jueves, 7 de febrero de 2019

Diálogos sobre imágenes astronómicas en América siglos XVI al XIX


Metaphysics and geometry of the line in the engravings of 
Claude Mellan's moon

Instituto de investigaciones Estéticas UNAM
Hall Francisco de la Maza
Coordination: Nydia Pérez
February 1, 2019


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78FXzJp8h1w&t=4014s

The relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm is a metaphysical paradigm that attempts to solve the question of why the universe, its measurable and symbolic reasons. With the sight man understands his world and with it, he recognizes himself in it. See to understand and compare to compare and consolidate, is to perceive. The foundations of Western thought, established from the pre-Socratic thought of Pythagoras, where the measurability of the world through geometry, which is based on the determination that mathematics is the means to justify nature; of the relation of the geometric bodies with the natural elements; reinforced in the Renaissance, especially in the sixteenth century with German geometrists such as Albrecht Dürer, Walter Hermann Ryff, Jamnitzer, Lautensack and Lencker; for the treaties of Italians such as Vitruvio, Leon Batista Alberti and Leonardo Da Vinci; as well as the contemporary vision of the application of geometry to formal and aesthetic reasons in the images of Jay Hambidge, an American researcher studied and applied by José Clemente Orozco in the mural The struggle in the west of 1931 at the New School for Social Research In New York; and Douglas Hofstadter, who implies the formal reasons as a geometric paradigm that relates to the geometric and symbolic harmony, widely explained in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid, of 1979, are just a starting point.

     Returning to the central point, which tries to justify the geometric, optical and metaphysical relationships with the line in the engravings and with it, sustainable reasons for its physical and symbolic relationship with the observation of the celestial bodies, we must consider that the theoretical paradigms, both geometric , as symbolic and aesthetic, they have been and always deserve a practical corroboration, otherwise they manage mythological monsters that wallow in narrow daring. However, the reaffirmation that the world is what it is because it is perceived, interpreted and consequently represented and re-perceived and interpreted, begins with optical science, but not only in its volitional reasons, but in the evident consciousness in the engravings that represent it, which is by itself, a cognitive reason of the trade of engraving.
     With the sight a line of focus is drawn, with the thoughts interconnected interconnections and volitional, cognitive and sensitive structures, linear too. The eye is an instrument that transits its perception in two angles: one of focus, which in optical science is called the optical axis; and another that perceives indirectly, called visual field. In both cases, the perceptual linearity has to do with attention, which is the allocation of visual and mental interest. However, the angle of focus of the optical axis is so reduced compared to the visual field, that it allows to interpret the visual trace as a gradient line that starts from the eye at a point and opens with the distance at a minimum angle. This is a purely optical phenomenon and because it is measurable, it is geometric.
     The construction of graphic solutions for the representation of shapes, volumes, spaces, light conditions and textures are human inventions that conform to a perceptive and interpretative reality to be credible. The most common way in which the line represents images is the outline. The envelopment of the objects upon seeing them and touching them to identify and reaffirm their morphology is linear inasmuch as their physical and spatial limitations, that is, their contours, are thus linear. Every time we look or touch the objects we reaffirm their linear circumstances as far as their physical and visual limits. To see the objects or to touch them is to wrap them, is to reaffirm or restore their descriptive linearity. One more to this representative modulation of the line is that which arises in the circumstance of bodies: by movement, position, size, superposition or touch generate variable directions according to their strength and internal or external circumstance of the context in which They are registered. This, in the visual representation is called composition or organization of the space. The reasons that determine the conjugation of these formal trousseau have to do with the relationship between man and his space; that is, with the priority of balance, stability and movement of the body, as well as the relationship of the objects in its environment with a physical and visual logic.
     In the images made with engravings, the line is the first paradigm in the representation of the universe. With straight lines flat surfaces are described; with curved lines, round, concave or convex surfaces. Vertical and horizontal lines describe the spaces that interrelate and reaffirm the position of bodies. The celestial bodies represent, under this association of geometric and linear characters, an enveloping perceptual solution. The invention of the line works as an interlocutor between perception and theories. Metrology and a theory about measurements developed partially in this study, help to understand how the lines in the engravings have an eloquent language to discuss representative optics. The distance between the eye that looks and the object in which it fixes its focus results in an angle that corresponds with the human eye nature and with the metrological science, a situation applied or applicable to the distances predisposed in the lines in the engravings.
     The linear solutions of the engravings of the moon (1635-1636) of Claude Mellan, are part of a geometric code that comes from the heritage of German Renaissance engraving, where Dürer defined with great precision the way in which perception and representation , as well as intuition and reflection, can function as a reconstructive whole of the world. The size of these engravings (21 x 23 cm approximately), plus the distance between lines (between 750 and 900 micrometers), the thickness of the lines (variable and gradient in each of them between 200 and 500 micrometers) and the interrelation between these, whose formal solution is given horizontally with variables of length according to the terrain of the moon and the light modulation of each area, generate a positive and convincing propositive image. Although the lines in this case are horizontal straight lines and the body they describe is spherical, their enveloping emphasis is manifested in the thicknesses of each line and as a whole, where the thick and thin lines respectively define the depth and relief of the terrain of the Moon. This linear tuning in Mellan's engravings seems a contribution to the linear descriptive spectrum in the engravings, but in fact it is not more than one of the options that conform to the geometric linear and perceptual treatment of the forms translated into lines and that has to be see with a perceptive metaphysics. For example, the discovery of the elliptical translation attributed to Kepler was already represented in the preceding astronomical engravings, which describe the trajectory of the celestial bodies and the spatial layers in the armillary spheres when the rings or armillas should be represented as circles in perspective, that is, as ellipses.
     The use of lenses to enhance eye perception seeks to adapt to their reasons for study. In the engraving, seeing through a lens is for the engraver (in addition to an approach to the crumbling microcosm), a way of splicing it with its macrocosm. The faculties of the engraver have to do with the sensitive tuning that is projected in the lines that trace when they are looked at closely, that is, with their expressive character; that is why they must be seen as poetic and nomothetic ribs, in reason first and respectively, of their creative potentiality and aesthetic eloquence; and second, by the geometric determination in the interrelation of the lines, which must respond to an indissoluble geometrical parameter, which also responds to its technical and formal nature.
     To represent what is far away and what is nearby, the engraver runs between the visual world and the metaphysical world. He fuses the reasons to understand with his eyes what he must represent and make others understand with his engravings.
     Although the relativity on physical and metaphysical reasons of the engravings made with lines has to do with the conceptualization between the distances, between the microcosm and the macrocosm and between the technical possibilities in the processes; and although the astronomical representation of the seventeenth century depended on partially corroborating and soluble reasons, as well as symbolic intersections, the engraver relates the elements he perceives and how he perceives them with a way of representing them. The variables of linear solution in the engravings have to do with the technical capacity of the engraver, with the knowledge he has of the physical and metaphysical world, where the correspondences between what is seen and what is represented are in the engraver and in the others that they look at their engravings; and with the way in which the cognitive construction of the time determines statutory modes of representative validation. The connection between what is seen, is represented and the agreements reached between those who see the visual reality and the one represented is, of course, a cognitive epithet. The discrepancies between these parts arise when the symbolic world, which is iconographic and therefore statutory, goes hand in hand with its perceptive and visual interpretation capabilities. Here we enter again into this metaphysical dissertation. The images of Mellan's moon are not the moon but a representation of it. What we see in the engravings are linear interrelationships in different intensities and formal particularities that allow us to define a symbolic unit altogether. The lenses to see the moon in the sky and those used to make and see the engravings work as metaphysical reaffirmations of this symbolic world that is seen and represented. In order for the engraver to make a consensual interpretation of what he requires, he must first identify a perceptive and symbolic connection in those around him and in himself in order to be valid, otherwise he would be describing pure abstractions.

                                           Héctor Morales



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