Astronomicum Caesareum as Listicle
The date is 1540. The time? Late evening, perhaps during a nightcap. We encounter our emperor gazing out a window, deep in thought, and swirling his 16th-century-equivalent-of-a-Manhattan-straight-up. Where his eye falls on the darkened sky are constellations and beams of light, bouncing off one another and straight into his head. He wonders of his future: Will he find love? Will he emerge from battle victorious? If so, will his royal robes still fit him after many 6th-century-equivalents-of-a-pitcher-of-celebratory-beer? He is desperate to know, and with a silent toast to the court mathematician, one skilled Peter Apian, our curious emperor unearths a newly-made, massive, hand-colored book - the Astronomicum Caesareum - and delves into its interactive pages, rotating the volvelles and aligning the stars to seek some understanding from the astronomical world above.
While our emperor may have pored over the book's intricate pages for days on end, his modern-day counterpart is at all times just one click away from a horoscope, a star map, or a gallery of constellation charts. In a few seconds, one can find a treasure trove of the Internet's latest version of instant information - the listicle - cataloguing the Top 10 Leo Personality Traits You Are Probably Not Aware Of or the 15 Reasons to Date a Cancer. Looking for 32 Times Tumblr Truly Nailed Your Star Sign In 2015? The Internet has just what you need!
But imagine if we could convert Peter Apian's masterwork instrument-in-a-book into a listicle to span the ages…what if our dear Charles V could’ve simply clicked the little star logo on his Macbook Pro and instantly encountered the 10 Signs You’re A Total Aries? Let's take a look at the Astronomicum Caesareum, reimagined for the 21st century. Would it make a listicle that's, so to speak, out of this world?
In 1540, Peter Apian published the Astronomicum Caesareum, a massive, intricate print book dedicated to Charles V which is full of hand-colored volvelles, or equatoria, designed to be turned and adjusted to predict the alignment of the stars and planets. Several of these detailed volvelles are pictured above, alongside an image of Apian himself. Some of the work's most notable traits are its massive size and the level of detail in the handiwork and print itself. Several of the text-only pages involve detailed stylistic shaping and marking of text, and the equatoria throughout the book range in complexity from still images to layered, rotating volvelles of up to 9 layers. Using the Astronomicum Caesareum would have been a highly involved process that required a significant amount of time, not only to make the proper adjustments to each volvelle but also to read through the in-depth information contained in its many pages.
Pictured next to a Listicle, a highly abbreviated itemized list of information, it's hard to imagine that we could transfer the Astronomicum Caesareum to such a modern, dissimilar medium. As a breed of reading technology, the Listicle seems to have taken over the web, and even well-known news sources like the Huffington Post have gone so far as to include an entire “Listicles” section online. Other sites like Buzzfeed and Thought Catalog have founded themselves almost entirely on the Listicle genre, catering to the kind of speed-reading and short-attention-span content many of us have grown so fond of finding online. Some have taken the genre so to heart that the New Yorker published a listicle about lists: Ten Paragraphs About Lists You Need in Your Life Right Now, and the Guardian published a listicle about listicles: Top Nine Things You Need to Know About 'Listicles'.
While the Listicle may seem to many to be a frivolous or insignificant reading technology, its popularity and permanence seem to be on the rise, and many listicles have come to share noteworthy content in a manageable, easily-digested package. Author Arita Okment considers the listicle as a literary form in her article (shown at right), making the case that the listicle can be more than just a list of the “12 Best Butts in Hollywood.”
But even if the listicle as a reading technology has the capacity to convey information of high value and substance, is it robust enough to encompass the intricacies of Peter Apian’s work? Is something culturally lost or diluted in the transfer from instrument-in-a-book to a listicle? How would the transfer affect accessibility and impact? What are the losses and gains in making the transfer across technologies?
To answer these questions, we'll create our own star a-list-ment rather than a star alignment: Six Considerations of Astronomicum Caesareum as Listicle.
Six Considerations of Astronomicum Caesareum as Listicle
1. Loss of Uniqueness/Value
The most obvious effect of converting the Astronomicum Caesareum to listicle is the complete loss of its uniqueness and value as not only a limited-edition, highly intricate work but also as a piece of art. A limited number of copies were produced and each was an extreme investment of time and effort considering the number of detailed, complex volvelles within the book. Additionally, the Astronomicum Caesareum was created specifically for the elite members of society and was dedicated to the emperor; it was absolutely not a text that would’ve been accessible to the general public. Were the contents of the Astronomicum Caesareum to be presented as a listicle, it would lose it’s value as a coveted and sought-after item of importance and cultural/historical significance.
2. Ease of Access
In converting the Astronomicum Caesareum to listicle, it would become a very easily accessible resource in several ways. Firstly, the transfer would eliminate the Astronomicum Caesareum’s limited nature by creating an online presence, which would allow a large number of people to access the resource regardless of their social status or income level as long as they could obtain access to the Internet. The format of a listicle itself would also make the Astronomicum Caesareum more accessible by shortening the length and minimizing the amount of detail and in-depth information, though this does come at the cost of sacrificing much of the knowledge gained from reading the original.
3. Ease of Use
The Astronomicum Caesareum would be much easier to use in its listicle format because it would not require as much time and physical effort to align the many moving parts of the original volvelles. Instead, readers would simply click or scroll to the correct combination and read the simplified, concise version of the information that would’ve taken hours to obtain using the original Astronomicum Caesareum
4. Loss of Involvement
With the simplified use of the Astronomicum Caesareum as a listicle, however, also comes the sacrifice of the personal connection and involvement required to use the book. Like a farmer caring year-round for their land and crops, there is something to be said about investing time and energy in obtaining the result of one’s efforts. By increasing the ease with which readers can access and obtain the information in the Astronomicum Caesareum, we decrease the potential for them to feel the gratification of somehow earning the result rather than simply finding it.
5. Physical Touch
Similarly to the loss of involvement mentioned above, the transfer of the Astronomicum Caesareum to listicle also requires the sacrifice of the physical aspects of its use. One of the work’s most unique and appreciate features is its intricate equatoria which had to be turned and aligned one by one in order to understand the book’s contents. By digitizing the information and presenting it as a listicle, the Astronomicum Caesareum completely loses this physically interactive factor in favor of a faster, more accessible method of information access.
6. Impact (Personal and Social)
Finally, transferring the Astronomicum Caesareum from instrument-as-book to a listicle format is likely to change the work’s impact on both a personal and a societal level. As was touched on above, simplifying the book’s use by converting it into a listicle decreases the one-on-one interaction required between the book and the reader in terms of time, energy, and effort. This is likely to change the reader’s relationship with the work itself and the resulting information. Like a Tarot reader grows attached to their own set of cards and a fortune teller so loves the tea leaves themselves, there is something to be said for the attachment a reader has to a physical copy of a book and their interactions with that copy, much like a reader who makes notes in the margins of a novel or dog-ears their favorite chapters. At a societal level, the loss of the physical copy – especially one of such high artistic quality – decreases the social connection to the piece as a “work” rather than just an online entity.