Architecture glossaries & Hakim Bey on Imagination
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 5:54 amI love resources like this. Did you ever want to know the proper word for a decorated arch keystone, or those little brackets that run around under cornices, or the water-collection box that discharges into a downpipe? Here they be, at Roberta Barresi’s illustrated architecture glossary. For a more in-depth coverage of medieval art and architecture, there’s a dedicated glossary here.
While I’m linking, some of you might enjoy this short essay by Hakim Bey on Imagination. Bey makes the point that in modern culture, imagination is mediated through “specialists” such as actors and writers, and is not democratically shared. On books, Bey says:
Books appeal to “imaginative” people, perhaps, but all their imaginal activity really amounts to passivity, sitting alone with a book, letting someone else tell the story. The magic of books has something sinister about it, as in Borges’s Library. The Church’s idea of a list of damnable books probably didn’t go far enough–for in a sense, all books are damned. The eros of the text is a perversion–albeit, nevertheless, one to which we are addicted, & in no hurry to kick.
If the eros of reading (as I take Bey to mean) is a perversion, I wonder what the eros of writing is?
August 5th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
That architecture glossary is amazing. Thank you!
August 5th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
You should start a delicious.com thing and bookmark all of these websites
August 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
That architecture glossary is like pornography, thank you.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Penny – I was surprised to find something so useful on the interwebs
Michael – I have too many bookmarks, sob. I think delicious.com might only encourage me…
Alankria – It is, isn’t it? And not just because of the groin vaults.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:51 am
I would imagine writers, in this context, as a kind of drug dealer or pimp, providing imagination for a price and generating not merely a desire, but a need for an imaginative fix.
The problem with the idea of passive consumption of imagination in lew of the active imaginative process is that partaking of the artist’s work spurs one’s own imagination – feeds it, if you will, the way one might feed a plant or child … and as such the imagination is given the means to grow and even thrive. One cannot build without boards, nails, and quarried stone, does that mean that the architect is not actually a creator, but merely the impartial servant of the parts he uses? In the same way, a reader – or viewer – takes the imaginative tools he is provided and creates something more of them. Sure, some merely repeat what they have ingested, but these people would never have been thinkers or creators in any event – a failing which cannot be placed at the foot of passive imagination.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that – as it relates to books or even film, theatre – there is no such thing as passive imagination … the act of consuming the material spurs thought. This is not to say all film or television encourages creativity, but that it has the potential to do so … if the imbiber is actually partaking of the imaginative essence rather than watching in blank thoughtlessness as the sights and sounds carry him from one point in time to the next. (as is the case with many television addicts)
Visual arts, such as painting, statuary, etc. are guiltier here, as unless the viewer comes with the intent to interpret and construct/deconstruct the metaphor – actively – he may get away with merely viewing the piece while taking nothing away from the experience. Properly ingesting art of this nature takes effort which a smaller percentage of people are capable of engaging in.
And I love that glossary, it will improve my architectural vocabulary immensely.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Yeah, I don’t know whether Bey is dissing the sharing of creativity along active-passive lines in itself, or only lamenting that this is just about our only paradigm for exercising our imaginations.
I do think he’s getting at the idea of a participation beyond the interpretation of art or the active readership of texts, though. And I admit I’m not sure what such a participation would be like. The Vision Quest still involves an individual acting out his experience for the tribe. Maybe he’s talking about cultures where you don’t have a choice about being imaginative or creative — it’s something you have to do actively to fully participate in the culture, whereas in our culture it’s optional.