Athanasius Kirchner (1602 to 1680)

Athanasius Kirchner was one of the guys involved in the Voynich case. Here are some interesting facts about his life:

Athanasius Kirchner (1602 to 1680) was a well educated Jesuite monk. He was a professor, and so did some interesting scientific work. He became famous as a specialist in foreign languages like the Coptic language and the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were not deciphered at this time. He also worked in the field of natural sciences, including the construction of a calculating machine, the mapping of water currents in the sea as well as of the moon. There are several descriptions of optical phenomenae like the afterimages of the eye. He claims to have invented the Laterna Magica. We know now that this is not true, as the first descriptions of it date from 1558. However, he probably reinvented it.
Athanasius Kirchner is most famous for one book, Mundus Subterraneus (About The World Underground). In this book, he describes numerous undergound phenomenae all over the world, caves, mines, lava flows, underground water channels, and many more. Some of his descriptions look pretty strange and phantastic, some are simple misinterpretations because of ignorance. Others show an enormous amount of common sense. The importance of this book is not primarly based on the facts described therein, but also on the way it was written. It is the first attempt in history to write a scientific book based on observation and facts instead of legends and interpretations of the Bible. In this sense, it is the first scientific book in human history -- and the start of modern science.

Voynich Manuscript

My latest assignment as linguist brought me in touch with the so-called Voynich Manuscript.



It is named after Polish librarian Wilfried Voynich, who is said to have gotten it from the library of a Jesuit monastry in Upper Italy. Nobody has ever found out more about the origin and meaning of this manuscript. Some linguists say though that the language this manuscript is written in is no European one but rather one from Polynesia.



Experts from Yale University, whose library holds the original manuscript, attribute it to Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (1214 to 1292). Still others attribute it either to Elizabethan doctor and magician John Dee (1527-1608). Some even assume it is a pseudo-medieval sham from 17th century, or the product of a pathologically sick mind.

Ueno Piece

This image shows a work of art made after some sketches by Toyokuni. The art work is these light stelas at the top end of the strange building. It has been removed years ago due to some troubles with the neighbourhood and a dubious religious group. I´m very tired because of a jetlag, but I´ll write more about this stuff soon.

The 24 Hour Lie

The elevator stopped on almost every floor. People left the cabin, people hopped on. Sometimes the door opened with nobody waiting outside the door. The people in the cabin were looking suspiciously at each other. Who had pressed the wrong button? When the cabin had almost reached the floor my room is on, it was returning down to the basement. This elevator had definitely been built to waste time -- my time! Another guy who had already been on the elevator when I got in sighed and muttered something like "the big 24 hour lie".

Flashback: I had met Bill Watson for breakfast. Continental breakfast. He seemed very rested -- as fresh as a mountain stream. Obviously, the past pastis-drenched night hadn't left any marks on him. We talked a lot about Japanese habits and culture. Again we talked about this artist, Toyokuni. Bill knows a lot about his early works. I especially remember one work he mentioned -- "Time Tracks" or "TT".
When Toyokuni was asked to participate in an exhibition, he used to record 24 hours of the local speaking clock. In almost every country there's a telephone number for getting the right time -- usually spoken by a very unemotional voice.
Toyokuni took all those tapes and made a cutup from them. Mostly you could hear a normal time flow. But then there were what you could call "time hiccups" -- the normal time line jumped back and forth 10 minutes. Sometimes time stood still, repeating the same time stamp for 5 minutes. Sometimes it skipped at random or went backwards. Everything was made from these tapes, spoken by these over-synthetic telephone voice. Despite all these tricks, the time on these cutup tapes would always synchronize with the real time again, usually at 5:30 in the morning. I don't know why Toyokuni had chosen this time, he probably was an early riser. Personally, I think this choice of time is pretty extravagant, since nobody would realize this synchronization of time except for some museum staff members who were still or already working that early in the morning.
Toyokuni created several of these time tracks, naming them "TT Tokyo", "TT Munich", "TT Ottawa", etc., depending on the place the exhibition would take place. Usually, he'd present only the local time track of the city where he'd have his exhibition. On very rare occasions, he'd also present time tracks from other cities, but never mix them with each other. Yeah.

Being caught in that oxygen-poor capsule now, I got the uneasy feeling that this elevator could be controlled by a Toyokuni algorithm. Cripes!

Remote Control From The Past

Didn´t sleep too well last night. Had no more French nightmares, though I dreamt of a speaking electrical toothbrush. Well, most of the time it was humming but then it repeatedly said: "Don´t forget to tell somebody about me. It´s important." Yeah, that´s what it said. It was placed on a small white shelf. One week in Tokyo, and the machines come alive in your nightmares...
On the morning show on TV they showed a guy covered with bees. This beesuit event was part of the opening celebration of a new subway station somewhere in South Korea. Bees and subways? I just can´t find the link.

Brushing my teeth with my normal toothbrush I just thought that last evening was part of my strange dreams but it wasn´t. Met an American art collector, Bill Watson. He told me the strange story about an artwork he bought from the Kupferstock Collection. Kupferstock and Toyokuni, that´s the artist´s name, are both dead. The first one died last week near Honolulu, the other died in the 80s. The piece of art isn´t something material- at least not yet. Toyokuni gave some envelopes to a notary. They included plans for some conceptual art and a detailed timetable when to open and publish them. Kupferstock bought them all decades ago without knowing anything about their content. Watson was the first person to open one of these messages from the past. Sitting at the Provence Bar he told me: "It lead me right here! Understand? That´s what it did. It lead me to this hotel bar". He told me lot of things about Toyokuni, about Fluxus and things like "remote control from the past".

My head is still too heavy from yesterday, and my mind is still too confused to think clearly. Yet there are a couple of things that don't seem to make any sense at all:
This hotel had been buildt in 1994. Toyokuni died in the 80ties. Watson travels half way round the globe in order to have some drinks at a hotel bar with a stranger. Is this art? Is this remote control? I´ll meet this guy for breakfast. Maybe after a good breakfast with scrambled eggs and French toast, everything will make more sense.