Textiles Studies
Review of Laura U. Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art
Date of this Version
2012
Document Type
Article
Citation
Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Vol. 6, Nos. 2–3, June–September 2012, 137–139
doi: 10.1080/17513472.2012.680179
Abstract
Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, by Laura U. Marks, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, 392 pp, Hardcover, US $37.95, ISBN 978-0-262-01421-2
Who would think that digital media art owes its heritage to Islamic art? Author Laura U. Marks enticingly relates these two seemingly disparate tradi- tions, one that is familiar and contemporary (abstract art and new media) and one that is less familiar, having originated more than a thousand years ago in distant lands (classical Islamic art). Marks takes us on a fascinating intellectual journey by means of compelling visual comparisons accompanied by philosophical excursions and historical crossroads – leading us through tortuous paths of cognitive dissonance, in which she nonetheless demonstrates the resonance of harmonic chords. On the surface, and to judge from stereotypes, such resonances do not make sense. But beneath surface appearances, and beyond stereotypes, Marks’s astute reading of visual and performative works illuminates our understanding in quite startling ways. Reading Marks’s wide-ranging, provocative and eloquent work, the reader may be convinced that she indeed demon- strates meaningful connections in the parallelism between the art and mathematics of digital media and that of Islamic art. Marks describes the relation- ship in terms of ‘enfolding and unfolding’, rooted in an algorithmic aesthetic that is central to both traditions. Expanding upon the notion, ‘one point can unfold to reveal an entire universe’, she relates classical Islamic art to then contemporary philosophical discourse on atomism, which sought to explain the world in terms of accidents and fluctuations. For digital media, the algorithmic process is embedded in code, which has a performative aspect, ‘writing that is executable’ (p. 32).
Comments
Links to Taylor & Francis site.