Personal Project

Javier de Muller Santa-Mª 10PY

 Index:

Index: 1
Introduction: 2
Previous ideas: 5
Outcome and exhibition layout: 7
Curatorial rationale: 8
Bibliography 9

1
 Introduction:

The artworks that I am going to develop have as objective making people

reflect about the importance of the voyage that is many times reduced when
compared to the destination. The aim of this project is to reflect about the purpose of
life, the voyage and the destination we are looking for. To what extent can we
consider the purpose of life as arriving at the destination without looking to the
voyage that brought us there?
As I will develop this project on the Arts’ domain, first, I will make a short
theoretical introduction about the symbolic system that I will use in this project until I
find the right outcome to exhibit - the metaphor - then, along the process, I will
observe if people fully understand the main concepts of the project and have their
own reflection. As I am not imposing a universal understanding (like mathematics or
other objective subjects) of my point of view but proposing a way of seeing, there
might be other personal interpretations. This does not alter the Truth but the ways
truth reveals itself, how it is understood by the subject and the ways it is affected by
its knowledge, beliefs, culture and other social circumstances.
After that, I will explain the exhibition’s background message, the outcome
and the layout. Finally, develop the curatorial rationale. Then, on the exhibition, I will
observe how people react and make conclusions.

2
 My own language:
There are many types of communications. Communication is a process of
transmitting some information or data, ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions through
speech, writing, gestures, mimics, eyes and even nonverbal signals. 1 Because of
this, as animals transmit primary feelings and emotions as biological reactions, we
can say that they have “animal languages” although these languages are limited
because they can not transmit ideas or thoughts
Concepts are ideas that represent absent realities. The Oxford dictionary
describes the concept as being an idea or mental image which corresponds to some
distinct entity or class of entities, or to its essential features, or determines the
application of a term (especially a predicate), and thus plays a part in the use of
reason or language.2, this is, concepts are the average of all the individuals of a
certain group formed on a person’s mind.
Vygotsky refers that only human can combine thought and language 3, that is
the same as communicating concepts because as seen before, concepts are created
by the mind, and as only the human people can transform them into language,
animals can not transmit concepts.
Howard Gardner explains that this ability has different stages of maturation by
ages on persons and divides them into four main stages: baby stage, childhood,
adolescence and adulthood. 4 Each stage has different pieces of knowledge.
Gardner quotes Piaget, that says that child can already use symbols such as using
words to describe certain things on the world. Only from early adolescence on, the
person is able to reason about the world [...] by figuring out the implications that
obtain among a set of related propositions 4, this is to fully understand metaphors
(set of related propositions).
Thus, my exhibition’s target audience will be teenagers and adults, because
they are the only ones that can decipher a metaphorical message.
Howard Gardner also writes that there are many intelligences, such as the
mathematical, the musical or the linguistic. Different intelligences use different
concepts, and they have different languages to express the same realities. 4
I will call metaphorical language to the language that uses metaphors to
express the reality. Metaphors are, by Max Black, primarily conceptual and can be
developed in any appropriate media5. A metaphor, by Black, needs primary and
secondary objects. It maps some of the secondary object’s qualities and associates
them with the primary object. The other languages, when transmitting a message,
are absolutely objective, leaving no space for different interpretations. For example,

1 KACHARAVA, K; KEMERTELIDZE, N. Visual and Verbal Communications: Similarities and

Differences. European Scientific Journal December 2016
2 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/concept
3 VYGOTSKY, L. Thought and Language. MIT Press
4 GARDNER, H. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books
5BLACK, M. Metaphor. Models and metaphors: studies in language and philosophy. Cornell
University Press.

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for mathematics 2+2=4 and it will always be that way, there is no other possible
result. The metaphors, as they associate two different objects, transporting some
qualities of one of them to the other, they need interpretation, because people need
to interpret which of the characteristics of the second object should be assigned to
the primary one6.
Lakoff and Johnson believe that the metaphors surge from our corporal
experience, that they have their origin in our first basic experiences 7.Our cognitive
experience turns the metaphor more elaborated and comprehensive than what it
would be otherwise. For example, Love is heat, argument Lakoff and Johnson has its
origins in the experience of a baby on his mother arms. Lakoff and Johnson say that
the metaphors give a great contribution to the self-understanding, are the main way
by which we elaborate meanings and constitute a fundamental connection between
body and mind8. This means that metaphors are attractive, because our
comprehension is based on our personal experiences and, when someone
understands a metaphor, as it makes a personal interpretation, it creates a part of
the meaning of the metaphor.
Fernando Hernández says that on the visual arts field, people deal with
artefacts that are, firstly, visual representations, and secondly, they constitute
positions and speeches through attitudes, beliefs and values, that they mediate
cultural meanings.9 He also says that the media can alter the reality.
This means that the objects of an exhibition can express messages and ideas
that mediate cultural values. My exhibition will do what Hernández says that,
nowadays, the artistic artefacts do: transmit messages. I will use objects to transmit
the cultural value of the valorisation of the voyage instead of the destiny or the
results. With this, I expect to conscientize the people and to change their minds
about this subject.

6 PARSONS, M. Interpreting art through metaphors. International Journal of Art & Design
Education p. 228-235.
7 LAKOFF, G; JOHNSON, M. Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
8 PARSONS, M. Interpreting art through metaphors. International Journal of Art & Design
Education p. 228-235.
9HERNÁNDEZ, F. ¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de cultura visual? Educação &
Realidade, vol. 30, núm. 2

4
 Previous ideas:
Before this definitive idea, I have had many before. Here, I will explain two of
them. Since I have started to think about an artistic personal project, I have always
had the idea of making an exhibition/artwork about something related to life in either
Arts or Theory of Knowledge.
The first idea was a wall full of holes with shapes of different kinds of hearts
with a box full of hearts with different shapes and sizes. It would be a participative
artwork, where people would pick up a heart and try to fit in the different holes, and
they would see that it fitted into some of them and it would not into others. The idea
of this artwork was to make people reflect about the human fulfilment, there are
many paths to fulfil oneself, but some paths that fulfil me do not fulfil other people,
finally, there are paths that do not fulfil anybody and that make people that follow
them unhappy.
Another idea with the same background message of the definitive idea (to
express my opinion that is the voyage of life being as or even more important than
the destiny) was a bag full of objects. It was based on a poem called Ithaka that I will
transcribe after this paragraph. I would have picked some keywords of the poem like
the «road» or the «Laestrygonians» extract their full meaning and what was the
importance or what symbolized to the ancient Greeks. Then, I would transform them
by a metaphor into objects that represent elements of my own life related to my own
voyage of life that had a symbolism or significance for me close to the ancient
Greeks.

5
 Ithaka (C. P. Cavafy)10
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.

Without her, you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

10 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec

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 Outcome and exhibition layout:
In the exhibition, I will present four artworks: A time-lapse film, the relics of the
project (the shoes and the backpack) and the journal of the project, ending with the
poem of Ithaka.
The time-lapse film symbolises the time that passes and leaves a mark. As I
will have been using the boots and the backpack for one or two years (I still do not
know when I will exhibit my project), every day will be registered as a frame in the
video, every frame symbolising a specific day with all the things and experiences that
I will have experienced on that day.
The shoes and the bag are the relics, they also symbolise the voyage and
they are what is left of the process, they will have suffered a transformation since I
started using them just as what I will have suffered after one or two years developing
this project, or such as the transformation of the person from child to adult. The
person I was before I started the project and the one I will be after it will be «made
with the same material» but transformed just as the person that makes the voyage of
life is transformed from childhood until the old age.
The journal will be the diary where the progress of the work is registered, such
as the time-lapse, it will be one medium used to register the progress of the project,
and with it, my life that will go in parallel with it, the voyage that I will make will be,
such as the diary of navigation, registered in my journal.
The Ithaka poem will be the last object and it will be the key to decipher the
rest of the exhibition.
The exhibition will be set up in a corridor with four wallboards each one
containing an artwork. On the sides, I will mark with hiking trail signs and I will cover
the ground with soil.

7
 Curatorial rationale:
My objective was to use my art to transmit the importance of the voyage. I
wanted my artworks to express this message, but also to be ambiguous, so people
would have to involve themselves to fully understand the exhibition.
As the materials that I have used are objects that already existed and the only
modification that I have made has been using them to transmit metaphorical
messages, the main focus area has been the development of a metaphorical
language, to develop a complex and fully developed message behind my artworks.
When a person enters the exhibition, it finds a time-lapse that shows the time
passing by and the transformation it leaves on the objects, the voyage that they
suffer. Then, it finds school shoes and a school bag that give the idea of an
academical voyage. On the next wallboard, it is found the diary, that is the journal of
this personal project, where I have registered all the previous ideas, reflections and
the progress of this exhibition. The objects permit many levels of interpretation, there
are many correct paths to understand different nuances of the metaphor. The own
setup of the exhibition gives the idea that the person is making a voyage through it.
My work has been mainly inspired by the poem Ithaka of Costantino Cavafy,
that reflects and summarizes my exhibition.

8
 Bibliography

Books:

BLACK, M. Metaphor. Models and Metaphors: studies in language

and philosophy. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
PARSONS, M. Interpreting Art Through Metaphors. International
Journal of Art & Design Education p. 228-235.
LAKOFF, G; JOHNSON, M. Metaphors we live by. University of
Chicago Press.
HOMER. The Odyssey. Penguin Books.
HERNÁNDEZ, F. ¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de cultura
visual? Educação & Realidade, vol. 30, núm. 2
GOODMAN, N. Ways of Worldmaking. Hackett Publishing Company.
GOODMAN, N. Languages of Art. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
DANTO, A. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A
Philosophy of Art. Harvard University Press.
KACHARAVA, K; KEMERTELIDZE, N. Visual and Verbal
Communications: Similarities and Differences. European Scientific Journal
December 2016
GARDNER, H. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple
Intelligences. Basic Books
VYGOTSKY, L. Thought and Language. MIT Press
BRUNER, J. Toward a Theory of Instruction. Harvard University Press

Sites:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec
(Last visited: 29/04/2018)
https://symsys.stanford.edu/ (Last visited 29/04/2018)
https://sites.google.com/a/hbuhsd.edu/ib-art/artist-statement (Last
visited
29/04/2018)
http://bluelavaart.com/curatorial-rationale.html (Last visited 29/04/2018)
https://www.fairviewhs.org/staff/michael-jaramillo/classes/ib-visual-
arts/files/31301 (Last visited 29/04/2018)