LECTURE WEEK FOUR

In response to Kips lecture on Monday, April 18, I was shocked to see some of the crazy marketing schemes out there as well as the value of maps and the importance of location as an avenue for knowledge and mastery. As we started the day discussing tools and avenues of design in maps, I found it interesting all the different perspectives of our world out there regarding different views on geography and meaning.

As maps allow us to group, break down, and understand life around us, there are so many different viewpoints of land and symbols, it is hard to distinguish meaning sometimes without mastering the knowledge of the subject at hand. Maps pertain to language, space, sound, vision as well as physicalities, time, and social activities. If someone is handed a map of my hometown and live cross country, they will have no clue what this unique map represents and the numerous meanings that i can find inside it.

Out of the whole lecture, the most shocking thing to me was the piece by Jean-Pierre Gorin entitled Poto and Gabengo, made in 1979.  As Jean-Pierre documented the incredible story of two twins that developed their own language that only them two understood was astonishing to me. At first glance, I assumed the two twins were in fact mentally disabled as they ranted and jibbed in gibberish, until they showed the two twins respond to directions in English. At the same time that I give respect to the two twins, I have no respect for the socialization they had growing up in Linda Vista. I consider the dysfunctionaltiy of their family the most important reason why the two twins language developed as it did and feel the parents are entirely to blame. With a quiet, passive aggressive father, a mother with a horrible German accent, and a grandmother who entirely speaks German, the lack of influence and attention the parents gave to their twin daughters directly correlates to the bizarre habits they developed.