Ether

[Dave Monroe]

>From Joe Milutis, Ether: The Nothing that Connects Everything (Mpls: U
of Minn P, 2006), Ch. 2, "Holy Science, Film, and the End of Ether,"
pp. 36-74:

"... from 1880 to 1905 — in counterpoint to the anarchist bombings of
the time — there was a popular rapprochement between technoscience and
renegade mystical energies.  Visions of a biotechnology of the spirit
and an absolute cinema engendered paradoxes of transcendence that
remain fairly novel solutions to this closed system.  That is, if
industry could learn from the cinema, so could spiritualism —
specifically the theorists of duration and the fourth dimension; in
fact, the list of theorists of mystical sciences who use cinematic
metaphors for the elucidation of higher-space perception is a long
one, including Bergson, Ouspensky, Bohm, and Yogananda...." (p. 41)

http://books.google.com/books?id=XuePsRdTkR8C

Ether
The Nothing That Connects Everything
Joe Milutis

Diagrams the interconnections among cosmic consciousness, hermetic
avant-gardes, and technological progress.

Every culture has its own word for this nothing. Synonymous with the
idea of absolute space and time, the ether is an ancient concept that
has continually determined our definition of environment, our
relations to each other, and our ideas about technology. It has also
instigated our desire to know something irrepressibly beyond all that.

In Ether, the histories of mysticism and the unseen merge with
discussions of the technology and science of electromagnetism. Joe
Milutis explores how the ideas of Anton Mesmer and Isaac Newton have
manifested themselves as the inspiration for occult theories and
artistic practices from Edgar Allan Poe’s works to today. In doing so,
he demonstrates that fading in and out of scientific favor has not
prevented the ether, a uniquely immaterial concept, from being a
powerful force for material progress.

Milutis deftly weaves the origins of electrical science with
alchemical lore, nineteenth-century industrialism with yogic science,
and network space with dreams of the absolute. Linking the ether to
phenomena such as radio noise, space travel, avant-garde film, and the
rise of the Internet, he lends it an almost physical presence and
currency. From Federico Fellini to Gilles Deleuze, Japanese anime to
Italian Futurism, Jean Cocteau to NASA, Shirley Temple to Wilhelm
Reich, Ether traverses geographical boundaries, spiritual planes, and
the divide between popular and high culture.

Navigating more than three hundred years of the ether’s cultural and
artistic history, Milutis reveals its continuous reinvention and
tangible impact without ever losing sight of its ephemeral, elusive
nature. The true meaning of ether, Milutis suggests, may be that it
can never be fully grasped.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/M/milutis_ether.html

Joe Milutis
http://www.joemilutis.com/etherpage.htm