“Neither beginning nor ending”
The Google map on the phone is very useful. You can see at a glance where you are and tell you how to get where you want to go. Would it be more convenient if photografs was used instead of these map symbols? Probably no, because the informations would be too complicated to work. In other words, because the symbols are abstract , we can grasp the situation straight.
Does'nt this same thing happen in language?
We often lament: "If only I could convey exactly what I mean." However, emotions are always close to words. Also, for example, the word “red” is packed with textures that can be felt through the life of those who use it. Therefore, the only way to convey what you want to say to the other person is to make him or her experience fully your life . If that become possible, the difference between you and others would no longer exist.
The language can be shared with many people due to the abstract ambiguity that language's imperfeccionlity has. Can't we say that the world created by a kind of “gap” between us because of the imperfection of the language is rich and diverse?
Naturally, the meaning of the word differs slightly depending on the person using it. Because the meaning of the word is closely related to the thoughts and values in the environment where the person was born and raised.
I think it was Marcel Duchamp who noticed the “gap” and made it into art. When he escaped from World War I and moved from Paris to New York, he may have first encountered the uncertainty of words. It should have been the “gap” of words derived from the difference between French and English. Even in the same word of fountain, the French “Fontaine” reminds us of the common fountain in the city of Paris, and Americans would say “Fountain”, referring to the water source that springs in the mountains. If the location where the same word is used changes, the "gap" occurs in what the word means.
If so, moving the same “thing” from one place to another where different ideology and values exist, would the “gap”create and its original meaning change? For example, if you take a computer to a place where no one has ever seen it, it may be just a white box for those who live there.
Duchamp quickly paid attention to the “gap” of the contents indicated by the words and the “change” of the meaning of the things due to the movement of the location. As a result, "Ready- Made" was born.
His representative work was "Fountain", unveiled in New York in 1917.
And it was just a male urinal. Thus Duchamp showed us that in addition to the real world and the surreal world (discovered by surrealists), another world created by the “gap” derived from words was hidden in the “things” that surround us in everyday life.
