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October 25, 2005
Borges & reality
The hazy existence of Tlon, and it's slow bleeding into "reality", made me think about the fluidity of culture, and the transformation of thought into form. Borges seems to be hinting that our culture, and our group conception of reality, is only perpetuated through our own complicity, our own unspoken agreement to share certain assumptions and definitions. If our culture exists to such a large extent as a shared point of view, then as that point of view shifts, so will reality itself. So, if new ideas and thoughts begin to spread and take root, then the apparently solid structure of society will morph. It's like he's suggesting that we live in a room, the physical structure of which is constantly, subtly shifting in response to thought, just as fictional elements of Tlon begin to manifest themselves as fact. Makes me think about the works of Decoi, and fantasize about performance/installation spaces that bend and subtly reshape in response to the inhabitants.
Tlon also made me think about Wikipedia, which is almost like a much less extreme version of Tlon. Here is an ever growing, enormous encyclopedia, which is defining our universe. However, I wonder how much of the facts listed in Wikipedia are really correct, and if minor error after minor error might not subtly start to change our history.
I loved the concept of Hronir, and of the Hronir of Hronir, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation Hronir. A process similar to that of creative inheritance, how people create by unconsciously combining and expanding upon the creative endeavours of their peers and forebears. Ideas cannot help but breed other ideas, no matter how elusive, mysterious and labyrinthine that process may be.
The Library of Babel seemed to be another metaphorical commentary on our experience of "reality", this time focussing more on the concept of chaos within symmetry, and with the impossibility of true perspective. The librarians suffer the knowledge of their own limitation to see the big picture. They are only able to ever see the tip of the iceberg. If their understanding of reality is based on experience, and their experience only consists of the tiniest fraction of what exists, then they are always stuck in the bug's-eye view.
But they also have to live with the knowledge that everything has already been written, and so in that way everything has already happened - every possibility has already been mapped out. But they can never live long enough to find maps that they can understand. So. They are in a double bind: not much point doing anything new, but also not much point seeking the answers in the library.
Spatially, architecturally, this made me think of the power of repetition, and of suggestion. Repetition to create a sense of the perpetual, and half-hidden allusions that suggest the existence of deeper, inaccessible levels.
Posted by Ed Purver at October 25, 2005 10:37 AM