A dog sprawled on a sofa.
A jerk of the paw.
A twitch of the ear.
A wrinkling of a snout.
A mutter of a bark.
A dog dreaming.
And yet, those observations do not actually tell you a story; to you, the dog’s actions become his dream of chasing a squirrel. Is there any actual evidence that is where his doggy thoughts have wandered? No. Through your experience with the animal, and with dogs in general, you make assumptions. You are seeing an incomplete picture and filling in the details. As humans, knowledge is always incomplete and we rely on inference to understand the world around us. Shaped by experience, learning, and personal bias, small observations inform the whole.
Through my work, both art and design, I try to understand how, as individuals and members of a society, we interpret the world around us—how we create meaning through connections between learning, experiences, beliefs, and tradition. From basic intellectual and emotional building blocks we make sense of the world and divine truth. Many of the constructs of our civilization—religion, law, and language—help to simplify our experiences. They edit the infinite number of choices we face and clarify possible interpretations of the information we encounter. They allow us to interact with the world in manageable levels of complexity and choice. These filters are what we rely on to function in a sea of potentially overwhelming stimuli. They hold together our society and our psyches. They are the structures of meaning and understanding and a can be used, in turn, to create or shape communication to greater effect.