Hello again Luke,

I started to write this post yesterday morning and got interrupted by some pressing matters related with resting in the far-south of Portugal.

So I will pretend not to have seen yours and Terry’s contribution. 

So please see it as a continuation of my previous post and not a response to your present ideas (very interesting and thoughtful).

  

As you well know Simon’s shed/boat riddle navigates on the Wittgensteinean “duck-rabbit riddle”. 



I suffered from a similar problem throughout my childhood, offered by Warner Brother cartoons, known as the Daffy-Bugs riddle. Who do you like best?



Like many other analytical philosophy problems, the duck-rabbit riddle narrows things to a pin-point concept that is still possible to fractionate, elaborate on, inconclusively conclude on.

As you might have guessed, that is not the method of WI (Warburgian Iconologist). Don’t forget that WI comes from Art History, which means that she/he was trained as an artist or an historian, or both. 

So, WI tends not to narrow things to a pin-point issue but, on the contrary, expands the number of elements looking for other kind of “impurities”, different from Wittgenstein schemes. 



Another thing you have already noticed is that WI works with images, otherwise she/he wouldn’t be an “iconologist”. An Icon is an image and its value as icon means that it alludes to other things. Which means that a thing (a shed or a boat) is not an icon but can be looked upon as an icon, whereas an image of a shed is an icon that can be looked upon as a thing. 



Therefore, it would be difficult to call WI’s attention on a real shed. So in order to get WI's interest on this riddle (which is in fact: what is this thing, shed or  boat? Or in a more elaborate way, “can you see the boat in the shed?), the riddle should be presented to WI in images. 



Let’s first consider that Simon presents the riddle to WI in an IKEA style. It would have to be a 30 pages booklet (now that I remember, IKEA style, don’t teach people how to disassemble stuff, only how to assemble stuff). The knowledge contained in IKEA’s booklet is the knowledge about how to change the shed into a boat and to a shed again. But, of course, WI can trace back IKEA’s style to greek vases, that contain knowledge on how to throw a spear, a discus, or how to chase a nymph in case you are a faun. or what to do with your children if you are Time. The riddle might, therefore, look as not important first, because what IKEA is selling is a shed that can be boat and vice-versa; second because, what interests WI is the fact that the IKEA drawings use a style with a kind of economy similar to Greek vases. However, since WI is really good, she/he can see that what lies behind all the drawings in IKEA’s booklet is a story of transformation, a sort of reversible metamorphosis of objects. 

What is quite intriguing in this story is the ability of one man made object to behave like a god, or a devil, since only these can restore their initial form after a transformation. But, for now, let’s consider that the shed-ikea-booklet contains knowledge about how to make that reversibility possible. 

  

Secondly, let’s consider that Simon presented the riddle by a sequence of engravings, almost like a deck of cards. Card 1. Simon sees Shed. Card 2. Simon dismantle shed. 3. Simon builds boat. 4. Simon navigates boat. 5. Simon dismantle boat. 6. Simon builds shed. 7. Simon dwells in the shed. 

WI thinks immediately of Adam’s hut in Paradise often depicted as the origin of architecture and of course of countless depictions of boat travels representing transitions in spiritual live. WI also notices that there are seven cards, the same number of steps in Jacob’s ladder. So this sequence can be placed among other representations of relations between humans and the divine and processes of transition through transformation. Again, cultural knowledge is crucial, rather than instrumental knowledge. Such knowledge with capital K is embedded in these representations. This Knowledge is a collective (through Time) response to the question “Why?” and not an individual response to the question “How?”. 



Thirdly, let’s imagine that Simon presents the riddle in an image with the same power of Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit. An image that seen with emphasis in some elements looks like a shed, and with emphasis in other elements of the same image, looks like a boat. One can easily imagine such image looking alike a childish Noah’s Ark upside down.

WI would think of hermaphroditism and its representations, bissexuality, yin and yang. Also in the Trojan Horse (should be know as Greek Horse). WI would think of ambiguity in general, again, surprising Simon. WI had to think also about Picasso and cubism and, of course Heisenberg’s principle. 



Is all this knowledge contained in the shed?. 

No, it is contained in the images of the shed.

But isn’t all that knowledge, in fact, only in WI’s mind?

No, that knowledge in WI’s mind is only a fraction of the knowledge that the images of the shed-boat contain. Cultural Knowledge persists and remains outside WI’s and others minds. Cultural Knowledge only exists if cultural vehicles are available. Cultural knowledge hangs on images and texts. 



So, for that matter, we can teach WI to look at designed objects the way she/he looks at images. 

WI gives a try at the shed:



There is no point at looking at the shed as shed since what is here at stake is a shed that is convertible into boat.

So WI looks at the shed in shed state trying to understand if the shed carries some Knowledge about being a boat.



WI remembers the story of a Portuguese friend in the 80’s that arrived in Praia da Luz with a tent. Due to strong winds he was unable to assemble the tent and so, went to the beach and slept under one of those fisherman’s boats stationed upside down in the sand. So this shed-boat riddle has to do with the reversibility of shelters into vehicles, and vice-versa.

Images of Noah’s ark also come to her/his mind persistently. 

Knowledge about lightness, provisional status, economy of means, simplicity of assemblage in shelters are contained in the shed. As a shelter, the shed is different from a house, a cave, a cabin, even a hut. WI knows that God did not landed the shed there from nothing. Humans made the shed, assembled the shed. A culture made the shed. If the shed may become a boat and a shed again is because it contains, at least, the knowledge for its assemblage. But contains more. Contains knowledge about its own transportability. 

Simon do not possess the knowledge about transforming shed into boats! Simon never transformed a shed into a boat. 

Driven by the love for the shed, Simon understands that the knowledge contained in the shed is knowledge about how to assemble that particular shed and of course the cultural knowledge about the portability of sheds, the float ability of wood, etc.

The knowledge contained in the shed belongs not only to Simon but also to the ones that designed the shed to be easy assembled, the ones that assemble the shed in the first place and to the culture that created a provisional status for sheds. WI remember photographs from California’s gold rush, English lower middle class backyards or even Shackleton’s hut in the antartic. 

A culture of sheds ready (wishing) to be transformed in boats. 



Best regards,

Eduardo,



Eduardo Corte-Real

PhD Arch.

Associate Professor

Professor Associado com Agregação

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