broken
symmetry

An exploration in becoming

No. 001 Philosophy

Friedrich Nietzsche 1883–1885

Thus spokeZarathustra.

What remains when the old
certainties fall away?

Enter exploration
A book for all and noneAll artwork
“Every voyage is an opportunity for learning and to become wiser.”
Colin Haley

Five pauses at the edge

No. 002 A visual dialogue

Friedrich Nietzsche Jeff Smoot

All &nothing.

Where does freedom begin?

Follow the line

Pen & ink

The work.

24 drawings Open to look closer

A fold in a white surface opens onto a miniature, densely hatched mountain valley, with pale violet edges. An intricately etched cicada shell clings to a single reed against a wide field of white. A small irregular stone rests within interrupted elliptical ink rings, their edges faintly violet and blue. A bare stump and branching roots float in white space, their finest tips becoming pale contour lines. A curved raven feather dissolves into hundreds of fine windlike marks along its diagonal tip. Hairline fractures spread across white lake ice from a small dark opening, drawn in intricate violet ink. Angular mineral folds and fluid strands meet in a small braid, then continue as one quiet line. Three porous stones hover above one another with narrow gaps, their surfaces densely etched in dark violet. Branching glacial channels spread across the lower edge of an otherwise empty white field. A narrow floating shard of folded rock reveals dense mineral layers and clean white breaks. Two fragments of a jagged ridge dissolve into white mist, joined by a fine, suspended ink line. A finely drawn hand rests against a fracture in stone, its contours echoing the rock. A small solitary walker follows a descending path into a nearly vanished mountain valley. A blade of finely hatched violet rock rises diagonally into mist, its edge illuminated by a thin seam of light. Several broken ridgelines hover in layers of pale mist, their violet and cyan contours appearing and disappearing. An abstract ridge divides luminous lake-shaped voids, with delicate lavender contours following the surrounding basins. A geological fold opens into featherlike pen strokes, with spectral violet and rose light along its fractured strata. A low panorama of repeated rocky crests dissolves into a wide empty field, outlined by vibrating violet echoes. A central precipice descends into radiating gullies and pale basins, with fine cyan and magenta afterimages. A ridge almost disappears into white mist, leaving only scattered violet contours and a faint luminous trace. A camel carrying a bundle walks with its head lowered inside an open ink circle. A lion stands with its head raised, framed by an open ink circle. A child at play traces a circle in the earth with a stone, inside a larger open circle. An intricate monochrome pen drawing of successive serrated ridges disappearing into mist.

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