Ramón Llull's Empty Wheels

This silent video is a supplement to a zoom lecture series. Artificial memory, precursor to AI, seems at first to involve combinatorial protocols for combining known topics, but in fact the topics were (Lacanian) master signifiers, without specific content. Memory wheels, derived from mystic Christian/Arabic/Jewish zairjas (devices involving astrology calculations) generated new knowledge based on combinatorial contrasts. The thesis here focuses on the katagraphic cut function, or "consubstantiality," the creation of a fully oppositional/antagonistic category out of simple negation or privation.