In looking at the Carnival website, I can tell you that I was confused. Honestly, I must say that I am still confused. When the words were placed in the typical, agreed upon, coherent fashion, I found the statements puzzling but interesting and containing both debatable cognitive meaning and worth. The following is one example:
'If the Revolution could be spoken, it would only be with a discourse that cannot assume a coherent position of truth, with a series of contradictory voices that cannot know themselves, which do not constitute a point of view, which repeat themselves and fall apart, only in order to be able to begin again.'
This statement is of a sort which I can enjoy. I acknowledge the possibility of deeper meanings than may first appear but ultimately feel satisfied when I have reached some form of judgment or decision regarding what I feel it represents. Parts of carnival which mirror this kind of representation spark me as philosophical in the sense that they can be pondered, debated, and discussed but require sufficient thought before doing so.
The remaining portion of Carnival is what really befuddles me. I am perfectly okay with differing applications of text and textual representations of words such as those we have discussed and created previously. I am also familiar and have even dabbled with the creation of artwork such as those formed through ASCII. What I do not seem to comprehend, however, is the merger of the two. Images which are in part incoherent swirls of blurred letters of differing sizes and yet also in part tightly written clauses of cognitive meaning scattered throughout seem frustrating. (This construction for example) Despite my better efforts, I see little that can be done in order to comprehend, debate, or argue much meaning for such issues definitively as anything significantly more than whatever subjective, whimsical theory is developed by each individual who encounters it.
All in all I’m left unsure of what I’m supposed to take away from such renditions placed before me. Reflecting upon Snyder’s recent book on graffiti leads me to the hypothesis that perhaps I am too much an outsider to these works. Just as writers created graffiti largely for, in response to, and with the criticism of other writers, perhaps works similar to those in Carnival are intended for others who are perhaps more familiar with this particular craft. If left to my own analysis, I feel as though I ought to seek out an interpreter, someone to translate for me what exactly is going on and provide some kind of foundation for me to begin with in order to discover whatever meaning I seem to be overlooking. Hopefully, today’s discussion will offer me some guidance of this sort. If not, then many of these images (both in zoomed in portion and in their entirety) will likely remain little more to me than rejected cards from a Rorschachink blot test.
No comments:
Post a Comment