Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Māori whakatauki
Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society.
David Bowie
Stop asking what you want and start asking what you have to offer.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
…to not let the injustice of what could have been, override all the joy of what was.
Jack Rooke
When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
…
When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.
Lied Vom Kindsein – Peter Handke
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns (1794)
Turning away from a flight from death, you see a horizon of opportunity that puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakeable joy.
Heidegger, Martin
JD: why do they do that Mamaw.
Mamaw: ‘Cause we’re hill people honey. We respect our dead.
JD: Where we come from is who we are, but we choose every day who we become… My future, whatever it is, is our shared legacy.
JD/Paul: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it’s not pretty.it was the first time I’d
realized
that.– Charles Bukowski
Get over your hill and see
What you find there
With grace in your heart– After the Storm, Mumford and Sons
Life is an ocean and love is a boat
– Johnny Duhan, The Voyage
In troubled waters that keeps us afloat
And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first
– Van Morrison, Sweet Thing
And I will drink the clear, clean water for to quench my thirst
And I shall watch the ferry-boats, and they’ll get high
On a bluer ocean against tomorrow’s sky
On a crowded beach in a distant time
– Deeper Water, Paul Kelly
At the height of summer, see a boy of five
At the water’s edge, so nimble and free
Jumping over the ripples, looking way out to sea
Now a man comes up from amongst the throng
Takes the young boy’s hand and his hand is strong
And the child feels safe, yeah, the child feels brave
As he’s carried in those arms up and over the waves
Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
’Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isleAnd you sang
– Song to the Siren, Larry Beckett, Tim Buckley
Sail to me, sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am, here I am
Waiting to hold you
“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”
– Leonard Bernstein

AR: Some of the models you photograph, like those based on a Kuen surface, start off as computer renderings that can only be created as an object by a five-armed robotic machine. How do you feel about generative art, machine learning and AI?
HS: I’m kind of scared of it. Once it can do a job better than a human, what can a human do? Particularly in terms of the skills involved in thinking and imagination. If a human can’t do as good of a job as the machine, then what is the point of a human? The brain has to be trained to keep thinking. If you don’t have to think deeply – if you let the computer think for you – then the human brain will have to become something else.
AR: That’s transhumanism, isn’t it? Where humans interface fully with technology. Do you think that’s inevitable?
HS: I’m just glad I’m not going to be living in that future. But the world will end very soon in my estimation. For example, if you compare last year’s global temperature with this year, it’s one or two degrees hotter now – global warming is now global boiling. I think the end is coming pretty soon.
From ArtReview Oct 2023