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Time, Location and Symbol
WITHIN THE LAST TEN YEARS OR
SO, public attention has begun to focus on monuments to the
Holocaust, oral histories of the Second World War and other
such events. The timing of this revival is more than fortuitous;
the period of fifty years or so that separates us from these
events is at the practical limit of human living memory. People
who lived these events are now reaching the twilight of life;
unless their memories are recorded, they might be lost forever.
A ritual, to be repeated once
every fifty years and celebrating the continuity of human
history represented by The Millennium Sphere, would
accentuate the natural cycle of remembrance and thereby contribute
to keeping its memory alive through a regular periodic ceremony.
The remarkable thing about
the 50-year cycle is that we find it prescribed as the jubilee
year in Leviticus, a book of the Old Testament in the Bible,
probably written in the 6th Century BC. This connection with
the jubilee year is for us doubly interesting in our effort
to deeply root the liturgy around The Millennium Sphere
in themes meaningful to the cathedral community. First, the
ancient text boldly calls out:
"Thou shalt number seven
Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and
the space of the seven Sabbath of years shall be unto thee
forty and nine years." (Lev. 25.8)
Now the text of Revelations
of St. John the Divine, on which the cathedral geometry is
based, makes abundant use of such numbers as seven and seven
times seven, so that from a formal viewpoint, these numbers
integrate the rite within the architectural framework of its
setting. Furthermore, as we shall see subsequently, The
Millennium Sphere geometry echoes some of these numbers
as well.
The second point to be made
in connection with the jubilee is, however, at once more profound
and more evocative. Its resonance with the themes of Freedom,
Justice, Human Dignity, Compassion and Unity are a part of
the tradition of the cathedral and indeed of the city and
the nation. As the Biblical text has it:
"And ye shall hallow
the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee
unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possessions;
and ye shall return every man unto his family. " (Lev.
25.10)
"... ye shall not oppress
one another ..." (Lev. 25.14)
"... ye shall dwell in
the land in safety." (Lev. 25.18)
The liturgy itself will need
to be determined through a collaboration of secular and ecclesiastical
authorities, but included in it should be some actions directly
related to the capsule - The Millennium Sphere -
and its purpose. We have already alluded to the fact that
the sphere itself, through its design, had meaning beyond
its function as a container; that its geometry crystallized
some of the fundamental ideas that have nourished speculations
over the centuries. As we shall explain later in its description,
it is, through its form, structure and location, a symbol
evocative of the macrocosm (the Heavens) as well as the microcosm
(the Atom). But it also symbolizes the thread of Ariadne that
allowed Theseus to escape from the labyrinth after slaying
the Minotaur, which in turn relates to the themes of memory
and freedom.
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We shall propose
that The Millennium Sphere, echoing in design the
cathedral's Rose windows, be hung in the nave of the cathedral,
at a height of 24´ to 34´ from the floor over
a marker in the form of a labyrinth. Every fifty years, to
celebrate the jubilee year, the sphere will be lowered onto
the center of the labyrinth. It will therefore be a symbol
of Heaven on Earth, the Heavenly Jerusalem of which St. John
the Divine speaks in Revelations. It will also be
a symbol of Atom on Earth: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and their horrors
- a human rendering of the apocalypse. Besides, touching the
center of the labyrinth, it will remind all that it is indeed
possible to slay our own minotaurs and to be free: free of
our own demons, personal and social, but also free to gain
that liberation of the spirit of which all great traditions
speak.
But we want The Millennium
Sphere to carry out not only a message of the past to
the present, through its design and ritual, or to the year
3000, through its content. We want it to also carry a message
from the ever-advancing present to the ever-elusive future
so that, after the millennium, there will be a record, not
simply of what was enclosed in the original capsule, but of
the significant events from the viewpoint of those who witnessed
them, along the course of the millennium. And so, we would
suggest that, at the jubilee celebration, the central medallion
of the labyrinth, under which a receptacle will have been
positioned, be removed to expose the receptacle. Then, a record
containing text, sound and images of significant events between
two jubilee celebrations, say in the form of a disk as those
included in the capsule, can be placed in the receptacle.
If necessary, because of technology changes, data migration
of the previous records to newly-developed forms of information
technologies could be made at the same time. A simple text
beautifully handwritten and illustrated on long-lasting material
might also be appropriate. This, after all, is how we obtained
most of our knowledge of previous ages.
The details of the rite would
be engraved on the back of the medallion to ensure the continuity
of the ceremony. They would as well be kept onrecord at other
places of record specified, such as the cathedral archives
and the Cooper Union (or its succeeding institution's) archives.
As mentioned in the introduction,
to keep alive the memory of The Millennium Sphere,
large numbers of icons would be put in circulation, particularly
at the jubilee. To this effect, we have designed "Spherinths."
These are small spherical labyrinths of the size roughly of
a tennis ball, that can be comfortably held in the hand. They
bear a groove in the form of a labyrinth in which a small
ball may roll (as a roller bearing steel ball). Both sphere
and ball are enclosed in a transparent sphere that can be
manipulated to make the ball travel on the surface of the
inner sphere through the labyrinth from its entrance at one
pole of the sphere to its center at the opposite pole of the
sphere. An inscription on the sphere would commemorate The
Millennium Sphere and the jubilee.
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[click
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Nave interior at the education bay
Nave interior view
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Copyright
© 1999 The Cooper Union |
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