Identity, a double vision in a generative process

 

Prof. Enrica Colabella, architect

Generative Design Lab, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

e-mail: enrica.colabella@polimi.it

Abstract

This paper try to investigate about the concept of contemporary identity in Art by using a generative process. After a brief introduction about some generative tools as abduction and idea/code, the first step  identifies  3 attributes/formulas as a performing structure: visionary, double, natural, and also tree categories: words, sounds and clouds. Tree exercises. 1- the relationship between mother tongue and translations. 2- clouds as a discovering tool for a complex natural vision. 3-  Poetry: nuances for music. An observation : Flaubert  investigated by Borges about two copyists.

Identity rises from a soundless site because birds have no tears

1. Tools for a double vision

This first step of the generative process consists in two different moments:

1. Abduction , a subjective tool

As happens in every creative act, such observation activates a fixing up of our impressions, as a performing of our subjective interpretation. This procedure was defined by Pierce as an abduction process, able to define an “how to reason”. The interpretation is an experience. The aim of the formal logic is to delineate a table of categories, able to be a faneron, a manifestation of experience. We can read and record what fascinated us as a code of transformation. Hume described this mental process as an idea that reminds an impression of an absent object. In this way what is observed and appreciated becomes a strong deep  indication for identifying a process of transformation that will operate on the existing environment to transform it into a possible scenario. So we call abduction this type of performing rules because the interpretation of the events is managed with the aim to represent a rule as an algorithm.

The construction of an artificial Dna is also a basic process that can grow toward complexity using algorithms as a useful answer to the contemporary needs of Quality and Beauty.

2. Attributes, a tool connected to reality

We use creatively our mother tongue defining some words as attributes, minimum three or more, as a possible significance of our iter. This is a very important tool that connects words with pictures in a logical procedure, as in ancient time, ut pictura poiesis. But this is also peculiar to the classic music. We have a lot of different attributes as indications for playing Mozart, Bach, Rossini etc. The author can gain an open number of variations with these multiple topic suggestions.

 

STRUCTURE: 1 FIST ATTRIBUTE, generic also random VISIONARY

                         2 SECON ATTRIBUTE, dual, hendiadys     DOUBLE

                         3 THIRD ATTRIBUTE, versus                      NATURAL

                         = performing open CATEGORIES

 

2. Words. About translation, visionary + double

 

Run, little boy, find the river in your mind

An universal language starts up from a mother tongue,

 a visionary  bridge can gain the similar site.

Translation is a very hard exercise. Similarity is the condition of a good translation. A poet can interpret another poet and so on. This was the only way in the past time. Now we have anonymous translations. So it is very hard to gain the deep significance of poems

I chose the first frame  and the last two verses of  the Zueignung of Faust by Goethe and 4 different English translations.

   Zueignung.

  Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,

 

Was ich besitze, seh ich wie im Weiten,

            Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.

 

It is clear for me the significance by the translation of Franco Fortini, a great Italian poet.

          

               Dedica

               Mi tornate vicine,voi figure mutevoli

 

               Quel che ora è mio lo vedo come in una distanza

                E quel che era scomparso mi diventa realtà.

 

First translation by George Madison Priest

   Ye wavering forms draw near again as ever
 
What I possess, as if far off I'm seeing,
      And what has vanished, now comes into being.

 

Second one, anonymous

                        YE wavering shapes, again ye do enfold me,

                         

                       What I possess as from afar I see;

                       Those I have lost become realities to me.

 

Third one translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring

YE shadowy forms, again ye're drawing near,

 

All I possess far distant seems to be,
The vanish'd only seems reality.

 

Forth translation by A. S. Kline, 2003

Again you show yourselves, you wavering Forms,

 

What I possess seems far away from me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

 

Dedication, an explication (anonymous)

In a nostalgic poem, Goethe recalls his early work on Faust, his many experiences since and the loss of many friends and loved ones who were the original audience, and his presentation of the finished first part to an anonymous readership.

Dedication, an interpretation by Alexander Gillies, 1957

“We recognize the power of a yearning that is so overwhelming that the poet feels himself to be divorced from what is around him and transported not merely into the past but, we seem almost persuaded, into the sphere of eternity itself, from which he may survey his experiences in a new perspective”.

With an interpretation in a similarity process we can gain a poetic significance as a site of the relationship between two points of view.

With an explication we can only define a simplification as a static result without any possible improving elements.

 

3. Clouds, visionary + natural

“Generative Design is the idea realized as genetic Code of artificial events.

 This approach opens a new era in design: the challenge of a new Natural science of Artificial ware. This is a mirror of human uniqueness. Once more man imitates Nature, as in the act of making Art. This is like an universal language.

Like DNA in Nature the genetic code of artificial ware identifies a species of objects. So we can design the idea and realize infinite variations. 

The Renaissance cultural approach was able of combining Science and Art. This was a  process as a code of Harmony that identifies a representation of the subjective vision of a possible world. The code of Harmony, like all codes, contains some rules that trace certain forms of behaviors. Therefore it is not only a sequence, a database of events, of forms, but a transforming patterns definitions: the performing from what exists into the complexity of visionary becoming. The design act is a changes from forming to transforming, because each form is only one of possible parallel results of the same idea.” This discovering process tries to represent two different approach: one describes a fantasiosa (imaginative in addition to exorbitant) reality without any peculiar identity. A swallowing reality without any test except the technical references. The other one in contrast  represents a visionary world in which it is necessary to define a poetical point of view. This approach can describe  a natural vision of reality.

 

Figures 1- 6, Mantegna, Adorazione dei pastori, Adorazione dei Magi ,Agonia nel giardino, Annunciazione, St. Sebastian, Mars et Venus

If we try to focus the sky in these pictures by Mantegna in all of them we  discover clouds, with different nuances but they are constant elements in all the configurations. These are a very important tool for gaining a natural expression also in strongly imaginative scenarios. A natural representation rises from a visionary expression as a result of  an impression of the history mixed to an impression of reality as a remembering connected to the experience of the artist in reading the world around him. Clouds are very simple details, but they suddenly realize the naturalness of  the Art expressions. Clouds are tools for an eternal  deep communications with human beings. So mythical, symbolic or religious scenarios looks  more a natural reality.

If we analyze the manuscript: ”Marco Polo, Le Livre des Merveilles”, we discover an incredible experiment. This manuscript was edited by the drawings of miniaturists that translated in real pictures ”The Million”, in which an unvisited very far world was described. So it  was very hard for them to define an unknown reality using only a imaginative tool. A total  fantastic world is more easy to represent. In these pictures we  recognize codes belonging to the topic references of miniaturists in a strong artificial environment. And clouds, our small element of investigation, are totally absent. This for the reason that the miniaturists defined only with a simple mental process, the relationship between the text and their technical references in which  the emotional part of remembering something similar is impossible to configure. So we discover no clouds. Figures are just a product of calligraphy.

 

 

 

Figures 7-15 Frames from Le Livres Des Meraveilles,  M. Polo, Il Milione

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figures 16-17 Frames from Le Livres Des Meraveilles,  M. Polo, Il Milione

3.1 A way for improving and rising ability to changeable inventions

Figure18 ,Leonardo, Sant’Anna, Maria e Gesù


Leonardo, De Pictura
"… nuova invenzione di speculazione… è di grande utilità a destare l'ingegno a varie invenzioni.  E questa è se tu riguarderai in alcuni muri imbrattati di varie macchie o in pietre di vari misti… potrai lì vedere similitudini di diversi paesi, ornati di montagne, fiumi, sassi, alberi, pianure grandi, valli e colli in diversi modi… battaglie ed atti pronti di figure strane, arie di volti ed abiti ed infinite cose, le quali tu potrai ridurre in integra e buona forma; che interviene in simili muri e misti, come del suono delle campane, che ne' loro tocchi vi troverai ogni nome e vocabolo che tu t'immaginerai.
Non isprezzare questo mio parere, nel quale ti si ricorda che non ti sia grave il fermarti alcuna volta a vedere nelle macchie, de' muri, o nella cenere del fuoco, o nuvoli o fanghi, od altri simili luoghi, ne' quali, se ben saranno da te considerati, tu troverai invenzioni mirabilissime, che destano l'ingegno del pittore a nuove invenzioni sì di componimenti perché nelle cose confuse l'ingegno si desta a nuove invenzioni.  Ma fa prima di sapere ben fare tutto le membra di quelle cose che vuoi figurare..”

 

Figures 19-20  Frames of related drawings by Leonardo and a rotated image of St. Anna

It is possible to discover hidden elements as performing shapes inside the natural environment that is all around the central religious figures. As a bridge between human temporary reality and eternal holy representation. Clouds and nature are elements for discovering shapes.

3.2 Double+ natural+ visionary

Figure 21
Alhazen, Ibn al-Haytham (Bassora 965 - Il Cairo 1039 ca.)

Small table for experiments about binocular vision. Reconstruction by Dominique Raynaud
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most important Renaissance work is La Città Ideale by Leon Battisti Alberti .We have two variations of the same picture

Figure 22-24 La città Ideale, tavola di Urbino, Prospettiva Architettonica, tavola di Baltimora, Prospettiva Architettonica, tavola di Berlino

This visionary ideal realities recall to the telescope of Pascal and the concept of the double infinities as a tools for a generative process of consciousness.

4. Poetry, nuances as musical variations

“Five things cannot generate other five things”
J. W. Goethe, West-Ostlicher divan

 

Figure25.  Dream, Raffaello Sanzio

 

Flaubert believed in the necessary connection between just related word and musical word.

One more time Music is the magistra ludi in performing Art.

 

 

 

 

Conscience can grow by walking around a tree as a deep connection of our soul with Nature

 

“To be a writer is, in a sense, to be day-dreamer--to be living a kind of double

 life. Literature is not a mere juggling of words; what matters is what is left unsaid, or what may be read between the lines. Were it not for this deep inner feeling, literature would be no more than a game, and we all know that it can be much more than that”, J. L. Borges, Who needs poets?, 1971

 

Is Poetry in relation between musical variations a stochastic process? This is a false problem. Also variation is stochastic, when it is defined. But musical theme is more soft and variations run copious. But why don’t Poetry need variation? The condition of eternity is iteration. Poetry represents this procedure. This is an unique way to gain eternity. She is a site of loneliness. Text is iteration. The sounding expression is a collective listening as the addition of hearing singularity. The listening impressions  are not possible to add. The sound is like a figure  with nuances.  Each people perceives and takes a peculiar aspect, also if all together perceive the same significance. And emotions can be strongly similar.

5. An observation: double + a new hendiadys, ancient new

“The story of Bouvard and Pecuchet is a false simplicity. Two copyists… make big friends with themselves: an inheritance leaves them free from working  so they went to live in the country; where they experimented Agronomy,  Gardening, how to do preserves, Anatomy, Archeology, History, Mnemonics, Literature, Hydrotherapy, Spiritualism, Gymnastic, Pedagogy, Veterinary medicine,  Philosophy, Religion. Each one of these heterogeneous disciplines keep inside a crash, after twenty or thirty years, disenchanted, they place an order with a woodworker for a double writing desk table and they start again to copy, as before.”,

J. L. Borges, Discussione

 

Mot juste.

I am alone on the sidelines

I am waiting a train

Popular, lonely and late

A mechanical voice talks

But reality don’t show:

It is like to come late.

But I am just read from 10 minutes!

Running shall not aid,

A smile will open the gate.

 

For a new system of investigation:

 

“Song, find resonances of just your fire!

For being more ancient, you are more new.”

J. W. Goethe, West-Ostlicher divan

To have a double vision don’t mean only to be drunk

 

 

 

 

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