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title: Notes on The shape of Infinity by Geller

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# Notes on The shape of Infinity by Geller

- **What questions do Gellers arguments raise?**

-- The Libary of Babel- "Unlimited, cyclical", No end and no begining

No death no meeting the ground an infinite space, everything is the same its space that continues going with no end.

What shape is the infinity?
Does it have a shape?

Geller compares the library of Babel to Clarke's book, Piranesi's infinite house grandeur, in that both the house and the library are infinite. Both show an infinite world that will never stop showing new things.

- Having an obligation to the infinte
- Look into Gorogoa (Jason Roberts, 2017)- Game
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Piranesi- Book title and character name are a direct reference to (Giovanni Battista Piranesi) an Italian architect/artist/archaeologist of the 18th century. Restored the Santa Maria del Priorato Church. Most famous work: Carceri d'invenzione.

- Piranesi Effect- it can be something to do with a feeling of unease and ambiguity of things being out of place or time.
- Piranesi's prisons composed whilst artist was sick with malaria.

Yourcenar quates: "Fever did not open for Piranesi the doors to a world of mental confusion, but to realms dangerously vaster and more complex than the young engraver had hiltherto lived in, the dream of a builder drunk on pure volumes, pure space" {1}

- Connecting differences in space (multiple vanishing points on engravings, seamlessly incorporating foreground and background, construction on top of and below each other)
- The hero is space

**Yourcenar quates**- "Such gnats do not seem to notice they are buzzing on the brink of the abyss" {2}

- Abyss defines, a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm- reflects space as being infinite.
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- Manifold Garden - Game by William Chyr's asks to plunge into an abyss over and over (containing different possibilities) it drags infinity. Puzzle game with recursive Universe, shiftable gravity. 

This reflects to Yourcenars quote {2}, theres no character, no space around, no shadow, no dialouge.

- Manifold Gardens and Piranesi's architecture both describe a place or space that has multiple possibilities that are like a dream, the expansion from the real world, however, can be found in it. It could as well define a dream where the dreamer is the creator of their world, having multiple possibilities, *and infinite* choices, there are no boundaries to outcomes in dreams. The same is described bY Geller and Yourcenar relating to the Manifold Gardens and Piranesi's architecture, loops of space same yet different with a purpose and for some not. Reflecting to Yourcenar's quote {2}

- Taste of infinity first hand
- Space being infinite but being limited by time
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Geller lists all these unique people who were attempting to bring out infinity with their work but were limited to time. As there are multiple possibilities a human can have but is being limited to time. 

- Geller comapres infinity being no closer than a single gear

Opalka is a french/polish artist attempting to paint infinity. Opalka was painting for 46 years on a black canvas, his painting was numbers starting at 1 and going forward. 

Was Opalka trying to reach infinity but had no time?

***Gellers Arguemtns:*** 
- "When you draw infinity theres visual space for implication"
- "When you describe it, you can skip to the point using the leaps and bounds of language"
- "But there are no shortcuts when you write it down, one at a time"

- Piranesi helped Marguerite Yourcenar find the infinite, Yourcenars writing brought solace to Opalka. At the end of one of her short stories, a painter and his assistant disappear into a painted world of their own, avoiding and accepting death in equal measure.

- "In this sense we are eternal" - Opalka
- Infinte cannot be reached
- All these people found the pursuit that they found meaning. A conversation with the eternal. 

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## References

Book:
Piranesi, GB., Piranesi, G., 1761. Carceri d'invenzione. 2nd ed. [Roma]: [l'Autore], pp.178-217.

Images:
Opalka, R., 2022. 1965/1 - ∞, Detail 511130-512739. [image] Available at: <https://www.wikiart.org/en/roman-opalka/1965-1-d-tail-511130-512739> [Accessed 2 October 2022]

Video:
Geller, J., 2020. The Shape of Infinity. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm5Ogh_c0Ig&t=1332s&ab_channel=JacobGeller> [Accessed 2 October 2022].