For the exhibition called " The Journeyman II", I wrote a dictionary trying to tie the meanings to the paintings
A.List of symbols
1. Aerostatic globe
2.Artery
3.Arlequin
4.Artisan
5.Artifacts (see Machine)
6.Artilugy (see Machine)
7.Astronauts
8.Bambino
9.Bear.
10.Belt
11.Beauty
12.Big turtle
13.Bird (-queen, -guards, -hunter)
14.Bride
15.Bridge
16.Bycicles
17.Cementery
18.City(see clocktower, headless man,
19.Clock tower
20.Dancers (masked-), (nigth-)
21.Days
22.Death
23.Engineers
24.Equidna
25.Filmaker
26.Fish Fisher
27.Flying machines
28.Glasses (see artifacts)
29.General (The)
30.Gryphus
31.Hedgehog (equidna)
32.Headless city man (see City)
33.Heart (see city)
35.Hidden places (see City)
36.Hours
37.Icaro
40.King monkey
41.Knowledge
42.Machinery (theatre)
42.Map
43.Mask
44.Masked man
45.Monkey
46.Musicians
47.Old cars
48.Outdoors
49.People
50.Power
51.Procession
52.Rabitts dancers
53.Railroad
54.Soundboy
55.Singer
56.Ship
57.Solitude
58.Theatre
59.Traveler
60.Train of progress
61.Television
62.Time
63.Women
B. Dictionary
Words with Letter A
Aerostatic Globe (see Globe)
Above all, an escape from the city, an ideal evasion, destined to fail because the city is the world. It is used in association with the figure of the Bambino or the masked man, meaning the travel made from one stage to another. It is generally depicted with a big smiling face on the outside.
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The first time the people in the town saw the globe, they didn’t understand what was it for, it looks like and immense, round, big bladder, thrown out at the outskirts of the town, completely useless.
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Positive: freedom, perspective
Negative: escapism, evasion, isolation
Artery
(see City)
If the city is a living organism, therefore the roads and paths are their arteries and veins, and the cars and people like little red and white globes that insert it with inner life.
Positive: Flow, life, energy
Negative: clogs, traffic jams, inertia, preestablished paths.
Harlequin
Type of character found in some procession.
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The story of the harlequin goes as follows. The tale tells us that the Harlequin was sick, and was in the hospital. The harlequin started to tell the dreams does comes to the mind, the dreams tell the arlequin. And the harlequin is happy doing so, so the health returns and everything goes well. And then, the harlequin was not sick anymore. Does this make sense to you?
Positive:
Negative:
Artisan
(see engineers)
Ditto, old lineage of treasurers, collectors of all sort of tricks regarding the manipulation of material to make a statement or create an elucidation, or a message to someone, somewhere. Rabbits are artisans, but birds as well, and mainly they are side-roles despite the effort, that together with the engineers, they put in for the rehearsal of the opera.
Positive:
Negative:
Artifacts (see Machine)
Artilugy (see Machine)
Astronauts
Another type of traveller, who affronts, however, the same kind of threats about what will be discovered
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Some of the papers in the archives were mishandled, so some folios do not belong to the group where they are found. I can recognise patient A and patient B but sometimes their identities get blurred; there are more patients who are registered, at the peak of the season they were almost 600, then the number goes down to 20. I can track the records of the doctor who wrote the reports, but the letter gets more nervous as the month pass. The paper became yellow and the ink brownish. I like the calligraphy, especially at the beginning.
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Positive: Excitement
Negative: Fear, apprehension
Avenue
There are some avenues that being immersed in the city, they seem to give it their back, open to the sky, they circulate among the neglected areas of the city: it was one of these avenues where now was the transport unit of the newspaper, heading for a new commission, and from there, S (one of our characters) contemplated how gray can be some neighborhoods at certain times of dawn, for it was early even for the bustle of the city, it was cold and windy, but S kept the window open for air, which lashed his face unrepentantly way, distracts him from the remnants of the morning dizziness. Worried about their appearance, not always very neat on the other hand, took a look to the rear view mirror: there looked somewhat tired, but not much more than a bad night anyone could cause: dark circles, some wrinkles, a face of reluctance, slightly less, little more.
Attic
Where the hidden things are, for comfort or for shame, either way, that is where they finish, as long as I remember.
Words with Letter B
Bambino
The principal character of the story of the journeyman, this is a child-like creature (until what point is a human being we still don not know). The aspect of the Bambino is the one of a small child, with the big head and narrow shoulders, short legs, and a narrow chest, dressed with loose garments, unadorned, and more similar to a pyjama than to daily clothes. It can be represented with an inexpressive face, more likely to be related to fear or perplexity, and sometimes is depicted wearing a mask, or taking the mask out.
Positive: candour, innocence
Negative: Childishness, immaturity.
Bells
Bells ring.
What, then, of the man against man? The gaze that reflects the late hope, in his hands slow, silent smile, raised the mood, closed breath, how deep is the hidden aim of such interludes between both saturations and delays. Fallen man, feel a tremor to hear about the kingdom of heaven here on earth. That joy. A smile, slight and flat, after the defeat, is perhaps the most sincere smile, stripped of so much amalgam, so much noise, without much pride or gold. Man has fallen, and it is necessary his fatigue, reborn to the breath of the world, the created world, to be reborn from him the breeze needed to release him from the anguish carried from birth, since he lives, from growing to life in this world always so inexplicable.
That thought Peter, playing with a small clay made of mud in his hands, waiting for the day, passed without much to do at the foot of the tower of the church.
What about us? Of our work, our fatigue?
Peter followed, shaping the mud ball without throwing it, like the others, to the water, water with waves, that, regular, like evenly predisposed, repeated their echo around each ball devoured by the sea.
It was not even time King Porus festival and the people exuded an embarrassed, thoughtless, tiredness so distant from this weariness in which he was thinking. Of this tiredness, a little redeeming smile could be born, drowned in that hideous air, almost, almost decadent.
While it was not time then, little was missing for the city to transform itself into the venue of the festival of festivals days of King Porus.
Bear.
Animals, characterized by their force, but in a more aggressive way than the turtle.
Belt
In the form of floating stripes, they appear in many images, mainly accompanying a central figure. They sort of give a corporeal presence to the flow of energy that surrounds the characters, sometimes gently quiet, sometimes sinuously agitated. They speak for the character, and they get the mood in the environment. They are usually black.
Positive:
Negative:
Big turtle
Animal. Slowly coming, the turtle is read as a medium of transport by the troops of the bird queen. Also, there was a procession fo turtles in the wedding of the bird queen with the little hairy animal of unknown name. They are really big, as much as four two-legged persons standing one over another.
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And then, over the hill, when the fog started to slowly disappear, they appear. The big army of turtles, expanding itself until the horizon, just in time to claim the victory, and to cause despair among our people. They were coming, slowly, peacefully, unstoppable. And at the top of each one of them, a tower, full of warriors, bird warriors, shooting their weapons over us. That was the moment we realise the game was over.
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If you turn to the left of the yellow room and walk straight to the end of the corridor, you will find a glass case, where you can test yourself in the reading of the turtle carapace. The lines surround white spaces and echoes themselves until they find one another and get stuck, forming the peculiar shapes that are so typical of this pieces.
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Bird (-queen, -guards, -hunter)
These characters appear many times in the images that form part of the collection.
Bride
The Bride is a bird as well.
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She was walking from one side to another, making regular sounds with the stilettos, one sound after another, her figure defined against the window, warmly protected from the rain.
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In one of the dreams written by patient B, two brides with heads of birds start to shoot at the guest of the party, or it was a wedding? we do not know as the description is confusing, why two brides? and why they start shooting? where are the grooms? the dreamer has no answers.
Bridge
Bicycles
Gracile in some way, that represents in their two wheels the azarous sides of the fortune and movement, that is, energy. Sometimes they represent the energy and flow of the effort, a scaffolding over the fortune, and therefore, a recourse used to enhance enterprise.
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Patient B also dream of bicycles, as we read:
“I am riding a bicycle, along a big promenade, flanked by trees to one side, and by a road to the other. It looks that I am crossing a bridge, but the bridge is not so hight, as it looks the river is so close to me that it can enter the track if it grows a meter or two. But the weather is quiet, and I run and run riding the bicycle and the cars come and go beside the track. it is early morning and everything seems ok.
And then...
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Positive:
Negative:
Words with Letter C
Cemetery
A structure that curiously reflects some of the structures of the city. It can be considered a mirror of the city in the duo metropolis-necropolis.
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Walking and walking, to the left, to the right, again and one more time.
Each pavilion looks exactly like the other, and another one comes behind both. Is this what eternity looks like? Do they want to tell you that putting this so repetitively?
And so silent.
One dog runs at the end of the lane, just to disappear quickly. We stop to rest, walk out to the main corridor, we look up and our eyes see the hills, the mountains, covered with houses, so colourful, so alive, but so similar as well.
We seated a couple of minutes and we start again.
Niche after niche, name after name, life after life.
All forgotten. I feel alive.
The shadows are there, covering us. We keep walking.
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I look at the map to orientate myself, looking trough the apparently random organisation of all this. As an architect, I want to find patterns, but I can't find them here, and it freaks me out, I want to know, I want to find an order, I personally think that is what we are programmed for, to find an order in the chaos. But what if everything is not more than chaos?. We started to feel tired, but by now, we just keep walking.
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Positive: Peace, quietness
Negative: Grief, solitude
City
(see clocktower, headless man, power, engineers)
The city is the universe. This is the elemental statement. Certain traditions depict the city also as a human being, both male and female. The city, as imagined many times, is in the middle of a desert, surrounded by some dry mountains and covered by a softened gray and cloudy sky, which from time to time gives place to some solar rays. The city extends to each one of the four cardinals points from your home. You can travel and travel days and not find a way out of the city.
The city has hidden spaces, and one space for each day moment of the day, and for each day of the week.
The city has arteries and veins. Also a heart, but you wonder if a brain.
Positive: Vibrant, full of stimuli for the senses, technology-friendly
Negative: Crowded, impersonal, alienating
Clock tower
(See Time)
Located in the middle of the city, is a main landmark for tourist and locals. The clocktower is a structure made of a multitude of gears(years), aggregated apparently disorderly( and this appearance is of fundamental importance to some questions) amidst the shadows of the city. Not properly a tower, but more accurately a group of towers, each one with a duty to perform. People used to count years since the day of its foundation, hence the termination (att:after the time of tower) used for recording historical milestones: 1979att, 2011att, etc) Artisans in certain works hava a tradition of disregard this convention and sort the numbers in a n opposed order, with the intention of mislead the cataloguers, which work at the hearth of the clocktower.
Positive:
Negative:
Colors
Bold colors, of this land, reds, oranges, deep blues, under the sun, joining quietly the words, hoping that they unveil my meanings, my symbols, my sense, waiting, quiet between line and line the words find joy in my lips, waiting, without rush, without artifacts, without tricks, without sideways, simple, simple, tired, quiet. I have already tired the verb scape after hiding it in my evasions, like a running criminal that leaves behind the identity that harasses him, broken and no point of destiny. By this time I’m tired and will let me get caught.
Words with letter CH
Chomsky, Noam
The impossibility of knowledge and the critic of the mechanical model of reason, that is, in mechanical philosophy, the idea that the world works like a big machine, a idea that Descartes and Galileo subscribed but, according to Chomsky, Newton put in doubt, reducing the aims of the general science, but not denying the utility and usefulness of our nearest and verifiable perceptions in order to interact with the world (Nature). Language, was, according to Chomsky, one of the faculties of the mind, which, because of its creativity and power of communication to others people’s minds, escape the model of the reality as a machine. So the fact of how communication works was a problem to this model, a fault that still can be seen in fields such as the exploration of the human genome and neuroscience (where is the mind?). But for Chomsky that, if of anything, is a proof of our limits in understanding.
From Chomsky we take this idea, and use it to apply it to the interpretation, equating, arbitrarily for the purpose of this work, understanding to interpretation. Also this description of creativity in language as a kind of erratic factor in the communication process. This is important to us as long as interpretation and communication are part of the goals of art.
Words with letter D
Dancers (masked-), (night-)
People who celebrate by moving themselves and playing instruments while singing a different song. Mainly found in the processions.
Positive:
Negative:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _
Just saw the shine.
The thousands of sequins massively dragged her skirts, not only twinkling, flashing, but splashing in slow, fast movements of rhythmic soft, thin motion as the brittle broken laces that in its surroundings twinkled with elaborate, golden, glasses shining in broken movements, and I saw his face, covered between multiform earrings of delicate figure and graceful silhouette, bobbing around the crowned head filled with moons, blue pendants, zaphires and violets, sunflowers. Spin spin! spin! spin! they all glassy, transparent, bright, began to move ...
Days
The city, people has found, has places for each day of the week. For example, the weekends correspond sometimes to quiet, calm places, sometimes also noisy, crowded colourful places, but free from the strenuous sensation of the places that correspond to the weekdays, especially when the week start.
Positive:
Negative:
Dream
Today I dreamed that you, author, wrote me, my self, with some letters spelling myself, discovering in a word my personality, creating me with some signs, juxtaposed, alienated one from another, tied in one word by your trace, in just one paragraph
only four letters, I dont know, maybe some more, some adjectives
a few circumstances
and two observations
Death
Death in the world of the city has a ever-present identity, as a unavoidable comanion of life. There is also a conception that life is no tother thing that a very, very slow death. Corresponding this vision, the city has, as oposed to the metropolis itself with its many areas and districts, one region called necropolis.
Positive:
Negative:
Drink
I have the drink in my hand,
and the cup has not broken yet , of waiting the visit, the visit yet to arrive,
once in a while, once in a while,
on this table so hurt
of names, memories, hearts and bar wounds.
But worst, the patience not ends the memory as had been my desire, locked inside this bottle ,
in which desperate is my desire,
in which laughing are my sorrows,
in which silenced are my defeats,
in which sliding is my wrath,
in which falling are my eyes,
both of them asleep of trying to forget,
that tomorrow to start over
they must have again.
Duality
Visual thinking. Text and image.
Complementarity. Image is simultaneous. Anyway faster than text. But shorter.
Text is successive. Anyway slower than image. But larger.
____________________
Between the streets, pointed by the metallic post, drak painted, stained, some ligthing , some not, betwen them, between the houses and the silence of the night. For all the night walkers in the many cities around.
_______________________
Words with letter E
Eco, Umberto
The intention of the author, the intention of the text and the intention of the reader can be different. The author marks an intention in writing a text in a certain way, but cannot manage all the meaning that each of the pieces that is handling, mainly because the impossibility of controlling the context, just being allowed to resctrict the number of meanings and clarifying what the intention was not. The text, in turn, to the intention of the author, aggregate the meanings given by the context, and the sum of the reaction of the readers, and also anchor more or less sucessfully these compromise between the author’s intention and the reader’s lecture trough its inner coherence and structure. This is different from the author’s intention too much or very little,mny times depending of the mastery the author has of the craft or of the simbolism of the element involved. Then, comes the intention of the reader, who may or may not have a predisposition to read the text in a certain way.
From Eco we take this model of interpretation which we can link to the theory of information form Claude Shanon, and the idea of noise and mental models in the flow of information.
Engineers
Members of a team who are in charge of the gears, dents, chains, tubes, pulleys and other artifacts and artiluges for the correct and proper function of the clocktower.
Echidna
(See Ornithic)
Words with letter F
Francesco Franchi
The map as a history, graphic literature
Filmmaker
Fish Fisher
Flying machines
Face
The morning had begun as always, unintentionally and forced, taking him out of the bed, pushing him to look in the mirror, again and again, his face, tired, clumsy, staying in front of him until arriving to the otherness- as when one examines a word, either, for example, elephant and looks on all four sides, repeatedly, in their anatomy, their form, their construction: e, l, e ?, e, p, n, it will, el, pee, en, en, (n!) to feel something completely unknown, either with a natural or absurd structured nonsense (acccording to the mood); he looked then, that way, that, his face, as if even his gaze (where the soul or the real person is sighted) does not belonged to him, stolen by the mirror. Then, who knows, he saw, or felt, uncomfortable by that strange reflection; reached this point stopped his thoughts, deciding to start shaving: first the left cheek ... done.
posted by storm34flu at 2:26 am | 0 comments links to this post
Fry, Paul
The possibility of understanding the text, in the context of the author and the context of the reader. Here comes the theory of the mind, how the mind can communicate, and if that at all is possible. That is the possibility of really understanding the other, and the presence of the author, an author, as a character defining a text, being it a community or an individual.
Words with letter G
Garden
A garden in the desert, a miraculous vision, a delight for the senses, a marvel of mankind power,
a victory against the elements, a luxury place with marvellous pleasures and golden palaces
where the unbelievable takes place...
but, as well hidden truths that can throw yourself into the deepness of cruelty
soon in your nearest theatre, the garden
Glasses
(see artefacts)
Devices for seeing. A lot of people use that. Painted as big, heavy, dark artefacts, with lot of buttons and rods to adjust them.
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A cup on the table.
Is it half full? Or is it half empty? How to say?. It was far from your table. Not that far from mine. Were you wearing your glasses?. Please tell me you were wearing your glasses?. Oh dear. You know you can never go out without them.
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I just need to adjust this, and this...and this...ok, now is ok, ok take a look please, and tell me what you see.
I see... I see a face, somehow recognisable, although if you push me and ask me to tell you who is that face of or where do I know that person is I probably couldn’t tell you, I am sorry, wait, wait...that colour, everything looks so vivid, so crisply defined know...
So it is working, the fixes are ok, I can tell by your words.
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General (The)
The one who harness the power. Generally-of course- considered as a male protagonist, is, according to convention, painted as faceless, or more precissely, headless, as linked to the principle of power. However, the eyes are visible, and in the space of the head, there is either a cloud or another object such as a tree, objects that deny somehow the humanity of that space, and, in being placed in such perdominant position in the body, determine the directive principle of the whole organism, and ocntrast with the very defined uniform the general has, totally emboridered and ornamented as a peacock.
Grandma
Progressively, I realize that my grandmother was entering that stage in the time where the past comes along with the present slowly, unpainfully, calmy, unstoppable. Will that happen to me? to my mother? to us?. Now , in my house, I pull the curtains almost closed, to get the same lightning I had back in the grandma’s house.
Gryphus
The shadow of the war. It is always represented covering most part o the canvas, showing behind a dark landscape diminished by its towering and sinister presence.
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The beast, seated and quiet, fearless and in complete control of the situation, asks the man
-Do you know, did you know, will you know the answer?
Three questions in one, three answers in one. The beast stands over the black rock. Is it correct to say she? Does the beast has a genre? Maybe it was a he. I guess that perception changes according to the moment in the story.
Anyway, the answer was no.
But it was not said, and silence was given room to stay, polluting the air, suffocating the day.
How long was the duration of the silence?
Long enough.
The landscape, dark as the night was starting, just let glow tiny point in the distance. People coming back from work.
The man stands, thinking of an answer, other than no, but he could not think of another one. What could he do?
You can guess the situation by the way the beast is portrayed, so big there is not room for more in the image, just a little space for a city drowned in darkness.
Would you answer, please?
The beast was waiting, as the man also was.
Words with letter H
Ornitorrinc (echidna)
A creature that is not qualified by the typical criteria of taxonomies
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If you hunt a hedgehog, the popular legend say, you will get a year of good luck, but if you try to hunt one and fail, doom is assured for you and your fourtenth generation. That is why when people go to hunt hedgehog they try not to fail, and they make big preparations for tht event, and they make it once a year, and they consider the succes or failure of this hunt as a ggod or bad omen for the group involved and the town or the city from which the hunters come from. In the room was a big portrait of the uncle hunter, source of pride in the family, just standing along the rifle and the knife, the hat placed to one side and a draft of a smile in the yes, because the mout was a s shut as the hands, tense and crisp.
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