This is William Blake's (1757 -1827) The Tyger. The last stanza reads:
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright.
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry
If you were at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, would you want to see the actual page or would you be OK with looking at the digitized version in the museum knowing that for preservation purposes the actual page needs to be kept in storage?
2 comments:
to a certain degree, I would be ok with viewing the page in the text digitally, rather than in person--as long as the text actually exists in the collection. However, I think part of my acceptance of digitizing a book page has to do with the medium itself. I would be less ok with a digital representation of a painting, for example, than a text. The experience of viewing a digitial image of an artwork, to me, does not come close to the experience of seeing the work up close and personal, face to face. Part of it has to do with "control:--if I find a digital image of a painting on the web, I have control over how big or small I view it, I can increase or decrease the width if I copy it, or I can find varying degrees of clarity for the image--affecting my analysis. If the painting is actually in front of me, I am confronted with "absolute limits" of size and shape, as well as perfect clarity--which overall lead to a better and more accurate visual assessment. Works on paper or texts, however, I would be fine with not having direct access to--how often would one really get to read an entire text in an exhibit anyways?--as long as perhaps there was a rotating case for their book collection, just to confirm the truthfulness of the digitial collection...
I am not as concerned about seeing the original version of a work of art, although I don't turn down opportunities to do so. I get much enjoyment from museum catalogues and art books, and I have for most of my life. Blake is one of those artists that I have exclusively seen in reproduction, and I don't feel like I've missed something. There is so much art in the world that any opportunity to see any version of it satisfies my love for it. i am especially drawn to digitzed versions of art, and I like the fact that, for the first time, there are huge collections that are available to the public via a collection's database. The New York Public Library has one of the largest collections of books and artifacts in the world, but it takes for ever to go to the library and search for stuff; you have to depend on human beings to get stuff for you. There new database avoids all that. And if you find something that you are pareticularly interested in you can go to library and see it in the flesh, of course, after an appointment and a considerable wait.
Post a Comment