AFTON DICK
Roots of Meaning: Exploring beauty, function and context in natural objects
May 2025
Art and Philosophy BA Hons Dissertation
DOI 10.20933/100001379
Except where otherwise noted, the text in this dissertation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
All images, figures, and other third-party materials included in this dissertation are the copyright of their respective rights holders, unless otherwise stated. Reuse of these materials may require separate permission.
Abstract
Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini imitates encyclopaedic arrangements to present the ambiguous. In combination with indecipherable text and distinctive imagery to challenge traditional methods of meaning-making, it attempts to encourage ‘readers’ to explore alternative ways of interpretation. In so doing, we challenge the notion of boundaries; moments where visuals precede comprehension, where our understanding remains unshaped by rigid systems.
In parallel to the codex, by grounding ourselves in concrete structures, the codex also invites exploration of our own philosophical theories of aesthetics, function and context. It allows us to move on from established boundaries, revealing how even the act of attempting to interpret the work or this dissertation renders the engagement paradoxically redundant. Context, though seemingly constraining, is the very mechanism through which we push past those boundaries. Drawing on thinkers from objectoriented ontology and epistemology, this dissertation examines how structure and ambiguity coexist to shape meaning without incidentally creating altogether restrictive frameworks.
Codex Seraphinianus is a paradox: a work of enigmatic beauty that thrives on its lack of explicit meaning whilst relying on the very structure that allows concrete understanding. However, in this dissertation, we meditate on the dual nature of understanding and meaning through the tension of human nature. The Codex and the natural objects that inspire it inhabit the interplay between mystery and structure in which fosters new grounds of innovation and perception.
Question:-
“Howdoestheexaminationofnaturalobjects, viewedthroughthelensofhumanperceptionand theirinherentboundaries,evokephilosophical inquiriesintobeauty,function,andcontext?”
Introduction
The roots are the bond between seed and soil, forming an invisible and essential connection that nourishes life below while perpetually renewing its nature. Similarly, natural objects act as bridges between the tangible and the conceptual. Yet they are artifacts within their own right, carrying concepts of beauty, function and context. But despite their allure, they will never fully reveal their true nature leaving some mysteries outside of our understanding.
Both art and philosophy house concrete distinctions that engage the questioning of perception, meaning, and interpretation. These disciplines question reality and its boundaries, underscoring the transformative power of context and its connections with knowledge. Together, these fields offer rich systems of understanding which we interact with and assign belief to.
However, objects as vehicles of information of these systems are not immutable. By removing their grounding contexts, their beauty and meaning shift, becoming abstracted and redefined. This dissertation shall examine natural objects that exist within structured systems to inquire into philosophical concepts of beauty, function and context. Such as organizations like museums, in by which must adhere to the demands of specialties to create the basis for understanding: -
“Museums, in common with all other social institutions, serve many masters, and must play many tunes accordingly. Perhaps success can be defined by the ability to balance all the tunes that must be played and still make a sound worth listening to.” (Greenhill, 1992, pg.1)
Greenhill (1992) emphasizes that to gain a brief understanding of knowledge from a chosen area, one must explore systems of interpretation to instil significance to those objects from institutions that determine them to be so. Yet we must employ this method, not to instil a grounded perspective on our objects, but to understand how they extend outside of our traditional frameworks of understanding. Such work may suspend the belief of its viewers, to hold objects aloft in a limbo state of contextlessness like the work of Luigi Serafini and his cryptic encyclopedia Codex Seraphinianus. Juxtaposing against systems that hold objects and their concepts in a state of rigidity, in attempts to avoid the fluidity of interpretation when human comprehension is in the face of boundaries unknown. Before delving into the implications surrounding our questions and concepts, it is essential to establish our own foundational understanding of the distinctions that lie between the definitions of object and subject. By examining how objects are perceived within a relationship, we gain a better insight into the complications of interpretation and meaning making. As the reader risks existing detached from the premises in which Codex Seraphinianus suggests, but in by doing so we may also, paradoxically, ground ourselves. Only by showcasing their parallels can we then confer in both, becoming fully aware of the implications of grounding to a fixed state.
ContextualLinks
Before engaging with objects that are examples of concepts of context and beauty, it is vital to clarify the meanings between object and subject. The degrees of separation between the two, while seemingly straightforward, is pivotal in exploring how natural objects and their abstract forms invokes philosophical inquires. To explore these terms fully, we must suspend their fluidity and affix them into a set state, more easily reflected upon.
TheSubject
For something to be a subject, it must exist as a conscious entity and an agent outside of a system. Heidegger's critique of Descartes’ Dualism (Kadir Çüçen, no date) frames the subject as an entity capable of self-awareness yet distanced from the external system around us. In this system, the subject can not only perceive this world but act upon its environment. It will always take precedence over all else as it’s the only conscious that is aware of itself. Thereby it extends to art, where the subject serves as the creator and overarching theme. In self-portraits, for example, the artist becomes the origin and focus of the work, extending their identity outward into an objectified form. This duality — The subject as both the observer and agent — underscores its role in systems of interpretation; The observer will always treat itself as a subject over any other object, including other aware objects that declare itself as also a subject.
TheObject
"Each consciousness pursues the death of the other." (Trans. A.V.Miller,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1807, pg.111)
It is the conscious being that seeks out the death of the object through defining its state; it is either objectified or experienced. It exists within the preview of the subject, relying on the interaction to imbue the object with meaning. No matter how autonomous an object might first appear; its nature is indefinitely shaped by the perception of a subject. Within art, this dynamic is exceptionally pronounced. An artwork, regardless of its original context or intent, becomes an object within the presence of its audience. Objects are thereby not isolated entities, but more so akin to nodes in a web, connections that influence the networks they inhabit. Like roots that extend beyond their immediate environment, objects participate in systems that continually reshape their identity. This fluidity challenges the notion of objects often referenced to subjects as fixed. It suggests in essence that objects are never truly stable — changing with each act of observation, interaction, or interpretation.
Definitions frame boundaries and nuances between all things, acting as the framework in which hold these concepts aloft. However, we may, paradoxically, limit our understanding. The traditional method frames the subject as active and the object as passive obscuring their mutual influence. For example, by defining an artwork as ‘object’, we ignore the transformative role of the viewer that gives the work new meaning. Whilst labelling the artist, the individual themselves as the ‘subject’ restrains them to merely the actions of their creations. In so doing, we neglect the discussion of how their creations influence and redefine their own identity within the process.
For relationship between subject and object, and how we perceive them can alter its state of being. By grounding its definition via the use of specialisations like art and philosophy, we can better understand it within our own systems. We thereby forge connections; however, we must be aware what we classify as ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’ to appreciate their broader impact in the systems we create and the natural world.
Chapter1:-Contextualization
Objects exist in a dual state: firstly, their physical state as observed by man and simultaneously, symbols shaped by context that distract from its visual form. It’s this notion of ‘context’ that does not naturally belong to the object; it is directly tied to the human compacity to reshape the identity of an object through observation. Even the meaning of context is a human construct — Relying on our interaction with an object instead of the intrinsic quality of the object itself.
It is the subject that draws experience from the object, instead of remaining its most immediate, visceral form, we instead transform it from an artifact of its own making to a complex symbol that no longer exists in its purest form; a simple glance rather than a dissection of an object. It is a tendency rooted in our need to understand our environment, using objects as mirrors onto our own human existence. It is this tension that raises implications of object to subject relationship as how much of an object is truly its own, and how do we design over these objects. For both, such an institution employs this method to convey the world through only the eyes of human history. So it is in museums, wherein objects are removed from their external narratives and recontextualized to serve narratives and purposes outside of their original perimeter's.
“The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.” (Jean. B, Forget Foucault, p. 120)
Forget Foucault (2007) speaks on this incongruity. As the only world that remains as truth is often perceived as an external and fixed state, Baudrillard reminds us that we can only attempt to reason and contain truth by the construction of our own frameworks. This approach, however, often leads to a void; the object’s original essences are ascribed with our own constructed truths which lies the destruction of the original object for the intention of avoiding the same fate. It’s understandable for the subject to want clarity, for where is our reality than at a fixed point with no redeemable state apart from the one, we classify it as: -
“The photograph is a way of imprisoning reality… or a way of asserting that the world is somehow finite, and that the object seen can be captured and understood” (Sontag, On Photography, p. 17).
As Art historian Susan Sontag suggests, there is always a conflict between representation and reality. This is reproduced within museums as they attempt to capture and represent these objects. The act of collecting, much like the act of photographing, implies a system which distils, understands and preserves an object to a limited make-up. Humanity's pursuit of static representations and a cohesive state of being emphasizes the subject's interpretative role over the object’s own complexity. While this allows for an individual to approach and allow exchange and understanding, it often reinforces a limited window into a vast world. It is the ideology that there is only a finite nature of objects.
To investigate this relationship between objects and context, we must echo the way museums frame their objects within a broader conceptual discussion. Displays, like museum placards, serve as tools to explore, guiding us to how each object is understood. The isolation of the display within their conceptual ‘exhibit’ invites us how to consider fragments of meaning and truths. For how this relates to our subject to object relationship, where we are unconcerned due to our own self-obsession in relation to knowledge.
FunctionandPurpose
The desire for clarification is often deeply rooted for humanity's insight into their value, whether it is the terms of their discovered function, or a purpose imposed onto them, detached from their natural roots. Function suggests a perceived goal- but within the natural world, objects embody both facets, blurring the line between intrinsic and extrinsic importance. The construct of natural objects is not related to their material but their capacity to remain elusive in their intention, leaving the subject to continuously reframe and redefine their meanings to interplay with a broader ecosystem. To the subject, their purpose is only discovered through their examination of their full role within a broader system, however ignoring their impact they have as singular individuals. For it is us, the external observers, who take advantage of these closed systems.
For natural objects to occur, the creators of those objects must be unphased by purpose. As it is the invisible nature of reason that preserves the object and its values. For the subject, who is both creator and observer act; overanalyzing and discerning context from those minute actions of creation. For the subject, the necessity of finding the truth succeeds over all else, especially the object —Their existence provides grounds to simply react to the direct not for the in direct in which the observer can see.
This mirrors the hive-mind mentality observed in beehives.
The Honeycomb, which is the natural product formed is our primary source of discussion. It serves the fundamental needs of the hives to both provide structure to nurture. It’s this elaborate matrix of hexagonal cells that extend beyond more than utility transforming into symbols of efficacy and unintentional artistry through precise geometry. This however depicts how the subject shifts function and purpose onto reason, for bees do not have a sense of reason or common sense. It showcases that perhaps this interaction offers material benefit and intellectual inspiration, only enriching our understanding to seamlessly integrate form and purpose into our own replication. Whilst neglecting the grounds to in which the shape was built. Reflecting upon this, Martin Heidegger, suggests that: -
“The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.” (Heidegger. M, pg 32 )
What can be considered to be smaller than insects? Creatures frequently overlooked or dismissed by both subject and humanity alike. Heidegger highlights a crucial point, emphasizing the lines between object and subject, and furthermore suggesting the ‘small’ might hold significance beyond human perception. For the subject may not explicitly notice the notion or meaning of ‘small’ for we think ourselves as the great thinkers. Though often great thinkers don’t understand the raw immediacy that exists within our world, it contrasts against the tendency to impose external meanings to things we yet do not understand. That our boundaries limited to human purpose and are never wiser to external subjects including our own species. In this case we are the great thinkers, who transform objects into our own ‘reflection’ and nothing more than our own independent thoughts.
Elizabeth Clarkson’s Honeycomb Quilt (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015) reinforces this dynamic, demonstrating that the essence of an object’s function and purpose lies within the mechanisms behind its formation. Much like the bees in a hive, an artist operates without awareness of the full picture, driven by external stimuli like the circulation of pheromones with force to even subsume the subject within the hive. It’s born out of a reactive response to the external condition rather than premeditated design. Imposing reason onto objects often disconnects from the immediacy and adaptability of natural objects. Because the true artistry that lies within them is not the set reason or function of why they were made, but it’s adaptation to the changes of function through the process. As just how we embrace change within an artwork, a bee may not seek efficiency but merely a resolve to an immediate need, for others to then soon follow in its actions.
HoneycombQuilt,Clarkson.E
Symbolical
Earlier, we examined how objects may hold symbolic significance transcending both species and interrelations. Amongst the wealth of symbols recognised nigh-universally by object and subject alike, is that of death, or the harbinger of death. A universal idea that spans a vast wealth of context. Striking when seen as a potent visual; but the subject themselves constructs the triggers for that symbol to instil that experience onto the subject. As the object does not seek any relations and acts independently from any associated meaning. But an inbuilt instinct to avoid, yet for human nature we are taught via our connection to our external world. The subject, which is a human construct, we seek context through shared knowledge and experiences with others, not from the observing subject but an extension of that experience. They are merely representations that become assumptions of a system that is passed through generations for example death is not known personally. We cannot experience it without the destruction of the observing subject, we can only experience the second-hand observation of its impact. Objects, on the other hand, do not know death, not by its symbols or emblems to transform. But to both the alive object and static form, death is when it becomes other than itself. To become redefined into something it currently is not, to be either digested and in extension changed into a different form or matter. The subject, however, cannot withdraw the notion of relation and instead makes death into a universal idea. The poet and Philosopher Rainer Mari Rilke writes: -
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us." (Sorace, 2016)
Rilke (2016) suggests, compared to that of an object, the subject will always embody context as a universal experience though it never can be experienced by the subject; it is in fact that symbol that ultimately, we are undone by. Often the subject will restrain it to a stark, unyielding symbol — an object in which is a manifestation of other than itself. For Humans, a symbol of death such as a skull serves as a confrontation to its own life. It’s the romanticized existence that should remind us of the emptiness of the external world. That objects evoke a quiet, unrelenting truth. That it simply exists, the subject is the only one that imposes an invitation into motif, now to be feared in relation to other objects. It is our own cognization that seeks the reinterpretation of the object and subject. And, in so doing, seeks to destroy ourselves.
Within the artwork, Cow’s Skull: White rose by Georgia O'Keeffe (1931). We consider how human perception imposes symbolic meaning when perhaps object exist interdependently of such interpretations. We see how the artwork becomes more than just a depiction of objects. Often, art is the representation of how the act of reinterpretation either from a subject or an object sees itself as a subject as self-destructive. We project our own relationality, destroying the illusion of our own permeance on object. It showcases that though objects exist in our external world, we often connect nodes of truth, that, in so doing, confronts and reaffirms that humanity- the subject- reflect our own rationality upon ourselves, undoing our own existence.
If humanity's drive is to analyse, organize and contextualize objects within a grander narrative, such as within museums, we can approach Codex Seraphinianus as its anthesis. We construct coherent systems to connect disparate objects together, yet the Codex tears these systems down, regarding them and the notions underlying them with frank distaste. It denies the subject any satisfaction in finding recognisable patterns and coherence. It instead forces us to challenge the very frameworks that museums—and by extension, human culture—seek to uphold. It is a deliberate effort by Serafini to draw attention to its systems in order to provocatively counterpoint our institutionalized curations and methodologies.
The contrast between Codex Seraphinianus and the systems in which we create, is how Serafini scrutinizes the human tendency to impose order on the external world; to frustrate us is how we reflect upon our own actions and see how separate we are within the world and its objects. For what often is reflected within natural objects, is our own selfimage. As the subject will always take precedence over the object and cannot fully understand the nature of this external world.
Chapter2:-Recontextualization
Objects derive much of their meaning from the systems they inhabit —Environmental, cultural, or philosophical. When these objects are stripped of this framework, however, suspended independently with an obscured or absent context, we invite philosophical debate, at how meaning shifts when the anchor of interpretation is removed or altered. Yet objects existing without context, in practice, is functionally impossible, being involved in a human system and thus governed by the subject’s innate ability to act actively. All objects, even those seemingly devoid of discernible frameworks, exist with some form of reference — whether physical, conceptual or in relation to other objects. For an object to be perceived, it must already establish a relation to the observer, creating minimal requisite context through the act of observation itself. This interaction inherently ties the object to the subject’s own experiences, ensuring that complete contextlessness remains unattainable.
“The perceived world is always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence. This Thesis does not destroy either rationality or the absolute. It only tries to bring them down to earth” (Ponty.M, 2005, pg. 31)
Ponty’s statement highlights the centrality of perception and how it grounds the subject to the suggestion of a fixed world. The perceived world is not a pure object; it is the soil in which the subject is rooted, providing the essence of living as a conscious subject. In relevance to this, we should look at Codex Seraphinianus, which attempts to deliberately sever objects from traditional frameworks of understanding, presenting in a way that defies rational interpretation. Yet, Merleau-Ponty suggests that perception will always serve as the foundation of re-establishing meaning.
The codex exemplifies how even objects seemingly without context still interact with the subject's ability to rationalize and perceive. As through this perception, the subject engages with newfound objects, creating a new interpretative framework grounded by their own experience and assumptions. This aligns with Merleau-Ponty's viewpoint; however, the codex does not ground the subject but instead roots abstract concepts in the tangible and experiential. With the most imminent interaction with those objects being the bridge that walks across both, the images thereby contain aspects of both worlds simultaneously.
This manifests within Codex Seraphinianus (Archive, 2021). By presenting objects that defy and resist familiar systems of meaning, Luigi Serafini’s work invites viewers to engage with the act of perception itself as an interpretive and insightful process. The absence of clean and clear context shifts the focus onto the object’s inherent qualities for the subject’s role in constructing meaning. This echoes Ponty's assertation that perception grounds rationality and value. In the following section, we delve into Codex Seraphinianus as a study into functionality and aesthetics, analyzing how, devoid of context and traditional means of interpretation, we can reveal the fluid nature of the world in areas such as Art and Philosophy.
Published in 1981 (Serafini, L. and Notini,S. , 2013), Codex Seraphinianus is an illustrated encyclopedia, yet its contents resist translation. Written in an untranslatable language and populated with imaginative illustrations, the codex presents objects in recognizable scenes, but it’s source alien to us the subject. It explores areas of rationality, from science to nature in attempts to ground its own world in context, yet each image is suspended in a state of liminality. It challenges its reader by offering no explicit explanation or context for its objects to an external world. As previously referred to before (Ponty.M, 2005), the viewer themselves becomes the bridge between meaning-making and context and instead it becomes the acting force dependent on its own interpretation to fully apprehend rigidity. We engage with this work to both interrogate our own systems, the viewer-object interaction, and to redefine the means by which we assign meaning to the unfamiliar.
LanguageandCommunication
Language is at the center of meaning making as it connects between thought, culture, and perception betwixt subjects. For what may be untranslatable, we make assumptions in it’s place to ground it to the subject’s point of view. This parallels the codex as it deliberately defies convention, functioning as a purely visual experience left to the subject’s observation to understand. It forces the reader outside of our comfortable structural systems of linguistics to thereby make information a form of interpretation, as definitions are inherently fixed upon a language system. Making untranslatable languages symbols of the ineffable.
Serafini,L,CodexSeraphinianus
Introduction
The Dictionary of Untranslatables (Cassin, B. ,2014) explains the remarkable flexibility of the term ‘form’, encompassing a range of dimensions from physical, aesthetic and the metaphysical. It references the concept morphê as the aspect or contour, and schêma as shape or the manner of being. For our purposes, this suggests that a form is not merely a static visual structure but a dynamic interplay of essence and appearance. When examining the language of Seraphinianus , we are thereby constrained to the form of the language. Its visuals being that of form (morphê) whilst placement on the page is its manner of being (schêma) which all together evokes consistency. Like hieroglyphs, it can take interpretations past its context. This is why hieroglyphs can be understood universally as it’s up to the interpreter's way of reading that can alter its meaning, you can take its literal form as a physical manifestation of a word, or the symbolism behind that form that can correlate to other objects within a system.
The ornamental glyphs recall that of platonic distinctions (Silverman, A. , 2014) between form-model (paradeigma) and image-copy (eidôlon). These glyphs suggest that they belong to a higher system or grammar. However, they are left over with their image-copy. This echoes the tension between context and surface, where the aesthetic surface becomes the primary form of engagement. Yet in this case, the image copy, via the writings aesthetical values act as the exemplar rather than a pseudo. It is not falsifying information, but instead is the only source we can determine information from.
Codex Seraphinianus , though at first glance could be denigrated as a mere picture book, invaluably suggests that language once stripped away from reason, can in-fact inform context not via traditional methods but reinforcing the idea that boundaries of communication are not fixed but malleable, shaped by our perception. Even in the absence of linguistic content, the visual arrangement of those forms can communicate both its morphê and schêma.
When we investigate the pages of Seraphinianus, and glimpse pictures and ‘text’, our first instinct, owing to our traditional systems, is to separate them. However, the purpose of Serafini is not in understanding of its context or differentiation but lies instead in expanding our understanding of form and how the visual arrangement itself can tell us more than the directiveness of context.
ContinuityofContent
To truly experience an object, there must be a thread of familiarity —a foundation of stable footing for the observer may stand amidst surrealist ambiguities. In the previous section, we examined how the visual elements within Codex Seraphinianus ground the subject on unfamiliar terrain, acting as a bridge between the subject and depicted object. This relies on continuity, where familiar structures enhance the impact of alien context, allowing the viewer to find meaning within the unknown and be compelled to. To avoid complete disconnection from the source, there must be a sense of relation to reality. For instance, the work of H.R. Giger exemplifies this dynamic.
In Necronom IV (1976), Giger created a creature that straddles the lines between the human and the unknown; A design both unsettling and familiar, later adapted as the Xenomorph in Alien. Similarly, the codex employs the method within forms and organizational structures, following the same foundations that make information accessible, thereby grounding the subject not to the reality of life but instead the continuity that lies within its pages. By withholding clarity while simultaneously maintaining these recognizable patterns, reality-based or no, the reader is thus engaged, enabled to explore and push the boundaries of understanding both within the text and the methods they use to observe it. It attempts to draw both the attention of the subject whilst challenging their expectations of meaning, illustrating how the context can both anchor and disorient. By so doing, the codex offers meditation on the actions of the subject on objects, yet the process attempts to rewire human nature.
It is the codex that presents its objects as isolated entities, intentionally organized within a system we recognize that categorizes them into apparently distinct groups, ranging from lifeforms to vehicles. At a glimpse, each object appears to exist as isolated articles within a designated page, confined by the layout that defines it. However, the reader, the conscious agent engages with the codex, where connections thereby emerge, transcending the boundaries of these individual systems.
The innate human tendency to seek patterns and assign meanings beyond the initial analysis (apophenia) was touched upon earlier in the dissertation; the idea that objects are not wholly singular, but are subtly influenced by a complex, interconnected network that lies outside immediate comprehension. Yet it is the conscious agency of the subject —their capacity to construct relationships and make assumptions— that both breathes to life these connections but also denies obscurity, claiming pattern as an indication of relationship declaring an object as a pseudo-construct of relation —a reflection of the human impulse to impose order where none was intended.
Serafini,L.,CodexSeraphinianusVehicles
The pages above draw us into the juxtaposed experience of Codex Seraphinianus, compelling us to search for connections whilst simultaneously helping us confront our comforts of understanding, and their limits. Isolation and connections serve as the heart of the codex, its ability to appear structured whilst simultaneously defying comprehension challenges the subject to reconcile these opposing forces to form new methods of interpretation. Reading the codex not only involves a passive ‘onlooker’ effect, but encourages active participation, whereby seemingly independent objects invite speculative links and relationships in the mind's eye. It is within this tension that the codex thrives as a natural object. As we transition from the theoretical presentation of the codex and the Analysis of its imagery, this dichotomy becomes even more apparent.
“The power of judgement... brings the manifold of intuition under the unity of concepts, thereby forming an organized whole.” (Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 87)
Serafini intentionally manipulates the power of judgement to infuriate the reader, crafting his system in which each creation is meticulously categorized yet refuse any attempt to unify them outside of the context of the book. It disrupts expectations of rationality, when juxtaposed between natural and the unnatural. Within its pages, these boundaries blur, creating a world where both coexist seamlessly at the cost of the subject’s reliance on those distinctions. This raises the question of why I have treated Codex Seraphinianus as a natural object within the context of this discussion.
The focus here is not on the act of creation via the artwork itself, but rather on how the objects exist within a system. When referencing the ‘natural’, it is the form these objects take that is significant —they require no explanation, merely existing as pieces of a larger, imposed order. Typically, unnatural objects are designed with an apparent functionality or efficiency, bearing marks of purpose. In contrast, Serafini’s creations challenge us to question both their nature and their efficiency, daring us to reconcile their existence with the systems we instinctively impose upon them.
“Order, Unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopaedias” (Russel, B. ,1967, pp. 75)
Russel’s statement highlights how continuity serves as a mental foundation through which humanity interprets and organizes experience. Like before, experience is essential for an individual to refer to itself as an acting subject. So, by Codex Seraphinianus challenging and subverting it, presenting a world that resists the unifying structures, we instinctively seek to impose our actions makes the codex one of a kind. Where our own personal experiences and assumptions ultimately brings more frustration and any attempts to use logic often will dilute the context instead of leaving the object as an impression.
For within the codex, objects and systems are present within a sense of order, featuring pseudo-scientific classifications and layouts. Russel when it comes to catalogues and encyclopaedias remarks that they are tools, meant to distil the vastness of the natural world into something comprehensible. Is in fact only distilling its contents for the sake of general understanding. Serafini's creations defy any deep alignment with familiar logic or layout, leaving the reader adrift in a sea of discontinuity. The objects detailed with motifs, like the rainbow, are not meant to corelate, but allow their meanings to remain opaque, disconnected from a reality we recognise. As the best way to challenge the norm is to disrupt the human impulse to assign continuity, forcing the subject to confront the artificiality of their expectations.
Conclusion
The codex serves more than just a compendium of surrealistic imagery or an exercise in speculative world-building. It is a profound reflection on the human condition. The function is to frustrate and confuse, yet this disorientation is intentional, for we force the subject to grapple with the very methods and tools we use to interact with media and indeed, the natural world around us. In a society shaped by education, systems and accumulated experiences, we have lost the raw, unfiltered curiosity of childhood. To be able to engage with the unknown without preconceptions or the compulsion to explain. We are subjects that cannot see past our own experiences, often preceding any other object and individual in the process.
As children, we all encountered novels and books as visual objects, the lettering, layout and illustrations often captured our imagination and our minds to a far greater extent than the text we could not yet fully comprehend or read. It was the forms they created that conveyed meaning, before we parse the rigid structures of language and logic. The codex attempts to return us to a state of action, the act of observation unmediated by knowledge. It does so by mirroring our adult state: we are no longer innocent subjects but enforcers of agency. This frustration that arises because of codex denies these learned behaviours, in attempts to see past the boundaries we set for ourselves.
By referencing philosophers like Maurice Marleau-Ponty who remind us that perception is not a passive action but an active engagement within our environment, shaped by our individual embodied experiences. However, this engagement is subverted within the codex, as familiar forms and structures draw us in, but withhold our comprehension. Whilst Roland Barthes’ focuses on the death of the author juxtaposed by how Serafini neglects the authority of meaning, as both emphasizes how responsibility is placed entirely on the reader for them to decide. This ambiguity of context challenges the cartesian desire for clarity and certainty, in which to celebrate the diverse ways we interpret , whereby the journey of how one gets to that conclusion should be heard and experienced for us. Though Luigi Serafini is the sole creator of Codex Seraphiniaus, sharing similar methods to the artist H.R. Giger who toyed with the boundaries of the natural and unnatural, and withholding context in the face of reality. Invoking this otherworldly childish wonder tinged with the adult realization that some things may never be fully explained. The refusal of closure that is the codex’s greatest gift: It invites us to engage within a space where meaning is fluid, and that we can test our utter most boundaries of meaning. As it is the limitations of assumptions and through our own experiences that keep us grounded in a world that in some cases, never reveals it’s mysteries.
In a way, Codex Seraphiniaus is not merely a book but a reflection on the process of meaning-making itself. It makes us ask how to reconsider frameworks in which we developed to shape our world. It suggests that humanity’s greatest flaw—and its most irrefutable strength— Is our awareness of ourselves and the environment around us, that order for us to contain such as vast world. We relentlessly pursuit boundaries, flagging the edges of our understanding. But it is our pursuit against areas of obscurities, do we then create the drive to discover more and to change how we approach the world.
It reminds us that what defines our systems is boundaries, but in so by doing, the codex liberates us. It reminds us, before we shaped our worlds, we were simply subjects in awe of the object —It’s visuality and its strangeness. The true purpose of this encyclopaedia is to allow us, briefly to see the world through the eyes of a child. This immersion does not diminish but enriches, reminding that the essence of humanity lies not in answers but in the infinite possibilities of questions.
MatriculationNo.2413506
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