14 June 2008

Metropolis passage

i found this juicy paragraph in a recent essay in Metropolis:

"We get lost in words, thinking they are the bones of the world, not mere ill-fitting tags. But words, however much we may love and rely on them ... don't always cut it. It is evident that the more dimensions one has at one's disposal, the more information a construction, verbal or physical, can contain. Consider film versus painting, hyperlinked text versus static text, a monograph versus a museum. I'm rattling on here, stringing these words in a row, and the best I can do, squeezing from each a dot of meaning, is to suggest the contour of an idea, from which it is hoped that you, the sympathetic reader, will then manufacture within yourself a specific understanding that matches mine... Writing is a Hail Mary. [Design], working haptically and intellectually all around us, can play a deeper game."

that's fair medicine --- especially for me, i am sometimes captured by words and brainstorming before i dive deep enough into drawing, art. but he is missing the point entirely, i feel. sure, films are more alive than paintings, but that does not mean they are by nature better. truly sublime work is focused, is pure, is not hyperlinked, as the above author would desire.

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