Starting off with a side-note: is the adults tendency to shut out the sight a learned behavior? Why are they uncomfortable while the children are fascinated? Are they simply used to violence and tired of seeing it?

Figure 1.4 is an incredibly well done still-life, and while it looks like I could reach out and grab an apple, I don’t want to. The most important aspect of art, for me, has always been to interact with it. Not always in a physical way(though I do have a particular fondness for van Gogh, specifically due to the brush strokes of Starry Night making my fingers twitch). Simply replicating the world as it is has never felt influential or interactive. I’ve been pondering lately if that has something to do with my autism; since I process things so literally I often miss symbolism and double meanings, and I’m sensitive to sensory input. My favorite works have always had very specific textures or audio combinations. I do prefer art to influence me emotionally, but on the other end of that thought… The next work presented, Still Life with Dralas(Fig1.5), makes me feel plenty. And I hate it.

“…consider how labels and images produce meaning yet cannot fully invoke the experience of the object”(15). Would you say they can only produce… a vibe? I do like this quote, I just wanted to make the joke. I also enjoyed the cyclical discussion around technology and aesthetics.

The readings’ comparison of photography and still life made me wonder if that’s why I prefer photography that’s a bit ethereal; subjective space, high contrast, forced perspectives, etc. It’s also why I have to say, as both a photographer and a scientist, that I don’t think photos are as objective as that debate would make it seem(17).

Roland Barthes “truth as always culturally inflected, never pure and uninfluenced by contextual factors.” The truth is subjective! Even science can be subjective, depending on who(with what background) reads the results. He defined two ways to view photographs; “the denotative meaning of the image refers to its literal, explicit meaning… Connotative meanings are informed by the cultural and historical contexts of the image.”(19) I suppose then, that the truth would actually be somewhere in the middle.

“Myth is the hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal and given for a whole society.”(20) Not my first thought when defining myth, but I do agree with the sentiment whole-heartedly. Especially the example the reading gives with societal beauty standards(that’s been a long-held confusion of mine, asexuality in general is confusing).

I really like Barthes’ model of signifier and signified(29). To continue building the smiley emoticon example: I always thought it was funny how each person associates a different meaning with the same emoji. My friends and I use the upside down smile as a red alert- like a grimace pretending to be a smile. I often use this little squid emoji as a nonverbal cue, to represent excess energy and enthusiasm. My friends know what I mean when I send it, but they never associated either feeling with the little guy before I defined it as such. However, and this might be another side effect of being autistic, I never considered signs and signifiers to have a natural relationship, like the reading implies. To me a rose only has romantic meaning in that I was told people find them romantic, and I remembered that rule like I did all the others; frown=sad, inside=quiet, still=behaved, nice=friend. It took me a long time to understand the nuance, and how to define what I actually perceived, rather than the intended meaning.