Week 11 Session: Modern reconstruction
The first material this course meets that the edition did not produce. 夫诸's three clauses leave six decisions a model has to make anyway, 帝江 forces a renderer to draw an absence, and on 九尾狐 the audit stops working.
17 May 2027 · Phase 3, Take it apart and rebuild
The rule this week states
A system transfers only as far as its characters do, so the test of one is naming which of its characters the next material will not supply.
What this week does#
Week 10 produced a list of features no system in the room could hold. This week points the system at material the edition did not produce — a model, a rendering, a sketch — which is the first test of whether it transfers anywhere.
The test runs in both directions. Some of our characters have nothing to read off an image: no image supplies a locus, an omen, or a citation. And the image supplies characters we never had a column for, because a model has a size, a skin, a gait and a weight whether the record gives them or not.
Three steps and a failure case:
- Six decisions from three clauses — 夫诸, whose complete record settles none of them.
- Where the comparison character runs out — 夔.
- Drawing an absence — 帝江.
- When the audit stops working — 九尾狐, where there is no record at the bottom of the stack.
The method depends on one accident: these records are short. A reconstruction from a nineteenth-century field description cannot be audited, because the description already specifies more than a viewer can hold. Three clauses can be held in view, and against three clauses every addition is visible.
Step 1: six decisions from three clauses#
Specimen
夫诸
Fuzhu quadricornutum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a white deer with four horns
- Habitat
- 敖岸之山, first mountain of the 萯山 route
- Omen
- 見則其邑大水 — where it appears, that town floods
- Record
中山經 · 中次三經 · 敖岸之山Central Mountains · third central section · Mount Aoan
有獸焉，其狀如白鹿而四角，名曰夫諸，見則其邑大水。
There is a beast there, shaped like a white deer with four horns. It is called 夫諸. Where it appears, that town floods.
Three clauses and nothing else. The shortest complete record here, which is why a reconstruction of it is so visibly a reconstruction.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
A white deer, four horns, and a town flooded. That is the complete record. Now list what a model needs and the record does not supply: how large, where the four horns sit and whether they branch, what colour its eyes are, how it holds its head, whether it walks or stands, and whether the water is caused by it or merely announced by it. Six decisions before anybody has drawn a hoof.
The last one is not a visual question and it changes the creature most. 見則其邑大水 — where it appears, that town floods — is a conditional. A reconstruction showing the beast summoning a flood has converted an omen into an agent, which is the move week 5 refused when it kept omens out of the character set. A renderer makes that decision by drawing, often without noticing there was one.
An addition is not an error
Every item on that list has to be decided by anybody who renders anything. The audit does not ask a designer to stop deciding. It asks which decisions were made by the record and which by the designer, and it can only ask that because the record is short enough to check against.
Mark each addition consistent, inconsistent, or unresolvable. Only the middle one is a mistake.
Step 2: where the comparison character runs out#
Specimen
夔
Kui unipedatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like an ox, grey-bodied, hornless, one-footed; its light is the sun and moon, its voice is thunder, and going in and out of water it brings wind and rain
- Habitat
- a mountain in the great wilds of the east
- Record
大荒東經Great Wilds, East
其上有獸，狀如牛，蒼身而無角，一足，出入水則必風雨，其光如日月，其聲如雷，其名曰夔。
On it there is a beast, shaped like an ox, grey-bodied and hornless, with one foot. Going in and out of the water it always brings wind and rain. Its light is like the sun and the moon, its voice like thunder. It is called 夔.
One foot, as 畢方 has one foot, with nothing else in common. The epithet repeats across genera, which is ordinary Linnaean practice and worth saying out loud once.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
夔 (kuí) has one foot, and the record does not say how it moves. A model has to move. 出入水則必風雨 says it goes in and out of water; whether that is a wade, a hop, a dive or a stride is supplied entirely by whoever animates it.
This is the comparison slot failing in a new way. Week 2 took 其狀如 as a character because it tells you what to picture. Here it tells you what to picture standing still, and says nothing about the thing a moving image cannot avoid. Our best-transferring character transfers about half way.
Step 3: drawing an absence#
Specimen
帝江
Dijiang anommatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, six feet and four wings, a blur with no face
- Habitat
- 天山, on the third western route
- Record
西山經 · 西次三經 · 天山Western Mountains · third western section · the Heaven Mountain
有神焉，其狀如黃囊，赤如丹火，六足四翼，渾敦無面目，是識歌舞，實為帝江也。
There is a god there, shaped like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, with six feet and four wings, a shapeless blur with no face. It knows song and dance. This is 帝江.
The limit case for a grammar of parts. Every other composite is built from recognisable animals; this one is built from none, and it still knows how to dance.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
帝江 (dìjiāng) is where this week ends, for the reason week 3 first noticed. Every other composite in the bestiary is assembled from animals a reader already knows — a tiger’s body, a human face, a snake’s tail. This one is assembled from none of them.
渾敦無面目: a blur, no face. A renderer has to draw that, and every way of drawing an absence is a positive choice — a smooth surface, a shadow, a smear, a mask. Each reads differently and none of them is what the record says, because the record says only that something is not there. Then, because the line ends 是識歌舞, the thing has to dance.
That clause is the one week 10 found no system could file. Here it becomes compulsory: an animator cannot leave it in residue.
When the audit stops working#
Specimen
九尾狐
Jiuweihu anthropophagum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a fox with nine tails, its voice an infant's
- Habitat
- 青丘之山, on the first route
- Use
- 食者不蠱 — eat it and you cannot be bewitched. It also eats people
- Record
南山經 · 南山經之首 · 青丘之山Southern Mountains · first southern section · the Green Hill
有獸焉，其狀如狐而九尾，其音如嬰兒，能食人；食者不蠱。
There is a beast there, shaped like a fox but with nine tails, and its cry is like an infant's. It can eat people. Eat it and you will not be harmed by 蠱, poisoning by witchcraft.
The edition describes this creature but never gives it this name.
The edition never calls it 九尾狐. It is an unnamed beast, fox-shaped and nine-tailed, and everything the name now carries was attached to it later.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
九尾狐 (jiǔwěihú) is the case where the method fails, and the failure is the useful part. Its reconstructions are not being made from the record. They are made from earlier reconstructions, which were made from the tradition week 7 traced, which grew on a line that does not even name the creature.
The additions are no longer legible, because legibility was never a property of the image. It was a property of the gap between an image and a short record, and nobody in that chain is looking at the record. A system whose audit depends on a source can say nothing at all about material that has lost contact with one.
What you leave with#
An annotated list of your own additions to one creature, in any medium including a sketch on paper. The list is the deliverable and the picture is evidence for it, which is the reverse of how reconstructions are normally judged.
That list is also this week’s specimen card, and it is the last one before the congress.
This week is the rehearsal for Part 2 of the classification design, which is the last thing due. The question is the same one at a larger scale: which of your characters survive contact with material the edition did not write, and which turn out to be readable only inside it. Here the new material is a picture of a creature you already have a record for. In Part 2 there is no record, because you choose the material yourself.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you can list six decisions a designer must make about 夫诸 that its record does not make
- you can say what 渾敦無面目 requires a renderer to draw
- you can name one creature whose reconstructions have become the source for later reconstructions
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor