387. 388. 389. An old wagon lurches over ditches and groundhog holes. The task, on this blue June afternoon? To catch each bale of compressed hay as it cannonballs from the chute of the baler, to which the wagon is linked, then quickly settle it in place, interlocking it with the others so the whole sky-high stack will travel safely to the barn. Brick-laying, really. But there was bravado in the pure mathematics of it all. Each day you dared to build your wobbly hay ziggurat one layer closer to the clouds. Bale 400. 401. Was it there, scorched with sweat, drizzled with dirt, that I first learned the risk and exhilaration of serial exactitude?
April in Paris. The gardeners of the Jardin du Luxembourg are planting new annuals. The earthen beds are brushed as smooth as moleskin. Each hole is marked along a straight edge, each interval perfect to a fraction of a centimeter. The gardeners on their knees look like men at prayer. Is the artistic grandeur of France really just the art of a perfect interval between windows in its architecture, strikes on the metro, tulips in its gardens?
In the assorted mosaic of a log format, we’ll reflect on serialism as an aesthetic principle, we’ll look at its long, even pre-historic past in architecture, science and design and compare it with relevant instances in the present; we’ll dwell as much as we can on artists, writers, furniture-makers, musicians, etc. who practice this principle in one way or another (there is no house style), and on examples and exhibitions of their work all over the world. Hand in hand with that, we’ll try to promote the cause locally, where this site happens to have its two (well, four) feet down on the ground.
Serialboxx is not just ours: the more people who become engaged, and the more eclectic the points-of-view, the better. Send an image accompanied by a paragraph or two. If it fits the philosophy of the site, up it goes. And those that are featured early on, when readership is still small, will get a rerun later on.
Thanks,
Lynne and John Diamond-Nigh
Your first paragraph, in particular, was beautiful and brought back fond memories of a summer in Erie, PA baling hay as a teen.
ReplyDeleteGreat concept here - interested to see how it progresses.
All we girls from Long Island know about are miles and miles of strip malls with the same stores and forms over and over again, but it's the same thing, isn't it? So, when does serialism move from being a positive building block to something that repels us?
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