Because my name is lion.

This weekend, we were assigned several critical readings, one being the text “Myth Today” by Roland Barthes, “Mythologies”.
In it, he discusses the idea of myth- the communication we experience as humans, and the oral and visual myth that assist in the process of understanding as per the cultural and synthestetic affinity of the individual/participant. In discussion of meaning, form, concept, sign, and signification, Barthes extracts language from the space in which it exists/or is perceived to exist.

From the text: Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi; it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an ‘elsewhere’ at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place.

He then goes on to illustrate the act of looking at a landscape from the vantage point of a moving vehicle. The glass of the window is both present and invisible. The landscape both distant and vast, yet unreal. The window-pane is existent, yet empty. In the same way form and meaning are present and invisible.

Semiotics are the way in which we interpret signs and implication. The understanding is based on culture and symbolic reference. The language of art is not universal, but in its use of form, and content, there is a signification that takes place. In other words, visual communication/translation.

Phew! More soon…

(first image courtesy of:
mailonsunday

second image/diagram: Burghard B. Rieger FB II: Department of Computational Linguistics – University of Trier)