Anthology is ontology. The power of selection and the ‘worldmaking’
- Autores: Alessandro Canevari
- Localización: Critic-all III International Conference on Architectural Design & Criticism: digital Proceedings / Silvia Colmenares Vilata (dir.), Luis Rojo (dir.), 2018, págs. 56-63
- Idioma: español
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The work of gathering anything conceals a huge power. A power hidden as much in the meticulous selection as in the swift browsing and gathering – based on an aim driving our choices. Nevertheless, we often wield that power unwittingly, since we seldom focus on the influence we wield through the very act of selection.
Determining if something can be part of a given set and laying down its set rules allows us to define its interaction chances and above all its identity. This allows the editor of an anthology to provide the background or the genealogy on which a discipline is founded – as in the case of History of Theory – but his mastery goes far beyond this. Indeed, every collection of snippets not only supplies an autonomy to the discipline but it actually defines a new discipline, forming it in an extensional way. This is to say that at the root of every anthology there lives an ontology, meaning that the editor's act of selection is the founding of a world.
These new worlds, new ‘Architectures’, their logic and laws, are set by the content of the excerpts. The meeting of this world making authority – offered by Philosophy – with Linguistics and with the latest text mining technology unfolds a new scenario for the discipline. Thus, every anthology and any possible set of that endless ocean of spontaneous or indexed papers turn into a gold mine. This is where the anthology reveals itself in a new light as an instrument for current times, becoming an analytical corpus for the software.
As an instrument to explore parallel paths in Architecture through its very words, the anthology becomes a new way to understand Architecture from within, opening a new season of self- reflection for the discipline.
