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Explorations 5

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The cover of EXPLORATIONS 5 returned to the playfulness of issue 2: the image of the famous Minoan “Our Lady of the Sports” figurine, held at the Royal Ontario Museum (the authenticity of which has long been disputed) was set in front of the Toronto Daily Star’s 8 April 1954 Home Edition front page, featuring the headline “H-Bomb in Mass Production, U.S.” This juxtaposition between ancient artefact, contemporary media, and technological production set the stage for the issue: starting with Daisetz Suzuki’s description of “Buddhist Symbolism”, the issue follows with McLuhan’s famous analysis of TV and radio in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Such contrasts of new media forms continue with a “Portrait of James Joyce,” an excerpt of a 1950 “Third Programme” BBC documentary edited by W. R. Rodgers, and the two-page “Anna Livia Plurabelle” section of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, set in experimental typography designed by Harley Parker and Toronto’s Cooper and Beatty Ltd. The issue further juxtaposes essays by E. R. Leach on cultural conceptions of time and Jean Piaget on time-space conceptions of the child; anthropologists Claire Holt and Joan Rayfield on interpenetrations of language and culture and Carpenter’s study of Eskimo space concepts; Rhodra Métraux on differences between the novel, play, and film versions of The Caine Mutiny; Roy Campbell on the fusion of oral and written traditions in the writings of Nigerian author Amos Tutuola, including an excerpt of his 1954 novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Harcourt Brown on Pascal; economist Kenneth Boulding on information theory and Easterbrook on economic approaches to communication; and an excerpt from Daniel Lerner and David Riesman’s work on the modernisation of Turkey and the Middle East. Tyrwhitt and Williams contributed reflections on the seminar’s second media experiment in “The City Unseen,” an analysis of students’ perceptions of the environment of the then Ryerson Institute. Anonymous entries included “Colour and Communication” and a transcription of satirist Jean Shepherd’s radio broadcast “Channel Cat in the Middle Distance,” likely courtesy of Carpenter. The issue is rounded out with a Letters File and an Ideas File, with contributions from E. R. Leach, Patrick Geddes, and Lawrence Frank.

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  1. Overview Emma Allain
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