Anonymous. Statue, Egyptian Scribe. Fifth Dynasty.
daVinci, Leonardo. Sketch , “Drawing the Light”.
1500s.
Modotti, Tina. Photograph, Peasants Reading El Machete.
1928.
Picasso, Pablo.
Painting. Girl Reading Book at a Table. 1934.
Rembrandt. Painting, The Scholar. 1642.
Schwitters, Kurt. Collage, Merz - 133. 1921.
Undeciphered Artifact, Phaistos Disc from Crete.
Poem, “She Loved the Paper”. 2002
This design repeats the design motif of the letter ‘G’, with an arrangement of images of figures reading and writing with images of the writing surface: paper and stone. A poem about the love of paper, the skin of print’s body adds commentary. The circle in the letter ‘P’ is configured to resemble a computer compact disc (CD).
The play of square and circular patterns suggests a cultural transition from linear to circular perspectives. Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy (1906) discusses the psychological differences between square and circular forms and traces a trajectory of artistic movements through these forms. The binary of abstraction and empathy as personal and collective cultural urges are expressed in square and circular forms.
According to Worringer circular forms were predominantly used in the classical period and were replaced by an interest in square forms in the medieval and modern periods. Worrigner predicted a transition back to circular forms in art finding similarities between the early twentieth century and the classical periods. The transition from scroll to codex (book) and now disk is a transition from circular to square forms as James O'Donnell’s Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace reminds.
Worringer’s questions about the psychological implications of spatial forms are an important precursor to questions about embodiment. Paul Virilio’s Bunker Aesthetics and other works continue a similar thread of inquiry by considering how interactions with space and motion affect cognition and vision in what he terms kinematics.