The Space Cat Ballad

Space Cat Ballad

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

When your cat looks upward to the stars

Within her soul something special stirs.

Does not that messenger of light,

Beautiful Vega, shining bright,

Embellishing the Northern Sky,

Reflecting upon her upturned eye,

Bestow dreams unto her feline mind?

Of long lost forgotten fates entwined,

And speak of a cat civilization of the past

That ruled the interstellar spaces vast.

Did not bipedal spacecats a zenith reach?

Universal wisdom did they not teach?

The arts of pleasure they most enjoyed

And yet their love planet was destroyed.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

If a cat could but shed a grieving tear

She’d shed as many as she sheds fur.

Here begins a cosmic tale of cats in space,

And strange beginnings for the human race.

The story of Lemewria and the Catolith

– Feline symbols of an antediluvian myth.

Here too the tale of lizards on the make

And all the devastation left in their wake.

The Disco Reptilians with all their might

Did so mercilessly the cat world smite!

Never ever say that all is completely lost:

Twenty-three light years some cats were tossed

From Vega to Earth at the Ice Age’s close

And the Cult of the Cat Priestess there arose!

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

Unexplainable monuments in every land

Mystic secrets of the ancient feline mind!

When the Cat Priestesses from outer space

Purred in harmony the huge stones into place.

The great pyramids rose up to meet the sky –

Only the sphinx and I know the reason why . . .

And Cat Priestesses of the Northern Isles

Employing all their witchy ways and wiles

To levitate alone each stone of Stonehenge –

Withstanding relentless Reptilian revenge!

All the great ruins of all forgotten ages

Are sacred books with stones instead of pages

All these temples cat people did construct

For their child, the human race, to instruct.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

In her heart dwells sweet holofelinity

The feline form of universal divinity.

Crystalline cat cities of icy towers melted away

When those crazy lizards came to earth to play

Lemewrian civilization vanished in the flood

And yet the Cat Priestesses called not for blood.

The Disco Reptilians for all their rage and might

Could not extinguish that feline inner light:

Each act of hate was by boundless love repaid.

And so the lizard fury did falter and did fade.

Mighty Cats from outer space may no more yet be

But in the humble housecat echoes their legacy

No more clever being than a cat roams this earth

In her meditative mind she is certain of her worth.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

Kittoliths grow up to be Catoliths

Refurbished Catoliths with new bases and “KISS” (Kittolith Interactive Sound System) adapted to the Catolith

It’s only natural that cats should have kittens, and plastic cat statues should therefore have their progeny too. The Coven of Catoliths gave birth to a Litter of Kittoliths.

After 5 years of design and production I feel that the Catolith is at last nearing its potential. The newly refurbished Catoliths that were just installed at KALW with their LiDAR based interactivity, battery operation, independent control via Raspberry Pi computer, and lighter more mobile wooden base actually exceed what I imagined for this artwork 5 years ago.

Below is a table showing the progression of techniques from one iteration of Cathenge to the next.

The Vision of Cathenge

From the beginning, the vision of Cathenge and of the Catolith Cat Statue has been exceedingly difficult to realize because it combines lighting effects and interactivity in very specific ways and is dependent on the large format 3D printing to achieve. However, each installation of Cathenge succeeded in communicating this vision in different ways, but never completely to my satisfaction, and that’s why I have continued working on the project.

The goal has been to express the concept of “Holofelinity: Universal Cat Consciousness”. Holofelinity is the magical power of the Ancient Lyran Space Cats to manifest their minds over matter and to transform themselves into any shape. This is expressed in the artwork as “Harmonic Purring” (AKA; “Purrbration of Holofelinity”), an evocation of the capacity of the Space Cats to purr their visions into material form.

Ancient Lyran Space Cat materialized as Bastet idol levitating pyramid using chromatic spectra of the Purrbration of Holofelinity.

The Kittolith

In order to reach this goal, it was instrumental to create a smaller version of the Catolith, the “Kittolith”:

The Kittolith at Miami Art Week

Because the Kittolith presents as a single statue instead of a circle of statues (as in Cathenge) it has been necessary to condense the interactive harmonic purring system into one sculpture. This has been done using LiDAR. People interact with the LiDAR beam extending from the collar of the Kittolith and trigger different frequencies (“Solfeggio Tones”). The infographic below shows how the Kittolith works with the use of Solfeggio sound healing tones:

From Kittolith to Catolith

The “Kittolith Interactive Sound System” (KISS) was adapted for use in the Catolith. The photo gallery below documents our process of creating the New Catolith. Essential to this process was the design and construction of a new wooden base for the Catolith.

CAD drawing of wooden Catolith base

This new, lighter base not only facilitates a wider range of possibilities of exhibitions because of its much reduced weight (compared to the previous concrete bases), but also resolves acoustic issues since the wooden base acts as a ported speaker cabinet for the subwoofer installed in the base. Below is a gallery of photos of the new Catolith and its new base under construction:

Opening Tues. June 11th: The Catoliths at KALW Studio Gallery!!

Group Show featuring:

Exhibition Opening and Live Broadcast Panel discussion with the artists moderated by Ben Trefny:

5 – 7 PM (doors open at 5, discussion at 6)
Tuesday, June 11th
KALW
220 Montgomery St., SF, CA 94104
Admission free – All ages

The exhibition will be up through August 1st 2024.

(Eventbrite link at bottom of page to reserve free tix)

Public broadcasting station, KALW, recently moved their radio station’s studios to the heart of San Francisco’s financial district where they reside in the ground floor lobby of the historic Mills Building located at 220 Montgomery (Montgomery and Bush). The spacious lobby provides a new and exciting arts and events space. KALW executive director, Ben Trefny, is curating a series of art exhibits in the lobby.

The KALW lobby space features large storefront windows looking out on busy Montgomery St. which are a perfect place to perch the Catoliths. Two Catoliths will be placed, one in each large window, on either side of the entrance to the radio station where they will be seen by motorists and pedestrians alike, and, of course, by visitors to the station. These Catoliths will feature their hallmark interactive purring (Purrbration of Holofelinity).

Cathenge by David Normal
Infinity Box by Matt Elson
Sculpture by Brenden Darby
Painting by Jesse Pemberton

Space Cat Session II – Thursday May 25th 2023

On Thursday, May 25th at 9PM join us for the second installment of the “Space Cat Session Series” at Cathenge at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley. Within the uniquely cosmic ambience of David Normal’s Cathenge Cat Temple art installation we’ll continue to explore the mysteries of the Cathenge Mythos – the epic tale 0f the Space Cats and their journey through the cosmos. In this second session we’ll focus in greater depth on the sacred order of the Cat Priestesshood of Pussiopolis and their rituals of Holofelinity – Universal Cat Consciousness.

Facebook Event Page:

https://fb.me/e/UAuzOE0x

The “Space Cat Sessions” at Cathenge! Starting May 11th

Space Cat Sessions is an on site multimedia slideshow presentation of the Cathenge Mythos by David Normal with musical accompaniment by Xxhe (Ręal Varnes) at the Cathenge installation.  Patricia’s Green, Hayes Valley, San Francisco

Bi-weekly series every Thursday evening at 9 PM 

Starting May 11th, 2023.

Dates:

  1. Thurs. May 11th 9PM
  2. Thurs. May 25th 9PM
  3. Thurs. Jun 8th 9PM
  4. Thurs. Jun 22nd 9PM
  5. Thurs. Jul 6th 9PM
  6. Thurs. Jul 20th 9PM
  7. Thurs. Aug 3rd 9PM
  8. Thurs. Aug 17th 9PM
  9. Thurs. Aug 31st 9PM
  10. Thurs. Sep 14th 9PM
  11. Thurs. Sep 28th 9PM
  12. Thurs. Oct 12th 9PM
  13. Thurs. Oct 26th 9PM

Cathenge Mythos Talk – the Saga of the Space Cats, our Feline Overlords 

Lecture by David Normal (Creator of Cathenge Cat Temple)

45 min power point presentation +Q&A

The Cathenge Mythos is the saga of the Lyran Space Cats, our ancient extraterrestrial feline overlords and the true creators of the human race.  Learn how the Lyran Space Cats came to Earth at the height of the Ice Age, and of their awesome cosmic powers, and the lost secrets of how the Egyptian Pyramids were really built.  

In this fast-paced and densely information packed Power Point Presentation, Artist and Researcher, David Normal (Creator of the Cathenge Cat Temple), will reveal the results of years of esoteric research into the history of the Extraterrestrial Space Cats from the Lyran star system.

Topics Covered:

  • Feline Life in the Ancient Cat Civilization on Planet Lemewria orbiting the Pole Star Vega
  • Holofelinity:  Universal Cat Consciousness
  • Cat Goddesses of the Lyran Religion
  • The Cat Priestesshood of Pussiopolis
  • Lyran Cat People and the interstellar “Starseed” races.
  • The “Disco-Lyran Wars” between Lyran Cat People and Disco Reptilians
  • “Pizzazium” and recreational transubstantiation among mystic felines
  • How and why cats shoot lasers from their eyes
  • The Orb of Holofelinity and its destruction
  • Origins of the Catolith – Sacred Symbol of Holofelinity
  • Arrival of Lyrans on Planet Earth
  • Catlantis and New Lemewria – Ice Age Cat Civilizations
  • Pro-wrestling and the creation of the human race
  • Pursuit to Earth by the Disco Reptilians
  • The Great Cat Mau, the Yonger Dryass and the Legends of the Deluge
  • Enki, Thoth,  Quetzalcoatl and the Feline Teachers of Civilization
  • “Annunaki”  – The Draconian Heresy and the enslavement of mankind
  • The departure of the Cat People from Planet Earth
  • Sekhmet, Bastet, Tefnut – Secrets of the Egyptian Cat Goddesses
  • Holofelinity and the Housecat
  • Kitty Kundalini – reclaiming the Nine Cat Chakras
  • Cathenge and modern Cat Worship in the 21st Century

Green Light for Cathenge Installation at Patricia’s Green!!!

Last Wednesday, October 19th, the San Francisco Department of Recreation and Parks issued a one year permit for Cathenge to be installed and exhibited at Patricia’s Green Park (Octavia and Fell streets, Hayes Valley). This is the green light, the permission, Cathenge has been waiting for! By October 31st 2022 Cathenge will be all finished and ready to receive the public.

Needless to say, the whole Cathenge Crew of collaborators and I are very excited. We are in the home-stretch of production. Many final tasks and finishing touches are being completed. The “Holofelinity Sound-Light Sculpture” is being refined and perfected. The base is being decorated with laser cut space cat themed motifs and metallic gilding. The cats are being given their final clear-coat of iridescent hi-gloss finish. So many details being coordinated, a concerted collaborative effort of a dedicated team of artists and technicians, an elaborate and meticulous vision on a monumental scale is being realized.

It has also been a concerted effort of SF City Officials from different departments, as well as engineers, insurance agents and other professionals to work through and process all the regulations, civic and legal requirements to bring a sculpture like this to the public. It is easy to take public artworks for granted, but behind the scenes; the large amount of administrative work required to produce them cannot be underestimated.

Here are photos and videos documenting the latest efforts of Cathenge in progress.

Staging all six Catoliths in their correct position at David Normal’s studio in Stinson Beach, California
Final Concept Drawing of Cathenge for Patricia’s Green
“Holofelinity Light-Sound Sculpture” (Interactive Harmonic Purring)
Cathenge 3D printing studio
“Saucer Cat” laser cut Design for Cathenge side panels
Decorative laser cut facia speaker covers with “Saucer Cat” motif

Cat Priestesshood of Pussiopolis – Part II

The Power of Holofelinity underlies “transubstantiation” throughout the cosmos and all its ages.


Transubstantiation, a power ascribed to the Eucharist within the Catholic Mass, transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  It is to be noted that only that which IS the Lord Jesus Christ himself is transubstantiatied.  In communion, neither Jesus’s loin cloth (technical name, “Perizoma”) nor his crown of thorns are tasted by the faithful – only his body and his blood.  This is because transubstantiation only metamorphoses the body but does not transform the objects that belong to that body. 

In the final days of the Cat Planet, the Cat Priestesses found themselves in a terrible predicament:  Theirs was a power of transubstantiation dependent on a magical crystal, the “Orb of Holofelinity”, and if they could escape their doom through transubstantiation they could not take the Orb with them, and so they took a chance doing something that had been made taboo since time immemorial upon Lemewria:  They chose to translate themselves into the Orb of Holofelinity itself.  Doing this would shatter the Orb and also they could never return to their physical forms, but the most important thing – the power of Holofelinity – would be preserved.  That power they would not allow the Reptilians to destroy.

Lyran Space Kitten escaping exploding Lemewria in the final conflagration of the Disco-Lyran Wars.

A central motif throughout Arthur C. Clarke’s writings is the evolution of human consciousness through extraterrestrial – and seemingly divine – influences.  In 2001: A Space Odyssey we are introduced to the “Monoliths”.  These mysterious dark metallic oblong objects appear consequentially and seem to bestow a decisive blessing resulting in an evolutionary leap in consciousness:  Immediately after touching the monolith in curiosity, the primitive early man (indeterminate hominid?) picks up the femur of a tapir and strikes his enemy dead:  The use of tools. 

Like the Monoliths of 2001, the Catoliths appeared on Earth mysteriously before the dawn of human civilization, before humans as we know ourselves existed.  These were the shards of the Orb of Holofelinity that had transubstantiated from Lemewria to Earth.  These shards were the Cat Priestesses themselves, the consciousness of the Cat Priestesses lived within these mighty crystals.  The crystals took the form of tall, elegant, mystical cat statues that evoked the beautiful forms of the Lyran Cat Priestesses.  The design of the Catolith Cat Statue of Cathenge is a replica of the ancient Catolith of the Cat Priestesses, the Catolith formed from the Orb of Holofelinity.  The Catolith is the sacred icon of Holofelinity, Universal Cat Consciousness.

The Catoliths materialized on Earth at carefully chosen geographic coordinates that would amplify the Power of Holofelinity.  There were only 9 Catoliths, and their locations are no longer certain – some may have been under the sea or deep within caves, but in Africa it was upon the banks of the Nile in Ancient Egypt that a Catolith stood.  The Cat Priestesses, now consciousness bound to crystals, were pleasantly surprised by the pliability of life on Earth.  Here was a primeval planet, beautiful, rich in resources, and with a pre-existing abundance of complex genetic diversity, yet no civilization whatsoever – all of Earth’s creatures were just animals. 

The Cat Priestesses found that their minds could play here freely and that they could not only invest their consciousness into the life forms a round them and thereby experience physical existence once again, but that they could, using their minds, manipulate the DNA of all living things on Earth.  This is how they became the animal headed Egyptian Gods.  They melded the humanoid Lyran form (yes, lyrans were humanoid – but with feline characteristics) with animal forms – somewhat whimsically.

The Cat Priestesses created human beings to be the vessels of Lyran consciousness – their consciousness –  and to fulfill the Lyran impulse to create physically.  The early civilizations of Lemewria and Catlantis were formed by the humans newly mutated from an existing hominid race (like Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon).  Cat Lords and Cat Priestesses were beautiful humans with cat heads and other feline characteristics.  This drastic difference in morphology denoted their higher rank and power – they were the “gods” on Earth who carefully taught the newly created humans the arts of Civilization, and inculcated the Lyran ethos of beauty and pleasure before all else, and the practical principle of Holofelinity. 

I’m running out of time for describing the practical use of Holofelinity, but I think that it is summed up well in this clip from “The Cat from Outer Space” (Disney, 1978);

Kittolith 2.0

In February we completed the “New Prototype Kittolith” and debuted it at the Space Cat Cavalcade. This 5′ tall Catolith was printed by Re3D in Houston, Texas. The sound and lights were created by Theremin Barney, Artur Pyrogovskyi, and Aaron Winette. In this video I am demonstrating the motion detection based sound/light interactivity that Barney engineered using passive infrared sensors. The cat itself is a speaker. A kind of transductive speaker is affixed to the perimeter wall of the cat statue and the entire plastic cat vibrates to produce the sound. The sounds are solfeggio tones that Artur programmed in a randomized cycle to be triggered by the voltage signal transmitted from Barney’s motion detection circuit. This is still a work in progress, but we are developing this system to be used in the ring of six Catoliths that will be installed at Patricia’s Green.

Blue Sparkle Kitten Print

Today I printed out a small version of “Thanata” the Catolith of Death in sparkly blue-green irridescent PLA plastic. This is the first version of the Catolith that I’ve modeled with decorative surface embellishment. I modeled this in the subdivision surface modeler “Sculpt” of Cimema 4D 3D software. My intention is to use these surface details as the basis for painted decoration of the big Catoliths. This small print is a useful experiment in painting technique that can be applied on a much larger scale.