[...]nking them to the text, one can trace the different narratives extant--manifest and latent--in the work (Brancaforte on Olearius cartographic work)
(this visual rhetoric is also what i am using in my storytellings) (i also need to be careful with my collages: (not?) to map out creations that are totalities much greater than its author's own appreciation or conscious knowledge of them; to emerge an often confused and paradoxical but signatory “self” in the liminal/marginal areas of the page)
•“the mass of textual material that accompanies single-sheet or atlas maps tends to reveal its ideological perspective in the gaps between a silent, spatial, schematic rendering of an area (in visual form) and a voluble (por-harf پرحرف، روان، سليس، چرب و نرم، خوش زبان), copious (mofasal مفصل), emphatic (mo'akad تاکيد شده), printed discourse that strives to tell of the invisible history that the image cannot put into words.” (Conley)


grid, superimposed on the map

a common topos in Persian painting: a male protagonist expecting the female to pour wine or some other liquid into the shallow bowl he is holding
this ‘anticipation of drink’ is construed (in the title of Olearius map of persia) as a gesture of welcome and hospitality; providing the viewer with an iconic image of two “typical” inhabitants and their form of dress --> “promise and peril” [riches to be found + dangers encountered; treasures + giant snakes]
this continues today: the image of an iranian woman in native dress

on the Persians’ inner nature and customs

the dedicatory cartouche's [special effects]: ruler's name, capitalized, special style of italics
establishing the Duke's geographical purview --> linked to foreign territories


through ‘knowledge’ and ‘discovery’ --> learn about Safavid Persia

(Conley)
(cartography during early modern age afforded to) the emerging self and the self's relation to the idea of national space
between raw perception and creative imagination
surveying and plotting the world
the drama of european literature: an unforeseen theatricalization of the self in the 15th-17th century
-the self seems to be produced in the form of a subject, as a paradoxical being divided between a representation of the conditional relations it is producing and the composite nature of the simultaneously aural and visual medium of print
-growth of cartography parallels that of the coming of autobiography --> mapping is responsible for the consciousness that leads to the production of the fashioned self

rise of:
•autobiography
•opera
•natural history


Olearius multiplicity of roles
artist, geographer, historian, tourist, merchant, diplomat,

Olearius's production of self
mantle of artist is passed on to the author, who asserts himself and his new status in pictorial form
[in the corner of the map of Flensborg from Newe Landsbeschreibung] a hat obscures the specific character traits of the individual [artist/cartographer], and the image opts instead to emphasize the professional activity of the geographer [==> *expert: a new subject ruled by laws of classification or ideology, an expert cosmographer or topographer]
+ beautiful theories of a fire that burned in the human heart



he stick to his calculations despite the criticism he receives from colleagues and friends

Olearius's scientific reticence (kam-guyi کم گويى)
he quotes (without attribution) Athanasius Kircher: “some think that the earth, as well as the heavens have their intelligent angels or spirits which move inside them and thus bring the waters out of their depth” (Vision of Persia p.153)
therefore the waters were driven by a natural power through the hidden veins of the earth and rose up into the mountains, just as in a human being the blood rises from the liver to the heart and moves upward to the head through the vena cava. --?--> Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood


...cartographic literature both reflected and brought about changing perceptions of the world

about Marco Polo
Gabriel: Marco Polo did not have the influence on geography that one might have expected [...] he had no corresponding education, had been unable to make astronomical observation, and the results of these thrown-together maps was complete chaos [!]


the shape-shifting Caspian sea


*** Tabula Asiae ***

Olearius's travel account also seeks to be encyclopedic
...describe and judges the deviations from the European norm

common
barbarous
destruction of the body itself

Munster's final judgment:
“[Perisans] do not speak much and are more apt to act than to speak. they like the uncleanness or lust of the body; they are measured in their eating habits; they seldom keep to what they promise unless it is to their advantage” --> a laconic (mojez موجز) group of people who are frugal (sarfeju صرفه جو) in their habits, rarely keep their word unless it is to their advantage and are also oversexed ==> they are indeed different from the Europeans


discourse of analogy
cartographic evidence

a book of others

the ways it fashions received information

“Ortelius's innovation in the science of cartography is that he attends less to the “big picture” of the world than to putting together an illustrated summery of possibly infinite number of fragmentary parts (Conley)
--> “segmentable” units of an infinite possibility of scale and focus (#Goolge maps)


[]
Blue Map of Persia


influence of Ptolemy on the early islamic cartographers, in the time of Ma'mun

the notion of the inhabitable world being divided into seven horizontal bands called ‘climata’ or agalim/aghalim/ اقلیم(a geographical model derived probably from Persia)

*encircling ocean* surrounded the known world, and that usually have south at the top, probably to emphasize the importance of Mecca

system of Climes

(book of) notification: tanbih تنبیه


...pioneer on the road toward a (geographically) correct picture of Persia
_Persienbild_

...................................

“drawn from life”

the imagery and allegorical figures found on the frontispiece are learned signifiers belonging to a visual world that reflects and prefigures the verbal description that forms the body of the work

Olearius designs a brilliant visual program
visual table of contents
his nascent (dar tavalod درحال تولد) nationalist feelings
he translates both:
•the literature of the Persian poet
•the visual code of the land (he has visited)

traces of the author within the map
signs of the hidden power relation
depiction of the exotic “other” --> represented visually and typologically categorized, be it within the map itself, or in the boundary areas, in the margins of the representational space**

--?--> Timuri jiz

patronage
naming


“es gab eine lustige perspective”

of note in this scene [shah Safi's banquet for the Hostein embassy] is the woman alongside the right wall, who seems to be flirting coquettishly with a German looking in her direction, thus establishing a kind of contact between the two cultures

the monarch's true nature is laid bare

“you see me from the outside, as a pleasant young man in years, but on the murderous interior i am a tyrant.”

the scene of Eastern opulence and decadence corresponds to a 17th century (or even 21st century) Westerner's conception of an Oriental court

oriental stage

...................................

صورت الأرض  surate al-arz (face of earth)

اصطخری Istakhri, 10th century, translated into German by Mordtmann
he met another celebrated traveler, Ibn Haukul ابن حوقل

...................................

Verran: *innovating to effect the discipline of deductive proof in ancient Greek*

(i found out--Pierre also noted--that in my work i tend to) inspire a baroque style of empirical analysis

[*]baroque
--> now you see it, now you don't
--> (a thread of innovation in) mixing words and visuals
--> wonder-filled difference
--> sensibility concerned with collective way finding through complexity
*baroque sensibility* loves unlikely juxtaposition
*baroque form lives with passionate intensity*

****forms of non-explanation [=/= to reflect of ‘what is’ from a meta position****]:
•juxtaposition
•stories
•framing
•reframing
•folds --> working within the ‘folds’
•working on the edge
-
--> *pushing and pulling at the interfaces we feel ourselves enmeshed in* [<-- that is exactly the description of what i do. #amazon project]


to recognize stories of entrepreneurship as stories of working relations between people, technology, and nature
@Setareh


acknowledge our “understanding of”(s)


(taking diagrams as involved only in) epistemic practices linking the mess of the actual and the ideal of the future =/= (account of diagrams that focuses on their unique) contribution in rhetoric --> *collective way-finding* (that #Olearius works agains for iranians and german, and Sa'di's version)
[diagrams:]
•(graphs, images, visuals that fill the) two-dimensional physical spaces
•screened images that cover the surfaces of a *tapestry*
•visuals performing in a graphic register in *tension* with linguistic registers (Verran) --> figurations designed to work with text --> open up a space for imagining their capacities as *agential devices* --> (how) diagrams intervene in the organization and governance of institutions --> *diagrams as objects of governance and organization* embeding working imaginaries (such as in the imperial enterprise of the Duke Frederick that Olearius worked for) --and--> diagramatic devices of technoscience ==> enforcing *non-equivocation* and *non-contradiction* : the standard rhetoric of Western scientific thought and argument - - --> ***devices enacting norm***

[*]diagrams: a juncture: text-graphic / graphic-text as an ephemeral clot لخته of material semiotic resources where words are embedded in graphics as much as graphics are buried in words


...not collaborate enough to benefit from each other's insights


[representing passage of a domain of innovation from past to future]
is there a way representing the many differences at play? are there other ways apart from one arrow pointing towards one futre? the answer was swift: “no, that would not be wise. we need to demonstrate that we stand united [as an industry, nation, family,,,]” --> it was mutually and tacitly agreed that this is how innovation happens : man-made devices ride into the future on arrows of progressive tinkering with heterogeneous things


(Verran reading/naming of) normative iconography of technological innovation

assumptions of technological innovation:
•physics as fundamental knowledge (--> the translation of kinetic energy to electrical energy and the variables that influence the efficiency of that translation) [--(this is)--> knowledge relating to environmental and social contextualization of the techniques described by physics ==> constitution of environmental robustness ==achieving==> social acceptability] --> the rhetoric of a diagram embeding that assumption:
◦‘additive’ : that knowledge becomes relevant at ‘later’ stages in the life of the model asserted by the diagram. the purview of the ‘additive’ diagram : negotiation and strategy reside in the realm of subjectivity, therefore cannot be represented }==> subjects, those who do the organizing and the giverbing, do not belonge to the ‘core’ that the diagram claims to represent : [subject]--[emptiness]--[dieagram]
--> rendering innovation as a ‘general event’ of an ‘unspecifiable future’ that is progressed towards + idealizing sites [= times and places (of these affairs)] [not allowing the questioning of these sites as obligatory passage points (for innovation)]
--> claiming for itself a capacity to realistically map a stable system
(diagram of technological innovation: a cartography of stable entities and stable relations) =/= a complex and emergent system embedding ambiguity and contradiction
--> promoting an organizational regime that proceeds by conforming to standards of non-contradiction and non-equivocation in its rhetoric =/= baroque baldachin (arshe عرشه) (with other than representation capacities) explicitly recognizing complexity, openness, and emergence --offering--> [enabling graphics to offer] pilotage خلبانى

***every tool should pose not only technically complicated questions rather fundamental ones***

branched tree diagram: saying that knowledge of the ‘branches’ includes a conception of the truck, suggesting: to understand is to understand how the truck generates the branches, and that is what is learnt and transmitted by specialists (Stengers, @Eszter)


Verran ☞ Stengers working on the “gods and demons that populate physics”


[...] rejection and enclosure within the domain of ‘nonscientific’ or ‘simply subjective’ (of anything that cannot be reduced to the canon of the ‘simple’ model)
[Stengers]


(Verran on) the capacities of numbers to interpellate (رسما سوال کردن، استيضاح کردن) their users


diptych قاب دو لوحى


model of meaning-making that diagrams initiate (spatially + linguistically)

articulated sets of relations

a particularly efficacious form of certainty-generating rhetoric by ancient Greek mathematicians (appropriated by thier politicians), according to Netz: meaning-making in geometry proceeds in a particular way, a way that generates deductive proof --> (Netz's notion of) oral performance origins of meaning-making with diagrammatic device =/= (Verran's) graphics embedded within flows of words --> relations graphically plotted frame the relations plotted in flows of words (and reversed): diagrams labile ناپايدار in their forms of participation in collectives***

{my research on premodern systematic investigation of strange singularities of the labile phenomena [lability: liable to err and fall, slip, glide, flow] in the middle ages --helps--> how in the absence of authoritative *source of knowledge* in artistic research environments such as apass, *styles of knowing* mime and intertwine in poetics, practice, and politics}

speaking from diagram (offering possibilities of pilotage of the emergent relations) =/= speaking to diagram (a form of presentation, a proposed ‘found’ past in an idealized future, proposing as a realistic map of a given)

@Eszter: the question of recognizing the complexity of manipulating sets of relations expressed graphically --> developing (in my self) a contrast which offers possibilities for rhetorically distinguishing between ‘speaking from’ and ‘speaking to’ ==> shifts that can effect moves in collective meaning-making

wordy texts

(Star Trek's) displaying “our” modern commonplaces out of the place they are coming from --> makes me vomit
-in US sci-fi TV series we face that we are still Aristotlian, in our regulation of speech, we live under the regime of non-contradiction and of non-equivocation (tie up our public life in it) (--> when i say this is not my story, i am talking about another tradition of speech regulation)


proto-Baroque theater


*ambiguous monarchy*

absolutism has never been a feature of Iran monarchies

(who?) put an end to the complex, emergent baroque polity

a baroque sensibility was no longer salient in the Danish monarchical context and the baldachin became war booty --> that is how Adventure Time's sensibility is now

[Verran & Winthereik briliant thinking and literature:] “baldachin was designed to perform within the tense shifting landscape of partnerships associated with an aristocracy vigorously reorganizing itself as it emerged out of the crisis of the late medieval.”

there was a shift from ‘vertical to horizontal social integration’ (Christianson) with a better-off peasantry and a surge in the urban middle classes, and secular magnate families (najibzade نجيب زاده)

the baldachin was a device that performed in a force field--a wary but indomitable alliance of crown and noble magnates --> baldachin as a diagram in association with texts, the speech, and bodily gesture of court events


diagram: ambiguously and ambivalently ‘spoken from’ (--> proposing how a just society might be achieved) and ‘spoken to’ (--> a vivid vision of a just polity)

[...]