I've always thought it would be an endless project to collect all the things that depict the carillon towers I've played (just try searching in ebay on "Harkness Tower" over the course of a few weeks and you'll see it never ends), since towers tend to be a strong informal aspect of the graphic identity of universities. It's a luxury to be able to buy memorabilia for your instrument that you never had to commission. But what a peculiar link -- I always assumed that the carillon tower is different from other towers, but this semester in Steven Feld's class I've been realizing how conceptually related it is to all sorts of other towers. The semblance of the belfry to lighthouses particularly excited me while Andrew and I were at Point Reyes. Which leads me back to my fascination with ephemera... there are plenty of postcards on which all these tower typologies are depicted (did Walker Evans collect any?). Other collections of towers, such as those by Bernd + Hilla Becher, have had a significant cultural impact too. I can think of quite varied academic disciplines that could be interested in Ji Lee's archive of logos and Evans' massive postcard collection, from visual studies to geography. How does the carillon play into all of this? Feld mentioned that someone wrote a history of high buildings. Time to look it up.A number of my seemingly unrelated curiosities have started to merge, albeit bumpily, into a convoluted train of thought. Perhaps some meanings will emerge from it soon.
2 comments:
I like towers too, even the slender magic others seem to hate, such as communications masts and wind turbines, though maybe because i've none in my backyard, but i doubt it—the contrarian in me would seek the bargain and buy. I've long sensed this architectural magic in height, a pattern language, and in tensegrity, a way to construct. Neither, i think, architects have yet to explore fully.
I'm all about monopoles and windmills! Let's jointly invest in some for your backyard. I'll take pretty pictures.
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