Ether

[rich]

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the
depths of an ether binge.--HST

sorry, couldn't resist--(one of the funniest bits in F&L, the movie)


On 5/26/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>