Neurology and Language through Art

This past week I continued testing different drip methods and color schemes in my studio time. In order to re-contextualize the familiar drip paintings I was producing, I decided to draw a brain in order to emulate neurological studies done on people that centered around language. When I examined the paintings I made, I kept thinking about how the little intricacies that resulted from the paint reminded me of human anatomy (such as blood vessels and tissue). This in turn made me look at the paintings as zoomed in images of the areas of the brain that light up in response to language. In some of my previous research, I learned that the degree to which someone's brain responds to specific words in a specific language depends on how early in life that person learned that language. Thus, this indicated to me that any word in a person's first language holds memories, meanings, and associations unique to that individual's experience. Consequently, languages learned later in life do not contain the same weight as those that have formed the individual's first communication capacities. For this reason, I thought it practical to draw connections between the paintings I produced this week and the idea of a single word provoking a "colorful" response.

This week's research mostly consisted of "The Neuroscience of Language" by Friedemann Pulvermuller. In Chapter 4, "Words in the Brain," the book discussed the different reactions that subjects had to words and pseudo-words. Responses were indicative of the imbedded meanings held by actual words used in every-day conversation as opposed to the lack of such a reaction for the pseudo-words. This indicated to me that words themselves are relevant to communication and understanding not just because of their explicit meaning, but also because of their existence as 'empty;' as vessels that carry meaning only because we endow them with meaning.

Communication: The Importance of Shared Attitudes

According to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in order for a system of communication to work, the members of that system must agree on their attitudes towards the things around them. Regular use and application of those concepts thus form part of language and its successful implementation. I found this profoundly interesting because it made me think of the way speakers of a language "share a brain." It reminded me of the changes I see and feel myself going through when I transition from English to Spanish (for instance, when I suddenly have to change my speaking from English to Spanish, I hear my voice get higher, I feel lighter, more open and extroverted). In this sense, the idea of shared attitudes is something that I would love to further explore; it shows the extent to which language can affect our behavior and our perceptions of ourselves.

But can this hinder us just as much as it helps us? Does the idea of an individual life-form, a simultaneously isolated and liberated being, have anything to teach us about the complexity of language? I think that those agreements speakers of one language have act as the basis for the unifier that is language. Though it is undeniable that language forms part of a culture, are people willing to believe that part of this truth lies in the fact that everyone - mostly - unquestioningly agrees on logical truths based simply on the structure of the language they communicate in? Does this take away our autonomy to a degree?

In my studio time this week, I produced this abstract piece with the initial sole intention of experimenting with acrylic ink. The process of creating this and the final piece kept reminding me of the elaborate birth of a new world or being. The disorder of both the process and the final product reminded me of the spontaneity with which many things are created. This also made me think of the creation of languages: although they hold for us a sense of order and logic, they were once nothing more than experiments in communication, created just as circumstantially as something in the natural world. What would an image like this mean to someone who has specific words or phrases for the flow of the paint across the canvas, or for the way the paint acts differently along each corner (some sections blend together, some indicate movement, some appear to exist as interruptions within the piece)?

Language of the Sublime (?)

After reading some theoretical texts about the concept of the sublime and the different meanings and interpretations surrounding it, I started to think about the effect that scale would have on the work I produce. I created a piece in which I tried to replicate the sudden awareness of our lack of knowledge.

The more I think about this piece in relation to language, the more I see it reflecting my own relationship with knowing and not knowing language. Since I am bilingual, I understand the feeling of being able to express yourself more adequately in one language over another for certain situations (when you feel a word or phrase has more weight/significance when said in a specific language). However, I also realize that in not knowing other languages, I miss out on the type of self-expression or thinking that those languages have to offer. The piece I created reminded me of that because it reflects the ambiguity with which we are forced to think about certain things, since we sometimes cannot express what we perceive with the language that we communicate in.

For instance, some languages have words that illustrate concepts that English does not have specific words for, such as the German word treppenwitz, which describes the failure to come up with a good comeback during an altercation only to think of one long after the argument takes place. It is this type of simplification that differentiates the thinking around a similar event for speakers of different languages.

As such, I think this version of the sublime is one that focuses on absence, not of a total absence of language, but rather of a lack of the awareness, appreciation, or knowledge brought on by the mastery of multiple languages.

 

Starting Off

The first steps I took toward beginning my thesis involved conducting research on the framework surrounding my project that will explore language's impact on perception, thought, and action.

As I completed my studio practice over the summer, I realized that the pieces I was producing were strongly tied to the landscape and the environments that I had been to in the last couple of months. However, the formal aspects of the art I have produced thus far is not as strongly tied to its conceptualization as it should be. As such, my current goal is to work on tying concept and content closer together.

That being said, readings such as Michael Clapper's "Thomas Kinkade's Romantic Landscape" exemplify the complexities that can be found even in traditional landscape paintings. Kinkade paints scenes that are meant to be idyllic, views that offer an escape from the concerns and problems of the real world. Clapper comments on the way in which Kinkade's admirers see the world differently than someone who may prefer Norman Rockwell's humorous approach to real-world situations; some individuals prefer to see the world how it could be, others favor a more realistic interpretation. This is pertinent to what I wish to explore because it shows how people's thought processes influence their opinion of and interaction with art.