Thing

INTRODUCTION

I am very happy to share that I have, after a protracted period, reconnected with Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schirmacher, the venerable co-founder of the European Graduate School. Through a series of correspondences, we have settled on a viable path toward completion of my EGS doctoral studies. The focus of the project will be on the ancient question, “What is a THING,” from the philosophical perspective. When I began the EGS program, the possibility of integrating the art, philosophy and media aspects in dissertation work existed. Now, it is necessary to concentrate on the philosophic matters in the proposition. Art, media (and technology) will be an element in the discourse, but the process of presentation of findings will take a traditional course. The production of thesis art and a virtual platform will follow the completion of textual components. I have generated a set of questions to begin assembling the book (at Wolfgang’s helpful suggestion), which I will share below. As an interstitial exercise, next I will “play” with the concepts poetically. I hope you enjoy!

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #154
Blue Series #35 [Combos #2]
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1. A Thing

2. Assembly Required

3. There Is No Such Thing

4. The Art Thing

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #155
Blue Series #36 [Combos #3]
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• On Martin Heidegger’s “What Is A Thing?”

• The History of the Question

• The Challenge: “If We Are Remain Equal to the Question At All”

• On the Thing of Science and Philosophy

• The Classical Thing

• This Thing

• More on The Thing (“An Sich”)

• On Thingness (Essence)

• The Substantial Thing

• The Golden Rectangle and the Thing

• A Thing and Its Sign

• The Particular Thing

• To Number and Name A Thing

• Categories and Lists of Things

• Force and the Thing

• A Thing Being

• The Natural Thing

• Framing a Thing

• Das Ding

• Thing, Now

• Thing as Presence

• Time-Space and the Thing

• A Thing and Belonging

• The Thinking Thing

• Can a Person Be a Thing?

• I, Thing? (“What Am I?”)

• The Subjective-Objective Thing

• True and False Things

• A Compendium: Dynamics and Effects of and on a Thing

• The Thing as Content

• A Thing in Context

• Novelty and the Thing

• The Republic

• Value and Thing

• Conditioned or Unconditioned Thing (be-dingt)

• Kant’s “Thing In Itself” and “Thing for Us (Phenomenon)”

• Baudrillard’s Thing - Simulation, Simulacra

• On No-Thing, Nothing & Void

• Processed Thing

• Recursion and Compression and the Thing

• Transcendence and Impossible Things

• The Meaning of “Thing”

• Networking Things

• Thing and Data

• The Thing and Its Representation

• Data Visualization and Things

• A Thing and its Projection

• Internet of Things

• Wondrous Thing: “Cabinet of Wonders”

• To Create a Thing

• On Anything and Everything

• Something (God/etwas/X)

• On the Single Thing and Plurality

• Absence, Quiescence with Things

• The Set of All Things

• A Virtual Thing

• On the Digital Versus Analog Thing

• Conception of Thing

• On Thing 1 and Thing 2: Clones

• The Thing in Art, of Art, for Art…

• Thing As Gesamtkunstwerk

• “Thing Called Love”

• The Giving and Receiving Thing

• Is Pleasure a Thing? Joy?

• Spectacular Thing

• Thing in the Function of Memory

• A Dimensional Thing

• The Wovenform Thing

• Appearance and Disappearance of Things

• Visibility as the Will of Things

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #156
Blue Series #37 [Combos #4]
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[IS THIS A '"THING?"] [1 + 1 = 3 NOT-THINGS]

1

A poem is not a thing.

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2

Thingamabob, thingy, thingamajig, precisely.
Are we “to remain equal to the question at all?”
You may wonder…What is a THING? Did you mean

This thing, specifically? thinking or not-, in-itself
substance distinguished from interpretation
Heidegger reminds us
It is an ancient, historical question
like a machine, positioned under a web
for example, our thing, evolving as Mob*

formations in Monument Valley of the imagination

meaning, seeming, appearing, named and counted

*Cosa Nostra, but also to reference the recent mediated re-versioning of historical term “Populism”

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3

1982* | The Thing - Swamp Thing | movies
+ Thing 1 & 2 - multimedia phenomena
& an animated, disembodied hand

drawing a perfect, unconditioned line
PICTURE THIS!

The Republic, thru time & space
to das ding, my thing, your thing
Everything & anything, something
& nothing, no thing, a Void (beyond)

a profound novelty-or-catastrophe
so contemporary, like 2005
- the award-winning exhibit
of sculpture at the Hammer
. My friend Chuck Moffitt
had something in that show
”eros bruises thanatos”

where is it now? the same?
thingness things thing
”AIN’T NO THANG!”

*The year I graduated from high school.

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4

ideal versus proposition verses

an internet of things
connected by devices
wired, cloud-based
voice-activated immaterial
joined to infinity by a thread.
categorized, lists of things
“in its right place” he sang.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #157
Blue Series #38 [Combos #5]
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