On November 2, the Uzbekistan National Pavilion hosted an event in collaboration with Ca’Foscari Environmental Humanities programme.
The conversation was held around the polymaths of Ancient Baghdad, the history of ideas, and gardens as both technological and discursive spaces. In Persian culture, the garden was seen as a microcosm – a world that was re-created and reinvented in an “idealized” way, always a product of technological intervention. Drawing on Al-Khwarizmi and the history of algorithms (Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book in Arabic about Hindu-Arabic numerals, which was later translated into Latin), the speakers also discussed how translation always reshapes ideas, moving them into a new context.
Special thanks to our guests – the faculty and the students of Ca’Foscari University, professors Shaul Bassi, Stefano Pello and David Gentilcore, and Sheida Ghomashchi, the curator of Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge