The Anxiety Graphs
The Gnostics believed the world was a mistake and that "salvation" was to make sense of the world by rationalizing it. When things fall apart we either embrace the dissipation and orgy of chaos or search for a schema that will organize the mess and horror. By adopting the same rhetoric that simplifies culture through amplification, these graphs present a picture of unification and provide a home for free-floating anxiety.
They accomplish this state by joining thought and feeling along sets of reputedly indisputable axes. By placing the elusive elements of our psyche in mathematical relation to dependent conditions or impulses, the culture of anxiety suddenly becomes manageable and predictable because when Cartesian co-ordinates are applied to the ineffable forces of human beings, a mathematical function transforms into a comfort function. When you locate your position on the graph, you also locate where you are in time and by following the trajectory of the graph, you can predict your future. Conversely, if you work backward along the curve of a graph, you have access to a past that is now closed.
The graphs are both the rationalization and the visualization of states that resist measurement but despite their soothing manifestation, resolution takes place just outside the points of the graph.Besides the PowerPoint
graphs page, Lukelab also hosts several interactive java applets such as
The Spiral of Shame.Artist's Bio:"Rev. Luke Murphy has used computers to assist and produce his work for the past seven years. This project and the many charts he has made are the manifestation of a graphing project started on in 1994 when he first graphed the relation of Suffering to Pain. He has produced several collections of these works that chart the impossible quantification and monetization of elements of the psyche and spirit. Parallel to this work, Rev. Murphy has also shown computer-generated drawings and projections based on Gnostic and Masonic writings. Much of his painting is also developed digitally. His most recent exhibit of landscapes was the result of repeated re-processing of “template” images from earlier landscape paintings. These evocative works are first resolved digitally and then manifested in concise black and white oil paint, resulting in a digital rendering of emotionally-charged and expressionistic painting."Rev. Luke Murphy's website
