An example of ancient vispro text

The Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest* is a fascinating parchment codex which originally contained a Byzantine copy of works by Archimedes and other authors. One of the original diagrammatic prose texts is a theory by Archimedes to determine the positions solids will assume when floating in liquid. This is now known as the Archimedes Principle, and is the only surviving Greek edition of his work. It is thought to have been written sometime around AD530 (https://www.aproged.pt/biblioteca/worksofarchimede.pdf ).

Overlaid on visual diagrammatical elements are scriptural texts, a text by Hypereides** an Athenian politician from the 4th century as well as 4 Byzantine style religious artworks. I am proposing this manuscript as a vispro object as some of the discussion has involved the use of diagrams in vispro. Barton, claiming visual devices in prose have often been “critically marginalized” in the past, sidelined in terms of page construction and meaning, (worse, called ‘gimmicky’) (pg1), with his discussion on multimodal** analysis, “where meaning is conveyed to the reader through varying combinations of visual image, written language and spatial modes” is a term which can apply to the vispro practitioner as well.But, (see discussion on pg 7), vispro is not ‘just’ illustrated text – a vispro practitioner, who is intimately an artistwriter will consider and conceptualize all the formal elements of both art and prose. Although another fortuitous ‘accident’, study of the construction and palimpsest visuals of the Archimedes Palimpsest will aid in understanding how different modes of execution create meaning for and in vispro creation. Vispro is neither text and image, it is both. They are inseparable, bound together as a literary and visual accomplishment. Such works are neither graphic novels, comic books, illustrated texts, but diverse, rich and complex combinations of different disciplines, multifaceted thoughts and embedded visual perceptions.

Matthew Kon - http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/Labo/Ilan.Vardi/arch_eabig.jpg?36,70 Page from Archimedes Palimpsest revealing ‘On Floating Bodies’

*“At 2pm on October 29th, 1998, at Christie's auction house in New York, a very special old book was sold to an anonymous collector for $2,000,000. This collector deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in order to conserve it, image it, and study it. The book is special because it contains seven treatises by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. …5