Mea Hermetica

In addition to my almost extreme desire to display craftsmanship and skill in my work, I began to challenge myself to add actual meaning to my growing collection of stippled ink illustrations as elements in composed art pieces. My technical skill gave my work a level of personal and public legitimacy, but I felt like my content imagery needed to mature as well.

Expressing my then-recent embrace of my Chicanismo felt vital, and my initial inspirations came from the muralism of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, as well as Chicano folk art, Mesoamerican art, and the Surrealism of Salvador Dali. The results were planned compositions of mural-like storytelling, with my illustrations interlocking in dreamlike settings. My fascination with Tonalpohualli (the Aztec calendar stone)  – with its intricate, cosmological iconography contained in a concentrically-circled unit – would inspire me to construct my own cosmic scheme diagram. This process would eventually come to include influence from Qabbalistic and Rosicrusian concentrically-circled diagrams of the Cosmos. Twenty five years later, my Laterna diagram is fully realized in 2d animation, and is the core expression of Mea Hermetica.

My psychedelic experiments over the next three years would increasingly become essential tools in cultivating the primary graphic elements that would remain constant and fundamental throughout this years-long process, and ultimately reach full expression in Mea Hermetica.

Guadaña

An illustration that merges the shape of human vulva with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe — a ubiquitous mestizo icon in Mexican and Chicano art – was the first of these primary graphic elements. Guadaña is obviously a primarily feminine/mother archetypal icon, but additionally extending it’s meaning – in the Jungian sense – to represent the collective unconscious, and/or the unified field of consciousness. As the foundational icon of Mea Hermetica, the imagery becomes a kinetic motif through repetition and self-referential nesting of the oceanic curves of her physique. Carrying all possibilities in her receptive nature, Guadaña represents communion; the social half of our dual perception. She’s the infinite circle of space with a ubiquitous center.

Atomus

Atomus is a graphic ideogram that depicts an autonomous unit of agency. A separate self-sense that arises from the self-reflection of creation from the plenum that is the Guadaña matrix. This primordial point exists at the center of all things, yet contained within itself is the threshold to the infinite. Atomus declares the first boundaries that begin to define objects in space by yielding edges and vertices in geometric shapes. 

First appearing in my psychedelic experiments, Atomus was later found to be synchronistically and morphically analogous to my Mayan birth glyph. Etznab is an obsidian mirror who’s reflective surface was used for magickal access to the astral realms. The sharper-than-razor edge of the obsidian knife was the translated glyph, Tijax, in the Aztec calendrical system, and for me embodies the geometric edges implied by the initial point as it unfolds it’s own self-creation.

«52»

The third primary element is a representation of electricity as the medium for information. A positive/negative charge visually depicted – and the unfolding field that this quanta unit of electromagnetic energy paves in it’s pathways – is the dances between Guadaña and Atomus expressed digitally in a rhythmic pattern. 

«52» – named for its resemblance to the form of the numerical digits – is an electromagnetic unit of energy and information. This field-grid can be expanded from the initial two-dimensional state into a hyperspatial torus; the foundational energy-shape of non-euclidean space. The ensuing meander motif —(the labyrinthine ends of the 5 and 2) also called Greek Keys, and also appearing in Mesoamerican and Chinese patterning – generates a visual resonance over its contrasting background color. Simultaneously depicting emanation and vibrational patterns, the lines suggest dendrite branches of neurons, and the spiraling spaces between suggests the folds of the physical cerebral grey matter.

Like a music staff, The «52» field-grid becomes the foundational pathway for “the assembly language that lies behind language, or a primal language of the sort that Robert Graves discussed in The White Goddess, or a Kabbalistic language of the sort that is described in the Zohar, a primal “ur sprach” that comes out of oneself. One discovers one can make the extradimensional objects – the feeling-toned, meaning-toned, three-dimensional rotating complexes of transforming light and color.”

My interest in the esoteric use of numbers was piqued with Five Percenters’ Supreme Mathematics enciphered into the lyrics of 90s hip-hop artists such as Wu-Tang, Nas, and Erykah Badu. Around this time, I had immersed myself in Arguelles’ The Mayan Factor, and indulged in the fractal mathematics encoded in the mesoamerican calendar system. The qualitative, rather than the quantitative value of numbers is a fundamental construct in the development of Mea Hermetica. Numbers and geometry – the abstract language found in metaphors, myth, art, human events, architecture, as well as naturally occurring structures in the universe – are the basis for a significant amount of synchronistic representations of thought that I’ve put into my work. For example: one as unity or wholeness, two as duality or partnership, three as resolution or peace. This extends to the application of Gematria – where the letters in magickal alphabets have numerical values that add up to significant numbers in words and phrases. 

The number of sides in the polygons used in the imagery also express these symbolic meanings of mathematics. Michael Schneider’s A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe also became one of my most treasured paperback possessions, providing me with a wellspring of archetypal knowledge regarding numbers. 

My study and application of numerology and Gematria (and magickal practices in general), and the significance placed on their synchronicities, have always been directly and exclusively aimed at my artistic pursuits. My intuited life path number of 9 was my default mark of intent; my mode of operating and building from the threshold between my inner and outer worlds. Nine traditionally represents the horizon, and an event horizon may also be an appropriate extension of that concept here.

“The number symbolizing periodicity and completeness, 9 is also the number of the mythic lords of Time, the number representing the original Mayan galactic masters themselves  …” the bringers(sp) of galactic measure to the planet.” A nine-based current is the operating system of Mea Hermetica. A frequent manifestation of «52» in my works from ‘96-’99 prominently places the graphic of a 3²= 9 grid.

Overlaying the magic square of 9 (Saturn) was useful in erecting my model of an astral plane that is the electromagnetic mechanics behind this earthly plane. The sum of any row or column is 15, and the sum of all nine numbers is 45. The signature for this particular square is then 3, 9, 15, 45.

The ninefold «52» matrix is the central element in my overambitious first attempt at a cosmic scheme diagram. My largest, and most labor-intensive stipple work, I was bored and overwhelmed before I could complete it back in 1997. I spent countless hours stippling to the beats of breaks and syncopations of dub rhythms. Rooted in mainly Mesoamerican numbers and symbols, but additionally introducing some Western esoteric elements, this diagram still lacked my own patterned language in its composition. 

Initially, the Guadana and «52» visual concepts appeared in my awareness in 1996, alone with a sketchbook, breakbeats, and LSD. A more methodical and structured approach to psychedelic experimentation began in 1999, after a profound experience at The Great Sand Dunes National Park in Southern Colorado that forever altered my approach to taking drugs to make art to take drugs to.

In the UFO capitol of the world, The San Luis Valley cradles a 26 square mile conductor of seemingly mystical energy from the magnetite and water of the sand dunes. While meditating in the sun with LSD on a dune, I perceived an audiovisual humming; a vibratory tone that divided itself again and again, creating a vocal-like harmonic complexity with analogous reverberations of a visual assembly language. As this language was transmitted, it was simultaneously feeding back into itself. The growing complexity of this feedback loop was given contour as an electromagnetic field in the shape of the torus. The emergent morphology was radial; resembling the symmetry of the unicellular plankton fantastically illustrated by German naturalist Ernst Haeckel. When the ultimate form was revealed, my astonishment immediately raised the question of whether this was internal or external to myself. 

A hypersensory-enabled entity emerged from the complexity of the information matrix and spoke the complex language that it itself was composed of. Compound eyes – spheres wrapped in a skin of humanoid eyes, multiple cone-like hearing organs and antennae, endless tentacles, and a large proboscis/speaking-tube. The spoken visual coded-language emitting from its speaking-tube was that of solar radiant energy, and fed back into itself through its sensory organs. I perfectly understood it’s resonant binary-triplet rhythmic speech, the verse combinations describing the totality of felt  experiences. 

The experience of being spoken to by this unthinkable alien entity – which I still remain uncertain if it existed outside of myself or was of my own imagination  – was enigmatic, and utterly bizarre. The entity brought to mind Philip K. Dick’s gnostic vision of the Logos-god VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System), but over the years, I found no similar entities experienced in anyone’s recollections of psychedelic journeys that included communication with entities. Only upon finalizing the illustration of it twenty years later, did I give it a name: Metator (a leader, a guide, a measurer, or a messenger). Inspired by Metatron – the Qabbalistic angel who was the voice of God – Metator may simultaneously correspond to Thoth-Hermes, the Greek/Egyptian amalgamated scribe of the gods, and bringer of wisdom, magick, and geometry. The previously mentioned Mayan Nine Lords of Time, as bringers of galactic measure to the planet, also correspond appropriately to this archetype . Metator, in all of its complexity, is therefore the core of the Laterna cosmic diagram; the source of the archetypes and agents contained, and conversely the sum of those parts. With such a personal revelation, Metator was perhaps what Thelema considered to be the Holy Guardian Angel; representative of one’s truest divine nature. 

Metator’s compound eyes are a major visual theme in Mea Hermetica; the source for several kinetically unfolding psychedelic textures. My frequent use of eyes is deliberate, in that the eye (I) is my emblem of the perspective point-of-view. As such, the compound eye represents the multi-perspectival view of a collective entity.

The rest of the year marked a series of eyes-closed LSD experiments that included aspects of Golden Dawn-esque and chaos magick techniques, and Goldie, Massive Attack, and Smith & Mighty reverberating from the speakers. Journeying through the mindfield’s hyperspatial landscapes and tunnels, my location would be wherever my attention was focused; not dissimilar from the Observer effect in quantum mechanics. The purple Guadaña sea as a field, folded into non-euclidian vortices, and tangentially linked by data-language strings in green.

A repeated experience of a holorchy of seemingly small entities – initially taking the quasi-insectile morphology of Metator – that were vocally creating the impossible multidimensional spaces that were composed of their self-replicated selves. I would later name these consciousness agents, Aristas.

Leading up to my first breakthrough experience on LSD, I found myself in what I instinctively knew was a waiting room. I was at the center of a cosmic torus, and the entire inner surface was lined with TV eyes as video monitors; each one containing a specific conscious experience that can be immediately accessed with focused attention. After a millennium-in-ten-minutes worth of experience in these portals, I felt a submissive release of myself into the pure white light of ever-present, non-dual awareness.

After a year and a half of remodeling, hosting underground events, and intense creative output informed by my psychedelic experiments, our dilapidated warehouse — with living spaces divided by black plastic sheets – was finally open to the public as Revoluciones Collective Art Space by my co-conspirators and me in February 1999. A community forum of artists, musicians, performers, and activists in Denver that became a catalyst for a larger holonic network. With a bulk of my time spent nurturing Revoluciones over the course of eight years, my work on Mea Hermetica came to a slow-crawl. By 2001, my days of stippling were over, and my ideas would slowly develop digitally while teaching myself Adobe Illustrator.

Implica

The first of my iconography to be developed digitally was Implica; an ideogram of consciousness as a dualistic process of unfolding. Paralleling the dialectical monism of Mayan philosophy, Taoism, and Pico della Mirandola’s Hermetic philosophy, the perspectives of self and other – the duality of agency and mutuality – are reconciled into a unified whole in an Ontological Anarchy. Hierarchies are dissolved into holarchies. The will of the autonomous individual is crucial, and yet fundamentally dependent upon the mutual aid of the community in which they exist, and thus the direct action onto the larger holon from which the previous is united and nested. 

This fractal unfolding of self-similar wholes within larger wholes is a balance of power enabled by the sensitivity resulting from the Golden Rule. The authority of the Will of the individual is justified through the radical act of Love, and Love is further manifested through larger nested holons.

The recursive facial profiles are an elaboration on the reflexive notion of the social perspective. The simplified Guandaña graphic is composed of the mirroring of these facing profiles; expressing the reflective nature of care and empathy. 

The profiles also share a mindspace; to suggest solidarity, and thereby creating local communes within even larger holons. 

On another level, these shared spaces give birth to the four elements of fire (will, intuition), air (mental realm of thought and communication), water (emotional self), and earth (the physical manifestation of self).

The creation of the Revoluciones logo in 2001-2002 was pivotal for the identity of the art space, and the evolution of my digital logo and icon design process in general. A dynamic mark with an implied spiral to suggest revolution; three arms signifying the artist, the public, and the Revoluciones forum itself – as the link between the two – all interlocking at the axis. These arms of the icon would eventually develop into kelp-like shapes in the Guadaña ocean vortex from which Mea Hermetica surfaces; deconstructed and fractaled to imply a foundation of the collective holon upon which my individual self-expression has been nurtured.

Becoming the default graphic designer for all the needs of Revoluciones – including branding, website, and two or more monthly event flyers — time for my personal art projects was minimal. The art space demanded a great deal of my time outside of my day job with increasingly frequent events, publishing Denver News and Arts Magazine, and housing a pirate radio station. I was able to produce and exhibit my one and only art piece during the Revo era: Zetatez. 

A complex, mystical icon that elaborates on the concept of a spoken, visual binary-language by a mirror-faced, Mesoamerican deity. By including my element icons that represent the four bases of a nucleotide – and the serpentine data-tunnels of psychedelic space – these segments intertwine into a pair of pre-Columbian snakes, while the elements resolve in a double-helix spiral that is the DNA strand. The entire structured figure springs from  – and simultaneously pours into – the Tonalpouhalli stone, which grounds the divinity into the earthly plane.

It’s worth noting that prior to the Metator experience, I unwittingly prognosticated it with the imagery of disincarnated elders speaking in a metaphorical visual language, and I applied this idea several times in various illustrations. In Zetatez, shadow profiles of the mirrored faces subtly materialize from the anatomy of the gaping serpent heads, and take on the ancestral shaman archetype. The shamanic wisdom – concerning the passage of time in this work – from imagery appearing in the elder’s exhaled smoke.

In my studies of Integral Theory in the early years of the new millennium, I began to fabricate an actual framework for my idealized numeric language revealed in the binary-triplet song of Metator. Integral Mathematics is based on the idea that consciousness – the fundamental substance of the universe – begins with perspectives of individual and collective holons  – and their interior and external realities. First-person perspectives (individual and collective) of second and third person perspectives (individual and collective) yield a total of twelve interactive experiences. For example, first-person singular’s (I) perspective of third-person plural (they), or MY awareness of THEIR perspective of the world. When adding notional perspectives into this framework, there are a total of 36 interactive experiences. For example, second-person’s (you) perspective of first-person plural (us), or YOUR awareness of OUR perspective of the world.

The 36 current is the primary resonant field from which Mea hermetica manifests itself. The interaction of my life path number nine, and the previously mentioned four elemental archetypes of fire, air, water, and earth weave this resonant field into my assembly language. The number four is expressed symbolically as volume; a shape in three-dimensional space. The adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson’s Quantum Logic adds a “maybe” and a “maybe not” to the True/false dichotomy of Aristotlian logic. From this fourfold logic structure, a primal digital code arises : 00, 01, 10, 11.

36 = 2² x 3². The key to the binary-triplet vibration. Metator’s spoken visual code-language was that of solar radiant energy, and this is expressed with the pulses in the magic square of the sun and its signature: 6, 36, 111, 666.

The four elements  – when paired with the archetypes of the nine numbers from 2-10  –  give life to the thirty-six Arista consciousness agents that are active characters of the Mea Hermetica metaphorical language. This is a direct correlation to Western Esoterica. The thirty six pip cards of the tarot are gatekeepers of the thirty six decantes (10° segments) of the 360° ecliptic band upon which the sun travels from our earthbound perspective. 

In 2004, I began digitally illustrating a new character; My avatar that would explore the hyperspatial landscapes that I had created over the last several years. Originally, she was named Ever-girl, and after several iterations and name changes such as Analog Girl, Digital Girl, i-Girl, and Implica Girl, her final manifestation was simply called Implica. Sharing a name with one of my core ideograms – and her surname, Metador, derived from my alien deity, Metator – her mystical-genetics were deeply rooted in my mythos. With the assistance of a friend to model for my illustrations, Implica Metador was truly realized as my protagonist in the Mea Hermetica Arista vignettes fifteen years later.

In 2010, I returned to my mentally-shelved project, and was finally able to construct the first version of my own cosmic scheme diagram. At the end of that year, along with a second digital work, I was able to exhibit my piece and sell digital prints, revealing to the public my weird artistic statement. Not all of my original primary iconography was applied here. Guadaña, the profile faces, «52» grid, and the compound eye carried their structural weight, but the application of my proto-assembly language facilitated the possibility of a concentric architecture that I had sought to materialize for over a decade.

Two years later, I breathed life into the assembly language. I simplified the units down to the most basic shapes: circle for the first-person perspective, square for second-person, and triangle for the third-person. Each Arista – a consciousness agent, and therefore a verb – represents an interior and exterior, perspectival interactive experience. These thirty six interactions occur between singular and plural forms of the three perspectives.

This phase marked a much anticipated marriage of the thirty six perspective interactions with the thirty six Hermetic decante archetypes. Aligning the two data fields gives a mystic-genetic identity to each individual Arista verb. Each decante is ruled by combinations of Nine Lords of Time and four elements that correspond to an astrological planetary position, a tarot card, its position on the magic square, and a Qabbalistic name/incantation. These correspondences describe the feelings of experiences of the perspective interactions that describe each Arista. This assembly language manifests as trecet verses in the binary-triplet meter. This can be seen as the process of meaning-making at the root of language.

My continued fascination with recursion, repetition, and resonance revealed synchronicities in my photography of NY architecture. Editing my monochrome photos into mirrored and self-reflective imagery produced familiar patterns; particularly with a Brooklyn storefront gate.

These synchronistic appearances of my primary archetypes in a new medium were significant in that brought an alignment of concepts and imagery to a state concentricity; a shared center from which the align.

2018 was a leap forward for my artistic process. Two decades after the experience, Metator was finally manifest, and ready to assume its throne at the center of Laterna, my cosmic diagram. Entirely digital from its genesis, the bulk of the work in generating this bizarre creature was illustrating the Giger-esque snake-skinned audio tubes and tentacles. 

I was also learning the basics of 2d animation with Adobe After Effects, and began to slowly animate the circle layers of Laterna into spinning wheels. I had yet to imagine the possibilities that lie ahead.

My dream of returning to stippling, but through digital media, finally occurred when I created a lattice-wrap (wink) skin around objects that is made up of various sizes of circle outlines. The intersections of these outlines create a “stipple” shading value. The result gave me the same satisfactions that my inked stippling on paper did, including the time-intensive craftsmanship, and focused, meditative practice that allows for meta-consciousness and self-contemplation. I quickly began to use my new digital stipple technique for portrait illustrations.

The following year brought the first phase of Mea Hermetica as a poster set. The first 12 Aristas  – all of the first-person perspective agents  – featuring mainly headshot illustrations of Implica Metador in various poses and moods. The posters also contain their respective mystic-genetic data specs as iconography, along with a personalized trecet of verses with the syllabled meter of 2-3-2. Each poster can be seen as a promotional object and still-frame of a unique vignette that is based on the alignment of the two data fields of the thirty six perspective interactions with the thirty six Hermetic decante archetypes. I fashioned these works with the same meditative focus of my ink stippling era; applying magickal techniques with love and full intent of will.

After successfully completing several 2d-animated music videos, the magician was ready to embark on the magnum opus called Mea Hermetica in December of 2020. In a cannabis & coffee-fueled journey, I began to add color and motion to each and every Illustrator vector element that I’ve drawn up in the last quarter-century. With jazzy space-funk and afro-futurism on constant turntable rotations, I indulged my time-honored process of making art with music as my inspirational environment. Even without the use of LSD, this process was still very psychedelic and spiritual for me. Each animated sequence was a peak experience that folded time and space, bringing the last twenty five years up to the present.

Like a psychedelic creation myth, the first nine minutes of the video present the birth, self-replication, and coalescence of the primary elements and number patterns to eventually construct the living and breathing Laterna diagram. The use of color, repetition, and rhythm is immersive for the viewer, and simulates the psychedelic experience. The second half of the video is the presentation of the first twelve Arista vignettes, each with their own tercet verses, and their theme songs.

The vignettes begin with the Arista agent emerging from its place in Laterna, revealing it’s metered verses, followed by a projection of its Hermetic correspondences appearing in a display panel. Based on the sequential pathway (a sigil) of the numbers 1-36 on the magic square, an additional fractal sigil is generated for each Arista, and appears rhythmically between flashes of the Arista agent. Working backwards from each Arista poster, I animated Implica into swirling and folding spatial topographies; as I had originally intended. The vignette scenario is based on its own particular mythos. The vignettes end with their personal perspective interactions, creating a contemplative map to help facilitate class consciousness, as well as awareness of class struggle and intersectionality.

As a non-musician, I took a DIY punk approach to composing the soundtrack of Mea Hermetica. A few chords, and a plethora of effects, echos, reverb, and beats. While phasing of styles into one another, but carrying the same two or three base melodies in a long-formatted prog rock-like composition was certainly influenced by The Mars Volta, Can, Pink Floyd, and Mansun’s “Six” album in the first half of the video. Mansun’s song fragments, Wire’s minute-long art-sketches, and Eno’s elevated pop portraits were my inspiration for the Arista vignettes. The genre-hopping throughout the score ranges from ambient, dub, trip-hop, electro, and reggaeton, to punk, post-punk, psych-rock, goth, and industrial-metal. The music is credited to The Void, my electronic music entity that includes the majority of the vocals by my partner Natalie Kimber. The score is intended to match the visuals in terms of rhythm and trippiness, and the tercet verses work as lyrics. The Names of the first twelve Aristas and their 2-3-2 syllable tercets are as follows:

Diadema – I, me. | I’m not you. | You’re me.

Virtus – You’re peace | between in | and out.

Consummatio – They spoke. | I heard them. | I’m them.

Concertatio  – My foes, | prepare for | my wrath.

Triumphus – I nod. | You progress | and shine.

Valorum – You can’t. | I resist, | bravely.

Quiesco – We aim | to balance | the two.

Dolor – I can’t. | Knowing what | I know.

Indutia – Rhythm, | solitude, | sanctum.

Detrimentum – We bow | to pain of | defeat.

Scientia – We merge | knowledge and | nature.

Vanitas  –  Us, them. | Guile, action, | success.

Mea Hermetica overall, is a contemplation on the unfolding of consciousness. The visual depictions – through animated architectures of higher dimensions of hyperspace – were intended to be my reference tools, and the entirety of the project can be applied as a literary, introspective, or even a divinatory apparatus. This unified field of consciousness is my interpretation of what lies behind the physical world; an abstract, symbolic schematic of reality. The ninth tarot card of the major arcana is The Hermit, who turns inward towards self-actualization. He carries the lantern (Laterna) to reveal the universal wisdom.

In my creative process, I carried the intent to make Mea Hermetica an extension of Hermes Trismegistus’ Emerald Tablet, the structure of the Hermetic philosophy, with its primary credo – As above; so below, As within; so without. As with the universe; so with the soul – setting the mode of the entire mystic text. With an additional thirty six tercet verses, I assembled my own psychedelic  / quasi-mystical writing that is an homage and extension of the Emerald Tablet. These abstract verses can be used for contemplation, as well as being descriptors for the animated processes that they overlap. These tercets are presented as text and spoken word in the first half of the video, and are shown here in the order that they appear in the video:

1. plenum our lady of space 
2. a point self breath beat of will
3. the dance between this and that
4. constant existence in flux
5. self seeks to reflect themself
6. rhythm rests and beats in time
7. fractal hologram echo 
8. triad opposites unite
9. structure function and order
10. zygote syzygy two three
11. the point perspective as eye
12. vertex polygon structure
13. three squared trinities balanced
14. cyclic nine timelords of space
15. her curves generate ebbflow
16. endless cascading contexts 
17. fluid reflexive spacetime
18. mindfield unified fieldtrip
19. someone’s view of an other’s
20. coded datastream verses
21. discreet exper’yence holons
22. conscious arista agents
23. phrased verse binary triplet
24. units of feelings quantized
25. fractions factors as fractals
26. a whole is part of a whole
27. change is the only constant
28. the beats repeating as change
29. timebridge to higher spaces
30. sum of all data bodied
31. agent of agents network
32. hidden sun behind the sun
33. in/out fractal lens vibrates
34. the whole is cased in the self
35. circuit of solar currents
36. loop self reference reflex

With the entire artistic process baked into its own creation, Mea Hermetica is my magickal grimoire; the time, the entities, the concepts, and their manifestation in accordance with my will are scribed into a trippy music video. As such, this presentation is not a final product, but a work-in-progress. The next phase is to bring to life the second and third-person notional perspectives. These perspectives are notional to the first person, and thus only exist in its interior; the subtle realm that is the focus of Mea Hermetica. These additional twenty four Aristas will therefore complete the thirty six fractal matrix of the 360° circle.

From the beginning of this journey, I wanted to “kick something that means something”. The result here is an inner-cosmic scheme diagram of my actual process of meaning-making through a metaphorical assembly language; animated, and set to beats.vign