User:Emily/Thematic Project/Trimester 03/07

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At first I thought encyclopaedia is a standard form for accumulating knowledge, and it seems existed in the middle among all our knowledges therefore changed slowly. It is a kind of index reaching to different disciplines, maybe for each discipline there is always some information at the edge has to be updated, but in the middle, the index is quite stable. After a few courses on encyclopaedia of media object, I find out that the way of understanding the term "encyclopaedia" changed to a large extent. There can be different ways to approach encyclopaedia. It is not universal but subjective; it can contains both fact and fiction. What is the artistic approach to encyclopaedia?

According to Graham Harman "most human cognition involves reducing a thing to one of those two roots: if someone asks you what something is, you tell them what it is made of or you tell them what it does." He suggests a third table besides Eddington’s Two tables, the scientific and manifest tables (the table described by physics, the familiar table of everyday life). The third table is the real table in between these two. So as art argued by Harman, it has to do with the separation between the real object and its sensual qualities. This really helps me to understand artists can turn media into a strategy addressing the question/critique they want to put forward. Like for example, in Haytham Nawar's work 'The Seven Days, The Heavens and The Earth.' he brings forth the story that the universe was created in seven days from mythological, historical and religious sources. Those content even together with manipulated images from internet about seven days of creation consist of a handmade book. The display includes seven ceramic sculptural pieces and seven short animated films that are projected on the handmade book. The project is interactive, inviting audiences to turn the pages of the book and watch the projected images in play with the book’s content. The creator’s hands, the creator versus knowledge, collective conscious versus alternative inputs that threaten the establishment, are some of the thoughts tackled by the artist.

This work is a kind of encyclopaedia of the seven days of creation. Describing it only with its components or its effects are not enough. It brings all the stories from different context into one, showing how authority and public manipulate the "truth" (a truth of a myth/ convention). It also implies it is so subjective, not completed and may always be unstable as long as someone use it to different context. The complex encyclopaedia become a strategy shaking the structure of our knowledge.

For me, the data in encyclopaedia has the potential to reassemble itself, as well as regroup with new content. So it is too unstable and of Immediacy to be reduced to what what it is made of or what it does. It exists at the edges different disciplines instead of "the eye of the thunderstorm".

Links:

GRAHAM HARMAN: “THE THIRD TABLE” [1] A.S. Eddington’s Two table [2]