Browse Exhibits (2 total)
Contextualizing Art Through Everyday Writing
Most people are familiar with the saying “a picture is with a thousand words,” and while this may be true, sometimes a little more context is needed to evoke a complete understanding of a piece of art. Everyday writing can thus be used to provide this context, and this exhibit explores the ways in which people have used everyday writing in this manner.
The importance of establishing context in both everyday writing and in art, lies in its ability to stimulate knowledge creation. In her article titled “Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity,” Heidi Estrem uses a definition of writing which asserts that writing is “an activity undertaken to bring new understandings,” (Estrem 19). It is about “mulling over a problem, thinking with others, and exploring new ideas or bringing disparate ideas together,” (Estrem, 19). This concept of bringing new understandings and bringing disparate ideas together are seen within the interrelationship of art and everyday writing in this exhibit.
In the next few pages, a relationship between art, everyday writing, and materiality will also be established, as the materiality of a work is just as important to its context as any other component. In other words, I will be taking a scenic/contextual approach to analyzing these artifacts, where “writing is not only words on the page, but also concerns the mechanisms for production,” (Porter 386). The methods by which the creator of these artifacts composed both the artwork and writing of their piece attests to the purpose, audience, and overall meaning of the composition. The materiality also portrays the character of the creator while defining the composition’s intimacy and capacity for interaction, performing both as “an expression of the self and a social activity,” (Yancey, 164).
The ontological view of writing maintains the “impossibility of ‘contextless’ writing,” (Lillis, 80), and this is a view I choose to uphold in this exhibit. The meaning of any composition is heavily dependent on its context, an idea I will further explore in the pages to come.
Everyday writing in the college dorm
The college dormitory environment is one where hundreds of different people walk through the same halls. Their many different voices, perspectives, and experiences can be seen in their everyday writing.
The presence of everyday writing is expressed in widely different ways, but despite how it is expressed, there is a commonality of collaboration and socialness that goes hand in hand with everyday writing in the college dorms.
I want this exhibit to highlight the way in which students will communicate with each other through everyday writing in different contexts, such as formal and informal. I also want to examine the connections that everyday writing in the dorm fosters between students and students with their R.A., and how these interactions differ due to the contextual differences.