Page 74 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

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UMBERTO ECO was born in 1932 in Alessandria, Italy. He is a professor THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTENSIVE LISTING OF THE WORKS OF ECO
of semiotics, the study of communication through signs and symbols, at The Island of the Day Before (1995). Postscript to The Name of the Rose (1995).
the University of Bologna, a philosopher, a historian, literary critic, and The Search for the Perfect Language (1995). How to Travel with a Salmon and
an aesthetician. He is an avid book collector and owns more than 30,000 Other Essays (1994). Apocalypse Postponed (1994). Six Walks In the Fictional
volumes. The subjects of his scholarly investigations range from St. Thomas Woods (1994), Misreading (1993). Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992).
Aquinas, to James Joyce, to Superman. He lives in Milan.

UMBERTO ECO AND PETRU RUSSU OF WORLD OF ART MAGAZINE

A Conversation on Information (episode 5) I always like to tell the story of Bosco - San Giovanni Bosco. This Salesian priest
in the middle of the
A chain-smoking and jovial Umberto Eco receives me in his crowded, 19th century who got the idea that was a whole new generation of young people
untidy but cheerful little office at the Institute for Communication Studies who were working from a very young age in factories, and so were dispersed and
at the University of Bologna. A bay-window opens out onto a tiny balcony separated from the family. He invented the oratorium, which was a community, to
overlooking the garden of the villa where the institute has its offices which those who worked could go to play and discuss. And for those who couldn’t
work, he established typographies, activities in which they could take part. So, he
and library. The walls of the office are covered with rows of well-filled was matching the problem of despair and isolation in the industrial society with
bookshelves; a sofa along one wall is full of piles of papers, books and articles, the possibility of people meeting each other, and obviously also having a religious
a modest writing desk hidden under even more books and papers. In one purpose. It was a great social invention.
corner of the room is an IBM 486 clone with Windows, a new article or book What I reproach today; with both Catholics, as well as former Communists or
obviously in progress on the screen. Eco offers me a chair in front of his desk. Progressives, is that they lacked the new don Bosco. There was no new San Giovanni
In advance I had given him a list of some possible issues we might discuss Bosco of our age able to invent a new possibility of establishing communities. And
so he would have some idea of what was on my mind: Computer Technology, so you have young disaffected males with guns killing people in Central Park. You
the Internet Community and Processes of Cultural Change. I begin by asking: have all the problems of young people...
“The pathologies, yes...”
(continued from the previous number) Also of mature and aged persons who feel isolated. Was, is, television a way to SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.CUDENVER.EDU/~MRYDER/ITC_DATA/ECO/ECO.HTML MARTIN RYDER
overcome this solitude? No, it was a way to increase it. With your can of beer you
It is a community but it is only a virtual community. Now, it is true that great artists sit down on the couch...Television was not the solution.
spend their lives living in remote villages and writing letters all over the world and Obviously for certain people - I had an old aunt who was obliged to live all
they establish these kinds of virtual communities. the day at home, and was unable to walk, and for her the television was a gift of
“Kant did that as well - he was a great letter writer...?” heaven. For her, it was really the only possibility to be in some way in touch with
Yes, there was Kant. But I think of a great poet like Leopardi. He was sick, a the world. But for a normal person it is not. Can the new virtual communities like
hunchback. Repressed. we have on Internet do the same job? Certainly! They give to a person living in
BY PATRICK COPPOCK he traveled a little more. let’s say, Internet, should be to be a starting point for establishing contacts, and
the Mid-West the possibility to contact others from there. Is that a substitute for
Lived in a village. Went once or twice to Rome. I don’t remember how often, though
face-to-face contact and community? No, it isn’t! So the real social function of,
He was well known, and in touch with all the intelligentsia of his time. OK, it’s
then to establish local...
always possible. But for every Leopardi, you have a lot of other people that are
“Places to meet face-to-face...”
living in isolation, with elaborate forms of mental illness.
Yes, local communities. When Internet really becomes a way of implementing
One great problem of our time is the decrease, or absolute lack, of face-to-face
communities.
74 WORLD of ART - through virtual communities - face-to-face communities, then that will be an