The Tautology of Typology

The Tautology of Typology
Digital Prints, Single Channel Projection, Wall Drawing
Dimensions Variable
2008
Exhibited first at Bombay Art Gallery in third_life, a group show curated by Gitanjali Dang

KEYWORDS
+ contradictions of language
+ patterns of cognition
+ the dynamics of classification
+ scientific diagrams
+ information visualization
+ representations of complexity
+ the empty promise of ‘comprehension’?

The primary impulse in this body of work can be summarised by the mock-formulation stated below. For convenience, let us call it the Cantordust Conjecture or CC.

We propose that,
Logos = Typos . . . . . . . . (1)
It follows from (1) then,
Typology = Logos Logos = Typos Typos
Typology then displays a circular repetition.
Therefore,
it is a Tautology.

CC argues that all acts of (human) knowledge (Logos) are ultimately acts of classification and concerned with the construction of the relevant typology (Typos). Drawing from the etymology of the English suffix, “-logy” – widely used in naming various disciplines like anthropology or geology - Logos here is used to indicate formalised bodies of knowledge.

CC could also be read as a self-reflexive comment on the oscillation between difference and sameness in human cognition: while we can perceive a given thing in its specificity only when we can decipher the contours that separate it from other things, it’s also true that if each and every thing were irreducible in its specificity with a complete lack of shared characteristics with any other thing, then the sheer sensorial overload could bring the cognitive mechanism to a halt. However, the foregrounding of ‘cognition’ here should not be read as a valorisation of any ‘empirical’ experience divorced from the mediations of language.