Look upon Things
        Or, watch it.


Idle viewer: In your hands you are holding the fiftieth edition of The HTV [you don't, but imagine you do]+. This edition is neither a commemoration, nor a celebration, but a many-voiced declaration of what is in no doubt the real and true SEWAHD* and only SEWAHD. Did you mean: seward? they asked. Seward is situated on Resurrection Bay. It lies at approximately 60° 07' N Latitude, 149° 26' W Longitude (Sec. 10, T001S, R001W, Seward Meridian)*** And we said: NO. After they told us that our statement "SEWAHD" did not match any documents and no pages were found containing SEWAHD, they suggested that, if we wanted to make ourselves understandable, we should make sure all words were spelled correctly, try different keywords, or try more general keywords. We could also try Google Answers for expert help with our search, they continued, but we were okay without expert help. It was Them who didn't understand Us, we said.


SEWAHD it was and will be. The human species is divided into more than five thousand language groups that do not understand each other. And yet these groups constitute one coherent world language system, connected by multilingual speakers in a surprisingly powerful way. The chances of a language thriving depend on its position in the system. There are thousands of small, peripheral languages, each connected to one of a hundred central languages. The entire system is held together by one global language: English. A language is a 'hyper-collective' good: the more speakers it has, the higher its communication value for each one of them. Of course it was someone else who said this****, someone who didn't say SEWAHD, we added generously.


Fortunately people like yourself still have The HTV. In this issue you will find a list of headlines from our paper's past publications and lists which exist for the sole purpose of name-dropping. (As if our aim was to frequently mention the names of famous or influential people as friends or acquaintances in order to impress? - MAYBE, YES.) In this issue you will also find an image of our vision and maybe you will get the picture.***** Your goal is to cut and paste as many new words as you can for your edification. There are no rules, but the ones between these lines.


If we have learned anything from SEWAHD it is that information is the essential ingredient: the crucial player in cultural systems and visual processes. Indeed, a current trend is to regard SEWAHD as made of information, with its visual outcome and resulting artistic objects as incidentals. SEWAHD triggers a placebo effect. SEWAHD isn't about new pictures and The HTV will show that. We could say that what we perceive and actually SEE is always different from one person to another, always relative. We could also say that when something is looked at, it is changed by the act of looking. But we already said so many times before. A set of agreements would make it possible for us to relate and define what we call SEWAHD, but we never agree. Contrast, exceptions and mistakes are giving us the tools to develop and continue our stories. SEWAHD, as everything else, is essentially unthinkable, unspeakable and invisible - and The HTV will show that.


Images were first made to conjure up the appearance of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented: it then showed how something or somebody had once looked - and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. An image became a record of how one person had seen another. This was the result of an increasing awareness of history (A.O.H.). Today we know this A.O.H. is often far removed from real history and facts. We are given remnants from which we create tales of make-believe (A.O.H.). The viewer's knowledge is crucial to his attitude or understanding, therefore, what is observed or thought is always personal.


People SEE by constructing images in their heads made up of what they already know and expect. But let's say we don't know and expect little. Let's say the visual approach we are all working on is one previously unthought of, one that we are unable to imagine, but is brought into existence by doing what we do. Let's say SEWAHD.


The HTV may not be a guide to a better theory, but what is theory like?****** The chain of reasoning involving SEWAHD suggests that such a theory must not be concerned with aesthetic movements, not even with three-dimensional conclusions, but rather with the exchange of information through visual processes.******* If so, the vision of information, the stuff the world is made of, will have found a worthy embodiment.

JB


*Pronounce kind of like seaward or see-word, but comprehend more than ever as a sheer utter of something new.**
**Well now, that wouldn't be pronounced "seaward" more like "seewad," which, I might add, does not sound very pretty in English. What I meant to say in the last email was that upon seeing SEWAHD one can only think of the word seaward, unless one is a computer which knows all that exists on the net, including the existence of a place called Seward. I'm going to call you tomorrow. M.
***Find your subsections at http://www.vacationalaska.com/Alaska/sewardmain.htm.
****[Words of the world: the global language system, Abram de Swaan (2001) Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745627471. Dutch version, Woorden van de wereld: het mondiale talenstelsel, (2002) Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. ISBN 9035123263.]
*****On October the 21st 2003, just after dawn at the arrival hall 3 on Schiphol Airport, you will be able to get the picture.
******Read Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo his "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity" and more about the five-dimensional spacetime ["anti-de Sitter"].
*******As in the exchange among physical processes.