Week 9: Matej & Thanassis

Matej

Past week I had been quite busy because my school sent me to a three-day conference in Louisiana. However, I had been developing our sci-fi story. As Kate Schwarting suggested, in term of the narrative path, I Had been looking at Samuel Beckett's Not I for character development and Tim Ingold’s concept of wayfaring for storyline format. 
According to Ingold "In wayfaring, … one follows a path that one has previously travelled in the company of others, or in their footsteps, reconstructing the itinerary as one goes along. Only upon reaching his destination, in this case, can the traveller truly be said to have found his way.” (p.16, 2016) 

Another sources of inspiration in relation to the form of our story line is Borghes’s science fiction story Garden of Forking Paths and Interactive Digital Narrative by Koenitz, Ferri, et al. 
As Thanassis suggested, I had been also looking into Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander and I'm considering adding to our collection of characters - as Democritos, Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. 


Quoted material: 
Ingold, Tim. Lines: A Brief History (Routledge Classics) (p. 16). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

Thanassis

We are have crossed the half way point of this residency program – but I’m sure that my collaboration with Matej will go far beyond that – and things look great. This week we decided take a step back and search for more inspiration. We are both quite busy in our work lives: Matej is at a conference in New Orleans – lucky guy – and I’m working on the preparations for my trip in Vancouver, which is next week.

Nevertheless, I found some spare time and looked for animations, mainly through platforms like Tumblr that we could use as influence for our sci-fi show. 

"Héraclite (1943)", 1943 from André Masson

We also got some references on storytelling and theory of theatre from Kate - thanks again :) which will definitely help us in terms of structuring the show.

Beyond that, I went back to my ancient Greek philosophy readings and more specifically into the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Democritus. Every time I read about their teachings I get fascinated by the fact that they did that over 2000 years ago! Also, I find intriguing the fact that their philosophy doesn’t only cover the “physical sciences”, but politics politics and society. The last bit is also connected to my mentality on how a scientist should behave in a society (see previous blog– -interview with Matej).

It is also worth noted that the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, that followed the pre-Socartics, is the foundation of the western school of thought.

Two of the quotes that stood out when I was reading were the following:

“You cannot get to the same river twice” by Heraclitus
Which is connected to his famous “everything moves” quote. The universe is in a constant motio. Despite the fact that something may seem stable, in a more deep sense it is always changing. The most striking example is ourselves: we grow older every day, our cells are regenerated entirely every decade!
​
“Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.” by Democritus

Democritus was, in modern terms, a very strong advocate for materialism. According to him, everything was either atoms or void space. Even the psyche was, according to him, made out of fire atoms.

Brace yourselves, because my blogs for the next two (maybe three) weeks will be all about nuclear physics experiments and how they help us understand our origins!

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