Universal Iconic Language
UPDATE:
Works Cited
Bing, Xu. Book from the Ground: From Point to Point. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 2014. Print.
Bing, Xu and Mathieu Borysevicz. The Book about Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground. North Adams, Massachusetts: Mass MoCA, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 2014. Print.
Blagdon, Jeff. “How Emoji Conquered the World.” The Verge. N.p., 04 Mar. 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
“David Claerbout.” Xu Bing Book Review / Art Review. Art Review, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Melvin, Sheila. “Always a Pioneer, Artist Xu Bing Now Takes the Novel Beyond the Written Word.” AsiaSociety.org. Asia Society, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Mitchell, W.J.T., “What is an Image?” Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago + London, The University of Chicago Press. 1986
Mitchell, WJT. “Word and Image.” Ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition (2003): 51-61. University of Chicago Pree. Web.
Ziv, Stav. “CHINESE ARTIST XU BING’S BOOK WITHOUT BORDERS.” Newsweek.com. Newsweek, Mar. 2015. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Yo Sam,
Dope project. Both your critical stuff and your three stories were all really cool. Have you started dreaming in emoji yet? I’m definitely headed in that direction.
Again, providing a historical context with your introductory pages was really interesting, and something that really adds to our knowledge of what we may think of as a new fad, or a dumb Generation X obsession (aka the emoji). Along those same lines, I thought you tackled Mitchell well, as daunting as it might have been, and your discussion of his theory was clear and really added to what was going on throughout your project. I could definitely tell you spent a lot of time constructing your creative stories because they were really clear to me. Even so, I think it was a good move to explain them at the end, both to make sure the reader can check and see if they were “right,” and also so you can really see the differences and similarities between written language and emoji, which is something I find quite interesting.
What I got most from this was that images are universal. More so than language. And by beginning with the bathroom sign, I feel like you’re arguing that this is a good thing, something we should recognize, something we should use (and already do use). In my mind, that is again validating the emoji as more than just a cute sticker to tack on the end of your texts.
I too glanced at Xu’s book in my work with emojis, and one thing I thought about when constructing emoji sentences (and maybe something you’ve already thought about too) is that he had access to a wide range of emojis and images. For instance, in the selection you chose to put in your piece, there is a picture of a human digestive track. Which I don’t believe I have on my phone. When writing in emoji, we’re basically limited by what has been invented and put into the Apple keyboard. It makes constructing meaningful stories harder, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Which is why it’s impressive you were able to make so much meaning from the emojis you had access to. That’s one thing I didn’t touch much in my project, but that interests me – this is a language currently dictated by a cell phone company wanting to sell cell phones. How does that make it different from English or other conventional languages?
Awesome job!
Oh god that was long. Sorry. I’m really into emojis right now.
You did a great job with the structuring/order/organization of your project: moving from a personal example, to an overview of the attempts at a universal language, to a theoretical explanation and framework based in scholarly articles, to a specific example of one author/creator’s experience, to the modern day dominant form of pictographic language (the emoji), and finally to your stories and synthesis. The structure was extremely fluid and flowed well from one section to the next, a difficult task when transitioning from theory to storytelling to creative exercises and a final synthesis. One of the strongest aspects of your project was just how unified and connected it seemed to be; it never felt disjointed or awkward or unnecessary, but maintained continuity, creativity, and cohesion throughout. I really respected your ability to move from one section to the next so fluidly, with each section bringing something new while compounding all the ideas that previously followed. Structure and organization are extremely underrated aspects of these types of projects, but you executed them very well.
Your description of “Book From the Ground” followed by your explanation of emojis got me really thinking about the future of a pictographic universality of language. But I always wondered whether or not this could actually be achieved. It seems to me emojis receive their strength and usability from their ability to supplement text with ideas, emotions, tonalities, and interjections otherwise impossible through mere text. Emojis rarely act on their own, unless as a single image response to a text or a face trying to convey emotions. Emojis work best in their ability to supplement text with emotional/tonal clues so that the text can be read more accurately. To me, emojis are text enhancers, and not a standalone from of language. But that being said, I also agree they are the closest thing to a universal language that we have.
I thought that your division of stories into 6 word, 140 character, and 300 word micro fiction stories was the perfect breakdown, and that picturing it in the form of a text message, a tweet, and a note brought an element of reality and connection to it that would have otherwise been lost in a simple section of a PDF document. These small aesthetic changes brought life and meaning into the stories structurally, before we ever even reached the content. Additionally, I found a common theme in your stories that was very easy to follow once picked up on: you would supplement the unique character’s emoji faces (context) with the yellow emoji emotional faces (description/emotion) to successfully show WHO was doing the action and HOW they were feeling doing it. While never directly mentioned, this is a very important part of the emoji grammatology, and interesting to see in your work.
Overall, I really appreciated the time and effort that went into your work, and thought the final project gained an incredible value from your ability to add aesthetic and appealing structure and organization to already powerful content. One thing to think about would be a way to convert the text from a PDF to a form that would translate better to an iPhone screen, with some level of interactivity or user-generated content available to further drive home the accessibility of the text to our everyday lives.
Hey Sam –
I enjoyed the deep historical background you gave on not only emojis but the attempts of universality of language and the history of pictograms. I thought the historical background gave me a really strong context to understand the creative component.
My perception of the project was a historical analysis of image based languages with a focus on the modern emoji language. The project focuses a lot of time on a book created entirely out of emoji/symbols. The project reads like an essay with an attach creative component. I think you are going to move this to a digital platform? I think that would be the part where I feel like I lost the most. Using emojis in your work or using headers would have made the project read less like an 8 page essay.
Some things to think about – a digital platform? And maybe a discussion of culture and how that plays into the idea of universality? The only reviews for the all icon book were in english and while I’m not saying you go learn Chinese – it would have been interesting to see what other cultures thought of the book.
Hey Sam! First of all, I freakin love this. I think you’ve done a great job investigating the history of universal iconic languages (starting with Babel was a great touch, and I really appreciate the work you did bringing in Mitchell) and melding it with your case study of Xu’s book + your own stories. The historical background really helped frame where you were coming from and going with your own emoji stories.
Trying to decipher the emoji stories was definitely my favorite part of reading this project — it’s like a linguistic game. Like Stephen, I think using the formats of iMessage, Twitter, and Notes really helped ground each story; each of those was such a great way to present the respective story. One thing I noticed in reading the third story was that, before introducing another character (the security guard), you only used the main character’s Face emoji (medium brown skin, brown hair) once, which struck me as both a matter of convenience (if there’s only one character why bother using her expressionless face when you can use the universal expressive emotions instead) and also prompted me to read it in first person, since I identified with those yellow faces. Which is super interesting — like a function of pronouns in English.
I thought the translations were really interesting and helpful as well. It makes a lot of sense to me that, when reading/translating your stories, people understood the emotions best; I feel like the little yellow emotion emojis are the most commonly used among our generation’s texters (meanwhile, my mother’s favorite emoji is the big red exclamation point), so it would follow that we would interpret them easily.
You made me super eager to read more stories in emoji form. Great great job!!
I love how the project “hooked me” right away by placing me in a scenario. I think this was such a creative idea and it seems like you put in a lot of work in both framing the project through research, but also in how thorough your stories were at the end.
This process made me think about the potential for a universal language, and also the privilege that comes with immediate understanding of a dominant language such as english. Native english speakers hold a lot of privilege by having access to certain texts or signs and understanding them immediately. It made me think about the way that emojis could even the playing field in a sense when we think about language and signage. I wonder if emoji’s are a foundation for a sort of universal language. Additionally, if emoji’s emerged from a certain culture, the images/messages/significance may not be relevant to other cultures.
I wonder what would happen if you placed the emoji story first, and the words after. It might give the reader the chance to interpret the story on their own, and see if their interpretation aligned with yours. At the same time, this may have been a choice to encourage the reader to align with your initial message and interpretation.
Like your classmates, I love the way this project combines a history of emoji with creative story-telling. I really appreciate the historical and theoretical foundations you offer in the critical essay (and think it would be even stronger if you eliminated the passive voice and let your voice come through!). The essay helps ground me and prepares me to take seriously a genre and language that I might not otherwise approach with the same focus and investment.
Like you, I find myself especially interested in the varied reader responses and interpretations of your original stories. I’m struck by the contrast between your finding that “Dialogue and action translated poorly, there were many differing interpretations of what was said and what each character did,” and your conclusion that, “pictographic and iconic language is the best way to achieve universality in language.” Given how many differences of interpretation you found within a small, relatively homogeneous demographic, what makes you confident that we can achieve “universality in language”? Is universality even desirable? Or should we be celebrating the diversity of interpretations and inevitable variation of meanings?
Another interesting question this project raises is the limits of emoji story-telling—what kinds of story telling are possible in emoji? What makes a good storyline? Your stories are deliberately short with limited plots, and 2 have (perhaps also deliberately) unfulfilling endings. Did you find yourself limited or enabled by the emojis? Would you write the same stories in English language if, say, you were taking a creative writing course in fiction and were asked to write stories of this length? Or are certain stories more powerful in images than in words and vice versa?
There are so many fascinating questions your project raises, and I hope you continue this investigation (both creatively and critically) because, as far as you’ve gone, you may have only begun to scratch the surface of this rich material. Although Xu Bing’s work is relatively recent and emojis are a fairly new language, there are many unexplored resources that could help support your inquiry, should you choose to continue it. As I mentioned in my comments on Graham’s Emoji Primer, when I go to the library catalog and search “emoji,” I get 702 results, including books entitled How to Speak Emoji (2015), The Story of Emoji (2016), The Great Emoji Quizbook (2016), and The Semiotics of Emoji (2016). EBSCO host offers 697 results, including some in academic journals. There are also academic works on Xu Bing, including The Art of Xu Bing: words without meaning, meaning without words (Smithsonian 2001). I get the sense that you ran out of time (the typos reinforces this feeling), which is regrettable because the material is so fascinating, and I believe you have more to say and create in this new, relatively uncharted field.
Your digital version of this work is terrific–I wonder if there’s something about the emoji language that benefits from the more interactive format. Or maybe you’re just a gifted digital designer and dynamic thinker. Or both!