If I make a sign and no one knows it is a sign, then is it really a sign? I argue that it's not a sign until it's recognized as such. Then there is the difficulty of knowing what the sign stands for or points to. What I intend in choosing or making a sign has no assurance of ever being recognized as such. Human communication implies, rather strongly, at least two agents -- one and another -- and both participate in creating the signs they use and how they are interpreted. But nothing is off the table, as it were, when it comes to how communication takes place. Speech is one mode among many others, limited only by the human abilities and no one really knows what those ability limits are. Gesture, sound, sight, objects, all of them can be important elements in communication.
I agree that there are cultural tropes that we recognize in our culture as standing for something or other. It's easy enough to recognize how some of them have no predetermined sign value to people in cultures quite different from our own. Maybe the symbolism assigned to certain religious artifacts or rituals are opaque to those not familiar with the religion. As an artist I would never be interested in evoking a bundle of associations "communicated" by the artwork. First, I have no control of what associations one may have -- not even my own from moment to moment -- in making or viewing my artwork. To aim for or intend a certain bundle of associations means that some other associations are wrong because the intention is to exclude some and include others. Why? Despite misgivings with E. Gombrich's linear art history based on illusionism, I agree fully with his statement that there are no wrong reasons to like artworks. Also, it strikes me as absurd that an inanimate object, like an artwork, communicates if we understand that communication is an ongoing human act involving more than one person (or an imaginary other or surrogate person). My art communicates nothing at all. In itself it is entirely without meaning. My paintings say nothing. My intentions are simply the urge to do this or that in making an artwork. They may be helpful to me in making the work but are otherwise irrelevant to the meanings that can be created for my artwork by me communicating with others about the artwork or by others among others or with imaginary surrogates be they one or many. Again, I claim that intentions may be necessary to making an artwork, or engaging in communication, but they are never sufficient. You have a traditional view of communication theory that is fully and analytically rejected by my new hero, Roy Harris. Harris promotes a view that is entirely consistent with the way artists tend to think about artmaking and content. wc Mike - I take a probabilistic, rather than a deterministic approach to communication. The only process available in communication, in my opinion, is that the communicator (speaker, writer, artist, etc.) creates an artifact (sounds, signs, images, etc.) which are perceived by a communicatee (listener, reader, viewer, etc.) The artist cannot determine through a process of communication the experience of the viewer. When the viewer apprehends an artifact involuntary associations arise: images from the viewer's past, feelings associated with similar images, theories of interpretation the viewer has learned about the type of artifact involved, etc. Each viewer's associations will be unique; they are not determined. The viewer may or may not devote the internal effort toward an organization of the associations. The viewer may or may not make a judgment about the worth of this particular bundle of associations "communicated" by the artwork. Part of the skill of the artist is the ability to create artifacts in such a way as to create predictable associations in the viewer. No two aesthetic responses are identical, but I believe they are usually clustered around one or more interpretations. Kinkade has tighter clusters than Rothko, but that is also, in my opinion, part of the the artist's intent. So, I am committed to the notion of communication. And, while I will concede fallibility and further concede that I haven't read Harris's book, if he claims that we cannot communicate then I would bring up Zeno's Paradox and suggest that maybe the problem is with the analysis, not the the object of inquiry. Mike Mallory
