Picturing Language

The persistence of language is a human experience. Both art and language act as a door to that experience. The structure of language is the structure of the brain, as linguist Noam Chomsky says, “language is not just a bunch of words statistically strung together. Structures governing words come from the mind.”
Sarah Hulsey describes her work this way: “My work is concerned with the architecture that underpins language, which we use effortlessly but with little awareness of its beauty and complexity. Even a simple sentence has layers and layers of organization, governed by a complex set of rules and interactions happening below the level of our conscious knowledge. Small pieces of information (atomic components, as it were) combine into ever larger units within the concurrent linguistic systems at play. These components are organized into elegant structures that exist only in the mind. In my artwork, I analyze these structures and create visual correlates, looking for poetry and resonance in the rich patterns that emerge.”
Artist Sarah Hulsey and MIT Linguist Athulya Aravind will explore the important underlying aspect of the structure of language that compels them in their respective practices. The idea of picturing language is a way of understanding language, which is so deeply embedded in us.

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Love this thank you so much for sharing

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I find the postulation "only humans have the capacity for language" arguable.
What is language? It is a method of communication. Conveying thoughts. "There are bees here." "Let's attack."
A dog can acclimate and understand some foreign 'signs:' "Sit," "shake."
Likewise, in the odd case of some human children raised by animals, they may take up hissing and barking and have been recorded to be difficult to convert to what is human. I see this to disprove the human 'blueprint' idea.
Cats have their own signs through body language and flicks of the tail, meaning various things. It is arguable whether this is the same as eyebrow movement, which I would not consider language. Regardless, they can adapt that to human communication by meowing to us. It is to let those thoughts be known (in a conscious manner!), which I would consider language.
Dolphins click, whales cry.
Some 'signs' can arguably be devoid of language. A bird can tweet, but if that tweet can only ever mean "I want to mate," I wouldn't consider it language. Nor the hair raising of a cat or that crouching gesture dogs make when they want to play.
Aside: I think tonal structures can replace word order for animals. Even as humans we can intuitivly distinguish a cat's anxious meow, their uncomfortable meow, distressed, pleady, all sorts. There is certainly a system of rules behind tone.