but I’m always left wishing I could see a little further into the future, because I’ve got a pretty good hunch this cave is massive. If only we could make our torches burn a little brighter.

Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of

loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness,

and it’s all over much too quickly.

— Woody Allen, in Annie Hall

A paradox is a statement that is self contradictory because

it often contains two statements that are both true, but in

general, cannot both be true at the same time.

It is rare when I don’t think about what it is that connects us all, though much more apparent in my every day is what doesn’t, or more appropriately, what is uniquely different about each of us. In the most simplest of things we can find ways to argue and clash, and these feelings are only intensified when paired with things of more personal importance. It might be easiest then to describe the unifying factor in the form of the question ‘why are we here?’ (and it’s related ideas ‘what is real?’, ‘what does it mean to exist?’, etc.) and how we each come to terms with the impossibility of answering it. But that is what we are all faced with, the cause and not the effect. The effect, or rather, the answer to the question, can never be the same for all of us.

Our consciousness won’t allow it. Could there be some sort of Absolute?* I think so, but it is absurd to think that everyone will come to the same realization at once about what it is, or even more laughable that it will reveal itself.

And that typically leads me to this conclusion: we are connected by our differences. In some almost incomprehensible way our consciousness is something utterly personal and completely universal at the same time.

Not in the sense that each of our mind’s are one in the same – a shared consciousness – but rather that we are so impossibly different, and there are infinite factors that will effect each of our thoughts uniquely, that we are unified in that.

I represent this graphically with the spiral, a never-ending cycle of both preserving and changing an idea or concept, and look to Hegel’s approach, referred to as the Hegelian method, to help clarify it.

Art is not about the singular hand of the artist; it is the ideas

behind the works that surpass each work itself.

when I accept myself just as“The curious paradox is that

I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers

Paradox can prove to be very revealing about human

nature and the way we speak.

I think one of the most odd things about learning is the moment where you know enough to realize how much you don’t know. It’s scary as hell, because of how vulnerable it makes you feel. The sensation of this virgin thought might only be on par to when you are a child and you realize you only have a one and only life, or when you are a little older and realize that other people can hurt you in a way that no one else can see, and you can do the same to them. Understanding these things is a weight, and it makes you feel very tiny. So small, like that particle.

There is a reach to knowledge and skill. You know what you know, and through time and effort and diligent focus, you’ve also come to realize a few of the things that you don’t know. You begin to understand that those

unknowns are within reach if you stretch a bit. That’s learning. And then the thought occurs to you that puts the fear of God in your bones: there are things out of your reach, (Important things! Crucial things!) that you will never know that you don’t know. It’s a darkness too dark to pierce.

It feels a bit like walking through a cave with a really crummy torch. The torch gives enough light to see a couple feet in front of you. We’re told that’s enough to get out, but I’m always left wishing I could see a little further into the future, because I’ve got a pretty good hunch this cave is massive. If only we could make our torches burn a little brighter.

There are more paradoxes than any other point in time.

Maybe the most paradoxical thing is that we need to create

even more to understand the ones that are already there.

Amusement is one of the best parts of paradoxes, but their application is wider and more important. Our access to information has created more paradoxes. We’ve made pieces of conflicting information more accessible than any other point in time. Unfortunately, we’ve mistaken cynicism as the tool we need to cope with this conflict of information. It seems much more healthy to me to accept that two pieces of contradicting information can both some how be true. It removes that default state of distrust, and displaces it with acknowledgement, respect and insight. Things aren’t black and white. They are gray. We’re gray.

How do we sort out the paradox that even though the our consumption lifestyle is causing global warming, most people are unlikely to change their buying habits? Or the paradox that we make decisions that fill our lives with more minutia, but the more bits we’re surrounded with, the poorer decisions we make? Or how about the paradox that even though our hyper-connected world exposes us to more conflicting view points, we actually become more narrow-minded because we choose places where others only agree with us?

What is the pupose of using such a statement then,

instead of just forthrightly stating the work’s intent?

One reason is that to do so would be boring. It is much

interesting for a reader to carve out the meaning, than to

have it fed to them on a silver platter.

W O R K Sused

Warhol, Andy, Jacob Baal-Teshuva, and David Bourdon. Andy Warhol, 1928-1987: Works from

the Collections of José Mugrabi and an Isle of Man Company. Munich: Prestel, 2004.

Print.

Klanten, Robert. Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design. Berlin: Gestalten,

2010. Print.

Speasmaker, Joel. “Mind/Spirit Or, Philosophy as a Tool for Visual Interpretation « Thinking

for a Living.” Thinking for a Living RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2012.

Chimero, Frank. “The Particle.” Frank Chimero. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2012.