Why had people bothered to build a bridge when there were boats and flyers to ride?

The quote is from Ursula K Le Guin, ” A Man of the People”, the third of four novellas that comprise Four Ways to Forgiveness.

Having sketched this quickly, I now see her iconic bridge is different in scale, described as enormous, reaching far above a landscape of tidal pools inhabited by myriad wading birds, descended originally from those brought from Earth.

It is old, maybe a million years.   So, I guess, it was built across a long-changed landscape, and likely by machines and labour controlled by strident imperialists, alien to the contemporary pueblo-dwellers with production divided by gender, lineage and tradition.

Wildcode

I have enrolled again for Experimental Drawing classes at the Midlands Arts Centre.

We start from basics, over two sessions making marks with charcoal, then an eraser, smoothing over the depths and highlights by abrasion and water, building in new layers: finding a picture in the unplanned image.  I know this stuff but I never do it.  Coming straight after work and despite a grabbed sandwich and beer on the way, I find it hard to unwind and let go. Still, it is great to have the space and time and permission to play with marks.  It is like rediscovery.

The headline piece has been digitally manipulated, altering the brightness and contrast a little, but particularly, boosting the red channel.  The original is below,  actually drawn the other way up.  When I can get the original back, I will wash over it in layers of sepia ink and see where this leads.

As I worked, my fleeting ideas included making calligraphic marks like a script, masts and rigging of tall ships and sunight breaking through foliage overhead.   Once I turned it upside down, this came immediately to mind:

“I helped her see patterns in the desert, in the wind, in the wildcode.  We found treasures.  There are ghosts beneath the earth, you can dig them up if you know where to look.”

This is perhaps as close as we come to an explanation of the desert or the nature of wildcode in Hannu Rajaniemi’s novel, The Fractal Prince.  In so far as I could tell, beneath the layers of  quantum physics, wildcode relates to our core canon of stories which truly come alive when our flesh and digital natures converge.