bracket bracket 22

bracket bracket by Paul Smedberg

Alexander is much beloved by programmers and software architects. He talks about a "pattern language" that's evident and manipulatable in buildings that make you feel good.

And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety, created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.

And from the repetition of the patterns, and uniqueness of the parts, it follows, as it does in nature, that buildings which are alive are fluid and relaxed in their geometry.

If you want to make a living flower, you don't build it physically, with tweezers, cell by cell. You grow it from the seed.

We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary.

This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing.

In fact, the opposite is true; the most mystical, most religious, most wonderful – these are not less ordinary than most things – they are more ordinary than most things.

dancing shape

Like a flower's sweet nectar,
    you were born laughing.
The planets say
    you will be the happiest man in the world.
You are graceful like the stem of a flower
    and free like the towering cypress.

But there is something very strange
about this cypress —
It's flying!

The secrets of eternity are beyond us
And these puzzling words
we cannot understand.
Our words and actions take place
on this side of the veil.

When the veil is gone, we are gone.

One who does what the Friend wants done
will never need a friend.

There's bankruptcy that's pure gain.
The moon stays bright when it
doesn't avoid the night.

A rose's rarest essence
lives in the thorn.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

rocking and rolling
what have you been drinking
please let me know

you must be drunk
going house to house
wandering from street to street

who have you been with
who have you kissed
whose face have you been fondling

you are my soul
you are my life
i swear my life and love is yours

so tell me the truth
where is that fountainhead
the one you've been drinking from

don't hide this secret
lead me to the source
fill my jug over and over again

last night i finally caught
your attention in the crowd
it was your image filling my dream

telling me to stop this wandering
stop this search for
good and evil

i said my dear prophet
give me some of
that you've drunk for ecstasy of life

if i let you drink you said
any of this burning flame
it will scorch your mouth and throat

your portion has been
given already by heaven
ask for more at your peril

i lamented and begged
i desire much more
please show me the source

i have no fear
to burn my mouth and throat
i'm ready to drink every flame and more

Jalaluddin Rumi is the guy
that founded the "whirling dervish"
group within Sufi – which
might be called a sect of Islam.
These poems are from the
mid-13th century.

some nice euler

A Knight's Tour
A chess knight dances across the board
starting with square 1, visiting all 64 squares.
Each row and column across the entire board totals 260.
Each row and column within a quadrant totals 130.

1 48 31 50

30 51 46 3

47 2 49 32

52 29 4 45

33 16 63 18

62 19 14 35

15 34 17 64

20 61 36 13

5 44 25 56

28 53 8 41

43 6 55 26

54 27 42 7

9 40 21 60

24 57 12 37

39 10 59 22

58 23 38 11

All of these alignments and progressions and facts have no use.
So this must be art.

Music for a Modern Office

Hey Kids! Let's do a musical installation!!!
Here's a bunch of midi files that are the building blocks of this environmental music work.

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Each piece-let is about 6.6 minutes long. Record each piece (or a bunch of the pieces – at least 5) onto separate cassettes (or cds or mpeg3s or whatever). Get a bunch of tape players and people to operate them. Spread the tape players and their people out throughout some sort of big, multi-roomed place, such as a big house, dorm, apartment building, office building, whatever. Leave all the doors open. Print out a copy of this page with a bunch of Fibonacci numbers on it for each player/participant. At a set time, start the tapes to playing. (A leader can shout "now", or participants can synchronize their watches and start at a pre-arranged time.) Participants then wander around the space, pushing stop or play on the tape players or messing with the volume control, and reading randomly from the list of numbers as per the instruction page. If there is an audience (other than the participants) they should wander around too. All of these alignments and progressions and facts have no use.
So this must be art.

[Bracket Bracket] is rendered by
Paul Smedberg.

Other issues are available for viewing.

You can subscribe to [bracket bracket] by typing your e-mail address in the box below. You will receive a surreal yet informative message whenever a new issue appears. This happens at irregular intervals.