Posts Tagged ‘language’

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On Visual Thinking

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Most thought, at least in my experience, happens through the medium of language. We use language as a primary means of communicating thoughts, ideas, and emotions with one another. We are taught early on to read and write. With the rise of email, IM, and the like, we have become a culture strongly oriented to the word.

Through all of this verbal bombardment it is important to remember that linguistic thinking is merely one modality of thought. As philosopher Martin Heidegger says, “What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said.” What is spoken leaves out what is seen. And that which is seen, speaks.

Visual language is an amazingly powerful means of communication. Certainly advertising agencies have realized this. They utilize this knowledge to a great degree. Visual language suffers the same limitations as spoken language. Context is important. And with context comes the ability to read between the lines. One of my favorite visual context issues has to do with how children are dressed. In European, and European derived cultures like the United States, little boys are associated with the color blue while girls are associated with pink. In parts of India (and I can only imagine other parts of the world as well) the reverse is true. Rather than seeing pink as feminine, it is seen as the diminutive of red (a very masculine color) and as such a totally proper color for little boys.

Visual thinking, just like verbal thinking, necessitates an understanding of the cultural context and the larger visual vocabulary of that contextual visual language. The color example above is but one instance of visual language differing culturally. The meaning of shadow is culturally determined as well. In fact, I would argue that visual languages are as unique and distinct as verbal languages. Just as the collection of phonemes that make the word pronounced [fuhk] have a different meaning whether you speak English or Vietnamese natively, so too does red or shadow have different meaning depending on the visual language you speak.

Just as there are similarities between the verbal and the visual with regards to vocabulary, there are similarities in terms of grammar and syntax. Rather than issues like subject/object or verb/noun (although those concerns can arise) we have foreground/background or shadow/highlight.

While we can map similarities between the visual and verbal realms all day long, we must be clear that the two are distinct. Talking about visual ideas can be a nice way to begin a project. It can serve to frame a show before heading in to tech. It can be useful in terms of devising the palette of lights used by a designer. But once the lights are being turned on and off, and cues recorded, the thinking must be wholly visual. It does not help to sit there going “I wonder if turning on the head-hi will deconstruct the notion of theatricality better than the shins.” Or “rather than looking at the stage picture I’m going to take a moment to think if frame 6 blue or frame 7 blue in the scrollers is more romantic.” Or whatever. You turn a light on, see if it looks right, and adjust as needed. The thinking must be at the visual/emotional level rather than the verbal/rational level or the effort will fail.

I recently had a board-op say to me they wished I would not turn my mic off when speaking to my assistant because they wanted to know my thought process. I was honestly baffled by that response because the thought process is not talking, it is looking and then turning lights on, off, up, or down. “Channel 35 to 20 percent” is a thought. It is an idea. A hypothesis.

I write this blog because I find writing to be an enjoyable activity. I do not write this blog because writing about light and moving light through space/time are the same thing. They are not.

Back when I would work as a board-op, even if I did not like the work of the designer, I would watch every level change with rapt attention trying to decipher why they made that change and not another one. I would play games trying to see with their eyes and guess ahead of them what they would do next. When I was really paying attention I would be right in the zone with the designer almost like I was lighting the show myself. That is visual thinking.

Without visual thinking, without putting words aside and allowing the mind to focus wholly on what it sees before it, the creation of visual art is impossible. To improve my visual thinking I have recently taken up drawing again. When drawing, words not only don’t help, they hurt. One must turn off the verbal part of the brain and just look and see. If the line is correct move on to the next one. If it is wrong correct it. The right answer is in your mind’s eye.

It can be a lot of work to free a mind oriented to verbal language and allow it to think visually. It was not easy for me. In fact it was a lot of work. Words are seductive. It can be easy to get trapped inside a beautiful rhetorical flourish and not notice that it is masking a lie. Visual language can lie too. But one thing it can’t lie about is whether or not it looks good.

Close this browser window, pick up a pencil, and start looking. You’ll expand your vocabulary and improve your grammar at the same same time. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself.

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What we have here is a failure to communicate – Part 2

Friday, October 30th, 2009

In any interpersonal relationship the ability to clearly and accurately communicate is a necessary skill. When one gets into collaborative projects like theater the need for those skills increases exponentially. There is a degree to which everyone in a theatrical production must rely on and lean on everyone else in order for the whole to work. When any one individual does not live up to their end of the communicative deal the whole process can unravel.

I recently assisted a designer whose communication skills were insufficient at best. She would ask, for example, if something was possible, “Is it possible to print out the lighting cues?” and would get a response to her question, “Yes it is possible.” This is a different question than “Please print out the cues.” One day she threw a temper tantrum about how “nothing I ask for gets done. I have been asking for a cue printout for WEEKS.” Upon checking with with the electrician it was confirmed that in fact not once had the actual words “Print the Cue list” been said.

While this might sound like a minor issue it points to a much larger complex of issues. No one is a mind reader. As such it is only possible to know what is actually said. Working in theater, and lighting specifically, it becomes necessary to be precise with language when any given note may well cost hundreds to thousands of dollars in labor, parts, and so forth. Those carrying out the note need to be certain with regards to what exactly is wanted. Ambiguous requests, or requests for something other than what one wants, will only create conflict and confusion down the line.

Systems have been developed over years to allow for the precise giving of notes from a designer to an electrician such that exactly what is desired gets achieved. The precise type, placement, color, method of control, and so forth can all be described in exact detail so as to avoid any confusion. Part of why this system works is that it leaves nothing ambiguous. Because there is no ambiguity there is no room for misinterpretation.

Ambiguity and miscommunication do happen. But having a system that keeps information flowing without recourse to interpretive wizardry, or decoding efforts worthy of the greatest CIA Kremlinologists, allows for a minimum of miscommunication. One need not resort to temper tantrums over things never asked because everyone is speaking the same language and the same dialect of that language.

Asking for what one wants is the bedrock of good communication and, sadly, something far too many people lack. The equation is simple: use words to accurately describe what it is you would like to communicate. In far too many situations people are unable, or unwilling, to do this.

One factor I have found that contributes to poor communication are feelings of insecurity. Especially in the arts it seems that those who are unclear are also those who are uncertain in their ability or place. As such they use unclear communication as a way of shirking responsibility. If something goes wrong it is not their fault, but the fault of the person who misunderstood them.

While all this may explain why such things occur it does not get at the root problem. Poor communication and smokescreen tactics like tantrums will never compensate for hard work, diligence and competency. WIllful ignorance of how things are done does not absolve one of being unable to work in their chosen field.

Contrasting my recent disaster of a communicator with a designer I assisted a while ago is the difference between night and day. Working for Don Holder and Karen Spahn was a smooth and fluid experience. Notes and ideas were communicated effortlessly because they would follow the one rule of communication: say what you mean. Leaving aside their generally calm and easy going manner, the process was easy because there were no linguistic hurdles, there were only lighting problems.

By communicating clearly and directly they kept the focus on the lighting. Their energy could be fully devoted to the work in front of them on stage since they were not needlessly expending it in frustrated wonder at why no one could read their mind. There was no need for the Kremlinologist. They simply and clearly expressed what was needed and saw the notes carried out to the best of the ability of their crew.

Such a simple thing really. But then it is often the simple things that can trip you up if you are not aware.

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The Language of Design

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Link

“Languages can package knowledge in radically different ways, thus facilitating different ways of conceptualizing, naming, and discussing the world.” Elsewhere he calls languages “packaged information.” In systems of kinship terms, for instance, which vary dramatically among different cultures, each one is “the result is a highly compact, highly efficient system of knowledge that packs multiple bits of information into small spaces.”

In other words, languages are design objects. And I thought: no one loves extinct or endangered design objects more than designers do.

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Colorful Language

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

Link

LANGUAGES divide the spectrum up in different ways. Welsh speakers use “gwyrdd” (pronounced “goo-irrrth”) as a general word for green. Yet “grass” literally translates as “blue straw”. That is because the Welsh word for blue (“glas”) can accommodate all shades of green. English-speaking anthropologists affectionately squish “green” and “blue” together to call Welsh an example of a “grue” language. A few of them think grue languages are spoken by societies that live up mountains or near the equator because ultraviolet radiation, which is stronger in such places, causes a progressive yellowing of the lens. This, the theory goes, makes the eye less sensitive to short wavelengths (those that correspond to the green and blue parts of the spectrum). Unfortunately, though the Welsh do live in a hilly country, it is hardly mountainous enough—let alone sunny enough—to qualify.

The ultraviolet theory, however, is just one idea among many in the debate about the psychology of colour. Like many debates in psychology, this one pits congenital, fundamentally genetic, explanations against explanations that rely on environmental determinism. Psychologists in the former camp think people are born with ingrained ideas about how hues are grouped. They believe the brain is preconditioned to pick out the six colours on a Rubik’s cube whatever tongue it is taught to think in. The other camp, by contrast, thinks that the spectrum can be chopped into categories anywhere along its length. Moreover, they suspect that the language an individual learns from his parents is the main explanation for where that chopping takes place.

[SNIP]

There is a fundamental—presumably congenital—distinction, as shown by the fact that the non-linguistic side of the brain distinguishes between blue and green. But there is also a language-mediated one, as shown by the linguistic side’s greater response.

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Vision leads to language

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

Link

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that all great apes, including humans, follow the gaze direction of others. But in previous studies the head and eyes were always pointed in the same direction. Only when we made the head and eyes point in different directions did we find a species difference: humans are sensitive to the direction of the eyes specifically in a way that our nearest primate relatives are not. This is the first demonstration of an actual behavioral function for humans’ uniquely visible eyes.

Why might it have been advantageous for some early humans to advertise their eye direction in a way that enabled others to determine what they were looking at more easily? One possible answer, what we have called the cooperative eye hypothesis, is that especially visible eyes made it easier to coordinate close-range collaborative activities in which discerning where the other was looking and perhaps what she was planning, benefited both participants.

If we are gathering berries to share, with one of us pulling down a branch and the other harvesting the fruit, it would be useful — especially before language evolved — for us to coordinate our activities and communicate our plans, using our eyes and perhaps other visually based gestures.

Infant research, too, suggests that coordinating visual attention may have provided the foundation for the evolution of human language. Babies begin to acquire language through joint activities with others, in which both parties are focused on the same object or task. That’s the best time for an infant to learn the word for the object or activity in question.

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Musicality of Language

Monday, June 12th, 2006

For Josh Costello

These Elizabethan actors know how to speak poetry. Hear their voices ring out in the tremendous phrases. Nowadays if we want to hear a good voice on the stage, we must go to opear. We do not expect to find one in the theatre. Music is no longer an integral part of drama. Our dramatists write for the eye, for the mind. But Shakespeare wrote for the ear. The soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” is nothing more or less than a great spoken aria. Turn to this play and read it once for the music alone.
-Robert Edmund Jones, The Dramatic Imagination

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Authentic Categories

Monday, June 5th, 2006

When Jean-Paul Sartre called Che Guevara “the most complete human being of our age” he saw a man who had no inner conflict regarding his world view and aspirations, whose every action made manifest the ideals he lived with inside himself. One may like or dislike Che. They may agree or disagree with any number of things the man did. Che was a highly complicated individual yet he was clear within himself of not only his own personal goals and aspirations, but of what was needed to create a more perfect world. He lived entirely by the ideals he espoused.

This is what we are referring to when we talk of authenticity. The individual is not judged as though a criminal. There is no punishment for wrong doing. Living authentic or inauthentic lives is of no normative concern. It holds no moral weight. No position authentically exists from which one could condemn. Rather, the point of import is within ones self.

Zay Amsbury asks “How does the “come from” of an artist determine their authenticity?” This is a simple enough. It is everything. In one section of his Indeterminacy John Cage relates a Buddhist teaching. The student asks “If the mountains are still mountains and the trees are still trees, then what is the difference before enlightenment and after?” To which the teacher replies, “No difference. Except that the feet are a little bit off the ground.”

In this way we see that the actions themselves may be no different in any formal sense. The wood is still chopped the water still carried, yet for one it is like floating. In the same way, one is always historically determined as regards their prima facia modes of thought and action. One can always act inside of history. One can always follow the path determined y history. Ernesto Guevarra could easily have become a successful Physician healing the rural poor. But few can act outside of history. Or more to the point, few can act with no regard for their ontological historicity because their every action (re)creates it every moment, in every breath.

As I said, “there has been a substantial transformation in Humanity’s mode of existence due to the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. And this transformation encapsulates the arguments of Benjamin and places them within a specific socio-historical context that we label the ‘past.’ ” The very basis for authentic action has shifted. The world historical ‘come from’ is something wholly new and unique to our age. Any attempt to understand the basis of human agency without placing it within this socio-historical context will only be a partial analysis.

It is this shift in the very basis of ontological potentialities that alter the potentials for authentic action. Zay and I both seem to agree that the authentic exists within experience. In the final analysis we find there is nothing beyond experience. I am therefore I think, is a better way of looking at the situation. Thought is just an experience, it is not a mode of being. How one thinks is determined by ones mode of Being. Ones mode of Being then determines one’s experience.

However, the shift in the soil upon which and in which that experience is rooted determines how the experience is experienced. For authenticity is based in moments of direct unmediated experience. It is the action taken by that pre-linguistic self that knows and thus acts. This is highly separate from the inauthentic being who thinks and then acts based upon thought. ‘I think therefore I am’ may well have caused more damage to Western thought than the loss of the the library at Alexandria.

To base ones actions upon thought rather than raw experience is to place a filter on true understanding. In thought all the sensory world becomes like nothing as it slowly reduces to signs and signifiers falling further and further away in a sea of referents. To reclaim that original experience becomes an imperative. To reclaim that original experience is to reclaim the soul. That first breath of air or gush of wind. To find that place of action and understanding that we had before language made us forget. That is the path towards authenticity.

Language is an amazing technology. But too often and too easily do we become ensnared in its mesh and rather than determining the course of language, we allow language to determine our actions. Benjamin’s notion of the Authentic in light of Mechanical Reproduction begins down the path and then gets caught in the trap of its own linguistic structures. It becomes unable to see the very thing it critiques causes the entire field of reality to shift. The very basis upon which we act has shifted due to the rise of the photograph and the film and the many technologies that came after. We have undergone numerous paradigm shifts in the intervening years. And as a result we must be ready to look at the potentials of authentic action from within a wholly new conceptual framework.

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Creating Dynamic Peace

Friday, May 19th, 2006

Momus makes an interesting point about the relationship between art and politics. Using the metaphor of textures and talking of an anti-war noise band he disagrees with the efficacy of their work in saying “I disagree with this. Two quotes here: Susan Sontag said that rock music was “aggressive normality”, a loud noise on behalf of the status quo. And Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”. (Not “angrily demand it from your representatives”, note: be it.)”

This is an important point for both activists and politically minded artists. At a certain level it is simply a matter of contrast.

Scenario 1:
Person A yells.
Person B yells back.

Outcome:
No difference.

Scenario 2:
Person A Yells.
Person B replies quietly deliberately and forcefully

Outcome:
Person A looks like a bafoon.

This is a simple principal in acting. If everyone yells we lose the drama. If there is variation, the texture in the writing comes out more strongly. It is a good and solid technique. It is also a good way to live life. To get ‘angry’ and flustered and start yelling is to already lose. You are no longer in control. AND you are no longer peaceful.

The same thing is true of fear. If you allow yourself to be consumed by fear you can not be brave, you can only endure. If nothing else this is simply exhausting. But the expenditure of willpower to overcome the fear and the anger and live with peace and stability is ultimately something that can feed your soul much stronger than nearly anything else. It is not about ignoring emotions and being cold. It is being in full touch with your emotions and knowing that like thoughts they are part of the illusion. The necessary illusion of human existence.

Yesterday I had been surfing the internet looking for audio clips of speeches by Che Guevara. I found one and while I was waiting for Quicktime to load the rather large file I pressed play on my iTunes. A Tibetan prayer chant came on and as I went back to work listening to the chant I almost totally forgot about the audio clip I had set for download. Several minutes later the forceful and powerful voice of Che mixed into the prayer for peace. A whole amazing new layer to both emerged from the juxtaposition of the two. An accidental Fugue.

A soft melodic prayer for peace was underscoring a UN speech about how ‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ can not just be between the superpowers. But rather, for peaceful co-existence to be an authentic value it must extend to all peoples of the world. And yes I understand that these words of his exist within the same man who was more than willing to execute any opposition to the Cuban Revolution. And perhaps that is the point. Perhaps his inability to find peaceful co-existance on the micro level contributed to a world where it was not possible on the macro level.

Be the change you want to see in the world

When you live with a set of values deeply rooted in your Self, no matter what language you use or styles you employ, those values will come forth. The radical intellectualism of Beckett for example, holds within it some of the most tender and human emotions. I found the style of the film Derrida rather dull and self conscious. However, a number of the interviews were absolutely fascinating. At one point he is sitting with his wife, in the kitchen I believe, and is asked about why he never writes about love. He gives a wry smile to his wife and says something to the effect of ‘everything I write is about love.’

When you open yourself up to authentic experience there is no part of You that is left out. When you create from a place of total openness and ‘self’-less-ness, the whole of your non-ego Self is allowed to come forth and aid in the creation. Just as a play could not happen without the director, actors, designers, stage managers, riggers, carpenters, PR department, janitors etc. so too is it impossible for an action to happen without the entirety of experience behind it.

So when you create or when you simply act in the world, how you act is as important as what you do. Are you coming from a place of violence and control? Or rather are you acting from a place of calm and peace. Are you the still point around which the chaos of life whirls or an aggressive agent forcing change on an already tumultuous Earth? Perhpas you understand that these dichotomies do not really exist and are nothing more than linguistic constructs.

Be the change you want to see and you will see the world changed.

We must approach creativity as a collaborative process of mutual exploration. There is no end goal, no ideas of progress or success or failure. There is only motion, interaction, curiosity and play. The idea is not to “change the world” ; the world is in a constant state of change. The idea is to direct this change in a way that allows human beings to recognize the reality of their freedom, creativity, and collaboration in the whole process.

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Subway thoughts

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

The 20th Century philosopher Martin Heidegger made an important observation when he spoke of ‘Being’ as a verb rather than a noun. Being, the basic unit of existential analysis ranks next to ‘Self’ in importance. Or rather they are one and the same thing. Form and function become indistinguishable.

Heidegger’s texts formally understand this in terms of the discursive tools he uses to construct his arguments. He takes the reader through a journey and demands of them not a passive understanding, but an active engagement. Process determines product. Theory is derived from practice.

Trocee and I have been going back and forth about the role of verbs and verb tense in relation to culture, awareness and consciousness. The basic subject has to do with the relation of verbs and verb tenses in language and how they serve as a reflection of that culture’s understanding of the world. As a result then, one might be able to map a relationship between language, culture, cultural production, and possibly individual action.

Heidegger’;s claim of being as verb and being as noun is often misunderstood by speakers of English. The German language denotes a verb by the use of a capital letter at the beginning, just like we do with proper nouns. (I personally prefer a little impropriety in my nouns, but that is a separate post.) As a result an everyday German understanding of language,when translated into English takes on an esoteric metaphysical quality. ‘Being,’ ‘Capital ‘B’ Being, and so forth. This common misunderstanding obfuscates the essential meaning that Heidegger is trying to make, life is action. The form coexists with content in a mutually necessary almost symbiotic relationship. Heidegger further placed an emphasis on context, an element ignored by his French readers who came to be known as the Existentialists. So we have an evolved network of relationships. Form, content and context all inform react to and guide one another.

Why does this matter?

It matter because this is life. This is how we live. We are placed in a context(born), and we react and interact with it. This is also theatre. We have a text(content), performed(form) within a given place and time(context). When I write about minimalism or lyrical humanism within the context of a networked meta-theatrical setting I am already creating that theatre through the use of hyper links, common cultural references, tags and so on.

If I mention the most beautiful sun set ever, I have helped create that for you in your mind by referencing your memories locking onto my words in an attempt to understand and we begin to break the fifth wall. When we go see Dorothy’s Mash-Up Theatre we will be experiencing a live, whole and contained theatre event. But we will also be experiencing contemporary music trends, hip-hop, the theatre blog world, visual art, technology and so on. And on.

Endless associations.

Endless associations that feed in on themselves. It is truly a web. But not a mere object. It is a living thing. It is information evolving like and organism. A thought becoming aware of itself.

Just as the work of Plato, in a sense, did not become fully realized until Derrida’s deconstruction of it, so too does information not become alive until it has the proper technology to live its content and make concrete the associative networks it has always operated under. All that is left is to package it and sell it like Cola.

Oh, wait. Someone did.

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Style / Choice

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Language is a very powerful medium. It is a technology that contains within it the ability to take an idea from inside one mind and transfer it to another. No USB or Firewire cables required. I am often amazed at language for this very reason. But the flip side to this amazing potential is an obfuscation of ideas. A loss of clarity due to a mis-match of signs relating to a single word or idea.

I remember a discussion one day in graduate school. One of my classmates was working on a show and talking through his ideas for the lighting. The play followed an arc through a single day. Scene one morning, scene two afternoon, scene three dusk and so on. In his description of the second scene he said he wanted to go for a cloudy day where halfway through the sun breaks through the clouds.

He is sitting there describing how he wants that dull grey shadowless quality that you get on those overcast days. I love that quality of light. I begin to imagine the day as I hear talk of tons of little spotlights to cover all the shadows and try to eliminate them. I keep coming back in my head to the description of the light. Dull, grey and shadowless. Sounds like daylight color fluorescents to me. So I chime in with the suggestion that he might consider using dimmable fluorescent lighting for the scene to create that effect.

The response from several other people in the room is that this is ‘not the kind of play where alternative lighting is appropriate.’ That sort of set me back. “Not the kind of play” for the use of “alternative lighting.” Alternative to what. Alternative to a knee jerk reaction in a theatrical setting, sure. But what about a dull grey shadowless day translates into hundreds of tiny shadows flickering over the stage.

Because the acceptable theatrical vocabulary is limited to a very few types of lighting instruments, anything outside that is considered ‘alternative.’ The kind of thing to be used in a ‘stylistic’ or ‘expressionistic’ production. The language surrounding lighting has confined much of it to an incredibly limited visual vocabulary. We have infinite combinations of nouns and adjectives to describe the quality of light yet only a handful of acceptable words to express it. This dearth of expression often leads to sadly cliched responses.

Working for two years as the resident lighting designer for the NYU dance department was a major help in overcoming cliched responses to dance lighting. As a medium of performance, dance is expressed visually in light through the dominant use of low side lighting. Lights at floor level and head height and in between. Its great for a while, but 80 dances later in one year, you start to get bored. You have used every color in every conceivable combination. All that is left is to question the use of side lighting.

Sometimes these experiment prove why there are standard responses to a given situation. But they can more often than not show you whole new ways of looking at things. My friend Mark and I spent a year playing a kind of game with the lighting. Since we spit all the lighting between us and saw every one of the pieces we would give little challenges to each other. If the typical response was blue we would tell the other, “no blue in that piece.”

Working in this manner forced us to overcome the weight and inertia of the accepted vocabulary. Sometimes it worked brilliantly and sometimes we failed equally brilliantly. But every time was an expansion of our visual vocabulary. Ideas like “this is how you light dance” fell away quickly and that energy carried on to work in other genres.

What is “theatrical lighting?” What makes it work? How do you get to the emotional core of not just this particular play, but this particular instance of this particular play? Language can be and is a powerful medium for the exchange of ideas. But it is necessary to keep an eye out that it is not overly confining at the same time.

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