Federico Leoni kick-starts our #Leonardo500 Symposium @gloknoscentre @CRASSHlive with Da Vinci’s ‘I am a man without letters’. What is a letter? A technology, a grammar, a language of essences, argues Federico. 
"The Indo-European grammar gives us a quiet universe of stated things - everything is what its name says it should or must be. Everything is 'near itself'. Being is discreet within this paradigm. The inessential 'is not'. " (Federico Leoni) #Leonardo500 @gloknoscentre @CRASSHlive
"Now imagine a man, a culture, humankind, without letters." Federico takes us to the other side, a letter-free paradigm where no discreet beings can be identified, and the notions of inside-outside, causality, male-female, etc collapse. #Leonardo500
"What is the grammar of the technology of drawing? [...]. The grammar of Leonardo ('the man without letters') is characterised by two things: nuance and the curve."
Implications: 1) nothing is solid, concrete. 2) the drawing is not the protrait of an object -- no opposition between appearance and being; to draw *is* to construct, not to show the construction; there are no subjects.
3) to know is no longer a relation between the subject and object -- 'we become our things.'
Very interesting discussion now on the opposition between the indexical nature of literary technologies so central to scientific knowledge, and the non-indexical operations and technologies mobilised in drawing. Federico: there is a similarity w/ the Leibnizian differential sign.
Are we witnessing the breakdown of the Indo-European paradigm, moving closer to the idiographic (non-letter) language mediated by contemporary technologies? It is not a coincidence, says Federico, that everything is becoming so fluid -- including our sexuation, sense of reality..
Particularly interesting comment by Federico on the differences between the 'floating' ontologies arising now in our understanding of nature versus the Aristotelian taxonomy, which could see no continuity between animal and vegetal.
Question on how Leonardo would have dealt with drawing on iPads... Federico makes a fascinating comment on how touchscreens collapse the great binary of sight and touch throughout the history of art. (Sight as grounded in distance, touch in contact.)
Back to images not made to be seen but to be touched, through bodily practice -- e.g. prehistorical cave paintings.
I ask Federico about Leonardo's scientific imagination versus modern scientific imagination (codified in language, rigid taxonomies, etc.). Pointing to the fluidity of these paradigms at the time, Federico speaks of the co-existence of different languages & practices in Leonardo.
Also co-existence and fluidity among different 'sites' -- the lonely studio, the collaborative workshop, the construction site of Leonardo the engineer.
Join us if you’re around @CRASSHlive. We’re here all day!
Starting with a quote by Zaha Hadid on experimenting with materials and proportions.
Situating Leonardo in the long history of technological innovations, and within more recent history: Evolution of info tech and structural engineering in the past decades:
Some examples of Da Vinci's 'intuition & ingenuity' as Nicola puts it: cutting machine, cranes, but also helicopter. Moving on to a series of gorgeous designs of 'wave bridges' around the world, showing how Da Vinci's style and vision are still very much alive.
Unpacking the notion of 'artist-engineer' and how it translates into contemporary professional categories. Example from a Louis Vuitton exhibition to show how these fragmented categories today often require collaboration among different domains of expertise.
In contrast, Nicola demonstrates Da Vinci's 'multi-talent' encompassing these categories and more categories. My own sociological inclination is to see him fitting naturally within a different taxonomy/configuration of practical knowledges and their associated literate skills.
Final part of Nicola's presentation focuses on principle of 'nature as the best engineer', comparing how this informed Da Vinci's work from anatomy to engineering, as well as contemporary structural engineering. E.g. of holistic approach to design of Masdar Institute Abu Dhabi.
Q&A with questions on the impact of 3D printing, future trends in structural engineering research, where skills are lacking in the industry at the moment, and influence of environmental concerns in directing research towards particular sub-fields (wind engineering, fluids, etc.)
Counter-question on extent to which non-architectural, non-environmental concerns are shaping contemporary designs -- Burj Khalifa in Dubai given as example. Nicola: however egotistical some new designs are, they serve engineers' interest in pushing & testing limits & parameters
Our third session on 'The Da Vinci Flow' is led by Alessandro Melis of @portsmouthuni, curator of the Venice Biennale 2020. Alessandro is an architect who finds intersections with neuroscience and paleoanthropology -- my type of scholar! #Leonardo500
Alessandro recounts his encounters with Leonardo: He won a competition to lead the restoration of the theatre of Vinci, and another to test Leonardo's wings design for a canopy in Perugia.
Originally a historian of art & architecture, Alessandro uses Buffalmacco's The Triumph of Death (ca 1340) and other illustrations to reconstruct the aeshetic imaginary that was dominant before Leonardo, and what changes in the Renaissance. #Leonardo500
So what makes Leonardo a 'game-changer'? What we are actually talking about when we speak of 'genius' is the ability to shift from one modality of thought to another. Associative Thinking, argues Alessandro, is the shift characterising the rise of Leonardo and his creativity.
I'm quite happy to hear Alessandro mentioning prehistoric beginnings of creativity and associative thinking -- 40,000 years ago based on combined paleo & neuro studies. Quick overview of history of linear logic vs associative thinking, and implications for today's problem-solving
To my surprise, Alessandro's talk is now very strongly converging with the concerns addressed in the @artefactCRASSH project: epistemic transformations and their conditions of possibility in relation to societal transformations and changing needs, including food crisis.
So back to Leonardo's associative thinking in the context of the problems raised during the 'crisis of the 13th century', compared to contemporary architects' ability to deploy associative thinking in responding to today's problems (desertification, bigger cities, fodo crises...)
Interesting footnote on the etymology and different meanings of 'architect' -- chief builder or builder of ideas? (Medieval vs Aristotelian/Renaissance). Alessandro argues that 'poligraphism' is essential to the ethos and work of architects. Leonardo diff from Michelangelo here.
How to translate/transmit associative thinking through pedagogy? Alessandro gives illustrations from his MA modules at @portsmouthuni and shows us how the perspective-led architectural structures emerges from particular exercises in the work of his students. So much material...
Final comparison: the Leonardo flow versus the kakapo evolutionary path... I'm still digesting this one -- metaphor for linear thinking/survival and inertia forces of society...
Back from lunch, and the afternoon session starts with Prof. François Penz of theSchool of Architecture @Cambridge_Uni with a talk on 'The cultured eye: Between Renaissance Perspective and the Anthropocene'. #Leonardo500
After an overview of the transformation of European art with the rise of perspective, François now takes us to China for illustrations of 16th century paintings, such as Qiu Ying's Morning at Han Palace, which represent spatial depth in a different way.
Clash of antagonistic 'cultured eyes' illustrated by the transformation of Jesuit art in China -- e.g. of the Visitation of Elisabeth in European and Chinese styles. Interesting underlying ideas of whether 'man' or 'nature' are the measure of things.
The Taoist conception of Sou Che on the childishness of art 'resembling' reality contrasted with Da Vinci's view.
As a way of further exploring the anthropocentric characteristic of the Western cultured eye, François Penz is working with Descola -- and with Descola's different cultural ontologies.
Interesting case of the TeamLab in Tokyo, based on the idea that traditional Japanese art does not contain perspective. Their shows immerse the audience in a two-dimensional world called 'ultra-subjective space'.
TeamLab use sophisticated technologies but in the other direction from virtual reality projects. The narrative on the rise of perspective as a progressive paradigm of spatialisation is reversed, as they unpack what they think is wrong about Western perspective & perspectivist art
Example of this critique from 1978 exhibition in Paris:
Conception of two-dimensional layering in Japanese architecture:
François argues that Renaissance perspective is built in the camera obscura. From there, as per Jean-Louis Baudry's analysis, perspective becomes part of the ideological and material framing of our perception.
Toshiyuki Inoku (TeamLab founder) challenges the universality of this construct -- what if we developed a camera on the basis of Japanese perspective-less perception? Back to Descola's cultural ontologies. For more, see François's CineMuseSpace -- with Descola hosted next year.
Q&A: François points to how the globalisation of a uniform technology is crushing cultural diversity. Example of how perspective is built in architectural design tools, such as AutoCAD -- buildings all over the world end up all looking the same.
My collaborator at @polimi Ingrid Paoletti @ingrid_paoletti now presenting on Designing Emergent Material Cultures, starting with the metaphors of Ovidio's Metamorphosis and the Glaucus fisherman. #Leonardo500
Ingrid is presenting some of the projects she's working on at Material Balance @polimi such as the installation on the transformation of microalgae serving as bioreactors to compensate for CO2 emissions.
Another project that links to some of Leonardo's work on wave sounds explores the development of modular structures made of material shaped specifically for optimal propagation sound waves.
Project commissioned in the UAE for the use and recycling of sand waste from construction sites. This involved a 'customization and production of a meta-matter', which became 'a design constrain and opportunity for form finding'. @ingrid_paoletti
Another example is based on traditional knitting techniques: making textile from used plastic bottles or other components, based on the functional performance (visual, acoustic, structural, climatic).
Environmental concerns push designers to think about designs that will not produce waste. Designers should act as 'sustainable bricoloeurs', as 'material activists from micro to macro with a pre-political task' says @ingrid_paoletti
And of course, important to foster a material culture that is adaptive to environmental issues while also being subjected to permanent transformations. A lot to learn from Leonardo's own exercises in variation and transformation.
I'll be wrapping up our Symposium w/ some conclusive remarks on the social conditions and social environment of innovation and on interdisciplinary knowledge across the university-practice divide. Many thanks to @ingrid_paoletti @federicoleoni9 @Nikbeo @CRASSHlive @SamanthaJPeel
And Alessandro Melis and François Penz. Thanks to the audience, especially @JonJoshPerera for coming by!
Great day and great evening with the wonderful colleagues who contributed to the @gloknoscentre’s Leonardo da Vinci Symposium @CRASSHlive yesterday. Looking forward to meeting you all again in Italia. #Leonardo500
