The Stele of Vultures

Chapter 2 of The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832 is called „Six strata of network history: Genealogy of a cultural technique“. Actually, this one has been written almost exclusively from scratch for the English version of the book. It carves out two main themes of the book. Firstly, this chapter is about research on cultural techniques, and what this means for an Anglophone audience. And secondly, I am telling the longue durée story of nets and networks in a very condensed form.

This week’s image resonates with that genealogy which uncovers six strata of network history: material culture, mythology and religion, reticular nets, infrastructural nets, social networks, and network science. (Connectionist artificial intelligence might develop into a seventh stratum, but this remains to be seen.) The so-called „Stele of Vultures“ resides in today’s Louvre. In the spatial logic of the Paris museum’s collection it represents the beginning of cultural history. In the Louvre you’ll not just find the fragments of a net of power that holds and punishes the enemies of the city-state of Lagash. The stele is surrounded by a multitude of smaller objects of Sumerian everyday culture. Nonetheless, it remains a stunning testimony of ancient civilization’s symbolization of the net as a network of binding, holding, and ruling power.

Eannatum catches the enemies of the city of Lagash with a net. Fragment of the Sumerian Stele of Vultures, circa 2440 BCE. Limestone. Reconstructed original size: 130 cm × 180 cm; depth: 11 cm. Louvre, Paris, inv. no. AO 50.
Eannatum catches the enemies of the city of Lagash with a net. Fragment of the Sumerian Stele of Vultures, circa 2440 BCE. Limestone. Reconstructed original size: 130 cm × 180 cm; depth: 11 cm. Louvre, Paris, inv. no. AO 50.

 

Paolo Veronese: L’industria

Since The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832 is coming out on October 15 I might as well blog about some of the book’s visual elements. The book has eleven chapters, so this will be a weekly series of eleven images that convey and carry Connectivity’s narrative. These will be brief entries, since the images themselves are key protagonists of my network history. I do hope that they inspire deeper reading.

Let’s start with Paolo Veronese and his workshop who finished their allegory of „industry“ in 1577. This oil painting makes its appearance in chapter 1, which is called „Getting caught up“. It has already served as a frontispiece for the German original Die Verbundenheit der Dinge. From my point of view, it is the first heterogeneous network that represents and transcends the material net as web between nature and culture. Veronese’s network evokes a multitude of meanings, some of which I address in the first chapter. Up until today it is one of the most stunning artworks in the Palazzo Ducale of Venice.

Paolo Veronese, L’industria. Oil on canvas, 1575–1577. Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Collegio, Venice.
Paolo Veronese, L’industria. Oil on canvas, 1575–1577. Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Collegio, Venice.