ix 9/5

Our downtown lecture was a great experiment in our abilities to apply things we learned within the enclosed structure of the ivory tower and apply it to the world around us—even if, anticlimactically, it was just a matter of pointing at an aspect of the building and giving it a name/definition such as Multivalent or picking out the empty space which is called the Absent Center. The most interesting aspect of this downtown excursion was the fact that we were also participating in the process of giving "new" names to aspects of buildings we may (not) have paid close attention to while downtown on previous occasions. And how did we achieve this? By utilizing the consensus as a means of determining signified that we talked about a week or so prior in class.

One person, let's say, plays "Adam" and names the empty space within a building, the space that has no roof and is open to the elements—though this does not have to be literal—and (s)he chooses to dub it the Absent Center. Another person, possibly a teacher/professor and/or person of the authoritative persuasion (having learned it from another, and another, and so on, all the way back to “Adam”) takes a group of initiates to a gathering of buildings and passes on the signifier/signified relation, as it pertains to a particular style of architecture, and they feel pleased with themselves when they have correctly grasped this new correlation and heard the according sound signals that we have accepted as signifiers of approval. But… this is how we humans learn and pick up language/culture/religion and everything that, if you subscribe to the notion, comes from the “Nurture” part of our perceived existence(s).