New pattern seems to "click" into existence somehow. What pieces of sound are objective properties? — Raymond

For reconstruction, it's mostly about melodic structure. For example, phrases, or segments within the phrases. There's a certain grammar we all perceive, and that helps us organize what would otherwise be chaos.

Could we discover elements the artist wasn't aware of? — Raymond

Possibly yes. (But to be fair, that's not specific to the reconstructionist method. An artist can read a traditional interpretation of their work, and roll their eyes.)

Don't tell me you don't know that in abstract painting most trees stand vertical and their leaves are convex. Same for realistic work. Vertical, up-down linearly, convex, spherical. — Raymond

Just thanks.

That's a nice approach. I think I even use it myself, when listening to music. Beside the emotions and crazy dances I sometimes dance, I discover new pieces of guitar, drum patterns I didn't notice before, bass lines repeating, or whatever. Is that the stuff you write about? Sounds like a discovery tour somehow! Great! — Raymond

Yes, that's the kind of stuff. Reusing this reconstruction "The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8)” that gets repeated in the next phrase (0:10 to 0:18)", what happens if we continue to unfold the network of relationships throughout the whole piece? That's the experiment.

That's shining a nice light! So it's an aid for the beholder. Not throwing in useless context info, but concentrating on the piece "as it is"? — Raymond

Exactly. And I believe it's surprising how far that can go, when you don't look for meaning and context at every turn. Just let the medium do its work. But you have to help it if you want to maximize it. Reconstruction helps with that.

But how to determine the concepts? Suppose I look at the New York Boogie Woogie painting, by Mondriaan? What would be the concepts? Should I ignore the title? Or the atmosphere in New York? — Raymond

If you start anew, the process of determining the concepts will be empirical. In my case, I found something in some medium-specific narratives. Reconstruction is for sharing them with others.

For your specific questions (should I ignore the title?), you can test out empirically how that improves your enjoyment. In my manifesto, I refer to this as "conventional medium delimitation". You decide what is the content, and then you analyze it.

What's the essence of a piece of music? The decomposition of the soundwaves? Then maybe the most objective way is using Fourier transforms piecewise. — Raymond

Reconstructionism isn't a theory about what is essential (or a theory at all). It is hedonistic : we look for a perspective that will provide enjoyment.

It's objective if we both agree to reconstruct the piece in the language of "motives", "contrapoints", or other terms of classical music. Isn't the record itself the best reconstruction? — Raymond

Yes it is. That's why in the Manifesto I wrote that reconstruction is not a substitute for the content, just a guide.

We reconstruct an abstraction of the work (hence "conceptual" reconstructionism) to help the consumer of the content re-focus on the content. Consumption of content tends to be distracted by a million factors (for example, the search for meaning and context), that's where reconstruction comes in.

Every claim to objectivity, is a claim to subjectively assigned values of importance. — Raymond

I think it would be more productive if we frame this discussion with a concrete example, as I told Metaphysician Undercover:

Let’s assume a reconstruction of music starts as follows:

“The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8)” that gets repeated in the next phrase (0:10 to 0:18).”

The music is “quoted” and a correlation (the repetititon) is noted. What is not objective for you here ? — thaumasnot

If by "a claim to subjectively assigned values of importance", you mean that it's subjective that I picked the motif M and this correlation, then absolutely. There's no debate here. I'm saying that the reconstruction is objective only in the fact that M does exist, and so does the repetition of M.

Not at all. As I told you previously, the links to the definitions on your website don't work for me. I'm using Chrome. Even if they did, I'm not sure it would make any difference. — T Clark

The question “is everything clear to you” is for the post in this forum, not the website. In addition, I'm not sure how a technical problem on a website ties in with the question.

If you strip the piece down to its most subjective level — Metaphysician Undercover

I’m not sure where I “strip down the piece down to its most subjective level” ? There must be some misunderstanding here.

Even if you leave in place some of the "formal correlations", by changing others you are allowing your own subjectivity to invade the objective aspect. — Metaphysician Undercover

By “changing others”, do you mean “changing other correlations” ? Then I’m not sure where you come from, since I’m not changing anything.

The best way to eliminate any ambiguity about what we mean (the most useful definition of objectivity for me is Karl Popper’s, which equates it to “interpersonal subjectivity”, but if you don’t agree, I can use “interpersonal subjectivity” instead of “objectivity”) is by looking at an example. Let’s assume a reconstruction of music starts as follows:

“The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8)” that gets repeated in the next phrase (0:10 to 0:18).”

The music is “quoted” and a correlation (the repetititon) is noted. What is not objective for you here ?

T Clark doesn’t want to participate, so I’ll leave the thread, unless someone wants me to continue the reconstruction.

This eerily reminds me of Alexandre's paper. A breakthrough in perspective, this time not in physics but art and literature. — jgill

I don’t know if it’s a breakthrough, but I do know it’s much more difficult to get my points across than I expected.

I think this gets at the heart of my questions. Why would I want to look at the reconstruction of the work of art if it's not telling me something interesting. — T Clark

I said it was not interesting if we use rhythm as the basis for a reconstruction. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t want to write a reconstruction if it wasn’t interesting.

That brings up another question, which is especially important to me for media I am not familiar with. What standards are you applying? I don't know what "verticality" or "convexity" mean, represent, or imply with visual art. — T Clark

Good question. “Verticality” or “convexity” are used as referential terms. You point to a weakness in my approach, as I didn’t mention that you have to look at the following annotated picture to find what these terms refer to. Other terms could have been chosen. “Verticality” was chosen because it’s the geometrical property I want to emphasize. And so on. The exact choice of term is not the most important part, it’s the referentiality, but the choice of term needs to be intuitive enough to make the reading comfortable.

All the other works are short or, like the photograph, all one thing. "As I Lay Dying" is long and you've only presented a few analyses of the text. Are the ways of analyzing you've provided intended to be exhaustive? Does that cover all the aspects of the writing it's worth looking at? — T Clark

No, of course not. The reconstruction is one narrative carefully selected to represent the content (it doesn’t make the claim that it’s the best way, it would non-sensical to try to claim that). Exhaustivity is more the domain of the mosaic of the interpretation of the average value (cf. Manifesto).

Isn't that exactly what analysis is though, to break something down into its parts, in an objective way? This is to make the divisions in accordance with what is inherent within the piece, rather than according to some values. It is synthesis, when we put the parts back together (reconstruction), which is necessarily guided by values. We cannot "reconstruct" in a manner which is not value-driven because the end, or goal, of the reconstruction must be chosen, and it acts as a guide in the reconstructing activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s true. If analysis only quotes the content (guided by value-based predilections) for the purpose of extracting a medium-specific narrative (so in our case, a network of melodic motifs), it is fundamentally the same as reconstruction. You could maybe say reconstruction is a subset of analysis. I will usually oppose them, but that may be an abuse of language.

How does the reconstructionist know that these correlations are the ones produced by the artist, rather than ones created by the synthesis (complete with inherent intention and values) of the reconstructionist? — Metaphysician Undercover

As you said, the reconstructionist is guided by values, and reconstructionism is essentially hedonistic, it makes no claim of being right. On the contrary, even though it sticks to the content like a dog to his bone, it isn’t at all about being right (cf. Manifesto). To summarize, what’s subjective is the choice of these correlations. What’s objective is the quoted content and the correlations. These are formal correlations by the way: transpositions, inversion, repetition, scaling, and so on.

Conceptual reconstructionism in science? Mathematics? — jgill

Yes it's possible. But I haven't tried it (I've only applied some of the principles to books about the philosophy of science/mathematics) and I don't think I would. But who knows?

So you might go through the whole piece and determine what parts are the fundamental rhythm, and what parts are variations, or maybe some parts are even completely different. That's an analysis, but where does the reconstruction come into play? How would a reconstruction differ from an analysis? What am I missing? — Metaphysician Undercover

If we take your example, the reconstruction would be like: rhythm accelerates a little, rhythm slows down big, rhythm sustains etc. Even though it’s not interesting, it’s different from analysis in that reconstruction transcribes variations almost transparently. It makes no effort to add value to the content (except try to be readable and not too tedious). It won’t even try to categorize the piece. In practice, it will rather apply to melody (not harmony), more precisely the motifs. It will transcribe how patterns arise from correlating melodic structures. This is already unusual (not unique, of course), but it will take that approach further by looking at piece-wide networks of correlations. The content that is reconstructed also kind of matters. Some pieces arguably lend themselves better than others to that approach. I have a certain experience in this area that can be interesting to some.

No, we just reference the broad concept this passage suggests. As we only care about a certain narrative, it’s not the exact meaning of the concept that matters (otherwise it would be extremely tedious, I agree), but how it will be used. Please bear with me.

Another point: why do we use a special notation to denote referential terms ? Because otherwise, if later in the reconstruction I need to reference the concept, I would have to write something like “the distancing like the one we introduced earlier in the reconstruction, when Darl and Jewel were walking down the path to the cotton house”. The special markup allows me to be more concise.

The reconstruction starts like this:

As I Lay Dying opens with Darl as the point-of-view character. Early on, it is established that Darl can <distance>DEF himself from even himself.

❝ Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cotton-house can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own. ❞

The reconstruction follows the book. It will pick up elements from the text as it goes along and refer to them using referential terms.

How do I choose which elements ? I read the whole book before, and I picked up a book-wide narrative that is based on certain elements throughout the book. This is the narrative I want to share, because I find it remarkable. Whether that’s true for another reader depends on the reader. My goal is not to PROVE that I’m right (which would be as pointless as trying to prove that one’s taste is objectively better than another’s). It’s to share objective content that can be discussed and can enhance your reading of the content. We’ll see how that pans out.

The referential terms are denoted as <such>. <distance> references the quote, and particularly the quote in boldface: anyone watching us from the cotton-house can see. There’s nothing more to it. It’s a mnemonic. Since it’s the first time we encounter this concept of “distancing” (Darl speaks as if he can be in the head of someone else), there’s a DEF attached to <distance>, for better readability. There’s nothing to delve into, no deep meaning to decipher, we’re just preparing the groundwork for the developing narrative. In fact, the whole reconstruction will just be to pick up things along and correlate them, and that will be enough to create something.

Later, this concept of <distance> will be referenced. Many references will be made, creating a network of concepts. Every time a reference is made, the definition must be remembered along with its context. The context is the phrase that contains the definition. Here, the context is minimal. It’s the start of the book, basically.

T Clark, is everything clear to you ?

Hi T Clark,

I’ve PM’ed you a proposal. I sent Tom the links, he doesn’t see the point of the reconstructions, and that’s fine. It’s a very novel thing, it will take time to sink in.

I don't understand this paragraph — Tom Storm

I’ll rewrite it. What it says is basically that when a review/criticism is not taken as just being informative (in which case there is nothing to criticize), we can subject it to the same judgment criteria that we use to judge the content. For example, we can criticize something they say for being cliché (speaking about the author for example), or for being inconsequential (for example, they explain why a certain thing is there in a painting, and that thing doesn’t matter at all to how we experience the content).

Sending you a PM.

Your conceptual reconstruction of Ode on a Grecian Urn is what I expected from what you described. I can see the value and agree it might be helpful, especially after I read the poem once. — T Clark

That’s cool to hear ! Sometimes, it will not be as helpful. It can depend on the content or the reader. Not every content is interesting to reconstruct for every reader. The project is to offer reconstructions that people are free to judge. Hopefully one will open the eyes of some person to the wonders of medium-specific narratives. Reconstruction in itself is nothing. It’s just a tool to open eyes, and once it works, we can forget it, because the only thing in it that matters is the cognitive approach that it suggests.

But what you wrote here seems different from what you posted at the links you sent me. — T Clark

It’s fundamentally the same thing, except that I use the special markup notation for various reasons (concision, and forcing readers out of their comfort zone). It will probably appear more technical, but it’s just the syntax. For Ode on a Grecian Urn, it was okay to use an informal language, but I think you’ll agree that as the narrative gets bigger, it becomes more and more tedious to mention the narrative links again and again, so we need some mnemonic convention to keep things practical (for the writer and the reader).

The form of a reconstruction also depends on the medium. In the reconstruction of painting or movies, I will use a lot of images to show what the terms of the reconstruction exactly refer to (in fact, since it’s so graphical, reconstructions of paintings and movies might be the most convenient and pleasurable to read). For literature, I will quote the text a lot.

The OP seems to be working towards trying to capture the uniqueness in a work that may have been missed by conventional means of discussing works. I think this has merit. But to me this will often be a side dish to the main course. In some art what makes it 'unique' might be the least interesting aspect of that work. — Tom Storm

Yes. That said, a part of the thesis is that there are different types of uniqueness. It’s of course (at least to me personally) not very interesting to mention that a work is unique because of things like “it’s a novel without a single punctuation”. Reconstruction is only of the medium-specific narrative. The narrative aspect stresses not details/aspects in isolation, but how they are leveraged within a composition, how they fit together. I would certainly be curious to know what your stance would be after being exposed to reconstructions. The reason is that IMO if there’s any such thing as a “main course” in interpretation, the medium-specific narrative is the most natural candidate to be it. That’s because it’s a structure that ties the whole work together as a holistic unit in a way that is concrete and detailed.

Well written perspective but I confess it was long and detailed and I struggled to understand some of your specifics. But it's good to see this kind of content. — Tom Storm

Hello, welcome to the discussion :) Thanks for your feedback. If there’s any passage you specifically struggled to understand, please tell me where it is and I’ll try to improve it.

Your distinction between review and criticism is fair, I think. That being said, the Manifesto also addresses this brand of criticism (the “too much, not enough” syndrome), though it’s possible that criticism partially coincides with reconstruction (as @SatmBopd pointed out).

I'm not sure about this. I find that taste is one of the primary things I find meaningful and useful in a review. A good reviewer is trying to share his taste with me. Share, not impose. — T Clark

In my experience, the important bit is not the value judgment, but what (supposedly) leads to the value judgment. So if someone writes “I like because X”, X is actually the useful bit. That’s a big part of reconstructionism. The other big part, is what that X can be if you apply a certain discipline to the experiencing of the content (attention span and sensory memory).

You can't turn art into words, even verbal art like poetry or literature. Interpretation, review, whatever you want to call it can only legitimately address the viewer's/reader's experience. Ok, enough of that. — T Clark

We both lean toward the “experience”, so we’re practically on the same page. The only difference is that I don’t talk about “legitimacy”, and I don’t think this difference matters.

Sure, if value judgement is all there is. On the other hand, why would I interpret something that wasn't at least interesting? I write reviews on Amazon, Yelp, or Chowhound from time to time, almost all for things I have strong feelings about or interest in. I've been known to end a review with "I love this book." — T Clark

I also only interpret something I find interesting. The only difference is that I don’t try to articulate _why_ it matters to me (which is actually impossible because taste is not communicable), but the _what_, and this “what” happens to be objective, so we all win.

I'm interested in this, especially in media where I am not familiar with technical aspects. I know that bluegrass and old time country music sound and feel different, but what is it about them that makes that difference? — T Clark

The medium-specific narratives are genre-less (or cross-genre, if you will). They actually show music in a light that make genre/subgenre considerations pretty much worthless if you find value in medium-specific narratives (which is my case).

I'm trying to figure out what, exactly, this means. As I said, I think I have work to do. — T Clark

I don’t think so. This shows that I have a work to do. My goal is to reach people like you. I failed. I need to be clearer and provide examples.

I need to see some examples. I see you have provided at least one in later posts. That's the homework. — T Clark

Idem.

This gets at a question a lot of unsophisticated people like me have about art. Sure, the Mona Lisa is a nice painting about a pretty woman. What's so great about it. — T Clark

Actually, my goal is NOT to explain why this or that work is great. This is actually the contrary. My goal is to show content in a certain way that was overlooked and may actually the most important thing. In the case of Mona Lisa, I have actually nothing to report (for me it’s just straightforward artwork worthlessly hyped by interpretation and the context it brings with it).

Thank you for your valuable feedback, that was very useful, and shows where I should rewrite the Manifesto.

I do tend to conflate interpretation and reviewing. I’m not rigorous about it, so please bear with me.

“Pleasure” might not be the best term. I include a wide range of things in it, including “interesting viewpoints”, “nostalgia”, “writing style”, etc.

Thank you for the feedback, looking forward to any criticism ! And welcome to the discussion :)

Another aspect I would like to emphasize, is that we're not "limiting" content, in the sense that we introduce a formal step to our interpretation called "conventional medium delimitation". Whatever context you might want to import is fair game. However, it is my personal experience that this context (including author, history, theme, and so on) are clichés that are boring to me and are inconsequential to the experiencing of the content. “Boring” is subjective of course, just like you could say my interpretations are boring. I will however try to offer something that may be worth your while. Since it's objective, you can observe it cleanly and rate it however you like, on a per-work basis.

The notion that context can be a boring cliché is developed further in the book, and is a big (but not essential) part of my critique of critique. One of my theses is that context has a special status w.r.t. to content, which has somewhat protected it from criticism, especially with regard to its importance and universal relevance. But this critique of context is also somewhat linked to the discovery of medium-specific narratives, as it relativizes the importance of context w.r.t. content. We haven't exhausted what content has to say, and it shows in many works. That's what reconstructions are here for, to bring awareness, and hopefully, some people agree it’s worth their time.

Yes, we look for patterns, patterns that have been ignored. While this yields a formal kind of review, it's not like an AI though, because in the last instance we're guided by personal inclinations when choosing the patterns. In fact, if anyone publishes a reconstruction, it’s probably because they found patterns they deemed remarkable. An essential difference from traditional reviews is that this personal inclination is implicit and not a focus, and the patterns are content that can be shared objectively and can ultimately lead to emotions (but this is not talked of, because it's something best left to the discretion of the reader IMO). My hope is to show patterns that are worth your while, but whether they are is yours to decide.

The first link seems nice, thanks.

If you PM me, PM me with your email, since I may not be able to reply back.

Thank you guys for the fast replies !

To add to the previous post:

“Say if you're looking at romantic poets as a whole, and you're able to focus your analysis of their work on the things that they each do differently from each other, then aren't you extracting something more important or unique about each work?”

The reconstruction of a work is such that usually you’ll be able to extract something unique within the body of work of its author, let alone unique w.r.t. to other authors. It’s also very possible that this uniqueness hints at a signature (a template) that is unique to the author (or a period of their work), and this uniqueness is usually quite precise, at least much more precise than a vague term like “romanticism”. For example, you wouldn’t be able to mistake the medium-specific narrative of some Beethoven piece with any medium-specific narrative from other so-called “romantic” composers.

“broader contexts and movements across history could both be important narratives in and of themselves, as well as provide deeper insight into the meaning of the work/ which aspects of the text were most important” :

The key term is “important” : one of my goals is to show that importance is always subjective, and that we are free to ignore any aspect of context that we have been conditioned to value (at school for example). I would agree that context can bring something that would interest me. In fact, my own analysis uses semantics, so it’s not context-free. That being said, anything beyond that (such as romanticism and biographic notes) is usually either (1) tangential to the content and colors it “cosmetically” (often in stereotypical ways), or (2) overloaded meaning that becomes its own (typically pompous) work of art. I therefore have a negative prejudice regarding those. I’m still open to “un-pure” analysis though (I call the process of accepting content outside the content “conventional medium delimitation”).

For my specific analysis of the Ode, someone else could certainly arrive at the same narrative. I’m curious to know the exact content of the course was, and would be happy to find a coinciding view (other analyses, for example, if you read the Wikipedia entry, don’t talk about the poem like that at all, and I think it’s true in general). The shorter the content, the greater the probability of coincidence. That being said, analysis of rhyme structure for example is tangential to that narrative. There is some work behind the reconstruction in terms of extracting what is essential to the narrative.

The purpose of extracting _medium-specific_ (emphasis on the latter) narratives is that it’s not that obvious depending on the work/reader (mainly due to our education), or totally unusual (music), and can lead to discoveries (or a way of discovering) that were (to me) groundbreaking. You may see it with other reconstructions. Luckily, since the first post, I’ve posted many reconstructions, so I think you’re in a great position to judge for yourself. I’m also now going to post reconstructions regularly.

I cannot PM you (probably because I’m new to the forum), and posting links is forbidden, but maybe you can PM me and I can reply to you ? Discussing things with more material would be great.

Thanks again for your curiosity and the great discussion

I’ve also implemented something special for music reconstructions. They contain an audio player, and sound references can be played individually. They are also highlighted karaoke-style when the music plays.

To follow up, I have published reconstructions as proofs of concept for all major media types:

- Novels (As I Lay Dying by Faulkner, The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway)
- Music (Soon to be dead by Dismember)
- Painting (La Vie by Picasso)
- Movie (Angst by Gerald Kargl)
- Photography (Damsels wearing face packs posing before panels by Jay Maisel)

I see in your profile you've quoted Ode to a Grecian Urn. The book contains a reconstruction of that poem. So here's the extract from the book pertaining to that poem:



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When I look for a medium-specific narrative, I try to find one that roughly covers the whole work, one that justifies the work as a unit. Here’s one:

• 1. The narrator questions a silent “thou.”
• 2. The narrator associates the silent (“those unheard are sweeter”) with the eternal (“canst not leave […] nor ever,” “never, never”, “For ever,” etc.).
• 3. The eternal is then associated with repetitions of “happy” and “love” (“Ah, happy, happy boughs!”, “happy melodist”, “More happy love! more happy, happy love!”).
• 4. Finally, when the eternally silent (“Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought as doth eternity”) says something, it addresses the narrator’s questioning (“all ye need to know”) through structures of repetiton, reminiscent of the repetitions of “happy:” “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

All the terms of the interpretations are reused and combined in different contexts. In (1), the “silent thou” is asked questions which are addressed in (4). The repetitions of the answer “beauty is truth, truth beauty” echo the repetitions of the words happy and love in (3), but in a non-silent context which contrasts the silence in (1) and (2). A narrative thus emerges.

This narrative is medium-specific in the sense that it takes elements directly from the poem with almost no recourse to subjective interpretation. I say almost, because there is certainly some layer of interpretation there. I did skip many details, even entire parts of the poem. I also didn’t mention the stanza structure or the rhyme schemes. Implicit in these oversights is an assessment that they weren’t needed in the narrative I wanted to highlight. If you study the stanza structure or the poem’s themes, as most scholars do, you get invariants rather than a narrative. But this choice, to prefer this poem-wide narrative over invariants, is already an act of subjective interpretation, even if, in the last analysis, I just highlighted certain passages of the poem and their relationships.

I could cook the interpretation a little bit, because it is a little too raw as it is. I could add some commentary that would express the feelings and value judgments that led me to this narrative. I could say this:

« John Keats thus makes us realize that our questionings are superfluous, in the sense that the answer was already implied in the narrator’s enthusiastic exuberance. The answer is in the rythmic expressivity—whether in the questioning itself (the series of “what”) or in the insistence on eternity, happiness and love—that almost seems to anticipate T.S. Eliot’s criticism of the “grammatically meaningless” statement that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” »

I will usually choose to stay away from this style of writing, but this is a purely personal choice. I personally like to address an audience that doesn’t need to be spoon-fed and will arrive at its own conclusions. In fact, I would argue that the raw interpretation doesn’t need any conclusion. The elements of the narrative are interlinked with one another in such a way that the whole point is lost as soon as one tries to wrap things up in a generic conclusion—i.e., the narrative is self-contained and self-conclusive, somewhat like “beauty is truth, truth beauty” is self-contained and self-conclusive. In fact, any type of value-based conclusion would attract the sort of (rightful) criticism against awkward attempts at penetrating non-objective concepts (like authorial intention or imagination) through objective interpretation, such as Derrida’s criticism of Jean Rousset when the latter tried to describe passion in literature (or at least invite his readers to sense it) using only geometrical concepts like “rings,” “symmetry,” and so on.
[/quote]