Modern Hieroglyphs / Language of Dreams By Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller

Otto Neurath’s theory of ‘logical positivism’ reminded me of the “rational observation’ scientists use to investigate a hypothesis. Unlike the scientific method, an international system of uniform typography is culturally specific and must be learned. The reduction and consistency of an image results in generic silhouettes that can be interpreted both literally and conceptually. Pictograms try to clarify the relationship between the parts of a whole and demonstrate how something works. Isotype may transcend some limitations of letters, however, these neutral silhouettes are limited by their own simplicity.

I have never been successful in deciphering my dreams… until now. I’ve used the Freudian dream decoder and I understand why I was dangling fifty feet in the air from a novelty balloon last night. By exchanging the direct, literal meaning of these images for indirect substitutions I’ve concluded that my dreams are weird. There are so many possible associations in memory, sound, and physical structure that eventually meaning is whatever you want it to be. How Freud interprets the dream world is not so different than how we interpret reality. Before reading this article I never realized how sophisticated the Japanese language was. 40,000 signs that have separate symbols for words and parts of words that might sound the same but have different meanings and look differently. Imagine all the possible interpretations of a Japanese dream!