Beethoven and Ligeti- On the subjects of communication and perception (1.0)

A rainy weekend is coming, so maybe this is the appropriate moment to talk about semiotics and communication phylosophies. I recently commented a @ty-ty post that raised a controversy between us in this regard. Although, sometimes, I get the feeling that he is just pulling my leg, I also realise that he does it in a very interesting and intelligent manner, and that was what brought me to this text. If you, the reader, follow this discussion, it's possible you end up finding it interesting.

The problems: Is the interpretation of symbols a uni or bydirectional process? Is an artist's work involved in bi-directional communication? Is there a feedback loop into a past moment of creation? Does nature interpret man concomittently with man interpreting nature?

(Image: Masonic Symbology at mavink.com)

Considerations:

1 - I have stated that "I don't believe the artist's intentions to be consequential. What matters is the reader and the images conjured up in his mind by the symbolic. It really doesn't matter if the interpretation is born out of personal experience or training, or out of what Jung called the collective unconscious. Whether the source is interior as based in personal experience, or exterior, through some Godly or Morphogenetic Field channel that I can perceive but not assure, symbols awake in us the recognition of meaning and, to describe this output is not the same as to chaotically throw words into a page, expecting it to form meaning." As a corolary to this, that: "Interpretation belongs to the reader, not the author."

This statement was objectively directed at the instant of creation and at inorganic arts, a point where the artist has no contact with his audience and emits his message. About stage arts or any live performances, this process takes a different twist, so, if we get that far, I'll discuss it in a different article. The subjacent process, however, is not very distant.

2 - When we create a piece of art, like a text, a painting, a sculpture, a photo, a musical record, a movie, or any kind of product that finishes in a fixed point in time, I affirm that we cease having influence over the message. We become pure emiters. Then, it is up to the receiver to interpret our message, that tends to be symbolic. Every receiver owns a different filter, which is constituted by pre-concepts built over his life time. In this process, our message will reach the receiver's filter and be transformed by it before it enters the receiver's reasoning, and then, he will process whatever managed to get through that filter using whatever meaning he associates to the reformed symbols that resulted from that filtration.

Emitter ---------> Receptor's Filter ---------> Receptor

Both the sources of the filter and of the, (let´s call it diccionary of), meanings that the reader possesses can be manyfold. They will be sourced through life by learning, experience, immitation and some times, invention. If we listen to Carl Jung, this interpretation of symbols can also be born out of the collective conscious, which is the idea that all of us have access to a sort of species wide library of symbols. I would add that this idea has been highly reinforced by Rupert Sheldrake's recent work on morphogenetic fields.

Having said this, many symbols are culture dependant and their interpretations vary wildly through time, as in the example the Crescent and Star of the Eastern Roman Empire being appropriated by the Turcs and then being disseminated as a symbol of Islam, when it was born out of the most Orthodox Christian culture ever. Even today, the implications of this diversity of interpretation can be seen in the divergence between the red cross and the red crescent flags for the exact same organization. As a matter of fact, there is also the other symbol that we cannot discuss in Germany and that is an amulet for attracting good fortune in Tibet. Symbol interpretation is dependent solely upon the receiver, and it is even more so, as the temporal divergence between the emission and the reception increases.

3 - Symbols (and this includes arabic, latin, greek and cyrilic letters, hieroglyphs, kanji, and all sorts of communication codes), once set, present a one way direction of communication that depends on a learned receiver to be decoded. During our modern lives, we learn to decode an enormous ammount of symbols, from the alphabet, to the road signs, passing by company's logos and all sorts of hieraldry. And in all those cases, communication is a one way street. There's no way I communicate with the author of the STOP sign design retroactively, in the same manner that I cannot communicate to Hieronimous Bosch what I feel about his paintings. I can pretend to do it, but, in our reality, where the arrow of time points in the direction of the increase in entropy, I cannot talk back to Bosch. The most I can do is interpret the symbolics in his paintings, according to my filter and library of symbols and take my own point of view of whatever he intended to express. There will always be as many points of view as there are observers, hence, receivers.

There are all kinds of societal structures that teach us the meaning of symbols, so we can go through life with very important code breaking skills. These codes, concealed in symbols, are esoteric to anyone who has not been privy to learning to decode them. Primary school is to the alphabet as Freemasonry is to symbolic alchemy. You cannot break the code if you are not given the tools and, in each communication you receive you only interpret. To be interpreted yourself, you need to turn into the emitter, and then the process is reversed. Dialogue is in no way a simultaneous and omnipresent act. It is a fractured two way action that depends on the existence of a receiver. No one can communicate into the void.

4 - When I say that the artists intentions are inconsequential, I am pointing to the fact that, once a unique work is finished and set in stone, the author's act of emission is done and all of the interpretation lies upon the receiver. It is not a two way street. We carried the following dialogue:

ty-ty - I don't think it's arbitrary.
hefestus- I don't see a piece of literary creation as a dialogue
ty-ty - Nevertheless it IS.
hefestus - It most certainly is a monologue with manyfold interpretations, just as a piece of art is.
ty-ty - This is exactly what I deny.
hefestus - Now: when you talk about the body of work of an author, that becomes an entirely different issue.
ty-ty - Not understood - no interpretation from my side...

Every unique work of art, as an act of communication is a monologue. The body of work of an artist can be, if he is an hermit, like St. Francis of Assis, or not, if the artist lives in society. In the later case, it can be an extended dialogue, providing he receives feedback from his contemporaries. However, it ceases to be a dialogue once the artist produces his final work and then, the whole body of his work turns back to being a monologue, because there will be no way he can receive our input and use it in his next work.

ty-ty -" 'Art' is part of 'nature', believe it or not. To encounter a piece of art means to be interpreted by that piece. You can best learn it in music, and I do not speak of Pop: Beethoven interpretes me, and Ligeti does in another way."

I defend that I am neither interpreted by Beethoven, nor by Ligetti. There is no piece of art that interprets me. I may identify with it. I may even feel enthralled by it, but I do not communicate back to it's creator. The symbolism is fixed and all I can do is interpret it through my filter, with my library of symbols. I do not produce change in the artist's finished work. And this is a very important affirmation, for it is this fact and this fact only that allows a writer, a painter or a composer to convey emotion in an almost uniform way to their audiences, because, in most instances, it was through those creators that we faced, for the first time, the symbols they created, or were exposed to the symbols they used. We were learned into their library of symbols the same way as the Japanese were learned into the symbolism of Japanese Opera. There is no retroactive interpretation, There is only proactive interpretation and it follows the route from the emmiter to the receiver.

5 - Regarding naturalism, or animism, which @ty-ty professes when he says:

To interpret and be interpreted is not only the main thing in communication but in all subject-object-relations. We interprete some parts of 'nature' as something, and 'nature' does the same with mankind.

Although you may think so, Gestalt does not propose that there is a reverse process of interpretation, what Wartheimer did was to establish that, in principle, we can anticipate how our work will be received by others, which is not the same as saying that when we create a work of art, it will be interpreting someone that will be confronted with it five hundred years from now. Neither is communication a subject-object relation. It is, in the dialogue form, (if it is continuous in time) a feedback subject-filter-filter-subject relation, and in the action of artistic creation an object-filter-subject relation, because the laying of the touchstone seals the symbolic content of the work and then, it becomes interpretable in it's full dimension only to the ones that are learned in the code, and still, they will interpret the code through their own filters.

Above, I was talking about the creations of man, now, let's talk about nature: Nature does not interpret anything. Nature, at the most, reacts or suffers the consequences of our actions. I could almost travel the hippie route and tell you how many shrooms or ayahuasca sessions I have attended and, I kid you not: animism does not roll with me. And it does not because a conscience with a filter and a library of symbols is needed to interpret communication, and, nature, as a whole, does not posess it, and most animals don't either. What it posesses is reaction to stimuly, and even that, you cannot produce retroactively.

Even though I am a defender of the notion that all times and all things are simultaneous, I am also a defender of the position that we humans are gifted with free will and that there is no determinism, so anything is possible and everything is in quantic connection, and still, our will, as conscious observers is apparently manifested over matter itself. So, I am still responsable for setting my touchstones and the observer is still responsable for the mutation of the object I created. Even if you consider the weirdest possibilities of Physics, you can never revert the action and have the observed object react to you. The most you can do is have it reveal itself, and, even there, you need to have the tools and the decoding skills to achieve it.

The Answers:

Is the interpretation of symbols a uni or bydirectional process?

The interpretation of symbols is a clearly univoque relation. The symbols are fixed and left to the interpretation of the observer.

Is an artist's work involved in bi-directional communication?

Overtime and with his contemporary critics, certainly. On each finished work and after his death, never.

Is there a feedback loop into a past moment of creation?

Only in science fiction. And, it depends on the author. If he is a proponent of alternate dimensions or timelines, he will say there is no feedback, because every decision will generate a new universe with all possible outcomes. If it was Phillip K. Dick, he would say anything is possible.

Does nature interpret man concomittently with man interpreting nature?

Nature is not gifted with the capacity to interpret anything. Nature reacts to stimuly. Communication is a work between communities of likeminded, (or same coded), individuals. Ants communicate with eachother. For me to communicate with ants, I will need to learn their code first, else, the most I can do is react to their stimuly or have them react to mine. That does not constitute an act of communication.

I expect to have made myself clear about my opinion on this matter, although I know that I have not fully explored all the avenues and have only pointed the way to further understanding of the way I think about communication, and how it explains the form of my creations, because I actively use the theory of communication I advocate here in order to produce them. I intentionally create, for instance, written works that are devoid of many literary artifices and skim all the fat off my texts in order to penetrate as deeply as possible into the reader's filter and have him create my stories him/herself. At the point I finish a text, the only responsable for interpretation is the reader, so, I feed him the least I can, trying to find a common symbolic ground that allows the reader to visualise the story I have written.

For me, chaotic verbiage is not a viable art product as literature, the same way that a Rorshach test is not art. People can see meaning in it, but literature it is not. A literary product obeys rules and codes and needs to follow a structure that allows for a common ground of understanding between multiple readers. Those codes are learned by each of us at school or self-taught, but uniform as a toolbox, whether it's grammar, logic, the Propp method, rethorics and oratory, color theory or any other structured form of code decription.

As a corolary of my demonstration, I offer that If you do not follow structure and use a code that only you are privy to, no one will understand what you are intending to communicate and everyone will do of your creation what they will, or, as Shakespeare would put it "As you like it", being the "you", the proverbial reader. I postulate ink blots do not have the capacity to understand us, hence, they do not interpret us. The only interpreter is, and alway will be the receiver/observer, even when there is an intermediary, as is the case of classical music or theatre.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

I would now like to know if I answered @ty-ty's doubts about the non triviality of my opinion and if any other readers out there wish to join this dance. Have neither fear nor shame to comment and let me know your minds about this subject.

21.02.25 - @hefestus