Pattern Language

I have a few theories about pattern. An amoeba can distinguish dark from light - this is pattern recognition at its most fundamental. So what the amazing human mind sorts out of and reinterprets from a myriad of information is also pattern recognition, and may be the foundation of language. Mazes and puzzles, quilts, mathematic and dance and music notation, game boards, astronomical charts, Tibetan mandelas - all of these are maps which stimulate and organize the darling synapses of our brains.

We've been watching television for 50 years and during that time, unbeknownst to the education system, we've become adept at splicing together meaning from rapidfire imagery and clipped text. We read logos and icons like the Roman alphabet.

Oriental languages read faster than western ones because the iconographic content makes faster associations in the brain. I suspect western language is evolving backward - from an abstract alphabet to a more visual language. At the heart of this process is pattern recognition.

To me, visuals are a language. No more, no less. And artists are people who have learned to write in images, no more, no less. As an artist, the questions that have driven much of my visual explorations are:

What meaning do we find in pattern?

Why do we prefer some patterns to others, either collectively or individually?

Once I learned a little Spanish, but this may take a few lifetimes.