>Art history is not linear; although it is often taught as such. Culture is a multi-dimensional network that feeds and builds upon itself in a mashup that transcends time.
>- [Ryan McGinnes - Art History Is Not Linear](http://www.ryanmcginness.com/sites/default/files/user-uploads/%2B%20McGinness%20Art%20History%20Is%20Not%20Linear.pdf)
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## Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
>In Greek mythology, Atlas was the name of a titan, brother of Prometheus, who confronted the Gods of Olympia, to take over their power and give it to humankind. The story goes that he was punished in the same measure of his force. While a vulture ripped Prometheus’ liver in the borders of the East, Atlas in the West (between Andalusia and Morocco) was compelled to hold the whole celestial dome on his shoulders. So more tells the story, this burden gave him in surmountable knowledge and desperate wisdom. He was the ancestor of astronomers, geographers, and some say he was the first philosopher. A mountain (Atlas), an ocean (Atlantic) and an anthropomorphic architectural support (Atlant) got their name after him.
> - FROM THE ATLAS » MNEMOSYNE«
>More recent Warburg research has shown that it is plausible that Aby Warburg’s historiography was formed in conjunction with technical media. So the structure of Warburg’s “Thinking in Pictures” (“Denken in Bildern”) was modelled by means of, among other things, imaging and image transmission processes such as cinematography, and the materiality of these media extends deep into Warburg’s historiographical and epistemological designs.
>There were other problems that made the work on the Atlas an infinite endeavour. Warburg was a technophile. He was interested in telecommunication, the press and travelling; all these new technologies enabled new forms of travelling, but also prolonged the old idea of migration that connected civilizations from the beginning. _Technology_, for example in the form of printing,was also the direct link between Dürer’s engravings and the 28 telephones in his avant-garde library building. He had already written an article entitled „Airship and submarine in medieval imagination“ that suggested that former societies had anticipated what he called “vehicles of thought” and imagination that we dispose of today. Images were their vehicles.
