Pedagogic Poem. Reports. Night Owl Club: egmg

egmg

Pedagogic Poem. Reports. Night Owl Club

Dec 28, 2012 18:13

(c) Veronica Colleen Whittemore

Sir Thomas Morlion
Jan 25 (7 days ago)

to me
Dear Ms. Grigorieva,
please find hereby attached my thoughts on Semiotics of Art, in the assignment as we agreed.

Also, here are the links to some summaries of classes:
3rd lecture, three thoughts http://semioart.livejournal.com/302340.html
Bunny Opera http://semioart.livejournal.com/306074.html
Summary of today's class http://semioart.livejournal.com/316519.html

Thank you for the interesting course the past semester,
Kind regards from Belgium,
Thomas Morlion

I have read the reports on the course of past semester, and I have tried to put the core of our course on paper. Some notions that are extremely important for semiotics, are perception, memory, filters and vocabulary - among various others.
Something in the course that led me thinking: is there any right or wrong in PERCEPTION? When I perceive a thing in one way, who am I to say that your perception of that thing is wrong, and vice versa? To refer to the philosopher Kant holds that the definition of things is merely nominal (thus linguistical) and, therefore, we cannot employ it to establish which judgments are true. For example: truth cannot be said. Semiotics is quite subjective, as everybody perceives the things according to their own filters, memory, vocabulary (cf. later).
As we see the camel on the pack of cigarettes (which, by the way, is actually a dromedary), we instantly think about a camel, even without reading the title ‘Camel’ above the image. I have never seen a camel in real life, but even I am being remembered of a ‘camel’. That is memory. Semiotics in his whole is memory; we don’t know the meaning of something as we see it for the first time; it takes a second or third time before we become familiar with the meaning of an image, symbol or action.
Throughout the course, MEMORY was very important; in our daily lives, we started to notice things that we saw in class - we started to remember visual signs. Examples are the visual matrices and the V-shape, that returns in many forms.
To make art, you act with the purpose to do something significant. That is what defines ‘art’ from ‘shit’, as we’ve seen in classes. Performing art is using your creativity. When you use your creativity, you use your consciousness. Again, memory has to do with it: every artist will make his art following to some experiences he has in his life. The artist puts his experiences (=memories) in his art.
But then the question came to me: do Estonian people see things different than me as a Belgian? Undeniably, people from Estonia have other experiences than foreigners. Older people have known the Soviet oppression, while people from western Europe haven’t. Does this affect their views on things? Or: do they watch things with other FILTERS?
With modern technology, everyone knows filters - it’s easier than ever to put a sepia filter on your pictures, to adjust the colors of photos on mobile apps like Instagram. Like these visual filters, we have our own filters, based on experience.
We see things through these filters. There are plural filters, for example an opened and a closed filter. Sometimes, we have to learn nót to see what is there. That was what the experiment was about, when we had to go out of the class room with our eyes closed.
To look at something, you need also a certain VOCABULARY. This vocabulary is needed to perceive things. The kind of vocabulary you have, depends on your cultural background - so again, on your experiences and your shaping as a person. An example that was given: Estonians can find blue-black-white matrix from nature.

Special gratitude to Rauno Kivi for his seminar music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYs8WunFYKo

Disclaimers
http://egmg.livejournal.com/1788176.html?nc=2#comments

Celer Tambre - suspended

Update 28.08.13
Celer Tambre participated in the Semiotic Summer School on Self-communication in Kaeriku 18.08-23.08.2013
He prepared a set of questions and asked the participants to answer them.
Here is my transcript
http://jeesusjalutasallveelaeval.blogspot.com/2013/08/ac-jelena-grigorjeva.html

I am completly satisfied with Celer's work. He can state questions and listen to the others.
So, I remove the mark 'suspended' from his certificates.
:)

Mark Lutter - invalid

Special case - MA student Mark Lutter.

I asked Mark for an expertise of one meme concerning his specialisation (parallel patterns in Egypt and Mezoamerica). He neglected my claims in private e-mailing three times. When in a month I asked publically in FB I got a baby-talk back. In the situation of the Flood the most important aspect of semiotic expertise is it's immidiate reaction. We caunt by seconds the changes in the Semiosphere. We observe epedimies that explode with herms and anti-viruses. It is very important to get an expertise in time. I was deeply disappointed with Mark's indifference to the problems of the Semiosphere. This is about irresponsibility - the worst of sins at the contemporary moment. Then it comes to a question - why does not he respond? And I made an investigation. I tried to check his writing scills at least. The result was a catastrophe: 3 pages of a very bad grammar in his mother Russian tongue. He is unable to build a consequent thought. He cannot separate different layers of authorship in his text. All documents can be shared by demand. I sent the results of his analyses to his supervisor Irina Avrametz, but she showed no interest in Mark's qualification. I see a big moral and ethical problem here. Proceeding in our semiotic studies we should radically increase our (non)formal responsibility, that means we must report intermediary results of our progress publically and permanently or by a demand of a colleague at least! If we cannot check the document (written source with indication of time) we have no evidence whether we agree with the interpretation of our thoughts(herms) in somebody's mind or not. I gave some information to Mark but he refuses to give me an appropriate feedback. Maybe he got it wrong. But he uses the same School name. We cannot protect ourselves of further falsification of our thoughts. The logo of our School is suspended. And as far as I know, Mark is a kind of a guru in a local subculture. What he teaches we cannot control. My position is - it is too dangerous and too generous for our School to keep such suspisios subjects under the egid of our certificate. I would not certificate Mark Lutter for further studies in Tartu University. Of course, this is my personal oppinion, but I insist to mark all Mark's certificates with my personal sign - invalid.

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