Enquiry

How does “seeing” shape “understanding” and construct “meaning” in the context of everyday forms?

The question I am exploring

Exploration framework:
(Unit 2) Image = Object
(Unit 3 Project 1) Image = Text
(Unit 3 Project 2) Image = Text = Object

I explore how ‘seeing’ shapes ‘understanding’ from a cognitive perspective. Through the unconventional reconfiguration of everyday forms, my work reveals the misalignment between the two, prompting a reevaluation of how ‘meaning’ is constructed and perceived.

The medium I use to explore it

Direction: (Unit 3 Project 1) Image = Text
Medium: Book
Method: (Tentative) Photography
Approach: Photograph each page of a text-based book and recreate the book using these photographs, presenting each page’s text as an image. The blending of the “visuality of text” and the “semanticity of images” serves to prompt viewers to reflect: Is this text or image? Are they reading or looking?

Engaging with specific audience, network, or context

My research is based on epistemology. I aim to explore how viewers interpret objects—for instance, how an observer/reader/user determines “what kind of object is a knife” or “is this an image or text?”

What I want to present is not something pre-existing, but a new perspective or connection created from the original—a kind of Present Continuous Tense.

It’s like handing someone a brand-new knife: they might hesitate about what to do with it. But if you hand them a bloodstained knife, they may panic, trying to understand the situation and figure out how to dissociate themselves from a potential murder. If you hand them an unopened bag of chips, they might wonder if they’re allowed to open it; but if you hand them a bag of chips that’s already open, they might eat a few.

My audience won’t receive a polished poster—they will be handed the bloodstained knife or the opened bag of chips. My job is to stain the blade and tear open the bag.

This week’s work

This week, in addition to clarifying the above questions, I am primarily focused on considering what kind of content to input.

Direction 1:
A “nonexistent” book

• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
• A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain
• A Perfect Vacuum

Direction 2:
A book about photography

• On Photography (leaning towards this one)
• Ways of Seeing (downside: too many images)
• Understanding a Photograph (leaning towards this one)

Direction 3:
Inputting my own writing (no time, already abandoned)