04-06-2020 Hello Mattia, I Hope You Are Doing Fine. This Is Richard
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04-06-2020 when the flag is in a fixed position. Information is encoded by the position of flags; it read rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare gloved hands. at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, FLAG SEMAPHORE Hello Mattia, I hope you are doing fine. This is Richard Niessen, from Amsterdam. I’m happy you are willing to coorporate with me in this project. I’m doing is the telegraphy system conveying information the graphic design for the Dutch pavilion of the Architecture Bienial. My design is based on the idea of the fan. is a line of stations, typically towers, For me the sample fan is a very interesting medium and metaphore that can show a diversity, without A SEMAPHORE TELEGRAPH for the purpose of conveying textual information by means visual signals. It uses pivoted indicator arms and conveys information according to the direction indicators point. The most widely used system was invented in 1792 France by Claude Chappe, and was popular in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. an hierarchy. Bisides this, two fans opened refer It has been said that in the courts of England, Spain fans were used in a more to the western and eastern hemisphere in the or less secret, unspoken code of messages. representation of the world. These fan languages were a way to cope with the restricting social etiquette. In the late 1790s Charles Francis Badini For the Exploratorium, I think it would be nice to designed what he named ‘Fanology’. Printed instructions were written on the continue working with the fan. We are here Venice fans informing ladies how to use them. was hoping to cennect me to Doretta Davanzo Robert Rowe’s LADIES TELEGRAPH seemed slightly easier to use. Twenty-six flaps Poli, a Venetian textile expert who wrote in the corresponded to the letters of the alphabet catalogue ‘Ventagli italiani’, but unfortunately she and you would point to each letter to make a word. There was also a 27th flap to is not able to join this track of the Exploratorium. signify a full stop. When lost for words, we point, wave, motion and otherwise use our hands to attempt to indicate meaning. John Bulwer (1606 – 1656), an English doctor and philosopher, attempted to record the vocabulary contained in hand gestures and bodily motions and, in 1644, published Chirologia, or the NATURAL LANGUAGE OF THE HAND, an illustrated collection of hand and finger gestures that were intended for an orator to memorise and perform whilst speaking. INTERNATIONAL MARITIME SIGNAL FLAGS refers to various flags used to communicate with ships. The principal system of flags and associated codes is the ‘International Code of Signals’. Various navies have flag Nevertheless I just started to find out more about systems with additional flags and codes, and other flags are used in special uses, or the fan. But few historic totems carried as much have historical significance. symbolic weight as the handheld decorative fan. As an example, during a certain period of time, the fan became an ideal instrument of communication and its main gestures were known as “the language of the fan”. The earliest such language was made up of individual letters, almost like a semaphore alphabet, later variations were extensions of body language, mostly to transmit a love code. Not only are fans beautiful, a great means for communication, used in social etiquette and Paulina Ołowska’s “ALPHABET” was inspired thus a carrier of expression in many cultures, by the book entitled “ABECEDA” by Karel they are foremost practical objects to carry on a Teige, who created in 1926 the experimental “moving alphabet”, in cooperation with warm day in times of climate change. The ornate, Milca Mayerova. “Alphabet” combines dramatic, and once-ubiquitous item is more worth rhythmicity with constructivist fascination for typography and points to the rhetorical resurrecting than ever: Wouldn’t it be great to function of dance: three performers arrange develop an updated messaging system for these their bodies to form 26 letters confronting the alphabet of the written language with battery-free tools to cool down? the “alphabet” of gestures and movements, create a new system of expressing meanings. 20200703 Pagina's Exploratorium.indd 2 03-07-20 11:43 The word fan derived from the Latin vannus, What I would like to explore is the fan as a carrier the Roman instrument for winnowing grain. This winnowing-fan, held sacred by all of expression. We are here Venice now connected the peoples of the ancient world must be me to you. I found out you have a lot of experience accounted amongst the earliest of the prolific fan-family. The origin of hand in Commedia dell’Arte, that you are working in fans can be traced back 4.000 years ago in Teatrino Groggia? And I see you are holding ‘The Egypt. It was used in ceremonies and seen as a symol of power. In this great funeral Grammar of Fantasy’ in your hands… “the need for procession from a royal writer in Thebes imagination to have its place in education”… maybe servants wear similar CRESCENT-SHAPED MATTED FANS, along with the more graceful we can incorporate this in the project! semicircular spring-hand fan used by ladies All the best, to fan themselves. Richard CEREMONIAL FANS were employed by the Native 09-06-2020 Americans; there is an account of the visit of a Taensas chief on the banks of the Lower Mississippi to Le Sieur de La Dear Richard, Salle in 1682: “The Chief condescended to visit La Salle at his camp. A master of Thanks for your nice mail. I am a creative who ceremonies and six attendants preceded him, loves to collaborate with other artists, who loves to clear the path and prepare the place of meeting. When all was ready, he was seen life and human beings. In recent years my research advancing and preceded by two men bearing work starting from the theater flocks up to flood white fans, while a third displayed a disc of burnished copper, to represent the Sun, the whole city (shops, hotels, prisons, fields, private his ancestor, or, as others will have it, houses, noble palaces) is the tool to tell the change his elder brother.” It is safe to assume that these fans were of feathers, and the of the city and its inhabitants over the course of the incident is an evidence that the use of the time but above all of the time in which we live. fan in high ceremonial was universal, and common to both East and West. The fan can be a thousand things. funny, seductive, repelling. I can imagine many variations of its language. I can imagine making a performance or a video, it all also depends on the type of project you have in mind. All the best Mattia . Pochteca, professional, can be traced back to the INDIAN HAND FANS SYMBOL OF THE MERCHANT CLASS 15-06-2020 It is quite probable that the famous Ratinlixul vase depict merchants on a journey. The chief personage, in litter, holds a fan, long-distance traveling merchants in the Aztec Empire, occupied a high status in Aztec society, below the noble class. They were responsible for providing the materials that Aztec nobility used to display their wealth, which were often obtained from foreign sources. The origins of ancient times, when they were used in temples to fan deities, in the royal courts and households. There is a mention of fans in the Indian Epic poem - Mahabharat (a major Sanskrit epics of ancient India). Temple fans vary in size from tiny to large fans needing the full strength of a person to move them. The villages and towns have varieties of traditional hand fans. In each place, the fans are made of different materials and have intricate designs. Dear Mattia, Feather fans were used for ceremonial purposes by the ruling Incas of South Thanks for your message, I hope the re-opening America. Ritual as a performance requires of the theater went well. In the meantime I made actors and spectators with a shared foundation of symbols, and is therefore a very rough start to see what happens when the inextricably linked to a given context of fans are connected to the stock characters of the social identity, tradition and meaning. Acts like vocalization, dance, and sacrifice are Commedia dell’arte, and to see what happens when all examples of common elements, and many I would create patterns for them in a way that the such acts require THEATRICAL PROPS FOR ORNAMENTATION. Fans played a significant set of fans also becomes a bit like a set of signs. part in the rituals as they could represent wealth and status as well refer symbolically to the concept of certain spirits. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is perhaps one of the best known early adopters of fan- power in Europe. She enjoyed clutching and collecting folding fans and had a collection of 27 at the end of her life. Fans arrived late in her reign as gifts from afar from individuals like Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world. Queen Elizabeth employed these fans when POWER DRESSING for some of her many portraits that were designed to project her status and authority. 20200703 Pagina's Exploratorium.indd 3 03-07-20 11:43 In my work I somehow always end up mixing sings, developed into foldable wooden fans. like, readable and portable collections. At some point these their base binding the strips together into expandable, fan- of wood called aristocrats, bureaucrats, and rulers used portable strips pre-modern Japan (552–784), before the invention of paper, But the most endorsed history of folding fan is that in fanning her face mask at a festival led to the tool’s creation.