Foam Core Mock-Up

This week I have been focusing on producing refined work for our final all-faculty critique. I have mostly concentrated on color palette, both for the shapes painted onto the work and the background color of my piece, and I also plan to construct something that is large and sturdy enough to hang on a wall. I am trying to decide whether a darker background or a lighter background relates more effectively to my project, since black may be a bit too strong (even if the idea of the "void" it provokes relates to my content), and a lighter color like a pale blue or grey can ease up the heaviness and better convey the calmness I want to incite in the viewer.

In terms of research, I have read a lot about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the several experiments that have both supported and opposed its main premise. This hypothesis claims that whatever language you speak dictates your worldview, essentially creating unique versions of the world for each speaker of a different language. An example in favor of this hypothesis is that of the Hopi language and its characteristics that differ from English speaker's conceptualization of concepts like time, according to Whorf in "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior." Unlike English, the Hopi see time as a continuum; unlike us who see every day as a new beginning or a fresh start, the Hopi language causes its speakers to see each day as a continuation of what came before. This is due to the language's lack of tenses. 

Another article I read this week - Berlin and Kay's "Basic Color Terms" - disproved the idea that each language creates an entirely different experience of the same world for its speakers. When conducting research to test whether speakers of different languages could somehow identify different colors, it was concluded that every language recognizes the existence of multiple colors, despite their lack of clear, distinct labels for each. For instance, there are several specific words for colors in English - olive, navy, crimson - that other languages lack. In fact, some languages order all colors under just two categories: white and black (in these languages, the colors are split according to how bright or dark they are). Thus, although there are some instances where languages can affect a speaker's worldview, there are still universal continuums that disprove the theory of completely different perspectives depending on the language one speaks. 

"Languages differ essentially in what they must convey, not in what they may convey" (Whorf, "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior").