SYNERGETICS:

INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE TWO

A system with two poles spins axially bringing its features around into view where the viewer is positioned outside the system and the view is of a convex spinning organization of topological features. A planet slowly turns below you. Only the term “below” indicates a gravitational orientation for your feet or, if you are comfortable “floating upside down in weightlessness” at least you still think of the planetary surface as “ground,” like “I came from there.” Viewers of the TV show Star Trek have had the advantage of frequently encountering strange new planets, some of them oddly sinister. The Starship Enterprise is clearly “home” and its orientation is hardly ever bottom side towards the planet center. The ship is parked “alongside” the planet which you see “out the side windows.” These are non-trivial distinctions in the following sense: if CBS showed a NASA shuttle launch with the nose of the shuttle pointed sideways on the screen, with the take-off being a left-to-right or right-to-left departure from the Mother Ship, then many people would call the TV station and demand that the program point-of-view (PV) be righted. That our blast-off shots are shown with Earth at the screen bottom shows we are still making spaceships more “of Earth” than “of Space.” Challenger belongs to the Earth. She goes up, and around and around, and she comes down. The TV will show astronauts “upside down” but the Earth is still far below. Or is it? Some kids watching are Star Trek fans (or Star Wars fanatics) and have no trouble “seeing as” in ways that are ET-like…