Latour, B. (1986) Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together, Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture at Present. JAI press. vol.6
Benjamin, W. (2006) Berlin Childhood around 1900. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
In my understandings, I understood that Benjamin tried to write about reminiscences which go beyond personal dimensions. His intentions were not only to idealise the personal experiences from childhood, but expand them to realise real historical experiences and cognitions about them.
- It provided me opportunities to contemplate about – how can I use my memory to conjure up others memories? How can they expanded to collective memories? Or how would the reader translate them? (personal memories). Benjamin was living an era which the culture and society was destroyed and breaking down – in my position, which memories am I talking about? What kind of content? to expand these memories further to communicate with audiences, what kind of perspective should I take? what is my intention in sharing and documenting my memories with readers?
- The text consists of short stories with non-linear structure. Each story titled with an object, name of place, or an experience. He actively uses sound, smell, and mostly, image; which he almost describes and paints in words.
Image, objects and memory?
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- Through out this book, Benjamin addresses memories, objects and places. (89p) Rather than explicitly explaining the direct 1:1 relationship between an object or place name and memory, the text instead illustrates that the object or place name evokes an experience or situation and condenses it in indirect ways. (He is also providing a detailed description of the object or place name itself.) And then it is connected to other experiences that may seem either relevant or unrelated. Benjamin portrays a part of an object(or place) as if the whole situation and emotions were projected on it, or as if the senses were projected on it.
~in text,
50p Butterfly Hunt
I was reminded of these, for a long time afterward, by the spacious cabinet on the wall of my boyhood room containing the beginnings of a butterfly collection, whose oldest specimens had been captured in the garden of the Brauhausberg.
52p
On that laborious way back, the spirit of the doomed creature entered into the hunter. From the foreign language in which the butterfly and the flowers had come to an understanding before his eyes, he now derived some precepts. His lust for blood had diminished, his confidence was grown all the greater. The air in which this butterfly once hovered is today wholly imbued with a word, one that has not reached my ears or crossed my lips for decades. This word has retained that unfathomable reserve which childhood names possess for the adult. Long-kept silence, long concealment, has transfigured them. Thus, through air teeming with butterflies vibrates the word “Brauhausberg,” which is to say, “Brewery Hill.” It was on the Brauhausberg, near Potsdam, that we had our summer residence. But the name has lost all heaviness, contains nothing more of any brewery, and is, at most, a bluemisted hill that rose up every summer to give lodging to my parents and me.
89p Blumeshof 12
And since the imagination, once it has cast its veil over a region, likes
to ruffle its edges with incomprehensible whims, it turned a nearby grocery store into a monument to my grandfather.
149p The Desk
Often, my first thought, on returning home from school, was to celebrate the reunion with my desk by making it the scene of one of my pet activities- transferring cutouts, for instance.
151p
And hardly had I regained my desk after a dreary day at school, than it gave me new strength. There I could feel myself not only at home but actually in my shell-…
152p
Nothing was more gratifying than to pass the time in this way, surrounded by the various instruments of my torture-glossaries, compasses, dictionaries-there where the claims of these things were nullified.
Benjamin, W. (1986) A Berlin Chronicle, Reflections : essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings. New York: Schocken Books.
Benjamin creates his own space based on his memory. Benjamin’s various thoughts and especially contemplations of space and language are impressive. By writing in as if the texts and memories are tangible, he invites the reader to observe, listen and feel the stage – space which he expands the memories into historical experiences and leads readers wondering around.
~in text,
Spoerri, D. (1966) An anecdoted topography of chance. First edn. New York, Cologne, Paris: Something Else Press Inc. Re-Anecdoted Version.
The way he captures the moment, is pretty interesting. It was anchoring on the random moment – not intentionally selected, but also at the same time, really specific.
In the beginning of the book, included the map of the objects on the desk – Spoerri used the method of mapping; Topography which was fascinating that he blended the approach of scientific method in this practice which somewhat seems idiosyncratic to explanation of this desk with objects at a certain moment. The texts he wrote, was a mixture of some descriptions about the objects
Lupi, Cotton and Cox. (2021) Plastic in the air [Digital art]. Available at: https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/plasticair/ (Accessed: 20 Jan 2023).
I could think of the way of knowledge presenting, and generating of them. Also reflect about how can an archive provide chances towards public to engage in some part of the project after all the archiving processes had happened?
Ways of visualising the information and knowledge – how can I give information with these relics? what sort of informations do they include? what types&categories of informations are there? are those informations shown? or hidden? any specualtions??