Infinite vibrations, infinitesimal connections

Architecture, Masonry plate intellectualises practical knowledge by ignoring the tacit dimension embodied within it. In this process of translation, knowledge is fragmented and diminished. It is transformed into a poetic, oneiric, and romanesque18 image that ingrains in itself signs and their infinite vibrations19 .

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1. Wooden portico 2. Bucolic scene 3. Earth ground 4. Wet environment 5. Major movements

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6. Wooden floor 7. Discrete movements 8. Scientific tools 9. Brick wall as limit / threshhold

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10. Solid structure - arches 11. Stone floor 12. Mechanical movements 13. Ancient Greek façade: columns, ornaments, and pediment

Img. 9 Diagram indicating how the tableau vivant follows the Map of the System of Human Knowledge grid’s pattern – Edited by the author.

18. Roland Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia (Evanston: Northwestern Press, 2009), 2339. In “The Plates of The Encyclopedia”, Barhes describes the informative system of the Encyclopedic image as being “poetic, oneiric, and romanesque”. 19. Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia, 34. Barthes defines Poetics as the sphere of infinite amount of vibrations, in other words, meanings.

Imagining The Invisible

Infinite vibrations, infinitesimal connections

The Architecture, Masonry plate’s tableau vivant is constituted by a multiplicity of signs. A semiotic reading of it, opens the stage for not only a romanesque scrutiny but also for an infinite amount of interpretations. The information does not end with what the image could communicate to the reader of its period. The contemporary reader obtains from this old image a portion of information which the Encyclopedists could not foresee. Time breach is the primary impetus for the different semiotic readings that result in an un-universal knowledge transfer. The French literary critic Roland Barthes asserts,

There is a depth in the Encyclopedic image, the very depth of time which transforms the object into myth. This leads to what we must call the Poetics of the Encyclopedic image, if we agree to define Poetics as the sphere of the infinite vibrations of meaning, at the center of which is placed the literal object.20

Thus said, the transmission of knowledge through a tableau vivant can be questioned in terms of its correctness. If we consider the tableau vivant a gathering of signs or even a sign in itself, and admit that the preliminary knowledge the contemporary subject has, differs from the one the eighteenth century individual had, one can argue that the tableau vivant does not achieve its aim of rational and true transmission

of knowledge. The contemporary reader has difficulties in understanding the work done by the craftsman engaged with a tapestry weaving-like machine at the back rural side of the construction site. Since the machine object – as a sign – reminds us of a loom (Img.10). Thus different vibrations or meanings can be understood from the same sign. As the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl asserts in his theory of time and consciousness, knowledge has two directions. The past direction

Img. 10 Engraving by Prévost Fécit showing a stone sawyer (1765) – Edited by the author.

20. Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia, 34.

which he calls “retention”, in other words, knowledge gained through past experiences and the future direction, “protention”, which is the application of signs. In this sense, it is consistent to claim that the tableau vivant – as a sign – has two directions. It is a projection, an imagination of something, we read it and try to make sense. Therefore, the subject of the tableau vivant is related to something other than “itself”, embodying the mark of the past elements, and corrupted by the ones of its relation to the future elements. We can construct

multiple movements of signification, give them different significations and even sometimes, everything but the significance of the practical illustration of building a brick wall. The contextualisation of the tableau vivant is made through an effort of putting the tabulated21 elements –of the plate’s lower part – into context that creates a frame of signs. This contextualisation and situatedness is perhaps a summary of what the encyclopaedic project is. There is a dichotomy between the Encyclopaedia of Arts and Crafts (1765) being an Encyclopaedia and Reasoned Dictionary. One must say, the tableau vivant is the epitome of this polarity and undecidedness of being an encyclopaedia or a dictionary. These two framings of the general knowledge are

established through three visual and textual features in Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s Encyclopaedia (1765): the written definitions, the Map of The System of Human Knowledge grid, and the plates. The written definitions are an alphabetical arrangement of the entries that shows a will to tabulate things. The Map of The System of Human Knowledge, portrayed as a grid, perhaps is the paragon of tabulation as it represents only outlines stripped from commentaries, whereas the tableau vivant has an intermediate function between connecting and tabulating knowledge. The tabulation of elements in an imaginary scene is made through an abstract thinking process. It is important to state that the exercise of creating a tableau vivant is done through the abstraction of signs in order to bring things into life and bind them together through the depiction of actions in which the actors are involved.

21. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, (London: Routledge, 1989), 125-132. Foucault argues in his book “The Order of Things” that the Classical age gave history making, a different meaning: undertaking a meticulous examination of things themselves and transcribing what it has gathered in smooth neutralised faithful words. He writes, “the locus of this history is [now] a non-temporal rectangle in which, stripped of all commentary, of all enveloping language, creatures present themselves one beside another, their surfaces visible, groped according to their common features, and thus already virtually analysed, and bearer of nothing but their own individual names.” (127,1989).

This abstraction of signs works in two directions. The artist creating the tableau vivant engages with abstract thinking in order to produce an image, but the reader would decipher the signs of knowledge contained in the plates by appealing to their memory, translating their past experiences, and also by using their capacity of abstraction by imagining beyond what we see, for the interpretation of the signs representing the objects, tools or actions illustrating the described craft. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida explains in his book L’écriture et La Différence22 (1967) that in the non-alignment of oral and written signs, there is a hidden dimension between them, a tacit monument23 as he would call it. Derrida demonstrates his theory using

the French word “différence”. He remarks that graphical possibilities of writing the word “différence” with “en” and “différance” with “an”' can only be noticed graphically and not heard, not apprehended in speech. Derrida writes,

Now it happens, I would say in effect, that this graphic difference (a instead of e), this marked difference between two apparently vocal notations, between two vowels, remains purely graphical: it is read, or it is written, but it cannot be heard. It cannot be apprehended in speech, and we will see why it also bypasses apprehension in general. It is offered by a mute mark, by a tacit monument, I would even say by a pyramid.24

If we agree on considering the plate as the translation of oral knowledge to written form, Derrida’s theory could be applicable to the tableau vivant. In fact, until the Renaissance, craftsmen – as knowing objects – held the monopole of practical knowledge which they transmitted orally and physically to their apprentice via making and oral signs. The plates lay out the knowledge on a written platform. With this shift of medium, knowledge is captured on the move, and as such immobilized. Expressed in this static visual frame, knowledge is presented in a graphic language; be it through writing or through the image of the plate. Diderot writes in the Discours Préliminaire25 (1751) that some notions cannot be well described by words but need to be illustrated, and thus the plates are crucial materials in the

22. Jacques Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence (Paris: Aux Editions du Seuil,1967). 23. Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence, 3-4. 24. Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence, 3-4. 25. D’Alembert, Discours Préliminaire.