Glossary investigation – Teeter

Unbalance: Teeter

1867 James Russell Lowell Biglow Papers Series II

An’ I tell you you’ve gut to larn thet War ain’t one long teeter
Betwixt I wan’ to an’ ‘Twun’t du

Teeter

war
hell
dead
enemy
failed
fighting
god
lost
adversity
apologizing
appeal
aspirations
blood
bloodshed
brotherly
carry
charm
crimes
crueler
cruelty
danger
dangers
defeated
dissatisfied
facts
forever     
golden
grow
guilty
hardship
hate
hesitate
hopes
humiliation
inheritance     
killed
killing     
kindness
liberties
liberty
lies
life
love
magnitude
momentous
nothing
owned
perfect
power
promise 
purged
reform
sadness
share
spies
strife
truth
vainly
whipping
wish

Notes: Lowell wrote this long poem in response to or inspired by the American Civil War. In this and other writing he attempted to emulate the true Yankee accent in the dialogue of his characters. See https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13310/pg13310-images.html – a search for “teeter” in the document will bring you to the passage.

I find it next to impossible to read. What language were others using at that time? Using around twenty quotes about the Civil War, written at that time, I selected key words and ordered them by count of occurrences and then alphabetically to create the accompanying list.

Materials used: Galvanised steel wire, fishing weights, wooden block. Photographic documentation continues to be unsatisfying, so I have made an initial experiment with video. One of the delightful things about this piece is how much it teeters, while still requiring surprising effort to dislodge. The balance point is a vertical wire sharpened to a point, on which sits a horizontal 1.57 mm wire that has been hammered flat and given a pockmark. The fact that it can fail, can fall, seems important and appropriate.

More glossary entries
Structure based on lists

Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance

Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions

Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote

Text response in a list

Process notes

Glossary investigation: Disequilibrated

Unbalanced: Disequilibrated

1891 Jean-Marie Guyau Education and heredity. A study in sociology

Obviously, then, there is no possible remedy for this common disease called neurasthenia, to which all criminals, poets, visionaries, the insane, hysterical women – in fact, all whose mental equilibrium is disturbed – are subject; races simultaneously descend the scale of life and morality, and there is no ascent. The disequilibrated are for ever lost to humanity; if they do propagate their kind for a longer or shorter period, it is all the worse for them.

initial quote from dictionary in bold above

Uprighteous
Narrow
Judgmental
Isolated

Joyous
Energetic
Creative
Interacting

Whose humanity is lost?

Notes: It seems an investigation of unbalance returns repeatedly to “hysterical women”. The quote above is from the preface of a book. https://archive.org/details/educationheredit00jmgurich/page/xxii

Skim reading shows Guyau was discussing the powers attributed by some to heredity, only to challenge and dismiss them. The actual focus of the book is on the role and types of education and Guyau’s vision of reforming education with proper attention to moral, physical and intellectual development – lifelong education. Long hours of studying to pass an exam and then forget all is rejected. Skipping to the chapter dedicated to education for women, it’s not clear to me if Guyau disagrees with the logical outcome of prevailing principles that “… the disequilibration produced in the woman by intellectual work will therefore necessarily be greater than in the case of the man” (p. 260). He does appear to agree with the assumption of a girl or woman’s primary role as future mother. Given the precise direction of her future is uncertain, given vagaries of husband and family, “it should be clearly understood that we have not to teach her everything, but to fit her to learn everything, by giving her a taste for study and an interest in every subject” (p.270). Skipping ahead we find: “Inspire children, and especially young girls, with a taste for reading, study, works of art, and elevated amusements; this taste will be worth far more than all knowledge, strictly so called, artificially implanted in them; instead of a mind furnished with lifeless knowledge, you will have a mind at once living, moving, and progressive” (p. 274).

A 1891 NY Times review of the book I found annoying and confusing in tone. https://www.nytimes.com/1891/08/16/archives/new-publications-inheritance-and-training-education-and-heredity-a.html

A side note – the treatment of Guyau’s mother in various wikipedia references. The Guyau entry highlights the influence of “his stepfather, the noted French philosopher Alfred Fouillée”, while the mother, Augustine Tuillerie, gets a brief mention as author of a book and a link that doesn’t work. Her book gets an entry. There is also a french language entry for Augustine under her pseudonym G.Bruno. I’d like to know more.

Balancing the mobile was particularly challenging as the upright spikes flipped at the slightest change. Also challenging was photography for this entry. The composite photo is static.

Individual photos give some idea of the shapes made.

More glossary entries
Structure based on lists

• Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance
• Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions
• Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote
• Text response in a list
• Process notes

Glossary investigation: Pendulum

Unbalance: Pendulum

1818 Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear

Mood swings
Erratic
Unstable
Hysterical
Unreliable
Unequal
Unbalanced

Pendulum still

Notes: Inspiration for this came from seeing Alexander Calder’s 1936 work Tightrope at the National Gallery of Victoria. My gallery photos didn’t come out well – better to look on the Calder Foundation website www.calder.org/work/by-category/standing-mobile.

More glossary entries

Structure based on lists

Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance

Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions

Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote

Text response in a list

Process notes

Glossary investigation: Trepidation

Unbalance : Oscillation : Trepidation

1667 John Milton Paradise Lost

They pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt,
And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs
The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov’d;

Moon
Mercury
Venus
Sun
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Fixed stars
Precession of the equinoxes
Trepidation of the equinoxes
Obliquity of the eliptical

Notes: Un-Balance, an infinite series of adjustments, led to Oscillation, a regular periodic fluctuation in value about some mean, nudged a memory of Kepler and the music of spheres, and on to Trepidation, the hypothetical oscillation in the precession of the equinoxes.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45739/paradise-lost-book-3-1674-version
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_3/text.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepidation_(astronomy)

The mobile took a literal approach. A central “earth” in wood; two arms, each with a “planet” in metal (both copper one side, aluminium the other) circling the earth, each planet balanced with a metal swirl, a swivel allowing the trepidation circle. Without movement, flat and boring.


More glossary entries
Structure based on lists

Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance

Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions

Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote

Text response in a list

Process notes

Glossary investigation – Quiver

Unbalance: Quiver

1490 Caxton Eneydos

“Dido quyvered & shoke of grete rage.”

Dido

Red haze
Choke in throat
Tears threatening
Incoherent thoughts
Bitter barbs
Disbelieving
Frustrated
Shaking


Unbalanced

Aeneas

Notes: I was drawn to this quote in part because of mention of Dido in Float, a work by Anne Carson that we discussed in the Creative Research group.

I made the copper wire form in while in Hobart with the group, as an illustration of balance. Representing Aeneas it turns with freedom around the pivot. As Dido, options are curtailed, movement constrained.

More glossary entries
Structure based on lists

Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance

Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions

Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote

Text response in a list

Process notes

Glossary investigation – Unballast

Unbalance: Unballast

1586 B. Young The Civile Conversation of M Stephen Guazzo

“He..without anie more words unballanced the ship.”

1st paycheque – an Antler suitcase

£75 ticket – no place as a £10 Pom

6 weeks – the rocking ship (sick until Gibraltar)

2 years – stretched to a lifetime

Notes:The first attempt in an intended series. An investigation of un-balance – an infinite series of adjustments.

Structure based on lists – the Glossary as a list of words; text response in a list. Making and recording of un-balanced in action.

Initial text from Oxford English Dictionary – a translation by Bartholomew Young. The boat form was made in a workshop with Mary Hettmansperger (17-Sep-2018). Printed words in ballast net from Stephano Guazzo, La civil conversatione:La civil conversatione: divisa en quattro libri on books.google.com.au. Response list based on my mother’s memories of coming to Australia. On the learning curve in use of technology.

More glossary entries
Structure based on lists

Glossary as a list of words connected with unbalance

Oxford English Dictionary used as source of quotations, not definitions

Making, motion, and photo documentation in response to quote

Text response in a list

Process notes