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thaumasnot

['Member']Joined: November 28, 2021 at 10:19Last active: January 23, 2022 at 21:115 discussions82 comments

Bio

I’m currently promoting a new community project based on Conceptual Reconstructionism, a style of interpretation specialized in transcribing what I call “medium-specific narratives.” I post weekly reconstructions on my website. I published a Manifesto and an online book on my website to explain my rationale, which is based on a critique of critique.

The online book is in a beta stage. It is finished and has been proofread by a professional. I am now looking for readers to gather critical feedback (is the book well-written? logically sound? does it make enough sense? is it useful? does it repeat itself? what other works is it similar to?). I would love it if you could take a look: https://reconstructedart.org/wiki/Book

You’re invited to check out the project. In the future, other contributors will be able to post reconstructions of their own. Since the project is new, the directions that will be taken are still not set in stone. In particular, current reconstructions are deliberately written in very minimalistic and dry prose (reconstructions only help to consume content in a different way, they’re not here to steal the show, and we're looking for efficiency). They are not especially pedagogical. But that could change based on feedback.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any question or proposal.

Discussions (5)

Comments

In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
This isn’t how reconstruction works. As stated in the manifesto, when you quote something in a reconstruction, there is an implied convention that inv...
January 17, 2022 at 17:14
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
I see what you mean, but I don’t think it’s a very useful subtlety, because it leads to phrases like “When I read, it’s not words.” I mean, I don’t th...
January 12, 2022 at 12:57
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
By making you pay attention not to the meaning of words or the truth of statements, but how the words are used, their context in the discourse, and ho...
January 12, 2022 at 11:03
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
That’s quite confusing. “When I'm reading, I don't see the things I am reading as words” followed by “I'm reading I see each particular word as the wo...
January 12, 2022 at 09:26
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
The discourse stays the same even if the medium is sound, so the distinction doesn’t matter here. You could reconstruct instruments + lyrics, that wor...
January 11, 2022 at 19:05
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
To correct my previous response (“not for classification purposes”), this could actually lead to building a knowledge base not unlike Christopher Alex...
January 09, 2022 at 16:52
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
So, about this active thing. What I mean by active consumption in the context of reconstruction is the activity of correlating things (the basis of an...
January 09, 2022 at 14:16
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
I don't get what you're saying. We can always talk about something without talking about the author. There's value in that.
January 09, 2022 at 13:55
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
May I re-use the example of motif M that gets repeated for the nth time? Well, that kind of thing. So medium is music, the same for both Metallica and...
January 09, 2022 at 13:53
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Who cares about the author? Sometimes I'll find an interpretation that's even more interesting than what the writer intended, and that'll be fine. Som...
January 09, 2022 at 13:34
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
That's true. That being said, painting is not necessarily the right medium for expressing what you intend. Given your description, there are many poss...
January 09, 2022 at 12:17
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Your question is essentially the same as the questions about objectivity. Who cares? There are different types of meaning. Apparently, you look for sy...
January 09, 2022 at 12:08
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
I don’t think “objectivity” is a very useful concept here. In most cases, the viewer will see PHYSICS as a word, and I think that’s enough for most pu...
January 09, 2022 at 11:38
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Are you trying to play a game of Dixit or what? (Sorry for the sarcasm...)
January 09, 2022 at 11:14
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
To be more accurate, it’s not really metal music that’s the subject, but medium-specific narratives. They’re not specific to metal music. They’re actu...
January 09, 2022 at 10:56
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
That's why I said reconstruction is a helper. A reconstruction of metal music would totally change how you listen to music (whether it's for the bette...
January 08, 2022 at 15:36
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
In a hedonistic mindset, the fictionality/non-fictionality dichotomy is not a problem. It so happens that in reconstruction, we insist on "pure refere...
January 07, 2022 at 14:28
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
To help you get an idea why these questions become trivial in the hedonistic context of reconstruction, let's take the Mondrian reconstruction. I coul...
January 07, 2022 at 12:15
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
All these considerations are obsoleted in a hedonistic endeavour. Choose what you're interested in, and find a medium-specific narrative based on the ...
January 07, 2022 at 10:32
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
So regarding the "arbitrary" part : the individual observations of a reconstruction are arbitrary when taken in isolation. That's one of the things an...
January 07, 2022 at 09:19
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
You’re not taking into account the hedonistic goal of reconstruction. It’s not to be correct (in fact, I find trying to reach correctness a boring ove...
January 07, 2022 at 08:35
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
I read the claim and chuckled. It's actually the type of paper that I would reconstruct for fun. I might do it.
January 06, 2022 at 18:24
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Yes to both questions. I think that the division implicit/explicit might be too academic for what reconstruction is trying to achieve. It's not so muc...
January 06, 2022 at 17:30
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
It's a hunch, not a profound thesis. If I read my reconstruction, I don't see any observation in it that another person couldn't make. On the other ha...
January 06, 2022 at 13:31
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Regarding the reconstruction of Mondrian above, I don't claim any expertise. What I do believe, is that most people can arrive at the same narrative i...
January 06, 2022 at 13:05
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Well, pleasure is subjective, so obviously, JP can be a source of pleasure, and that goes without saying. That said, it can also be interesting to rec...
January 06, 2022 at 12:45
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
That could look like this : 1. The horizontal and vertical lines intersect so that each line is divided into a short and long segment (before and afte...
January 06, 2022 at 12:24
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
What you see, and how they interact with each other. Examples : linear transformation, parallelism/intersection, mutation, similarity. The goal is to ...
January 06, 2022 at 11:46
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
OK I looked at the painting. Athough this isn't expressly forbidden by the reconstructionist method, I wouldn't use "Man" and "Woman" or "house" to de...
January 06, 2022 at 11:31
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
In a vacuum, a reconstruction is worthless. Let's use this example again: "The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8) that gets repeated in the next...
January 06, 2022 at 11:11
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
If we want to really nitpick, here are exact quotes relevant to our exchange: So I’m not claiming exactly that reconstruction is objective. From a ver...
January 05, 2022 at 08:05
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Do you have a link to the painting?
January 04, 2022 at 17:18
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
That's the sort of things the other thread was about.
January 04, 2022 at 17:12
In: Introduction to reconstruction: As I Lay Dying  — view comment
That's a bit ironic in the context of this thread, but your decision is totally fair. It was cool to discuss with you. I wish you the best.
January 04, 2022 at 17:06
In: Is it permitted to ask for reader feedback about one's book ?  — view comment
There's already a thread like that.
January 04, 2022 at 16:16
In: Is it permitted to ask for reader feedback about one's book ?  — view comment
OK I just did, it's not permitted. Thanks
January 04, 2022 at 16:00
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
It's a mix of convention, habits, utility. Cf. intro paragraphs. It's basically the hedonistic thing. It's described further down in the Manifesto.
January 04, 2022 at 13:19
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Have you read the Manifesto? This would save me from repeating myself.
January 04, 2022 at 12:25
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Do you mean you want to reconstruct the song? My method is to memorize the shape of the melodies as the music plays (doesn't have to be perfect). When...
January 04, 2022 at 11:32
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
A very basic one would be relative position of notes (whether note is higher or lower than another note). This is constantly used in reconstructions.
January 04, 2022 at 11:09
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
For reconstruction, it's mostly about melodic structure. For example, phrases, or segments within the phrases. There's a certain grammar we all percei...
January 04, 2022 at 11:04
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Possibly yes. (But to be fair, that's not specific to the reconstructionist method. An artist can read a traditional interpretation of their work, and...
January 04, 2022 at 10:50
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Just thanks.
January 04, 2022 at 10:48
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Yes, that's the kind of stuff. Reusing this reconstruction "The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8)” that gets repeated in the next phrase (0:10 ...
January 04, 2022 at 10:40
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Exactly. And I believe it's surprising how far that can go, when you don't look for meaning and context at every turn. Just let the medium do its work...
January 04, 2022 at 10:25
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
If you start anew, the process of determining the concepts will be empirical. In my case, I found something in some medium-specific narratives. Recons...
January 04, 2022 at 10:22
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Reconstructionism isn't a theory about what is essential (or a theory at all). It is hedonistic : we look for a perspective that will provide enjoymen...
January 04, 2022 at 10:13
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
Yes it is. That's why in the Manifesto I wrote that reconstruction is not a substitute for the content, just a guide. We reconstruct an abstraction of...
January 04, 2022 at 10:11
In: A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism  — view comment
I think it would be more productive if we frame this discussion with a concrete example, as I told Metaphysician Undercover: If by "a claim to subject...
January 04, 2022 at 10:00
In: Introduction to reconstruction: As I Lay Dying  — view comment
The question “is everything clear to you” is for the post in this forum, not the website. In addition, I'm not sure how a technical problem on a websi...
January 04, 2022 at 08:59
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