Monday, January 23, 2017

Response to "Visibility"

What is the imagination? The author Italo Calvino paraphrases Dante's description saying that imagination "steal[s] us away from the outer world and carr[ies] us off into the inner one, so that even if a thousand trumpets were to sound we would not hear them" (82). I strongly agree with this description of imagination as I can recollect countless times when I too was completely consumed by own mind's imaginary world.
In addition, I like how Calvino states "fantasy is a place where it rains" (81). After reading that sentence, I took it literally and began to imagine this fantasy land where our imaginations reside subjected to continuous downpour. After continuing to read Calvino's description of Dante's Purgatorio where he states "images rain down from the heavens-that is, God sends them to him" I realized how the "rain" is a metaphor (81). Though I don't see imagination as having a divine connection, I like this imagery of actual images coming down into one's mind.
Before reading this, I had never thought of different types of imagination. Calvino describes two different types of imagination. One "starts with word and arrives at the visual image" and the other "starts with the visual image and arrives at its verbal expression" (83). Calvino describes the first as what occurs while reading. For example, when we read the words blue cat driving a car 500 mph down the freeway, our imagination fills our thoughts with images or an almost silent movie of a cat speeding down a highway. I found it especially interesting when Calvino describes the movie making process as being a product of the first type of imagination. Calvino states that a film and "the image we see on the screen has also passed through the stage of a written text" (83). Continuing with the idea of cinema, for the second kind of imagination an audience watching one of the Pixar short films is watching images and allowing their imaginations to fill in the films with verbal meanings to describe the film. The below links are to two Pixar short films I thought of when I read Calvino's description of the two kinds of imagination.
Pixar Short Film Geri's Game
Pixar Short Film: La Luna
All in all, imagination is much more complex than I had initially thought and "Visibility" helped me realize that it has been an idea explored since historical times.

2 comments:

  1. Jenny, I agree with you when you say that before reading this, you never thought about different types of imagination. I think its valuable that you stated imagination is much more complex than we make it out to be if we look closely.

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  2. I completely agree with what you had to say about this article. It was confusing to understand at first, however this helped me to understand it more thoroughly. Imagination is such an interesting function of the brain in which we try to bring to life and like art it is different to everyone.

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