Author: cmajgaar (Page 2 of 2)

This week, Professor Colangelo from the University of Bologna offered us an insight into his study of poetry with his presentation: “Voice and Verse: At The Origins of Contemporary Poetry”. Colangelo’s lecture was rich in powerful quotes and excerpts from philosophers, poets, and historians. His slides focused exclusively on the textual, offering both the Italian and English renditions of the text being discussed. The importance of presenting the original form of the text aligns with Colangelo’s argument that foreignness is key to origins.

Colangelo explained that poetry has no distinct origin because poetry is absolute and a state of mind. He referenced Benedetto Croce who said, “Art is pure intuition or pure expression… but a kind of intuition not at all devoid of concepts and judgments, the primordial form of knowledge, without which it is impossible to understand its other more complex forms”.

Colangelo’s discussion of foreignness and origins was centered around the claim that if one’s view is too rooted in a certain culture, then no origins can be created due to a person’s understanding of a topic being dependent upon previously acquired knowledge. In this sense, nobody can be a true listener if they have or draw upon previous knowledge in their interpretation of the matter at hand. Along these lines, no origin can be achieved without novelty.

A story was told about a man who traveled from country to country without any understanding of the local languages. This man displayed an intent to hear something without being subjected to its constructed meaning. He made an attempt to view something simply for its aesthetic qualities rather than any attached conceptual signification.

This idea that meaning may in fact be detrimental to speech (or writing) is powerful in relation to poetry. Gaston Bachelard was brought up by Colangelo. Bachelard was noted for saying, “While all other metaphysical experiences are preceded by endless introductions, poetry rejects all preambles, general principles, methods and proofs. It rejects doubt. At the most it requires a prelude made of silence. At first, drumming on concave words, it quiets prose and those reverberations that would leave in the soul of the reader a continuity of thought or a few murmurs. Then after these empty sounds, it produces its moment.”

I feel this passage aptly captures poetry’s nature as something more primal and powerful than constructed meaning. Simply its vocalization and presentation completes the art form. Pre-existing knowledge needs not be drawn in to appreciate work in the genre. In fact, it may even spoil it. This notion applies in situations far beyond just poetry. Using poetry as an example, it highlights how much of the content we digest ought to be truly listened to, rather than comprehended through our preexisting filters.

Being a child born just a few years before the new millennium, my lifetime has coincided with what seems to be the fastest period of growth in technology our world has witnessed so far. (I claim no responsibility for this, yet.) Since 1996, we have grown the capacity of a single hard-drive nearly 4000-fold from 16 gigabytes to 60 terabytes. Electric cars have become a legitimate and viable transport option. Stage 1 rockets can now land on their own and be reused. The race to become an interplanetary species is in full swing. It seems innovation is on an exponentially growing curve. However, Vittorio Loreto disagrees.

On the evening of October 24th, Loreto presented on the topic of “Novelties, Innovation, and the Adjacent Possible”. In his presentation, he referenced studies which his team had performed which suggested that innovation and the production of novelties are, in fact, on a downwards slope. The studies surveyed a handful of internet-based communities such as Last.FM, GitHub, Wikipedia, and Project Gutenberg. What Loreto’s team saw was that over time, the rate of innovation (contribution of novelties) steadily declines. Loreto argues that innovation, much like any resource, can be depleted. As we mine innovation, it becomes harder to create novelties organically.

One might argue that Loreto’s observations of novelty rates on sites like GitHub or Wikipedia may be somewhat biased or flawed. The rate of innovation in a medium, whether it be a traditional written language or a programming language/paradigm, must be subject to the capacity of the medium. While such a number would still be astronomical, only so many sensical phrases can be written in the English language. Similarly, only so many valid lines of code can be written within a language or paradigm. Once we begin approaching the bounds of a medium, standalone novelties do become more difficult to produce. However, novelty should not be mistaken for the only form of innovation. Context adds a whole new dimension to the bounds of the medium, one I suspect would be too complex to observe and model on a chart (e.g. frequency of A occurring immediately between B and C, followed by X VS. just the frequency of A).

Moore’s law presents an excellent example of continual innovation without much novelty as of recent. “Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years” (Wikipedia) The rapid evolution of computer processors was to due to novel technological innovations in its early stages. However, recent growth has been dominated by innovative reconfigurations of existing concepts. Moore’s law applies to a number of similar observations including hard disk drive areal density, fiber-optic capacity, pixels-per-dollar, and the quality adjusted price of IT equipment.

Innovation comes in many forms. Some innovation is found true discovery and happenstance. Other innovation is laboriously constructed by drawing on and building up from previous achievements, no less impressive. Vertical innovation should not be discredited in favor of its horizontal cousin.

Tuesday, with the guidance of Shalini Le Gall, we toured a number of installations aimed at (or tangent to) the Origins theme at the Colby College Museum of Art. The majority of the work we discussed was displayed in the Davis Curricular Gallery, which (aside from a few bird-centric pieces) has been furnished to serve this year’s humanities theme. Shalini encouraged the group to meander about and eventually select a piece or two to share a few thoughts on. Among the works in Davis gallery were a handful of acrylic paintings, some photography (of varying dimensions), and a number of works composed of less common media, such as artistically amended pages from books and works including paper money.

One piece particularly stole my attention: a giant steel frame (roughly 4’x6’) covered in rows of carefully arced tickets of colored paper. While the piece as a whole was pretty hard to miss, with its steel construction and hundreds of colorful paper slips, the details could have slipped by you if you weren’t careful. Each row had been assembled with different paper currency. I’m still not entirely sure of it, but most currencies on the piece appeared obsolete, although in pristine condition. The antique Polish Złoty gave it away on first encounter, followed by spottings of a number of now defunct regimes.

The name of this rather grand, bright, and eclectic piece was “Wall of Lamentation XIII”.

[On a side note, the piece had been gifted to Colby College by the artist, Santiago Montoya. I hope he was able to sell the previous twelve walls of lamentation… They cant have been cheap to make.]

The name is pretty much where I stop agreeing with Montoya on his philosophy surrounding the piece. According to Shalini, Montoya says his recent work is inspired the increasing disuse of cash in modern society. He disapproves of the abstraction of legal tender and is upset by the loss of cultural heritage which comes with cashlessness.

I see the point Montoya attempts to make. But to me, his ‘motivation’ seems almost like an afterthought to an overwhelmingly aesthetically pleasing piece. Let’s be real, this thing is beautiful. A solid stainless steel block filled with bills in mint condition (ha). I’m sure he knew this thing was going to look good when he dreamt it up (for the 13th time). If that was his intent, let that be known. I don’t think there’s any shame in that.

However, with a title so powerful and a selection of beautifully illustrated currency from regimes not limited to the DPRK, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and CCCP, I feel that Montoya misses out on a massive opportunity to make a statement on how centralized currency is a leash on the public for as long as it is functional. Centralized currency and artificially fabricated value leave the fate of a nation’s people at the fingertips of those who control the source. Additionally, paper money, with its ornate designs depicting either figures or objects of cultural heritage, is essentially propaganda (for better or for worse). The Wall of Lamentation deserves to be about the suffering caused by the bills it displays. Few people lament over a slimmer wallet and using plastic over paper. Billions have suffered at the hands of regimes starving their citizens of nourishment, education, healthcare, free agency, and freedom of speech.