ALL conflicts in time, space & culture

As Bush & Blair discuss the future of Iraq - in apparent acknowledgement for a new approach to the situation - & debate of Donald Rumsfeld's replacement is screened live on CNN - I am reminded - on this 55^th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour - of the conflicts of war & terrorism and particularly - BOTH Gulf  wars and their inevitably horrific consequences.

Regardless of the many theories attached to the Pearl Harbour attack - &  whether or not Winston Churchill knew of the impending assault - he was certainly delighted with the decision of the USA to join the war against Japan & its ally Germany.

Winston Churchill LIFE

Whilst I worked at Glasgow Renfrew as an Air Traffic Controller in training - Winston Churchill died and I made a remark about his statement that - "the UK & USA were two countries divided by the same language " -regardless of the fact that the messages between Churchill and The President had been "scrambled" by the American intelligence X-ray team working out of the basement of Selfridges in London.

Hail to the son of Chicago !

An older female colleague - who had lived through the war - soon put me in my place and stated that - "had Churchill not been so persistent in his efforts to get the USA to join the war effort - matters for Britain would be very different".

It has taken the wisdom of the years to realise how poignant her statement was & how much the world still owes to the USA - when still much more is being asked of her.

During 13 years of the 1970s & 80s - my family were privileged to live in a village called Tackley in Oxfordshire. All three of my children went to primary school there - where they were also taught italic handwriting - & many many happy times were enjoyed including endless walks around Blenheim Palace and a visit to Winston Churchill's grave in Bladon with its line of sight - across the rooftops of the Palace - to the Battle of Blenheim memorial column itself - and the thousands of dutch elms which were planted in remembrance of those that had died in the conflict of the battle.

Abrams described DALI in 1968 as - "a painter of visceral paroxysms" and described his painting "Premonition of Civil War " as - "a large human body, wriggling with arms and legs, strangling itself in delirium"  - in the context of the fact that DALI - finished the painting six months before the war in Spain began. Subsequently the inevitably horrific consequences of that war were the driving force behind Picasso's masterpiece - "Guernica"  - which became the obsession of Bob Abel in his quest to create a fully interactive televisual experience of the conflict of war utilising an Alan Kay Dynabook-like version of the painting.

BOTH of these artworks truly manifest the art of enlightened communication.

So much of DALI's work was dependent on the interconnection of pictures in picture & the multitude of interconnected perspectives which could be painted  in the mind of the viewer - as a result of "hooking into & onto" the existing  "already experienced"  connections within the viewers brain.

One such picture in picture was

GRID switch

"The Chemist of Ampurdan Looking for Absolutely  NO THING" in the lower left corner of  "Premonition of Civil War" - which brings to mind the Viennese Secession, Josef Hoffmann & his metal baskets and the idea behind the graphic used for Designers Saturday.

It is the MIND set switch - as a result of the workings of the psychology of visual perception - which facilitates the ...
ZEN-like experience of seeing the THINGS that constitute the ...
"box in the corner" one moment - and ....
in the blink of an eye - a space of NO THING the next moment - and so on and on.  Furthermore a different number of boxes IS actually "perceived" according to the MIND "set" - regardless of how many flashing dots there are at the intersection of  "white on black"

As De Bono often reminded us - NO THING is actually black or white - only a combination of one or more of the 256 shades of grey between the two polarised positions.

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