Study · 2016
Kode-Kode Nusantara
A Scientific Reading of the Traces of Tradition
It reads batik, gamelan, regional songs, and traditional carving through a quantitative lens: geometry, statistics, and computational modelling. What surfaces is a regularity rarely discussed, because tradition is more often approached through meaning and history.
What's inside
What's inside.
One of its most quoted passages traces the link between the heart symbol and the truntum batik motif.
This book is the foundation phyBatik was built on.
From the publisher
From the publisher.
Digging into traditional life with modern science and technology opens interesting possibilities, for traditional culture and modern life alike. When science and technology are turned toward Indonesia's collection of traditions, the inspiration and the fine dreams of modern civilisation become more, not less, achievable. One of those traditional works is batik. Batik turns out not to be merely a cloth covered in motif and colour. Inside a batik motif sits the story told by its symbols. The world agrees that the symbol of love is the “heart” in pink. Few realise that for the Javanese, the romance of love is reflected instead in the narrative of Truntum batik.
Kode-Kode Nusantara opens up the elements of culture in a lively, well-made narrative. We find not only the origins and the secrets behind batik, gamelan, traditional songs and carving, but also how that cultural wealth becomes the inspiration for what comes next.
The elements of traditional culture should be seen as information. There is knowledge in the stroke of batik, the ring of gamelan, the sway of a dance, the taste of rendang, and so on.
What readers say
What readers say.
Reading it made me proud to be Indonesian, but also uneasy at how most people have treated culture all this time.
I had never found a book that opened up Indonesian culture outside the social-science lens. Here it is read through mathematics and physics.
My curiosity about this book was answered in full, replaced by satisfaction and awe at how densely packed it is.
On the same shelf
On the same shelf.
Kode-Kode Nusantara
A scientific reading of tradition