First part

IV Is it possible to classify sameness ? Is there a greater and smaller one ?

Is a 2D sameness smaller than a 3D one or greater one than a monochromatic one ?

from Medea sculpturs in Le Jardin des Tuileries by Hervé Bernard.

and Medea reinterpretations by Hervé Bernard.

Sameness as a technical question. The material sculpture matter. The sameness of a human sculpture is not the same if it’s made of iron or marble. Same for black and white and color. Different size of two objects is most time seen as different.

V Sameness is not an evidence, it is a mind game. Magritte pipe is not only a semantic reference, it is also a mind game.

The vision system for the mammal, the insects and the scallop are different but they have some similarity we say so nowadays but in the Middle age we probably said they were totally different. And we say it because we are able to explore the scallop eyes which, at a first glance doesn’t seem to be similar. They have both at least a retina, something to make difference between color and luminescence. This is showing there is a superficial sameness and an inside one.

• Sameness and evidence
Sameness make you believe everything is expressed no need to meet others to express yourself. If you believe sameness is an evidence. When you say something is similar to an another think you mays think everything is told no need to meet the others fo explantion. This belieiving in sameness drive you to deny the others difference and denying others drive you to the violence. The other become the enemy because there is no room for them as they are different. Different people become to be the explanation, the origin, the reason of all your problems. What René Girard called the scapegoat.

The gridlock of sameness as an evidence. The impossible reality of sameness.

VI Sameness elsewhere, the twins matter
The similarity, the sameness doesn’t exist in all the civilizations. As far as I know only two civilizations are concerned by this question : the Occidental and the Asian one. This two civilizations have in the same time developed a concept of the individuality. It could seem surprising to build a link between sameness and individuality. But they are the opposite faces of the same coin : identity.

As we say before, for speaking about sameness, you need someone to proclaim it. It’s not a fact, a thing, an evidence.

This is image is showing the eyes tracking of five persons during ten seconds. As you can see, there are people who have a really fixed eyes and others have eyes which are always moving.

Eye tracking is showing something essential nobody see the same thing even on a photography without speaking of reality. So, if nobody is seeing the same thing similarity is a construction. But in the same time if similarity doesn’t exist there is no way to discus together.

Dynamic eye tracking of someone looking to Icare Fall painting registred on video.

La Chute d'Icare, Bruegel from BERNARD Hervé (rvb) on Vimeo.

We considered two objects to be identical if they are product in the same production line and if they are the same colors and we considered this objects as identical despite they are not the same color. But in few African cultures, if they have the same shape, size... But not the same color they are seen as they were different.

The sameness question doesn’t seem to rise every where but the twin one, yes !

As Victor W.Turner explain in some parts of western Africa, “what is physically double is structurally uniqueness and what is uniqueness on a supernatural point of view is double”. Many cosmogonies and religions give a large place to the twinning Castor and Pollux, the Geminy in astrology... Twins are seen as prodigious and they arising is shaking the social, reinforcing or regenerating it.

They are the refection or the repetition, the doubling of the world order which is depicting the chaos, the mess of the sky and earth. They are the demonstration of the world duality : bad and good are coming together, stability and disorder, rain and dryness, peace and conflict, death and life...

In this mythology, gods or some of them are supposed to give to twins gifts or powers which are used for helpful or evil purposes. Sometime they are even the parent hoods of one of the twins. This is the reason why they are worthy worship and dreaded.

VII Sameness : a necessity
We need to simplify to understand our world as shown before by the plane. When we spoke about two objects as same even if they have a different color. We are building an abstraction.

But, if similarity doesn’t exist, there is no way for human being to discus together. There is a minimum similarity we agree to say. For instance, if we have a table in front of us. All the people which are in the room will agree this is a rectangular table, there are 3 or 4 feet, the work surface is round, square, rectangular or even triangular, the color is brownish, blue or red…. But all of this are abstraction, concept even colors are concept, are simplifications, to be able to build linked between objects, people, animals and so and.

VIII Images and their dangers,
many times a matter of sameness story
• Image danger are only a question of sameness
What ever is the danger of an image, it is always a sameness question

People say image is dangerous because it’s shown :
– Tits, nudity Fb version of dangerous image ;
– God or alive human bible religion ;

- Mehmet II‘s portrait was made in reference with 2 painted portraits made by 2 European painters Bellini and Constanzo da Ferrara. This portrait made possible the portrait by a Persian miniaturist : Sinân Bey. There was no thin, Sinân Bey made a copy of to objects. No human being in the process. Where is the sameness, in this case it’s a triangular one.

– Is it a nuclear plant itself or the picture of the nuclear plant that is dangerous ?

– Pictures of death

– Which image is the dangerous one ? and why ?
See Aylan and the skeleton baby ?
If they where not dangerous, why we wait a so long time for publishing them. If there were not dangerous why they arise so lately. Lately, because it is years and years that there is children who are dying because their parents are moving from south America to US, Africa or middle eastern to Europ and children starving and far before, in 70’s it was Biafran war.

https://observers.france24.com/fr/20151105-videos-syrie-ghouta-cages-asl

IX Sameness and realism
Is sameness the same as realism in visual art ? See impressionist cubism, hyperealism or Dali and optical illusion. Sameness in art is changing not only with centuries and places but also with artistic movements.

As the plane story shown we don’t need realism to build sameness but as photography, movie shown it’s may help a lot because the most part of People doesn’t understand what is an image.

When Brassaï shot this Picasso’s portrait he shift the slipers for aesthetic matters. When Picasso noticed it, he told to Brassaï if you shift them it won’t be anymore my portrait because you changed their place. So, Picasso shown he didn’t understand what is sameness. Yes, the slippers were not be anymore at the place he put them. Brassaï did it because he thaught the picture would be more aesthetic and aesthetic is a way to ridge a higher sameness to Picasso.

A last one. The Apollo flag on the moon. The people who don’t believe in this picture sa that is a fake because the flag is flying. Something that is impossible because there is no atmosphere on the moon. But at the same time, you are in the middle of the called war. As you are Occidental, you know the meaning of a flag at half-staff. If you know it you know something else : this was IMPOSSIBLE for the American Foreign Office and the secret services. It was wasting all the energy (in a literal sense and metaphorical one) spend during years to go to moon. So they need to a find a solution to avoid this symbolic defeat. They found a SOLUTION and if If you watch carefully to the picture you’ll see along the flag long top side, a metallic transverse crossbar which hanged the flag. Where is the sameness ? In the Earth’s atmosphere or in with the military symbolism ? Never forget to ask to yourself, where is the sameness, most of the time it’s not an evidence.

In conclusion
Sameness-evidence
Many people are speaking about sameness as an evidence. But as I showed it is only built. If sameness does exist, the greatest danger is the quest for evidence. Then to avoid this quest of sameness. The solution the easiest solution was to forbid the image.

When someone let you know or proclaim this is similar to this think you have to be careful because he may trying to make an amalgam. If he had only one proposal of sameness. I think when you find only one similarity, you are probably wrong because you fall into the trap of manicheism.

So you have two questions : first one is Is this ”true” ? The second one is Why he is revealing this similarity and not another one ? No matter you find this similarity exists or not. This persons is saying this with a purpose, a goal and he may probably trying to manipulate you.

This is why a picture represents neither similar, nor sameness, if there is a picture danger. Sameness is the one. Having as goal to be similar to be the same to reality is the danger because it is a de-negation of the individuality and negation of individuality is, more or less, one of the pillar of the fundamentalism in this 3 religions.
The picture ban, the picture prohibition was decreted for protecting ourselves of sameness. This ban was delivered because similarity is the negation of the Other. The Bible God is the God of the alterity.

If the similarity is dangerous, the perfect proof is worst.

• At the end, sameness is never truth
Don’t mixed similarity with truth. Similarity is never a proof by itself. In a police inquiry it’s not because you’ll find footprints with are similar even identical to the One you are suspecting to make this guy guilty. It’s may that someone pass by this place with the same shoes and a similar weight. It’s because you have many sameness you can say this guy is the guilty one.

If the sameness does exist, it ’s may be the biggest danger of the Image because it’s drive you to the fusion with the image. That’s mean the denial of your individuality.

If a text is the same as an image, at least the text or the image or probably both don’t have any interest… This sameness is the negation of the other regardless of its nature. This is probably one of the explanation of the ban of the human representation in the Old Testament.

Yet similarity does exist and it is were nobody thinks to find it
« L’une des pistes les plus prometteuses du « dialogue entre les cultures » serait d’explorer les similitudes, les analogies, les ressemblances, entre les religions, – et non d’insister sur leurs différences, leurs distinctions. » Ph Quéau [1]

The sameness, an endless quest because sameness may doesn’t exist
Sameness could be very different..