The origin of the Loom of Form and Meaning in a game with glass beads
and applications in semiology and anthropology
The Loom originally arose from an attempt to classify comparisons between forms, and in particular two groups of banded agate beads and glass bead copies from Iran, c. 249 BCE – 300 CE, cited in The Worldwide History of Beads by Lois Sherr Dubin (2015).
Archaeologists and anthropologists have long recognised the potential meanings of prehistoric artefacts such as beads, whether such meanings are accrued by metonymy (the tooth of a powerful animal), association (membership of a particular group or tribe), or resemblance (a man-made copy of a tooth of a powerful animal). But my prior attempts at a classification of comparisons using beads with different physical substance and qualities, each with different specific meanings, weren’t able to accommodate single items with multiple possible meanings/uses, and single meanings/uses each represented/achieved in multiple different ways.
This is why the most useful aspect of the new attempt with banded agate and glass bead copies was not their difference, but their similarity. A first pass at codifying their relationship resulted in a 2x2 matrix plotting the material they were made from (stone or glass) against their similar design features. It was a start, but wasn’t yet quite what was needed, and in a second pass at the classification, sign and meaning were plotted in another 2x2 matrix, where material and design features were both included as aspects of the sign, as distinct from a meaning which varied while the sign remained identical. A third pass reapplied this model to a seminal example I had been tinkering with for a while: the ‘sign of mercury’ as metal, planet or god, and the ‘meaning of mercury’ as a metaphor for speed, for example an expression for quicksilver, the fastest planet and the god of speed, all expressed again as a 2x2 matrix.
Also front of my mind at the time were other seminal comparisons I wanted the model to accommodate, where forms and meanings were not similar:
- Multiple diverse folk names for the same medicinal plant mullein (Aaron’s Rod, Adam’s Flannel, Beggar’s Blanket) which would become a key example of re-expression (A3);
- Multiple diverse uses for the same fan in Noh drama, as Paul Kuritz describes it in The Making of Theatre History (1988): ‘Opening a fan signalled a dance. Fans could also represent bottles, cups or weapons.’ This, at the time, was my quintessential example of reuse of the same unchanged form for different purposes (C1).
Together, these further opened up the matrix to accomodate more radical differences in form and meaning within a 3x3 matrix, where forms are similar or different, but may still mean or be used for the same thing, and where forms remain the same but have multiple meanings or uses.
In the end, I adopted a very broad definition of a form and its qualities, which could include anything from the etymology of a word or the provenance of an artefact to the precise chemical composition of a glass bead. On the horizontal axis, degrees of perceived difference in form may vary from case to case, and from time to time. This time I may only care how a word is spelled, and the next time the handwriting or font may be significant. That a painting may have passed through the Gurlitt collection may be a matter of indifference to one person, or of crucial importance to another.
Similarly also for the vertical axis of meaning and use: a pedestrian interpretation or usage for one person may be surprising and unexpected for another.
In the case of both form and meaning/use, I judged it sufficient for my purpose to distinguish only between three categories of sameness, similarity and difference, and allow all of these distinctions to include subjective aspects which will vary depending on the specific context and observer.
Semiology
The Loom was not intended to be a tool of semiology or linguistics, nor of symbolic or interpretative anthropology. But since it is concerned with form and meaning, it is interesting to see how it compares with the well-known models of Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce and others in these fields.
Explanations of Saussure’s linguistics often start with different signs that each arbitrarily refer to different things: the word ‘cat’ has its meaning because that word is not ‘mat,’ ‘cut’ or ‘cap.’ On the Loom, all Saussure’s different words which mean different things from ‘cat’ are C3, unless you consider some of them similar enough in form to ‘cat’ to be counted as C2, or also similar enough in meaning (e.g. ‘catty’) to be B2. Other special but common relationships between signifier and signified which are explicit in other positions of the Loom, most notably synonyms (A3) and homonyms (C1), are not addressed in Saussure’s simple base case.
Saussure’s student, Serge Karcevskij, made homonyms and synonyms central to his system, writing in 1929: ‘the signifier seeks to have other functions than its proper function; the signified seeks to express itself by other means than by its sign.’ For Karcevskij, language operates and develops at the intersection of a chain of possible synonyms (all the different words which could be selected to mean the same thing) and homonyms (all the different things which could be meant by the same word). Peter Steiner’s Defence of Semiotics (1981) extends Karcevskij further to include polydimensional forms ‘comprised of all substances which can serve for the expression of meaning,’ just like my broad definition of Form on the Loom, making this ‘Karcevskij-Steiner proposition’ the nearest precursor of the Loom I have found so far.
Digging deeper into how Saussure’s own theory deals with homonyms and synonyms, for example, we come across the concept of value equivalences. Saussure’s central distinction between similar and dissimilar value equivalences breaks down differently on the Loom: he gives the example of a coin which may be exchanged either for something dissimilar, such as bread of the same value, or something similar, such as other coins of the same value. On the Loom, the exchange of a coin for bread of equivalent value is A3 if the bread itself may then be exchanged for eggs of the same value, for though they are different things, the bread and coin achieve the same purpose. But if the bread is only to be eaten by a hungry person it is a C3 type of exchange, since the coin can not be put to the same use as the bread as food. Likewise, the exchange of coins with other coins of the same value are A3 if they can be used for the same thing, but are C3 if they cannot, for example if particular denominations are needed to meet a certain purpose. C1 uses of a coin include tightening a screw (it’d have to be a dime, or a similarly small coin), temporarily fixing a wobbly table, or reviving indents left by furniture in carpet pile, none of which purposes would be very well served by substituting bread for the coin.
Peirce acknowledges that some signs are arbitrary (those he calls symbols), but also grants that signs and their objects may be alike (icons), or have some other inherent relationship (indexes). The last two are not totally arbitrary, because the sign shares a quality or relationship with its object. I’ll illustrate with an application of Peirce’s classes to an analysis of the Thai chedi, a bell-shaped tower or stupa, by Hiram W. Woodward, Jr. As an index, the chedi is ‘a nexus of cause and effect: who built them, when, and for what purpose’ which yields crucial aspects of its meaning. Highlighting different well-known meanings and uses of the same form is a B1 type activity. The stupa as icon stands for something it resembles: according to some sources, Buddha’s upturned begging pot. Similarity of form, combined with difference in purpose, makes this a C2 type of relationship. Stupa as symbol, for Peirce, only has an arbitrary signifying relationship with whatever thing it signifies, making it an A3 type substitution, in this case representing the abstract concept of dharmakāya.
On the Loom even arbitrary symbolism can have many nuances, including private and personal uses which are not collectively shared by a wider community:
- to represent the abstract, something we cannot directly point at or imitate, or indeed (as for Jung) the unknowable (A3)
- to hide something, for example (as for Freud) displacement/substitution in dreamwork in order to change a meaning to something more acceptable (C3), or to render something ambiguous or make a secret/personal message readable only to certain people (C1)
- to clarify and to reinforce a message, e.g. a red stop sign, or ‘traffic lights’ in a report (A3)
- to show several things when we only have limited means of representation at our disposal, for example condensation in Freud’s dreamwork, or the above example of the fan in Noh theatre (C1)
- to represent one thing consistently across cultures and languages (B1, or even A1 if it really means the same, like an Ikea product name)
Anthropology
What we’re doing with the Loom is taking a form in one category, ‘Mercury’ as Roman god for example, and putting it into another category, such as chemistry or botany, to see what we get. If we leave the form intact and otherwise unchanged we may find a C1-type mark in these other categories (e.g. ‘mercury’ as metal), but if we look for the equivalent form in these other categories we will find the A3-type mark of its meaning (e.g. the fast-growing hazel tree).
Contrast this to the anthropological method of Franz Boas which would explore a single culture on its own terms across all its different elements, rather than explore a single element of that culture in relation to the same element in different cultures. For example, it would note the role and position of dance with reference to all other aspects of a culture (C1) rather than playing the ‘idea of dance’ across different cultures, including (but not only) translating the word itself (i.e. also considering how costumes, movements and contexts express the dance), giving different (cross-modal) expressions of the same cultural element: the dance (A3).
Explaining his own concept of ‘symboling,’ neoevolutionary anthropologist Leslie White uses the example of holy water whose ‘holiness is not dependent on the physical or chemical composition of the water’ to demonstrate a fundamental difference in capacity for symbolic comprehension between man and ape. However, like provenance or etymology, on the Loom holiness is a characteristic of a form which is significant enough to a believer to give it very different meanings and uses compared to otherwise similar water, with which it is in a C2-type relationship. But to the non-believer supposed holiness makes little or no difference, nor may a believer recognise the holiness of water sourced from the Ganges, Zamzam or Lourdes if it is outside their own religious tradition, making such forms to all intents and purposes A1-type identities.
Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner recognised the multivalency in symbols, meanings which he classified either as ideological and socially normative (use of milk in ritual as a symbol of matriliny), or sensory (milk as physically and emotionally gratifying). On the Loom, a specific symbol moves in column 1 (or column 2 depending on how much we care about how exactly it is expressed), and the row will depend on how common, uncommon, or surprising the interpretation is. The sensory and ideological poles are merely different routes into the interpretation.
An exchange of views on newly discovered artefacts from the African Middle Stone Age, and what they might mean for theories of development of language and cognition in homo sapiens, brings us full circle. ‘Can beads act as symbols?’ ask Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2011), who conclude there is no difference, ‘at the cognitive level, between understanding that there is [a] conventional link between an artifact and an abstract property (e.g., beads and being cool) and understanding that there is one between an artifact and an event (e.g., the cross and crucifixion).’ But a cross is an essential quality of a crucifixion (A1), while coolness is possible without beads, just as beads can be uncool, depending on value judgements of observers (B/C1), making the linkage between coolness and beads both more arbitrary and also more dependent on accepted social norms. They continue: ‘In both cases, it is insufficient to see that people see things: one must see how people see things.’ Untrue, in the case of a crucifixion, if we leave aside the meaning of the event to some observers. And in the case of beads, it is also insufficient to omit who sees, and who (if anyone) can be considered the ultimate arbiter of coolness.
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The Loom offers additional nuances to some of these established models, and elides some distinctions in others. At the end of the day, it was designed only for comparing comparisons, and even that only in the limited context of comparison games. If there does exist any extra mileage in it at all, it’s simply fun to explore.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll stick to the games…
