eXageration The expression of an idea may not lie in the sounds of words, or the inner dialogue of the written form. Even here today artists attempt to convey, at best, an idea – something that is far reaching and stretches beyond the physical realm of the subject itself and into the conceptual. And it stands to reason that the artists of the world, of all people, should come to understand and familiarise themselves with the knowing of ideas and their communication via representation. For the art world deals in totality with the representation of ideas, not merely in its subject formation, but also in more pure forms of sensory modes; as such in music, moving picture, and interactive works that consist of smells and physical contact. Yet even at this point, where a realisation takes place – a realisation that communication is merely the analysis of mutliple levels of sensory data with a metaphorical link to the realm of what is real -,

The knowledge of real objects is immediately insubstantiated when one recognises an obvious truth – that rational sensory beings cannot know real objects as they are but merely as they are represented to us by our sensible intuition. As Kant would have us believe, real knowledge of true forms is only obtained via non-sensible intuition; knowledge is instantanous and subsequently without thought, for if one were to interact with forms one needs a sensible intuition and therefore can only know their interactions with their relative appearances. In this way Kant splits the realm of all possible knowledge into two categories – phenomena: the term reflecting what sensible entities the subject itself has derived from empirical data, the senses. – noumena: a thing which is not to be thought of, as an object of the senses but as a thing in itself, solely through pure understanding.

“All existence and all change in time have thus to be viewed as simply a mode of the existence of that which remains and persists. In all appearances the permanent is the object itself, that is, substance as phenomenon; everything, on the other hand, which changes or can change belongs only to the way in which substance or substances exist, and therefore to their determinations. ”


the artist will attempt to extend the representation into the emotional plane and communicate with the audience further afield; the referential art formation. The idea however, is simultanouesly contained within the montage of sensory data but also lost within its midst. It seems with every effort that is made into the representation of this unsensory form the foremost intention of the art seems to become ever more obscured and isolated from the creation that was sparked, and is the vessel, for the beast. Since the idea can only be intuitively grasped by the subject itself other rational beings must partake in an analysis of empirical data that must be critiqued as mere appearances of their true forms that remain unknowable by the beholder. It cannot be assumed that the same sensory information will result in the same experience for all rational objects; the processes of sensing are not in any way determinably the same, although perhaps similar and measurable; the only form of intermediate understanding is via the categories of judgement that were stumbled upon by Aristotle and further developed by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Post-Structualists. In this sense rational beings may be content with a false and limited sense of understanding in the tautological structures of language; in the sense that the rational being names an appearance thus and evidently knowledge arises.

“But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not; to speak I tried, and forwith spake,
My tongue obeyed and readily could name
Whate’er I saw.” – milton

Deconstruction begins with Derrida. The examination of literary texts holds key to the examination of the social fabric that not only holds the tautological truths together in a fixed form of understanding, but also the basis on which social references and symbolisms can be related. And yet there are numerous forms of analysis. From psychoanalytic (Freudian) to the English philosphies such as Hobbes; the Marxist account right through to feminism – and yet certain intellectuals will have it stand to reason that all perspectives are equally valid. Despite the patent difficulties inherently intertwined with the expression of an idea the artist will still feebly attempt to recreate this dream of intuitive representation. Such Fear: Fear of Misconception. Stanley Fish examines the ocurrence of linguistic misconception – such has been exemplified by Randy Newman’s “Short People Got No Reason To Live, and Swifts “Verses on the Death of Dr Swift”, exploring how rational beings may understand linguistic subtlies such as irony, metonymy, metaphor, hyperbole, and the list continues. The artist uses these tools not only to shape what the idea is but then again also what it is not.

“Well, that’s Philosophy I’ve read,
And Law and Medicine, and I fear
Theology too, from A to Z;
Hard studies all, that have cost me dear.
And so I sit, poor silly man,
No wiser now than when I began.”  ¶ 2:13 am