Art and Experience in the Age of the Astrolabe
Ittai Weinryb’s project as Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices fellow focuses on the reception and distribution of mathematical knowledge presented through the technology of the astrolabe in the Mediterranean environ in the Middle Ages. The astrolabe, a sophisticated inclinometer used by scholars, navigators and astrologers, was a fundamental scientific tool for the amassment of numerical and visual knowledge. Weinryb’s project carefully examines the place of the astrolabe’s technology and its relation to the production of data such as distance, proportion, length and depth as well as to its influence on the production of astrological knowledge. The project further shows that inter-regional interactions in the science of astrology in the Middle Ages were positioned in parallel movement to discourse in image and object production at that period. Thus, the reception of the technology of the astrolabe and the discourse regarding the actual fabrication of the inclinometer, this project shows, served as a protagonists in the discourse regarding the nature of object and image around the Mediterranean environ and beyond.