Irrational Symbolic Thinking
Hand Cut Embossed Monotype on Rives BFK, Fishing Wire, Single Channel Video. Varying Dimensions.
Installed at Artist Television Access, 2026.
Sound Performance by Cantati also known as Tasya Abbot.
An irrational number is a never ending, never repeating decimal. An imaginary number exists1 and creates a complex system that explains observed phenomena.1, 2 Equations are symbolic representations of concepts, abiding metaphors,2 ideas, dreams,3 and thoughts.
It can be tempting to imagine our skulls to be like the walls of the gallery – blank canvases to house our autonomous creations. Like the gallery wall and Plato’s cave, our minds and bodies4 have contexts that determine possible interpretations of shadows on the wall, obscuring which questions are "unreasonable" to ask.5
But let's peel back a few layers? After all, knowledge is a collective pursuit.
1) Detailed full proof is here:
“Answers and Explanations -- Do “Imaginary Numbers” Really Exist?” by Philip Spencer www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/answers/imaginary.html.
And for some other helpful explanations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/z4qxsk/can_anyone_explain_what_imaginary_number_are_what/
2) See Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's discussion of abiding metaphors and science in her book The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie.
3) Srinivasa Ramanujan is regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and the“the man who knew infinity,” as the film with the same title tells. He figured out the equations in his notebooks through mysticism, his faith and dreams.
4) The mind/body split that may seem natural or common sense to people in the Western philosophical traditions is not so universal and has been pushed back upon by many. One place to start is Julian Frazier, PhD's article "Indigenous Wisdom Reveals the Truth about the Mind-Body Connection": https://medium.com/@julian.frazier.phd/indigenous-wisdom-reveals-the-truth-about-the-mind-body-connection-c8c5ec1b0451
5) For more on what questions are reasonable and unreasonable to ask, see the paper: Cognitive Sociology: between the personal and the universal mind by Eviatar Zerubavel, published by The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology.