Map of BowLand: A ROSE IS A ROSE IS NOT A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A GLASS ONION

Map of BowLand

28" X 31" X 9"

acrylic and paint marker on inkjet canvas print 
on custom plaster support

with 3.5" floppy, dispenser cap, pipe cleaner, steel globe, 
bamboo, analog playback parts and canvas

benjamin harubin 2014

People look at a rose and think
"a rose, how pretty i think i'll paint that"

And then there are those that look at the rose
as an interaction of visible photons with a surface,
a complex cloud of many frequencies,
refracted by a lens
and projected upside down in a bowl of living neurons.

There's also the act of painting that rose on a canvas:
the muscular movement abstracted,
a complex geometry of shapes and curves,
and of literally (literarily?) painting that rose (red).

And then others can consider the botanical function of a rose,
as a sex organ
(pimpin' bees,  making the money honey),
part of a tangled bank
of mutually dependent interconnections,
as part of a mating ritual of humans, (a nuptial gift).

And then, there's all of the myriad historical and personal associations,
(higher order cerebral cortex clusters).

And then there's those who see the rose
as a metaphor-
for the dualistic nature of afferent neurons
(pleasure and pain, baby bitch).

And if you had enough electrodes inserted into individual neurons
throughout the living brain of a subject shown a rose,
then the idea that you can know a rose by any name is seen to be silly.
Better at least maybe could say a number of qubits,
that in superposition,
also represents a portrait of Abraham Lincoln,
a classic Singer 66
and protein information ports floating in a cell membrane
simultaneously and shit on an operating table.

with floaters.






the title is in part a part of a series of perfectly good Picasso quotes, trashed.







here you can see the arc of the canvas
(click for bigness):