Symbolic Languaging

[Steve Saunders]

Many people know how interested David Grove was in ancient hieroglyphics, and some will know his process for an emergent-space exploring of the spaces within and around symbols or letters.

Over the last year or two I've met a few "dyslexics" and "autists"; and a while ago a few of us agreed "nonlexic" was a more accurate definition that "dyslexic". The "lexic" belief and energy system may just not have intruded over and replaced the symbolic perceiver. This the abilities of the nonlexics to perceive the world differently to how lexics do, to invent and create science outside the lexicon.

It has been known for a long time that many nonlexics process the world through images and that they find the verbal word form of thinking just too slow. And nonlexics can learn reading writing if they use a comic-strip translator: going from words to pictures (with words on the objects), and vice-versa.

So, I found myself stranded in Mexico City for a day, and I caught the tube/metro. All the stations are signed by glyphs - two-tone icons - with tiny writing underneath for the name. In a non-literate country they communicate with symbols, and very effectively. Not just the metro but the airports also - all signed - and other airports around the world are following with symbolic signing instead of words.

Finally sense was being made - a country with many indian languages, many spellings, needs a common way of interpreting how to navigate. and they use glyphs that represent the meaning of the place of the station - wonderful! Staring in my face is a new language, not limited to East or West, not limited by letters, but instead limited by the ability of the perceiver to imagine what the glyph means ... in a common modern culture perhaps we have a way of communicating to explore, perhaps a way of working with nonlexics. This feels like the beginning of something huge! I have no idea where this is going, maybe a written language for nonlexics, maybe a new insight into the ancient glyphic messages, maybe just better signing at train stations in the UK? Maybe a new tube map with glyphs for station names? (I met a person who could not read on the tube a few weeks ago, and this might have been an answer for him.)

Anyone up for this journey?

Cheers

Steven

[phil]

[phil]

Having recently been immersed in Mr Ikea's cosmos, I can say that with pictures and no words (but WITH numbers), they describe adequately how to take a fairly simple flatpack cupboard from 2D to 3D. Just occasionally, when I couldn't get what they were driving at because the image or what it referred to wasn't clear enough, I would have liked a few words - to provide 'fine tuning'. At that point having just a drawing slowed me down.

That said, having an instruction manual in images made it fast and easy to get an overview of the project I had to complete which is very useful to have before starting. Relationships were easy to spot too, especially when I compare the Ikea manual to old-style manuals with their 'see page 11, subsection 42a' references.

I was wondering what other use there might be beyond 'universal' instruction manuals and metro maps for glyph-based communication. Then I remembered doing a CL session once with a guy who couldn't use his hands to write or draw, nor did he read very well. I drew the metaphors he described on separate pieces of paper and moved them around on his instructions, redrawing them if they changed. He seemed to get as much out of that as anyone does who can manipulate their own landscape.

Definitely worth exploring.

Phil

[Steve Saunders]

Great! Phil,

Those DIY instructions are always easier to understand in hindsight, but from the right perspective they are totally logical - if taxing on the spirit in the moment! Maybe we could find a logo designer or a person who designs those instruction leaflets - they might help translate?

Thanks - I've no idea where this goes but there is something to be discovered or made!

Cheers

Steven

[Steve Saunders]

"Messages from the Stone Age" - read the article ...

it shows clearly a common symbolic language WORLDWIDE going back 35,000 years and more to the earlier times of modern humans, who have apparently been around some 200,000 years ... there are common signs and some common sign groups, with symbols going back to 100,000 years ago as recorded... pre-hieroglyphic somewhat!!!!

and the experts cannot interpret the signs ... doh, we only have to think like the cave-person thunk ... same problem as really understanding the AE stuff - beginning with not assuming the one symbol means the same thing each time.

Oh, and they have found 26 different symbols repeating again and again at different sites, yes, ... 26.

this is more likely IMO a common language pre-african exodus or spontaneous around the world ... I'm going for the pre-African exodus ... i.e. at least 120,000 years ago ...

...........

in addition, being given a mexican book on the mayan language, the instant learnings are: the symbols are all different facial expressions - yes, its an emotional sequence being described by the faces - amazing - reading the face nuances as the language ... wow, really fired up for the trip out there to the pyramids in May now ... awesome expectations!

The symbolic languaging just got interestinger and interestinger

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

Nicholas Conard said in the Louwe Kooijmans Lecture on March 4 that the earliest cultural founds like jewelry and engravings date from Africa some 75 thousand years BP, but typical modern artefacts were found in Schwaben from 40 thousand years ago, showing three-dimensional ornaments, representations of figures, mythical symbols and music instruments. The modern human anatomically originates in Africa, but the culturally modern human evolved elsewhere, like in Schwaben. Culture is one of the factors of evolutionary competition, which enables people to communicate in order to cooperate.

I think what symbols have in common around the globe is that they are based on what people observed in their environment, which will be similar in most cases. Being able to represent that in your mind, or even better make a tune, drawing or sculpture of it, enables you to think and communicate about it.

Isn't that what symbolic modelling is all about?

[Steve Saunders]

Hello Corrie,

Well, this thread is about symbolic languaging ... not the same thing at all as symbolic modelling.

And this is about the 'hares' who have difficulty in dealing with the tortoise world which predominates presently. and about understanding the ancient symbolic languages, not as a tortoise-style verbal-acoustic translation, but as an understanding of the MEANING ... the hares naturally leave out the small words; they understand "cat sat mat" without needing 'the on the'.

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

And aren't 'tunes, drawings or sculptures' symbolic languages?

Cat sat mat is only a primitive way of saying 'The', not just any cat, but you know, the cat we've been talking about, our cat that is, sat on the, you know the one at the front door, mat.

David's 'process for an emergent-space exploring of the spaces within and around symbols or letters' was meant to bring out unconcious memories apparent in some peculiar writing.

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Corrie,

The drawings/writings/scuplting are individual communications, partly symbolic, treating letters, drawings as symbols, but a 'language'?

In my reality, to be a language they need to be universal not individual, they need to be in common with the tribe or tribes who speak/draw/write/act/mime/dance/sing/... that language.

To be a symbolic language, in my reality, what I am exploring, is "iconic": symbols that replace words/letters, but which are recognisable and understandable sufficiently universally, like for example hieroglyphics was to ancient egyptians - just because we modern humans are too stupid/disconnected to understand the meaning of their symbols does not mean they were exclusive or not universally understood by the so-called more primitive ancients.

I'm not interested in the therapeutic aspects of symbology or modelling in this thread. It is a discussion about symbolic languaging - as a form of communication.

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "to be a language they need to be universal not individual, they need to be in common with the tribe or tribes who speak/draw/write/act/mime/dance/sing/... that language. [...] symbols that replace words/letters, but which are recognisable and understandable sufficiently universally"

Corrie: "three-dimensional ornaments, representations of figures, mythical symbols and music instruments. [...] Culture is one of the factors of evolutionary competition, which enables people to communicate in order to cooperate.
I think what symbols have in common around the globe is that they are based on what people observed in their environment, which will be similar in most cases. Being able to represent that in your mind, or even better make a tune, drawing or sculpture of it, enables you to think and communicate about it."

The Venus found in Schwaben probably represents fertility and is well understood even today. Isn't it the other way round: symbols are a language that preceeded a language in letters, and aren't in many languages, like Chinese, these 'letters' similar to the visual representation? And wouldn't a picture of something be more universal than any language?

[Steve Saunders]

Probably now, computationally and bandwidth-wise, technologically, we could use pictures/holograms instead of abstracting into 2D forms. 3D computing displays are going to widespread soon, electronic paper books could give rise to a 3D symbolic experience that we could use as messages ...

So, what do I really want with symbolic languaging?

Any language will be limited by the fact that every word, every letter, every phrase, is understood differently by each perceiver, even though we enjoy collective delusions that we share an understanding of the representation.

I feel the alphabet lost touch with its roots in hieroglyphics, I also acknowledge the power and flexibility of words - but also that which words cannot represent - and the image of the mona lisa; her smile shows she knows 'the real secret of life' - that is your perfect example of a picture representing something perfectly that words cannot.

So, I want to communicate that which words confuses, and yes metaphor is great, and also is there a symbolic form that will work for the nonlexics and lexics?

Steven

[Steve Saunders]

or did letters and words evolve for the lexics who did [do?] not understand the glyphs ...?