Dipping back into Tsoukas, I found the bit where he quotes Barthes. In practical communication, language is an instrument for the efficient communication of information about the world - this is the base case. In poetry language-noise is sought deliberately - encouraged to emerge in the communication - to go beyond established literary conventions - in an attempt to render the world newly strange - to stop the world being obvious. Rhetorical language makes words depart from linguistic norms and in poetry elements of the communication that are not normally semantic take up a semantic role. Tthe reader has to take on a constructive role and to do some work to get this new semantics to work. (Gadamer has suggested that this constructive approach to meaning is more common than we imagine. It may even be evident when someone acts on an order.)

The free-floating photocopier technicians - the pioneers of the knowledge society - use a narrative level of language - telling each other stories. In a narrative, meaning is always open - new meaning emerges as the narrative unfolds. (It emerges that the stranger was her long lost twin or that the capacitor was sourced in India and not quite the right value) . The narrative unfolds with presuppositions, through the points of view of certain subjects - but almost always not just a single point of view - usually multiple points of views.

We used to think organizations reduced uncertainty. These days there s a lot more uncertainty and we ought to think of a different relationship between organizations and uncertainty.

Tsoukas suggests that we stop seeing uncertainty as the absence of information . We flick a switch and see it as the presence of new information which is as yet not under our control . We should look for the pattern in those various things that disrupt patterns. Narrative would fill the bill - in narrative we get pattern, the pattern disrupted , then a new pattern.

Indeed today seemed to evidence fragmented narratives in the professional world. In the office.

Intention and narrative are very closely intertwined - we are believed in terms of our intentions when people buy into the narrative we seem to be acting out.

Paul mailed about Hux�s 3rd novel - I looked up the relevant section of the bio.

RKCS - have reached the bit in the 90s about Mike Kelly. MK is the artistic consequence in Detroit of the MC5 episode which happened when he was 15. In the 90s he is famous for domestic vids dealing in abjection - I saw his infamous Heidi vid at the stupendous Video Acts Ex at the ICA - which helped orient me on my new sphere of creative endeavour. They have a good explanation of abject as midway between object and subject.

Read more about Mrs J Pollock. The idea is that we read the paintings as autobiography and that the autob inevitably reflects her positioning - in her own mind - vis a vis her husband.

AND SO .

Vaguely discontented - with my age - it being about to increment by one an ddef with my shape it have incremented by lots in the last several weeks. E-ms with Paul W about Hux and his strange life but contemporary ideas - and strange friends. Insatiable curiosity might be the excuse. Insatiably curious and alarmed about what modernity means in all its nook and crannies. And also about the remaining bits which aren�t yet modern. Some good assessments on Amazon - try Those Barren Leaves and Point Counterpoint. .

Made some more progress with the issue of programme management and its institutionalisation - also with manufacturing strategy - using the F word - and its several dimensions. There was a board meeting in the next door room - I didn�t go - I would only have been bored - or worse. Not my board anyway. .

Went to the bear garden in berkswell again and read more of Wagner on Krasner dipping back into O Keefe. The suggestion is that these artists are playing a game with their marital status and gender - they use it in a tricksy way to fox the audience. Suppose you don�t say that this is marginal for to say such a thing would not be correct. You might say instead that its another side of the coin. Modernism is a language that enables artists to use abstract reference to play now you see me now you don�t. Possibly even the testosterone majors like Pol an Pic are playing this game - and the bravado is a feint. Cage-Rausch-Jjohns don�t invent this tricksy semi-auto biographical approach - they inherit it and carry it more to the mainstream. In fact you might see the who Min-conceptual-performance and into the 90s postpunk thing as a development of this trend. In this way O Keefe and Duchamp share the honors for inventing it perhaps. .

Half heard the newsnightpseuds on F Kahlo (Sappho made made plectrums/Billie was a songwriter/ Frieda sold amplifiers). They seemed to thing there was a lot of me me me me in the work - maybe she always had it up to 11 . Not tricksy autobio at all..

RKCS ends with Tacita Dean of all people - someone Mrs C vaguely knows - we have limited edition volumes of her postcard collection. Did I mention that I had taken the opening of a poem about Eva Hesse and used it as text for a vid? This move now strikes me as absolutely central - precisely the right thing to do. .

All this guitar chat means that the U2 is plugged into the amp simulator and I have thrown down a couple of things - a version of So What plus a gtr and Dhorn version of the latest fourth chord concept - descending whole steps - thirds and sevenths in the root. The music is about stasis and then sudden steps from stone to stone. .

The more I do images and read this stuff the less the images are about the external world and the more their iterative development reflects their internal properties. What does this mean about the images ? That they have started to reference some of the history that I have been reading about. Its obvious that digital transformation ought to be able to engage with this narrative -but how might this happen ? What form will the narrative disruption take? Suddenly we discover that the micro level of the Pollock field was really little squares? That the quantum theory suggests we think in terms of micro chunkiness? .

Ideas of more or less outrageous things I might say about motorsport keep occurring to me - I think they will get a report whether they like it or not. .

The Beethovenfest grabs the attention. I heard some late SQ on the radio - not one I have - also the BBC2 show. So the middle period is what we know. I have even played the 5th conducted by E Spira - I should consider myself fortunate. There s the thing about his impossibly high standards - which was his mode of engagement with the social world but also was part of the barrier. And the obsessive ness where he would take ordinary material and it work it up into something extraordinary. The world reciprocated to some degree - he was admired and funded despite the eccentricity. Last night there was a sudden switch of fortune - things seemed to get a lot worse all of a sudden - presumably this will kick off the late period. .

You cant help thinking about the Beethoven-me as part of the journey of bourgeois subjectivity - and in relation to Hegel - that subjectivity might attain an absolute. B conveniently demonstrates that limits of bourgeois subjectivity - what the subjective sublime might be like. It will seem crazy to some but I cant help thinking - yes but he didn�t anticipate the idea that Trane might as his wife suggests get closer to the sound of truth - or that Lamonte Young might discover the sound of the ego dissolving. .

My flat is dissolving in a damp floor - I shd call the estate managers.