What Can I Gain From WORDS?

“As we begin, so shall we go” (46, McLuhan).

  To be honest, I really don't get Stephen Perkins's point in his artist talk because I rarely remember his idea. Whereas I do like his idea of using words as his favorite media to pass information. I noticed something about myself that when I appreciate other people's artwork or communicate to another person, I tend to always get inspiration from some words they said. Maybe the individual doesn't mean to use their words to talk to me in the way I interpreted, but I do anyway. Sometime I feel this behavior means when I talk to people, I am not actually paying attention to what they say, I am just hearing what I want to hear. It might not be good for the person I communicate with, but might be good for my personal development as an artist——idea pop up from everywhere.

  The way I get meaning out from Stephen Perkins's talk is similar as how I learn from McLuhan's book The Medium Is The Massage: I don't really understand anything they say in the book or the talk, but I can still somehow interpret things in my own way.

For example, in the photo card, Perkins wrote: "closed borders, closed minds".

  I found this quote really interesting. It is really simple but somehow meaningful for me: When I saw the "closed borders", I am thinking a 3D box with all the lines around; then I flip the card around and saw the words on the back, "closed minds", I felt something different. He says the mind is closed, but what I think is while the brain is closed because the organ brain has borders, the mind is open, limitless, can go to anywhere. 

"The rational man in our Western culture is a visual man. The fact that most conscious experience has little "visuality" in it is lost on him (45, McLuhan).

  What I see is not what I feel, what I think is not what I say. The power of abstract words is huge for me, I'd like to play around with it. Like wise, the same reason to explain why I really like McLuhan's book. The full experience of reading the book as a media and gain knowledge from it is such a cool perceiving experience.