What is now a tried and tested springboard for a brief is Richard Serra’s verb list. As I perused it the verbs that jumped out at me could pertain to human interaction; like, to complement, or to impress. This morphed into the phrase “to instruct” and this is the basis of my idea. Other words that bear similarity are:
- direct,
- explain,
- dictate,
- educate,
- edict,
- command,
- guide.
The lack of direct synonyms captivated me and I tried to pinpoint the difference in these verbs. It got me thinking; a large part of this comes from the emotion evoked, rather than intention or outcome. Some hold kindness, a feeling of collaboration and skill sharing, whereas others denote authority and a hierarchy.
Critiques and conversations got me thinking about propaganda; the dissimilation of information. The line between manipulation and advertising as opposed to casual information sharing grew blurrier with every passing day. Our minds are so oversaturated with digital information that trying to distinguish between the two seems arbitrary.
I think this is because there is a certain attitude of surrender when it comes to technology. It is so prevalent in every aspect of our lives that to fight it would b an immense amount of conscious energy; we’d have to rethink every minute detail of our lives. Not only this, but it can also seem counterproductive because, of course, technology is pivotal to societal advances.
I do think that such an extreme influx of media has created an almost universal numbness towards instruction and propaganda. The ins and outs of data collection and digital footprinting are too tedious and technical for most of us to make sense of. Instead, we remain willingly unaware of the complex manipulation that we fall prey to at the hands of marketing, news, popular media, etc. It’s something that we accept as a base part of living in the 21st century, it is convenient in many ways and it does not project itself to the forefront of our minds often.
So I thought about some of the basic verbs that characterise this subconscious type instruction:
- entice,
- lure,
- persuade
- seduce,
- attract,
- invite,
- coax,
- convince.
Essentially, I want my sculpture to have some element of instruction which is balanced with a certain allure of curiosity.Â
The experiment was about quickly and light-heartedly playing with the instruction verbs as well as found objects I want to implement in my design. This brief task has helped me land on an idea that I’m very interested in extending throughout the sculpting process; the idea of voting. In this case, the vote was a simple choice between two options and you denote your choice using a tally mark system.
But the act of voting could be much more complex, it’s also something we come across on a very regular basis: having various or limited options presented to us and making a choice when its ramifications, weight on your life or its general purpose isn’t clear- even if that choice is not to vote at all.