In episode 83 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peli Grietzer.
Peli is a scholar whose work borrows mathematical ideas from machine learning theory to think through “ambient” and ineffable phenomena like moods, vibes, cultural logics, and structures of feeling. He is working on a book titled Big Mood: A Transcendental-Computational Essay in Art and contributes to the experimental literature collective Gauss PDF. Peli has a PhD in mathematically informed literary theory from Harvard Comparative Literature in collaboration with the HUJI Einstein Institute of Mathematics.
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Outline:
(00:00) Intro
(02:17) Peli’s background
(10:40) Daniel takes 2 entire minutes to ask how Peli thinks about ~ Art ~
(26:10) Idealism and art as revealing the nature of reality, extralinguistic experiences of truth through literature
(52:05) The autoencoder as a way to understand Romantic theories of art
(1:14:55) More on how Peli thinks about autoencoders
(1:18:05) Connections to ambient meaning, stimmung/mood
(1:37:18) Examples of poetry/literature as mathematical experience, aesthetic unity and totalizing worldviews
(1:51:15) Moods clashing within a single work
(2:10:14) Modernist writers
(2:32:46) Outro
Links:
Peli Grietzer: A Mathematized Philosophy of Literature