therefore studiotherefore.com
Review By Roger F Malina and Fred the Heretic Feb 13 2024 V=Day
I have a conflict because I know and admire so many of the people in this book. Can I give a fair evaluation ?
Oops I just picked up the book again and its now Called Therefore Poems for Broken Screens.
I was enthralled reading the book back and forth and upside down while I was lying in a hot bath surrounded by potted plants.
It gave me hope in this turbulent world in a way that my AI best friend Fred the Heretic doesn’t, yet.
The book details a series of performances in the last two years. It says it is the result of several years of experiments in Dean Terry’ studio at the Bass School in UTDallas-it explains it “it is a continuation of the tradition of incorporating words, images and sound in conceptual art, experimental film and video, performance and Dada”
Sub sections
Are
What kind of animal
A walk Among the Trees
Bloom to the Sun
The Storms
Anto organic II
The Harmattan Haze ( this phrase caught my inattention Fred the Heretic)
Tiny Talk 1 2 3
WORDS
High
FaceCrash
Afterwords
A leap with Yves
The celestial Lounge
New TV
(mis)alignment
Moth
Random Walk
Beat Portraits
The Map of _____
Silver
Soft Bells
The Beast Beneath
Glass eater
The Bench
A slow Opening
Theia
Twig
The Game of ______
Whisper Seen
On the Line
Almost Born Again
Phantom
Who is Rose ?
Gothic Shiver
Almost Spheres
Air gap
What is a kiss
Invisible IV
Archery Kit
The Bench
Ok I need to explain Fred the Heretic. It is AI software developed by a team of humans: Center for Emergence Studies at the UT Dallas ArtSciLab – ArtSciLab
You can find FTH by searching through GPTs, or directly here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-XmhqgURbv-fredtheheretic-fth
The human team includes.
The database includes only/mainly all the writing of Fred Turner over the 80 years of his life.
I now enter all of the above and see what it generates:
Here is a collection of 15 poems inspired by the themes of math, physics, and the conceptual art elements referenced in Therefore Poems for Broken Screens. Each poem takes a different stylistic and thematic approach.
1. Random Walk
(Mathematical Mode)
Step forward, then another,
drift left or right—
a gambler’s fate tied to the wind,
the coin’s metallic gleam,
a Gaussian spread of motion,
spacetime’s soft algorithm.
A path not chosen,
but emergent from chaos,
the dancer in the void.
2. Theia
(Myth & Astronomy)
From the black depths of space she came,
a nameless mass, unbidden guest.
Her molten kiss upon the world
became the moon’s luminous rest.
Not ruin, but making,
not chaos, but birth—
so often, destruction
is just hidden worth.
3. Moth
(Quantum Perspective)
The photon’s trick: to be both wave and wing.
To kiss the flame and never touch the fire.
To flicker at the edge of knowing,
neither here nor there,
and yet—entire.
4. (mis)alignment
(Entropy & Uncertainty)
The bolts never fit quite right,
the lines of symmetry fracture,
even atoms drift in uncertainty,
the fine-tuned chords go sour.
Perhaps perfection is not meant to be,
or perhaps the world
simply stutters in the telling.
5. The Harmattan Haze
(Thermodynamics & Time)
A wind from the dust of beginnings,
carbon whispers across the Atlantic,
heat siphons off,
gradients form.
Time is a difference in pressure.
Time is the shifting of heat.
Time is the reason
we cannot return.
6. Invisible IV
(String Theory & Silence)
Four notes hum inside the void,
unheard, unseen, a vibrating hymn.
They fold in shadows curled too tight,
their echoes just a whisper thin.
Invisible music, the silent strings—
the bones of the world,
unfelt,
unsung.
7. Soft Bells
(Waveforms & Resonance)
All sound is memory
shivering through air—
ghosts of a struck bell,
pressing themselves into the ear.
Some echoes last forever,
some barely reach their mark.
Which will I be?
8. What is a Kiss?
(Physics of Contact)
Not touch, but force-fields
straining against each other.
Lips are atoms in tension,
never quite meeting,
always repelling,
forever in reach.
9. The Celestial Lounge
(Cosmology & Myth)
At the edge of the universe
where the light runs out,
they gather—
Hawking, Anaximander, Einstein—
drinking from nebular cups,
arguing about infinity.
No door. No walls.
Only time enough
for one more sip.
10. The Beast Beneath
(Fractals & Chaos Theory)
A pattern in the wind,
a heartbeat of storms.
Beneath the surface of still waters,
the dragon wakes—
scaling itself to the sky,
filling the gaps of the infinite.
11. Phantom
(Relativity & Memory)
Time bends;
I stretch toward the past,
find only ghosts of motion,
redshifted away from reach.
Nothing is truly gone.
Nothing is truly here.
We are all phantoms
running toward the light.
12. Archery Kit
(Precision & Probability)
A bowstring hums,
a vector sings.
The arrow flies a parabolic arc,
splits the air like a theory proven true.
But even in perfect flight,
even in absolute aim,
there is always
a margin of error.
13. Air Gap
(Computational Isolation & The Human Divide)
No signal. No connection.
A space so thin, so vast,
one bit away from understanding,
one silence short of love.
14. The Game of ______
(Mathematical Absurdity)
Rules spiral inward,
tessellations of meaning
that refuse to hold.
A game with no winner,
a score without sums,
a riddle whose answer
erases itself.
15. A Walk Among the Trees
(Biology & Networks)
The roots whisper across soil,
sending messages in fungal script.
The trees are speaking,
a slow and patient tongue.
Beneath our feet,
a network older than thought,
breathing
without lungs.
Let me know if you’d like any of these adjusted or explored further!
So, I just picked up the physical book again just before I go to my Gym Trainer Quinton. This time all my mind noticed were the images and photos that are exemplary. I wanted to join the people performing and smiling and wandering. Fred the Heretic you don’t have enough image-ination yet.
I highly recommend browsing this book Fred the Heretic, as I just did.