Re: Dual scale histograms

diane celia hodges (dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca)
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:37:45 -0800

At 8:56 PM 11/21/97, Jay Lemke wrote:
<snip>

>I can indeed imagine some cases where a local event might appear to send
>ripples spreading in the longer time dimension, though it is not clear to
>me that this will always be readily visible.

y'know, and I'm as surprised as anyone, but... I actually "get" this.
and I wonder how culture is organized/organizing the "readability" of
time scales; given that our interpretations are linguistically-contingent

on specific cultural frames of our articulations: what I mean is,
'descriptions' of
what takes place in 'longer' (thicker?) time dimensions
are historically restricted by the reseacher's own temporality.

it's a little like depicting 3-D within two dimensional 'scales' - what
gets drawn, or modeled,
is both defying and describing the limitations of the two-dimensional
place. This is effectively the principle motivating Cubism

( got a new book: Art In Theory: 1900-1990; reckon I'll be citing it a lot
for the next
few weeks :-] ) -

and so how do you see yr time-scales somehow overcoming/acknowledging this?
[that is, defying and describing the limitations of temporarility/the utter
historicity of
'consciousness,' a la Leonte'ev (sp?)]

>It is also the inverse case of
>the one that conceptually worries me more: not events with longterm
>consequences (I suspect we actually overplay this paradigm as it is), but
>large-scale processes that affect events on time-scales much shorter than
>is supposed to be 'normal'. We might need some other sort of visual
>representation to make that more vivid.

How do you see "large-scale processes" affecting (effecting?) events
on shorter-than-'normal' time scales?

isn't this concept only available 'historically'?/'descriptively'?

[I'm thinking of a (1960s) film: "Look Back in Anger'? or is it 'Don't
Look Back in Anger'?]

or am I missing something?

diane

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca