Signs

Hey,

I had an interesting thought last week. I was sitting in a restaurant with my friend Chantal (yes you are no longer annoynmous). But while she was talking I had a brilliant thought. The layers of the restaurant peeled away and I thought hmm, this is just a room with tables and chairs in it really, so why do I not percieve it in anyway as the same as if I were at home. Then after that I listened very attentively to my friend. Hey can't help it, I admitted on my introduction I am a day dreamer.

So what is it that makes a room become more than what's in it or the paint on the wall? I realised after dinner tonight that we humans are a lot smarter than we all realise. I'm just trying to get in the middle of a process we all do so often we've stopped trying. We're amazingly quick at responding to signs and I think it isn't conscious, it's always a feeling. It's the reason I feel the same trepidation I walk in a bar or less when I walk in a pub. It's more than design it's what something signifies.

Okay, the restaurant. I walk in and immediatly I think uhuh, waitress, sign, layout, chatter, chinking glasses. My mind is like this plus this plus this plus that =! restaurant. We are compiling these little mental maps and definitions all the time. We're even more intelligent than that though, that's because we can go from more general types of idenitfyers to more specific. I suppose it's just saying our language English at least has evolved from this certain way of thinking and categorising things and what an intriguing thought.

Think about it our language is basically able to go from general to more specific categories. It's like that instinct we have to group things and categorise. Our language is our thoughts. So that when I walk into a restaurant, my mind simultaneous puts all of the objects together to form the restuarant, but I can also percieve yes this is also a room and even more abstract this is a space. In becoming more general we include everything and then more specific items can be used by our mental maps to group things more specifically. I.e we move from restaurant to steak house. Signifiers steak knives and of course there's the menu.

It's funny I'm not sure I've even said what I intended. But try this exercise one day. See how many different ways you can see a space. Indeed, when you go more general the possibilities of a space are endless. You can perhaps see something for what it really is, a space with things in it! Then use your mind, which enjoys putting together signs and symbols. Put all of them together and you get your restuarant or steakhouse. But see if you can get in the middle of that coding process of that feeling, you might be surprised how different things appear when you understand it differently. That's really what separates professionals when you think about it, it's not necessarily a tangible skill, it's moreso a different way of percieving a space.

So if you go back to the idea of a space. A space is literally a blank canvass with endless perspectives.

So what is the post about? I don't know really, somewhere in here I was talking about our intuitive way of putting together signals and then there was some tangent about language then I thought I'd talk about going from general to abstract. So in a sense this post is as much a travel log of my thoughts destination A to B, including stops at McDonalds.

In any case, I hope you take something from this post. It is something I think infintely easier to think about than to discuss. Anyway feel free to comment. Speak soon.

J