Blog Research 2

Since I’m working more with words this year than ever before and bringing together writing with images in different combinations I’ve been researching both writers and artists and even scientists in connection with my work. Before it’s final form it all begins with the idea and that idea might lend itself to one outcome more than another but I have to chose which will best resolve the idea. In terms of crossing boundaries between different disciplines few men or women have ever crossed so many different career paths as Leonardo da Vinci. Painting, drawing, biology and mechanics. It’s a lot to write down as a list of interest never mind pursuing all of those paths with such dedication or success. People make a lot of fuss about the Mona Lisa but I much prefer The Vitruvian Man. Named after the Roman architect Vitruvius of whom da Vinci was a fan, the drawing depicts his ideas which are generally accurate about human proportion. His drawings or studies are very architectural and of course accurate. Notes and diagrams he made of gears so long ago have been realised in recent years, rarely failing. It’s the ideas which have endured more perhaps than the images because I would say that if the word genius is mentioned da Vinci is one of the first to spring to mind where as if amazing paintings are mentioned it would take longer to get to his work. Through his ideas and his brilliance he has prevailed.

On the subject of polymaths Isaac Asimov who was both a brilliant physicist and an excellent writer responsible for works such as I, Robot from which came the famous Three Laws of Robotics. Such precise considerations on the acceptability and safety of having advanced robotics within human society are one of the reasons that Asimov’s books are so successful. This depth of thought is what earned Asimov place amongst the Big Three science fiction writers of his time alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Asimov talked so widely in such detail that Kurt Vonnegut once asked him, “how does it feel to know everything?” to which Asimov replied that he only felt “uneasy” bearing the reputation of omniscience.

Kurt Vonnegut, himself a science fiction author so it goes, wrote Slaughterhouse Five which I have nearly finished and have enjoyed as much for the fancy plot device as any other book. The confidence with which he wields the changes in time are amazing because despite how quickly it happens it is always easy to keep up and that works so well in the context of someone who sees all time at once. Having created the character Kilgore Trout which I sadly thought was a real author, I think he uses it for notes on ideas never fully fleshed out. From his marks in chapter eighteen of his book Palm Sunday it seems that of all his stories Cat’s Cradle and the semiautobiographical Slaughterhouse Five are his favourites.