CIRCULAR REFERENCE
Things point to other things, and in turn point back to themselves. Some selves are other selves, just in another form.
“Now this connection, or this adaptation of all created things to each and of each to all, brings it about that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a living, perpetual mirror of the universe.”
- Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy (1710)
Looking into a cymbal that is unfinished - forged but not yet pounded - is like looking into the face of the celestial Io. It is a patina of extreme chemistry and temperatures, a body of sounding just waiting to sing. This specimen is from the factory of the famed cymbal makers, Istanbul Agop.
Published in 1632 in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, we see Jupiter at the top of the image, in the outermost ring, with four moons orbiting, the innermost on is Io. The discovery of another center of rotation (another planet besides our own with moons) doomed the long held view the Earth was the center of the universe. In this Copernican image the sun is the center around which the planets revolve, almost like in grooves of a record endlessly turning with celestial music.
Galileo in his Dialogue proposed the first theory of relatively regarding the experience of motion. It feels like we aren't moving on earth because of our "inertial frame" - such perspective decenters our spatial and psychological conceit.
Another spinning circle of references, voices, greetings, and songs. Now past the limits of our solar system and moving out at 621,40 km/ hour (38612 mph), these sounds may someday be put on an alien record player.
A metal dish flying through the void, Voyager has been listening to the electrodynamic tumult of outerspace for almost 40 years. This includes the ruckus between Io and Jupiter borne from the confluence of gravitational pull, magnetic fields, and plasma currents. As Voyager 1 listened to the charged currents’ whistling crackles, its own metal body was rattled by the electromagnetic vagaries rippling through space, turning the probe into a vessel of both signal and feedback. Like a dolphin in the noisy darkness trying to discern something from everything else or a cymbal constantly ringing, Voyager 1 continues on.
The relic radar dish on Riva Beach at the mouth of the Black Sea listened for the fugitive rumbles of threats on the horizon, a Cold War artifact of suspicions still very much alive today. To hear a cryptic signal amongst the roiling noise of the sea's and the sky's vast expanses - sounds that will continue long after us and our human worries are long forgotten.
This coin, dating to around 340-320BC is considered Greek / Thracian in origin. An ox riding a dolphin, it is thought by many to represent Io's mythic crossing of the Bosphorus. The dolphin on which the ox rides most certainly represents the native dolphins of the strait, and thus the fauna of ancient myth and contemporary ecology find themselves together carried by the currents, indeed themselves a form of currency.
Io is the most volcanic entity in the solar system, and because of this her visage is constantly changing by color shape and texture.
(image courtesy of Dr. Dr Paul Shenk)