Symbolic Errors: The Scarlet Letter Z and a Broken Film Strip (original) (raw)
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How to Read Red: Red in Western Culture (Part II)
Advances in Ergonomics in Design, 2019
This article is part of the research project "Glossolalia, an alphabet on Design". It focuses on the symbolic features of the color red, particularly in material culture in the West, traveling through words representing the various actions that elicit or derive from the use of red (correcting, punishing, prohibiting, protecting, distinguishing, loving, politicizing…). It also discusses similarities in the meanings of pink, purple and orange, the three colors that border RED.
Toward a history of cross-cultural written symbols
It is our assumption that the goal of primitive written symbols was to create suprasubjective representations. And we feel that it has continued to be the case all over the course of History. In an increasingly globalised world, this goal seems even more evident, and we could highlight that symbolic representations tend to be supraregional, supranational, supracultural and supraideological. The Arabic, the Chinese or the Suzhou numerals are nowadays restricted to specific uses and regions. Instead the Hindu-Arabic numerals, widespread by modern computers, are commonly used everywhere. Millions of people know the meaning of symbols such as 2, 3, 4, 5, =, ≠ , ≥ ,√, ∞. Almost everybody is able to recognize the usual iconic signs that mean ‗disabled person' or ‗smoking is forbidden'. And in spite of their importance in nowadays society a project devoted to the study of the origins, the spread and the evolution of those symbols is still lacking. The aim of our paper is to point out the theoretical and methodological assumptions upon which a history of cross-cultural written symbols should be undertaken.
Lies, damned Lies and Iconography
‘Lies, damned Lies and Iconography’, Making Histories (Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Art Conference – York 2011), Jane Hawkes ed., Donnington, 2013, 291-302.
In the words of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “There is one great difference between symbolism and direct knowledge. Direct experience is infallible. What you have experienced, you have experienced. But symbolism is very fallible…It is the cause of progress and the cause of error.” The fallibility of symbolism is ironically a side effect of one of its great virtues: namely, the fact that a symbol can be interpreted creatively in many diverse ways. The same symbol that can represent blessings and good luck in one context can represent hate and bigotry in another. A symbol that represents wisdom and enlightenment in one culture can, in another, represent sin and evil. This paper will argue that symbols rooted in natural phenomena can be interpreted in a great variety of ways, though this variety is also limited by the character of the phenomena themselves. Some of these uses yield insight into the nature of reality and are occasions for human beings to gain understanding of themselves and their larger environment. Symbols unite communities around sets of shared meanings and values. Symbols, though, can also divide and be used to demonize others. In exploring the ways in which symbols have been used and misused, this presentation will strive to understand visceral responses and how these create and reinterpret symbols throughout the world in the modern age.
World Signs – Symbols without Meaning (Typography Day 2013)
For decades I experienced the verification of readability as constraints in exploring the potentials of experimental display typography. To solve this rational and emotional problem, I initiated in 2005 a self-directed artistic enquiry.
The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory (Edited by Andrew Gardner, Mark Lake, and Ulrike Sommer), 2018
The human ability to represent concepts through image-making seems pivotal for enabling the formation of complex cultures. This chapter is concerned with the important but permeable boundaries between and around the categories of ‘art’ and ‘writing’. The writing:art/sign:symbol distinction has been fundamental to the location of the survey points forming the boundaries between archaeology and its siblings, e.g. philology, classics and ancient history, and to some extent anthropology. Contemporary notions of art and writing are contrasted with those of past societies and how image-bearing objects differ from other kinds of material culture. The question of when a drawing of something becomes part of a writing system and the types of literacy required to understand linguistic signs are also considered. Sociological and anthropological approaches to art and contemporary theories of visual culture are evaluated for the ways in which these can contribute to archaeological discourse on sign and symbol as a branch of material culture studies.
News & Notes, Oriental Institute, 2017
https://www.academia.edu/31410803/Seen\_Not\_Heard\_Composition\_Iconicity\_and\_the\_Classifier\_Systems\_of\_Logosyllabic\_Scripts Participant list: Diane Brentari Claudia Brittenham Orly Goldwasser and Gebhard Selz Zev Handel Guolong Lai Piotr Michalowski Holly Pittman Elisabeth Rieken & Ilya Yakubovich Joshua Roberson Andréas Stauder David Stuart Christopher Woods Ilona Zsolnay Respondents: Jerry Cooper Haicheng Wang From the Director: "Similarly Ilona Zsolnay’s article “Seen, not Heard: Composition, Iconicity, and the Classifier Systems of Logosyllabic Scripts” describes our thirteenth annual post-doctoral conference. This international workshop focused on a different way of seeing logosyllabic writing systems across the ancient world. Writing reflects spoken language. But, at the same time it functions as a visual system of communication, where elements of script, context, and interaction with iconographic elements can convey meanings that go far beyond the core function of representing spoken words." (News & Notes, Summer Issue, p. 2)