Il Cielo (The Sky)

Ducks, umbrella pines, airplanes and real life experience as an antidote to the challenge of artificial intelligence.

This is my final post (for now) of In The Shadow of Vesuvius as we have returned from Italy and are now reentering life here. I had not intended to write this post, but having reflected on the land and the sea, it seemed appropriate to address the sky — that realm that we have only begun to make part of our everyday world.

In our family we have a traditional dinner of wild duck on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This meal is the creation of my brother and brother-in-law who are both duck hunters and master game chefs. This excellent meal made me aware of how little fowl we ate over our ten weeks in Rome. It seems odd as this was the third category of how food was viewed — from the sky — by the ancients. There is certainly evidence for this bounty of the sky in the art of ancient Rome.

My brother Karl (left) and brother-in-law Jay (right) at our house at the Sea Ranch.

Barbecued duck breasts.

There is a particularly wonderful mosaic in the Vatican museums that shows the bounty of food from the land, sea, and air. It was most likely from the center of a triclinium floor:

Roman floor mosaic from the Vatican museums.

The dressed duck is hanging on the upper left alongside fish, a branch of dates, asparagus, more fish, and a basket of seafood. It is almost as if this is a portrait of the ingredients for a particular feast.

There are many portrayals of birds in both ancient frescos and mosaics.

Roman floor mosaic from Palazzo Massimo.

Roman floor mosaic from Palazzo Massimo.

Pompeiian floor mosaic from National Archaeological Museum Naples.

The sky and earth find their mediation in the trees. Some of the most beautiful paintings of birds can be found in the painted Roman gardens. The one exhibited in the Palazzo Massimo from the House of Livia a Prima Porta outside of Rome is particularly spectacular.

Frescoed garden room from the House of Livia a Prima Porta now in Palazzo Massimo.

Detail of garden room fresco, House of Livia.

Detail of arched entry into garden room, House of Livia.

Detail of Laurel Tree, garden room, House of Livia.

Young umbrella pine, garden room House of Livia.

This last image of a young Roman pine was used in one of the presentations at I Nostri Pini di Roma: A Workshop, held at the American Academy on November 16. The reason for the workshop is the terrible disease that has been ravaging these gorgeous trees that are in so many ways emblematic of the city. Prior to arriving in Rome, The New York Times carried an article on this crisis:

Rome’s Iconic Umbrella Pines Imperiled by Pests and the Ax

We certainly saw evidence of swaths of the trees cut down. One of the most beautiful collections of these trees is the pine forest in the Villa Doria Pamphilj just outside the walls by the Academy. Like the umbrella pines in the Villa Borghese across town, this is a planted forest.

One of the Pine Forests at Villa Doria Pamphilj

Villa Doria Pamphilj designed by Alessandro Algardi with pine forest on horizon.

The pine forest at the Villa Borghese.

The view of the sky through the canopy of the pines, Villa Borghese

The pines of Rome were our everyday companions in the Academy garden. Particularly for Marian who tended the garden under the shade of these magnificent trees which mediates so beautifully between the ground plane and the sky.

Marian and Natalie in the Rome Sustainable Food Program garden at the Academy under the iconic umbrella pines.

I was particularly fascinated by the presentation of Giulia Caneva, Professor of Environmental and Applied Botany at the Department of Science at Roma Tre University whose talk was entitled The Stone Pine: An Element of Nature Strongly Rooted in our Culture, and the words of Alessandra Vinciguerra, Bass Superintendent of Gardens at the Academy. Professor Caneva’s presentation on the unique botany of this part of the pine family that results in its distinctive umbrella canopy was illuminating as is her deep knowledge of the presence of these trees in centuries of Roman culture. Hence the presence of the view of this tree in the frescoed garden at the House of Livia (above).

Cover of workshop program showing umbrella pines that had recently been planted after the completion of the Academy building in 1914.

Workshop program

As a side note, I need to mention an amazing small exhibition at the altar of the Ara Pacis (that I later found out that Professor Caneva was involved in) that examines the many plants used to create the decorations on the Ara Pacis.

The Ara Pacis. Note decorative panels below frieze.

The panels although organized in a symmetrical decorative manner are actually a representation of many Roman plants.

Detail of the plant forms.

Caneva’s book details both the plants and their botany.

I am very impressed by the thorough research that Professor Caneva has done to identify all of the plants used in this incredible “decoration.” One comes to understand that it is more than a decoration—it is a kind of herbarium. She speaks with real authority. Her knowledge of pines is understood when you know that she in fact wrote the book:

The cover of Giulia Caneva’s book on Pinus Pinea showing the cones and the pinoli found within.

At one point in Professor Caneva’s presentation, she mentioned that one of the reasons that there are large plantations of these trees in Italy (that can be transplanted to urban settings) is that they produce pine nuts. Marian loves pine nuts and as a result I enjoy them in many dishes. This peaked my curiosity about whether these nuts were collected in Rome.

At the reception afterwards, I was talking with Alessandra Vinciguerra and she told me that for years there were people who foraged pine cones in Rome for the seeds. They would volunteer to clean up peoples yards of the dropped cones. This ended in 2019 with the onset of the blight. This makes me very sad, as I love the fact that these trees that are so iconic in Rome were also part of the food system.

We did not speak of the trees as habitat for birds, but certainly they must be and so they, like the birds they house, are a link to the sky.

It has always been man’s dream to fly — and the dangers of this dream are made clear in the Myth of Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

Air travel is so much a part of modern life. We flew back and forth across nine timezones to be in Rome.

We now track our progress on video screens.

Writing in 1923 in Toward a New Architecture, Le Corbusier uses the airplane along with ocean liner as a fact of the modern world — a fact that requires us to see differently. We now take this fact for granted, but a century later we should be asking what is it that we now “need to see.”

From Towards a New Architecture

In thinking about this question and the challenges of our times my mind goes to the challenge of Artificial Intelligence. I find the experience of the last ten weeks — eleven if you throw in this past week of travel — to hold a potential answer to the concerns that we as humans will be replaced by machines. This lies in the fact that we have experiences — new physical and mental experiences everyday. The experiences that we have build on prior experiences — these ever changing inputs let us see the world in a new way each day. I “read” places using what I have learned and simultaneously learn new things. I have been inspired by random comments of the amazing people we have been around and the specific research that they are doing. I am impressed by the importance of each person’s experiences and how meaningful these can be. The important thing is to value them — to understand where they come from — the way we should understand where our food comes from and the intricate web of culture that makes it possible. The Slow Food Movement show the important richness of understanding our food traditions and where our food comes from. When we succumb to a world of fast, industrialized food we loose our connectedness. I believe that the same will be true if we don’t keep this in mind as we navigate a relationship with artificial intelligence. Computing is a tool, it is not living. I believe in an architecture that builds on experiences and provides the opportunity to create new experiences.