• thaumasnot
    87
    Hi,

    I just finished a book about “conceptual reconstructionism,” and I’m looking for opinions and critical feedback. I will attach the manifesto at the end of this post.

    Conceptual reconstructionism can be seen as a style of interpretation (of art and various other types of content) that consciously avoids value judgments and focuses on the “reconstruction” of works, which is the process of looking at (and transcribing) what I call their “medium-specific narratives.” The main motivation is a dissatisfaction with reviewing and analysis in general and how they fail to capture a certain uniqueness in certain works.

    The intent for reconstructions is to rediscover works of art (and other types of content, like philosophy/science literature), share discoveries in objective terms, and build a community that is not based on tastes and value, and transcends the barriers between artist, critic and consumer.

    I would be glad to discuss the concept/project with you. In addition, I’m particularly looking for criticism about my writing (is it readable? is it logically sound? is it repeating something that already exists?). You can message me if you’re interested in reading the book or knowing more about the project, or we can discuss things here.

    Without further ado, here’s the manifesto. Thank you for reading!


    The Manifesto of Conceptual Reconstructionism

    The Internet offers a platform of expression for all kinds of reviewers. In particular, there’s on Youtube a healthy section of non-seasoned reviewers who don’t read from script and mostly improvize, unedited. So a familiar sight is a reviewer struggling to find what to say next, only saved by a reflex: “oh yes, I didn’t mention X.” As an example, for a music album, X could be “the variety,” “the lyrics,” or “the production.” Why do they now feel compelled to mention this aspect rather than another? Why in this order? How necessary is it to the review, and what is the nature of its connection to the review, if it’s something that the reviewer almost omitted? In fact, we could ask the same questions for all the points raised by the reviewer.

    The point is that underlying this reflex is actually a very common enumerative thought process. Professional reviewers use it as well. The only difference is that they internalized it so well that it looks natural.

    Reviews are far from being the only vector of that thought process. For example, if you read the Wikipedia entry for a country, you’ll find an enumeration of various subjects: History, Geography, Government and Politics, Economy, Demographics, etc. Inside the info box, you’ll find the capital, the languages, nationality, religion, etc. Even the paragraphs are enumerative in nature.

    France (French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française), is a transcontinental country spanning Western Europe and overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Including all of its territories, France has twelve time zones, the most of any country. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and several islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. [color=#0000FF]Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world.[/color] France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and [color=#FF0000]over 67 million people[/color] (as of May 2021). [color=#00FF00]France is a unitary semi-presidential republic[/color] [color=#FF0000]with its capital in Paris, the country’s largest city[/color] and main [color=#BF00FF]cultural[/color] and [color=#0000FF]commercial[/color] centre; other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

    Under careful examination, the description is a grab-bag of geographical, economical, political, cultural and demographical considerations which give rise to a mosaic. That is, it is based on juxtaposition rather than other types of relation (temporal order, cause-effect, deduction, formal similarity, etc.). It characteristically builds up into a familiar “messy” whole: while it is conventional and reads well, the mosaic typically doesn’t have a clear direction, with one notable exception.

    The standard reviewing style: the interpretation of the average value. The “too much, not enough” syndrome

    Consuming reviews and interpretations can be:

    1. for information
    2. for pleasure

    The mosaic suits the consumption for information. Now, in the interpretation of art, as well as in reviews where a product needs to be judged, this mosaic is the basis for what I call the interpretation of the average value. “Average value” refers to the fact that the features of the mosaic are individually evaluated, and the evaluations are “averaged” into an overall value judgment (sometimes even following a mathematical formula).

    That’s how the mosaic acquires direction: if each feature is assigned a value (even implicitly), then the whole makes sense as an average value. For example, if a music review states that “the ornery arpeggios provide an overarching gracefully balanced counterpoint” and you wonder why this is sandwiched between remarks about the tonality and the “modern sound,” the remarks make sense as good things if the review concludes to a “brilliant composition.”

    In the context of the consumption for pleasure, we enjoy the work’s content united to the mosaic of interpretation, although the connection has a fundamentally conjectural quality. Take the live performance of a song. The enjoyment of the song is heightened by the belief in a certain connection to the musicians, the technicality of their performance, how they seem to enjoy themselves too, etc. Even if the connection is real, the conjecturing is always in the background: the audience always has to transcend a fundamental doubt, however small, regarding the connection (playback, autotune, whether the performance is that difficult to pull off, and so on).

    From the angle of the consumption for pleasure, the mosaic can become a cliché, just like the content. If I speak about the author and various biographical facts about them, I, in effect, produce a cliché. The cliché is informative, but a cliché nonetheless. It has a characteristic quality of contingency that makes you question how essential it really is to enjoyment. You can, as a mind game, attribute various authors to the content, and see that it works the same way as when the “real” author is involved: the chosen author colors the work uniquely, but its impact on our experiencing of the content (as opposed to the appreciation of its meaning and context) is limited and diffuse. I call this method of assessing the relative merits of conjecturing the inconsequential conjecture test. It can be applied to any feature of the mosaic, including meaning, historical significance, virtuosity, emotionality, etc.

    The mosaic is predisposed to distract from the content, as if through centrifugal force. Reviewing is known to relate to the content in the following ways:

    * Description for the blind or deaf (for example, enumerating the instruments in a musical piece, or, if there’s a tree in a painting, saying, with style, that there’s a tree)
    * Analysis “through the microscope”, that is, features of the mosaic are individually looked at in detail (for example, the rhyming structure of a poem, or the references and historical context of a painting)
    * Myopic overviews, mostly in the form of categorizations (for example, categorizing a Beethoven piece as Romantic-era classical music)

    In that sense, the mosaic is always either “too much” or “not enough” with respect to the content: too much in the sense of over-analyzing microscopically to the detriment of the big picture, and not enough in the sense of losing sense of the specific when putting labels on the content. A notable labelling act is the value judgment. A statement such as “I like this work” is always a highly compromised abstraction of a rich experience. It tries to cram a more or less unique cognitive process into one quantity (informal or numerical, it doesn’t matter). The loss of nuance is why its explanatory power is so inconsistent. For example, someone likes category A and dislikes category B, but there are things in B they like and things in A they don’t. Or someone explains that they like something because of features A, B and C, but dislike another thing with the same features. Or 2 people say the same thing about X, but one will keep it, and the other will sell it.

    The mosaic’s limitless extensivity offers the promise of exhaustivity (enumerate as many things as possible), but has the mosaic actually exhausted everything that has to be said of the content?

    The interpretation of the medium-specific narratives

    The interpretation of the average value doesn’t match the actual experiencing of content, which is a process with a narrative quality. Not narrative in the sense of a traditional story, but in a medium-specific sense. For example, if the medium is painting, a medium-specific narrative is based on visual perceptions (“events”) and how they relate to each other (through morphology, color, transformation, topology, etc.) on a timeline affixed to the viewer’s roaming gaze. Even in a text-based medium, a medium-specific narrative doesn’t always coincide with the traditional concept of story or plot. That’s because medium-specific specificity isn’t so much about what the words mean, but how they are told. For example, “Anna gives Bob a present” is not equivalent to “Bob is given a present by Anna” medium-specifically speaking.

    Narratives are often perceived myopically. Temporality is typically thingified. For example, music has the concepts of rythm and tempo, painting and cinematography have the concept of scene, etc. These concepts reflect a general attitude toward processes that reduces them into a mosaic of components that can be considered in isolation. For example, to describe how a board game plays (a fundamentally continuous process), board game reviews are routinely satisfied with a mechanical enumeration of game turn steps, without the precise tactical or strategic sense of flow that underlies all gameplays.

    The interpretation of the medium-specific narrative restores the granularity, temporality and epiphanic quality of content.

    A wake-up signal: reconstruction. Markup notation. Conventional medium delimitation. Pure referentiality.

    Reconstruction is a product of the interpretation of the medium-specific narratives. It consists in transcribing a medium-specific narrative perceived in a work.

    The interest of reconstruction is in pushing the scope of the perceived narrative to the physical boundaries of the medium. This holistic approach justifies the concept of work as a self-contained unit of experience, and yet it is not myopic, since it builds on medium-specific elements that are concretely perceived. It rewards a wide attention span and sensory memory by bringing up content that is not challenging to see, but challenging to remember in fine granularity (song-wide narrative, book-wide narrative, etc). It is not about noting well-hidden details of the medium like some sort of private investigator, but how a narrative emerges from even the most obvious elements, as long as the attention span doesn’t fail.

    Reconstruction is based on 2 conventions.

    Conventional medium delimitation states upfront what is considered the “medium” that will be reconstructed. Most notably, it makes the dichotomy between interpretation and content mostly irrelevant (as the consumption of interpretation for pleasure announced), reducing it to a mere decision that obsoletes the core questions of traditional interpretation (is the interpretation right? Does it describe the author’s real intention?). When the medium delimitation has as little to do with the mosaic as possible, we talk of a pure reconstruction.

    Pure referentiality is simultaneously a concept and a convention implying that the reconstruction is only meant to reference the medium, without adding any content beyond the conventional medium delimitation. This implies that, unlike most interpretations, the point of reconstruction is not being true, correct, or “on point,” in the sense that referentiality should be trivial to verify. Unlike traditional interpretation, reconstruction is not meant to explain a content or even give an idea thereof. The reader is supposed to have access to the content, and to match it to the reconstruction. It is generally recommended to have experienced the content before reading the reconstruction.

    Reconstruction uses a special markup notation to concisely transcribe narratives through the use of references. For example, this <referent>DEF is referred to by that <referent>. The DEF subscript indicates the introduction of a new referent, i.e., a definition. Each definition must be understood in respect to the context of its introduction, which (informally) consists in the medium-specific elements that contain it (for example, if the definition refers to a melodic motif, the containing musical phrase is the motif’s immediate context). So <referent> is a mnemonic more specific than just the word “referent” without the markup.

    Besides the technical advantages (conciseness, hyperlinking), the markup notation acts as a wake-up signal and a reminder that how we interpret a work is a choice that conditions our mindset regarding how we approach the content. The unusual formalism ensures that the reconstruction cannot be read casually, thus coercing the reader into a mindset proper to the interpretation of medium-specific narratives.

    Societal and cognitive impact of the choice of interpretation style. The unnecessary role segregation

    The mosaic, as a format of content, is just one symptom of amnesic thought processes that forget narrative relations, leading to a simplistic interpretation of information and reality, with unfortunate philosophical and cultural consequences like excessive vulgarization and false lifestyle dichotomies (for example, being a commercially successful mainstream artist versus staying “authentic” and underground). In particular, value-based interpretation creates artificial communication barriers that become social barriers. Role segregation is a consequence of the opacity of value judgments (e.g., a renowned critic’s opinion is unfalsifiable but considered authoritative), and feeds into an inferiority complex. It paints “great” artists as geniuses, and “great” critics as authority figures.

    Most people make the common assumption that roles require elite knowledge and competence, and this is true, but only to the extent that their view conforms to value-based preconceptions. In comparison, medium-specific narratives only require imagination and attention span. As in conceptual art, they don’t require implementation, let alone sublime aesthetics or technical perfection, in the sense that they don’t seek neither external validation, nor any pandering to tastes and value judgments. That is, they suggest a tautological artist: we’re being artists in the process of interpreting medium-specific narratives, as a form of active consumption similar to creation in terms of intellectual faculties involved.

    With the focus of interpretation moving away from value judgments, not only do the critics lose all their privileges, but the gravity center of communities, now educated on on the sterile and manipulative aspects of value, shifts to the sharing of perceived content. Let me quote a random thread about a game on a gaming forum:

    Such a great thematic game.

    Congrats to the designer on this one. He does this all himself and you can seriously feel the love he puts in to it.

    Just love this game. Such smooth play, so thematic. Quick to set up.

    This is one I picked up after all the praise last year, and unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it all that much. It felt very flavorful, but not thematic.

    What a great game!

    I’ve enjoyed this game quite a bit so far, but I'm kind of surprised to see it so highly regarded by so many others.

    Theme and cost held me off for awhile, but continued positive reviews was enough to push me. No regrets.

    What is the end result of this discussion? A cacophony of “I like” and “I don’t like” that ignore each other. There are several phenomena at work here:

    * Posting, as an essentially anonymous user, gratuitous value judgments to an anonymous crowd
    * The demand for gratuitous value judgments

    Both cases are supported by a collective belief in a certain “fun” in sharing opinions, but it’s always the same dialog of the deaf, again and again, that feeds into a superficial communitarianism. Not coincidentally, discussions about art (debates like “is X art?” “What is the best art?”) end up with same acknowledgment that “it’s just a matter of taste.” Misleadingly, value judgments come with a certain precision language similar to fine dining and wine tasting, which tries to explain value through ever-so-refined “interesting” analysis, but is ultimately powerless at explaining the leap from observations to value judgments.

    A point can be made that the gap between review and reconstruction is just a problem of communication; that the mosaic and value don’t exclude a certain awareness of the medium-specific narratives. It can be true, although it is more natural for the reverse to be the case, which is that reviews as written reflect how their authors actually think (this is for example made clear by the trending reaction videos on Youtube). In the end, reconstruction addresses both how we think, and how we actually communicate what we think.

    Rediscovering content and avoiding grand theories

    Reconstruction invites to rediscover individual works through their medium-specific narratives. Not albums, but songs. Not genres, styles, techniques, performers, authors, but self-contained content. Works are reconstructed in objective, constructive terms that are not just vaguely interesting generalizations and speculations inconsequential to the experiencing of the content.

    The focus on experiencing individual works and what makes each unique (as medium-specific narratives rather than consumerist novelties based on aesthetics, theme, and so on) directly contradicts the need for grand theories (what is Art, what is great Art, etc.). Reconstruction isn’t so much a theory as the cognitive process of finding medium-specific narratives. A written reconstruction, as purely referential material, is an ephemereal product destined to be forgotten as the readers learn to interpret the reconstructed content without it. Likewise, this manifesto and the accompanying book are destined to fall by the wayside. They’re not enduring theories of what interpretation should be, but gateways to the reconstruction of great works.


    ----------

    This ends the Manifesto. Thank you for reading, and thanks in advance for any critical feedback.
  • SatmBopd
    91
    I am intrigued by the notion of increasing the quality of review discussions, but somewhat skeptical and do not fully comprehend the idea of removing value judgments entirely. Looking at specific works individually, and making one's best effort (probably imperfectly) to abandon all preconceived notions before addressing a work sounds really cool- but am I oversimplifying it? Is this all you have to do? Say if I just look at one episode of a TV series and analyse it on its own merits, rather than looking at the whole series?

    I think this sounds intriguing with my only concern being the relevance of emotion in the consumption of art. Do you think your manifesto allows us to discuss the emotional impact of certain works (even if it is somewhat subjective)? I'm suspicious of trying to remove values or subjective judgment, because I do not think such efforts will ever be fully successful without us essentially sacrificing our humanity. Someone who claims to have an objective framework who still conceived of said framework and engages with it thanks to values that they still hold (consciously or not) is being very subtly deceitful, whether intentionally or not.

    Finally, and most importantly; lets say I was inspired by this manifesto, how exactly would I construct a review in this manner? Is there an example of Conceptual Reconstructionism that you can point to/ make?
  • thaumasnot
    87
    Hello,

    Thank you for your interest!

    You’re right, that’s “all you have to do,” with an emphasis on attention span and sensory memory. For a TV series, there is actually an argument that the whole series can be considered a self-contained unit. It’s your choice (conventional medium delimitation). As a rule of thumb, I would only do that if the TV series is short (2 seasons max) or has a sense of closure, but that’s a personal choice.

    Regarding emotional impact, the point of reconstruction is that it looks at the “raw data” before the emotional impact. By doing this, it can actually change the emotions you get from the content. So it’s not about eliminating emotion, but more about focusing on our perceptions first. The emotions will follow, even though they’re not mentioned by the reconstruction. You have a point about value implicitly held by reconstruction. But the only purpose of reconstruction is to enable the sharing of objective content. So it’s, by its very nature, and contrary to traditional interpretation, not worth anything by itself. It melds into the background.

    For reconstructions, there are examples in the book, published on my site. I’m currently working on writing down the reconstruction of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. There are also many reconstructions I need to type or translate from French (some paintings and movies), but the most interesting ones are those about music, and I need to decide how I’ll present reconstructions of music. The project is in its infancy, so there’s a lot to do.

    If you’re interested, I can send you links (can’t disclose them here due to forum policies).
  • thaumasnot
    87
    Answering this question: 

    lets say I was inspired by this manifesto, how exactly would I construct a review in this manner?

    Reconstructing is to describe (or rather pointing to) the points of the medium that build up to a narrative (so any part of the description must, by definition of a narrative, have a relation with another part of the description). Instead of, or in addition to, describing (through technical terms or through metaphors), you can provide more intuitive references to the content. For example, when reconstructing literature, I quote a lot. For painting and movies, I provide images with annotations. For music, I haven’t decided yet. I think about including timestamps that can be clicked to play the corresponding segment.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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]
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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)
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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.
  • SatmBopd
    91
    Hey, didn't see this reply for a while, sorry. I'm definitely still intrigued by/ trying to comprehend this methodology.
    I was introduced to "Ode on a Grecian Urn" in an undergraduate literature class, and I feel like the academic analysis (as I remember it) from our professor was very similar to the breakdown you presented, but with an added focus on stanza structure/ rhyme schemes and importantly, a heavy emphasis on Keats' biography and larger body of work, along with the historical context of the romanticism movement generally. I feel like this information was interesting to me because I like history, but I'm curious how you feel about the relevance of this information to the interpretation of the work. I suppose if you are just trying to extract narratives you'd just want to look at the text itself, but I guess... what is the purpose of extracting specific narratives? I personally would not want to entirely compartmentalize the interpretation of art in this way, because 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. 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?
    Would be interested in seeing more reconstructions though. If you have links or something I'm open to PMs.
  • thaumasnot
    87


    “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
  • thaumasnot
    87


    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.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    If you PM me, PM me with your email, since I may not be able to reply back.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k


    It appears like your project is to remove all human feeling and emotion from the review of an artistic piece, and analyze it as an AI would. You would look for patterns in the content, specific to the piece itself, limiting the meaning of "content" in that way, by disallowing that the content be related to anything external to the piece itself, in the production of interpretive "meaning". Is this a fair summary of what you are promoting?
  • thaumasnot
    87


    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.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    I would be glad to discuss the concept/project with you. In addition, I’m particularly looking for criticism about my writing (is it readable? is it logically sound? is it repeating something that already exists?). You can message me if you’re interested in reading the book or knowing more about the project, or we can discuss things here.thaumasnot

    I'll start with this. You write very well. Clear and interesting. The ideas are well presented in a way that's easy to understand, although the ideas are not simple. And, no, this is not something that has been covered before. Interpretation is not a subject that gets addressed here much and it's one I'm really interested in, by which I mean I hate it. I'll provide a more nuanced discussion later if we get that far.

    There's a term. Perhaps you know it - tl:dr, meaning too long, didn't read. Your post definitely qualifies. I almost didn't read it, but then I read the first couple of paragraphs and got sucked in. That's a testament to your writing, but also the subject. Did I mention I hate interpretation? Problem is, I don't know if you could have laid this out in a shorter post.

    My post here relates just to the upfront part. I'm about a third of the way through the Manifesto. I'm determined to finish!!! When I do, I'll get back to you, today I hope.

    One point I want to discuss is the difference between reviewing and interpretation. As I see it, they are not the same. I love a good review. You say they can be for information or pleasure, but they can be something more. A good review is an essay just as much as an article by Stephen Jay Gould, my favorite writer, on evolution. As Gould has written, a good review often starts with specifics, like bricks, and builds a wall. The specific to the general. I guess that's the mosaic you are talking about. It transmits ideas beyond just the specific subject being reviewed. Other good reviews have different ways of dealing with their subject, but they all give something more than just pleasure or information. More later I guess.

    Good post. I'll try to keep up. Welcome to the forum. We need good writers and good thinkers.
  • T Clark
    13.8k


    I just noticed you started this a month ago. I guess I missed it. Or maybe I said, tl:dr and went back to reading one of the 5,000 threads about free will.
  • thaumasnot
    87


    “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 :)
  • thaumasnot
    87


    I do tend to conflate interpretation and reviewing. I’m not rigorous about it, so please bear with me.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    I do tend to conflate interpretation and reviewing. I’m not rigorous about it, so please bear with me.thaumasnot

    Don't apologize. Making distinctions is what we do here.
  • T Clark
    13.8k


    Ok. I've finished the manifesto and scanned the rest of the comments in the thread. First thought - I have my work cut out for me. Some homework to do. Do I want to do it? Yeeeesss? I'm lost on some concepts. I think that comes at least partly from the fact that I am not experienced in interpretation because of the whole hating thing, you know. And also because of my tendency to focus on the experience of art rather than the understanding of it. More on that later.

    I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to come at this piecemeal. I'll comment on the manifesto from where I stand now. Then I'll need to go on with later posts in the thread and some of the homework you've provided.

    I just finished a book about “conceptual reconstructionism,”thaumasnot

    At first, I thought you meant you had just finished reading it, but turns out you wrote it.

    Conceptual reconstructionism can be seen as a style of interpretation (of art and various other types of content) that consciously avoids value judgments and focuses on the “reconstruction” of works, which is the process of looking at (and transcribing) what I call their “medium-specific narratives.” The main motivation is a dissatisfaction with reviewing and analysis in general and how they fail to capture a certain uniqueness in certain works.thaumasnot

    Some background - I am not a sophisticated art user. I enjoy music and visual art, but I don't have much of a musical or visual imagination. I am very verbal and have a vivid verbal imagination, so I'm much more at home in discussions of writing. I want to lay out my understanding of meaning in relation to works of art. I don't think they are particularly relevant to your subject, but I want to describe them briefly so you can see where I'm coming from. I don't expect to go on in that direction because I think it might sidetrack your thread, which I don't want to do. It's your job as the original poster to keep us on track. I'll try to help, or at least not to hurt.

    I remember a fun trip to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston with a friend of mine, a visual artist. Lots to look at, most of it non-representational. I started a conversation with him about something I had been thinking about for a while. One of the museum guides came over and we had an interesting discussion. I laid out my thoughts - Art, of any sort, doesn't mean anything beyond the experience the viewer/reader gets from it. 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. You at least to see how that colors my understanding of your views.

    Under careful examination, the description is a grab-bag of geographical, economical, political, cultural and demographical considerations which give rise to a mosaic. That is, it is based on juxtaposition rather than other types of relation (temporal order, cause-effect, deduction, formal similarity, etc.). It characteristically builds up into a familiar “messy” whole: while it is conventional and reads well, the mosaic typically doesn’t have a clear direction,thaumasnot

    I love Wikipedia and the mosaic you are describing. It gives me just what I want. I'm your average user. I have specific types of information I'm generally looking for and it's good when I find it where I'm expecting to be. If I need to go further, which is not often, I'm capable of doing that on my own. From what you've written, I don't think you disagree with this.

    Consuming reviews and interpretations can be:

    1. for information
    2. for pleasure

    The mosaic suits the consumption for information.
    thaumasnot

    I commented on this in my first post. I agree that this isn't what I'm looking for in a review.

    In the context of the consumption for pleasure, we enjoy the work’s content united to the mosaic of interpretation, although the connection has a fundamentally conjectural quality. Take the live performance of a song. The enjoyment of the song is heightened by the belief in a certain connection to the musicians, the technicality of their performance, how they seem to enjoy themselves too, etc. Even if the connection is real, the conjecturing is always in the background: the audience always has to transcend a fundamental doubt, however small, regarding the connection (playback, autotune, whether the performance is that difficult to pull off, and so on).thaumasnot

    You say "enjoyment," I say "experience." I think we're probably talking mostly about the same thing, although experience might include a bit more. I'm not sure. The factors you identify probably would contribute to the experience for me, although I think there would be lots of other factors. I probably won't be aware of them unless I'm really trying to understand my reactions to the piece.

    A notable labelling act is the value judgment. A statement such as “I like this work” is always a highly compromised abstraction of a rich experience. It tries to cram a more or less unique cognitive process into one quantity (informal or numerical, it doesn’t matter).thaumasnot

    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."

    The interpretation of the average value doesn’t match the actual experiencing of content, which is a process with a narrative quality. Not narrative in the sense of a traditional story, but in a medium-specific sense. For example, if the medium is painting, a medium-specific narrative is based on visual perceptions (“events”) and how they relate to each other (through morphology, color, transformation, topology, etc.) on a timeline affixed to the viewer’s roaming gaze. Even in a text-based medium, a medium-specific narrative doesn’t always coincide with the traditional concept of story or plot. That’s because medium-specific specificity isn’t so much about what the words mean, but how they are told.thaumasnot

    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? For visual art, I'm even less knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the work. Even for written works where I am more comfortable, I am not usually paying attention to these aspects unless I make a special effort or unless someone points them out.

    The interpretation of the medium-specific narrative restores the granularity, temporality and epiphanic quality of content... Reconstruction is a product of the interpretation of the medium-specific narratives. It consists in transcribing a medium-specific narrative perceived in a work.thaumasnot

    I'm trying to figure out what, exactly, this means. As I said, I think I have work to do.

    The interest of reconstruction is in pushing the scope of the perceived narrative to the physical boundaries of the medium.thaumasnot

    I need to see some examples. I see you have provided at least one in later posts. That's the homework.

    Reconstruction is based on 2 conventions... Conventional medium delimitation... Pure referentialitythaumasnot

    I don't understand. I will probably have more to say once I've read some examples.

    The mosaic, as a format of content, is just one symptom of amnesic thought processes that forget narrative relations, leading to a simplistic interpretation of information and reality, with unfortunate philosophical and cultural consequences like excessive vulgarization and false lifestyle dichotomies (for example, being a commercially successful mainstream artist versus staying “authentic” and underground). In particular, value-based interpretation creates artificial communication barriers that become social barriers. Role segregation is a consequence of the opacity of value judgments (e.g., a renowned critic’s opinion is unfalsifiable but considered authoritative), and feeds into an inferiority complex. It paints “great” artists as geniuses, and “great” critics as authority figures.thaumasnot

    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. Or maybe - Hey, that's just a bunch of squiggles. My 3 year old son could do that. Maybe that's my problem with interpretation. I've read very few whose judgement matches my understanding, experience, of wonderfulness.

    With the focus of interpretation moving away from value judgments, not only do the critics lose all their privileges, but the gravity center of communities, now educated on on the sterile and manipulative aspects of value, shifts to the sharing of perceived content. Let me quote a random thread about a game on a gaming forum:thaumasnot

    As I've written, you and I have a somewhat different opinion about value judgements, but I do know what you're talking about. I read a lot and spend a lot of time on Amazon. Amazon ratings and reviews of books are practically useless. Most books get 4.5 or 5 stars, even crap. Then some of my favorites, well written and meaningful, get 3.5 stars. If I want to see what's really going on with a book, I always read the 3 star reviews and then look for outside reviews from reputable sources.

    The focus on experiencing individual works and what makes each unique (as medium-specific narratives rather than consumerist novelties based on aesthetics, theme, and so on) directly contradicts the need for grand theories (what is Art, what is great Art, etc.). Reconstruction isn’t so much a theory as the cognitive process of finding medium-specific narratives.thaumasnot

    Sounds good. That goal is similar to mine for focusing on the experience of a work of art rather than it's meaning. Sometimes in reading what you've written, I think maybe we are getting at something similar. Sometimes I think we are far apart.

    See now, this is all tl:dr, but that's your fault, isn't it. I'll PM you to discuss.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    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 Ascommunicable), but the _what_, and this “what” happens to be objective, so we all win.thaumasnot

    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. Sometimes it doesn't work, but when it does, it opens up a new way of seeing things. A new willingness to try things I haven't tried before. Some of my favorite reviews have been for restaurants, so the importance of taste can sometimes be literal.

    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).thaumasnot

    I need to look at the examples you've provided to get a better idea of what you're talking about.

    Idemthaumasnot

    I always use "ditto." "Idem" is classier.

    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).thaumasnot

    I think you and I are talking about the same thing.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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).
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    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.

    I've ususally drawn a distinction between criticism and reviewing.

    A review lets us know how someone (the reviewer) felt about the quality of a work and why. I read film reviews to work out if I should go and see a specific film. Generally, people seem to decide upon which are their favourite reviewers and take their assessments more seriously than others. It's as much a relationship with the reviewer as anything else. In recent years it has been fashionable to hate on reviewers as gormless twats. Some people go to see every film that reviewer X hates - a kind of reverse recommendation.

    In a review I don't want to know much about the work at all, just an overview of the themes, subject and cast and then some salient reasons why we should care (or not).

    Criticism is different - it explores the work in depth and often will not make assessment about merit. It might explore some specific aspect of a work - for instance the use of native American myth and art in Kubrick's movie The Shining. Criticism helps us to see what we may not have seen without assistance. Some criticism might also explore why a work has been valued in the past and explore the various interpretations.

    For my money the key fact about art is in the aesthetic experience - there is always a risk in analysis that such an enterprise may rob a work of its reason for being and miss the point. This process can be like people with no sense of humour trying to explain the punchline of a joke.

    Generally however I want value judgements from my reviewing. It's the main reason I would read a review. From criticism, what I want is further information to enrich my understanding of a work. I think you are aiming at the latter.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    For my money the key fact about art is in the aesthetic experience - there is always a risk in analysis that such an enterprise may rob a work of its reason for being and miss the point. This process can be like people with no sense of humour trying to explain the punchline of a joke.

    Generally however I want value judgements from my reviewing. It's the main reason I would read a review. From criticism, what I want is further information to enrich my understanding of a work. I think you are aiming at the latter.
    Tom Storm

    I think your and my desires and expectations for reviews and criticism are very similar. I'm trying to figure out how that fits into what @thaumasnot is aiming for.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    It's a fascinating area and my most acrimonious discussions with others over the years have not involved religion or politics, but art and how it can be understood and assessed.

    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.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    It's a fascinating area and my most acrimonious discussions with others over the years have not involved religion or politics, but art and how it can be understood and assessed.Tom Storm

    I can get all the political arguments I want, but I have nobody to talk art with, so I'm enjoying this.

    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

    I'm not sure. At times it feels like @thaumasnot and I are talking about the same things. At others, like we're nowhere near each other.

    Hey, @Noble Dust, we's talkin about aht. thought you might be interested.
  • T Clark
    13.8k


    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. It's the kind of explication I never would have done for myself. It reminds me of several posts that @Michael Zwingli put together for some of the poetry we exchanged. Michael, are you still around?

    I remember reading an interpretation of "Wild Grapes" by Robert Frost that I found really interesting. Two sets of lines referenced Greek mythology:

    The day I swung suspended with the grapes,
    And was come after like Eurydice
    And brought down safely from the upper regions;


    and

    Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,
    Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,
    And heavy on her heavy hair behind,
    Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.


    And another which referenced Leif Erikson's foster father:

    Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
    The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;


    The essay, which I have not been able to find again, explained the references. I found that really satisfying. It increased my depth of understanding of the poem.

    But what you wrote here seems different from what you posted at the links you sent me.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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).
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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.
  • thaumasnot
    87
    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.
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