Saturday, February 11, 2012
The Red Dimension has made its first appearance....
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About Me
- Jerry Gretzinger
- Jerry's Map In the summer of 1963 I began drawing a map of an imaginary city. The work started as a doodle done in the spare time I had while working at a tedious job. I continued to add to that map through the years until, in 1983, I set it aside to put my free time to other use. The Map was stored in the attic of our home in Cold Spring, New York. It gathered dust. My son, Henry, found it one day while rummaging around. He brought it down to me and asked what it was. Seeing it then triggered me to dust it off and continue the project. It now comprises almost 3100 individual eight by ten inch panels. Its execution, in acrylic, marker, colored pencil, ink, collage, and inkjet print on heavy paper, is dictated by the interplay between an elaborate set of rules and randomly generated instructions.
A parallel world to The Map, but still part of it. Interesting! How will it interact? Is it just a red flow, filling in the spaces it encounters?
ReplyDeleteSo far, yes! It's not in the same two-dimensional plane as The Map. We'll see what happens as it progresses. As with all these features it may take years. After all, The Void first appeared about 5 or 6 years ago, and it's barely evident still. Vive l'analogue!
ReplyDeleteI like your idea that the map itself, that you paint, is a reflection of a 2-D world below it. So maybe the Red Dimension is in fact a "leak" from the dimension outside the membrane OF the map you paint, visible below to the citizens of the map, but not part of their world per se.
ReplyDeleteMaybe when they first came to the place that would become Ukrainia, they were escaping the Red Dimension.
This raises some questions for them. If the map is how they understand their reality, does the Red Dimension cause confusion or hysteria? Or do they understand that it's a "third party" so to speak?
For some reason I am reminded of Plato's Allegory of the Cave and even of the common cultural denominator of Flood Myths. But that's presupposing that the map is on Earth I guess.
In any case, if the Allegory of the Cave is at all accurate, then its appearance must surely distort the Ukrainians interpretation of their world.
Lastly, unlike the The Void which must be fought "on the ground" (i.e. with walls on the 'surface' of Ukrainia, and is thus REFLECTED on the map) the Red Dimension seems to exist above the surface and ON the map. Does this mean that below the paint that WE see (i.e. the world reflected BY the map), Ukrainia is just peachy? Only covered in a red tint?
I think I utterly failed to answer any questions and only posited new ones. Oops.
Wow, Faelan! That's a lot to digest! (Would you like to be The Map's official mythographer?)
ReplyDeleteI like that the Red Dimension exists in the reflective plane and not of the plane of The Map itself. I don't think folks were escaping it though. It has just now appeared. But, yes, I am sure that it has caused some hysteria and confusion since it does not reflect the reality around the residents.
The Map is not on Earth. It exists somewhere totally outside our known Universe, maybe in another dimension entirely.
No red tint below, I think. Simply the streaks on The Map plane. Hmmmm...Yeah, I guess that's right.
Good questions! Thanks!
I would be interested. How do I do that? I don't want to usurp any of your ideas or corrupt your idea of the story of the map's denizens.
DeleteHey Faelan! Why don't you write up something and email it to me? I'll take a look and see if I think you are on the right track. (Whatever track you take will probably be alright.) You know the basic story, right? And your writing is top-notch! So.......
ReplyDelete