Borges' "On Exactitude in Science": Modeling the Model

By Jayne Goldsmith, Borges: An Exploration in Modeling Team

The “Borges: An Exploration In Modeling” Team at UCSB attempted to take Borges’ paragraph-length short story, “On Exactitude in Science,” which is a model in itself, and model the model. Within the story, there are cartographers who create for their empire a map that is on a one-mile to one-mile scale. The entire land is covered by this map, this model, this false reality and eventually the map begins to disintegrate, being abandoned “to the Rigors of sun and Rain.” This model, which had become the reality, was destroyed by nature, leaving only “tattered fragments of the map.”

Borges’ use of modeling in this story worked perfectly with the group project, adding an even deeper layer to the use of modeling. While this story was first published in 1946, it is especially pertinent in today’s world of media and technology. Everything is a copy of a copy. Everything is a code, or a model, or a representation. In today’s society, people even create model’s of themselves, using programs such as Second Life. Even with technology, such as Instant Messaging, people are modeling real conversation with people. In a sense, everything in the world is no longer real because everything has already happened. All things that happen, for example demonstrations are just simulations of ones that have happened before. At this point, there is just an indefinite number of simulations constantly occurring, even if people think they are “real.” This story emphasizes the idea of “no reality” in a chilling story of a world literally taken over by the model.

Jean Baudrillard addresses this short story specifically in his essay, “Simulacra and Simulation,” stating that “Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.”

An example that Baudrillard cites in his essay is the simulated world of Disneyland. Everyone is familiar with Main Street and Disneyland’s various “lands.” They are complete copies of real places. One of the parks at Disneyworld even has mini-models of countries. One can travel the world, so to speak, in a single afternoon, shopping at a bazaar in “Morocco” or eating sushi in “Tokyo.” Apparently, however it is not really a false representation of reality because even the real isn’t real anymore. In some ways, these worlds created by Disney are even more real than the supposed reality in that the models are supposed to be models, making them exactly what they appear to be—making them real.

Even places that are real are not real anymore. Baudrillard in his essay called Los Angeles, the city “without dimension.” He uses as an example that Los Angeles is a town that is notorious for the fact that nobody walks anywhere. Yet, people always jog. Everyone is incapable of moving their feet as a mode of transportation, but the act of walking is simulated in the form of jogging.

These interpretations take the notion of the destroyed map further saying that the land itself is destroyed—all forms of reality, the map, the land, the real, the hyper real.

The Borges: An Exploration in Modeling Team took this conceptual short story and all of its meanings and created an actual model of this story about models.

    The concept was to create a filmic model of “On Exactitude in Science,” taking the parts of speech and pairing each with a specific shot and thus creating an audio/visual model, word for word of the story. The attraction to film was the fact that film, in its very nature, is a model. It is not reality. Film is, like the map, the ultimate reproduction. Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” examines this notion of images, especially film and photography, as it straddles the line between reality and art. Benjamin notes that photography, an art form in itself, was able to revolutionize reproduction. It also, in fact, changed the meaning of what art is.  Benjamin believes that photography not only changed art because it was a new art form, but it allowed for the reproduction of old art forms. Paintings that could once only be seen from one location, could be viewed from anywhere in the world due to photographic reproduction of images. Also, places that could only be seen when visited could be viewed in pictures.

Another revolutionary art medium is film. It allowed for visual and eventually audio reproduction. A point that Benjamin made was that art has an aura that cannot be captured in reproductions. All film is a reproduction and therefore has no aura. Actors in film, for example, do not have the aura of stage actors. Film actors do scenes separately and even sometimes out of order. They only act for a camera, so they have no audience to connect with. Also, the editing of a film allows for an actor’s scene to be edited from many different views, with a focus on different things. The aura is gone and the audience is seeing what the whole production team wants them to see, not just the actor.

In “Of Exactitude of Science,” the world is covered by a life-size map and everyone is living in a type of hyper-reality. As time passes, the map slowly starts to get destroyed and the real world, having been covered for so long, is itself destroyed.

   In “The Work of Art in the Age of Reproduction,” Benjamin addresses the issue of art and reality. His ideas on photography and its ability to change reality and take people to a reproduction of a specific place coincides perfectly with the reproduction of reality in the Borges work.

 “…In photography, process reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images, which escape natural vision. Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations, which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room.” (Benjamin)

    Even further still, both of these works coincide with our actual project because it is a reproduction of art. The group is making a film that is in a way a model, or a reproduction, of the Borges story—and will utilize these themes through story, setting, and shots. The use of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” as a source gives the group the opportunity to better understand reproduction in relation to the fact that the group is using a video camera and creating a film, as well as in relation to the fact that the Borges story has to do with reproduction (the map and the hyper reality).

    These concepts inspired the group and related completely to the Borges story and helped the group to further understand the story itself and what the group wanted to do with it. With that being said, the concept of the Borges’ group project began as follows:

Part of Speech        Type of Shot

Adjective....................Close Up

Adverb.......................Close Up + Movement

Article.........................Eye Level

Conjunction................Zoom

Negative.....................No Shot

Noun (Person)............Oblique Angle

Noun (Place)...............Low Angle

Noun (Thing)..............High Angle

Preposition..................Long Shot

Pronoun......................Handheld

Verb............................Movement

    Each shot becomes a kind of code for each word. In his essay, “Semiotics for Beginners: Codes”, Daniel Chandler discusses this use of codes and the way that people read images. They are understood in the same way that any other codes are in that they are read based on the viewer’s prior knowledge. A great example used in the article that explains this is the drawing of a man waving as a greeting. This is not a universal code for a greeting, so even people from different cultures might not necessarily look at this picture with understanding. The Borges group wanted to take this idea of codes and make a key that could be read, analyzed and understood prior to viewing the film, in order to fully grasp the concept of the model.

    Each type of shot was picked methodically to coincide with a part of speech in the hopes that the action or feeling of a specific part of speech would be conveyed through the visual angle or movement of the shot. An adjective, for example, was picked because a close-up captures a more descriptive shot of something and is in a sense, very much like an adjective. Pronouns were handheld shots because pronouns are words that replace people and other nouns, whereas a handheld shot is supposed to suggest a replacement for human movement. Nouns (places) were represented by low angle shots because the places in the story (the Empire, the Map) are given much power and significance. A low-angle shot is supposed to give its subject the feeling of power.

    John Berger explains in his book Ways of Seeing that what we see is real and words can only be representations of what we see. The Borges group saw the Borges story as a representation of an idea—an idea that is further enhanced by the works cited in this interpretive essay. The words were representations of the idea, which the group felt they could model and make a visual representation of—creating a model that is, according to John Berger, more real than the original.

    The forum of our model, however, the film is a complete hyper reality. Film itself, as stated before, is an art form, which uses reproduction as its basis. The actor in the film has no aura and does not exist in real time before the audience. The film was shot over several days at several different locations, but the film is a continuous story that lasts less than five minutes. Like the story, the film is less of a narrative and more a representation of the idea of modeling.

    The film begins with a girl walking amongst nature, amongst the land that is covered in the map. It begins out seemingly continuous and linear, with longer shots. Every shot corresponds to a single word. The first word of the story is “In,” and the part of speech is a preposition. The film begins with a zoom in shot. The word “In” is at the bottom of the screen. As the film progresses and the narrative reaches the point at which the map begins to be destroyed, the shots become quicker and the quality of the film itself at times begins to disintegrate. The narrative becomes less linear and the film begins to convey chaos.

    The group attempted to further still create a model of the story by using various editing techniques such as stop motion animation and match cuts. A theme that runs throughout the film is that of nature deconstructing, and further still nature that was a model of nature. This was an attempt to create a visual interpretation of the story, using a map and a false reality in general to set the stage for a story that portrays the relationship between humans and nature as well as a false reality.

    One of the first shots—the shot that is representative of the word “Single”, which is an adjective and therefore a close up is of a tree, or to describe it more accurately, a decaying branch. On that decaying branch is a bright green leaf made out of construction paper. This is the viewer’s first glimpse at the false reality. Later in the story there is a school of butterflies that swarm over the subject, close up shots shortly thereafter reveal that the butterflies, too are made out of paper. In other shots there are tattered fragments of a map on the ground or outlines of a map—borders.

    The shot in which the tone and speed of the film changes is the shot in which the subject takes an apple out of a tree only to find that it is made out of wood and is inedible. Other elements include a lake, made out of cellophane that appears out of the ground and disappears very quickly. The last effect that the group uses is that of the worms coming out of the tattered map and crawling over the girl’s boot. These fake worms coming out of the ground represent the false reality of the world as well as the disintegration and practical nothingness. “Tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.” These worms, sheltered by the tattered fragments, come out of the ground. Worms, some of the vilest creatures on Earth, that burrow underground seemed fitting to portray the “occasional beast” that is sheltered by the hyper reality. Most of the materials used to create nature, such as the butterflies and the apple, come from wood or paper—were taken from nature to be reused as something else. These materials were then created back into parts of nature and integrated into “the real world” to create that hyper reality or map of the world.

    The idea behind the entire project was to create a complex model of a model using several modes of modeling. The Borges story is, in itself, a model. The art of film is also, in itself, a model. The Borges group attempted to take both of these models and take the idea of modeling even further through the use of codes (matching the parts of speech with the types of film shots) as well as through the use of constructed materials to represent the false reality. Borges took an idea of the model taking over the reality and the Borges: An Exploration In Modeling Team took his idea and tried to reinvent the idea of modeling and take it to places that other groups dared not go.

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra,” from Simulacra and Simulation. Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1995.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. New York, NY: Penguin Group Inc., 1998.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” from Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books. 196

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. 1972

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New York: Routledge. 2007.