Note to minion: This post was saved as a draft back in November. It's incomplete, but still more insightful than most of my posts so whatevs....
This week I'm into the mechanisms by which signs lose their meaning, and how new meanings take thier place. Contemporary cultural practicioners can access ample discussions of the topic trough Eisenman, or directly through Derrida or Chomsky, but the conceptual notion of the mutability of linguistic units in the practice of everyday life is typically overlooked.
From Eisenmans experiments (and successes) in semantic architecture we get the question when is a column not a column. Most of the time...and never. Both are correct. To clarify, how about another question: What is the role of a column? Technically columns are the vertical components of the structural system of an architectural artifact. In practice most columns in this country are pices of wood, like a 6x6 wrapped in some venner of stone, brick, more wood, etc. The point being, you don't even see the technical column, it's hidden by the sundry layers of stuff which are intended to look like a column. Why then would the column in its technical capacity need stuff to make it look more column like? Because the role of a column is not simply the technical requirement that it transfer the load of architectural elements above to the foundation and ultimatly to the ground, columns have a cultural and linguistic role.
The cultural role involves expressing a particular message about the architectural composition the column is engaged in. Houses in Tyler, TX with ionic columns are not greek temples. They have greek columns in the style of the ionian period, but, and I cannot stress this enough, they are not greek temples. So there is another reason to make them look like they are greek columns. An expression of permanence or small r republicanism, or the logo which represents some brand which I cannot access or understand, and hope not to. Capitol buildings. Same thing. How many contemporary capitol buildings do you see? NONE!!! THAT'S HOW MANY!!!! Okay, Scotish parliament, Utrecth and Austin city halls excepted. The myriad reasons columns are made to look like super fancy columns is not that important here. We're all going to agree on this point and move on.
Socialist. Democratic. Fascist. Communist. Capitalist.
Let's start by saying these signs are mostly innacurately used in relationship to thier appropriate signified meanings. We use democratic to desrcibe the american system which is actually a republic. There are specific meanings of these two words and to very easily slip into using the word democratic which actually maintains some relationship to its original meaning. This sad fact is based on the fundamental ignorance of the american people who believe they live in a democracy.
Homework:
There is a fantastic series of letters between Pierre Jeaneret and his mentor Perret which is essential to the when is a column not a column debate. The Jeanerate/Perret debate is over windows, but the lessons are the same.
George Lakoff's most recent book "The Political Mind" discusses the biological component of cognition and how the physical nature of the mind predetermines an individual's ability to rationalize the cultural environment. The interaction of the mind rationalizing in a particular way and the structural preconditions of the cultural system lead an individual toward what would be labeled (also by the cultural system, by the way) conservative or liberal.
de Saussure
Sign, Signifier, Signified
Lakoff
embedded mind
subonscious rationalle
constituencies
are fractured populations
rorschoch
subconscious rationalle
upper ontologies
conflict
conflicting semantic interoperability
dominant ink blot
No comments:
Post a Comment