Participation in Project Atalanta
October 28, 2018
In spring 2018 I participated in an online collaborative project, Project Atalanta, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Michael Maier’s book Atalanta fugiens (1618).
An ongoing project that is located in the Instagram space projectatalant. Every week artists, poets, scientists and others respond to different emblems in the Maier book. I created 3 Instagram videos in response to “Emblem 18: FIRE LOVES FIERY THINGS” (see image to the left).
The hearth/furnace in this emblem plays a central role echoing the statement “what falls into fire becomes fire”. The Latin word “focus” originally referred to a hearth. Maier seems to note this etymological relationship in his observation that the sun can become fire through the potential of a burning lens (in 1604, Kepler, a contemporary of Maier’s, comes to use the word focus to denote the point of convergence of a lens). The description of the sun rays being multiplied and projected through a lens are connected to ideas of propagation and multiplication as core mechanisms of nature. Mattheus Merian’s etching shows us the alchemist as one who works with Fire; his tools sit near or in the fire. A bowl of coins, perhaps gold coins are birthed or multiplied through the nature of fire. This homey scene with dog and possibly some bread in the background conveys the Fire’s glow despite the absence of color.
Jocelyne Prince Project Atalanta Videos on Instagram
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