if (chaos || order) then reflect(duality, reality, entropy);

PREFACE

In 2021 I was exploring my artistic side and one such outcome was a piece of artwork (shown left) that would encapsulate many ideas, concepts, articles, quotes, videos and music that have piqued my curiosity. They relate to such subject matter as metaphysics, space, time, duality, qualia, perception, identity, psychology, connection, technology, AI, culture, language, life and free will.

Why these topics? They have preoccupied my thoughts over many years and I found myself seeking a method to store the related material in a way that is both accessible and creative – to take the ‘noise’ in my head and put it into some form of order and structure. This is how the noise/static, chaos/order and binary/pixel theme came into being – plus it has the added bonus of catering to the binary nature of being (in that we experience only through knowing opposites – you can’t know cold without knowing hot, light without dark, etc).

SYNOPSIS + OVERVIEW

War Of The Ants is a name given by many European countries as a visual metaphor for the noise produced in a radio or television receiver by atmospheric or various natural or man-made electrical disturbances. The acronym WOTA also stands for ‘Who’s On The Air’ and ‘Wisdom Of The Ages/Ancients’ – both apt for the subjects covered within the work. 

The foundation of the piece is a 4000 x 3000 square grid to which all the content aligns (bar a few exceptions, all squares in the grid are black or white). The 4:3 ratio was chosen to reflect the format of older style CRT televisions which often exhibited static/noise.

Overview of some of the concepts the piece explores…

1. Order vs Chaos: taking internal chaos (thoughts, inner chatter, noise, overthinking, dreams, worries, memories) and attempting to create order to it. This in turn creates what looks like disorder (noise/static) which alludes to the cycle
of life. Chaos to order, order to chaos. 

2. Duality of life: black/white (dark/light), above/below, mind/matter, birth/death, hot/cold, good/evil. Our experience lies between such polarities. The top half covers more matter/objective/hardware and the below mind/subjective/software.

3. Static/noise also incorporates relic electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang – known as the Cosmic Microwave Background. This ties in with ‘Wisdom of the ancients/ages’ and also charts a journey from 13.8 billion years to the present. The piece also explores the possible future of the universe and the journey(s) from birth to death (and beyond).

4. Ants are perhaps the closest analogy to human civilisations… They have mega-cities, transport networks, ventilation, childcare systems and waste collection. So War Of The Ants is a mirror for war of the humans, showcasing the growing polarity, disparity, confusion and division that current society is experiencing. There’s also the chaotic noise of information (news, social media) and the challenges we face in navigating it.

5. Solid black areas (like the one in the epicentre) are areas that are deemed unknowable (at least so far). For example, a black hole and another’s consciousness are all things that are directly inaccessible to us… or rather incommunicable
to others.

6. Micro vs Macro: we can’t see both the big picture and the small details simultaneously. We can either see the piece as a whole and miss out on the details or zoom in to see the details but miss the bigger picture. Some of the QR codes and typefaces are of a size that they would only be readable if the piece was printed at 4m x 3m (so it can only effectively be used in digital form – as at www.waroftheants.co.uk). The macro/micro aspect also plays upon Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – in which we can measure either position or momentum, but not both. Also relates to perspective and how each of us can view the same thing differently.

7. Half-life/entropy: Half-life is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. As this piece includes barcodes, ISBNs, QR codes and various links to online sources, some of these, in time, will expire or perish. Which means over time the piece itself decays and becomes less ordered… so in effect even static changes.

8. The underlying 4000×3000 grid also represents the invisible order (or matrix, field) that underpins reality. We just can’t see it due to a veil that prevents us from directly observing the true nature of reality. It also represents a filter of consciousness.

9. The piece also acts as a kind of personal journal by documenting media I’ve consumed over time (articles, books, movies, videos, quotes, music etc) – albeit many hidden within QR codes and ISBN barcodes.

THE BOOK

The book takes WOTA further by delving into the topics explored within the piece and adds further insights and newly discovered material since it was originally produced. It also enables better access to material within WOTA since the original artwork would have to be reproduced at a size of 4×3 metres in order to be fully legible (and to be able to scan some of the smaller QR codes).