Can be useful ...

Xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign peoples.^[1] It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of foreigners or in general of people different from one's self.

Liquid Words Critique

So, today we had part two of the critique for our Liquid Words assignment. We spend a long time on each piece, which is good, since it is not so much about the pieces themselves we are talking about, but rather how to look at pieces in general, and how to interpret 'art' as a whole. At least, that is how I look at it. I think it is very important and useful to do it this way because of a couple of things. First of all, we are in a class room setting, wich means we are a group of people, each student possibly having a unique interpretation of each piece. To me, the most important part is actually to listen to all the initial (in particular) reactions to my own piece, since I will have a preconcieved notion or intent with what I am attempting to communicate. When those notions comes out as false, or if they would happen to be right, I learn a lot from that. This does not say that what I have made is good art or bad art, it simply tells me something about my own abillity to communicate my own ideas. Those ideas can be good, unique, deep, or they can be vulgar, shallow, superficial. There is little point in having brilliant ideas or concepts in your head, if you're unable to let them come through in your art. My point is, this is a unique opportunity we have as artists to listen so closely to what a whole group of devoted peers have to say about our own art. After school, you just might have to totally trust yourself, looking back at the 'classroom days' and whish you had a group of people telling you what they feel about your art again. It is pretty useful.

Another thing that comes to mind from todays critique was the question "What's wrong with english?", in other words, why didn't I just use english if I tried to communicate something through words? (I guess this might be obvious to some people, but I say it anyway) First of all, english is not my native language, so what is wrong with norwegian? Second of all, by using something other than english, I was actually communicating 'something' other than just what the meaning of each word 'means'. Third, Grendel–which was based on the epic poem Beowolf–was written in a language that was totally understandable for scandinavians of that time (700 - 1000 AD), and even today I can look at that text and more or less understand it based on my knowledge of norwegian, not english. So, what once was old english, has much more in common with scandinavian today than with english. This is for me a 'proof' that words and language is actually very liquid, they are in a constant flux, either you like it or not. True, some languages do not change as much as others, but they still change.

About the critique on "Text" ...

I think I learned something today in the critique about our "text" assignements, I'm just not quite sure what it was, yet ... So far, we only went through 4 pieces (in three hours!), so needless to say it was pretty thorough. At the same time, we could probably continue to talk about each and all of them for many more hours too. I thought it was especially interesting to see how 'difficult' it is to deal with universal symbols in your art. Difficult because everyone has such strong connotations (if that is the right word) to the different symbols. Lanz, especially I think, with his use of chains (a really, really strong symbolic–and litteral–piece of material) and also in combination with his litteral "will" written in the clay and divided in two equally important parts of clay. By using symbols that are almost clichés like that, I think you have to be very precise (or deliberately the opposite) to be able to convey the 'meaning' of what you are trying to say. In this case I'm specifically thinking of the chain and lock being open/unlocked, what does that mean? Is it taken off the person that had it? Can you take it on/off by your own will? Does that resonate with the perception of what the struggle for a free will means? Is there such a thing as a free will? I think all of these questions are immensely interesting, and I think Lanz did a very good job in bringing those questions up. I think the only 'problem' I had with it was how this piece would be perceived by 'us' if he had worn it himself, and as he described it, managed to break the pendulum. I don't know what it means to break the 'thing' that symbolizes the 'will-struggle'. Does it mean that the struggle is over? Does it mean that you will never have a conflict of will ever again? Is it temporarily, permanent, personal, universal, good, bad? Again, I give Lanz a huge cred for comming up with something that is as 'loaded' as this is. I think this will be a very interesting topic (for him) to research further, and an opportunity to make lots of cool art over.

Liquid Thoughts

(copy from/to self from researchclay.blogspot.com)
This is, again, a difficult and hard consept to grasp easily. To make it easier on myself, I will think about it as "the meaning of words", or "the meaning of communication", or "the meaning of words, in phonetic, semantic,and syntactic, (and so on) sense..." [Phonetic, the sound of it. Semantic, the meaning/logic of it. Syntactic, how it is arranged, and what meaning that gives]. Why is it difficult? Because, I think, we take it so for granted, and we can't imagine how it would be to be without it, for starters. We learn to communicate from the day we're born, and what we learn is depentent on where in the world we are, in what time. There are so many levels to this, that it is hard to decide where to start. In regards to the text, it seems that the author is mostly concerned about the written word(?) and how that has been, or can be, translated to painting. I think his statement about the "opposition ... of writing and painting" being "phenomenologically perpindicular to one another" is silly, but, enough about that. I think it is interesting to observe that when Ruscha chooses to paint "Lisp" on the canvas, it is communicating "stronger" to a certain group of people, but to for example me, it didn't mean anything until I looked the word up in a dictionary. So, even though I like 'word art', I also think it is something that can sometimes 'blur' the message more than enhance, but that is of course because some of us come from other cultures (well, we all come from other cultures, come to think of it :)

Message in a bottle

Text has become an integrated part of our everyday life. We don't even think about it. It is unthinkable to not have text to our disposition. Though, there was a time, actually not that far back in time, that we didn't have the letters needed to make the words. Still, we did communicate back then as well (I guess it is much more accurate to say that we've had the letters and alphabets for a long time, but the numbers of people that could actually use them has been very small, so there has been a great need for other ways to communicate with all of those that couldn't read as well) , mostly through the spoken word, but also through the use of pictures. These pictures were supposed to convey a message or story by 'reading' the image. This is the case with a lot of religious images, all the way up to our time, but has a long tradition that goes thousands of years back. I guess one can say that it goes all the way back to some of the first paintings ever made (or at least found) for example in the caves of Lascaux, France. These are dated to be from 32.000 BC. Exactly what sort of purpose these images had is not known. But if we look at, for example, Egypt and how they were writing their stories, it is clear that they had gone through a process from images (pictograms) to symbols/letters (hieroglyphs). As far as I understand it, our alphabet is based on the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and for example the letter A is derived from the (pictogram/hieroglyph of the) head of an ox (Aleph).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph