Conceptual Fusion

Coleridge, Higgins, and the intermedium

JULAINNE S. SUMICH
DOCTOR OF FINE ARTS
EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO ARTIST, THEORIST, EDUCATOR, WRITER
AUCKLAND
NEW ZEALAND
www.intermedia.ac.nz
2007

ISBN 978-0-473-12269-0

CONTENTS

A CHEMISTRY OF AFFECTION

CONFUSION

CONCEPTUAL FUSION

10

PROCESSING NOVELTY

16

CONCLUSION: A NOOSIGN

23

EPILOGUE TIS MINE AND IT IS LIKEWISE YOURS

25

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

25

A CHEMISTRY OF AFFECTION

The scientist Alfred I. Tauber has written of the tension between art and science as
a longstanding preoccupation in Western thought, in the sense that it captures the
ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus over what deserves to order our thought
and serve as the aspiration of our cultural efforts. 1 The intermedium between art
and science is a healthy antagonism that gives leverage to thinking. It finds a
resonance with self-organizing processes in the human nervous system where
opposing forces work autonomously in unison with each other as progenitors of
action. I write of the intermedium as an agency of affect between the opposing
forces of any mediums. My understanding of the term affect corresponds to Brian
Massumis notes on its translation in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism &
Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari. Laffect is the ability to
affect and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage
from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or
diminution in that bodys capacity to act(with body taken in its broadest possible
sense to include mental or ideal bodies).2 While beyond our conscious capacity
to decide its merit in ordering our thought, affect is crucial to the genesis of thought
and deserves our attention in the study of the intermedial arts. The potential affect

Tauber, A. I. (ed.) 1996, The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science in Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science Dordrecht, Boston; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Vol.
182, p. vii
2
Brian Massumi, Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgments in A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (1980),
xvi

of the intermedium in oscillation between the arts, philosophy, and science, is a

conceptual fusion borne of their confusion.
My initial research had been concerned with the degree to which the term
intermedium as used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) affected the thought
and work of Richard Carter Higgins (1938-1998). They were the protagonists of the
term in the arts and, by association, intermedial thought in a broader sense. In the
historical account of intermedia as an art form, disagreement over the initial source
and date of the term, and its subsequent use has been a subject of controversy.
However, through discovery of material from Coleridges criticism associated with
experimental chemistry, hitherto absent from this context, I attempt to expand on
both Coleridges and Higgins use of the intermedium to disentangle the confusion,
and to introduce a new complexity of conceptual fusion to the discourse on the
intermedial arts; a fusion characterized as a chemistry of affection.

CONFUSION

Higgins states that Coleridge used the term only once in Lecture III [on the poet
Edmund Spenser]. He is referring to the passage Narrative allegory is
distinguished from mythology as reality from symbol: it is, in short, the proper
intermedium between person and personification.3 Higgins remarks: Here we
have it - Coleridge uses the term to signify exactly what I have done. What I might
have known of it or not before having created it myself is subject to controversy. 4
Although forthcoming about acknowledging Coleridge, Higgins for many years did
so without citing the literary source, or the context of how Coleridges use of the
intermedium lined up so precisely with his own. My quotations from Higgins
advance aspects of confusion held by some writing on intermedia art: that his use of
the term was original and that Coleridge used it only once.5 Yet Higgins inference
of its mutual significance calls this opinion into question. In Looking Back, while
discussing poetic synthesis between the arts, Nicholas Zurbrugg suggests its
relation to one of your key terms: intermedia to which Higgins responds:

3
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Thomas Middleton Raysor, (ed.) Coleridge's Miscellaneous
Criticism London: Constable & Co Ltd. 1936, p.3 Lecture III Tuesday evening, February 3.
Chaucer and Spenser; of Petrarch; of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo. 1818; see p. 28 note 1
(watermark of first draft 1817); p.32 n. 4
4
Interview with Dick Higgins, 1998, <<Dick Higgins 1938-1998 Intermdia>> in Les
ditions Intervention Inter, Canada, Quebec: Inter diteur, Le Lieu, Centre en Art Actuel, 73, Juin
1999 p. 5 << Ici nous lavons - Coleridge utilise le terme pour signifier exactement ce que jai fait.
Que je laie connu ou non avant de la crer moi-mme est sujet controverse. >>. (I translate)
5
Ken Friedman, Ken Friedman's contribution to FLUXLIST and SILENCE Celebrate
Dick Higgins http://www.fluxus.org/higgins/ken.htm 1998 (accessed 29 December 2004) Higgins
coined the term "intermedia" in the mid-sixties [] Higgins noted that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had
used the term over a century and a half before he himself independently rediscovered it. Higgins was
too modest. Coleridge used the term "intermedium" once --apparently once only - to refer to a
specific issue in the work of Edmund Spenser.

I revived this term from Coleridge. He used it in a lecture that he wrote in 1814 and which
he published in 1816, and used it only once as far as I know. But it was such a striking
notion that when I came across it, it was easy to pick up. I must have come across it when I
was a language student in Yale or Columbia in the late fifties 6

What was such a striking notion in Coleridges use of the intermedium that
took so easily in Higgins imagination? Thomas Drehers research on action art and
intermedia has cited the source of Higgins use of the term as Coleridges
Miscellaneous Criticism, and suggests the more likely date of 1818. 7 Higgins had
previously given 18128 as its date, whereas in the Criticism Coleridges Lecture III
on Spenser is authenticated as 1818.9 The pair of different dates given by Higgins in
the Zurbrugg interview suggested Coleridge might have used the term more than
once. Internet searches linked to an article containing a passage from Coleridges
Biographia Literaria where the intermedium is related to technical chemistry:

10

[] whatever else is combined with metre must, though it be not itself essentially
poetic, have nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium
6

Nicholas Zurbrugg, Looking Back [an interview with Dick Higgins, 1993] in: PAJ: A
Journal of Performance and Art http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/paj/v021/21.2zurbrugg.html. 21.2, p.
24. Hereafter, references to this article will be indicated by: (LB, page number) in the body of the
text.
7
Thomas Dreher, <<Aktions-und Konzept Kunst>> http://mitglied.lycos.de/ThomasDreher
/1 Aktions-u.Konzeptkunst.html 2001 (accessed 11 June 2004) n.1. <<Higgins ergnzt: <Das Wort
<Intermedia> habe ich bei Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wiedergefunden>> [in: Coleridge,
Samuel Taylor: Coleridges Miscellaneous Criticism. London 1936, S.21, 31, 33]. <<Er hat schn
1812 [vielmehr 1818] den Begriff <Intermedia> verwendet.>>
8
Dick Higgins, Intermedia (1981), in Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society
for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, 2001, Vol. 34, No.1, p. 52.
Hannah Higgins 2002 Fluxus Experience. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University
of California Press p.91; Dick Higgins borrowed the idea from Samuel Coleridge (1812); p. 221 n.
46: The Coleridge citation dates to 1812, but I have not located it in a specific work.
9
Thomas Middleton Raysor, (ed.) Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism. London: Constable
& Co Ltd. 1936, p.3 Lecture III Tuesday evening, February 3. Chaucer and Spenser; of Petrarch; of
Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo. 1818; p. 28 note 1 (watermark first draft 1817); p.32 n. 4
10
Drew Milne, Flaming robes: Keats, Shelley and the metrical clothes of class struggle in
Textual Practice http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/media/ 15(1), 2001, p.106 (29 Dec. 2004)

of affinity, a sort, (if I may borrow a well-known phrase from technical chemistry),
of mordaunt between it and the super-added metre.

11

Coleridge began work on

Biographia Literaria in 1815, and published in July 1817. (BL I, lxv) In February
1818, he delivers his lecture on Spenser. Higgins had referred to Coleridges use of
the intermedium in a lecture, giving dates only a year out on the Biographias
writing and publication. (LB, 24) I suggest that, in his recollection, Higgins fuses
both instances of the term; and that if in fact he did recall just the IM1818 12 passage
as a once only use by Coleridge, in that instance the intermedium is in-formed by
its use just seven months earlier i.e. in the sense of its chemical agency. For
example, in his lecture Coleridge alludes to the transformative and conceptual
power of such agency in thought processes, describing allegorical writing to be the
employment of one set of agents and images to convey in disguise a moral
meaning, with a likeness to the imagination, but with a difference to the
understanding, [...] in an allegory there may be that which is new and not previously
admitted. 13
Higgins understanding of the intermedium as both a physical and conceptual
process of fusion between discrete media elements14 is supported by the Oxford

11

James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (eds.) Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches
of My Literary Life and Opinions, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1983, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 7, II. p. 71. Hereafter,
references to this book will be indicated by: (BL, volume and page number) in the body of the text.
12
intermedium: Hereafter, Coleridges uses of the term are indicated by (IM, date).
13
Raysor, p. 32-33
14
Dick Higgins, 1984, Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia. Carbondale
and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press p. 138 Hereafter, references to this book will be
indicated by: (HH, page number) in the body of the text

English Dictionary15 definition - intermedium: an intermediate agent,

intermediary, medium; esp. in earlier Chemistry and Physics, a substance serving as
a means of some natural action or process; b) with a mixture of the sense of an
intervening medium serving to transmit energy through space.
Given their different cultural and temporal contexts, and also given the
absence of intermediums connection to chemistry, the argument that Coleridges
use of the term differed from Higgins is to be expected. For example, in Ken
Friedmans opinion Coleridge's use of the word "intermedium" in Lecture Three:
'On Spenser' suggests a distant kinship to Higgins' construction of the term
intermedia. Nevertheless, Coleridge's usage was different in meaning and in
form.

16

On the other hand, Lisa Morens research paper on Dick Higgins and

Intermedia art touches on Coleridges relationship with the experimental chemist,

Humphry Davy, and although unaware of Coleridges earlier use of the term, she
comes close to it by suggesting a connection between the chemical etymology of
intermedium and its agency in binding together discrete technical elements. 17
A closer intertextual relationship, such as Moren indicates, I suggest is
confirmed when taking the aspect of an experimental chemistry into fuller account.

15

The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition 1989: Oxford University Press http://0dictionary.oed.com. www.elgar.govt.nz:80/entrance.dtl 2006. Hereafter references to this site will be
indicated by acronym OED.
16
Friedman, 1998
17
Lisa Moren, The Wind is a Medium of the Sky, monograph on Richard Carter Higgins
and Intermedia www.research.umbc.edu/~lmoren/pdf/wind.pdf .2003 p.2 (Accessed 3 Nov 2005)

Higgins had read almost all the writings by Coleridge during his time at
Yale.

18

A few years later, in his influential publication Intermedia, he uses the

singular form, intermedium, five times. In a variety of contexts yet common to each
use is the sense of the intermedium as an autonomous agency in the transformation
of objects and/or events into forms of conceptual experience. 19 From his discourse I
draw the opinion that the affect of the intermedium on Higgins led him to
understand the term scientifically and poetically as the fusion of particular elements
in the experimental mix between combined mediums, occurring internally in the
processes of the nervous system, and externally in the production/performance of
the intermedial arts.

18

<<Higgins 1938-1998>>, p. 5 <<Jai trs bien pu lire ce mot Yale, o jai presque tout
lu des crits de Coleridge .>> (I translate)
19
Dick Higgins, (1965), Intermedia in Dick Higgins, A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes
towards a Theory of the New Arts. New York & Barton, Vermont Printed Editions, 1978 pp. 12-17:
Hereafter, references to this book will be indicated by: (HDC, page number) in the body of the text.

10

CONCEPTUAL FUSION

Concurrent with his reading of Coleridge, Higgins was taking courses in

experimental forms of composition with the avant-garde musician, John Cage.20
These combined interests in poetry and music suggest the likelihood of Higgins
attraction to Coleridges theoretical critique on the role of metre in poetry. In
Biographia Literaria, discussing language of metrical composition, Coleridge
traces the origin of metre to that balance in the mind effected by that spontaneous
effort which strives to hold in check the workings of passion and how this
balance of antagonists became organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of that
term) by a supervening act of the will and judgement, consciously and for the
foreseen purpose of pleasure. (BL II, 64) These principles Coleridge uses to
determine two conditions that the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical
work: the natural language of excitement and a voluntary act that artificially
forms these elements of excitement into metre. (BL II, 65) In other words,
Coleridge requires that metre meet the balanced operations of mental processes. He
goes on to give examples of how the action of metre corresponds to the chemical
affect of ready-made stimuli, such as good company and alcohol, when combined
in body and brain become considerable in their aggregate influence. (BL V. II:
65) A correspondent mode of thought to Coleridges expression of metres

20

<<Higgins 1938-1998>>, p. 2 <<Cest ainsi que durant lt 1958, jai suivi deux cours
avec Cage, musique pendant la smaine et champignons les weekends.>> So it was that during the
summer 1958 I took two courses with John Cage, music during the week and mushrooms in the
weekends. (I translate); p.13 Yale College (New Haven, Connecticut), Columbia University (New
York, BS in English, 1960); Musical studies with John Cage 1958-9.

11

autonomous aggregate influence is found in Higgins notion of conceptual fusion as

the interaction between media elements so combined as to form from the aggregate
of those stimuli an experience distinct from its component elements: To me, the
difference between intermedia and multimedia is that with intermedia there is a
conceptual fusion, and you can't really separate out the different media in an
integral way. They all have to go together, or you simply do not get the
aggregate experience. (LB, 24)
Just as Coleridge induces the affects of metre by intensifying21 the
antagonistic processes between mental and physical processes, Higgins
Intermedia gives a dramatic account of early intermedial affects culminating in
his theatre piece, Stacked Deck (Higgins, 1958) He sees the ready-made, in a sense
an intermedium since it was not intended to conform to the pure medium, as
situated between the general area of art media and those of life media. He holds
the readers engagement as the intermediums agency is generated in collages of
incongruous objects or combines, and the inclusion of live people as part of
the collage. (HDC, 12-16) Employing what might for Coleridge be supervening
acts of the will, Higgins induces the intermedial dynamics of a situation to happen;
to take according to the nature of interacting elements, thereby taking his work
into a conceptual dimension, just as one forms a new compound by fusing different
chemical elements together. In 1958 I wrote a piece, Stacked Deck, in which any

21

OED. intensify 1. a. trans. To render intense, to give intensity to; to augment, strengthen, heighten,
deepen, etc. [coined by Coleridge, 1817]

12

event can take place at any time, as long as its cue appears. The cues are produced
by colored lights. Since the coloured lights could be used wherever they were put
and audiences reactions were also cuing situations, the performance-audience
separation was removed... (HDC, 15-16) Figure 1.

Figure 1 Still image from Stacked Deck by Dick Higgins (1958)

Performed 1960 at the YMHA Kaufman Auditorium, NYC.
Courtesy of the Estate of Dick Higgins

It was during this period of the late fifties that Higgins first came across the
intermedium in Coleridges criticism. I suggest he was struck by the coincidence
and resonance that Coleridges technical notion held in relation to his own thought
processes, and which, easily picked up, becomes evident in the dynamics of Stacked
Deck. The affect generated between the medium of people and the medium of light

13

corresponds to the intermedium of affinity22, the agent of conceptual fusions

fundamental condition. When two or more discrete media are conceptually fused,
they become intermedia. They differ from mixed media in being inseparable in the
essence of an artwork.(HH, 138) These aggregates of experience occur in the flux
of time, forming new compounds of this unthought within thought.23
For Coleridge, his experience of striking phenomena that became the
catalyst for new connections in his work came through his relationship with
Humphry Davy, the experimental chemist. They had become acquainted in 1799,
during a period of impetus for much of later Coleridges literary work. Besides
taking part in Davys early experiments he had later attended some of his lectures.
I attend Davys lectures to increase my stock of metaphors Coleridge is said to
have replied when asked what attractions he could find in a study so unconnected
with his known pursuits.24 The attraction that he felt toward Davy dated from the
shared experience of breathing nitrous oxide in Bristol. 25 In 1800 he had supplied
Davy with a detailed account of the experience, including its affect on his heart:
My eyes felt distended, and towards the last, my heart beat as if it were leaping up
and down Figure 2
22

OED, affinity 9. esp. Chemical attraction; the tendency which certain elementary
substances or their compounds have to unite with other elements and form new compounds.
23
Gilles Deleuze, (1985) Cinema 2: The Time Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert
Galeta, (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press) The Athlone Press, 1989 p.278 Hereafter,
references to this book will be indicated by: (DC2, page number) in the body of the text.
24
Nicholas Roe (ed.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 12. Hereafter, references to this book will be indicated by: (SL,
page number) in the body of the text.
25
Jan Golinski Humphry Davy's Sexual Chemistry in Configurations The Johns Hopkins
University Press and the Society for Literature and Science, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/
configurations/ v007/7.1golinski.html#REF49 1999, 7.1 p. 15-41 p. 32 (Accessed 28 July 2006)

14

Figure 2 Detail of Mr. Coleridge in Humphry Davy Researches 180026

The physical intensity of this experience and Coleridges spontaneous expression of

excitement would lead, I suggest, to the form of poetic transliteration in his poem
Christabel where he evokes a similar state of mind and checking of emotions by
the phrase: Hush, beating heart of Christabel! 27 It is an example of the convergence
between life media and art media where methods employed in ones art, knowingly

26

Humphry Davy, Researches, chemical and philosophical, chiefly concerning nitrous

oxide, or dephlogisticated nitrous air, and its respiration, London, 1800. Based on information from
ESTC Number T112164 British Library English Short Title Catalogue. http://galenet.galegroup.
com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/servlet/ECCO Gale Document Number CW106792973
27
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (1816) in J. C. C. Mays (ed.) Poetical Works I:
Poems (Reading Text), (The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge -16) Princeton University
Press p. 485. Hereafter references to this book will be indicated by: (C, page no.) in the body of the
text.

15

or not, draw on intense affects of life experience. I will argue that in further aspects
of this scenario from Christabel Coleridge, I suggest cognisant of such affect,
fuses these media together to give form to a language that might describe the
experience he found so gripping. When he writes: Metre in itself is simply a
stimulant of the attention, and therefore excites the question: Why is the attention to
be thus stimulated? the only reason he can give himself is that I write in metre,
because I am about to use a language different from that of prose. (BL, VII: 69) He
is preparing the reader for his allusion to an intermedium of affinity, a sort, (if I
may borrow a well-known phrase from technical chemistry), of mordaunt. (BL,
VII: 71) He fuses linguistic terms essentially different in style from prose 28 to rouse
the passions (BL, VII: 71-2) and induce the audiences attention on metres binding
affect, its mordaunt; the chemistry of affection that colours the imagination.29

28
BL, VII, p. 69; and J. C. McKusick, Coleridges Philosophy of Language (New Haven
and London) Yale University Press, 1986, p. 113 - 118
29
OED, mordaunt: any substance which fixes or holds a colorant in the material to be
dyed.

16

PROCESSING NOVELTY

Coleridge requires that metre meet the balanced operations of mental processes. His
description of the minds capacity for self-organization and the role of
consciousness in measuring the value of stimuli bring to mind current research on
the brains processing of novelty. The neuroscientist, David Friedman has described
the operations of the brain in its orienting response to novel events as follows:
Orienting is a rapid response to new (never experienced before), unexpected (out
of context) or unpredictable stimuli, which essentially functions as a what-is-it
detector. If the novelty is sufficiently deviant or unfamiliar it engenders the
involuntary capture of attention, enabling the event to enter consciousness thus
permitting an evaluation of the stimulus. This could lead, if the event is deemed
significant, to behavioural action. 30 I suggest that it is this mechanism of the brain
that Coleridge is referring to, and by which the power of his metrical composition
induces in his audience the visceral and mental turbulence that he had experienced
in life. From Humphry Davys lectures and experiments Coleridges observations
and notes give insight into the new dynamic potential of naturally occurring
chemical elements. Interlacing lines from his notebooks with phrases from
Christabel below an image is constructed of Coleridges orienting response by
observing the fusion of technical chemistry in his linguistic style. The passage from
Christabel is provided here for ease of reference:
30

David Friedman, and Y. l. M. Cycowicz, H. Gaeta, The novelty P3: an event-related brain
potential (ERP) sign of the brains evaluation of novelty, in Neuroscience and Behavioural
Reviews, 2001, 25, p. 356

17

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!

Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.

55
56

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Dressed in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were;
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she-Beautiful exceedingly !

58
59
60
61
63
64
65
66
67

Ether burns bright indeed in the atmosphere, but o! how brightly whitely vividly
beautiful in Oxygen gas. (CN, i. 1098 f.5) 31
Cf. L. 55 folded her arms beneath her cloak
Cf. Ll. 58-60 Bright, white, shadowy shone
Indicate affects of ether combined with oxygen -

32

e.g. a vaporous, icy atmosphere

inducing an anaesthetized state in the subject.

Davy at the lectures Jan. 28, 1802 | gave a spark with the Electric machineI felt
nothinghe then gave a very vivid spark with the Leyden Phial& I distinctly felt
the shock (CN, i.1099)
Cf. L. 63 blue-veined feet unsandal'd
Indicate involuntary spasms or convulsions 33 that can result from electric shock.
31

Roe in Sciences of Life, p.13 Coleridges notes indicated in parentheses.

OED, ether: 6. Chem. a. The colourless, light, volatile liquid, (C4H10O) resulting from
the action of sulphuric acid upon alcohol, whence it was also known as sulphuric, phosphoric, etc.
ether [] now distinguished as common, ethylic, or vinic ether, or ethyl oxide. It is an ansthetic,
and capable of producing extreme cold by its evaporation.
32

18

ff 11-12 [1 ii Class 2] Solid inflammable bodies having no metallic properties:

phosphorous, sulphur, carbon.34
Gold Silver, & Platina are combustible if a power sufficiently strong be applied;
and this power exists in Galvanic Electricity. (CN, i. 1098 f.14)
Cf. L. 61 The neck made that white robe wan
Cf. Ll. 64-65 wildly glittered here there gems entangled in her hair
Indicate an amalgamation and distributed use of Davys experiments with
nonmetallic and metallic elements: in its ordinary state phosphorous35 is a toxic,
flammable, phosphorescent, white solid; sulphur
occurring, brittle crystalline solid; carbon

37

36

- a greenish-yellow, freely

the black diamond. The wild sparks

of gems are entangled in the alliteration of here there (L. 64) in her hair creating a
breathlessness in response to a fright sufficient to make ones hair stand on end.38

33

Tortora and Anagnostakos, p. 219 Abnormal contractions in muscle tissue: convulsions

occur when motor neurons are stimulated by fever, poisons, hysteria, or changes in body chemistry
due to withdrawal of certain drugs. The stimulated neurons send many bursts of seemingly
disordered impulses to the muscle fibers. Such symptoms Coleridge may have experienced in his
attempts to withdraw from his dependency on laudanum.
34
Coburn, The Notebooks n.1098 Coleridges notes from the lectures refer to that part of
the course described in pp12-18 of [Davys Lectures] Syllabus.
35
OED, phosphorus: 2. a. A substance or organism that emits light spontaneously or after
heating or other treatment. 3. Chem. A non-metallic chemical element, widespread [] in living
organisms and in minerals, and in its commonest form is a whitish waxy solid which undergoes
spontaneous oxidation or ignition in air.
36
OED, sulphur: 1. a. A greenish-yellow non-metallic substance, found abundantly in
volcanic regions, and occurring free in nature as a brittle crystalline solid, and widely distributed in
combination with metals and other substances. In popular and commercial language it is otherwise
known as brimstone.
37
OED, carbon: 1. a. Chem. One of the non-metallic elements, very abundant in nature
b. a form of diamond, the black diamond or carbonado.
38
G. J. Tortora and N. P. Anagnostakos, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology: 4th Edition
Harper International Edition. 1984, p. 111 Hair: Under stress of fright or cold, muscles contract
causing the skin around hair shafts to form slight elevations.

19

The combined force of these elemental images characterize Lady Geraldine as a

chilling sight of galvanizing attraction and a site of explosive power.
Coleridge had used the oak, a sign of endurance,39 as a sign of decay in The
Ancient Mariner.40 In Christabel it stands as a sign of ambivalence or a confused
state of mind; an intermedium between the durability of the familiar and of the
shape of things to come - the rise of science and its unknown outcomes. Oak bark is
a form of mordant,41 an intermedium of affinity that in my discourse acts as agent
between the two contesting investments of the intermedial oak. If we take the
IM1818 usage we could say that the odds are stacked against Christabel in
Coleridges narrative allegory. He places her in an attitude personifying prayerful
concern. Then taking an opposite role on the other side of the oak he piles his
personification of science line upon line, leaving himself, the narrator, lost for
words, I guess. The ambivalence of his interjection is subsumed into the repulsion
/ attraction circuit between the words frightful and beautiful.
In contrast to Coleridges novel technique for attracting the audiences
attention Dick Higgins cues the movements of participants to fire between the
colour and lighting elements of his Stacked Deck. This is a different sort of
affection where the crucial element is real-time interaction between the elemental
including bodies and minds becoming conceptually fused as an image distinct
39

OED, oak: b. gen. the wood or timber of the oak, esp. the English oak; freq. in allusive
phrases with reference to its hardness, durability, or reliability.
40
OED, 1798 S. T. Coleridge, Anc. Marinere VII, in Lyrical Ballads 44 The rotted old
*Oak-stump.
41
OED, 1758 Philos. Trans. Royal Soc. 50 455 Whether this bark is used to give strength
to this yarn, as we dye and tan our fishing-nets with oak-bark, or for ornament, is uncertain.

20

from its elemental properties. Correspondent to Coleridges use of a language

different from that of prose, Higgins also constructs a language of conceptual
fusion, but in his case it is as an image of spatio-temporal events. His postal poetry
is an explicit and unusual example in providing the sense of an intervening medium
serving to transmit energy through space. Figure 3 (HDC, 17) 42
When he used the plural form, intermedia, Higgins was indicating the
many divergent forms that might be generated between different media practices.
(HDC, 13-17) When he later reflects on what it was that holds diverse practices
together, he comments on different inter-mediums, which include the art of
thought, philosophy, as belonging to a different species of poetry.(HH, 93 -95)
Higgins had diagrammed these inter-mediums in his mail-art poster, SOME POETRY
INTERMEDIA.

From poetry and metapoetries sound poetry >music;43 action poetry >

happenings; visual poetry (including concrete poetry) >visual art; video poetry
>video; object poetry >sculpture; postal poetry >mail art; concept poetry>
philosophy; an intermedium >anything. Included in a typeset aphorism44 on the
posters right side, Higgins writes: The real poem lies beyond its word, beyond its
ideas, following with a quotation from Coleridge: All the fine arts [are] a
different species of poetry. The same spirit speaks to the mind through different
senses by manifestations of itself, appropriate to each. The thoughts of Coleridge
42

Dick Higgins, SOME POETRY INTERMEDIA, Poster Folded in eighths (as issued) Skyline
Books: Modern, Beat, and Counterculture Literature http://www.sweetbooks.com/h.htm
43
> = leads to
44
OED, aphorism: 1. a definition or concise statement of a principle in any science. 2.
Any principle or precept expressed in few words; a short pithy sentence containing a truth of general
import; a maxim.

21

become literally embodied in Higgins personal maxim. In Coleridges original text

this passage continues: They admit therefore of a natural division into poetry or
language []; poetry of the ear, or music; and poetry of the eye, which is again
divided into plastic poetry, or statuary, and graphic poetry, or paintings.

45

In

Higgins graphic poem these divisions are interlaced with his own species of
modern poetry, where the inter-medium of philosophy is given the greatest
extension. By this Higgins seems to suggest the temporal nature of the art of
thought, the time it takes to process ideas. In this sense, he seems to see concept
poetry as a form of embodied mind when he continues: Since a poem cannot be
perceived at one flash, as a visual work can, but must be revealed over a matter of
time, like music, theater, or dance, the temporal aspect of a poem is one which the
poet must consider A poem, once perceived becomes a thing, and can be
perceived all at once in the memory. Higgins continues his maxim with a passage
that alludes to this infolding conceptual process between poet and poetry: The poet
can play on this phenomenon. There are words within words, and the poem lies
within the poem. The exchange resonates with Coleridges reflection on What is
poetry? and by extension, what is a poet? and his opinion that both belong to the
same answer: the process of fusion - through the imagination.
[The poet] diffuses a tone, and a spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into
each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the
name of imagination. This power [] reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of
opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; [] the sense of novelty and
freshness, with old and familiar objects (BL II, 16-17)
45

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On the Genial Arts of Criticism, in J. Shawcross (ed.)

Biographia Literaria 2. London: Oxford: University Press, 1907, p. 220

22

Imagination, in the sense used by Coleridge, is the power of inner vision:

Einbildungskraft the mother of creative invention because it creates compact
clusters of associations it makes them seamless so that a new unity and new
images are formed by a melting or fusing process. (BL I, ci) 46
The diagrammatic form of SOME

POETRY INTERMEDIA

includes the

extension of an intermedium indicated by a dashed line leading to anything. It

resembles a map of ideas for a thought experiment, a new cartography of
conceptual fusion.

Figure 3. Dick Higgins 1976 Some Poetry Intermedia, Offset print, Dim. 22 x 17

46

Nicholas Roe referring to the German philosopher, Ernst Platners clear-cut distinction
between Phantasie and Einbildungskraft.

23

CONCLUSION: A NOOSIGN

Yes, Coleridge did use the intermedium to signify exactly what Higgins had done.
With the proviso that the term is understood as a fusion of both instances and based
in the introduction of the scientific aspect of an intermedium of affinity. The agency
of its affection permeates their work, but separately expressing their own singularity
of imagination. The affect of the intermedium and its connection to chemistry was
for Coleridge, I suggest, an intensification of his technical and stylistic expertise
through which he could mirror the chemistry of body and mind. For Higgins it was
more a temporal agent; a form of process art where whatever happened from the
combination of discrete media is the work. It corresponds to naturally occurring
autonomic processes in the cortical structure of the brain where diverse stimuli
generate neural connections;47 (Figure 4) bringing the potential of combined data, in
both neural and intermedial art senses, to a point of emergence.

Figure 4. The six cortical layers of the brain and longitudinal neural operations

47

The Neuroscience of Consciousness in The Science and Philosophy of Consciousness

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/conz3a.htm#introduction (13 Sept 2004)

24

The philosopher Gilles Deleuze comments: [G]iven one potential, another

one has to be chosen, not any whatever, but in such a way that a difference of
potential is established between the two, which will be productive of a third or of
something new. (DC2, 179-80) If we consider three potentials, the arts, sciences,
and philosophy as intermedial arts, as inter-mediums in Higgins sense, or as the
technical chemistry of metre in Coleridges, their elusive synthesis is to be
discovered in the noosign, a term Deleuze gives to an image of thought, and whose
genesis here has been the affect between these disciplines in producing a new
perspective on the intermedium.

25

EPILOGUE TIS MINE AND IT IS LIKEWISE YOURS

In his preface to Christabel, Coleridge makes reference to those who had

appropriated ideas from this work. (C, 481-2) He knowingly suggests, in the spirit
of friendship, that this be known, so that he, like they, might benefit. Coleridge
offers advice in a piece of doggerel for any of us who might wish to copy him. My
writing on conceptual fusions has become what I call a philosscific inter-medium of
the arts, an elusive synthesis of art and science. In the spirit of Coleridges
suggestion tis mine and it is likewise yours (C, 481)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Hannah Higgins and Alison Knowles for their permission to use the still image
from Stacked Deck performance 1958, and image of SOME POETRY INTERMEDIA
1976: Courtesy of the Estate of Dick Higgins.
Lisa Moren for putting me in touch with Hannah Higgins and Alison Knowles, and
to acknowledge her insight on Richard Carter Higgins and Intermedia
http://www.research.umbc.edu/ ~lmoren/
articles.html
The Editorial Committee Intermdialits: Histoire et Thorie des Arts, des Lettres
et des Techniques, Universit de Montreal, Canada http://www.intermedialites.ca./