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Why marbleize Mark Zuckerberg?



The internet makes mystery rare. I worry this robs life of some enchantment.

Cognitive scientists often describe “awe” as an emotion of ignorance. That is to say, we are most amazed by the things we don’t fully understand.

In John Milton’s Christian epic Paradise Lost, an archangel appears as a sunrise masked by clouds,  “glory obscured” in “misty air.” To Milton, the greatest beauty was the kind we could not fully see.  

That’s a hard sell online. Here, I can find a GoPro video from the summit of Mount Everest, a list of every bird species in the Amazon, a video of a whale skeleton disintegrating in the deepest parts of the sea.

The internet puts the world at my fingertips. It’s often great.

But I can’t help but feel that, in Milton’s terms, I’m parting the clouds. Google shows me the precise shape of the sun, the character of its atoms, where it was yesterday, how it will appear tomorrow. Glory consumed.
In “Mark of Wonder,” I try to explore this struggle between knowledge and awe.

I chose a marble bust for its ties to classical ideals of empiricism. The scientists and philosophers of the Enlightenment—Newton, Kant, Volaire— idolized reason. They believed that humans would one day be able to measure the universe.

They felt kinship with the Ancient Greeks and Romans, admired their capacity for reason, aspired to carry their torch of knowledge to conquer ignorance.

And they borrowed their affection for marble busts.  It’s an odd, specific legacy of the Enlightenment—the shiny white heads of 18th century and Ancient Greek intellectuals came to symbolize knowledge and its pursuit.





Bust of Isaac Newton at Trinity College. Dublin, 1937. Academics often put rationality on a pedestal.







Colophon Printed on an A3 sheet of 47 lb Red River Premium Matte. Type is set in Gza & Andale Mono.

Course
ART 105: The Digital Studio taught by Professor Michelle Leftheris


 Cambridge MA
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