PrimatePoetics!

Apes in the wild have language and it takes only a small leap of imagination to try to give them a second, human, language. For over forty years researchers have been trying to do this with increasingly good results. Our language, when it is passed on to a different species, becomes a new language. PrimatePoetics is born from the realization that this language should be appreciated in its own right, as the greatest revolution in literature since the invention of written Chinese 4000 years ago. 'PrimatePoetics is Here' is the first primer to this new field. It explains where it comes from, it gives an overview of the field on an ape-by-ape basis and closes with an extensive anthology of relevant scientific and artistic sources. But most of all 'PrimatePoetics is Here' hopes to give a feel for the outsider charm of the language of the apes.

Download the pamphlet as PDF (3.60 mb)

Shortcut: Everything About PrimatePoetics You Always Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask.

Stream of Consciousness

MANGANI, A Fictional Ape Language
Observed: 06.Aug.2008

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Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of the other Burroughs (Edgar Rice). The Mangani language is described by Burroughs as made up largely of grunts and growls representing nouns and various basic concepts. The bestial quality of the speech, however, does not come through in the rather large lexicon of Mangani words Burroughs actually provides. The depicted language can be thought of as bearing a relationship to the described language similar to that of the movies' euphonious "Tarzan yodel" to the books' terrifying "victory cry of the bull ape" from which it supposedly derives.

The Human Ape, PrimatePoetic Pulp reviewed
Observed: 05.Aug.2008

Surely there are many unnoticed, long out-of-print books that deserve attention, a few extra readers and perhaps even a reprint. John Goelet's 'The Human Ape', a grubby paperback published by Tandem in London in 1977, is not one of those hidden treasures. It is a piece of disposable pulp that as far as its literary value is concerned is worth every stain of mold that has infested my copy. However, it has one saving grace, it is the only novel that I am aware of that explicitly deals with the great ape language project. This is the autobiographical story of gorilla Oh, who was transported from the mountains of Uganda to a research facility in the United States. Here, in the capable hands of science, he was taught English, or rather American Sign Language (ASL), by the brilliant but impotent, melancholic and alcoholic linguist Liedlich. And with what great success! Oh loves language, because he knows that the gorilla-as-he-is lives a barbarous life and is doomed to go extinct. Oh prides himself on the eloquence and speed with which he signs, or rather 'hand-dances' while the 'gobbledegook' of human speech remains an enigma to him. To his credit Oh is aware of the great responsibility part of language ability, the need to be truthful to the spirit of language, to do justice to the possibility of language to be communicate precisely and honestly. In his heart Oh wants to become a human; he even shaves himself. Unfortunately even his human friends, who taught him everything he knew, in the end regard him as a freak and not as a sentient being. At every point Oh is lied to, about the small things and about the large things of the human condition. In the end, when Liedlich's research project has gone to the dogs, Oh is remorselessly shipped to the San Diego Zoo. Like any other uncultivated beast.

Who is John Goelet? The internet does not seem to know this particular Goelet and it seems likely that it is a pseudonym for some hack author churning out a book every fortnight. It certainly reads like something written in a 72-hour stretch. The arch enemy of Liedlich is another linguist named Sandground, the proponent of the theory of Genesis Grammar. This is a thin disguise for Noam Chomsky's theory of generative grammar, the book even includes a nifty Chomskian tree-structure on page 7. Sandground resembles Chomsky in other ways as well. Liedlich's theory excludes on principle every non-human mind from language, as Chomsky's theory does. The talking ape Oh is of course defying this theory with his signing ability and this proves the driving force behind the novel's plot. Sandground wants to assassinate Oh. The most likely model for Oh is Koko, a gorilla trained by Francine Patterson at Stanford since the early 1970ties. Both the language achievements of Koko and the Chomskian contra-analysis could be found spelled out on the pages of popular science magazines at that time and I suspect that Goelet found his (or hers) inspiration there. But, though not able to link the other characters to real people, I cannot exclude the possibility that they actually are modeled from real life. Goelet might be the deep throat of ape-language research. This would hinge on the identification of Nancy Liedlich, Pansy Hacker and Sam Reech to existing persons close to animal language research. Nancy is the ambitious younger wife of Liedlich who spends most time with Koko. Pansy is the promiscuous niece of the director of the University hosting Liedlich's project and who has sexual fantasies about Macro, Oh's father, because he is so wild. Oh does not attract her because he is too human. Reech is the deaf-mute keeper of Oh who hates language because as a veteran from the Vietnam war he knows that language can only tell lies. Reech, who therefore has personal reasons to dislike Oh, introduces him to marijuana, causing Oh to screw up an important language test with dramatic results. Reech also, in the final pages, turns out to be a saboteur working for Sandground: poisoning Macro, attacking Pansy because she knows too much, causing havoc in an ape suit. The ape suit, incidentally, was a leftover of Liedlich's previous (failed) Edgar-project in which a chimpanzee, named Edgar, was raised by people wearing chimp-suits; consider the thought. At the end Reech tricks naive and goodhearted Oh into the hands of Sandground and his cronies, who then try to drown Oh by puncturing his boat. This attempt fails miserably, which shows that you should never trust even the simplest practical task to a theoretician. Reech gets paid for his service, which makes him the Judas of PrimatePoetics. At the end Liedlich, emotionally brought to his knees, claims on television that the entire Oh project is a hoax and the ape never mastered one word. I am not sure why and quite frankly I stopped caring at that point. The Human Ape is not all fun to read. The story is badly executed and moves from contrivance to contrivance, the language is dull, the inner life of Oh is dull and apart from a few pulpy details, this book is noteworthy only for its subject.

Many thanks for Nick to bringing this book to our table.

Pirahă Poetics
Observed: 01.Aug.2008

Jerome Rothenberg in a recent blog-entry writes that:

"Alongside the official ideologies that shoved European man to the apex of the human pyramid, there were some artists & thinkers who found ways of doing & knowing among other peoples as complex as any in Europe & often virtually erased from European consciousness. As the nineteenth century progressed, cultures described as “primitive” & “savage” – a stage below “barbarian” – were simultaneously the models for political & social experiments, religious & visionary revivals, & forms of art & poetry so different from European norms as to seem revolutionary from a later Western perspective. "

Which is spot on! And with this in mind it is interesting to dive into Pirahă, a Amazonian language that of all the languages known may be called primitive, it has for instance only 3 vowels and 8 consonants. Which is not to say that it is spoken by primitive people! Dan Everett, the most prominent Pirahă researcher, and others, think that Pirahă offers a smashing counter-example to universal grammer, and this in turn is of interest to PrimatePoetics: the Pirahăs are fully capable of language cognitively but they never developed it. Here is a PDF with a good acedemic interview with Everett.

Pirahă Doodle
Observed: 01.Aug.2008

The language of the Pirahă deserves a different post, here are some drawings (a cat and a tapir) made by these people freshly approaching pen and paper. The original paper I have not yet found.

Photographer to the Stars
Observed: 31.Jul.2008

Susan Kuklin was the in-home photographer to Nim Chimpsky. Above: Nim learning to sign "Nim."

Another assignment changed my professional life. Columbia University professor Herbert Terrace invited me to photograph his study that asked the question: can a chimpanzee learn language? Nim Chimpsky was one very smart chimpanzee. Using American sign language, Nim was able to "say" about 300 words. He lived in a mansion with a group of graduate students, and he traveled in a BMW to his very own classroom at the university. What a guy!
Before working with the chimp, Professor Terrace asked me to learn about fifty signs so that Nim wouldn't think I was a dummy.

Gabbing Fish
Observed: 31.Jul.2008

The human speech organs must come from somewhere. From fish some 400 million years ago to be precise. No further comment.

The Selk'nam
Observed: 27.Jul.2008

The Selk'nam also known as the Ona, lived in the Tierra del Fuego islands, in southern Chile and Argentina. They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be reached by Westerners, in the late 19th century, when the Chilean and Argentine governments began efforts to explore and integrate Tierra del Fuego (literally, the "land of fire" based on early European explorers observing Selk'nam smoke from their bonfires).

The pictures are scanned postcards and the additional info mentions E. Lucas Bridges, the only European to live amongst the Ona and learn their language and customs before they became extinct.

The evolution of Chinese Writing
Observed: 27.Jul.2008

"The evolution of Chinese writing" the inaugural lecture of Prof. G. Owen, date 1910, is a handsome little book with amusing little drawings. I don't think we have covered this style of character writing before.

The Jabberwocky
Observed: 24.Jul.2008

'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--'

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

When the Chinese wrote their best poetry the Scotch had perhaps hardly abandoned cannibalism!
Observed: 23.Jul.2008

You cannot but like the forward William John Bainbrigge Fletcher gave his 'Gems of Chinese Verse' . The date of publication for this is 1919, two years after Pound's Cathay. The Chinese is given along side the English.

It is not without diffidence that I bring before the public this little collection of verses. A translation can never equal the original any closer than paste can imitate the real gem : and this is particularly true of poetry, wherein the cream and essence of a language finds its highest and most ethereal expression.

The flower we can draw ; to its coloring art can approach : but who can delineate its scent ? And thus it is with these translations.

I have usually followed closely the original form of the poems, frequently keeping their meter, but fear that I have lost much of their nuances and fragile delicacy. But, indeed, the subject is a difficult one ; and I shall be repaid for the labor if the average foreign resident in China can glean from my siftings some further insight into the heart and feelings of the Chinese : if Chinese feel that their masterpieces, even in copies, find interest amongst their neighbors from far countries. Sympathy is the bond of human union.

The following translations are all from the' Chinese poetry of the T'ang Dynasty (618 to 905 A.D.): and it is not a little creditable to Chinese civilization that such refinement of thought should be current at a period when the ancestors of Europe were overrun by German barbarians, and the Scotch had perhaps hardly abandoned cannibalism. The poems are essentially sketches of Nature, written by true lovers of China's grand scenery, amid ruins of famous dynasties and the memories of immortal beauties. A strain of Buddhist mysticism adds in places its longing for the Unseen, the Unseeable. One finds in them the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and "the wind on the heath, brother." There is no clatter, noise, steam, or hurry the authors float in sailing sanpans, noiseless save for the rippling beneath the prow, through scenes peaceful and calm. The white clouds pouring like icing down the mountain sides : the gulls and herons gliding white against the sky ; the low boom of a temple gong in some tree-hidden glen; the quiet labors in the plains below; the village smoke curling upward in the temple of Nature as placidly as incense spirals about some Buddha's knees all combine here to form China's great ideal, great charm Peace. The very poems on the subject of war dwell only on its disgusts. There is no girding up of the loins to slay, no enthusiasm for destruction ; no great greed for wealth or possessions; no social distinctions of caste. There is just human life portrayed in terms of Nature. For in the Chinese language there are practically no abstract nouns, and for such the Chinese has borrowed terms from his one great Master Nature. Thus Love is typified by Spring with its wealth of bursting flowers and sweet stirrings of the sap; old age growing upon us by Autumn with its falling leaves and sere complexion. Such allegories I have marked with capital letters, that the reader's eye may catch them the sooner.

Let him, if he can, imitating the poets of old, float quietly down the broad waters of the Yangtze, through the scenery of the Min, or over the rapids of the Cassia River ; let him in some lone temple see the Moon rise over the tree-fringed hills ; let him, like Manfred, seek the Iris of the Waterfall ; or dream amid the relics of some fallen town then will he know the value of the T'ang poetry ; there will he find Peace.

The Chauvet Doodle
Observed: 22.Jul.2008

The Chauvet Caves are one of the most significant palaeolithic rock art sites. It was named after its discover Jean-Marie Chauvet, who discovered it only in 1994, together with Christian Hillaire and Eliette Brunel-Deschamps. The researchers found that the cave had been untouched for 20,000-30,000 years. Below you will find them recalling the experience of disturbing the ancient peace of this cave. Shown is a cervid overlain with scratch-marks, (flutings?) These marks are far from being disposed in an arbitrary fashion. Amongst them, one can distinguish two distinct representations: a right-hand profile of a mammoth, below which is a horse's head faced in the opposite direction.

Alone in the vastness, lit by the feeble beam of our lamps, we were seized by strange feeling. Everything was so beautiful, so fresh, almost too much so. Time was abolished, as if the tens of thousands of years that separated us from the producers of these paintings no longer existed. It seemed as if they had just created these masterpieces. Suddenly we felt like intruders. Deeply impressed, we were weighed down by the feeling that we are not alone; the artists' soul and spirit surrounded us. We thought we could feel their presence; we were disturbing them.

The Gibbon can keep a Beat.
Observed: 18.Jul.2008

Thomas Geissmann, "Gibbon Song and Human Music from an Evolutionary Perspective". (PDF-link) I think I mentioned this earlier but this fascinating bit I missed. The image is by Antonio Baratti.

There is an interesting report on pulse-keeping behavior in a female whitehanded gibbon (H. lar). This zoo animal was observed to follow the beats of a metronome with its short calls as long as the speed remained within the limits of 60 to 122 (the authors probably referred to beats per minute). Outside of these tolerance limits, the animal produced short notes at a rhythm of approximately 112. The gibbon's response was best at a metronome tempo of 60, and not when presented with its own normal speed of 112. The relevance of this observation is difficult to assess. The authors provided no sonagrams of the vocalizations, but the description may refer to a form of contact call rather than a song vocalization.

What fitness advantage is there to add a steady beat to a song vocalization? The beat may help larger social groups to participate in a song, to coordinate it. A well-coordinated song may be a more effective display than a cacophony of voices, and other social groups are less likely to attack or threaten well coordinated groups. In addition, introduction of a steady beat may make it easier to assess a group's cohesiveness and therefore its strength based on the group display.

The main message of this chapter is that loud calls in modern apes and music in modern humans are derived from a common ancestral form of loud call. If this interpretation is correct, early hominid music may also have served functions resembling those of ape loud calls. Loud calls are believed to serve a variety of functions, including territorial advertisement; intergroup intimidation and spacing; announcing the precise locality of specific individuals, food sources, or danger; and strengthening intragroup cohesion.

The most widely distributed (albeit not universal) function, and probably the most likely function of early hominid music, is to display and possibly reinforce the unity of a social group toward other groups. In humans, this function is still evident today whenever groups of people, be they united by political, religious, age, or other factors, define themselves by their music. National hymns, military music, battle songs of fans and cheerleaders encouraging their favorite sports teams, or the strict musical preferences of youth gangs may serve as examples of this phenomenon, whose origin may go back to the very beginning of human evolution.

Ape Drumming
Observed: 18.Jul.2008

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W. Tecumseh Fitch,"The Evolution of Music in Comparative
Perspective" (PDF-link) has the following on ape singing (they can't) and music making (they are funky drummers):

Bimanual percussion on resonant objects (drumming) is a common, easily observed behavior in African great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas). Behaviors analogous to drumming or other instrumental music are quite rare in animals, the most prominent other examples being palm cockatoos (which use sticks to drum on hollow trees), many species of woodpecker (who seek out resonant trees for display drumming) or various desert rodent species who “drum” with their hind feet on the ground. Great ape drumming has been the topic of surprisingly little research and has been largely overlooked in recent discussions of the evolution of music. In gorillas, drumming behavior is prototypically seen in the agonistic displays of adult male silverbacks, where a vocal “hoo” display is commonly combined with bimanual beating on the chest (and the inflated vocal air sacs, increasing the resonance of drumming). However, gorilla drumming is also observed in females and young, often in a contagious, playful, and unstereotyped fashion, and young gorillas beat on many surfaces (including their bellies, the bodies of other gorillas, the floor, and on hollow objects). This more playful and creative context is much more suggestively similar to much of human music. In chimpanzees and bonobos, drumming is typically observed on resonant structures in the environment (rather than their own bodies), often as part of the climax of the male dominance display. Wild chimpanzees seek out particular tree buttresses and in zoo contexts sometimes discover and drum upon resonant structures (e.g., hollow walls). Finally, bonobos have a variety of clapping and drumming displays, and enculturated bonobos, such as the language-trained Kanzi, produce and apparently enjoy drumming on resonant objects bimanually in a highly coordinated fashion.

Although the discovery of tool use by wild chimpanzees generated an uproar, dethroning humans from their sole status of “toolmakers,” the existence of drumming in apes has remained largely unnoticed by musicologists. It has long been speculated that vocal and instrumental music have independent origins and evolutionary histories, and the sharp difference between ape drumming (with its similarities to human instrumental music) and ape vocal capabilities (which show no evidence of the vocal learning and control required for song) provide strong support for this hypothesis. In my opinion, ape drumming represents a striking parallel to human percussive behavior, and its appearance in our closest living relatives (but not, apparently, among orangutans or other primates) strongly suggests the possibility of an overlooked and important homology for human instrumental music making. Unfortunately, there has been little empirical research on great ape drumming, and we are currently unable to answer even very basic questions that would help evaluate this hypothesis. In particular, despite very questionable statements in the popular literature, it remains unclear whether apes can entrain their drumming to a regular, externally given beat. Vocally, gibbons may be able to entrain their calling to a metronome, and bonobos may entrain their group calling, but here too the data are inadequate at present.

First Contact (Papua New Guinea)
Observed: 17.Jul.2008

The People of Oz meet a million people in Papua New Guinea in 1933. Was it really first contact? By what definition? To whom?

Funky Family Tree
Observed: 15.Jul.2008

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FROM

PaleoPop times Two
Observed: 14.Jul.2008

Two books about Palaeoanthropology both looking back on the same finds and both dated (late eighties, early nineties). John Reader's Missing Link uses the paper trail of science to describe the search for the missing link in the 18th and 19th century and how this search slowly changed in the search for the oldest human fossil in the 20th. It shows the way a science matures, the way personal biases inform a science and the way science overcomes its controversies. Extremely well organised, with a great wealth of detail and a joy to read. This is science writing at its best.

The first part of Lucy by Johansen and Edey overlaps Missing link and reads as if Donald C. Johanson (the discoverer of Lucy and a great many other fossils) dictated it to Time/Life writer Maitland Edey. The second part reads different and tells about the actual work of a palaeoanthropologist: the hassle of fieldwork, the importance of social skills and the talent for fund raising. As it moves deeper into the subject it gives great insight in the nitty gritty of science: the technology of fossil dating, the way super-specialized knowledge from one field informs another, the painstaking methodology of comparing teeth to determine their specie. This is again a model for all scientist writing a book for a lay person like me. The last part again seems to be dictated again and gives us a view on what palaeoanthropology does not know. And unlike Missing Link it has really well illustrated. Both books come recommended.

They Eavesdrop
Observed: 14.Jul.2008

The most surreal moment (the moment you nearly start to believe all this is insane) in this clip is when William Fields, head of bonobo research, states that he is careful discussing critical issues with an ape in earshot: "because you might never know" "they understand everything". Incidentally this also some of saddest looking footage found so far (ape walking on a leash, apes answering stupid question inside a glass experiment room.)

The Right Word [The Genius of Conley]
Observed: 14.Jul.2008

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Craig Conley is Crystalpunk

It is poetically said that when one raises a shell to the ear, one hears the ocean. Could it also be said that when one raises a shell to the eye, one reads poetry? In his masterpiece Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann holds a magnifying glass to the "indecipherable hieroglyphics on the shells of certain mussels" and conchs, questioning whether Mother Nature expresses herself in an organized, written code, and whether ornament can ultimately be distinguished from meaning. Mann describes the calligraphy on a shell that practically begs to be understood: "The characters, as if drawn with a brush, blended into purely decorative lines toward the edge, but over large sections of the curved surface their meticulous complexity gave every appearance of intending to communicate something." The shell's calligraphy bears a strong resemblance to "early Oriental scripts, much like the stroke of Old Aramaic." But how is one to get to the bottom of such symbols? Mann admits that "They elude our understanding and, it pains me to say, probably always will." Yet this elusion need not be a source of discouragement. Mann explains that ornament and meaning are like conjoined twins: "When I say they 'elude' us, that is really only the opposite of 'reveal,' for the idea that nature has painted this code, for which we lack the key, purely for ornament's sake on the shell of one of her creatures—no one can convince me of that. Ornament and meaning have always run side by side, and the ancient scripts served simultaneously for decoration and communication. Let no one tell me nothing is being communicated here! For the message to be inaccessible, and for one to immerse oneself in that contradiction—that also has its pleasure." In other words, the shell calligraphy communicates a profound mystery, pregnant with meaning and delightful to behold. Mann admits that, "were this really a written code, nature would surely have to command her own self-generated, organized language," adding that nature's fundamental illiteracy is "precisely what makes her eerie."

Mann's allusion to "early Oriental scripts" reminds us of the lost "shell" style of calligraphy discovered in Shang culture artifacts (14th - 11th centuries BCE). That ancient system of writing, more stylized than the early picture words, was brushed onto shells in vermilion ink. (For a full discussion of shell-style calligraphy, see Chinese Brushwork in Calligraphy and Painting by Kwo Da-Wei, 1990.)

In our collage above, we imagine King Triton conjuring the Platonic ideals of shell calligraphy.

Gilgamesh times Two
Observed: 11.Jul.2008

The Epic Gilgamesh, Penguin Classics, 1960, Translated by N.K. Sandars. 128p. Prose translation.

The Epic Gilgamesh, Penguin Classics, 1999, translated by Andrew George. 221p. Combines verse translations, with prose and images of the original tablets.

Of course I will translate it into Yerkish from the original cuneiform...

Wang Wei
Observed: 11.Jul.2008

Wang Wei translated by G.W. Robinson, it does include the famous one about the empty outdoors but, being English, it is not included in Weinbergers book.

Deer Park

Hills empty, no one to be seen
We only hear voices echoed-
With light coming back into the deep wood
The top of the green moss is lit again.

Chase Kanzi
Observed: 11.Jul.2008

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From the National Geographic March 1992, the Ape issue. A full page about Kanzi and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

KoKo keeps the Humans in a Cage
Observed: 11.Jul.2008

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From the National Geographic March 1992, the Ape issue.

Caption: "Confined by commitment, Francine Patterson and Ron Cohn rarely leave Koko and Michael, lowland gorilla's in a 19-year language study. The apes have learned hundreds of gestures of American Sign Language. The sale of Koko dolls helps raise funds to move the apes from California to Maui, closer in climate to their native habitat."

The Noisiest of Monkeys
Observed: 10.Jul.2008

Charles Darwin about our friend the funky gibbon in Descent of Man (1871). Notice the way it ends with a note about singing mice. Here surely darwin was wrong because they were never heard of again. Also: we now know that a gibbon is not a monkey.

CH 18: The voice of the adult male gorilla is tremendous, and he is furnished with a laryngeal sack, as is the adult male orang. The gibbons rank among the noisiest of monkeys, and the Sumatra species (Hylobates syndactylus) is also furnished with an air sack; but Mr. Blyth, who has had opportunities for observation, does not believe that the male is noisier than the female. Hence, these latter monkeys probably use their voices as a mutual call; and this is certainly the case with some quadrupeds, for instance the beaver. Another gibbon, the H. agilis, is remarkable, from having the power of giving a complete and correct octave of musical notes, which we may reasonably suspect serves as a sexual charm; but I shall have to recur to this subject in the next chapter. The vocal organs of the American Mycetes caraya are one-third larger in the male than in the female, and are wonderfully powerful. These monkeys in warm weather make the forests resound at morning and evening with their overwhelming voices. The males begin the dreadful concert, and often continue it during many hours, the females sometimes joining in with their less powerful voices. An excellent observer, Rengger, could not perceive that they were excited to begin by any special cause; he thinks that, like many birds, they delight in their own music, and try to excel each other. Whether most of the foregoing monkeys have acquired their powerful voices in order to beat their rivals and charm the females- or whether the vocal organs have been strengthened and enlarged through the inherited effects of long-continued use without any particular good being thus gained- I will not pretend to say; but the former view, at least in the case of the Hylobates agilis, seems the most probable.


CH 19: In the class of mammals, with which we are here more particularly concerned, the males of almost all the species use their voices during the breeding-season much more than at any other time; and some are absolutely mute excepting at this season. With other species both sexes, or only the females, use their voices as a love-call. Considering these facts, and that the vocal organs of some quadrupeds are much more largely developed in the male than in the female, either permanently or temporarily during the breeding-season; and considering that in most of the lower classes the sounds produced by the males, serve not only to call but to excite or allure the female, it is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the females. The American Mycetes caraya perhaps forms an exception, as does the Hylobates agilis, an ape allied to man. This gibbon has an extremely loud but musical voice. Mr. Waterhouse states, "It appeared to me that in ascending and descending the scale, the intervals were always exactly half-tones; and I am sure that the highest note was the exact octave to the lowest. The quality of the notes is very musical; and I do not doubt that a good violinist would be able to give a correct idea of the gibbon's composition, excepting as regards its loudness." Mr. Waterhouse then gives the notes. Professor Owen, who is a musician, confirms the foregoing statement, and remarks, though erroneously, that this gibbon "alone of brute mammals may be said to sing." It appears to be much excited after its performance. Unfortunately, its habits have never been closely observed in a state of nature; but from the analogy of other animals, it is probable that it uses its musical powers more especially during the season of courtship.

This gibbon is not the only species in the genus which sings, for my son, Francis Darwin, attentively listened in the Zoological Gardens to H. leuciscus whilst singing a cadence of three notes, in true musical intervals and with a clear musical tone. It is a more surprising fact that certain rodents utter musical sounds. Singing mice have often been mentioned and exhibited, but imposture has commonly been suspected. We have, however, at last a clear account by a well-known observer, the Rev. S. Lockwood, of the musical powers of an American species, the Hesperomys cognatus, belonging to a genus distinct from that of the English mouse. This little animal was kept in confinement, and the performance was repeatedly heard. In one of the two chief songs, "the last bar would frequently be prolonged to two or three; and she would sometimes change from C sharp and D, to C natural and D, then warble on these two notes awhile, and wind up with a quick chirp on C sharp and D. The distinctness between the semitones was very marked, and easily appreciable to a good ear." Mr. Lockwood gives both songs in musical notation; and adds that though this little mouse "had no ear for time, yet she would keep to the key of B (two flats) and strictly in a major key." ... "Her soft clear voice falls an octave with all the precision possible; then at the wind up, it rises again into a very quick trill on C sharp and D."

Chimpanzee to the Beat
Observed: 09.Jul.2008

Another PrimatePoetic classic. "Chimpanzee Intelligence and its Vocal Expressions" by Robert M. Yerkes and Blance W. Learned. Yerkish is names after this man, the approach is one of a kind. The bookpages below were inverted to enhance readibility.

The records of vocal expressions presented in this volume were made under peculiarly advantageous conditions since the animals, although under control, were given a large degree of freedom and were subjected to varied conditions of observation. The study of vocal reactions, although far from exhaustive, offered such interesting materials that it was decided to publish immediately. No review or discussion of other reports on voice or speech in the young chimpanzee is given because nothing similar to these descriptions in musical notation has been discovered.

The method used in recording the utterances presupposes considerable training and experience in aural exercise and is, perhaps best compared with the taking of dictation. The element of memory came into the work occasionally. Invariably the utterances were recorded iminediately after they were heard. In addition to description of sound, the situation in which it occurred was carefully recorded. No attempt was made to discover the significance of sounds until the observational task had been completed and effort begun systematically to arrange observations. It then appeared that classification by type of situation seemed both natural and useful. The records consequently were arranged in four principal groups which may be described briefly thus: Vocalization while waiting for food; while eating; when in company with persons; and when the two chimpanzees were together.

To supplement the observation of Chim and Panzee, the principal sounds made by the adult chimpanzees at the New York Zoological Park were noted. These are reported briefly for comparison with the vocalizations of the young animals.

The description assumes that the reader is familiar with simple musical notation, yet one who knows only the most common signs, such as the dynamic marks, the staccato and legato symbols, and the rhythmic value of notes and rests, can appreciate most of what is recorded. Bar-lines indicate pauses of varying length.

As the observations covered a period of several weeks, a continuous story was impracticable. The episodes, however, are in general consecutive, especially those dealing with food, and they have been selected from an abundance of records as either typical or significant because of the circumstances.

Various minor difficulties appeared in connection with descriptive nomenclature. Chim's "whine," for example, is not necessarily complaining. Yet the term "whine" seemed best to describe these unvocalized tones.

Although the young chimpanzee uses significant sounds in considerable number and variety, it does not, in the ordinary and proper meaning of the term, speak. Consequently there is no chimpanzee language, although there certainly is a useful substitute which might readily be developed or transformed into a true language if the animals could be induced to imitate sounds persistently.

goek, goek, goek, goek, goek ha ha ha ha haaaaa
Observed: 09.Jul.2008

Gibbon to human. From "Evidence as to man's place in nature" (1863) by Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895:

All observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice possessed by these animals. According to the writer whom I have just cited [Dr. Salomon Miller], in one of them, the Siamang," the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds 'goek, goek, goek, goek, goek ha ha ha ha haaaaa', and may be easily heard at a distance of half a league." While the cry is being uttered, the great membranous bag under the throat which communicates with the organ of voice, the so-called " laryngeal sac," becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the creature relapses into silence.

M. Duvaucel, likewise, affirms that the cry of the Siamang may be heard for miles - making the woods ring again. So Mr. Martin describes the cry of the agile Gibbon as "over-powering and deafening" in a room, and " from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." Mr. "Waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, " The Gibbon's voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer I ever heard." And yet it is to be recollected that this animal is not half the height of, and far less bulky in proportion than, a man.

The Natural History of the Man-Like Ape
Observed: 09.Jul.2008

The first picture of apes in the west. From "Evidence as to man's place in nature" (1863) by Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895:

I have not met with any notice of one of these Manlike Apes of earlier date than that contained in Pigafetta's " Description of the kingdom of Congo," drawn up from the notes of a Portuguese sailor, Eduardo Lopez, and published in 1598. The tenth chapter of this work is entitled "De Animalibus quae in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief passage to the effect that " in the Songan country, on the banks of the Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures." As this might apply to almost any kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not the brothers De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their eleventh "Argumentum," to figure two of these "Simiae magnatum delicise." So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the woodcut, and it will be observed that they are tail-less, long-armed, and large-eared ; and about the size of Chimpanzees. It may be that these apes are as much figments of the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, twolegged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate ; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman.

The first edition of that most amusing old book, "Purchas his Pilgrimage," was published in 1613, and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms " Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of Saint Paul, and with him Avent farre into the countrey of Angola ; "and again, "my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived in the kingdom of Congo many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woods." From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas was amazed to hear " of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape. They lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees."

This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work "Purchas his Pilgrimes," published in 1625, by the same author which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. The chapter is entitled, " The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adioning regions neere eighteene yeeres." And the sixth section of this chapter is headed "Of the Provinces of Bongo, Calongo, Mayombe, Manikesocke, Motimbas : of the Ape Monster Pongo, their hunting : Idolatries ; and divers other obser- vations."

"He differeth not from a man but in his legs ; for they have no calfe. Hee goeth alwaies upon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped in the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the ground. They sleepe in the trees, and build shelters for the raine. They feed upon fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eate no kind of flesh. They cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. The people of the countrie, when they travaile in the woods, make fires where they sleepe in the night ; and in the morning when they are gone, the Pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out ; for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. They goe many together, and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. Many times they fall upon the elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beated them with their clubbed fists, and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring away from them. Those Pongoes are never taken alive because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them ; but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrowes.

Translating for Apes, a Proof of Concept
Observed: 08.Jul.2008

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In order to communicate with their apes the Great Ape Trust in Ohio uses the so-called Yerkish system of symbols (lexigrams). The first draft, including 120 lexigrams was published by Ernst von Glaserfeld in 1977. Since then the vocabulary has grown to 384 symbols laid out on three panels. They are available from the Great Ape Trust’s website (1) (2) (3) . Actual use of these lexigrams is, as far as I can tell, poorly documented. There appears to be guide nor dictionary. The tables themselves show incremental additions. While glaserfeld’s lexigrams are all composed of a limited set of lines, cubes and other components (with a great looking set of utopian traffic signs as a result). Later lexigrams show a whole range of designs: Kanji’s, English words and representational and freehand sketches. A tally reveals that 40 signs are used for food (noodles, jello, taco, burrito), 8 are used for locations inside the primate centre (play room, Sue’s office), 15 are used for names of staff and primates (Panbanisha, Liz) and 9 are unreadable or of (to me) incomprehensible meaning. I can imagine that a different tally (on an other day or by someone else) might yield somewhat different results. The state of Yerkish, like all languages, is one of confusion; the real question is, can we use the remainder of 313 lexigrams to translate human literature into Yerkish?

To acquaint myself with the lexigrams, and to deliver a proof of concept of one of the great aims of PrimatePoetics, I have translated a small nature poem by the 8th century Chinese poet Wang Wei into lexigrams. This particular poem has a long and well documented history of translations (see Weinberger’s ‘19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei’ ) but the most important reasons for choosing it are practical. It is short, does not use any ‘difficult’ words and the experience described might be close enough to the worldview of a bonobo or chimpanzee to make sense. Or do you think ‘The Waste Land’ would have been a better choice? Because there is no useable set of lexigrams available I have endeavoured to recreate them. A proper designer would surely do a better job but I trust an ape or human familiar already with them would recognize them.

Here is the literal translation from the Chinese characters as given by Weinberger:

Empty mountain/Hill (negative) to see person/people

But to hear person/people words/conversation sound/to echo

To return brighness/shadow to enter deep forest

To return/again to shine/to reflect green/blue/black moss/lichen above/on(top of)/top


Above is my Yerkish version with the literal rendition in English underneath:


Quiet hilltop, no thing there

Surpise talk

Then light, into outdoors

Then, mirror green clover on top

The above is not offered as the final version but as a first jibe. Nobody will hold it against Yerkish that it lacks a word for ‘moss’ let alone ‘lichen’, but it might come as a surprise that apes do no know the word for forest. The substitutes used (cloven, outdoors) are the best alternatives I could think of. The translation of ‘reflect’ with the lexigram for ‘mirror’ seems reasonable but it success depends on whether an ape reading this would understand that it does not refer to the object but to a property of the object. The first two lines are more or less understandable. The last two lines are rather unclear. The last sentence in particular is a mess. Happily enough the available translations do not agree on the meaning either.

All things considered this effort had satisfied me enough to start working on the great work of PrimatePoetics: the translation of Gilgamesh. The Sumerian story, the oldest piece of literature we have, about the God and the ape becoming human together.

From the Gibbon to the Bushman in One Straight Line
Observed: 07.Jul.2008

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The weirdness PrimatePoetics leads me to... Music000001, wild speculations about the origin of music. The above map traces back the music of the world to primate, most notably gibbon, duetting. As far as I can say this diagram mixes up a few million years and two continents but it is great fun in a 19th century kind a way!

Summery Books Too Far Out For Johnny Depp
Observed: 04.Jul.2008

Your average 'alternative' 'underground' 'cult' summer booklist will name conservative corkers like William Gibson, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Hubert S. Selby or Brett Easton Ellis. A 'real' underground list might add snotty punk-fashionistas like Stewart Home or Henry Rollins. But if you have read one book by Home you have read them all, his depth is as short as his hair, and the original line-up of Black Flag was superior to the one with our Macho Man Rollins. Ask yourself, does a book that stars Johnny Depp or Jack Nicholson when turned into celluloid really deserve to be called 'cult'? No of course not. Can a novel published by a commercial publisher and reprinted as a Penguin pocket be truly underground? Only rarely.

Here is a list of books I can wholeheartedly recommend you to dive into this summer. They are all completely bonkers and they all start from first principles. The list has only eight titles but each of these books will stay with you for longer than your holiday sweetheart. Only two of them are fiction and this is no coincidence. Non-fiction is often less restrained and therefore more outrageous than the most 'daring' fiction. One can imagine only a few things, one can belief a whole lot more.


The White Goddess - Robert Graves

Graves' grammar of poetic myth works at so many levels at the same time that I can't keep track of them all. This is not a book, this is a neurosis you can borrow. Druidic power to the nerds.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes

Never mind the bulky title. The theory of Jaynes seems preposterous at first: before man was conscious he would not stop and think when making a decision, instead he would literally hear a voice telling him what to do. When life became too complicated this faculty broke down, but not in an instant. Religion is a by-product of this neuro-catastrophe. Jaynes however knows to make use of historic material in such a way that in the course of his argument he becomes plausible! If you don't trust me on this, trust Daniel Dennett.

The Ghost of Chance - William S. Burroughs

Burroughs was a great admirer of Jaynes and here he uses the bicameral image of two dividing brain spheres as a metaphor for the divide between peaceful lemur on Madagascar and the war-mongering chimpanzee on the African mainland as a reminder that human evolution could have taken a better turn.

Ancient Evenings - Norman Mailer

This book, the only lengthy novel in this list, I first looked up because Burroughs referenced it as his inspiration for 'The Western Lands'. When I noticed it starts with my favourite Yeats quote I knew I needed to read this. Even though Burroughs could never have written it like this, at times it is more Burroughs then Burroughs himself. It is the autobiography of a Ka, the lowliest soul of the seven souls of the ancient Egyptians, which makes for unusual reading. Especially because Mailer uses an uncensored version of Egyptian mythology which, to put it mildly, differs from the version you get of it from the National Geographic. The Egyptians practised sex magic with the stamina of a bonobo. Mailer makes Aleister Crowley look like a prudish schoolboy. This is the boldest attempt to recreate a radically different mind from ours that I know of, and does so successfully. The novel as the creation of an artificial consciousness. At the same time it doubles as an All American Novel (yuk).

The Mind in the Cave - David Lewis-Williams

Palaeolithic Psychedelia anyone? Close your eyes, place a finger on both of your eyelids and press gently. What you see is the origin of all art, you only need to look at rock-art with a guide like Lewis-Williams to see it.

The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry - Ernest Fennolosa

Edited by Ezra Pound, the most spectacular misunderstanding of language ever to be reprinted. It reads excellent and it gives us a language (Chinoiserie-Chinese) that does not exist in this world but should exist in a better world.

Vehicles - Valentino Braitenberg

I have read so much stuff relating to Cybernetics, AI, emergent systems and self-organization that I am totally saturated with it. The material itself is exciting but the professional obligation of science to be dull gets on my nerves. But this is an exception, wonderfully written and illustrated with funky little drawings. Vehicles is a tiny book but its size is deceptive. This introduction to synthetic psychology describes a number of simple responsive vehicles that with each new feature became aware of the world around them a good deal more. Each new vehicle is a new mind.

The Coleridge Notebooks

Charles Lamb said he loved to lend his books to ‘Poet, Metaphysician, Bard’ Coleridge because he would return them with annotations more interesting then the book itself. Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a mind that was free, discursive, unruly and truly original. His notebooks record the flow of his thoughts as if you are sitting next to him. Every now and then I dip into this and always come out with some gem I never saw before. Get the Seamus Perry edition of this. Get a copy of the Road to Xanadu by Livingstone-Lowes for extra enjoyment.

Old Yerkish Setup
Observed: 04.Jul.2008

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Sherman and Austin's low tech keyboard.

Lord Monboddo, the Urang-Utang man
Observed: 04.Jul.2008

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714 - 1799) was many things. In his linguistic analysis, he is probably the first person to associate language skills evolving from primates and continuing to evolve in primitive man. He writes specifically about how the language capability has altered over time in the form not only of skills but physical form of the sound producing organs (mouth, vocal cords, tongue, throat), suggesting he had formed the concept of evolutionary adaptive change.

I still maintain, that his [the orang-utan] being possessed of the capacity of acquiring it [language], by having both the human intelligence and the organs of pronunciation, joined to the dispositions and affections of his mind, mild, gentle, and humane, is sufficient to denominate him a man.

We talked of the Ouran-Outang, and of Lord Monboddo’s thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr. Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr. Crosbie said, that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. ‘But, Sir, it is as possible that the Ouran-Outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not contest the point. I should have thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; yet he exists.’

Prehistoric Symbol Communication
Observed: 03.Jul.2008

From Marija Alseikaitë Gimbutas' The Living Goddess:

Humans have been communicating by means of symbols for a very long time. Abstract signs emerge in the Lower Paleolithic Acheulian and Mousterian periods (from circa 30o.000 to 10.000 B.C.), long before the appearance of the extraordinary Upper Paleolithic art (from circa 35.000 to 10.000 B.C.). The familiar Upper Paleolithic images depict exquisite animals painted or etched on cave walls. They were also craved on stone or bone tools and made into figurines. But very few people noticed the manifold abstract signs that often accompany the animals. These marks include V's, Y's, M's P's, dots, eggs, seeds, 'arrows' ( -> ), two, three, or more lines, branching configurations, and squares divided into four or more sections. Some of the abstract signs known from the Acheulian era, such as V, M and parallel lines (engraved on the rib from Pech de L'aze, France, circa 300.000 years B.C.), continued through the Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

A Good Face needs a Spiral
Observed: 02.Jul.2008

Humbaba was a forest giant featured in Gilgamesh, his face is made with the same spirals (a labyrinth) like the Maori still portray people. The Humbaba mask is old: 7th century BC, it is in the British Museum.

Kadiwéu Property Marks
Observed: 02.Jul.2008

Cochabamba Hotel left some great additional info about the Mbayá at MyMyspace page:

The Kadiwéu (Mbayá-Guaykuru) used insignia or property marks, printed in fire or painted in their objects and animals, especially in cattle bovine and horses. some marks are still used nowadays, but most of them where substituted with the animals owners name’s initials.

At some point, these marks were combined forming a proto-alphabet incipiently used by the Kadiwéu people. Despite of it, the contact of the Kadiwéu culture with the Official Brazilian society discontinued this approach of the Kadiwéu culture, leaving space to the colonial alphabet.

(Cochabamba Hotel's english is bad english and we are proud of this...)

The Caduveo
Observed: 01.Jul.2008

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The Caduveo (or the Mbayá) are described in Levi-Strauss' Tristes Tropique. Their great achievement in art is their bodypaint and Levi-Strauss collected a fair number of their wonderful asymmetric patterns by getting them pencilled on paper. No mean feat given that the tribesmen did not use pen and paper themselves. Levi-Strauss puts great stress on the fact that we can't assume these patterns to be ancient. In fact he clearly states that they may change all the time and might actually be partly inspired by the carvings they saw on the ships of the first European invaders. Which is not to deny the uniqueness of their art but a reminder that a culture is always in flux.

The Luzhin Defense
Observed: 01.Jul.2008

The light hearted tale of chess madness. Translated from the Russian with a dictionary in hand, Nabokov always choosing the word he did not know. English is not my first language and I presume that to native speakers this book reads ever stranger than it does to me. What inimitable language! What a great topic! I am feeling it too! I had this for a while but only know I have read it.

Lateral God Transfer
Observed: 01.Jul.2008

Robert Graves' 'The Greek Myths' gives encyclopaedic resume of the deeds and fates of Greek Gods, and (what has my interest) an explanation of what it all means and where it all comes from. Highly condensed information that has you at all times wonder about where the hell Graves got it from. Graves is always sacrilegious and this book is no exception, ancient Greek culture is explained as a continuum that includes a variety of cultures contemporary to their own and cultures already ancient at that time.

How Non-Retinal Art was Defeated by the Crystal
Observed: 30.Jun.2008

(In correspondence with Jeremy Millar, who has created a number of art pieces that deal with Duchamp and chess, I mentioned my theory of how chess went through a period of rationalization and that Duchamp was crushed under its feet. Now I have tried to write down what I mean. It is rather longish (if I had more time I would have written you a smaller letter) and there is lot more I could write and there is also a lot I could edit but I have been working on this for too long already. When I write about chess I want to play chess, when I play chess everything else suffers. Like any addict I have no control over my consumption. My choice is between total rejection and total commitment, between life and death. One day, if the time is right, I hope to return to this.)

[image: in chess a straight line is not the shortest route]

Here are two possible views on the life of Marcel Duchamp. 1) He was one of the most original and most influential artists of the 20th century who devoted too much of his energy and brilliance to chess. 2) He was a reasonably talented chess player who could have achieved better ranking had he not wasted so much of his games by insisting to play for beauty above all else. To art history the latter option will be heresy but to everyone who has felt the obsessive power of chess will not exclude it out of hand. Chess is a disease, a mind invader, a neurological parasite: when Duchamp said he was a victim of chess he was not being melodramatic.

Emanuel Lasker, World champion between 1894 and 1921, said about Duchamp's style that he always played the most beautiful move instead of the best move. Lasker, a philosopher, a gamer (he played go, cards and invented the connection game Lasca), a friend of Albert Einstein, was not a dull man; his chess writing has lost nothing of their liveliness. But for him there was no difference between the two, the best move was also the most beautiful move. It is the philosophy of a man who played to win. In chess one can play with a certain intuitive lightness of touch that aims at the creation of novel and interesting positions rather than safe and trusted ones. All chess players want to win, Duchamp's complication was that he wanted to win with grace, alas, in chess as everywhere else, the classics are classics for a reason and being different comes at a price.

Duchamp approached chess as another medium he could use to express his mind, but chess does not allow for artistic creativity in this sense. The only thing chess can express is chess. Chess is not played, chess plays it self by making zombies of everyone who comes near it for too long. Chess needs people to generate all possible positions it can legally assume and once this has been achieved the game (and quite possibly the universe with it) will implode into nothingness. The number of all possible games is bigger than the number of atoms in the known universe, but chess, unlike nature, does have meaning, and therefore purpose. The philosophical term for meaning in chess is VICTORY, spelled with The V of Vanity, the I of Idiocy, the C of Compulsive, the T of Terrified, the O of Obsessive, the R of Repugnancy and the Y of Mathematics Gone Bad. The cunning symmetrical argument developed in 'Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled', Duchamp's 1932 end-game study co-authored with Vitaly Halberstadt, might be a collectable aside in Duchamp's art legacy, it does not bring you victory. In chess this book has the same status as the Rice Gambit or the matches between Napoleon and the Turk: that of an amusing but insignificant curiosity. In fact, Duchamp the chess player is himself a leftover pawn, an anomaly, a relic of an earlier age. Duchamp may have changed the game of art for good, in chess he was just another woodpusher. To understand why this is so one has to look at the way chess has developed from a micro-world in chaos into an agent of order.

Like the laws of psychics can only partially explain the forms of biology, the laws of chess can't be explained by the rules. We take it for granted that chess is a rational game, that it has general principles, that each move, from the first move to the last move, is connected to all moves that follow in one long chain of events. The astonishing fact is how relatively late this was discovered to be the case. For most of its history chess was a a kind of alchemy, a free-for-all happy-go-lucky affair. Chess games were unpredictable and showy rather than solid and reliable, games progressed from one transmutation to the next without any sign of being connected. The generally accepted credo was to "get your pieces out". The first moves were used to bring all the major pieces into a position where they could freely attack and form alliances. In certain times and at certain places this disregard for the opening went so far that the first ten moves or so were done by both players at the same time. Once the pieces were out, those obstacles called pawns moved out of the way, the game could begin. Each player would look for opportunities to attack by creating combinations that would force your opponent in a position where he or she lost pieces or was made otherwise vulnerable. If possible a combination should have you sacrifice at least your Queen before resulting in an inescapable checkmate. Player were playing to outwit the opponent by small dashes that went from brainwave to brainwave. When a plan failed they would just come up with another one for as long as there were pieces to play with. From this period dates the idea of chess as an art, as an experiment in the sculpture of force fields and interlocking patterns. But this pristine and naive charm was to be forever discarded as inefficient by one man. Wilhelm Steinitz had already become world-champion by playing in the old style, at the Vienna tournament of 1873 he displayed his new principles that would push chess out of the domain of magic and into the orderly world of science.

To be fair, chess had theory, history and openings with pedigree before Steinitz came along, but his theory offered a power of explanation, a level of coherence, that was unthinkably before him. Steinitz was the first to assume that there should be a right move for every move. That from the first move onwards games should unravel by applying general principles, every move should have a function. This insistence on the fact that games are not individual incidents, or accidents, but are all connected by the collective effort of the chess community to find absolute perfection, turned chess into a game of strategy. Steinitz application of long term planning, of accumulating small benefits into decisive ones, turned the wizards of combinatorics into schoolboys. Emanual Lasker in his 1947 'Manual of Chess' describes the impact of Steinitz' method as a conceptual leap beyond the comprehension of his peers. To some, unable to explain what came over them, it seemed like a form of foul play:

"How novel, how surprising, how opposed to every sentiment of his time the conceptions of Steinitz must have been becomes manifest when in play over the games of the greatest match won by him, the one against Zukertort. Zukertort relied on combinations, and in that field he was a discoverer, a creative genius. For all that, in the majority of the games of the match, though he had lost none of his faculty, he was unable to make use of it, the positions yielding no result to his passionate search for combinations. Steinitz seemed to have the mysterious capacity for divining combinations before they were realizable on the board, to encourage combinations favourable to himself and to forestall those which were unfavourable. Thus Zukertort, the great discoverer, searched in vain, whereas Steinitz, rather a poor hand at combinations, was able to foresee them. Zukertort could not understand how Steinitz was able to prevent combinations nor how he could win by such a method, since up to that time - this seemed to Zukertort indisputable - games, fairly won, had been won by fine combinations. Zukertort tried for four years to solve this riddle, but he never approached its solution by even one step, and he lost the mastery that he possessed in the bargain. He died a comparatively young man."

Maori Signatures
Observed: 27.Jun.2008

Signatures inscribed by the Maori Chiefs in New Zealand on the Treaty of W/Vaita(n)gi, which was made with the English in 1840. When the English signed the Treaty with the New Zealand chiefs, they were astonished to see the chiefs draw a whole series of signs, which were clearly symbolic, instead of a signature. This document and the tablets of the Easter Islanders are the only examples of writing from all of Oceania! And so much more.