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Monday, July 30, 2007

Post-Modern Monday: Rhinoplasty

Posted by Bill Benzon on 07/30/07 at 10:51 AM

Cross-posted at Mostly Harmless.

A decade or so ago I read an article about appropriation as a BIG THING in the art world. I thought it was silly. And so I did what any intelligent person does when confronted with high-toned silliness, I riffed on it.

I took Dürer’s rhinoceros as my starting point:

I then scanned it into my handy-dandy Jobs-Wozniak Appropriator and concocted the following dialogue on bioengineering and informatics.

* * * * *

“Do you think he would mind?” “Who?” “Albrecht.” “Albrecht Einstein?” “No, Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, the print maker.”
“Mind what?” “If I appropriated his rhinoceros.” “What for?” “I want to do some genetic engineering.” “Genetic engineering?” “Yes. I had this dream the other night. A voice kept repeating ‘zebroceros’ over and over again, with a very deep and meaningful intonation.” “What’s a zebroceros?” “Well, it must be a cross between a zebra and a rhinoceros.” “And you want to get into genetic engineering so you can make the cross. Isn’t that going to be difficult? I mean, the zebra and the rhinoceros are such very different animals. Do you think the cross will take?” “Don’t see why not. This isn’t like ordinary cross-breeding. Here we get right into the genetic material, the information specifying the organism’s form and function. We just splice one strand of information into the other and voilà! we’ve got it.” “I see. Tell me. Do you think we could make a rhinana?” “A rhinana?” “Yeah, a cross between a rhinoceros and a banana.” “Well, if it’s OK with Albrecht. It’s his rhinoceros.” “You mean there’s no problem about the rhinoceros being an animal and the banana a plant?” “Of course not. When you get down to the genes it’s all just information. Bits and bytes of biocode.” “Well, then let’s try something between animate and inanimate. Wrapping paper. Yeah, a rhinoceros and wrapping paper.” “But wrapping paper doesn’t have any genetic code at all. No DNA to splice.” “But it does have a pattern. And the pattern is information, just like the DNA. What should I call it” “Wrappoceros? Papoceros? Zigzagoceros?” “Oh.”

Comments

Correctly deciphered, the code on the last one reads:

Ceci n’est pas le rhinocéros de Dürer.

By JP Stormcrow on 07/30/07 at 12:27 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Some of the details of Durer’s rhinoceros seem to be borrowed from depictions of military armor, or possibly shell casings of insects. The ears seem like mouse ears. The hooves might be right, or not. There’s an extra horn on the shoulders.

My theory is that Durer got a very quick glimpse. The proportions are right, but not the detail.

By on 07/30/07 at 07:39 PM | Permanent link to this comment

In Art and Illusion Ernst Gombrich says that Dürer was working entirely from descriptions. He never saw a rhino. Gombrich goes on to argue that later artists were so influenced by Dürer’s drawing that it over-rode the evidence of their own eyes when they had an opportunity to work from direct observation. I have seen this last point disputed on the EvPsych list by Prof. Denis Dutton, but I don’t know whether or not the argument as been made formally.

By Bill Benzon on 07/30/07 at 07:46 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Portrait of the Art via 3QD

By nnyhav on 07/31/07 at 10:55 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Hmm, so the “original” was genetically engineered from stories of actual rhinos and that parable about the blind men and the elephant--excellent.

By The Constructivist on 08/01/07 at 10:08 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Very interesting, nnyhav, thanks for the link.

By Bill Benzon on 08/02/07 at 06:33 AM | Permanent link to this comment