Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 17:13:13 -0800 (PST)
From: oconnell-AT-oz.net (Mark O'Connell)
Subject: Re: Warhol/sci-fi/turnips/sybil



>>The language of some art is. Do you really think all art and artists are
>>concerned with this stuff?
>>
>>
>I think this is the crux of our discussion, as well as B's comments on
>simulacra. *All* artists use signs and symbols ( a symbolic language ), just
>as all novellists use words.

What about musicians, or visual artists working purely with color, or
abstract shape, none of them intending to represent or symbolize anything?
Will you assign a conceptual significance where it has no real business?
All art is not literary, it's not all conceptually articulate or concerned
with the world of ideas. Some art is experiential.


>The way a society uses symbolic representations
>is at the heart of how it constructs the concepts it calls 'reality'.

I think that's probably right, or in the right direction anyhow. But at the
same time it's only philosophy, and nobody doing phil up to this point has
managed to get everything into one box, 'cept maybe the Bhuddists, but they
used an un-box (ha ha). If you did get everything into one box B. would
probably call it "the end of the world" or something.  Anyway, what if you
said that social reality, or official reality, was constructed in the way
you describe, but that that isn't necessarily the only game in town?

>Perhaps if you could give me your thoughts on this, I could comment more
>fully on 'simulacra'.

fire away-


all the best,

Mark O'Connell
oconnell-AT-oz.net