Dream Tree

27 July 2007 @ 03:36 pm

Wunderkammer Object #26: The Karakuri Doll

Kirsty Boyle has compiled a marvellous website that explains in text and pictures "the Karakuri Ningyo craft, and its influence on technology and the arts." This craft, as Boyle explains, is the artistic and technological tradition in Japan of crafting lifelike automata (dolls, puppets, and parade floats) that mimic human movement and feeling, while hiding the mechanisms that enable their mimickery.

Boyle's site moves from Karakuri Origins (in 2600 b.c.) to Robot Perspectives in modern media and society. The most fascinating moment for me was the distinction she makes between the concept of "virtual reality" in the West and that of "intimate perspective" in the East, which is based on the Eastern sense that inanimate objects are also imbued with a natural energy that manifests the underlying structures of creation (a cultural distinction she explains in the Edo Mechanisms section).

This is one site I cannot recommend too highly. I am grateful to Kirsty Boyle for sharing her learning in this area, and to the Australia Council New Media Arts, which provided her with a grant used to develop this expertise on site, in Japan.

For more on Karakuri, see Lee A. Makela's pages on festival puppets, automatons, and modern robotics. The Wiki is also enlightening, if brief. OohJapan!, a commercial site, also gives a little history. From this last site, we gain insight into the mechanism of the dolls itself: "Their movements are caused by the power of springs, mercury and sand. You can build them and take them apart easily without ever using metallic screws or nails. Karakuri doll(Karakuri dolls) are a representative of the highest technology in the Edo period" (1603-1868).

Tags: automata, japanese culture, karakuri, robotics, wunderkammer

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29 May 2007 @ 10:58 am

Wunderkammer Object #27: The Nautilus Cup

Cue the Renaissance and search nature's bounty for forms of neoclassical symmetry that seem to convey in their very substance the harmoniousness of a natural order inherited from but not stopped at divinity. Through artifice, raise the humble finds to the height of human creation, and claim the bounty of the sea is within human dominion, within the grasp of a drinker of ocean worlds. And so beget the nautilus cup.

In the early modern period, German goldsmiths were renowned for their cups, whether they were of silver, gilt silver, or gold, made wholly of metal in various shapes (bells, animals, goblets, pears, crowns, castles, ships) or combined with natural materials. The pearlescent chambered nautilus shell (polished to enhance the shine) was a favored natural material for inclusion, as the shell formed a near perfect equiangular spiral. So too were ostrich egg shells and coconut shells (these last cups are featured separately in Dream Tree's wunderkammer).

The Heritage Museum curator writes, "The 16th century was truly the golden age of German art of goldsmithery. One of its principal centers was Nuremberg, a free imperial city lying at the crossroads of major commercial thoroughfares. Albrecht Dürer's birthplace, it was a center of Renaissance culture. Especially remarkable in the variety of German silverware of the 16th-17th centuries are drinking vessels. The most characteristic of them were lobing cups, double or with covers. One of the favorite forms of lobing vessels were cover cups in the form of aquilegia flower, Ageleybecher. By the 1480s, lobing cups gained wide currency, and German masters were unequaled in their creation.

Dürer's first designs of silverware inaugurated in German art of goldsmithery motifs taken from nature such as frogs, snails, snakes and lizards cast with the use of live models; the rustique style thus entered the German silversmith's art. These figurines were to surprise the onlooker with their bizarre and beautiful appearance. Another aspect of the rustique style was the use of natural shells or their imitations from semiprecious stones or metals, ostrich eggs, narwhal teeth and coconut shells to fabricate cups, bowls and other vessels for purely decorative purposes. Since early Middle Ages, works from these materials had a symbolic meaning and were regarded as something mysterious. For example, ostrich egg were believed to be laid by Phoenix and narwhal teeth were taken to be horns of the mythical Unicorn as late as the 18th century."

German Renaissance masterwork of Heinrich Jonas (Nuremburg) For a 3-D view of this cup, see the Heritage Museum online exhibit.

German, gilt silver, 1620

French (carved shell), 1830

Joachim Hiller, 1600

Johann Georg Hainz, Still Life with Nautilus Cup, 1700

Tags: decorative arts, german goldsmith, nautilus cup, renaissance, wunderkammer

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23 May 2007 @ 07:31 am

Wunderkammer Object #36: Sutra of Passing from One Existence into Another

Within The Tibetan Book of the Dead, beloved of Buddhists and mystics more various, is perhaps the best known of the Sutras, that of Passing from One Existence into Another -- it describes, as we might say in our popular New Age lexicon, crossing over or the journey to the other side or the passage to the light.

A sutra (literally a rope or thread that holds things together) in the Hindu tradition is a gathering up of sayings that form a manual of spiritual instruction. In Buddhism, sutras are specifically the oral teachings of the Buddha. The Book of the Dead is chanted by monks upon the passing of a believer into the afterlife, to assist him or her with his passage through three bardo, or afterlife states, which challenge the spirit with illusions that spring from his or her own mind and prevent spiritual release.

The very writing of the words on the page (reproduced through block printing) above are considered sacred, not only because of their content, but also because "Tibetan script is considered sacred, since it was created especially for the translation of Buddhist scripture...Tibetans handle books with great reverence. Even if a text does not contain holy scripture, it is still approached as the verbal body of the Buddha, the provisional foundation of eternal truth or sung-den (gsung rten, 'support of the exalted Word'). This explains why in Tibet books are never to be placed on the floor, at the level of one's feet, or in a low-lying impure space. Tibetan books are respected as powerful protections against evil and as paths to spiritual liberation" (U VA Special Collections).

The sutra above describes the first bardo, or state of passage from life, also called the chikhai bardo or "bardo of the moment of death." At the moment of death, for Buddhists, the clear light of reality dawns (the world's illusion and the self's are manifest). Literally, the released spirit sees a "white light."

the wheel of life held by the demon of impermanence

According to the curatorial text from the marvellous online University of Virginia exhibit on the Bardo Thodol, this sutra tells of how, "during the Buddha's stay in Rajagriha, a certain king named Bimbisara questions him on the transitory nature of karma and how rebirth can be effected by thoughts and actions which are by their very nature momentary and fleeting. Characteristically, the Buddha responds with an illustration. In this context, an individual's past thoughts and actions (karma) appear before the mind at the time of death in the same way that the previous night's dreams are recalled while awake; neither the dreams nor past karma have any solid and substantial reality in themselves, but both can, and do, produce real effects. An individual's past karma appears before the mind at the final moment of death and causes the first moment of rebirth. This new life is nothing more than a new sphere of consciousness in one of the six realms of rebirth (the worlds of the gods, demi-gods, humans, hungry ghosts, animals, and hell- beings) wherein the person experiences the fruits of his or her previous actions. From a Buddhist perspective, expressed for example in the Sutra on Death and the Transmigration of Souls, it is a mistake to refer to this specific cause and effect relationship as reincarnation since the Buddha explicitly denied the existence of a transmigrating soul that passes on from life to life. In reality, an entirely new consciousness arises at rebirth in dependence on the old. Continuity between lives is merely an illusion."

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is said to be one of the teachings left by the Pakistani saint Padmasambhava (also known as Guru Rinpoche, or Precious Master), who transcribed his teachings to his wife in the 8th century a.d. These he hid, for fear they would be misunderstood or misused, prophesying that 600 years to a day, a specially blessed individual would understand the spiritual map to them. And, according to legend, this prophesy came true in the 14th century a.d. when Karma Lingpa discovered the Bardo Thandol in the Himilayan Mountains as predicted, to the day.

Tags: bardo thandol, buddhism, death, tibetan book of the dead, tibetan culture, university of virginia special collectio, wunderkammer

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30 April 2007 @ 03:21 pm

Wunderkammer Object #43: The Chinese Puzzle Ball

Examples of Chinese puzzle balls--also called mystery balls--are available, both ancient and modern. The intricately carved, orbital layers of windowed ivory, jade, wood, soapstone, and like materials demonstrate the exceptional heights to which the carving craft may be taken. The windows may be lined up with a stick in larger versions or quill or toothpick in smaller ones, to create a see-through effect, but most antique dealers advise against toying with these toys, lest they chip or, when dropped, shatter.

Antique ivory examples include elaborate pedestals, whereas more modern versions tend to be worked in "Hong Kong ivory" (also called Mandarin or synthetic ivory accordnig to the Puzzle Museum) which is a sort of resin-like substance made from compressed ground bone (no ivory is actually used). Some very fine modern versions exist, but prices reflect the level of craft. The crude, poorly carved instances are easily spotted. The carvings themselves are typically of traditional symbols, especially those said to promote feng shui (dragons, phoenix, flowers, peach tree, love birds).

According to radio86 "All About China," puzzle balls are usually made up of 3 to 7 layers (the Puzzle Museum says 5 to 20), with the outerlayers being the most intricately carved open facework. The largest puzzle ball had 42 layers.

The puzzle balls are made in the following way: "The balls are carved by turning a solid ball on a lathe. Holes are drilled towards the center and special L-shaped sharp tools are used to cut free the innermost balls. The tools are of different lengths and the one with the longest upright has the shortest cutter, and vice versa. The work starts off with the longest tool being lowered to the narrow bottom of each hole and rotated to cut the innermost ball free. The work progresses from the inside out. The two outermost balls are fused together to form a thicker layer so as to prevent breakage when the elaborate carvings of the outermost layer are made."

According to an article posted at the Puzzle Museum, Chinese ivory toy sets were created and sold for European export from 1820 to 1930. Small puzzle balls were just one of their lovely features (click link for images).