Theory Diary: Encoding, Decoding

Stuart Hall's article Encoding, decoding organizes communication as a feedback system between producer/coder and receiver/decoder. This means that to effectively convey a message, an artist must consider the ideology of their audiences. It's not enough to have an idea about what I, the artist, have and paint a picture, and then blame the viewer if they don't get it. Instead, miscommunication is a product of asymmetry between encoding and decoding structures.

I often feel as if my paintings and poems are annoyingly obvious, to be told later that if they're barely legible and cryptic. Although it is always interesting when someone reads something that I didn't intend into one of my paintings, I am trying to work on making my message clearer. One way to do this by keeping the decoding stage of the communication of my artwork in mind.

Hall's article also discusses dominant codes that are generally accepted as nature which are in fact cultural constructions. This transparency defines ideology in a way that can dismiss alternative ideas and minority human rights issues. Im interested in how art can deconstruct these codes and expose the conventional nature of what we think of as natural.

Easier said than done.