In my research project I want to examine Encyclopaedias and Tableaus as historical precursors for the structure of knowledge in contemporary scientific visual aids of all disciplines as well as in displays – summarized in images handling complexity in the Age of “Google“ and “Wikipedia“. In form of an Artbook, structured as Encyclopaedia with alphabetically ordered texts, I want to collect keywords related to the term Tableau as synopsis of knowledge and as “the totality of what is representable“ (Foucault). Through exploring formal-aesthetic characteristics of Tableaus and their descendants I want to create „meta-pictures“ as equivalent and balanced juxtapositions to texts as treatises, that circle the philosophical conceptions of difference and repetition, singularity and universality.
