Gerrymandering Index Map of the United States, 2014
With audacious simplicity, the counter-monument thus flouts any number of cherished memorial conventions: its aim is not to console but to provoke; not to remain fixed but to change; not to be everlasting but to disappear; not to remain ignored by its passersby but to demand interaction; not to remain pristine but to invite its own violation and desecration; not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to throw it back at the town's feet. By defying itself in opposition to the traditional memorial's task, the counter-monument illustrates concisely the possibilities and limitations of memorials everywhere. In this way, it functions as a valuable 'counter-index' to the ways time, memory, and current history intersect at any memorial site.
What intrigues me about scale is its flexibility. ... The idea is that scale is constantly under reconsideration, it’s a little provisional. Scale is not a stable index to a particular fixed size. It is something that’s always shifting, and in that same way your relationship to the work, the size of your own body, shifts. So, you might be very tiny in a massive structure, or you may have a birds-eye view, a simultaneous view of the work versus what would happen if you were walking through the city, which is a series of views in time. I’m interested in how a model can provide a sense of understanding of space.
Kendall Buster, "Interview with Katie Geha," 2013
nickkahler reblogged
Clay Ketter, Gulf Coast Slabs, c. 2006-13 (via ryanpanos)
'Some days after hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I found an image in Time magazine, taken from the air soon after the storm’s passage, of the smouldering remains of some coastal community. This image, like many others taken that day and the days to come, documented the awesome scale of the destruction caused by the hurricane, but in a landscape which differed very much from the worst-flooded wards of New Orleans, so well-covered in the news media. In this picture alone I discovered a wealth of information and understood the need to be there and capture these traces of living which I found hauntingly familiar. My photographer and I went to Gulfport, Mississippi with our cameras, rented a skylift, and shot film. Gulf Coast Slabs is the result of this work.'
Carl G. Liungman, "Graphic Index for a Morphology of Symbols" from Symbols: Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms, 1974
As indicated by the highly-refined chart, Liungman foregrounds four dialectical sign metrics as the most significant for symbology:
- Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical
- Straight vs. Soft
- Crossed vs. Uncrossed
- Open vs. Closed
However, in this process of graphical clarity, Liungman did not elect to foreground several other sign characteristics, such as the following list:
- Directionality or Orientation
- Cartesian-Coordinate Focused
- Acute vs. Obtuse or Perpendicular vs. Orthogonal
- Singular vs. Combinatory
- Geometrically Simple vs. Complex
- Hieroglyphic vs. Alphabetic
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Marcel Duchamp, With My Tongue In My Cheek, 1959 (via yamabato)
Perhaps the most explicit example of Charles Sanders Peirce's Sign Types:
- Index: The Plaster Cast of Duchamp's Face
- Icon: The Drawing of Duchamp's Face
- Symbol: Duchamp's Signature
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Etymologies of the Month (February 2011)
February 2011 saw Investigation of Jude LeBlanc's Form and Narrative
- Sign (n): c.1300, "to make the sign of the cross," from O.Fr. signer, from L. signare, from signum (see sign). Sense of "to mark, stamp" is attested from mid-14c.; that of "to affix one's name" is from late 15c.
- Symbol (n): early 15c., "creed, summary, religious belief," from L.L. symbolum "creed, token, mark," from Gk. symbolon "token, watchword" (applied c.250 by Cyprian of Carthage to the Apostles' Creed, on the notion of the "mark" that distinguishes Christians from pagans), lit. "that which is thrown or cast together," from syn- "together" + bole "a throwing, a casting, the stroke of a missile, bolt, beam," from bol-, nom. stem of ballein "to throw" (see ballistics). The sense evolution in Greek is from "throwing things together" to "contrasting" to "comparing" to "token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine." Hence, "outward sign" of something. The meaning "something which stands for something else" first recorded 1590
- Icon (n): 1570s, "image, figure, representation," from L.L. icon, from Gk. eikon "likeness, image, portrait," related to eikenai "be like, look like."
- Index (n): late 14c., "the forefinger," from L. index (gen. indicis) "forefinger, pointer, sign, list," lit. "anything which points out," from indicare "point out" (see indicate). Meaning "list of a book's contents" is first attested 1570s, from L. phrases such as Index Nominum "Index of Names," index expurgatorius "specification of passages to be deleted from works otherwise permitted."
- Religion (n): c.1200, "state of life bound by monastic vows," also "conduct indicating a belief in a divine power," from Anglo-Fr. religiun (11c.), from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," in L.L. "monastic life" (5c.); according to Cicero, derived from relegare "go through again, read again," from re- "again" + legere "read" (see lecture). However, popular etymology among the later ancients (and many modern writers) connects it with religare "to bind fast" (see rely), via notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods."
- Sacred (n): c.1300, from pp. of obsolete verb sacren "to make holy" (early 13c.), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from L. sacrare "to make sacred, consecrate," from sacer "sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed," from O.L. saceres, which Tucker connects to base *saq- "bind, restrict, enclose, protect," explaining that "words for both 'oath' & 'curse' are regularly words of 'binding.'"
- Profane (n): late 14c., from L. profanare "to desecrate," from profanus "unholy, not consecrated," from pro fano "not admitted into the temple (with the initiates)," lit. "out in front of the temple," from pro- "before" (see pro-) + fano, ablative of fanum "temple" (see feast).
- Proportion (n): ate 14c., "due relation of one part to another," also "size or extent," from O.Fr. proportion (13c.), from L. proportionem "comparative relation, analogy," from phrase pro portione "according to the relation" (of parts to each other), from pro "for" (see pro-) + abl. of *partio "division," related to pars (see part).
- Chiaroscuro (n): 1680s, "disposition of light and dark in a picture," lit. "clear-dark," from It. chiaro (from L. clarus) + oscuro (from L. obscurus).
- Verisimilitude (n): c.1600, from Fr. verisimilitude (1540s), from L. verisimilitudo "likeness to truth," from veri, genitive of verum, neut. of verus "true" (see very) + similis "like, similar" (see similar).
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