A late evening in the future.
Remains a moment motionless, heaves a great sigh, looks at his watch.
Ten seconds. Loud pop of cork. Fifteen seconds. He comes back into the light carrying an old ledger. Strong voice, rather pompous, clearly his at a much earlier time.
Looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. Pop of cork. Ten seconds. Second cork.
Ten seconds. Third cork.
Motionless starring before him. The tape runs on in silence…
CURTAIN.
Roman Opalka
The 3rd of November 1970 was scheduled to be a routine monthly maintenance shutdown. The East Auxiliary #2 mirror was being lowered down the telescope when its hoist cable slipped off of the drum. The carriage raced down the tunnel incline about 30-meters before impacting the main #2 mirror carriage! The East Auxiliary’s 0.9-m aluminum mirror broke free of its mounting and fell another 5-meters onto the main #2 carriage. The 1.6-m main imaging mirror was seen to “jump about 2 inches”. When the mirror settled back into its support, the clips at the mirror edge broke a roughly 15-cm round chip from the front edge (Figure 11).
Vapor Tracers
“We cannot simply be ‘open to contingency’, because our openness, and consequently our modes of interaction, are determined by our capacities. We can only be open to contingency within certain specific limits that we can afford. If the contingent expression of materiality replaces these given affordable possibilities with other possibilities or ceases such possibilities altogether, our so-called sensible openness will begin to negatively deteriorate. Accordingly, what we need is a twisted type of interaction with contingent materials (whether in art or writing) that is built on the formidable ascesis of closure. In this case, rather than seeking openness toward the contingent outside through affordable modes of interaction, the work of art strives to embrace the twisted logic of capacity and rigorous closure itself as precisely the playground of contingency.”
Rule 53
Saturn's moon Daphnis up close
