Scalar's 'additional metadata' features have been disabled on this install. Learn more.
Explorations ProjectMain MenuOverviewMeet the IndividualsTimelineExperimentsArchiveArtworkAbout the Project-
Explorations 4
12018-09-17T19:19:08-07:00Emma Allainaf81bfdcf8d535972cadaf567952dcafd4b4d57c244601plain2018-09-17T19:19:09-07:00Emma Allainaf81bfdcf8d535972cadaf567952dcafd4b4d57cAccording to McLuhan, EXPLORATIONS 4 was planned as an issue devoted to Sigfried Giedion. Published in February 1955, with a cover adapted from Kandinsky’s Comets (1938), Explorations 4 was devoted to issues of space and placed a strong emphasis on modes of linguistic and poetic thought across multiple media. Poems by e. e. cummings and Jorge Luis Borges mingle with essays by seminar leaders McLuhan on “Space, Time, and Poetry,” Carpenter on “Eskimo Poetry: Word Magic,” Tyrwhitt on “The Moving Eye” (regarding comparative perceptual experiences of Western cities and the ancient Indian city of Fatehpur Sikri), and Williams on “auditory space”—a notion that “electrified” the group, as Carpenter later recounted. Northrop Frye and Stephen Gilman’s essays on poetic traditions were juxtaposed with Millar MacLure and Marjorie Adix’s odes to Dylan Thomas, who had died in 1953. Case studies by then graduate students Walter J. Ong on “Space in Renaissance Symbolism” and Joan Rayfield on “Implications of English Grammar” were aligned with Dorothy Lee’s contribution on “Freedom, Spontaneity and Limit in American Linguistic Usage” and Lawrence Frank’s early draft of “Tactile Communication.” Both Lee and Frank had presented their contributions at Ray Birdwhistell’s “Institute on Culture and Communication” in Louisville, in 1954. A “Media Log” and the now famous entry “Five Sovereign Fingers Taxed the Breath,” both largely replicated from McLuhan’s 1954 Counterblast pamphlet, were published anonymously. In addition to “Our Enchanted Lives,” a memorandum of instructions for television programming adapted from a Procter & Gamble memo, “The Party Line” offered a second alleged memorandum “To All TIME INC. Bureaus and Stringers.” An “Idea File” containing insights on oral, written, and technological cultural forms was culled from writings by Robert Graves, Edmund Leach, Walter Gropius, and E. T. Hall, among many others. With Explorations 4, the group revealed its commitment to the belief that communication studies was deeply rooted in anthropological and literary-poetic traditions, but equally informed by studies of mechanisation, technology, and culture.
