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Posted By: BranShea Quality language? - 10/11/07 08:59 PM
These words down here are not about art, but about language.
They come from a high quality invitation: expensive paper, print, (four black needles attached to it with a cute red sticker).
For a vernissage/opening of an art exhibition .This is mainstream. The words accompany an exhibition to make the visual part more comprehensible.I have the feeling that it sooner hides a vacuum of meaning.(also noticable in other professions)

In this last compendium there is a contribution of a man who asked Anu not to "dumb down" the words in his offerings and I think that was a good request.

On the other hand, what to say of the usage of 'quality' words that under the flag of brightening the understanding of the public, just seem to have the opposite effect: they obscure the real contents of what is offered or said.

Quote the artist:
[Black absorbs all color, but where does it go? / The floor mirrors our private pressure. / Light is full of long knives that slowly scratches the floor, I just can't hear it. / Try to realize the inception of tomorrow's new and mint condition. / Some parts of the city overflow due to the fall of the night outside. / Please recolour my direction. / What I had lost in my studio was found by my studio. / Awareness is the ability of an entity to flow (more) meaningful. / I am never here, only there] (tsja...)
Quote text about the artist: [The artist researches and changes the way we look at and experience a specific space; he is interested in the things we notice subconsciously, or the things we fail to notice because we are focussing on something else. The artist uses concepts which deal with a temporary state. This approach places his work between the viewer and a usually abstract phenomenon like light, energy, air or ‘risidual space'. The results are mainly of a conceptual and cognitive nature. His installations, drawings and objects are best described as modules of thought. He himself prefers to call them ‘interimodules'. A module for a way of thinking/concept, a temporary ‘in between'.

Here are images resulting from this artist's concept.
stroom

Language should not be 'dumbed down', but what of less and less understandable, complicated jargons?


Posted By: themilum Re: Quality language? - 10/12/07 03:53 AM
Originally Posted By: BranShea
These words down here are not about art, but about language. The words accompany an exhibition to make the visual part more comprehensible. I have the feeling that it sooner hides a vacuum of meaning.(also noticable in other professions)

In this last compendium there is a contribution of a man who asked Anu not to "dumb down" the words in his offerings and I think that was a good request.

On the other hand, what to say of the usage of 'quality' words that under the flag of brightening the understanding of the public, just seem to have the opposite effect: they obscure the real contents of what is offered or said.

Quote the artist:

[Black absorbs all color, but where does it go? / The floor mirrors our private pressure. / Light is full of long knives that slowly scratches the floor, I just can't hear it. / Try to realize the inception of tomorrow's new and mint condition. / Some parts of the city overflow due to the fall of the night outside. / Please recolour my direction. / What I had lost in my studio was found by my studio. / Awareness is the ability of an entity to flow (more) meaningful. / I am never here, only there] (tsja...)

Quote text about the artist:

The artist researches and changes the way we look at and experience a specific space; he is interested in the things we notice subconsciously, or the things we fail to notice because we are focussing on something else. The artist uses concepts which deal with a temporary state. This approach places his work between the viewer and a usually abstract phenomenon like light, energy, air or ‘risidual space'. The results are mainly of a conceptual and cognitive nature. His installations, drawings and objects are best described as modules of thought. He himself prefers to call them ‘interimodules'. A module for a way of thinking/concept, a temporary ‘in between'.


Language should not be 'dumbed down', but what of less and less understandable, complicated jargons?


I disagree, BranShea, the opening words you cite about Art are, of course, about Art, because in an organic sense, Art and language are one in the same, i.e. both are forms of social communication between sapient beings and neither form is sacred.

Come, let us go antelope hunting together in the Pleistocene woods.

At early sunrise two pre-Cro-magnon teenagers slip away from the clan and skip and hop and giggle into the woodlands to court and hunt. You are the boy and I am the girl. Showing off a bit you bound ahead, eager to reach the green meadows where antelopes are known to feed. Suddenly you stop and look back and find that you are alone. You retrace your steps until you find me in a stand of wildflowers wearing nothing but a smile.

You wish. I had on a full ensemble of the latest thing in hunting outfits, but yes, I was smiling. You stood there stupidly like you had never seen a flower before, and then slowly I began to realize that you hadn't. And so, although we pre-Cro-magnons have only a hundred or so words, grunts, and gestures in our vocabulary, we girls have a vocabulary all of our own and soon I had you thinking that flowers are the best thing on Earth since sliced bread.

Later we left the bed of flowers with you secretly deciding that you loved flowers so much and that in the future you would bring home some nice flowers after each unsucessful hunt. Men are so easy.

Holding hands we continued walking through the woodlands until we came to a thick stand of white birch trees and you began to jump up and down and whistle and babble on about human depth perception and balance and risidual space and contrasting but complimentary shapes and colors. It was ron obvious that you loved this place.

"Ain't it the truth" I said, while thinking "What the hell? All I see is a bunch of damn white trees!"

Overlooking a clearing at the edge of the birch grove we waited. In time a single antelope moved into the clearing to feed upon the grasses. I looked at you and you looked at me; no words were spoken. I circled left to close the neck of the elongated clearing and without cue I jumped out from the trees screaming. The frightened but beautiful deer bounded directly into the trajectory of your swift spear and died.

The End.

In other words we select from the external world that which we think (or perceive) to be useful to the survial of ourselves cum our clan cum our culture cum our DNA.

As we walk through life a billion pictures pass our eyes, many of which surpass the greatest visual art ever frozen by the nimble hands of man. But social Art is of a different color. Frozen by high blown words, social status is its goal and it seems that social status at this venue of social evolution has a function. And one such ron obvious function of Art today is to make the artsy in-grouper a part of a phoney in-group.

It is all a waxing or waning part of a clockwork orange.











Posted By: BranShea Re: Quality language? - 10/12/07 09:41 AM
Ho! Hey! Strange coincidence. I'd already packed my bag to take the full weekend off and visit some tribes.
I bring them both, the formal business suit and the bear skin.
(mind the latitudes.)

Posted By: Zed Re: Quality language? - 10/12/07 07:00 PM
It is possible to be obscure with short words but sesquipidalianism feels so much more sophisticated.
Posted By: BranShea Re: Quality language? - 10/12/07 09:33 PM
Serious answer. I don't think that art and language are completely functioning at a shared level, at least, they didn't till recently, when concepts (ideas, thoughts, words) started to take over the visual message/communication.

I started close to home (art) because the text I quoted in the small fonts irritated me as a cheaty jargon that in other fields of culture (largely taken) also exists. I feel the same irritation when I read job advertisements, specially in the manager, consultancy, financial controller world. Or when I read (in a dutch newspaper): "innovation manager" or "trendwatcher", "human resources manager".
There are surely many more of those doubtful professions, all with a different jargon. Classy words, but laying a smoke screen over real meanings, meant to impress and not serving but blocking communication. People in jobs, called employees are intimidated or decieved by their manager's words.(friends,relations)
I started from art because here the cheat is often so obvious.
(and very costly)

Which brings me to your inspired Cro-magnon allegory. To me the obscure word is ron obvious.What does that mean? I can see tswum often uses it, but is this an AWAD jargon word? I did not really get that.

That's all.

>>Zed:sesquipidialsm :)<<
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Quality language? - 10/12/07 11:11 PM
>To me the obscure word is ron obvious.What does that mean? I can see tswum often uses it, but is this an AWAD jargon word?

in the first place, Ron Obvious was a creation of the Monty Python troupe. I adopted it as an alter alter-ego way back in the beginning (actually, it turns up via search for the first time in this thread.)

you're going to have to wait for Milo to explain his use of the term as an adjective, I fear.

-ron (much too) obvious

p.s. - see the ron obvious entry in wikipedia if you want to see an obvious example of the weakness of wiki!
Originally Posted By: BranShea
To me the obscure word is ron obvious.What does that mean? I can see tswum often uses it, but is this an AWAD jargon word?


If the Artist must explain his Art then the Artist has not Artisted.

Oh I do hate it so when I have to explain what I so laborously wrote the first time but damnit BranShea, for you, anything.

The meaning of ron obvious

To me a joy of Awad is the quick exchange of Ideas. But some Ideas are complex and not easily condensed to a length likely to be read by Awaders so I try to indoctrinate the reader by using friendly parallels in readable stories. This method often fails because writing so tightly is tedious and soon I bore myself, and when I'm bored I like to play with language.

No doubt the skits of Monty Python are spicy but I've never been a big fan. Instead my nonce use of the term ron obvious was inspired by tsuwm. I was looking for a word to qualify "obvious",meaning "really obvious but only after putting together facts"...you know, like tsum's persona as Ron Obvious...say, that's it! - a ron obvious state of events.

The meaning of my story about the meaning of words and Art.

Stop me when you disagree.

(1) Language and Art are both forms of communication.
(2) Communication is only communication when information is transfered from one entity to another.
(3) A diamond never seen is not a thing of beauty.
(4)Words and thoughts have meaning only when they interact physically with the thoughts and words and actions of others.

The three examples of Art that I analoged in my story are...

(a) The boy finds beauty in flowers only when his budding sexuality forces him to isolate for practical gain the visual pleasure of the varied symmetry and color of flowers from the enviorment-at-large.

(b)The girl finds no beauty in the boy's world of structual beauty even after spacial relationships are explained. But still she pretends to see them. For social and biological reasons she lies.

(c) True Art is found when the boy and girl both see the beauty of the antelope in the clearing and then act without words in the beauty of the hunt.

In summary

Language and Art are largely antithetical; yet both delimit reality and both are extractions from a oneness that is. Yes, but both bring great pleasure to our lives so bland.

And yet, neither one should be taken seriously unless you just want to follow false gods.










>>>(3) A diamond never seen is not a thing of beauty.

(three star smile)

No, it's allright, clear,just so. Thanks for your answer and
both your (tsuwm, Milum) explanations for ron obvious.
I'll stick to shorter items and the lighter words and better go paint than talk about it. And listen to music. The most mysterious form of art.
Posted By: zmjezhd verbing nouns, or, avoiding the void - 10/13/07 02:01 PM
three examples of Art that I analoged in my story

Let's see. There's the skiffy magazine, Analog, there's the noun and adjective analog (for the UKers, analogue), the adjective analogous, the noun analogy, and the verb analogize. Hmm, and what about analog computers? (They must fit in there somewhere.) No, but not that I should get all anally grammatiholic (i.e., prescriptivist) about it—calmly, calmly, Ron Obvious—for, I like it. I will try to work it into one of my etymological monologues today, or, perhaps, I'll monologue it. Or better yet, I should heed Père Ludwig and repeat after him: „Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.‟ After all, I am going to Oktoberfest in Babylon by the Bay today, and one oughtn't to drink beer while monologizing.
Posted By: BranShea Re: verbing nouns, or, avoiding the void - 10/13/07 03:20 PM
>>"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen"<<
>> Wovon man nicht reden will, da schweigt man auch"<<
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: verbing nouns, or, avoiding the void - 10/13/07 04:03 PM
Wovon man nicht reden will, da schweigt man auch.

Tja, die Sprache feiert.
Posted By: BranShea Re: verbing nouns, or, avoiding the void - 10/13/07 04:51 PM
Quote:
tsuwm: p.s. - see the ron obvious entry in wikipedia if you want to see an obvious example of the weakness of wiki!

That's indeed a bit of a mess.I remember the Monty Python show. We liked it at the time. Never knew they had names though.Now they sometimes bring it back and it seems very dated.
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