Picture from Blue Ridge Botanic.
Why a florilegium? What is a florilegium?
A florilegium, as shown above, is rooted from a term that describes a book that is filled with paintings of flowers. I will, and attempt to, describe this project as a digital florilegium. Firstly, it is a collection of digital art including recordings of poetry, plays, music, and film. I am also using it as an analogy itself, as to say that each piece of this collection can be seen as individual works, but I am also drawing together a larger picture of time and transformation between them.
As per transformation, the theme that I will be illustrating from the multiple types of media in this collection will be their role in being transformative. Within the idea of transformation, time is a very integral and implied aspect. Transformation works with both before and after, which leads to or begs the question of causality or seriality. So, through each of the pages, I will be highlighting both their specific transformations-- either through adaptation from one work of art to the other, or the overall digitalization of art as the transformation-- as well as how the constraints of our perception of time and the opportunity that time encompasses and how they work through each of piece.
Lastly, each page will be given a flower from the original whole picture shown above to both connect the pages themselves as art and to reemphasize the project's argument about art by juxtaposing the 'traditional' form of art, the florilegium/paintings, with the modern, digitalized art.
Acknowledgements
There are a couple of things to keep in mind while going through the project that I will attempt to list here. My project will consist of both text in essay-like form as well as annotations accompanying the video or audio. Chapters I, II, V, VI, IX, and XI are in essay form, while Chapters III, IV, VII, VIII, and X include the artifacts themselves as well as their textual annotations. This project will look at these artworks and allow the viewer to interact with the pieces of art independent of this academic introduction and discussion of their essence and authenticity. Chapter I will be an introduction to the philosophy of art and introduce you to core concepts of aesthetic, film, and literary theory that will be contended or supported throughout the project. Chapters II and VI are symptomatic readings of two integral ideas you will find throughout the work with both the works of Linda Hutcheon and Gilles Deleuze. Chapter V is independent in that it offers a more specific analysis of the film Arrival concerning Deleuze's ideas. Similarly, Chapter IX will be a turning point and look at this project through an archival perspective. Chapter XI will hold both the conclusion of the conceptual argument of the project and the reflection will be geared towards the fruitfulness of building the project or its process. There is then a Works Cited and an index, which will present a visual picture of how the different digital artworks fit into the two themes of time and transformation.