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Visual Semiotics of Rain
My parents lived in an old flat with very thin windowpanes. In winter, on damp or rainy days, they would mist over with a fine layer of moisture, and droplets of water would slowly trickle down the glass from time to time. As a child, I would amuse myself by drawing shapes or words with my fingers, clearing away the droplets to reveal the transparency of the glass.
One day, with tearful eyes, from a less conscious state of mind, from the Inner Gaze, I wrote: with moisture in my eyes, I understood the rain. I had my camera nearby, loaded with a black-and-white roll of film. Almost without thinking, I photographed that trail of letters. A record of a fleeting moment (1)? A metaphor (2) for visual poetry?
A few days later, I took more images of windows with water droplets slowly rolling down from a visual semiotics perspective. Looking back at those photographs, one reflection remained: tears are like raindrops; they don’t stop until they have all fallen.
Keywords
References
Texts
- 1. 084 El record fotogràfic de l’art efímer / Photographic memory of ephemeral art
- 2. Arnheim, A. (1979 Arte y percepción visual: Psicología del arte creador. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, S.A. (Títol original: Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye ) P. 495-496.
“La función de la metáfora es hacer que el lector rompa la cáscara convencional del mundo de las cosas yuxtaponiendo objetos que tienen poco en común aparte del esquema subyacente. Este recurso, sin embargo, sólo es operante si el lector de poesía sigue estando vivo, en su propia experiencia cotidiana, a la connotación simbólica o metafórica de toda apariencia y actividad […] Un aspecto de la sabiduría propia de toda cultura verdadera es la consciencia constante del significado simbólico que se expresa en el suceso concreto, el sentir universal en lo particular. Esto presta significación y dignidad a todas las actividades cotidianas, y prepara el sustrato sobre el que pueden crecer las artes”.
Images
- The first and third photographs are two images with writing on damp glass as a result of the difference in temperature between the outside and the inside of the house.
Visual poems. Ends of the 80s.
- The middle image is a photograph of another window, without any human intervention on the glass.
Visual poems. Ends of the 80s.