I’m starting to question this whole dictionary idea having started school, mainly because I’m having too difficult of a time finding anyone who has done anything similar. Am I looking in the wrong places? I don’t know, I’m hoping that I’ll find a whole community of strange neurotic linguists and English scholars with major OCD so I can bring them my version of “the dictionary” for them to all have a chuckle at. What I’m attempting to do is to take an artistic and process driven approach to lexicography. ( I just learned this term. the definition of this is; the writing, editing, or compiling of dictionaries.2. the principles and procedures involved in writing, editing, or compiling dictionaries.) So according to my previous entry in which I present my “formula” for the question; what is art? man’s interpretation x X = art. I am breaking down the first part of the equation “man’s interpretation”, as I am the artist I will analyze and classify my own interpretation and understanding, the most obvious way to go about this in my eyes to do this is to write a dictionary of my own words and thier meanings according to me from my own perspective. I would imagine that it would be read as an index to my thought process. Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with something mildly original.
studio
dictionary of a madman.
schizophrenia has played a bit of a theme in my writing over the summer. perhaps its my own way of understanding my own way of understanding, but yesterday morning my friend/collaborator were having another crazy conversation about who knows what, when suddenly it hit me. writing my own dictionary that has a subtle narrative to it but basically a dictionary from my own perspective and interpretation. crazy, yes… stupid, no. after four years at ACAD if asked what is art? my answer would be “man’s interpretation of something.” it is an equation, the final piece would be the value of X. I have also learned that almost anything in this world can be argued proven or disproven, truth, history and facts are often if not always subjective. man has created classifications to try to interpret and understand themselves, this has been achieved in language, law, and mathematics. there is a curve that has developed in mankind’s classification systems that has the “grey area” expanding, as time goes on issues become more complex and debatable the idea and interpretation of the universe continues to become more adaptable, history is actually historiography and is more a narrative and interpretation then fact, how can it be fact when it exists only from memory and narrations made from perspective. language and meaning evolves and expands. this peice will probably be very useless to anyone else but the artist, however once retrospect I know it will be essential to my work. this same friend also introduced me to Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud that afternoon, and I have to ask, why do all my literary heros get stabbed in the back by a pimp for no apparent reason?
AMANDA LEHMAN-CHOI 