Porkopolis

Caricature, Burlesque or Parody

The Vitruvian Swine is, of course, a fanciful combination of two familiar and iconic figures in Western culture – the pig and Leonardo da Vinci’s illustration of Vitruvian Man.

Vitruvian Man is a well recognized symbol today with diverse associations, yet it embodies concepts far older than da Vinci’s drawing. And the pig… Well, probably no other creature has offered up more of itself to the building of so many human cultures around the world. I created this image respectfully, as a means of representing how I see the influence of the pig on the human world.

Man, Circle, Square

Vitruvian Man is the synthesis of philosophical thought about the nature of man that began at least two millennium before da Vinci’s familiar drawing. The Greek philosopher, Pythagoras (580/572 – 500/490 BC), and followers of the Orphic religion believed in man’s potential divinity and envisioned a dual nature to man’s soul – mortal, yet in the image of the divine. They expressed that duality of man’s soul with the perfect geometric forms of the circle and square, symbols representing respectively, the heavens and mortal existence.

The Temple is Man

Moving forward some five hundred years, the Roman architect, Marcus Orphic Pollio (80/70 – after 15 BC), in his books on architecture, theorized that the necessary proportions for the construction of buildings should be based on the natural laws of harmony and beauty, best exemplified by the divine perfection of the human body’s symmetry and proportions.

Vitruvius explained his reasoning, stating that the human body is the earthly model of divine perfection as exemplified by how a human figure, with arms and legs extended, fits into both the perfect geometric forms, the circle and the square.

On this point, his original written work - De Architectura - was more descriptive than illustrative. This left future scholars, as well as editors of future editions of his work, puzzling over a means to draw a representative image of Vitruvius’ proportions of man. Attempts at illustration resulted in unsatisfactory human forms with disproportionate arms and legs because the figure was forced to fit inside both a circle and a square inscribed within it.

Finding the Shapes Around the Man

And then the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) read Vitruvius’ books on architecture - one of the few collections on that subject that survived into his time. Da Vinci saw the solution and created the image we know today and he called it Vitruvian Man.

The genius of da Vinci here was finding the ‘divine beauty’ where previous attempts at illustration had been unsuccessful. He did this by his choice to start by drawing a perfectly proportioned man and then finding and drawing the circle and square around that man. In da Vinci’s drawing the square was not inscribed in the circle, but tangent to it at their shared base. Divinity and the duality of the human soul are exemplified in this image that has endured to the present time.

A Contemporary Tableau

Today, da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man has diversified his portfolio and broadened his earlier representation of the soul’s duality. A near ubiquitous symbol and now more familiar outside religion, Vitruvian Man has been adopted by all the humanities, science, medicine, business and advertising.

While some still appreciate his history and the genius of the synthesis that created him, Vitruvian Man has also been transformed to suggest a modern embodiment of the Renaissance – an allusion to having contemporary conceptions with an eye to the best of what has past.

Whether factual or unfounded, he appears wherever folks want to suggest substance beyond the obvious. Vitruvian Man in the 21st century has become a marketing metaphor for worldliness and artistry, a tableau suggesting a higher awareness of whatever concept is being espoused.

The Path of Choice

Perhaps a marketing metaphor is the next millennial step in Vitruvian Man’s progression. I think any path is justifiable as a path if it leads somewhere. Yet to me, the figure of Vitruvian Man is still synonymous with duality, with interrelatedness: intellect and artistry, faith and science, circumstance and destiny.

And, as I tend to follow pig paths and think about the wide range of influences that acquaintance with and exploitation of the pig has brought about in human culture, I see another duality. Into that fertile mix of modern Vitruvian metaphors I suggest a consideration of all that the pig has added to human culture since pig and man first met nearly 100,000 years ago. Along that path the Vitruvian Man, in a simple, almost Circean, transformation becomes a pig - the Vitruvian Swine.

Wallow Awhile

The Vitruvian Swine is a cornerstone of Porkopolis.org’s efforts to show the influences of pigs on humanity. It represents a blend of humanities with husbandry, of art and symbolism, religion and science, of how things were and how they seem to be.

Delve into Porkopolis.org you will begin to see the effect the pig has had since antiquity on arts, literature, philosophy and other varied aspects of human culture. The mud here is a wet and temperate pool, soothing and comforting with only an occasional root or stone. Imagine the pig as a springboard for growth, dispersal and innovation in human culture and then delve in and wallow a while, here with the swine.

Daniel E. Schultz,
Porkopolis Editor

[Originally published in the Porkopolis Notebook in 2006.]

Back in a simpler time (ca. 1997) and space (Geocities pre-Yahoo!) cursor trails (see picture to right) were “cool” to have on your web page. Now (ca. 2006) they’re vilified and it is suggested they might even be a trigger for epileptic seizures, brain hemorrhages and Adult Attention Deficit Disorders.

Removing my Snout Trails from Porkopolis in the fall of 2001 was probably the first step Porkopolis.org made towards political correctness and, by default, Web Standards. And now in 2008, cursor trails seldom even work in modern browsers [as of 11/08, Opera, Chrome and Safari still really like them, Firefox thinks they're OK, but IE7 doesn't seen to like them much - Dan].

I still think they’re sort of cool, though, and so using the links below you can turn Snout Trails on by visiting another similar page and then turn them off again by coming back here to this page. Maybe your browser will set the Snouts free… There is no disclaimer here though, so do so at your own risk. Brain hemorrhages are not a good user experience.

Here’s my original notice of removal. It was a sad day then as the Snout Trails were retired from the Porkopolis.org main page:

8/26/01 - Snout Trails

The set of six pig snouts following your cursor around on this page (if you can see them…) are what I call Snout Trails. These cursor trails have been on the main page of the Porkopolis web site for the last two years. They work with most versions of IE, Netscape and Opera, as well as some other browsers.

While the staff loves the Snout Trails, we have also had a few, er… polite complaints from visitors. Some could not access links on the main page with the snouts getting in the way, others thought the swirling snouts around their cursor were distracting.

I have finally conceded that the Snout Trails might not be the best way to welcome guests to Porkopolis.org. These beloved Snouts have had a good run, but now we are retiring them, sort of… Here is all the info if you want to play with ‘em on one of your pages:

• The java script comes from www.Dynamicdrive.com where there are a variety of such scripts and images in its “Mouse Trail Effects” archive. Compatible scripts for modern browsers are there and some are kept updated.
• The snout images were created by me. Here is a ZIP file (7KB) with all six in “.gif” format for you to use. Enjoy!

And, because the snout is such a quintessential part of the pig, we can not abandon the Snout Trails completely. So just for fun we will occasionally have Snout Trails do an encore on some page or other in Porkopolis.

[Originally published in the Porkopolis Notebook in 2006.]

The quest for the ultimate English to pig Latin translator is finally over! Now, your HTML and XHTML testing pages can have the impact of Latin with a fraction of the trouble! You can also spruce up your resume or impress your friends and co-workers with your use of pig Latin in poetry, calculus, politics and even sex. Below is a pig Latinized sample of Lorem Ipsum is provided for your editing convenience:

Oremlay ipsumyay:

Oremlay ipsumyay olorday itsay ametyay, onsectetuercay adipiscingyay elityay. Edsay itaevay eolay inyay iamday empersay orttitorpay. Ullamnay idyay augueyay. Aecenasmay atyay acuslay isquay islnay auctoryay imperdietyay. Integeryay incidunttay acinialay elitvay. Uspendissesay aretraphay. Uisday ariusvay. Ellentesquepay abitanthay orbimay istiquetray enectussay etyay etusnay etyay alesuadamay amesfay acyay urpistay egestasyay. Oinpray ullamcorperyay aretraphay uruspay. Ullanay itaevay ortortay. Etiamyay acinialay ictumday anteyay. Ullamnay oremlay igulalay, incidunttay isquay, empustay etyay, osuerepay idyay, isusray. Uncnay itaevay elitvay euyay estyay anditblay iverravay. Uisday osuerepay onguecay ectuslay. Urabiturcay isusray. Uspendissesay accumsanyay olutpatvay agnamay.

See the usefulness? Here is a text file with more available for download.

The actual pig-Latinized text is courtesy of Pig-hEaDIT, a pig Latin translator from Jon Vote at Idioma Software. Pig-hEaDIT for Windows is a total solution to your pig Latin needs.

[Originally published in the Porkopolis Notebook in 2000.]

Pigs and the Millennium

As science or religious conversion become fashionable short–cuts to the millennium, the reality is that technological advances of the 20th century in preservation of information and bio–genetic material have made it possible to preserve most any person, place or thing …almost any animal, vegetable or mineral. Compared with what is extant from the last 90,000 years of the life of pig and man, future generations of both will have access to a far superior quantity of data and detritus from their past.

Will this information base lead to the hoped for thousand-year period of holiness, joy, prosperity, and justice touted by so many? A period during which ‘the faithful’ are to rule on earth. Right now, when even in our most prosperous countries, the quality of human life does not keep pace with our flourishing knowledge of its psycho-biotic mechanisms, the post millennial future of pig and man is at best uncertain.

We can say that throughout their association, pig and man frequently seem unlikely associates: prone to each others sickness; disrespectful and quarrelsome with their own and each others kind; ill-adapted to stairwells and ill-mannered when interrupted at meals; but if that is all their association has been, then both would have abandon it, and perhaps this world as well, millenniums ago. Yet, neither has.

Pig and man are both changing, what may be true for our shared future is that we are eternally anchored to each other by new ways of understanding life. Sophistry and window-shopping on the future are not sufficient acts to absolve the end of this century and millennium. It is what is being discovered over and over about how the soul survives its biographers that will lead pig and man toward the hinterlands of their associations in the sweet by-and-by of wallowing pools, weightlessness and web sites.