Daniel is a PhD researcher with a confusing thesis title (something about art and writing). His time in London is split between eating Japanese food and starting new projects. Daniel’s website, MachineMachine, contains a portfolio of his work. Email: [email protected]
by Daniel Rourke This paper (more of an essay, really) was originally delivered at the Birkbeck Uni/London Consortium ‘Rubbish Symposium‘, 30th July 2011 Living at the very limit of his means, Philip K. Dick, a two-bit, pulp sci-fi author, was having a hard time maintaining his livelihood. It was the 1950s and Dick was living…
by Daniel Rourke In my last 3quarksdaily article I considered the ability of science-fiction – and the impossible objects it contains – to highlight the gap between us and ‘The Thing Itself’ (the fundamental reality underlying all phenomena). In this follow-up I ask whether the way these fictional ‘Things’ determine their continued existence – by…
by Daniel Rourke Mid-way through H.G.Wells’ The Time Machine, the protagonist stumbles into a sprawling abandoned museum. Sweeping the dust off ancient relics he ponders his machine’s ability to hasten their decay. It is at this point that The Time Traveller has an astounding revelation. The museum is filled with artefacts not from his past,…
by Daniel Rourke About a month ago in handling the remains of one Dr. Fred McCabe I found rich notes of contemplation on the subject of information theory. It appears that Fred could have written an entire book on the intricacies of hidden data, encoded messages and deceptive methods of transmission. Instead his notes exist…
posted by Daniel Rourke A couple of weeks ago I was invited to take part in a panel discussion on London based, arts radio station, Resonance FM. It was for The Thread, a lively show that aims to use speech and discussion as a tool for research, opening up new and unexpected angles through the…
by Daniel Rourke figure i : he stands opposite his rivals You are the only one who can never see yourself apart from your image. In the reflection of a mirror, or the pigment of the photograph you entertain yourself. Every gaze you cast is mediated by a looking apparatus, by an image you must…
by Daniel Rourke Pharaoh Khufu intends to secure his riches beyond the grave, and into the afterlife. He captures the greatest architect known in his kingdom, and forces him – through a threat to his entire people – to build him an impenetrable tomb: a Pyramid no thief can plunder. The architect sets to work,…
by Daniel Rourke A face to face encounter, devoid of the warm appeal of flesh. The eyes are glass, a cold blue crystal reflects the light in a way real eyes never would. A muzzle of hair, perhaps taken from a barbershop floor or the hind quarters of an animal. The painted scalp peeks through…
by Daniel Rourke According to the film industry, to director James ‘billions at the box-office’ Cameron, Avatar is the first ‘true’ 3D movie. It takes the experience of cinema to the next (natural?) level, and it does it in a way that makes the movie industry gasp. According to the industry, Avatar is the 3D…
by Daniel Rourke “The cinema can, with impunity, bring us closer to things or take us away from them and revolve around them, it suppresses both the anchoring of the subject and the horizon of the world… It is not the same as the other arts, which aim rather at something unreal or a tale.…
by Daniel Rourke In Part One of this article I wrote about the instability of the art-object. How its meaning moves, and inevitably cracks. In this follow-up I ponder text, the book, page and computer screen. Are they as stable as they appear? And how can we set them in motion? Part Two “There’s a…
Part One by Daniel Rourke “The spacetime of the lightcones and the fermions and scalar are connected to the chocolate grinder. The chocolate grinder receives octonionic structure from the water wheel.” – Tony Smith, Valdosta Museum Website In 1927 Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass was broken in transit. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,…
by Daniel Rourke Japan. That’s where I am. With the rice-triangles and the tatami-mats and row upon row of vending machines. In a country where serving others is paramount, and where holidays are something that other people do, I find myself being served – on holiday… I am the ultimate gaijin 1 and every ticket I buy and…
This is an extract from a work in progress… a short story, perhaps. Let me know what you Think. Tinkering with his iron fragments the stooping figure beads in sweat so as this heat won’t extinguish him. Seven steps astride him pink-lipped petals set the wind a moving; seeds at depth force Earth versus its…
by Daniel Rourke The urban landscape is overrun with paths. Road-paths pulling transport, pavement-paths and architectural-paths guiding feet towards throbbing hubs of commerce, leisure and abode.Beyond the limits of urban paths, planned and set in tarmac or concrete, are perhaps the most timeless paths of all. Gaston Bachelard called them Desire Paths, physical etchings in…
by Daniel Rourke I discovered the ants trailing like gunpowder across my kitchen floor. Before I had time to think I had vacuumed up a thousand. Yet they kept coming, tending to resurge where last I had punished them; coursing like a rainless cloud on the exact same trajectory each time. Somewhere unseen to me…
by Daniel Rourke A bomb won't go off here… (Click to enlarge) Y: I like the use of the past tense. Saying “weeks before” sets up the seen* as a narrative. X: Oh yeah. Y: It’s almost like the story’s not ended, like we now are still part of the story. X: And that there’s…
Part Two: The Data Deluge(Link to Part One) By Daniel Rourke Speed is the elegance of thought, which mocks stupidity, heavy and slow. Intelligence thinks and says the unexpected; it moves with the fly, with its flight. A fool is defined by predictability… But if life is brief, luckily, thought travels as fast as the…
Part One: Grapholectic Thought and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness by Daniel Rourke “There are things,” Christoph Martin Wieland… contended, “which by their very nature are so dependent upon human caprice that they either exist or do not exist as soon as we desire that they should or should not exist.” …We are, at the…
A Polyptychal Discursion by Daniel Rourke This text, designed with its own concerns in mind, diverges on many trajectories, crossing over itself, intersecting its arguments and statements with images and forms which question the traditional logic of the essay. This text will become enabled not through a writer's statements, but through a reader's response. A…