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Formation number one & two

These are the posters where the experiments is taking place on.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, PHILOSOPHICAL IVESTIGATIONS, 1953

"Think of the tools in a tool-box: There is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.) Of course what confuses us in the uniform appearance of words when we hear hem spoken or meet them in script or print. For their application is not pretended to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy!"

Forms in the formation

With an interest in the reading matter and how we interpret and visualise words. I want to see how others interpret with my written description. I anticipate to get a range of different results in the end. Our visualisations are different, from person to person. I have made two different posters, with a short description of an geometric landscape. I tried to be as objective as possible in my writing. If I achieved? It is up to the participants in the experiment to decide.

In the experiments people will be asked to read the text on the poster, and draw the image that they visualise in their head, onto the poster with three different markers. Each shape had one specific colour; circles = red, squares = blue, triangles = green.

Practice

I am now practicing my objective writing skills.

Describing the describable

To describe a poster on another poster, and letting people interact with the description. This is an experiment I want to stress. The experiment is divided into three parts; 1: The actual poster, 2: The poster that describes the first poster, 3: The participant and his/hers version of the first poster created from the description on the second poster.

Invisible Cities

The information that words gives us, are often drawn as an image in our mind. For example when an author describes a landscape. The image is more detailed in our mind, if the author describes more of the objects in the surroundings of the landscape. We use our imagination to visualize words. It is in our head, where we translate a sentence in words about a place and time, into images.



"...You leave there and ride for three days between the northeast and east-by-northeast winds..." Marco resumed saying, enumerating names and customs and wares of a great number of lands, His repertory could be called inexhaustible, but now he was the on who had to give in. Dawn had broken when he said: "Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know."
"There is still one of which you never speak."
Marco Polo bowed his head.
"Venice,"the Khan said.
Marco smiled. "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"
The emperor did not turn a hair. "And yet I have never heard you mention that name."
And Polo said: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
"When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice."
"To distinguish the other cities' qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice."
"You should then begin each tale of your travels from the departure, describing Venice as it is, all of it, not omitting anything you remember of it."
The lake's surface was barely winkled; the copper reflection of the ancient palace o the Sung was shattered into sparkling glints like floating leaves.
"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."

An extract from 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino 1974.