Aby Warburg was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the famous private library Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW). He started an interesting personal project called Mnemosyne Atlas in his late years.
What is unique about the two legacies is that the founder used an unconventional editorial method to organize and present his collection. The books were not categorized by following any traditional system but were randomly displayed, and their location was occasionally changed based on Warburg’s intention to encourage readers get inspiration from making connections between books in the library.
The layout of Mnemosyne Atlas, which also neglected the formal linear rule by sequencing sixty-three panels according to the editor’s shifting research focus and a hidden emotional and psychological clue within the images exhibited, making room for creative links to show up by a non-linguistic and conflictive behaviour (Barea & M. del C., 2018). In a time when people are worried about losing thinking abilities by digesting fragmented information, Warburg’s brilliant creation might give us a solution.
We should never forget that computers and software were supposed to become “tools for thought”, the “new medium” rather than just “technology” (Manovich, 2013, p.13). Now almost every UI has a search box, and undoubtedly it enables anyone to get loads of related information by just putting into some keywords. But it does not necessarily mean our connection with the information, which is the bridge to “knowledge” and which finally can be transformed into “insight”, has been strengthened.
What makes Warburg’s ahead of his time is not only his strong awareness about the universal web of ideas, but also an interactivity experimented in his library and atlas: a well imposed selection power in the “engine” demanding sufficient cognitive labor on “user interface” (Kersssens, 2017). It is a silent communication in a more profound and humane way, because once people detect the invisible connections, they get closer to the librarian’s mind.
I suppose it is by valuing the abstract and metaphorical relationships in the atlas that Warburg managed to recall Mnemosyne, the mother of Muses in his studies. If the world can be seen as an information machine, then we are constantly changing focus on different interfaces: nature, people, texts, screens.
On the one hand it is through such kind of interactivity we acquire knowledge, on the other hand we are always mediated by interfaces to communicate with reality. Now as the channels of information have become unprecedentedly unfathomable and uncontrollable due to the increasing accessibility and manipulability of data, we must learn to steer ourselves and actively take control of connections in the digital ocean. As what Charles Eames once said: “Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”
No interface can be more friendly than a man, because machines and human are speaking different languages. But what technologies bring us is the ability to combine the languages to form a new way of thinking, a space more fascinating than we ever expected to explore.
References
Barea, M., & M. del C. (2018). Rhizomatic Mnemosyne: Warburg, Serres, and the Atlas of Hermes. Contemporary Aesthetics, 16, 12. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=vth&AN=134679583&site=eds-live&scope=site
Charles and Ray. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from: https://eamesfoundation.org/house/charles-and-ray/
Fleckner, U. (2017). Dancer in a laboratory of images: Aby Warburg’s performative didactics. Philosophy of Photography, 8(1/2), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.1386/pop.8.1-2.17_1
Kerssens, N. (2017). When search engines stopped being human: menu interfaces and the rise of the ideological nature of algorithmic search. Internet Histories, 1(3), 219. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=ejs42856443&site=eds-live&scope=site
Manovich, L. (2013). Software takes command: extending the language of new media. New York ; London : Bloomsbury.
2019/10/16