I was writing and thinking about the algorithmic and the allegoric. I’ve been struck by how so much contemporary art practice has been informed by the algorithmic. Having done work in information engines and various net art pieces using algorithms for the display and organization of information, I was equally intrigued by what we get after we’ve deployed all these little engines and are outside...

Used as a noun, the term refers to a short summary or outline of a longer work. As an adjective applied to writing or literary works, abstract refers to words or phrases that name things not knowable through the five senses. Allegory: A narrative technique in which characters representing objects or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to tea...

In Late Antiquity a series of ideas emerges that adds a kind of buoyancy to allegorism. Readers' impulses toward other regions of knowledge begin to flow more consistently upward, drawn by various metaphysical currents that guide and support them. A whole manner of Platonist-inspired architectures structure the cosmos in the early centuries of the Common Era, among thinkers as diverse as the we...

A fifth-century handbook on Scripture and its interpretation, Adrian’s Isagōgē in sacras scripturas, is the only known extant introductio Greek which represents Antiochean exegetical tradition. This treatise, available two recensions, largely an explanation of stylistic idiosyncrasies Scripture’s God-talk. Although Adrian acknowledges fact that uses allegory to say various things (i.e., composi...