**See also**: [[Contraption i, ii and iii]]. Tripartite series (drawing, short story, installation) inspired by philosophical dwellings on selfhood, consciousness, synchronicity, symmetry, infinity and self-reference. It is, if anything, the most accurate self-portrait I have ever produced. More thoughts on this and other things here: [[Contraption]]. **Installation**: a hexagonal booth which can enclose one observer at a time, made up of 6 2x0.5m mirrors. **Drawing**: visual rendering of short story, black and red ink and paper.  **Short story** (below) was nominated for the annual thesis prize at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam, 2011) and for the Royal Academy of the Arts annual photography prize (London, 2011). Re-published in [Doyenne ii](https://doyenne-books.bandcamp.com/merch/doyenne-002-singing-to-spirits): _Singing to Spirits_, Flora Yin-Wong, 2023. ![[contraption 2011.pdf]] ### Ruining the joke A contraption is a machine. According to the _Online Etymology Dictionary_: “a slighting word for “a device, a contrivance,” 1825, western England dialect, origin obscure, perhaps from con(trive) + **trap**, or **deception**.” Much like the _poltergeist_, ([[Poltergeist in the machine]]) then, a contraption is both *abstract* (not there, virtual: to be continued) and concrete (it can be experienced: I can feel trapped by the patriarchy, and even witness concrete examples of it, even though I cannot directly *point* at it). A *real abstraction* of sorts, in other words. Re: [[𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽]], I want to say some things, explaining the joke, unfortunately: - In the context of the concept of [[Resonance]], what interests me about this is that it’s a text you can read from multiple perspectives, once you get a clue (whether it’s the story’s end, or a realization you have about what is being referred to), you can read different “situations”/“claims” into it: it’s either a person going mad, the history of science, the vacillation between religion and agnosticism, solipsism and the vertigo of other minds, etc.; - It presents the _problem of interest_ quite concretely: what should I be interested in, and why? The story’s protagonist is in absolute agony about what to follow: outside, inside, a combination of both, which eventually leads him to want to destroy himself, and then others, and then the “thing” itself; - It is dialogism/stream of consciousness/self-consciousness dealing with itself; it is the problem of research: where does it start and where does it end? And how/why struggle with this? - It is going from the abstract to the concrete to the abstract to the concrete to the abstract to the concrete, etc.; - It is the process of _learning_ questioning the processes that underlie it; - It is a finite system trying to deal with infinity, impossibly; - It is something that happened to me; - It is about the fact that _someone’s always doing something_. How to talk differently about that? - It is the Promethean-Narcissian ur-self-reflection moment; - It is the pointing moment, the moment he shoves himself aside is the moment the situation gains some clarity; - It is a kind of Daoist refrain; conceptual clarity only emerges once the structure is destroyed, things become visible when they break down; things are not there; they are a background effect of the background effect; - It is about doing/thinking paradoxes: it’s only when he puts the mirror to use in its reflective affordance, in the physical sense, just to look at himself, that things start actually converging towards an exit. An exit which yields another trap, he’s _standing in a new room_; - Finally, the binding condition which resolves the situation is gravity, everything collapses under its weight; - It is the Lacanian mirror stage; - It is also about mirror self-recognition (a test often used to see if non-human animals can understand their reflection); - It is also [[Et cetera]]. So I ask you, while reading, to keep some of these problems/ideas/questions in mind as well, most of which are basically about the nature of the love of knowledge (philosophy): do you _need_ to love knowledge? Can you disagree with yourself, and/or is it, in fact, inherent to the processual/dialectical movement of thought that you **should** (often) dislike your own thoughts?