A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL LIBRARY : EXPERIMENTS IN TIME, FORM AND THE BOOK

Baker, Brian (2021) A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL LIBRARY : EXPERIMENTS IN TIME, FORM AND THE BOOK. Masters thesis, Wrexham Glyndwr University.

Text (B Baker ART715 Dissertation)
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Abstract

The Fourth Dimension is an idea which came to prominence in the late 19th century, notably in the work of C. Howard Hinton and H.G. Wells. In the works of artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Kazemir Malevich, the Fourth Dimension came to be used as a way to investigate space and time, or ‘higher dimensions’ of mathematics, thought or spirituality. This project investigates the concept of the Fourth Dimension through an analysis of Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912) and The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23). In thinking about the representation of the Fourth Dimension in three or two dimensions, the dissertation considers motifs of projection, reduction (or ‘flattening’) or extension in how these literary and art works present time and space. It extends the verbal and visual modes of these presentations by considering dimensionality is sound reproduction, something that was not considered by either Wells or Duchamp. The dissertation consists of two, related parts: a short story or autofiction, patterned on the short stories of J.G. Ballard in The Atrocity Exhibition (1969), in which my own practice is fictionalised as the work of ‘Dr James Baker’; and a short essay with deals with time, space, sound, and projection. The connection between the two parts is implicit and asks the reader to work to decode, in terms of allusion, citation, and biography. The two-part dissertation is one component of a ‘multi-dimensional’ assemblage of objects, texts, bookworks and soundworks. The dissertation and exhibition is not a map of a higher-dimensional object (the project), but rather an echo of the multi-dimensionality of my practice throughout the MA.