Page 205 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

you cannot retrieve them. So what then is the difference will be in the next group of ten books that I pick up. But
between the Pravda, which didn’t give any news, and this is a very random thing.
the New York Times which gives too much? Once upon a “But it is also very much based on your past experience,
time, if I needed a bibliography on Norway and semiotics, obviously?”
I went to a library and probably found four items. I took Oh, sure, it is random, but based upon past experience.
notes and found other bibliographical references. Now He reaches for a book from his desk and begins to thumb
with the Internet I can have 10,000 items. At this point I through it.
become paralysed. I simply have to choose another topic. OK, now I am able to open this at the first page, to look at
“So information overload and this extreme, non-intuitive the summary, to see the bibliography and to understand
selection of information is the main problem? if the fellow is reliable or not; if there is something
Yes, we have an excessive retrievability of information. new there or not. And since I have long experience, my
It is neither ironical nor paradoxical, I think, what has decimation is oriented. I sense it is better that I read this,
happened with Xerox copies. and not that etceteras.
Eco picks up a pile of papers from the desk in front of “So you are able in a way to recognize newness, or
him and waves them. innovation?”
Once I used to go to the library and take notes. I would In a way, in a way. I can commit mistakes of course,
work a lot, but at the end of my work I had, say, 30 files but if I make a mistake today, I probably won’t do that
on a certain subject. Now, when I go into the library - this tomorrow. Possibly I may choose to disregard some book
has happened frequently to me in American libraries - I or other and that may be a mistake, but the next week
find a lot of things that I xerox and xerox and xerox in
order to have them. When I come home with them all,
and I never read them. I never read them at all!
“You never seem to have the time, do you? Once you
know that it is there, you feel reassured, and so you don’t
read it.”
Exactly...
“Xeroxing then can paralyse your reading activity? That’s
another risk?”
Sure...That’s another risk which is sometimes very real.
“Yes, well then, what do you think about the idea of
these personal information filters. This idea that you
can kind of make a personal profile, and the system will
search Internet on the basis of this?” UMBERTO ECO IN CONVERSATION WITH PETRU RUSSU BRIEFING ON MY
This is what I call the art of decimation... FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM '89 EXHIBITION, INSPIRED BY ECO’S SECOND NOVEL
FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM, WRITTEN IN 1988 AND PUBLISHED IN 1989. PICTURE
“Decimation?” CREDIT: © MARTA DIMITRESCU
Decimation. You kill only one person out of ten...
He gestures towards the well-filled bookshelves again. I will come across yet another book, and so on. But a
The number of books that only concern my specific student of 20 years old, or even of 30 does not have this
domain, not to speak of the other ones that I receive kind of filtering ability. We have to invent a practice, a
weekly certainly, exaggeratedly, overwhelms my reading... theory. A practice or training in decimation.
“Your capability, capacity?” “Well now, how do we do that?”
...my capability, my time. If you have a certain experience Eco leans forward eagerly in his chair.
you are able to... well, you can make a very random Well, it still has to be invented. There must be some
decimation. On this or that subject for instance, there rules. There are some very elementary rules such as:
may be no more than ten possible new ideas. It is rare control the dates of the bibliography for instance. If you
that that is the case. are working on a certain subject you may find many
“And the working hypotheses you make are based on references from 1993 and 1994. But in relation to other
these?” subjects finding only references from 1993 and 1994
So, if I read only one out of ten books, probably there will might be negative, you ought to be finding some older
be an idea in there I can find, and if it is not there, then it dates.

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