Crystal structure

Crystal structure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mineralogy and crystallography, crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms or molecules in a crystalline liquid or solid. A crystal structure is composed of a pattern, a set of atoms arranged in a particular way, and a lattice exhibiting long-range order and symmetry. Patterns are located upon the points of a lattice, which is an array of points repeating periodically in three dimensions. The points can be thought of as forming identical tiny boxes, called unit cells, that fill the space of the lattice. The lengths of the edges of a unit cell and the angles between them are called the lattice parameters. The symmetry properties of the crystal are embodied in its space group.
 
SEM micrograph of surface of a colloidal crystal. Structure and morphology consists of ordered crystallites, grains or domains of particles as well as interdomain lattice defects in the form of grain boundaries.

Las Lajas pixelada, non pixelada

Dialectic of Site and Nonsite

Site	Nonsite
1. Open Limits	Closed Limits
2. A Series of Points	An Array of Matter
3. Outer Coordinates	Inner Coordinates
4. Subtraction	Addition
5. Indeterminate Certainty	Determinate Uncertainty
6. Scattered Information	Contained Information
7. Reflection	Mirror
8. Edge	Center
9. Some Place (physical)	No Place (abstract)
10. Many	One

Footnote 1 from Robert Smithon's essay The Spiral Jetty (1972).

Originally published in Arts of the Environment, Gyorgy Kepes, ed. pp.222-232
Reprinted in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Jack Flam, ed. pp.143-153

by John Keller

Smithson's Hotel Palenque

From UBU, a bootleg film document from 1972 of Robert Smithson lecturing at Univ. of Utah on photographs he shot at his hotel in Palenque, Mexico in 1969.

PDF of the complete transcript and slides from the lecture.

The Ballroom at Hotel Palenque

vis a tergo

Like the Evangelists, like Saint Luke, the arist is not a free agent obeying only his own will. His situation is rigidly bound by a chain of prior events. The chain is invisible to him, and it limits his motion. He is not aware of it as a chain, but only as vis a tergo, as the force of events behind him. The conditions imposed by these prior events require of him either that he follow obediently in the path of tradition, or that he rebel against the tradition. In either case, his decision is not a free one: it is dictated by prior events of which he senses only dimly and indirectly the overpowering urgency, and by his own congenital peculiarities of temperament.

Excerpted from The Shape of Time by George Kubler, pg. 50

non-site 001: convolution reverb

From CJM Facebook Wall:

Christopher McIntyre is there a musical analogy to Smithson's "non-site" concept?
August 5 at 1:15am

Michael Berk
Maybe not musical, and maybe not even aesthetic at all, but I think of convolution reverb processes
August 5 at 1:36am

Christopher McIntyre
very nice mB. had to wiki it, but convolution reverb and the impulse response component in particular are spot on. been digging in to smithson, matta-clark, et al. for a project. really inspiring...
August 5 at 1:52am

From Wikipedia:
Convolution reverb
In audio signal processing, convolution reverb is a process for digitally simulating the reverberation of a physical or virtual space. It is based on the mathematical convolution operation, and uses a pre-recorded audio sample of the impulse response of the space being modelled. To apply the reverberation effect, the impulse-response recording is first stored in a digital signal-processing system. This is then convolved with the incoming audio signal to be processed.

Smithson and the land of crystal - 090817

I've been wending my way through a book exploring the work and working method of artist Robert Smithson. Entitled Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere, author Ann Reynolds charts a teleological path through Smithson's abstruse and varied interests. She identifies essays and books he was reading and quoting in his own writing while in process with his art works. His use of aerial maps, mirrors, and of course "earth" as content have larger dimensions than I thought before reading this work. There is a particularly compelling section dealing with Smithson's drive to fully objectivize abstraction in which his interest in "coded environments" informs the non-site concept. It inspired me to work on a composition tentatively called "The Crystal Land", the title of an important eassy he wrote in the late 60's. I'm going to use my own composerly coded environment to generate formal and linguistic content. Smithson's land of crystal is New Jersey, and I'm not really sure I understand what he means yet, but I have picked up a copy of "The Writings of...". I plan to read it while in India. Aptly incongruous for me...

Electronic Arts Intermix 090730

I visited EAI recently to view several videos from their collection, including various Dan Graham documents, Robert Smithson/Nancy Holt's Mono Lake, Gordon Matta-Clark's Splitting (with a couple others), Charlemagne Palestine's Body Music I & II, and a Rhys Chatham concert at The Kitchen in '81. EAI is a classic SoHo Scene era non-profit (they provided fiscal sponsorship to Woody and Steina Vasulka to start The Kitchen in '71), and I highly recommend setting up a time to hang out in the viewing room.