DISPIRATE SIGNIFICATIONS
ARE CONSTELLATED BY AN OVERRIDING NEED
These objects, though they have disparate temporal origins and display differing types of significence and targets of intention, nevertheless now loosely participate in an overriding practical need - to safely cross a traffic-streaming road to and from the entry-gate of a large College complex. This pedestrian-concentrating entry has attracted ancillary functions such as notice boards and telephone-kiosk
LONDON
ROAD, ISLEWORTH, MDDLX. - ENTRY TO SOUTH THAMES COLLEGE
(pic c1987 / to NNW)
A
confusion of signs: a chaos that results not only from the independent
acts of unrelated agencies and events but also from the different 'levels of abstraction'
of the various signs. However these objects, though they have disparate temporal origins and display differing types
of significence and targets of intention, nevertheless now loosely participate
in an overriding practical need - to safely cross a traffic-streaming road to
and from the entry-gate of a large College complex. This
pedestrian-concentrating entry has attracted ancillary functions such as notice
boards and telephone-kiosk:
Crossing Stripes are almost-pure abstraction: the meaning needs to be learnt, but not to the degree that completely arbitary signs such as alphabet letters require; the stripes illustrate the acts of stepping ... and the yellow belisha-beacons the 'fire an the hill', but what about their striped stems? = more stepping like the zebra?: climbing the poles?!... suddenly - because one assumes there is an 'information-scheme' here - signification breaks down, loses constancy and instead of clear action, provokes doubt and muddle (causing an excess of brain/information processing: that perhaps should be done by the designer not by the user!). Apparantly included in this (defective) scheme and thus compounding the muddle are striped gate posts - an architectural convention and pure coincidence that seems to intentionally signal the crossing's goal.
The
College gates whose 'wrought-iron-twiddle' style fakes that of Renaissance palaces - a style adopted
by the founder of Pears Soap who built his late-19C mansion here in leafy
Isleworth, now supplemented with late 1970s 'box-modern' blocks and morphed into a
technical college (a mix of snobbery with practicality - perhaps not
unwelcome to the 'authorities'). Unlike the zebra-stripes that provoke an action
by proffering its abstraction, these gates simply copy (albiet with some editing
of the difficult and expensive bits!) the appearence of familiar and prestigious
originals - evoking a memory and its concommitant emotions of envy (kitsch).
A
chance association of red objects
that seem
to bracket the gateway (apparantly meaningfully grouped at the instant of the photo and not noticed by
the photographer!) are actually a 'real-objective' event with no 'subjective' significence. A group of
three unconnected people (who all look to the left - at an emerging
fire-engine?) are all clad in the same red, and - as if this coincidence is
insufficient - are balanced symetrically on the right of the central gates by a
large same-red phone-box. Any thinking-being could be excused for mistaking this
'expression of chaos' for intention: street-theatre, ritual, or suchlike.
These
and many other significations confuse each other and us: a plot of chaos richly
furnished with intentions!
DISPIRATE SIGNIFICATIONS
ARE
FORCED INTO A 'FRAMED' CONJUNCTION
A
'PERSONALISED' EX-COUNCIL HOUSE
(pic c1978)
One half of a modest 1920s 'cottage-style' pebble-dash Council semi has been bought and 'individualised' with a display of mass-taste style-signs: 'Classical' (plastic) door-case (with Lloyds
Bank logo'!); 'Elizabethian Baronial' door; 'Baroque Palace' (plastic) parterre vases; 'Cottage' side-gate with lucky-horseshoe and 'hand-wrought' nails;
'International Modern' white walls with 'picture-windows'.
Except that they issued from one 'agency' (one person or family), when chosen and installed each motif seems to have been perceived as if alone and there is no sense of irony or awareness of their mutual tensions. the underlying ordering function of this confusion of messages (unlike the previous example of dispirate objects that over time have agglomerated around a practical need) has no more meaningful 'necessity'///necessary-meaning than the canvas that supports and frames (traditional) painting. The disparate 'motifs' are forced into conjunction merely by their isolation on a bounded surface.
The social persistance of
kitsch significations is exemplified by the fact that in 2008, this house,
now in a generally more wealthy setting, had retained (with small changes in the
details) all its main kitsch additions (even the little 'wrought-iron' gate
- though now in the context of a very white masonry wall) except the
'moderne' windows, historically reversed to wood framed leaded 'elizabethan'
glazing.
Contrast the above with an example of 'solved' stylistic collage:
OSTERLY HOUSE - ROBERT ADAM - 1761 to 1780
(pic c1973 / to SW)
An
audacious dramatic 'collage'. Adam removed the centre of the front wing of
this Elizabethan courtyard mansion and as if slid in an immense 'item of
furniture': a huge classical pedimented porch that amplifies and dramatises
the previously commonplace symmetry of the older building while mantaining
an extraordinary state of 'focussed confrontation' with its context. A
shocking and magnificent combination of elegance and formal tension!
.