words and this project is rooted in that dilemma: How do people share their individual interpretations of a visual experience when their representational tools are word-based? Collecting Material Memories One way people have attempted to represent (and potentially preserve) their thoughts, experiences and memories throughout history is by creating and handing down hybrid collections combining both images and words, compiled to reflect selected aspects of themselves. Designating and saving representative illustrations, likenesses and written language into material remembrances continues to satisfy a basic human hunger. Examples of this urge to compile and perpetuate assemblages of personal meaning include Greek hypomnema (personal notebooks), 15th century Italian hodge-podge books and 17th century commonplace books (Curtis, 2011). Modern examples of this type of meaningful cultural “material memory” collection tend to be divided between (a) personal collections of privately expressive documents (photo albums, family bibles, daily diaries, scrap books) and (b) public collections of culturally valued images, usually designated as either artistic archives with presumed didactic value (museum collections, for example) or commercial commodities purchased for consumption only by an approved audience (corporate graphic art archives or municipal police mug shot catalogs). Large Institutional Image Collections: Language and Control Issues The challenging relationship between language and images can be observed on a grand scale in large traditional image collections, in particular collections paid for and accessed by institutions such as museums or corporations which have traditionally been
words and this project is rooted in that dilemma: How do people share their individual interpretations of a visual experience when their representational tools are word-based? Collecting Material Memories One way people have attempted to represent (and potentially preserve) their thoughts, experiences and memories throughout history is by creating and handing down hybrid collections combining both images and words, compiled to reflect aspects of themselves. Designating and saving representative illustrations, likenesses and written language into material remembrances continues to satisfy a basic human hunger. Examples of this urge to compile and perpetuate assemblages of personal meaning include Greek hypomnema (personal notebooks), 15th century Italian hodge-podge books and 17th century commonplace books (Curtis, 2011). Modern examples of this type of meaningful cultural “material memory” collection tend to be divided between (a) personal collections of privately expressive documents (photo albums, family bibles, daily diaries, scrap books) and (b) public collections of culturally valued images, usually designated as either artistic archives with presumed didactic value (museum collections, for example) or commercial commodities purchased for consumption only by an approved audience (corporate graphic art archives or municipal police mug shot catalogs). Large Institutional Image Collections: Language and Control Issues The challenging relationship between language and images can be observed on a grand scale in large traditional image collections, in particular collections paid for and accessed by institutions such as museums or corporations which have traditionally been selected
Sutcliffe_Exploring_Naming_Behavior_Oct_24_2014_.docx