“Linking Venus”. New Technologies of Memory and the Reconfiguration of Space at the Warburg Library.

Abstract

The Hamburg art historian Aby Warburg (1866- 1929) anticipated what, in network science, we would call today the practice and mapping of complex patterns of information. Both his Library and his last project Mnemosyne were conceived as experiences of conceptual and emotional rhizomatic connection. In our days, his idea of Kulturwissensschaft presents a number of “elective affinities” with the concepts of “transdisciplinarity” (Nicolescu 2002), “convergence” (Jenkins 2006) and “information visualization” (Lima 2011), suggesting that digital technologies could enhance the resources of the Warburg Library in ways that could not only reflect but also expand the original plan of his founder. On these assumptions, this article investigates how digital media – including linked data – are likely to affect the transdisciplinary process of knowledge production represented in paper format in the Warburg Library. We look at how these have been developed in the digital resources of the Warburg Institute, their potential for further development and what impact they have on the process of knowledge production and scholarly training. It concentrates on the specific case study of a mythological figure, Venus, examining how the potential connections between images and texts available in the Library can be reconfigured in the digital space.