ANALOGY. ALLEGORY. TRANSMITTANCE.
Olivia Pintos-Lopes expressed an allegory to be 'a symbolic representation of abstract ideas by characters, figures/ events' whilst analogy to be a comparison based on similarities. These were then linked to heterotopias - 'imagined', 'perfected', 'social' utopias and transmittance. I see the lecture as a version of all of these ideas whilst trying also to explain other allegories, analogies, heterotopias through transmittance.
The destinations expressed in the lecture create their independence through the transmittance from their historical roots. Argentina, Buenos aires and Palacio Barolo, can be seen as analogies for the greater understanding of a way of life or a culture.
Buenos Aires is a 'vibrant' city with strong social and historical connections to Europe. These connections are imprinted on the city, yet Buenos Aires still stands independent to it. Through Olivia Pintos Lopez's travels she now sees Argentina as a "confused" country, with equally confused residents; She sees the city as an "overblown' mash up", where time is a loose concept and psychoanalyses is common and everyday.
In Dantes work allegory is portrayed through highly realistic characters acting as metaphors for his reality. “Dante journeys successively through each of these three kingdoms, leading us on a personal guided tour of the landscape of the medieval afterlife”1 Dantes social commentary is "a warts and all portrait of a fractious medieval community, at the centre of which is Dante himself”1. Quoting Margaret Wertheim in The Pearly Gates of Cyperspace “The virtual worlds being constructed on computers today usually bear little or no relationship to the world of our daily experience. For most virtual reality pundits, escape from daily reality is precisely the point. Dante, however, was not trying to escape daily life; on the contrary he grounded his virtual world’ in real people, real events and real history. Rather than trying to escape reality he was obsessed with it.”1 This speaks of allegory – and now can be related to modern use of the internet and social media.
I was intrigued this week by the concepts of identity being both a reflection and a creation; thus the ideas of analogy, allegory and transmittance over time through juxtapositions of culture telling the story of a place and the portrayal of this being the allegory. We were asked to do an internet search and map this search as we got deeper and deeper into cyberspace and visit the Eureka Skydeck. The activities gave me the idea of telling my own allegory of Melbourne, through the way it has been portrayed to me, as someone who has recently made the move. I searched the internet to find out how others viewed Melbourne. As i got deeper into my search i found comments in chat rooms to statistical research on population and growth.
1 Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace - a history of space from dante to the internet (australia and New zealand: doubleday Books, 2000);pp.44-75
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