The See of Logos

Here, at long last (I can't believe it's more than a year since we began using the puppets) are some cards.
They are nearly final, but I think perhaps will be adjusted a little more in places.

I know that See got some mentions at the Reader's Studio in New York recently, so I'll also fish out the links to some blogs on that. Very interesting to read about it from another perspective.

I've also given the prophecy that goes with each card. Rachel guarantees that these prophecies are 100% accurate. This may be oracle deck as you've never known it...



4. You will become part of a trapeze team, the Flying Perfectionists. Every night, as you and your partner glide up the hoist to your platform, as you smile and wave to the crowd, you will whisper through your teeth “Tonight’s it, you know. The night you drop me. The night you forget to put sawdust on your hands and I slide right through your sweaty palms.” And then later, after the performance and the circus have ended, you will cry on your knees, and whisper to him, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Do you still love me?”

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Good meeting with a guy who manages animation projects. We've decided we need a couple of real animation puppets for See of Logos (i.e. the professional puppets will let us do far more than simple models that we make), and even though the project is on hold for the summer, the puppets take so long to make (a month for one proper wood and metal, fully jointed puppet) that now is the time to begin planning.

It's nice to feel that things are underway, or at least at planning and sourcing stage, once more.

We've increasingly decided that the visuals for See need to be very strong and distinctive - the use of puppets in the way we envisage should achieve this. But it won't be quick!

The See of Logos consists of Thirty-two prophecies, which are guaranteed to be 100% accurate. Depending on how you define an accurate prophecy that is...

This is Prophecy Number Five - and our first almost final card:

5. You will become a famous Tarot reader, only to discover that all your readings are dreams, and all your clients characters from 19th century Japanese novels.

The news is that the deck is going to take quite a while. We like these first sketches but don't feel they are right yet. We'e trying out a whole new style. This page has a bit more information and some more pictures. Once we're really happy with the new sketches I'll put them up here.

Apologies - this has turned out to be a much longer and more demanding project than we imagined, but I think it'll be worth the effort in the end:

http://www.magic-realism.com/seeof…

26. Artemis and her brother Apollo, who have not spoken in millenia, will come
to you for counseling. You will discover that they were lovers as children
but broke up when Apollo killed their grandmother's pet snake. "Can't you
make it good again?" Apollo will ask you. "I'm tired of the sun. I want
the moon again."

ROUGH sketches only, please don't use or copy without asking us as they aren't at the stage where we'd show them widely.

This has turned out to be a hard project - but one that we feel is stretching us in a good way.
We have quite a lot of sketches, but nothing that we're really happy with. However, here are two that seems to be going in the direction we want.

Rachel may have more to say about this (if she can figure out the headaches of posting on a community - LJ is not all that user-friendly if you aren't used to blogs) but we found that the images work better if instead of making them a rather literal illustration of the text, they are allowed to be tangential to it - Alex says they need to be poetry in their own right, not illustrations to poetry. IF poetry is the right word. Perhaps it isn't exactly.

Anyway, here they are (one here, one on the next post):

_________________





3. On a trip to New York your soul will grow larger than your body. Where it has broken through the skin you will see hundreds of color coded wires, fragments of black and violet shells, and the gold earrings your grandmother lost three weeks before her death and accused you of stealing. Bits of your soul will cling to cell phones, or smear themselves on window panes of cooking schools, or get tangled in the hair of women buying frozen yoghurt from street vendors on East Broadway. Other fragments, however, will catch hot air currents from subway vents and spiral up into the sky, until nothing remains of them but tiny streaks of silver in the polluted air.

As there are still no See of Logos sketches to see (we expect it to be later in November before we can really show much) here is another thought that seems to fit here. It was my friend Richard Oliver (http://www.purposivedrift.net) who found this piece in the Financial Times (weird how the FT seems to have been useful in thinking about See of Logos - who would have expected it?):


Anyone who has seen the charming film Derridaor grappled with his formidable, erudite and strangely exhilarating work will know that this characterisation wildly misses the mark. Near the beginning of the film, Derrida suggests a distinction (in the French language) between futur and avenir. Futur/future (as in planning for the future, future trends and so on) suggests a continuation or extrapolation of the present, running along the same lines or tracks. The beautiful word avenir, on the other hand, means "what is to come", something potentially quite other, something we cannot yet know, but which might, just might, be the realm of justice and peace on earth.

Justice and peace may never come, but we must keep hoping for them to come, in the time to come (avenir). In the meantime, we will increase their chances of coming by loosening our tight grasp on things, by opening ourselves up to the uncertainty of the encounter with the other...

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/284c963a-…

(cross-posted to my own blog)

We've begun to work in earnest on See of Logos imagery. This isn't a sketch, it's just a small piece that we may use - but it gives a good flavour of the deck I think. Well, not everything will be quite so dramatic - but they certainly will not be "soft" cards. Anyway, just one little piece that we want to use for part of one particular card... but a start!

It's actually going quite quickly - surprisingly. But then, we've been thinking about this project for quite a while now.

(reminder that all work is copyright - and all that stuff)

After much trying to get this to work (I really haven't much of a clue when it comes to "communities") - Rachel is finally a member.

Now all Alex and I have to do is get on with the sketches (and maybe change our icon - time for something a little odder perhaps?

I have a feeling that this "community" is rapidly becoming a repository for my own ideas on this project. A way of recording things that come along and impact on my opinion. This feels a little lonely - Alex is noticably missing though I may try to record some of what he has to say (and some time he may post himself - unlikely but possible).

So - I amaze myself by posting an article by John Thackera (whose commentary I don't always like - though incidentally - yes, I'm rambling - he has a very likeable and active wife who unfortunately writes less)

Anyway, here it is. Personally, I wouldn't bother to read to the end. He suddenly gets very "oh I'm supposed to be writing about communication technologies" and it veers off to be quite dull and predictable. But the first pages are angry and interesting:

http://www.doorsofperception.com/I…

At least someone else is bored and fed up with all this dull, sad, elitest churned-out hipness. Oh God, Prada stores. One day I will write about the hideous wave of Prada that swept over Ireland.


The reason I write this here is that at the outset I want to say that I see See of Logos as a very "uncool" project. I mean this as a complete compliment.