What it all really means...

A triptych montage by Noel Johnson 

For this particular project I wanted to embody my extreme interest in language. I find it particularly intriguing that language in our modern day lives seems a necessity that is so often taken for granted. We NEED language to survive today. We use it to buy food, get jobs and thusly money, and socialize with every other individual in our daily encounters. We learn through language. We learn how to properly speak to people, we learn how o write and read, and much of what we know about the past today stems from written languages that give us clues about the culture of that time. With all this in mind it becomes clear that language may possibly be a basic human need. However, I would like to challenge that. Do we really need language to communicate with each other effectively? Even though we may you language as a way to communicate every day it has a tendency to lead to many miscommunications. For example, translating one language to another can completely change its meaning; It can create barriers between those who do not speak the same language as one another, opening up a possibility for more differences to be spotted and separate us as people even further from one another. And even when we do speak the same designated language as one another there are differing dialects within that language that separate people. Furthermore, even if one individual may speak the exact same language and dialect as another, they can still misinterpret each others' intended meaning according to their own emotional and intellectual backgrounds, and how their culture or society determines its connotation.  This is the reason why I would like to argue that, even though very useful overall, language, in many situations, can be rendered useless. In direct juxtaposition to these written languages, there are visual languages. In many ways it can be said to be the same with its culturally constructed iconographies, however, there are several aspects of a visual language that stretch across the board and can be understood by many individuals who speak several different written languages. 

The idea Ive splayed out for you above is precisely what inspired the creation of my pieces below: 

 

          In these particular images I juxtaposed bright colors and symbols that are, in general, considered positive. Their vibrant colors and cluttered, loud compositions are intended to catch the eye of the audience and bring them in for a closer look at the smaller details. Of these details a single word is included: stuck. This word, in the english western dialect, is considered a word of negative connotation by most ( I am not necessarily one of those people). However, this word in its original meaning in no way on its own insinuates something negative. It only means to be in a state of being at the present time. Thusly, the word is only given its negative meaning by being culturally constructed. Notice that the words are never quite the center of your original attention and pale in comparison to he visual imagery presented to the audience. This is since the message of this piece is to show the insignificance of written language to a more visual language as well as provide a juxtaposition of the two in order to tease the mind of the audience into challenging their own perceptions of both written and visual language.