Print Study Room: FYE 2020

A black and white blurred photograph of a mountainous island in a seascape.

Todd Webb, Photogram, 1969, gelatin silver print mounted on board, The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2017.41.244

White clock hands over a blue, starry sky above white clouds with black and white text, "STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS TED CHIANG."

All incoming Skidmore students are reading Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang in the summer of 2020 as part of their First-Year Experience (FYE).

Chiang describes the eight stories as “thought experiments” that challenge our assumptions and engage our curiosity about fundamental human truths and the nature of time, loss, beauty, and knowledge.

We invite students to illustrate each story in the book using images of objects from the Tang collection.

Below are eight sections, one for each story, that feature artworks selected by students and faculty to express an idea or emotion inspired by their reading. Each artwork is from the Tang collection; the captions explain a bit about the connection between the artwork and Chiang’s stories.

We hope that viewing this project will spark curiosity, reflection, and conversation for you as well.

Anchor name: Tower Of Babylon

Tower of Babylon

A white silhouette of a boy falling from a black net being shaken out by the black silhouette of a woman. A black silhouette of an angel woman floats to the side of the net.

Kara Walker, The Emancipation Approximation (Scene 14), 1999-2000, screen print on Somerest 500G paper, 44 x 34 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero, 2015.23.1.6

“I would use this image to illustrate The Tower of Babylon. It evokes the twisted path upward to heaven’s gate, and asks the question of who deserves to try the journey.” – Dominique Vuvan, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

An abstract painting of a forest with chopped tree trunks near the front and stone-like and metal-like materials scattered around the damaged trees.

Whiting Tennis, Wilderness Painting, 2011, acrylic and collage on canvas, 96 ¼ x 108 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of The New Foundation Seattle, 2012.13

“The Tower of Babylon asks the reader to think about what it means to try to understand a hyperobject–something that is outside of the bounds of our understanding, perhaps unknowable. When I look at this piece by Whiting Tennis, I don’t know quite what I’m looking at. The more I study it, the more unsure I am of what I’m seeing. I imagine that this is what the characters in the story feel as well.” – Erica Wojcik, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Anchor name: Understand

Understand

An abstract, optical illusion of blue and black circles on a yellow and black background.

Victor Vasarely, Pengo-Z, 1975, screen print, 25 ½ x 19 ½ inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of Leon N. Nad, 1984.489

“This image reminds me of Greco who could detect patterns better than anyone else. That is until Reynolds appeared in the story.” – Marketa Wolfe, Associate Professor, Department of Economics

A blue and white screenprint of an open palm divided in sections covered with symbols from Hinduism. Above and below the hand are phrases in Sanskrit.

Corita Kent, p is for palm (from international signal code alphabet), 1968, serigraph, 17 ½ x 23 1/8 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of Harry Hambly, serigrapher, Hambly Studios, 2016.14.129

“We all have knowledge that we take for granted. We know it like the ‘back of our hand.’ We must have learned it, but we don’t know how or when. What if you woke up tomorrow and knew organic chemistry—knew it like the back of your hand? The next morning you might wake with a taken for granted knowledge of Tagalog, origami, and human neurology. You might find that you understand just about everything with no sense of how or when you came to understand it. What is the best that could come of this? What is the worst?” – Amon Emeka, Director of the First-Year Experience & Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

Anchor name: Division By Zero

Division By Zero

A black and white photograph of a snowflake viewed through a microscope.

Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley, Snowflake, 1905, gold-chloride-toned microphotograph, 3 x 4 inches, The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2017.41.185

“I would like to propose the artwork for Division by Zero as this 1905 Snowflake by Wilson Alwyn. I chose specifically this one because snowflakes embody the beauty of mathematical properties while also serving as inspiration to many writers of prose and poetry over the centuries. The darkness behind the snowflake and the image’s black and white color might reflect the emptiness of lost meaning in a mathematical world once filled with color for Renee, while this particular snowflake’s pattern is neither so ornate nor so dense to detract from the significance of the dark background.” – Nicole Wong ’21

Anchor name: Story Of Your Life

Story of Your Life

A blue and green abstract artwork with pink, black, and yellow features that appear plant-like or reference other elements found in nature on an oddly shaped canvas.

Franklin Williams, A Beautiful Dark Moment, 1973, acrylic paint, twine, yarn, painted fabric, fabric, canvas, cotton batting, 40 x 48 ½ x 2 ¾ inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of the Alex Katz Foundation, 2017.50.4

“What does this image show us? An arrival from above? Dark patches that mirror and invert and, yet also, reflect? Parenthetical yellow brackets that seem to suggest inclusion—a space apart? And, also external aspects beyond the world inside the parentheses. Does this suggest a moment of arrival, understanding, misunderstanding?” – Tillman Nechtman, Professor and Chair, Department of History

Anchor name: Seventy Two Letters

Seventy-Two Letters

Frank Moore, drawing for “Camellia” by Frank Moore and Jim Self, 1987, gouache on paper, 11 ½ x 17 1/8 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of the Gesso Foundation, 2016.20.195

“Seventy-Two Letters takes us into a steampunk world where nomenclature—placing a name in a slot in an automaton—brings the creature to life. Moore and Self create a series of figures that blend human and mechanical qualities that evoke Ted Chiang’s Seventy-Two Letters. What happens if we imagine these figures as we read Chiang’s story?” – Catherine Golden, Professor, Department of English

A black and white photograph of an old, light-skinned standing next to a younger, light-skinned man behind a contraption dripping water from two different sides.

Harold Edgerton, Double-Piddler Machine, 1989, gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of Arlette and Gus Kayafas, 2016.18.3

“In this photograph by Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton, two men watch a Piddler machine in action. Edgerton, a photographer and MIT professor, developed the Piddler, a machine that uses water and light, to visualize a strobe effect. In the photograph, the camera’s lens stares back across the display to meet the men’s gaze. To a viewer likely unfamiliar with the device pictured, the image’s eerie quality leaves us wondering about the nature of the experiment underway. Are these men scientists? What knowledge do they wield and what impact might it have on our world, on our lives? In Seventy-Two Letters, Chiang asks us to consider the intersection of science, humanity, and the divine. What makes us human and what lengths will we go to in order to ensure our survival? Questions especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence, commercial space travel, and the rise of the internet, Seventy-Two Letters presents us with a challenge that only science can conquer but that might, in turn, raise new ethical dilemmas.” – Mary Kate Donovan, Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish

Anchor name: The Evolution Of Human Science

The Evolution of Human Science

A collage of two eyes, an open mouth with a tongue out, and an exploding volcano cut out from magazines on an old scientific drawing of uterine tumors.

Wangechi Mutu, Tumors of the Uterus (from Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors), 2006, collage on digital print, 23 x 17 inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero, 2016.27.12

“I chose this piece by Wangechi Mutu because its mixed media conveyed what I interpreted in Chiang’s piece as the dichotomy of "metahumans” and regular humans new coexistence; I’m still not sure if the old medical diagram that serves as the base of Mutu’s piece stands out as the meta or the human in this analysis. This print was also evocative, in similar ways to the writing piece, in its prompt of valuable questions regarding the ethics and at whose possible expense have these advances in science been made.“– Iris Mann ’22

Anchor name: Hell Is The Absence Of God

Hell Is the Absence of God

A black and white photograph of an old, light-skinned, stern looking man in a short cloak carrying a lamb.

Brassaï, Christmas Eve Mass, Les-Baux-de-Provence, printed 1954, gelatin silver print, 11 5/8 x 9 inches, The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2018.38.526

“Here we see an image titled Christmas Eve Mass, Les-Baux-de-Provence, and we see a man carrying a lamb – clearly in some way a reference to the Christian symbolism of “the Lamb of God.” And yet, the image does not carry with it the caring, the hope, the certainty that is often associated with Christian art and symbolism. Who is this man? Where is he taking the lamb? For what purpose? The lamb looks worried. Is this a moment of celebration – a Christmas Eve Mass – or is this a moment of angst and, possibly, darkness?” – Tillman Nechtman, Professor and Chair, Department of History

Anchor name: Liking What You See A Documentary

Liking What You See: A Documentary

A grid of eight photographs of light-skinned woman not wearing makeup in the top row and then the same women wearing makeup in the bottom row.

Joachim Schmid, Archiv #715, 1998, collage on paper, 15 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches, Tang Teaching Museum, gift of the artist, 2016.22.1.512

“A calliagnosic perceives faces perfectly well; he or she can tell the difference between a pointed chin and a receding one, a straight nose and a crooked one, clear skin and blemished skin. He or she simply doesn’t experience any aesthetic reaction to those differences.” – Thomas “Pat” Oles, Associate Professor, Department of Social Work

Anchor name: Close Looking

Close-Reading Exercise: Visualizing Text as Art with Stories of Your Life and Others

We invite you to choose an artwork from the Tang collection to illustrate Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. When presenting artwork to a new audience, museum educators often use a close-looking exercise called Visual Thinking Strategies to discuss observations. Based on this method, the following questions are examples of things to think about when making your selection.

• Think about what art medium could best visually represent your thoughts about each story in Stories of Your Life and Others. Do you envision a photograph, painting, print, sculpture, or installation?

• Does the story feel like it could be set in the present, past, or future?

• What images come to mind while reading the story? What physical descriptions of objects or symbols does Chiang provide in the narrative?

• What type of environment—geographical area, a specific landscape, or architecture—do you imagine? What does it feel like to be in this place you imagine?

• What colors does the story evoke? Are they muted or vibrant? Are they dark or bright?

• Chose a character and imagine you were them, what feelings would you have? What other types of experience can you relate to those emotions?

• What do you imagine the characters look like? Do they have a certain style? How do they dress? How do they accessorize?

Show Less