2026.10.04
detail of 2 = odd, Dick
Stephen Lauf DEFINE VIEW AREA FD: OPERATION COMPLETE 1984.06.03
multiverse meaning
A multiverse is a hypothetical collection of multiple, separate universes that together comprise everything that exists, including all space, time, matter, and physical laws.
main theories
Quantum Many-Worlds: Every time a quantum event or decision has multiple possible outcomes, reality branches into separate, coexisting universes to realize every possibility.
Cosmic Inflation (Bubble Universes): Rapid expansion in the early universe causes different regions of space to stop inflating at different times, creating isolated bubble universes with potentially unique physical laws.
give an example of a quantum measurement having multiple outcomes
A standard example of a quantum measurement with multiple outcomes is measuring the spin-1/2 state of an electron along a specific axis (like the z-axis), which yields one of two possible outcomes: spin-up or spin-down.
Probability: The chance of getting either spin-up or spin-down depends on the exact initial state of the electron before the measurement.
Collapse: While the pre-measurement state allows for multiple potential results, the act of measuring yields only one definite outcome, causing the quantum wave function to collapse into that specific state.
is there any relationship between the work of Marcel Duchamp and the multiverse?
While Marcel Duchamp’s work predates the modern pop-culture concept of the "multiverse" and modern cosmological many-worlds theories, his artistic philosophy shares deep conceptual parallels with multidimensionality, parallel realities, and infinite branching systems.
The Fourth Dimension and Alternative Spaces
Higher Dimensions: Duchamp was deeply obsessed with non-Euclidean geometry and the concept of the fourth dimension (influenced by mathematicians like Henri Poincaré and Élie Jouffret).
The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even): Duchamp used higher-dimensional projection as a framework to separate and conceptualize unseen, simultaneous realms--dividing the physical space of the Bride above and the Bachelors below into separate dimensional states that interact invisibly.
The Logic of Chess and Branching Possibilities
Infinite Variations: As an avid, high-level chess player and theoretician, Duchamp viewed chess as a mental landscape where a single starting board spawns an infinite number of parallel, potential game-histories and divergent futures depending on choices made.
Alternate Realities: Much like the branching timelines of a multiverse, a game of chess contains countless unplayed, latent realities existing simultaneously in the mind of the player.
Conceptual Loops and Mirrors
Non-Linear Geometries: Duchamp's later works and notes explored topological forms like Möbius strips, Klein bottles, and chirality (left-and-right handed asymmetries), which fold space onto itself and suggest continuous, multi-layered realities.
Transcendence of Space-Time: Duchamp famously stated that art was the only activity enabling humans to "move beyond the animal stage because art opens onto regions dominated by neither time nor space"--effectively pointing toward a conceptual realm outside our standard physical universe.
While he wasn't plotting quantum mechanics or sci-fi alternate universes, Duchamp's systematic subversion of reality, logic, and standard three-dimensional space laid a philosophical groundwork that resonates strongly with how we think about parallel dimensions today.
2025.10.04
Fox Chase Farm
 
2024.10.04
Bucks County Community College Newtown Campus
youngest and oldest, sisters
2023.10.04
From The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project:
4 October 2023 Wednesday
I never imagined the production of a project as bountiful as this one. Straight away from its start, for example, the title itself--The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project--heralds the naissance of two historical circumstances: Piranesi's final project (1778) and the discovery of Piranesi's final project (2022). The title also immediately manifests a very high degree of certainty and aplomb, which was solidified, moreover, within the first twelve hours of its existence by a brand new discovery of yet a third Piranesi plan existing in two, heretofore unnoticed, different printed versions. And the discoveries by no means ended there.
2017.10.04
zero nine four
2014.10.04
Material Witness #5: Cultural Gerrymandering
While O. was writing, I was driving home from a late night viewing of Gone Girl. It was lightly raining and I couldn't remember the last time I drove at night in the rain. Is Gone Girl the same neighborhood as American Beauty 15 years later?
And the night before I was watching August: Osage County--talk about your house with no closets, but lots of skeletons.
Last Monday afternoon, a good bit of a long phone conversation was about the 'obscure' architectural locations of Rome within The Great Beauty, like the apartment within one of the towers of S. Agnes in Agone (which I recognized from a mid-1980s issue of Casa Vogue) and inside the Capitoline Museum at night by candlelight. I forgot to mention the Scala Sancta (which I kind of think was a set rather than the real thing), and have since remembered the Tempietto and Borromini's forced perspective gallery at the Palazzo Spada.
A forced perspective gallery, imagine designing something like that for a palazzo now.
2007.10.04
things to do and see in MUNICH??
(not architectural, but one of those only-place-where-you-can-do-it things)
The royal treasury within the Residenz, supposedly the most valuable collection of state jewels (crowns, holy relics, etc.) in Europe. It's not often that one is in the presence of so many real gems.
FYI: the rolling hills adjacent the OlympicPark are the "soot hills"--the accumulated debris of Munich's WWII bombings.
things to do and see in MUNICH??
The Amalienburg in Nymphenburg Park--a rare manifestation of ultimate Rococo.
The Glyptothek and its contents. Where Florence has David, Munich has the Barberini Faun. Talk about hung over.
things to do and see in MUNICH??
If I was in Munich with a car I'd drive out to Altötting and then to Schloss Peising to finally meet the Baron von Ow and see the Chinese Room and then play a few rounds on his golf course.
Thanks to this thread, I and the von Ow family's cook during WWII were just discussing when we might get some Weisswurst from the authentic German deli just down the road. I'm thinking next week.
1965.10.04
1965. Monday, New York City
Published in the catalogue for the exhibition "New Sculpture by George Segal" at the Sidney Janis Gallery, is the statement: "With Segal
it's not a matter of the found object; it's the chosen object. Marcel Duchamp."
Ephemerides
1963.10.04
1963. Friday, New York City
Explaining to Monique Fong that he returned on Tuesday and leaves for Pasadena on Sunday, Duchamp asks: "When are you coming this way again?"
Ephemerides
1962.10.04
1962. Thursday, New York City
Teeny and Marcel have supper at Denise Hare's.
Ephemerides
1956.10.04
1956. Thursday, New York City
"Affectionately and atavistically," Marcel confirms to Roché that the sum for the small glass, 9 Moules Mâlic [19.1.1915], which Teeny is buying [5.6.1956], has been deposited according to his instructions.
Ephemerides
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