analyses
Introduction
The artwork of Cluster One contains a number of elements. Most of them were discussed during this analysis. I will summarize the observations and thought here, trying them to link with earlier ideas. If you want to investigate and compare the artwork from the US and UK CD, go to the artwork comparison page.
The three dots
see also
The matter of the three dots
A binary code
The three dots could represent a number of things. One of them is a binary code. In that case they should be read as either 101(5) or 010(2). For the '101' there were two ideas (without 'evidence). Room 101 could be a reference to Orwell's 1984. Furthermore, their appeared to be a famous airship R101.
In Mark brown's summary he already noticed the possibility that the three dots are morse code. In Morse code, the three dots can be taken at dot,dash,dot, or as dash, dot, dash. Respectively this would be e,t,e or t,e,t also, the letter R is represented by a dot,dash,dot. Also the letter K is represented by a dash, dot, dash. It might refer to Radio Kaos, (RK) This album is about a guy who cannot talk and is confined to a wheelchair. The situation of Billy is similar to that of like Stephen Hawking, who is talking in KT. Also, KAOS was painted on a section of the Berlin Wall, before it was torn down. It is on a poster entitled "Kings of Freedom". Incidently, the O in KAOS, on the Berlin Wall, has a dot in the middle of it, like the target eyes.
Because the artwork depicts tools that are used for the purposes of astronomy, could these three dots simply just mean new moon, full moon, new moon. They look just like the moon cylce pictures that are seen on calendars and in diaries. Furthermore, the new moon is the phase when we see the "dark" side of the moon! That is, when the moon is in the same direction as the sun, the side facing us is lit only dimly by light reflected from Earth.
The three dots resemble disassembled targets from the cover. These targets/eyes are also made of three circles. A red one inside a white one inside another red one. The center red one is filled in. the other two are not; they are hollow, like the three dots in CO; hollow, filled in, hollow. So the three dots are connected to the faces.
Looking at the dots in a different way, the two void dots resemble remind me to the eyes (the void of the look). The second dot (full-important) can be seen as the communication between the faces, but also as the mind (thinking) of the third face. The dots are between the division bell and cluster one, between the group and the division. So are they related to the division of the group, maybe the cause (or the way).
The three dots are probably not a page number. Pagenumbers are consistently placed inside heads in the rest of the album.
The boatsman
The little "P" symbol with the little bitty underline, all within a white circle, is only located on this one page, next to the title of CO. It shows up nowhere else in the US Columbia, UK EMI CD booklet and it is also on the Columbia (USA) cassette art, on the back cover and on the panel that has the lyrics to WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME. It is called the boatman. The original theme of the TDB album is said to be going to do with boatman. Some people see it as an S and b (Syd Barret) joined together or ST (with T up-side-down) for Storm Thorgerson. Others think it looks like a P, for Publius. This symbol is on the sides of the balloons in the High Hopes video as well as another symbol, made of three horizontal lines and one vertical, referred to as a secret message. This three line symbol could well be the E of Enigma.
Another thing is the reoccurrence of boats and water. The start of a Momentary lapse of reason starts with a rowing boat. And there is a picture with a man in a rowingboat. Are these symbols a link to aMLoR?. Also, the mirror ball seems to have two heads and, if you wan to, a boat can be seen in the middle.
Pink Floyd have used Greek myths in Ummagumma. One of the songs is called Sysyphus, which is normally spelled as Sisyphus). Somewhere in the story, Sisyphus meets the 'boatsman' Charon. There are also nebula's called after both Sysyphus and Charon (see: http://www.skynjun.com/trek/neb.TXT), which might link the boatsman to the observatoria.
General background
When a person dies, Hermes, the messenger of the gods, comes for his soul and leads it to the underworld entrance. There, the soul encounters Charon, an old blind man who operates the only ferry across the Acheron (River of Woe).
Geographically, the underworld is surrounded by a series of rivers: The Acheron (river of woe), The Cocytus (river of lamentation), The Phlegethon (river of fire), The Styx (river of unbreakable oath by which the gods swear), and The Lethe (river of forgetfulness). Once across the rivers an adamantine gate, guarded by Cerberus, forms the entrance to the kingdom. Deep within the kingdom is Hades vast palace, complete with many guests.
Those who can pay Charon's fee (a single coin called an "obol") are ferried across the river and landed at a gate, which is guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus. A lousy watchdog, Cerberus lets anyone enter the kingdom, but permits none to leave.
Once inside the underworld, the soul must appear before a panel of three judges. Those who have been very good, go to the Elysian Fields, a glorious place. Most of the others languish in the underworld until they waste away to nothingness. A few, however, are singled out for "special" punishment. Notable among these are Sisyphus and Tantalus
Sisyphus
Sisyphus was founder and king of Corinth, or Ephyra as it was called in those days. He was notorious as the most cunning knave on earth. His greatest triumph came at the end of his life, when the god Hades came to claim him personally for the kingdom of the dead. Hades had brought along a pair of handcuffs, a comparative novelty, and Sisyphus expressed such an interest that Hades was persuaded to demonstrate their use - on himself.
And so it came about that the high lord of the Underworld was kept locked up in a closet at Sisyphus's house for many a day, a circumstance which put the great chain of being seriously out of whack. Nobody could die. A soldier might be chopped to bits in battle and still show up at camp for dinner. Finally Hades was released and Sisyphus was ordered summarily to report to the Underworld for his eternal assignment. But the wily one had another trick up his sleeve.He simply told his wife not to bury him and then complained to Persephone, Queen of the Dead, that he had not been accorded the proper funeral honors. What's more, as an unburied corpse he had no business on the far side of the river Styx at all - his wife hadn't placed a coin under his tongue to secure passage with Charon the ferryman. Surely her highness could see that Sisyphus must be given leave to journey back topside and put things right.
Kindly Persephone assented, and Sisyphus made his way back to the sunshine, where he promptly forgot all about funerals and such drab affairs and lived on in dissipation for another good stretch of time. But even this paramount trickster could only postpone the inevitable. Eventually he was hauled down to Hades, where his indiscretions caught up with him. For a crime against the gods - the specifics of which are variously reported - he was condemned to an eternity at hard labor. And frustrating labor at that. For his assignment was to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill. Only every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again.
Pagenumber
This page number is written in Spanish, meaning three (it is also on page 3), and the page number head is facing SOUTH (down).The question is why page three's page number is in Spanish. Most likely this is because the observatories on these two pages are in Chili, where they speak Spanish.
Observatories
What is the significance of an observatory? Why is it placed on the page for this particular song? Why this particular observatory? Note that in the picture (UK version) there are two very close together and one setting off the the left, away from the other two. Furthermore, there appears to be a fifth one. We can only see the shadow of it. So it's present, but also absent. In the US version we can see three and the same shadow of a fourth one. If you add up the visible observatories in the UK CD and the three observatories on the US CD you get seven. There are, as yet, no ideas whether this means anything.
The tripod
A tripod, as suggested, is always used to bring a machine used to observe. As we look at the picture we could suggest this could be a tripod for a telescope. Yet another 'absence', the absence of another more umile machine to observe.
Sounds
Some claim that you can hear bits and pieces from early Floyd material in Cluster One. Specifically, what I hear is a seeming intro or prelude type thing to Shine One You Crazy Diamond about 4:30 into Cluster One - up to the electronic drum part. If I didn't know Shine On were not about to be played, one would think D. Gilmour was about to go into that song at that point in Cluster One.
The noises in the beginning are called earthsounds or VLF (very low frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency). Samples of these sounds for download, and some technical info, can be found at http://www.triax.com/vlfradio/natradio.htm ELF type equipment is also used by paraphychologists looking for ghosts ( http://www.ghostweb.com/elf.html )
The ELF/VLF part at the beginning sounds like it's intermixed with modem connecting via phone line type sounds (what techies call "handshaking signals" between a personnal computer and an ISP). This would give us a link between Cluster One and the Communication them.
Some people also hear some high frequencies sounds at low volume during the song. It sounds like 4 or 5 high frequencies tones repeating. If you look at the FFT of the song, you can see theses sounds as straight lines between 8KHz and 11KHz (not so high). These sounds resemble the sounds of a so-called "brainwave generator". There is a downloadable brainwave generator, with some descriptive notes: http://www.bwgen.com/ These latter sounds, however, are due to the difference between left and right channel frequencies, so they shouldn't be heard. Furthermore, if PF wanted to relax the listener, they should have used low frequencies sounds, not high ones. So why are there different and relatively clean high frequency sinusoidal sounds?
