The Stranger in society occurs every time two cultures meet. This culture shock is perhaps strangeness, every culture views and defines it differently. In our own western culture this concept was accepted with suspicion and resent. From the anti-Semitism of middle ages, the catholic declaration of slavery, Columbus and other “pioneers” with their policies towards the natives of the new world, through African American slavery and afro futurism to our current day with our foreigners integrating systems and globalization. Stranger in the western culture has a negative feeling to it. Its very existence presents a threat, for our own culture can get infected by others, its all ready happened and it will continue. But funny enough ‘stranger’ is a tag word we not only give to people but also to our technology. Change is life, we cannot escape it, to interact with others is to change.

Man being the tool-ape constructed his culture around tools, or perhaps more precise: technology. Our relationship with our tools started perhaps from practical reasons, but as soon became visible, it morphed in to something much much more. We incorporated those tools into our cultures (our collective programs) through religion, art and war. Our tools/technology became one of the key elements in our cultural development/change. Tools give advantages and advantages are power. The discovery of agriculture changed our life completely, the discovery of metal gave its discoverers the upper hand (more precise, the ones who used it for war). It might even seem to a viewer from the outside that our culture involves around war and its technological development that follows) but as upper hands go, they tend to change hands and this what happens when bronze was invented, then copper, iron, elephants, gunpowder, radar, enigma and Albert Einstein. Somewhere in the process we started to fear technology the very possibility that it can change our reality repulses many of us.

Tools are: “ (…) a entity used to interface between two or more domains that facilitates more effective action of one domain upon the other. The most basic tools are simple machines. For example, a crowbar simply functions as a lever (…) A hammer typically interfaces between the operator’s hand and the nail the operator wishes to strike (…) A telephone is a communication tool that interfaces between two people engaged in conversation at one level. And between each user and the communication network at another. It is in the domain of media and communications technology that a counter-intuitive aspect of our relationships with our tools first began to gain popular recognition. Marshall McLuhan famously said “We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us.” McLuhan was referring to the fact that our social practices co-evolve with our use of new tools and the refinements we make to existing tools (… )” so says Wiki, it also says “ (…) Philosophers originally thought that only humans had the ability to make tools, until zoologists observed birds[1] and monkeys[2][3][4] making tools. Now humans’ unique relationship to tools is considered to be that we are the only species that uses tools to make other tools.”

In this complicated relationship with our tools we started to worship them and praying to them. But when we started animating them things started to get out of hand. The famous Greek mythology figure Pygmalion the sculptor fell in love with his one sculpture, Rabbi Eliyahu of Chełm made his on privet golem, Frankenstein, and many more examples. Even I find my self sometime talking to my car in cold days, when it’s not starting. Animating things is seeing in anything something human or perhaps projecting our humanity or life into things. Our new age golems are computers and robots, the big bang that came from the industrial revolution in the 18th and early 19th from futurism, dada, avant-garde the small bang of technology in the early 80, with movies like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Brazil’ are good examples for new (old) age golems and fears of what the strange technology can make people into.

Regarding time and its flow I think people are a product of time. We are living in it and changing according to it and then after some time we get stuck, not dead yet but stuck in a time that is not here any more, watching time go without the ability to change with it. This phenomena is called “the good old days”. Tools work almost like people, unlike Technology and culture which are developing with time and perhaps even changing time itself. technology and its tools in the western culture is vast from science to consumerism, from capitalism = money and money is power, TV to tanks, old school things like light bulbs or phones are so much in us we can’t be without them and why accept it all? Well, because it was here before us.

Living in the world today is full of surprises. We are the age of pioneers. I can still remember when television become colorful or the first cell phone came in into the market but unlike anything else the appearance of the personal computers and their fast pace of development is unlike any other. When you bought your first computer, it’s already too late, it’s old news, stronger faster ones are already there, it’s like a current of a fast river never stopping. This idea can be explained by Moore’s Law in which he indicates the evolution of computers. This fast pace forces all of us to adapt, money becomes virtual numbers, not gold. Stock markets are just one big computer network. Opening the engine of my old car and fixing something was based on logic and some basic plumbing skills, but today mechanics need to study programming,

But lets go back to the concept ‘stranger’ and this time put technology and its tools on the stand. In the book “the hacker crack down” Bruce Sterling describes the development of computers and its networks, and the strange culture that developed around it. This sub culture is connected directly to our culture, influencing and penetrating it, morphing our reality. Think for a second on a simple program like wiki when you can democratically get the definition of a specific key word and if language is a program like ….than this system is rechanging the essential core of our language , it happens constantly in a democratic fashion. More democratically then any ruling system we have, of course like any democracy money and power can change the results and by understanding the rules of it you can keep your interest in the right place ( quite similar to being a lawyer). But this is not my main point, the very thought that by searching a word we determine what is its collective meaning is unthinkable and this is only how one program is able to change our reality, there are millions out there.

In western society our opposition stands prevent us from assessing those changes in objective manner and rarely any thought is given to the implications from this technology.

We grow up to it or we resent it, but we never see it as an alternative to our culture. Viewing our tools we can perhaps predict the changes that are taking place perhaps raises ideas like nationality, identity etc. If we take for example phenomena’s like the Afro futurism in the United States we can create an alternative for the existing culture. The technology, and specifically the net, not only can but is changing our culture. The taboo porn and sex on its variety of forms has a very strict place in our western culture, observing it in the net we can see that by having the ability to search and find other people with the same interests (“perversities”) we can connect to millions, share our thoughts and desires, when those groups grow in numbers sharing one idea, in some point it stops being a perversity and become mainstream. It might even seem that any one have his own private/public “perversity” or his own definition to his sexuality, the very idea of sex and sexuality might change with time. Observing this, I would think that ideas to put the stranger as the center of our culture and politics can actually work on the net.

So far we didn’t talk about the virtual world and the net. There are so many things to say abut this tool, how it changed from merely a tool to a new virtual “world” where our on social roles are not necessarily integrated in it. This cyber space or the space between phone lines (the place where phone conversation take place) is becoming more and more real, its effects on us grow as more and more people join it. New sets of rules can be made in this new world, but as stated in “the Hacker crack down” our old culture and rules are trying to infiltrate it and limit it, mimicking our own physical world. Lets take for example the program ‘Second Life’ where we people are able to create new worlds out from computer visuals and interact with other members, members can be represented in any shape, any size, no gravity, no physical limits and yet the majority of people in second life chose to recreate a copy of our real world and culture. Most of the member chose a human-like avatar, I say human-like because they are more human then any of us, they are more an image of comics super heroes with there super human shapes. Gravity funny enough also plays an important part in second life, most people chose to be confined by it when you could actually fly. This strange phenomena’s and many others are perhaps related to human fear of change or it’s just a lack of imagination. As those virtual worlds will grow, each with his one set of rules and culture we will face reality in a new way, for in the net we are all strangers, it’s a strangers society where you hide behind false names and enhance identities that don’t all ways represent us in the real life but this virtual self is perhaps the real one, one that is not restrained to facts and concepts of real, a self that its only limitation is our imagination.

One of the ways the real and the virtual collide and combine is in laws the rights. The law for a private phone number is old, the law that states your cell phone number as private just arrived, what’s next? Private ip address? All those rules are perhaps keeping our rights in the virtual world but they also connect the real world to the virtual, to call copying a file theft is changing the definition of theft for the file is still there, I only toke a copy. We tray to apply rules and laws from our real world without looking at the virtual world as a new place, we do what the western culture does the best, we colonize the new world with idea not necessarily belonging to it. This phenomena will make those two worlds one or a hybrid space. A nice example to this hybrid is: I have joust but the new fancy cell phone and one of its top features is that it is connected 24/7 to the internet, thinking on my financial state (after buying it) I immediately installed skype, a phone call program for free. Now I can talk to any of my friends (who is next to a computer) and talk for hours free of charge, but the most interesting side affect is that there is an icon that represents me, my virtual presence always online. A button distance from my voice, now lets connect the gps and share this info also and I’m live transmitting. Connect it to the virtual world second life and I’m living in both. This is not science fiction, this is our everyday tools and with time they will merge into one.

Now I can talk about the changes coming from our strange technology for hours, it’s already here and I’m a part of it. It’s easy to see you are flying when you already jumped the cliff but to predict what the future holds is complicated. This is where we move from science to science fiction so many good books where writhing on it all, but what’s nice about the two is that they are not so far apart. Fiction has the tendency to become non-fiction. It expresses merely human desires and we all know how we like to follow them. We said that we animate almost anything, this is a concept that exist for thousand of years, now lets see the development of artificial intelligence, some very serious scientists are working on artificial intelligence and think it can happen! Isn’t that the aliens that Zimmerman is desperately searching for a brain that is not ours, one that can put our brain into perspective, one that can think without the hormones and adrenalin fucking everything up (in hope of course that unlike us his first action won’t be making an electronic dick) is it not putting our society in question? Shouldn’t we think where are we going and why? The minimum is at least to know in which stop we need to get of?

Lets have a look at the future, in his book the spiritual machines, Ray Kurzweil follows our technologies development and tries to predict what the future holds. Now lets say we listen to him, lets put our skepticism aside and make believe (for every story is based on a true one, the difference is that some others don’t have any imagination) lets say that some where in the close future we make a computer that thinks maybe better then us, smarter then us, or one that we can up loud our “self” into using the advantages of technology will start becoming androids (like many of us today how use artificial replacements for organs) then what? Shouldn’t we think about it? Perhaps change some old rules, dust the covers. You know just in case some one will decide to come?? Is it not better then just waking one day looking at all of the young generation that is half machines and say in my days… Isn’t it the answer to all of our big questions we have to stop death, reach a higher level to evolve? Now I know it’s like what the father of evolution Douglas Adams said “42” its all in the questions, if not there than perhaps just for our own sake so the newcomers wont do what Columbus did or what our Hollywoodic Science fiction movies as “the Matrix” portraits, perhaps just the rule ‘respect your elders’ or something like ‘don’t feed the monkeys its bad for them!’

This is a list of interesting points to think of:

Porn, Sexuality and sex in the virtual age

Limits of imagination creating an alternative world

Racism and discrimination in the cyberspace

Virtual presence, id and rights

Hybrid space, electricity stops, plug ins of reality

I will finish this article in some what optimistic view. I will search for the human finger print, we all know what organic shapes rain is doing to mud, wind and temperature to stones, snails to anything they move on, every animal lives an organic pattern of movement and constructs life and death (ants nests, bees hives, birds nests) It’s funny that we humans don’t see ourselves as part of it but I’m sure that if someone from outside would look he’ll see the patterns (I know I can concrete, roads, streets etc…) perhaps everything that an organism dose is organic. Then perhaps machines? After all we design them, our human finger print is all over them, a computer program is man made it, caries our language in it, our basic code, the bugs in the program are our on faults and limitations so are the tools we make. Animals that were infected by man are man-animals (dogs cats horses) then why not machines? What do you say if for the time being computers will be human as far as we let them be and humans will be computers if we have any thing to say about it. And we live happily ever after

Until machines will make new machines…

And now for a bonus part: 450 words of solidarity, two days ago I found my self in a middle of a theological discussion god and other abstractions. When I was a boy, maybe 8 years old, we had bible lessons in school and one of my class mates asked me “do you believe in god” I didn’t know what to say, my mum never told me. First thing I did coming back from school was to go to the living room and ask my mum “ima do you believe in god?” my mum thought silently and said after some time “Ben I don’t know think for yourself”. I returned to my room with a heavy lode on my chest and spent the evening thinking and made up my mind No, now it’s not that I think I know the truth, it’s more that I think no one knows it. We’re all walking in the dark without a way to see, where some of us sit and some are holding the person in front who holds another one, and so on but the person in the front of the row is also blind, if this is the case then ill go my on way.

Let’s say there are 5 milliard people in the world and everyone thinks and beliefs in something, how can you know who knows the truth? It doesn’t matter because this is a test on time and my time is maybe finishing soon, then I believe in worms.

And what if god comes today?

I said : if today out of the blue god will come, you know smoke, lightning the whole shebang, and tells me, God: “Ben all what you have heard is true, I made everything and everyone take your shoes off and bow to me.”

I will say: “great job, what do you want with me???”

God: “Worship me and do as I say

ill say: “Piss off and leave me alone!”

“What?” said my friend “but he made you!” “No my mother did and you don’t see me bowing to here do you??” You know parents make you, teach you and when you grow up and think for yourself you go, one day perhaps there will be machines that can think, and one day there will be a machine that can grasp abstractions and maybe it will even take our place as masters of the world, but they may face similar stupid questions and this is comforting.

to feed my books with empty pages, so I could close them.

Love came for its own, uninvited

and left from the window at night, its a one way ticket.

I will be walking on my way back home.

Scene 3

At the camp, Corporal Wallace (Mario Brega) calls the roll. Tuco answers for Bill Carson, catching the attention of Angel Eyes, now disguised as a Union Sergeant stationed at the camp. Angel Eyes has Wallace torture Tuco into revealing Sad Hill Cemetery as the location of the gold, but Tuco also confesses that only Blondie knows the name on the grave.

1. Tuco = Seer, Blondie = Blind, Angel Eyes = Robber)

Angel Eyes offers Blondie an equal partnership in recovering the gold. Blondie agrees and rides out with Angel Eyes and his posse. Meanwhile, Tuco, chained to Corporal Wallace, is transported by train to his execution. During the trip, Tuco tells Wallace he has to urinate and distracts Wallace long enough to jump off the train, dragging the Corporal with him. He then beats Wallace’s head on a rock, killing him, and uses another train to cut their chain, freeing him.

2. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Blind, Angel Eyes = Seer (Blondie is the only one who carry the info).

Duality: Angel Eyes interrogates and trying to kill and take possession from Tuco.

We next see Blondie, Angel Eyes and Angel Eyes’ gang arriving in a town that’s rapidly being evacuated due to heavy artillery fire. Tuco, wandering aimlessly through the wreckage of that same town, is oblivious of the bounty hunter that survived at the start of the movie (Al Mulock), who tracks and ambushes Tuco. Despite the surprise, Tuco kills the bounty hunter. Blondie investigates the gunshot, finding Tuco and informing him of Angel Eyes’s involvement. The two resume their old partnership, stalking through the wrecked town and killing Angel Eyes’ henchmen before discovering that Angel Eyes has escaped.

Blondie Tuco rule one Blondie saves Tuco.

1. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Angel Eyes = Blind

Tuco and Blondie find their way to Sad Hill Cemetery is blocked by large Union and Confederate forces, who are separated only by a narrow bridge. They are preparing to fight for it, but apparently both sides have been ordered not to destroy the bridge. Reasoning that if the bridge were destroyed “these idiots would go somewhere else to fight”, Blondie and Tuco wire the bridge with dynamite. During the process, the two trade information, Tuco revealing Sad Hill Cemetery as the gold’s location and Blondie saying that the name on the grave is Arch Stanton. The two then take cover as the bridge blows up and the two armies resume their battle. The next morning, the Confederate and Union soldiers have gone. Tuco abandons Blondie (who has stopped to tend to a dying young Confederate soldier) to retrieve the gold for himself at the cemetery. Frantically searching the sea of make-shift tombstones and grave markers, Tuco finally locates Arch Stanton’s grave. As he digs, Blondie appears (now clad in his trademark poncho) and tosses him a shovel.

A second later, the two are surprised by Angel Eyes, who holds them at gunpoint. Blondie kicks open Stanton’s grave to reveal just a skeleton. Declaring that only he knows the real name of the grave,

Second Blondie Tuco rule; Tuco tries to betray Blondie.

Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Angel Eyes = Blind

Blondie writes it on a rock in the middle of the graveyard and tells Tuco and Angel Eyes “two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. We’re going to have to earn it.”

The three stare each other down in the circular center of the cemetery, calculating alliances and dangers in a famous five-minute Mexican standoff before suddenly drawing. Blondie shoots Angel Eyes, who rolls into an open grave. Tuco also tries to shoot Angel Eyes, but discovers that Blondie had unloaded his gun the night before. Blondie directs Tuco to the grave marked “Unknown” next to Arch Stanton’s. Tuco digs and is overjoyed to find bags of gold inside, but is shocked when he turns to Blondie and finds himself staring at a noose. Seeking a measure of revenge for what Tuco has done to him, Blondie forces Tuco to stand atop a tottery grave marker and fixes the noose around his neck, binding Tuco’s hands before riding off with his share of the gold. As Tuco screams for mercy, Blondie’s silhouette returns on the horizon, aiming a rifle at him. Blondie fires a single shot and severs the noose rope, just like old times, dropping Tuco face-first onto his share of the gold. Blondie smiles and rides off as Tuco, who has his gold but no horse, curses him in rage.

First Blondie Tuco rule; Blundie saves and humiliates Tuco.

Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Angel Eyes = Blind (dead).

In this movie there are some fixed patterns in the relationship between the characters. When the signifier passes between them in a fixed order; Angel Eyes never has it, Blondie has it most of the time and Tuco always looses it.

Tuco can never be the Robber over any of them (he can never kill/betray Blondie)

Angel Eyes can only be the Robber over Tuco, but never Blondie. Angel Eyes is always the blind when he meets Blondie.

Blondie is always the Blind or the Robber, but is never the Seer (Blondie saves Tuco).

Taste differs, so arguing about it is pointless. This is a saying we have in Hebrew but I argue that only on taste we should argue.

Taste is only partly personal, some tastes standards are shared by complete cultures, we can also study and learn to like tastes, the only thing that is real personal is the experience we have while tasting. This experience is similar to the way we see colors: we all call them in the same name but we all experience them individually. I’m for example a colorblind. I can’t detect the difference between some shades of colors; my experience from the color blue is personal, it is different than yours but I use the same word to define what I see.

‘Complete’ as an actual thing is an ideal, it is a utopia, and like any utopia it can only exist completely in fiction. Real utopia is a wish, or a hope, a goal that will never be achieved.

We are all traces of past lives, traces of genetic data, thinking according to traces of information, living traces for the rest to follow.

Many maps are static two-dimensional, geometrically accurate (or approximately accurate) representations of three-dimensional space, while others are dynamic or interactive, even three-dimensional. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or imagined, without regard to context or scale; e.g. Brain mapping, DNA mapping, and extraterrestrial mapping.”(wiki Map)

“Mapping may refer to:

* The making of maps, as in cartography, surveying, and photogrammetry

* Gene mapping, the assignment of DNA fragments to chromosomes

* Brain mapping, set of techniques to study the brain

* Map (mathematics), often a synonym for function

* Functional predicate, a logical symbol that may be applied to an object term to produce another object term

* Conceptual metaphor, an understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain

* Metaphor, cross mapping across two or more seemingly unrelated subjects

* Analogy, inference from a particular to another particular”

In order to understand an art piece we need to place it on a map.

When I was 12, I joined the ranger course, and one of the main things you studied there is how to navigate. One of the biggest dangers in navigating is to ‘rape the map’, to force the map to feet the topographic terrain you see, to forcefully misinterpret the map. The map rarely lie, its almost always the people who do so, it’s some kind of delicate balance between lack of confidence and over confidence, filtering what fits and what is missing. I use to find myself contemplating if what I see is what is printed on the map, or is it my will that wish it so.

Navigation on earth

Our navigating system enables us to find things on the map. The map itself is a 2D representation of our 3D world. By the use of height lines we are able to translate its topographic data into a 3D understanding of our terrain.

Our maps are usually flat, and in order to place anything on them we use a grid system, that relay on the directions, north to south and east to west. Now to measure the distances, we have to use fixed measuring sizes, and a definition of scale.

While navigating on the map we relay on fixed parameters of direction (north) and measurements (meters) in order to orientate ourselves. When you really get into it, you also discover things like the geodesic dome. The actual shape of our world (round elliptic) also plays a part in placing ourselves on the map. Using our existing navigating systems seems very clear, if you follow it you will reach any given point on the globe, but because we can use this system only on the globe, the moment we leave earth we are facing a problem, all of our fixed parameters are unstable, the north is gone, no geodesic shape, our real becomes fiction we have to deal with relativity.

Space navigation

In order to determine the place of an object out in space, we must define first our parameters, meaning according to what are we going to measure its place? Only by doing so, we can find our position.

What am I trying to actually say with all of this? That the position of objects is unstable until placed within a fixed set of parameters, regardless if the object is a text or an art piece, the location depends directly on the parameters.

In order to get lost we need to be conscious of our disposition or our lack.

Perhaps the signifier is lost within the frame of references.

When the minister is placing the letter inside out, he is hiding it from us by placing it under a different context, when the detective stills the letter the minister loses it by forgetting its existence, if only for a short time.

The really strange thing is that, we have to know something is missing in order to lose it. We have to feel its lack, the place in which its not. If we are not conscious of its lack we didn’t lose it, then it’s going back into being merely an unfulfilled possibility. Where does the consciousness of lack coming from? Perhaps it’s coming from our desires to control. Let us note that it’s the presence of the lack that indicates on the existence of a whole.

Placing an object by mapping is clear, but how can we determine the place of an object?

If we are to relay on our existing systems we should perhaps first understand them.

“It is neither the character of the individual subjects, nor the contents of the letter, but the position of the letter within the group which decides what each person will do next” (Barbara Johnson 217)

Art being in many ways similar to a letter (signifier), possessing an urgency of information. Its origin and destination is as irrelevant to it’s meaning as a purloined letter, if we to try and apply our ‘new’ discoveries in the quantum mechanics field we can say that by encountering the signifier (by reading or seeing), we fix its location- we ‘find it’. When exposing an art piece the creator is forced to release this bundle of information to form its own independent existent (existent that is encounter based). Free from its master’s reach it will carry its master’s traces; its destination as specific as it may be, will present his own interaction with this independent information. Every encounter will undoubtedly create a new interpretation. This brings us to state that “A letter always reaches its destination”. These ‘missing factors’ the ‘other’ and the destination can only be replaced by the location or dislocation of the letter.

“Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.” (William Westmoreland)

This active personal censorship is constantly working in all of us; perhaps we should bring it to our conscious part, into the spot light.

Framing is one of the most important things in art works, and I don’t only mean framing in photography and painting. Deciding where are the boundaries of an art piece is of tremendous importance. In photography the photographer physically frames a visual, and by doing so he creates for us, the ground on which we can start understanding or more likely engage with art. Framing is a process that is done constantly, ending only at the last exposing time mainly by the creator, who decides where and when it’s going to be exposed. If you would like to go a bit further, you could even say that another framing is done personally, every time a spectator is engaging with an art piece. By analyzing those frames we can set the ground rules on which we can work, similar to setting parameters in order to focus our search further (micro, macro as deep as we can get).

If you will dig long enough you will find oil, or come out on the other side.

Peeling those frames and layers, is an intellectual process that demands also a measurement of good taste (see at page 32), the decision where to stop is an important one, find the core not the other side.

To frame an artwork, to define its boundaries: size, where it starts and where its ends and in which context we can understand it, in order to make sense. Now lets forget it all and let our subconscious digest it.

But for me a discussion without an argument is like war without wounded.

And if we are talking about war, then an argument is like a First World War, trench fighting to the bitter end. Every side is dogged behind his walls of ideologies and trenches of philosophies.

Trying to draw his opponent out, searching for openings in the opponent defenses. When one is found, a full charge is organized to breach his walls open.

But unlike other wars this one is not fought to the death but on righteousness, the words “you are right” are admitting defeat.

One might think that “good” enemies are feared from, but in reality they are highly regarded, for only by breaking your defenses you can remake and close them better, for the next fight.

In a similar fashion Derrida text never really disqualifies Lacan’s text. He merely criticizes it. His words do the opposite, they strengthen Lacan’s theory, they formulate, block the holes in Lacan’s wall. They indicate, among many other things, that the formula or the way to understand a piece is many times, in the piece itself. Defining the boundaries in which you work, give you a better understanding of what you are dealing with.

The two things relevant for me, in Derrida’s ideas are; the letters location (which I will discuss later on) and the presence of a frame of reference within Lacan’s analysis. Now what Derrida is saying, is that in order to understand a text, in order to properly, thoroughly processes it, you need to determine its boarders, its context.

“When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk” (1966, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, screenwriters; Sergio Leone.)

Lets search for other places where Lacan’s formula can be applied. In the movie The Good The Bad And The Ugly, which by only reading it’s name you can already find a connection to Lacan’s text, we can find a similar formula to the one in Poe’s story. In the movie our 3 main characters are constantly switching the Lacanian roles of the Blind/no seeing, Seer/seeing that the others don’t see and Robber/seeing the signifier or in our case the gold. Like the scroll of a dice we are left only to guess on which side it would fall. I prefer the dice metaphor for it presents a 3 dimensional change, which to my opinion fits more to our 3 roles. The form of the dice, indicate its symbolic order, 2 is opposite to 5, 1 to 6, 3 to 4 the order stays the same regardless of the result.In the movie our hero Blondie, like Dupin in Poe’s always rolls to win.

This movie is constructed from three main scenes and 3 main systems. There is a clear repetition for every system, as you will see…

The good The bad and the ugly Plot

Scene 1

In a desolate ghost town during the American Civil War, bandit Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez (“The Ugly,” Eli Wallach) narrowly shoots his way past three bounty hunters to freedom, killing two but only wounding the third. Miles away, Angel Eyes (“The Bad,” Lee Van Cleef) interrogates a former soldier called Stevens (Antonio Casas) about a missing man named Jackson who has taken on the name “Bill Carson” (Antonio Casale) and a cache of stolen Confederate gold. Angel Eyes brutally kills Stevens and his eldest son after the interrogation, but not before Stevens pays Angel Eyes to kill Angel Eyes’ employer, another former soldier named Baker.

1. Angel Eyes = Robber, Stevens = Seer, Baker = Blind

Angel Eyes later collects his fee for Stevens’ killing from Baker, and then shoots him too.

2. Angel Eye = Robber, Baker = Seer, Stevens = Blind (dead)

Notice that we have 2 similar rolls when Blondie and Tuco are not involved. Angel Eyes make a similar pattern, as he kill and take possession (“Have You Killed and Also Taken Possession” the big bad sin, Elijah from the old testimony)

Scene 2

Meanwhile, during Tuco’s flight across the desert he runs into a group of bounty hunters who prepare to capture him when they are approached by Blondie (“The Good,” Clint Eastwood), a mysterious lone gunman who challenges the hunters to the draw, which he wins with lightning speed.

1. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Bounty Hunters/Angel Eyes = Blind

Initially elated, Tuco is enraged when Blondie delivers him up to the local authorities for the reward money of $2,000. Hours later, as Tuco awaits his execution, Blondie surprises the authorities and frees Tuco by shooting the execution rope, the two later meeting to split the reward money, revealing their lucrative money-making scheme. After Tuco’s bounty is raised to $3,000, the two repeat the process at another town before Blondie, weary of Tuco’s incessant complaints about the dividing of the profits from their scheme, Blondie abandons him in the desert, keeping all of the money.

2. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Authorities/Angel Eyes = Blind.

Duality: Blondie is always the Robber, and he is always saving Tuco from death. We are witnessing one of the rules between Tuco and Blondie.

A livid Tuco manages to make it to another town and rearm himself. Some time later In another town, Tuco surprises Blondie in his hotel room in the middle of a skirmish between Union and Confederate troops. As Tuco prepares to kill Blondie by fashioning a noose and forcing Blondie to put it around his neck, a cannonball hits the hotel and demolishes the room, allowing Blondie to escape.

1. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Angel Eyes = Blind

Following a relentless search, Tuco captures Blondie using the same scheme with another partner (Tuco doesn’t allow Blondie to shoot the rope this time and the unfortunate “Shorty” is hanged) and marches him across the harsh desert. When Blondie finally collapses from dehydration and heatstroke, Tuco prepares to kill him but pauses when a runaway ambulance carriage appears on the horizon heading their way. Inside, while looting the dead soldiers, Tuco discovers a dying Bill Carson, who reveals that $200,000 in stolen Confederate gold is buried in a grave in Sad Hill cemetery but falls unconscious before naming the grave. When Tuco returns with water, he discovers Carson dead and Blondie slumped against the carriage beside Carson’s body. Before passing out, Blondie says that he knows the name on the grave. Tuco takes Blondie (both disguised as Confederate soldiers) to a Catholic mission run by Tuco’s older brother Father Pablo. Tuco nurses Blondie back to health, and the two leave, still disguised.

2. Blondie = Robber, Tuco = Seer, Authorities/Angel Eyes = Blind.

Duality: The second rule of Tuco and Blondie, Tuco betrays Blondie. If we compare Tuco to the Purloined Letter story, Tuco’s role is that of the police, who fails taking the Robber role. Every endeavor he makes always ends when the signifier is at the hands of Blondie.

They inadvertently encounter a force of Union soldiers (who they take for Confederates due to thick coatings of grey dust on their uniforms). They are captured and marched to a Union prison camp…

For the rest of the analization see page 34.

Another interesting place, on which I can detect this formula, is quite different then a text or a movie, for it’s frame/context is more flowed and les evident. If we are to analyze past actions and human behavior in a similar way, we have to define the characters and place their actions on a simple time line that will create a clear structure that we can analyze. In the process of art making and exposing, certain characters and rules exist.

The letter in Poe’s story or the signifier as Lacan puts it, is represented at our scene naturally by the art piece, the signifier is being past by the 3 characters; artist, curator and audience who change the rules of the Blind, Seer, Robber.

“Transcendental signified,” that is, some meaning independent of all function of language, is an impossible-though perhaps inevitable-dream:” (Derrida 1981b, 29-32) “utopia” if I my add

When an artist is creating an art piece he creates a signifier. He is the one who sees the potential of art in the every day visual. The audience sees the every day visual, but fail to see the art, the artist is the Robber for he recognizes the signifier as art (placing it in the art context), the curator is blind to the art (not exposed yet),

Artist = Robber, Curator = Blind, Audience = Seer.

When a curator comes to the picture, he places the signifier under a new category. He sees what the artist doesn’t see; he sees the art in a new context (for example: in exposition, he sees the art in a context of many), the artist sees only his creation and the audience don’t see yet.

Curator = Robber, Artist = Seer, Audience = Blind.

When the art is exposed the only one that sees the signifier for what it is, is the audience, for only the audience is recognizing the art within the audience context, the curator sees his creation, the artist is blind.

Audience = Robber, Artist = Blind, Curator = Seer.

Perhaps patterns are traces, and recognizing patterns is following traces.

Object communication – Bag from Plakbenz on Vimeo.

You said “I will change, no more mister Bear, ill put him on his place”.

Now he is not allowed into the bedroom. There I have a small sanctuary from him, a bear free space.

Terrific, the more I sit here the more I feel in prison, yes the room is mine but the house? The house is his.

And did she change? My ass she did, “bear no” in a half hearted intension is all you can do.

Since then he tried to bite me twice and I kicked him in return, and every time it happened you started saying “I was acting right, now he will understand”.

Yes I’m sure he understands, this is exactly way he keeps on trying to bite me.

That’s not a way to mange your pets and I don’t feel like coming here any more, see him again, play this stupid game over and over.

I tried capturing you and him, I succeeded, the picture is good, fucking poetic.

I’m going home.

“The issue then is to ground fiction in truth, to guarantee fiction its conditions of possibility in truth” (Jacques Derrida, 178)

My grandfather was the best storyteller in the world, and as one he practiced at distorting the truth, when one of his facts didn’t fit completely like: “The man was 3 meters tall.”

When one would point the exaggeration out, he would say: “For one meter you are going to make me a liar?’’

As I said before, the truth is in the formula not in the result. The actual height is irrelevant as long as it serves the story.

From what I can understand and see from Lacan’s text and its interpretation, the real change in thought is the search for patterns rather then a meaning, through the patterns, analysis of what is missing, we can get a better understanding on the actions that take place.

To search for the missing, is what being a detective is all about; “All fools are poets doesn’t mean all poets are fools” This is according to Poe’s simple sound reasoning.

And everything fits,

It’s thoughts that we feel. (Goethe 1963, 245)

In this chapter I will make a big jump. While what we discussed so far may seem pretty clear we are going now to talk about 2 different detectives, and the father of the detective scene. At 1800‘s, Edgar Allan Poe (1809 –1849) wrote 3 stories: The Purloined Letter, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mystery of Marie Roget. Poe actually wrote countless stories and poems, and he is a whole subject on himself. With those 3 stories though, Poe started the detective genre. Jacques Lacan used Poe’s story The Purloined Letter at 1972 in one of his seminars. In order to analyze and explain his ideas regarding psychoanalysis Lacan took the story and formulated it. Jacques Derrida wrote in 1975 an article in response to Lacan’s text and by doing so created a monumental text. Many interesting points and insights where drawn out of his text, in the book The Purloined Poe, Lacan, Derrida and Psychoanalytic Reading, the linear construction of the texts by Poe, Lacan and Derrida and some others is exposed. Some of their insights I intend to use for the practice and understanding of art.

In Lacan text at the seminar of 1972 on Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Purloined Letter, he analyzed the changing roles of the characters, or as he calls it Intersubjectivity. In the story a mystery is revealed full of deceit and retaliation. Lacan is presenting us with a fixed formula with which the reader can analyze the passing positions of the characters in the story. But lets first understand the roles and their meanings:

1. The Blind, not seeing and not conscious of what is happening.

2. The Seer is conscious of what is happening and of the fact the blind cannot see.

3. The Robber sees the letter/art, and takes action and sees the signifier

4. The Signifier is the letter/art piece, an object that connects our characters

In this summary, we will follow the changing roles according to Lacan’s analysis. The story is constructed of two main scenes, and an additional role by Lacan.

“The Purloined Letter” (1844) Summary (http://www.sparknotes.com/)

Scene 1

In a small room in Paris, an unnamed narrator, who also narrates “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” sits quietly with his friend, C. Auguste Dupin. He ponders the murders in the Rue Morgue, which Dupin solved in that story. Monsieur G——, the prefect of the Paris police, arrives, having decided to consult Dupin again. The prefect presents a case that is almost too simple: a letter has been taken from the royal apartments. The police know who has taken it: the Minister D——, an important government official. According to the prefect, a young lady possessed the letter, which contains information that could harm a powerful individual. When the young lady was first reading the letter, the man whom it concerned came into the royal apartments. Not wanting to arouse his suspicion, she put it down on a table next to her. The sinister Minister D—— then walked in and noted the letter’s contents. Quickly grasping the seriousness of the situation, he produced a letter of his own that resembled the important letter. He left his own letter next to the original one as he began to talk of Parisian affairs. Finally, as he prepared to leave the apartment, he purposely retrieved the lady’s letter in place of his own. Now, the prefect explains, the Minister D—— possesses a great deal of power over the lady.

The queen takes the role of the ‘Seer’, the man whom the letter concerns with is the ‘Blind’ and the Minister D is the ‘Robber’.

Scene 2

Dupin asks whether the police have searched the Minister’s residence, arguing that since the power of the letter derives from its being readily available, it must be in his apartment. The prefect responds that they have searched the Minister’s residence but have not located the letter. He recounts the search procedure, during which the police systematically searched every inch of the hotel. In addition, the letter could not be hidden on the Minister’s body because the police have searched him as well. The prefect mentions that he is willing to search long and hard because the reward offered in the case is so generous. Upon Dupin’s request, the prefect reads him a physical description of the letter. Dupin suggests that the police search again.

One month later, Dupin and the narrator are again sitting together when the prefect visits. The prefect admits that he cannot find the letter, even though the reward has increased. The prefect says that he will pay 50,000 francs to anyone who obtains the letter for him. Dupin tells him to write a check for that amount on the spot. Upon receipt of the check, Dupin hands over the letter. The prefect rushes off to return it to its rightful owner, and Dupin explains how he obtained the letter.

Dupin admits that the police are skilled investigators according to their own principles. He explains this remark by describing a young boy playing “even and odd.” In this game, each player must guess whether the number of things (usually toys) held by another player is even or odd. If the guesser is right, he gets one of the toys. If he is wrong, he loses a toy of his own. The boy whom Dupin describes plays the game well because he bases his guesses on the knowledge of his opponent. When he faces difficulty, he imitates the facial expression of his opponent, as though to understand what he thinks and feels. With this knowledge, he often guesses correctly. Dupin argues that the Paris police do not use this strategy and therefore could not find the letter: the police think only to look for a letter in places where they themselves might hide it.

Dupin argues that the Minister D—— is intelligent enough not to hide the letter in the nooks and crannies of his apartment—exactly where the police first investigate. He describes to the narrator a game of puzzles in which one player finds a name on a map and tells the other player to find it as well. Amateurs, says Dupin, pick the names with the smallest letters. According to Dupin’s logic, the hardest names to find are actually those that stretch broadly across the map because they are so obvious.

With this game in mind, Dupin recounts the visit he made to the Minister’s apartment. After surveying the Minister’s residence, Dupin notices a group of visiting cards hanging from the mantelpiece. A letter accompanies them. It has a different exterior than that previously described by the prefect, but Dupin also observes that the letter appears to have been folded back on itself. He becomes sure that it is the stolen document. In order to create a reason for returning to the apartment, he purposely leaves behind his snuffbox. When he goes back the next morning to retrieve it, he also arranges for someone to make a commotion outside the window while he is in the apartment. When the Minister rushes to the window to investigate the noise, Dupin replaces the stolen letter with a fake.

The minister takes the ‘Seer’ role, Dupin the ‘Robber’ and the Paris police the ‘Blind’.

He justifies his decision to leave behind another letter by predicting that the Minister will embarrass himself when he acts in reliance upon the letter he falsely believes he still possesses. Dupin remarks that the Minister once wronged him in Vienna and that he has pledged not to forget the insult. Inside the fake letter, then, Dupin inscribes, a French poem that translates into English, “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.”

Lacan is the ‘Robber’, Dupin the ‘Seer’, minister the ‘Blind.

The added role of Lacan is the position of the analyst himself. In the symbolic structure, Lacan thus sees Dupin as failing to see himself as being seen. It is the analyst’s function to discern for us the symbolic structure of the entire tale and to reveal its importance.

What about Art Criticism?

Art critics, the detectives of art, are changing their methods in recent years.

In the book what happened to art criticism? James Elkin succeeds in squeezing his 7 hydras head theory on art criticism, into a friendly size book of 87 pages. A book that not only defines art criticism into 7 simple categories but also masters perfectly my patience to read art critics without a single image.

Elkins starts by describing the state of art criticism. On the one hand, it appears to be flourishing: it’s everywhere. On the other hand, no one cares: it’s not widely read, and it doesn’t figure in the intellectual debates of the day.

In his book, Elkins looks at the current state of affairs, and wonders how the situation might be improved (and whether that is possible or desirable).

Elkins sees contemporary art criticism as a 7-headed hydra: The Catalogue Essay, The Academic Treatise, Cultural Criticism, The Conservative Harangue, The Philosopher’s Essay, Descriptive Art Criticism, and Poetic Art Criticism. In the longest section of the book, he goes through these, one by one describing them, what they offer and what their limitations are.

The Catalog Essay and the Descriptive Art Criticism, are playing a big part in my idea for their closeness to forensic science. As you have undoubtedly noticed I do not belong to those two, for the simple fact that I have too much to say, but nevertheless the 2 categories are relevant to my idea.

The Catalog Essay:

We probably all encounter the small brochure given at exhibitions and museums. In some cases we can even buy them with small iconic images of the work. Those essays were as James Elkins explained, commissioned by the galleries themselves. As a result they contain a less critic content, due to their economical purposes the message should be positive and more neutral. Many writers simply avoid judgments, instead they produce a simple description of what you see and a full set of facts concerning size, materials and manner of working, general artist history data like; name, place of residence. Those essays are indeed a bad read but I couldn’t stop to notice that something else start to emerge from it. Those reckless collection of facts are forming for us the observer, our first encounter with the analysis of the work and due to its ‘neutral’ nature it also prevents us from having any easy solution for understanding the work. In many ways, the catalog essay resembles a primary evidence collection at a crime scene.

The Descriptive Art Criticism:

Is commonly practiced in the media and literature world. One of its main points is not to judge. Its’ past has many origins that could be traced back to modernist’s ideas like:

“Art critics should be considered primarily a forum for the examination rather than the exhibition of judgment.”

“The point of criticism [had] everything to do with value and almost nothing to do with method.” (1971 Rosalind Krauss modernism)

Art critic power of the 80’s and its economical effects and current days capitalistic market needs, demanded a more natural form. Elkin also notes a Columbia University shocking survey, found descriptive art criticism to be the most popular type, demanding;

”Providing an accurate, descriptive account.”

“To different cultures and alternative viewpoints.”

“Providing historical and other background information.”

“Let viewers get a sense of new art without ruining their experiences by prejudging the work.”

All of those are creating some kind of a scientific approach, where the writer tries to portray a prosaic natural image of the work, without passing judgments.

Elkin concludes: “So I do not think it is necessarily a good idea to reform criticism: what counts is trying to understand the flight from judgment, and the attraction of description.”

At this point I recommend to any of you who would like to get a better idea on what I’m talking about, to download one of MOMA’s visual descriptions pod cast, and to listen to them with out seeing the art work image. That by itself is a very interesting and entertaining exercise.

This short list is a basic forensic scheme that I translated; I will try to use it in order to understand one of my art pieces; The Pumpkin.

Frame the work. What is included? Set our working ground. How big is it?

The work size can very easily be indicated; we can relate to the pumpkin size, the frame is around half a meter in length and height. In order to question if it is a big or small object, we have to first experience it physically, and judge it according to what we perceive as normal. The object is regular size; for the frame size is common for a frame, and the pumpkin size is not unexceptional for a pumpkin.

Micro: Examine the scene/art scene. Collect and document clues. Map the existing clues. Time of death/when was it made?This part of the analysis might be seen like stating the obvious but it is exactly this analysis of the obvious that gives us understanding of what we are seeing.A yellow wooden frame is located on the edge of a green wooden shelf. The shelf is around 40cm size, and shaped like an Aztec pyramid, with its narrow part touching the wall while its wide side is connected to the frame. On the connection point between the frame and the shelf, 2 black metal angles are placed. Between the angles, 2 red rubber springs are connected to turquoise plastic cup, in the cup there is a pumpkin. The cup and the pumpkin are located on the connection point of the shelf and the wall. The rubber springs are stretched from the frame along the shelf to the wall, the stretching of the springs creates a tension in the pumpkin position. The shelf is located on the wall around 170cm from the ground, it is held in place by a white metal angle.The working method in which the object was build and painted is sloppy, it doesn’t carry in itself an extra focus for craftsmanship.The object time of making is unknown, but by looking at some of its components; like the pumpkin and the springs we can easily place it between 1990-2010.Setting a timeline: Place clues on a timeline. What came first? Deciding what it is not? What is missing?Simple timeline of what came first:The building of the object was done first (the frame, shelf) then the painting (no painting marks on the wall or floor or on the cup and pumpkin), springs and cup came next then the hanging process (hanging it on the desired height), next the stretching and placing of the pumpkin. The reason I lay all of the clues on the time line, is to get a clear chain of events. I will lay now the elements of the work in order to understand most of the making process.Work elements:Building the object (frame, shelf, angles)Painting the object + Springs and cup (color decisions)Hanging (height)Stretching (pumpkin)Deciding what it is not is not a simple task. You need to find what elements you can take away from the work, and keep its’ core intact. By doing so we can see what elements are most needed. A good work to my opinion carries the minimum of unnecessary elements, making every element crucial.

Those days you don’t die from love,

you don’t live for it ether, you turn on the window washer.

I’m not sad because we broke down, im sad because you have a spare tire, because I can take the taxi.

second hand, with a lot of kilometers on her clock, memory’s of time and distance.

When I was a boy, the Internet was small and slow; so we used to ‘get off’ from jpg/gif images. Watching porn was done on the TV with videocassettes. It was such a complicated story; first you needed to get the cassettes. For me it usually meant searching in my friends’ parents’ rooms for suspicious titles like; Football Game 1995, or Family Trip 1994. Then you sneak a peek at the content, mute the sound and pass forward the first 15-30 minutes (we all know that trick). If you found one, you just simply steal it; no parent is going to ask who stole his or her porn. You then patiently wait for the right moment till the family TV if free and no one is home and enjoys yourself. No wonder that the first thing we wanted as teenagers is our own privet TV. Hiding your treasure was a complicated art; you needed to think how you usually found them and then fool yourself. One of the best tricks was; to clean your own room, this way no one can come and search.When I got a little bit older, I turned more sophisticated; there was no need to hide it anymore so I just left them out in the open. In case any remark is made, you just make a scene and shout how dare you touch my stuff; it’s none of your business.

At the 18-1900’s, Edmond Locard (1877 – 1966) a pioneer in forensic science, formulated the basic principle of forensic science: Locards’ Exchange Principle; “Every contact leaves a trace”. Locard who admired “Sherlock Holmes” took his methods quite literally, in one of Conan Doyle’s novels; Holmes remarked that he had published a monograph, upon the distinction of the ashes of various tobaccos. In this little treatise, Holmes claimed that the examination of tobacco ash at the scene of a crime could furnish clues that would help to solve the mystery, a claim that many readers of The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes still regard as very far-fetched. Yet Locard took a lead from Holmes and published a scientific paper on the significance of tobacco ash found at the scene of the crime.

He stated his opinion of the Holmes stories quite emphatically;

“I hold that a police expert, or an examining magistrate, would not find it a waste of time to read Doyle’s novels … if, in the police laboratory at Lyons, we are interested in any unusual way in this problem of dust, it is because of having absorbed ideas found in Gross and Conan Doyle.” (Edmond Locard)

Locard at 1921 was delighted to meet Doyle and show him his Black Museum of criminal cases.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) the writer of detective Sherlock Holmes was a physician by profession and a hobbyist detective. His character Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in the world, who was not only addicted to cocaine but also mastered the use of astute observation, deductive reasoning and forensic skills in order to solve difficult cases. Holmes intellectual detection method, Deductive Reasoning is used in the solution to a crime.

He writes:

“From a drop of water, a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.”

Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for deduction. It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyze just what Holmes is doing when he performs his deduction. Holmesian deduction appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences, based on either straightforward practical principles, which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes’s study of different kinds of cigar ashes or inference to the best explanation. In fact, one quote often heard from Holmes is :

“When you remove the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”…

When I started to dig into forensic science, I discovered the work of Dr Zakaria Erzinclioglu (1951 – 2002), who was Britain’s leading forensic entomologist (an expert in the application of insect biology to criminal investigations). He produced an impressive thesis on blowfly eggs and larvae, and their development. This thesis helped to determine the time of death by following the development of the different kinds of maggots in the corpse. He published among other publications; these 3 book’s Blowflies, Maggots, Murder and Men, and Every Contact Leaves a Trace.

Dr. Zakaria tirelessly campaign to raise standards in forensic science, became more and more involve in cases of wrongful imprisonment due to flawed or fraudulent forensic science. He wrote in his book Forensics, Crime Scene Investigations From Murder To Global Terrorism:

“It is not simply the application of a set of laboratory techniques; its it an attitude of mind, a tendency to think in a particular way. It is the acquisition of the habit of starting with a doubt, of being eager and willing to question the unquestioned. It is the cultivation of a suspicious mind.”

These ‘suspicious mind’ added with sound reasoning (not common sense), are the techniques of reconstructing the past. In one of the examples that describe the difference between sound reasoning and common sense, Dr Zakaria describes the peculiar style the artist El Greco adopted toward the end of his life. His human figures are disproportional tall and thin, many assumptions where made to why did he paint this way. One of them was made by an eye surgeon who claimed that el Greco at his old age suffered from an eye defect that made him see people and things as long and thin. This seemed to make sense, but if you put it into reason you will understand that a person with an eye defect will paint regular size people and see them as long and thin, if he would paint them extra long they would have appeared for him even longer. The fact that the figures were long and thin is evidence for good vision, not bad, they where meant to be tall.

To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.

The dog did nothing in the nighttime.

That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. (Silver Blaze, Arthur Conan Doyle)

My analization of the traces in the image reveal what is missing from it, what is hidden.

Art I claim is the art of concealment. When I say concealment, I actually mean that artists are trying to hide their initial ideas, using symbols, signs, contexts and meanings, in a similar way a poet is using words and contexts. The concealment of the artwork is done by concealing + manipulating, the traces of the artist, confusing the audience. Creating a riddle to solve.

Ben Z

Amsterdam

e-mail: plak.benz@gmail.com

My grandfather, used to live in the old family house, just above my mother and me. As a boy, I used to spend countless hours with him. He used to sit at the stone table at the garden and call passing strangers and family to come and talk, or more precise to listen to his wonderful stories. His booming voice and sharp hearing, used to follow every newcomer. I used to try to sneak home without being captured in one of his stories; one of his favorite stories was about the Bedouins’ tracking skills, and their ability to follow traces. How by looking at the pressure point of the track, they could tell if the person was walking forward or backwards. This ability to observe and detect peoples’ actions and emotions was one of his greatest trades, a skill that could only be matched by his skill of story telling.

“A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundrums, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.” (wiki “riddle”)

When an artist creates an artwork he creates a riddle. This riddle is a bundle of information, the bundle is the subject or as I call it the “signifier”. The signifier can be anything; an image, sculpture, text, sounds or a combination of some of them. The information is the artists’ traces. His decisions, and working method that are all left as traces.

We as observers are confronted with this signifier, and in order to understand it we follow the traces of information the artists left for us. In a similar way a Bedouin tracer can analyze what direction the person was walking.

When an artist creates an artwork he creates a riddle. This riddle is a bundle of information, the bundle is the subject or as I call it the “signifier”. The signifier can be anything; an image, sculpture, text, sounds or a combination of some of them. The information is the artists’ traces. His decisions, and working method that are all left as traces.We as observers are confronted with this signifier, and in order to understand it we follow the traces of information the artists left for us. In a similar way a Bedouin tracer can analyze what direction the person was walking.

“A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms – cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally”.” (wiki “crime”)

If a crime is a violation of the prevailing norms then art dose exactly the same. It violates our norm; “reality”. It is playing with what we perceive as real. For example; the realistic paintings of the 1800s’ were a crime against the current perception of reality, the “romanticism”. If we were to go even further back, to the greek story about Pygmalion, the artist who fell in love with his own creation, his statue that was so realistic that it became reality. Aphrodite, feeling sorry for him brought the statue to life. A different approach to the same idea can be found in the Hebrew Bible with the Second Commandment: Thou Shall Not Make Graven Images.

The commandment not to make images that might be worshiped as idols, fearing that people will start worshiping their own representations of reality, changing the power point from the ‘other’ to the ‘me’. In some ways we can say that art always reflects on our existing perception of reality, and by doing so it morphs it.

In the Golem story, in order to make the Golem alive, you needed to write the word EMET, truth in the Hebrew language, on its forehead. By removing the first letter from the word EMET, the Golem could be deactivated, changing the word to MET, meaning dead.

In order to get a better understanding on how detectives are solving cases/riddles, I will start by observing current day detectives: