Selvedges

Notes for a Connectionist Manifesto

Mapping inputs in n dimensions

Broad swatches back of the brain map swapped halves of the retinas.
Blowups of the foveal business districts dominate this folded map
spanning the occiput, brightest of several small skies draped against the skull.

The way skin maps to cortex, lips and fingertips
dwarf the legs' long stretches. Here a palm brushed down her back
her spine's length travels no farther than the little finger slowly
tracing the outlines of her mouth. Kisses flourish everywhere
our densely sampled regions meet.

Our muscular degrees of freedom can't lie so flat
yet the net captures them in its ample spaces. These maps
fold so smoothly into us, they make territories after all.

Edge extraction in real time

The role of the dark in motion pictures

The signature of time ablaze in the tissues

Selvage

Solving systems of simultaneous constraints


Copyright 1998 by Greg Keith