Taste + The Golden Mean

Sweet

Salty

Sour

Abstraction: Taste

Sweet, Salty, and Sour. The shapes I chose were triangles, squares, circles, and four pointed stars. The image that I feel rings most true to its taste is Sour. I positioned the stars and triangles in an overlapping diagonal to create the illusion of movement, or activity. That quick sting on the tongue. The diagonal consists of triangles and stars, with acute angles creating the sense of the sharp pain that sour gives. The circles and squares are lined up vertically to indicate a falling motion indicative of the almost pleasurable feel of salivation. I chose this one as my favorite because although the citrus colors help with reading it more clearly, I do feel it may still work on a grayscale. It is difficult to see this from any other cultural mindset, but if you are from a culture who reads vertically not horizontal, the blue lines of shapes may seem different. Or if you are from a culture where the four pointed star means something religious or political, then that would have a whole other meaning.

Flatland and The Golden Mean

I remember reading the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott about twenty years ago. Although it was clearly fiction, I was completely frustrated with the nonsensical idea that “dimensions” exist. I am grateful that this is the first thing Leborg tackles in Visual Grammar pointing out lines are just points connected, planes are lines connected and so on. Once again I am learning more of vocabulary. Concepts and visual tools I’ve always known existed but never knew there was a name for. I had never heard of the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean describes the perfectly symmetrical relationship between two proportions. This can be represented by the ratio 1:1.618. That crazy Fibonacci. Also, I didn’t enjoy WTF do the Symbols on my Shirt Tag Mean? I think I just didn’t understand it. Symbols used to indicate how to care for clothes that are antiquated and vague…and…? However I really enjoyed learning about the peace sign and I’ve been drawing a lot of upside down peace signs lately for Universal Disarmament. Also maybe learning the semaphore alphabet would be fun.