Unit 6 - Disappearing Through The Skylight
Disappearing Through The Skylight
Osborne Bennett Hardison Jr.
Science is committed to the universal. A sign of this is that the more successful a science becomes, the broader the agreement about its basic concepts: there is not a separate Chinese or American or Soviet thermodynamics, for example, there is simply thermodynamics. For several decades of the twentieth century there was a Western and a Soviet genetics, the latter associated with Lysenko's theory that environmental stress can produce genetic mutations. Today Lysenko's theory is discredited, and there is now only one genetics.
As the corollary of science, technology also exhibits the universalizing tendency. This is why the spread of technology makes the world look ever more homogeneous. Architectural styles, dress styles, musical styles-even eating styles-tend increasingly to be world styles. The world looks more homogeneous because it is more homogeneous. Children who grow up in this world therefore experience it as a sameness rather than a diversity, and because their identities are shaped by this sameness, their sense of differences among cultures and individuals diminishes. As buildings become more alike, the people who inhabit the buildings become more alike. The result is described precisely in a phrase that is already familiar "the disappearance of history”.
The automobile illustrates the point with great clarity. A technological innovation like streamlining or all-welded body construction may be rejected initially, but if it is important to the efficiency or economics of automobiles, it will reappear in different ways until it is not only accepted but universally regarded as. Today's automobile is no longer unique to a given company or even to a given national culture, its basic features are found, with variations, in automobiles in general, no matter who makes them.
A few years ago the Ford Motor Company came up with the Fiesta, which it called the "World Car." Advertisements showed it surrounded by the flags of all nations. Ford explained that the cylinder block was made in England, the carburetor in Ireland, the transmission in France, the wheels in Belgium, and so forth.
The Fiesta appears to have sunk Without a trace. But the idea of a world car was inevitable. It was the automotive equivalent of the International Style. Ten years after the Fiesta, all of the large automakers were international. Americans had Plants in Europe, Asia, and South America, and Europeans and Japanese had plants in America and South America, and in the Soviet Union Fiat Fiat (= Fabbrica Italiana Automobile Torino ) workers refreshed themselves with Pepsi-Cola). In the fullness of time international automakers will have plants in Egypt and India and the People's Republic of China.
As in architecture, so in automaking. In a given cost range, the same technology tends to produce the same solutions. The visual evidence for this is as obvious for cars as for buildings. Today, if you choose models in the same price range, you will be hard put at 500 paces to tell one make from another. In other words, the specifically American traits that lingered in American automobiles in the 1960s--traits that linked American cars to American history--are disappearing. Even the Volkswagen Beetle has disappeared and has taken with it the visible evidence of the history of streamlining that extends from D'Arcy Thompson to Carl Breer to Ferdinand Porsche.
If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the World Car he drives, modern man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, from one airport to the next, from one Holiday Inn to its successor three hundred miles down the road; but somehow his location never changes. He is cosmopolitan. The price he pays is that he no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the word. The benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the modern sense is everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.
The universalizing imperative of technology is irresistible. Barring the catastrophe of nuclear war, it will continue to shape both modern culture and the consciousness of those who inhabit that culture.
This brings us to art and history again. Reminiscing on the early work of Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, Madame Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia wrote of the discovery of the machine aesthetic in 1949:"I remember a time...when every artist thought he owed it to himself to turn his back on the Eiffel Tower, as a protest against the architectural blasphemy with which it filled the sky....The discovery and rehabilitation of ... machines soon generated propositions which evaded all tradition, above all, a mobile, extra human plasticity which was absolutely new....”
Art is, in one definition, simply an effort to name the real world. Are machines "the real world" or only its surface? Is the real world that easy to find? Science has shown the insubstantiality of the world. It has thus undermined an article of faith: the thingliness of things. At the same time, it has produced images of orders of reality underlying the thingliness of things. Are images of cells or of molecules or of galaxies more or less real than images of machines? Science has also produced images that are pure artifacts. Are images of self-squared dragons more or less real than images of molecules?
The skepticism of modern science about the thingliness of things implies a new appreciation of the humanity of art entirely consistent with Kandinsky's observation in On the Spiritual in Art that beautiful art "springs from inner need, which springs from the soul." Modern art opens on a world whose reality is not "out there" in nature defined as things seen from a middle distance but "in here" in the soul or the mind. It is a world radically emptied of history because it is a form of perception rather than a content.
The disappearance of history is thus a liberation--what Madame Buffet-Picabia refers to as the discovery of "a mobile extra-human plasticity which is absolutely new." Like science, modern art often expresses this feeling of liberation through play-in painting in the playfulness of Picasso and Joan Miro and in poetry in the nonsense of Dada and the mock heroics of a poem like Wallace Stevens's "The Comedian as the Letter C."
The playfulness of the modern aesthetic is, finally, its most striking--and also its most serious and, by corollary, its most disturbing--feature. The playfulness imitates the playfulness of science that produces game theory and virtual particles and black holes and that, by introducing human growth genes into cows, forces students of ethics to reexamine the definition of cannibalism.
The importance of play in the modern aesthetic should not come as a surprise. It is announced in every city in the developed world by the fantastic and playful buildings of postmodernism and neo-modernism and by the fantastic juxtapositions of architectural styles that typify collage city and urban adhocism.
Today modern culture includes the geometries of the International Style, the fantasies of facadism, and the gamesmanship of theme parks and museum villages. It pretends at times to be static but it is really dynamic. Its buildings move and sway and reflect dreamy visions of everything that is going on around them. It surrounds its citizens with the linear sculpture of pipelines and interstate highways and high-tension lines and the delicate virtuosities of the surfaces of the Chrysler Airflow and the Boeing 747 and the lacy weavings of circuits etched on silicon, as well as with the brutal assertiveness of oil tankers and bulldozers and the Tinkertoy complications of trusses and geodesic domes and lunar landers. It abounds in images and sounds and values utterly different from those of the world of natural things seen from a middle distance.
It is a human world, but one that is human in ways no one expected. The image it reveals is not the worn and battered face that stares from Leonardo's self-portrait much less the one that stares, bleary and uninspired, every morning from the bathroom mirror. These are the faces of history. It is, rather, the image of an eternally playful and eternally youthful power that makes order whether order is there or not and that having made one order is quite capable of putting it aside and creating an entirely different or the way a child might build one structure from a set of blocks and then without malice and purely in the spirit of play demolish it and begin again. It is an image of the power that made humanity possible in the first place.
The banks of the nineteenth century tended to be neoclassic structures of marble or granite faced with ponderous rows of columns. They made a statement" "We are solid. We are permanent. We are as reliable as history. Your money is safe in our vaults."
Today's banks are airy structures of steel and glass, or they are store-fronts with slot-machinelike terminals, or trailers parked on the lots of suburban shopping malls.
The vaults have been replaced by magnetic tapes. In a computer, money is sequences of digital signals endlessly recorded, erased, processed, and reprocessed, and endlessly modified by other computers. The statement of modern banks is "We are abstract like art and almost invisible like the Crystal Palace. If we exist at all, we exist as an airy medium in which your transactions are completed and your wealth increased."
That, perhaps, establishes the logical limit of the modern aesthetic. If so, the limit is a long way ahead, but it can be made out, just barely, through the haze over the road. As surely as nature is being swallowed up by the mind, the banks, you might say, are disappearing through their own skylights.
参考译文——从天窗中消失
从天窗中消失
小奥斯本本内特哈迪森
科学是能够为人们普遍接受的。有一个事实可用来说明这一点：一门科学发展程度越高，其基本概念就越能为人们普遍接受。举例而言，世界上就只有一种热力学，并不存在什么分开独立的中国热力学、美国热力学或者苏联热力学。在二十世纪的几十年的时间里，遗传学曾分为两派——西方遗传学和苏联遗传学。后者源于李森科的理论，即环境的作用可能造成遗传基因的变异。今天，李森科的理论已经被推翻，因此，世界上就只有一种遗传学了。
作为科学的自然产物，工艺技术也显示出一种世界通用的倾向。这就是为什么工艺技术的发展传播使世界呈现出一体化特征的原因。原本各异的世界各地的建筑风格、服饰风格、音乐风格，甚至饮食风格都越来越趋向于变成统一的世界流行风格了。世界呈现出同一性特征是因为它本来具有同一性。在这个世界上长大的儿童感受到的是一个千篇一律的世界而不是一个多样化的世界。他们的个性也受到这种同一性的影响，因此，在他们的感觉中，不同文化和个人之间的差异变得越来越小了。由于世界各地的建筑越来越千篇一律，居住在这些建筑里的人也越来越千人一面了。这样带来的结果用一句人们已经听熟的话来描述再恰当不过：历史要消失了。
以汽车为例即可非常清楚地证明这一点。诸如流线型或全焊接式车身结构一类的技术革新，一开始可能不被人接受，但假如这种技术革新在提高汽车制造业的工作效率和经济效益方面确有巨大作用，它便会一再地以各种变异的形式出现，直到最终它不仅会被接受，而且会被大家公认为是一种宝贵的成果。今天的汽车再也找不出某个汽车公司或某个民族文化的标志性特征了。一般的汽车，不管产于何地，其基本特征都大同小异。
几年前，福特汽车公司制造出一种菲爱斯塔（嘉年华）牌汽车，并将其称为"世界流行车"。这种车出现在广告上的形象是周围环绕着世界各国的国旗。福特公司解释说，这种汽车的汽缸活塞是英国产的，汽化器（化油器）是爱尔兰造的，变速器是法国产的，车轮是比利时产的，诸如此类。
这种菲爱斯塔牌汽车现在似乎已完全销声匿迹了，但这种制造世界流行汽车的设想计划却是势在必行的。这表明汽车业也像建筑等行业一样在向国际流行风格的方向发展。菲爱斯塔牌汽车问世十年后，所有大型汽车制造公司都已国际化。美国人在欧洲、亚洲和南美洲都开设了汽车厂。欧洲人和日本人也把他们的汽车厂设到了美国、南美洲以及苏联(菲亚特公司的工人在那儿可以喝到百事可乐来消乏解渴)。当时机成熟的时候，这些跨国型的汽车制造公司还会把他们的汽车厂设在埃及、印度和中华人民共和国。
汽车制造业的情形也像建筑业的情形一样。在一定的成本范围内，相同的工艺技术就能产生相同的产品。证明这一点的直观证据在汽车方面和建筑方面一样，都是显而易见的。今天，如果要你在同一价格档次的各型汽车中进行选择，从距离五百步的地方看是很难分辨出各种不同牌子型号的汽车的。换句话说，六十年代里美国汽车还保留着的美国特色，美国汽车中那种与美国历史相联系的特正在逐渐消失。甚至连德国的大众汽车公司的大众甲壳虫型汽车也丧失了自身原有的特色，而通过自己车型的变化演示了从达西·汤普森到卡尔·布里尔到费迪南德·波尔舍一代一代的流线型汽车设计发展史。
人创造了机器，而机器反过来也能塑造其创造者。由于汽车已普遍化，使用汽车的人也就司空见惯了。现代社会的人像他们驾驶的世界流行汽车一样正变得越来越彼此雷同。他们不再具有鲜明的个性特征，再不是某个特殊地理文化环境里孕育出来的特殊个人了。他们可以从一个装设空调的市场到另一个市场，从一个机场到另一个机场，从一个假日酒店到三百英里外的另一家酒店，不停地旅行运动，但他们所处的环境却可能永远一个样。他们是世界人，他们为此付出的代价是他们不再拥有一个传统意义的家。他们从中得到的好处则是开始觉得传统意义上的家是牢笼的别称，而现代意义的家则无处不是，自己身边周围的人又无不是自己的邻友。
工艺技术的普遍应用是不可抗拒的。只要没有核战争给世界带来毁灭性灾难，这种应用将继续影响现代文化以及创造这种文化的现代人的思想意识。
这又把我们的注意力带回到艺术和历史方面来了。迦百列布菲·皮卡比阿夫人追忆弗朗西斯·皮卡比阿和马塞尔·杜尚的早期作品时对1949年机器美学的产生作了这样的描写："我记得有一个时期…每一位艺术家表示对埃菲尔铁塔的蔑视，谴责这座污染天空，亵渎神明的建筑是自己义不容辞的责任…机器…的发明与发展很快就提出了一些传统思维完全无法解决的命题，一种全新的、灵活的、超出人的理解力的可塑性…"
曾有人下定义说，艺术就是一种给现实世界命名的尝试。机器是"现实世界"本身还是仅仅是其表面呢？现实世界容易发现吗？科学已经证明，世界是虚无的。这就动摇了人们认为世界的物质是客观实在的信念。同时，科学又创造出了潜存于客观实在之中的各种不同种类和范畴的现实世界的形象。机器的形象与细胞、分子或是银河系这些物体形象相比较，哪一个更实在呢？科学还创造出了纯属人造物的形象。一个张牙舞爪的龙的形象比分子的形象是更接近现实还是更远离现实呢？
现代科学对世界万物的客观实在性的怀疑意味着对艺术的性质需重新评价，这与康定斯基在《论艺术中的精神因素》一书中对美的艺术所作的评价是十分吻合的。他说，美的艺术是"发自人的灵魂深处的需要"。现代艺术所描绘的并不是用眼睛看到的物质世界的客观现实，而是人的内心世界所反映的现实。因为现代艺术所描绘的世界不是客观存在的物质世界，而是人的内心世界，所以，它是一个完全丧失了历史的世界。
因此，历史的消失是一种解放--即布菲皮卡比阿夫人所谓的"一种全新的、灵活的、超出人的理解力的可塑性"的发现。像科学一样，现代艺术往往也是通过玩耍的方式来表达这种思想解放的——在绘画艺术方面是通过毕加索和琼·米罗的玩耍性作品，在诗歌艺术方面是通过达达派的朦胧诗以及诸如华莱士·斯蒂文斯的《C字母一样的喜剧演员》一类的滑稽史诗。
现代美学的玩耍性说到底是其最突出的，也是最严肃的，而必然地也是最令人不安的特征。这种玩耍性是模仿产生了博奕论、虚构粒子和黑洞的科学的荒诞性。这种科学的玩耍性还通过把人的生长基因植入牛体，迫使伦理学的研究者重新审定食人肉的习性的定义。
玩耍在现代美学中的重要性不应引起惊讶。它在发达世界的每座城市里都通过后现代主义和新现代主义的奇形怪状和荒诞的建筑物，通过把各种建筑风格奇特地拼凑在一起得到反映，而这恰恰是拼贴画式的城市和无计划的大杂烩城市的典型表现。
今天，现代文化包括了国际风格的几何图形、传统门面与新型建筑相结合的奇特图案以及主题公园和博物馆村庄的游戏绝招。这种文化有时装成是静态的，但实际上却是生机勃勃的。体现这种文化的建筑移动、摇摆，就像做梦一样，反映了周围发生的一切。这种文化向其公民展示了体现几何图形的直线结构，如管道、州际公路和高压电线，也展示了富有艺术性的流线型克莱斯勒公司的气流汽车、波音747飞机以及硅片集成电路上的精细网织图案。现代文化也向其公民展示了无情地引人注目的庞然大物，油轮和推土机以及结构玩具的复杂设计、短线拱顶和登月车辆。它充满了想象、声音和价值，完全不同于我们肉眼所看到的我们周围世界的自然景物。
现代文化是一个显示人的特点的世界，但又不是人们想象的那种模样。它所表现的形象不是列奥纳多自画像上那种倦怠憔悴的面容，更不是每天早晨从浴室镜子里见到的模模糊糊、平平淡淡的面孔。这些都是历史的本来面目了。现代文化是一种永远具有玩耍性而又朝气蓬勃的力量，这种力量可以创造出某种秩序，不管这种秩序是否客观存在于现实世界之中。而且，在创造出一种秩序后，又完全有可能打破这种秩序，再创造一个完全不同的新秩序，就像一个小孩玩积木时已经拼造出一种结构后又毫无恶意地以纯粹的玩耍态度拆散重拼一样。这就是它使人类显示其特点的形象。
十九世纪的银行一般都是以大理石或花岗石砌成的新古典式建筑，正面装饰着一排排粗重的廊柱。它们向世人宣告："我们坚不可摧，我们永不衰朽，我们像历史一样令人信赖。您的钱储放在我们的地下保险库里可保绝对完全。"
今天的银行却是一些钢架玻璃结构的虚无飘渺的建筑，或是一些门前装有像自动售货机一样的计算机终端设备的商店门面，或是一些停放在城郊商业中心停车场上的挂车式活动房屋。
原先的地下保险库如今也换成了磁带来替代其职能。钱在电脑中变成了一系列数字信号，这些数字信号要不断地经过其他电脑一次次地录入、删除、处理、再处理并不断加以修改。现代银行向世人宣告的是："我们像艺术般的抽象，几乎像水晶宫般的无形。假如我们还存在的话，我们也只是以一种虚无飘渺的媒介而存在，通过这种媒介您们的交易得以进行，您们的财富得以增值。"
也许这就可以成为现代美学发展的逻辑上的极限。如果这样的话，这个极限点距离我们还有一段较长的路程，但其模糊的轮廓透过路上弥漫着的薄雾已依稀可辨。正如物质世界的客观现实逐渐消失于人们的头脑中一样，可以说，现代银行也正从自己的天窗中逐渐消失。
Key Words:
homogeneous [.hɔmə'dʒi:niəs]
adj. 同种的，相似的，同质的
fiat ['faiæt, ət]
n. 由（政府）授权而具有特别意义的
reappear [.ri:ə'piə]
vi. 再出现
aesthetic [i:s'θetik]
adj. 美学的，审美的，有美感的
blasphemy ['blæsfimi]
n. 亵渎神明，亵渎神明的言词
参考资料：
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(1)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(2)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
http://www.kekenet.com/Article/201508/39549shtml
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(4)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(5)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(6)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
高级英语第二册(MP3+中英字幕) 第6课:从天窗中消失(7)_品牌英语听力 - 可可英语
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原文链接：https://blog.csdn.net/hpdlzu80100/article/details/121702643