It is not its content that makes the iron kaleidoscope extraordinary. It is the way that the apparatus of the kaeleidoscope exaggerates itself upon the human eye. It reflects itself, and in its recursive reflection, contingencies are multiplied. Artefacts that exist in one point are conjured simultaneously in other points, and those reflecting other points, such that the effect is a maddening multiplication of space within a fixed point. The scope of a unit of space expands.
There is something maddening about looking too deeply at the kaleidoscope. There is so much happening, and to tilt the system, to choose another angle, sends the pieces toppling in strange patterns, and reveals a world of branching complexity and confusion. Patterned in its lightning are runes of utopia, runes of destruction, and worse, prophecies simply illegible, unthinkable, indigestible to the well-read eye or socialised mind.
Few care to spar with this confusion, or to bear humiliation for long. But for those that tend to the structure as play—that tilt the mechanism, and look again, and see the structures of confetti and bone blossom into queerer shapes, take note, and tilt the mechanism again, at first for no more than the joy of the artefact—familiar rhythms emerge. Axes of symmetry become apparent around which one's system may orientate. It’s more of a muscular learning, however, like a hunters knack of the eye—where to look when the system rustles and the patterns whirl. It’s not a language one can quickly transcribe.
For those with hands and eyes entwined with the mechanism in fascinated lock-step it becomes apparent that the world in the kaleidoscope demands a new grammar to describe. And so they garble, make half statements, freely err. The machine turns and shreds their minds to shards. New words emerge, or a half-heard statement, scoped down, does work. Piece by piece these construct a model to teach the workings of the world inside the iron kaleidoscope. There is, perhaps a precious prize, for inside its maze they say there is every vision of God’s eye: both hell, and the heavenly, in infinities unthought.
Each night those who live by gazing upon the iron kaleidoscope walk home. It is late, and dark. Perhaps it is raining. In Auden’s poem, on Brueghel’s painting, when Icarus died, the world roared on regardless. One will squint, and see, not the kaleidoscope, but the iron; and for a moment, like a blackbird, doubt will pass through their minds.
The moon rises, and the whispering trees stand ignorant.
Some will reach their home like this. Some will unlock the door. They will say to their partner — it’s only an old joke. They will say to the mirror, it’s just a machine. But lying there, in the darkness, it is not the unknown that will get to them. It is the fear of the well-known, what their own eyes have seen. It is the fear, more specifically, of the imminent: of an artefact, not irrelevant, but outside the affordances of mind, like some high dimensional galleon or space ship: vast, omnipotent, barely illuminated, not properly in view, and potentially—unfalsifiably—armed to the teeth.
The kaleidoscope is an unthinkable thought, the iron a false cage. And with that thought, they sleep, and dream, and know even in sleeping that their dreams feel more real that the life that they will be implicated in, in the morning when they open their eyes.
Brueghel The Elder, Landscape with the fall of Icarus. Icarus can be seen falling in the lower right. Auden's poem on the painting can be read here.
After Borges, circa threat modelling
It is not its content that makes the iron kaleidoscope extraordinary. It is the way that the apparatus of the kaeleidoscope exaggerates itself upon the human eye. It reflects itself, and in its recursive reflection, contingencies are multiplied. Artefacts that exist in one point are conjured simultaneously in other points, and those reflecting other points, such that the effect is a maddening multiplication of space within a fixed point. The scope of a unit of space expands.
There is something maddening about looking too deeply at the kaleidoscope. There is so much happening, and to tilt the system, to choose another angle, sends the pieces toppling in strange patterns, and reveals a world of branching complexity and confusion. Patterned in its lightning are runes of utopia, runes of destruction, and worse, prophecies simply illegible, unthinkable, indigestible to the well-read eye or socialised mind.
Few care to spar with this confusion, or to bear humiliation for long. But for those that tend to the structure as play—that tilt the mechanism, and look again, and see the structures of confetti and bone blossom into queerer shapes, take note, and tilt the mechanism again, at first for no more than the joy of the artefact—familiar rhythms emerge. Axes of symmetry become apparent around which one's system may orientate. It’s more of a muscular learning, however, like a hunters knack of the eye—where to look when the system rustles and the patterns whirl. It’s not a language one can quickly transcribe.
For those with hands and eyes entwined with the mechanism in fascinated lock-step it becomes apparent that the world in the kaleidoscope demands a new grammar to describe. And so they garble, make half statements, freely err. The machine turns and shreds their minds to shards. New words emerge, or a half-heard statement, scoped down, does work. Piece by piece these construct a model to teach the workings of the world inside the iron kaleidoscope. There is, perhaps a precious prize, for inside its maze they say there is every vision of God’s eye: both hell, and the heavenly, in infinities unthought.
Each night those who live by gazing upon the iron kaleidoscope walk home. It is late, and dark. Perhaps it is raining. In Auden’s poem, on Brueghel’s painting, when Icarus died, the world roared on regardless. One will squint, and see, not the kaleidoscope, but the iron; and for a moment, like a blackbird, doubt will pass through their minds.
The moon rises, and the whispering trees stand ignorant.
Some will reach their home like this. Some will unlock the door. They will say to their partner — it’s only an old joke. They will say to the mirror, it’s just a machine. But lying there, in the darkness, it is not the unknown that will get to them. It is the fear of the well-known, what their own eyes have seen. It is the fear, more specifically, of the imminent: of an artefact, not irrelevant, but outside the affordances of mind, like some high dimensional galleon or space ship: vast, omnipotent, barely illuminated, not properly in view, and potentially—unfalsifiably—armed to the teeth.
The kaleidoscope is an unthinkable thought, the iron a false cage. And with that thought, they sleep, and dream, and know even in sleeping that their dreams feel more real that the life that they will be implicated in, in the morning when they open their eyes.
Brueghel The Elder, Landscape with the fall of Icarus. Icarus can be seen falling in the lower right. Auden's poem on the painting can be read here.