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13 Things 2009

13 Things 2008


Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

Search Brown

 

 

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]

The Original Tower

To explore the skyscraper as an archetypal thing, we may turn to the Bible. What follows is the short story of The Tower of Babel from Genesis 11:1-9.

There are a number of important implications concerning skyscrapers in this text:

First, the builders of the tower used brick instead of stone, which seems to be the material they were used to using before this particular tower was constructed. A skyscraper has unique structural challenges that a short building does not, so it requires a reevaluation of materials. This connects to the movement from load-bearing masonry to steel skeleton construction that will be discussed in the next section, 3. Modern Skyscraper Technologies.

In verse 4, we read that the skyscraper is planned to be the central point of the builders' new city. The skyscraper serves as a beacon towards which humans can orient themselves and, in doing so, create order and remain "unscattered".

On a cosmological level, the skyscraper is viewed by God as a human achievement important enough that God must directly intervene against its construction. The skyscraper suggests the movement of people toward heaven and, thus, omnipotence. This is a threat to God, and makes God acknowledge the potential power of humans and the necessity to control their power.

The story also brings up implications of the complexity of the project, and the importance of the active human network surrounding its construction. People needed to be 'speaking the same language' in order to complete it, and it is abandoned once the ability to communicate is lost.


An Image of the Dynamic Tower

In Chris Witmore's 2006 article entitled "Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time", he analyzes Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1565 painting The Harvesters in terms of sound (2). By unpacking the suggestions of sound in a silent, two-dimensional painting, the scene is given new life and placed in a four-dimensional, sense-rich world. I propose to do a similar analysis with another painting by the same artist, simply titled "Tower of Babel" and painted in 1563.

Uploaded Image

At first glance, this is a static image of a moment frozen in space-time. The focus point of the picture is the monolithic tower standing in the midst of a mostly flat landscape. However, a closer analysis reveals a great deal of movement present in the scene.

First, following the painting in a traditional reading pattern from left to right shows us a fascinating progression from a light-filled sky to a darker sky. The left side of the tower is shown bathed in sun, while the upper right quadrant of the painting is dominated by shadow. This is suggestive of the symbolic movement in the associated story, in which the tower begins as a unifying project, showcasing the power of humans, and ends in the confusion and dispersal of the human race. This artistic progression makes the tower reflect the cosmology of the story.

The tower as depicted in Bruegel's painting is alive with progressing motion and active mobility. The tower is only partially constructed, allowing us to see several different stages of the imagined construction at the same time. The tower is conceived of as concentric circles (similar to the tube construction of some modern skyscrapers). The tower is also showing the wear and tear of time; gigantic boulders have already begun to fall from the side of the tower, deconstructing it even as it is under construction. The overall design of the tower also suggests movement, as it is depicted as a gigantic spiral staircase, with a vanishing point located in heaven; human hopes of moving towards the sky and the omnipotence suggested therein are clear.

The skyscraper also exists within a rich network of motion. People are moving up and down the tower, working on it. A vignette in the lower right corner shows several classes of people interacting over the project. Boats, carts, cranes, wheels and animals form the mobile network on or near the tower. The skyscraper serves as the focal point of movement of matter and spirit in space and time. For a still-frame, 2-dimensional image, the painting depicts a remarkable network of motion and activity; as Latour and Yaneva might say, the tower depicted here is truly a moving project, and Bruegel has used his paintbrush as a photographic gun to capture the dynamism of the project.


With the archetypal skyscraper established, we are prepared to examine the development of the modern skyscraper. Let us skip several thousand years ahead to 3. Modern Skyscraper Technologies


Footnotes:

1. "Genesis 11:1-9 (New International Version)." BibleGateway. 12 Dec 2008 <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=GENESIS%2011:1-9>.

2. Witmore, Christopher L.. "Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time: Symmetrical Approaches to the Mediation of the Material World." Journal of Material Culture 112006 12 Dec 2008 <http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/3/267>.


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