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Xiangshu Yixue anyone?

AltVis8D

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I've launched my first crowdfunding campaign, should any of you be interested in giving it a look. I would love to open up discussions with other dedicated amateurs. Thank you! You can find it here:

 
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Freedda

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.... I would love to open up discussions with other dedicated amateurs ....
AltVis: without wanting to be mean - and as another dedicated amateur and San Francisco native - after visiting your kickstarter page, I really have no clue what you're doing??? It seems like it might have something to do with the Yi and using math? And it has something to do with colorful graphics and pictures?

I gather that this is something you've been working on for a long time (maybe too long?), and that you've been living in Europe but now want to return to the US, and that this is something - whatever the heck it is - that you want to show on multiple 'platforms' (welcome to the 21st century!), and that whatever it is you send us- about whatever the heck it is you're actually doing - you'll also be charging us $20-30 shipping!

But as to whatever it is you actually want our support for, there is just no 'there' there. Which seems to be almost the entire opposite of what the Yi is about.

Regards, D
 

AltVis8D

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Hi Freedda. Thank you SO MUCH for your reply. It's so important to me. I also want to say that I view this as the beginning of a much longer conversation - and at the same time I'm trying to be as concise as I can here at the beginning. Please forgive any wandering that I'm inclined to do. . .

First, I agree with you - this is my first crowdfunding campaign, and it just feels weird to require shipping that is as expensive as some of the lower tiers of rewards. Unfortunately, I've discovered that if somebody has already pledged for one of the rewards, then I can't edit the particulars of the reward. The only thing I can do is to edit the still unpledged-for rewards, and duplicate the already pledged-for rewards with the edited shipping info, contact the supporters who supported those incentives and ask them to move their pledges over to the new rewards. This might still be an appropriate move, in particular because I've reached my meager funding goal and still have 3/4 of the campaign left to run, but it is a lot of work actually, and not necessarily the best use of my time at this stage. To my colleagues who are a part of this forum who have pledged their support already, I offer you my deepest thanks and my dedication to getting you some excellent rewards, soon!

The other thing that I can do, and have done, is to offer rewards with no shipping at all, at an affordable price point. These are new digital-only rewards. Please go and check them out.

Philosophically and logistically, your comment is important to me because it is the one I receive the most, along the lines of 'I have no idea what you're talking about.' I consider it MY JOB to make this clear, to you and to as many people as I can interest in this work.

I would begin by asking if you are familiar with two aspects of yixue: Images & Numbers (Xiangshu), and Meaning & Principle (Yili). The first focuses on the hexagrams and their manipulations, and the second focuses on the hexagram texts, so I will call them 'Images' and 'Texts' for short. These are not something I've made up, but they are well-known perspectives within the yixue tradition.

Fully 90% of all Yixue, including this site, Hilary's book, & the rest, is Texts-focused. My work is Images-focused. So I'm not working within the dominant paradigm that most people are familiar with and rely upon. Imagine building a hexagram out of bananas and screws, where a banana represents a Yin line, and a screw represents a Yang line. So this hexagram would express hexagrammatical structure along a spectrum of 'banananess' & 'screwness'. What would, or could that possibly MEAN? This is just one example of an idea that I learned from Katya Walter - that you can build a hexagram out of just about anything. Katya has devoted her life to publishing on the I Ching, and I recommend her books to you whole heartedly.

Another author/practitioner whose work I admire is Chris Lofting. He's passed on, but not before self-publishing 'The Emotional I Ching', available on Amazon. In the early history of this site, Chris was sort of an Images-based troll, wrecking havoc among the peaceable Texts-based denizens of the Clarity forum. I, for one, am still leery about navigating the new reputation-economy of the internets, but I digress.

I mention Walter & Lofting to give you some idea of what the I Ching is all about - to me. As for what I want to accomplish with my first-ever crowdfunding campaign, I would like to build personalized oracular charts for clients, like you might have your Astrological horoscope read, or you might have the Tarot read for you. What would such a chart look like? I have some ideas, but I need co-conspirators and collaborators to help me put those ideas into practice.
 

AltVis8D

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. . .I forgot to mention one characteristic that I feel is unique to my Images-based approach, and that is my own emphasis on legibility. I don't know about you, but I have never seen the hexagrams animated in the way that I present; and on a more subtle level, in the top image of Shao Yong's Fuxi sequence (immediately below the animation) in the traditional notation, particularly the display of the hexagrams around the circle-perimeter - I have only seen them represented with the lines parallel to the circumference, which I find endlessly confusing - one can't read a hexagram accurately unless one knows which way is 'up'. So, here I represent the hexagrams with their original horizontal orientation intact. To me, this a simple innovation which makes them easier to read. I've never seen this before either. What do you think?
 
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Freedda

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I would like to build personalized oracular charts for clients ... What would such a chart look like? I have some ideas, but I need co-conspirators and collaborators to help me put those ideas into practice ....
AltVis, before digging in, I just looked at your kickstarter page and I see you've met you funding goal, so what I say here is probably moot at this point- as people have already fully funded you, either because they (unlike me) understand what you are doing, or they are just generous of spirit.

Having said all that: what I've quoted above is more in keeping with the idea I was trying to get across, which is it would have been nice if you had started with a simple, understandable statement about what you want people to fund you for. It could have further included the specifics of what you need help with, what you are offereing and then and only then, get into the guts of your Yi understand. It's sort of non-fiction writing 101.

My point about the shipping was just an aside, and as I said, this might all be after-the-fact at this point.

I do know about the different 'schools' of Yi interpretation, at least in a general way. If I had to peg myself, I'd say I'm a 'synthesist': I look at both the text and the imagery (less so at patterns and the sequence, and not at all at the math), to gain an understanding of what the Yi is conveying.

I have learned quite a bit from this web site, and from Hilary's courses, and also from Harmen Mesker, who is more of the image/understanding the trigrams school; here's a link to his 'YiTube' channel.

All the best, D
 
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AltVis8D

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Hi D,
I've edited the campaign to reflect what you were kind enough to discuss with me. You are in good company, as Hilary seems to agree with you.

all best,
Justin
 

AltVis8D

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Dear Hilary, THANK YOU for mentioning the campaign in the latest issue of Friends' Notes, for March!!!

That comes as such a pleasant and unexpected surprise. . . .and, you've nearly caught me with my pants down, so to speak, as I am in the process of updating the campaign for the last, four-day promotional push. The update should be complete by tonight: a great deal of new artwork, and a new bias toward: (wait for it) . . . CLARITY. Yes, needless to say, the feedback has been unanimous. And so I feel even more fortunate and grateful for everybody who's offered support nevertheless, whether that is in terms of backing for a reward, or in terms of feedback, which has been, without exaggeration, just as precious.

So, going forward: I will use very few neologisms, or 'made-up' words (there are some elements of the campaign that I'm not allowed to edit at this late stage, but the main description will be as plain as I can manage); and, the inclusion of more artwork, as the function of the artwork, from my point of view is just that: to make the emergent properties of the hexagrams clearer, and to differentiate those emergent properties from the traditional texts. I'm not disparaging the texts in any way. In fact, I rather enjoy making my own interpretations of the hexagram names, for example. I suppose the best way to 'see' what I'm about is to look at this work as my interpretation of the I Ching, or what I call a 'transliteration' of the meanings of the hexagrams, as compared with a 'translation' of the traditional, canonical texts. These are complementary methods of interpretation, in my view. And, as a practice, it is ever a work in progress.

So, thank you again. If you haven't already, please check out the campaign from the link at the top of this thread. Cheers.
 

AltVis8D

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. . .there is now something to look at, I'm pleased to report: lots of new images. Please have a look, and tell me what you think, here or in the comments at the campaign. Thanks!
 

AltVis8D

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For your enjoyment, if you are anything like me - from the revised campaign:

A note on MATH:

I am not a mathematician. I don't 'do' math. I'm a trained visual artist, who stopped studying anything to do with numbers after whizzing through geometry in high school. I love geometry. I do not love math. Nevertheless, the hexagram notation does have binary-numeric properties. And neverthenevertheless, the hexagrams were never used as numbers, or to do mathematics. In fact, this method of visual analysis that I have developed is meant to sort through all of the numerological (understanding numbers metaphorically rather than mathematically) contradictions that the hexagram notation has been used to symbolize, traditionally. The purpose of this method is to represent any traditional topic or theme from the study of the Yijing in terms of geometric logic and analogy: that is, visually, not mathematically (so, no equations, no algebra), and through self-aware analogy, rather than implied or assumed analogy. In other words, the method deconstructs analogy as another dimension of imagery. Please rest assured that the binary-numeric property, as paradoxical as it may at first appear, is a function of geometric logic, and not of mathematics. Although lots of people will do mathematics with anything, and seem to worship physics . . .which seems to worship, or to reduce everything else to math. Let's NOT attempt to define metaphysics, at least not here.
 

AltVis8D

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Well, that was a little bit harrowing. 200% of a modest goal isn't nothing. Thank you to everybody who read these posts and engaged as they could do. I'll leave images up at the site at the link at the top of this thread, and I'll leave these descriptions here.

Thanks, all, again.

The above diagram is a general key to the binary-numeric exponential values of the lines of the hexagrams, and shows the relationship between the original notation and the 1st & 2nd order dimensional exponents of the augmented notation.

Below, are several instances of a compact format diagram, focused on the 2nd order exponent - that is, from the original notation, to contour (1st order), and color (2nd order). Included as secondary, emergent information are indices such as the trigrams, the structural tetrad, 'Correctness', 'Correspondence', hexagram 'Flower' (as per Hacker), the canonical sequence number, two separate binary notations and correlated binary sequence numbers, and two interpretive titles, as well as bagua-house designation, elemental index, and seasonal correlate. Most of these secondary indices are traditional and well-known, but difficult to compute and re-compute for each hexagram, each time; some are new to this work; but the advantage to this work is that I can indicate all of them in one place, at one time using this technique of augmented notation. It's actually very useful for comparative purposes, as demonstrated below. Part of this work will be to indicate which geometric indices correlate to which emergent, secondary properties of the hexagrams, in a verbal description that is equally compact or as economical as this diagrammatic notation. But is most definitely can be done.
 
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