4000 word essay

EMOJIS IN ART

BACK TO BASICS: FROM HIEROGLYPHICS TO EMOJIS

It all started with a dot, turned into circles and spirals and now it is a hurricane…

A hurricane that is meant not to destroy but construct, does not damage but heal, does not separate but connect…

My art and my circles inspired my social responsibility project with the symbol of a circle. (see pic.1) And as the circle enlarges, it spreads out more love and encapsules more hearts.

Pic.1 Artopia Logo `Circle in an emoji form`

Despite touching social issues and global problems through my platform Arts for Global Good, I still believe the art work should give peace to the viewer. I stand at the same point with Bridget Riley who said for her mural at National Gallery Messengers, “I hope it will help people appreciate the joy of being alive.” That is simply what I believe what painting should be doing to people. Riley said, the title, Messengers, is inspired by clouds, silky pink, and yellow, blue… And might also be an allusion to the numerous angels, bearers of news that we see in the skies of so many National Gallery pictures. With her brief explanation, Riley summarises what simple dots, circles or simple geometrical forms can stand for or associate in people`s mind. Thus, the simplicity in dots and circles of artists are never meant to have a simple message, or just dots and circles, but can be taken as a reflection of complicated but beautiful minds.

BRIDGET RILEY Messengers (wall painting), The National Gallery, London, From 17 January 2019

The circle is a universal symbol with extensive meaning. It stands for the notions of wholeness, perfection, the infinite, eternity, timelessness, all cyclic movements in the nature, the circular heavenly bodies like the Sun, the Moon, planets and their whirling in the space, repetitive human behaviour. Along with the circles, I use symbols, signs, stamps, patterns that I think link us inextricably with nature and history. These are well known and repeated, without being passed on physically or through oral traditions providing strong evidence for the existence of what Jung calls the collective unconscious. Collective unconscious and archetype are two fundamental tools I am using consciously. It seems we have lost our connections to our essence and roots, and it would seem that this loss is at the heart of man’s loss of connection to a meaningful life and to the symbols of nature. In this sense, art of symbolism is a means of getting connected to our primitive self and a means of narrative.

Dilek Yalcin/ The Red Monday, 2019 100*100 (oil on canvas)

Art is a journey on the whole, a field that connects me to other fields to research and learn. And inspired from my logo circle, my next adventure is to discover the world of emojis, or rather the latest form of alphabet which serves as a lingua franca for the humans of our age. This study is also a reflection of my interest in symbolism and collective consciousness, whıch is having strong references to my previous project, Mystical Circles.

During my research I tried to track the traces of the need for a common alphabet for the world, are not our alphabets and language enough to express our thoughts and feelings? Why do we refer to emojis which are relatively a fun way of communication but even to express utmost serious issues? Can one single shape or a group of symbols replace the message we want to convey? And the most critical question here is “Is humanity going back to basics to the ancient times our ancestors used shapes, painted figures, symbols for communication?

Although this need may address to our subconscious and can be explained through Freudian or Jungian methodology, my main concern is more than the need itself but if emojis are something that we want to leave to the future generations as a cultural heritage from relational aesthetics and utility art.

Just like hieroglyphs, will the next generations have to decode them to understand our today?

First 176 Emojis created by Japanese designer Shigetaga Kurita ( 1999)

Also exhibited as an art work at MOMA December 9, 2016–March 12, 2017 /The Museum of Modern Art

Emojis have evolved and improved in 20 years. A list of andom Emojis from Emoji Alphabet (2019)

Thus, in my paper, I take my references from the past and with my unavoidable feeling of social responsibility, I reflect my concern on what to leave to the next generations as art works, which connects my current practice to my second project “Let’s Eat Children” in terms of feeling responsible for humanity.

To support my research, during my studio practice I tried to create a new form of translation: from latin alphabet to emoji alphabet and tried to picture it on my canvas.

I picked the oldest love poem “The Love Song for Shu-Sin” dated back to c.2000 BCE, discovered in Mesopotamia in Turkey and taken to Istanbul Archaeology Museum during 1900s. However, It was able to have been translated from Sumerian cuneiform by Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer in 1950s. From his own words, we understand the forms and shapes carved on the tablet tell many things about its era. “Once a year, according to Sumerian belief, it was the sacred duty of the ruler to marry a priestess and votary of Inanna, the goddess of love and procreation, in order to ensure fertility to the soil and fecundity to the womb. The time-honored ceremony was celebrated on New Year's day and was preceeded by feasts and banquets accompanied by music, song, and dance. The poem inscribed on the little Istanbul clay tablet was in all probability recited by the chosen bride of King Shu-Sin in the course of one of these New Year celebrations.” (Kramer, 245-246)

Ancient tablet of Translated into Latin Alphabet Translated into Emojis

The Love Song for Shu-Sin

Inspired from the clay tablets, here is my trial of creating emoji carvings on So I cannot help wondering what emojis will be telling to far future generations.

Do Artists Care about the arts for future Generations?

I was reading about Anish Kapoor and looking at his giant Cloud Gate in Chicago located at Millenium Park. It is my one of his favourite works. Although I have not seen it yet, I definitely feel a call towards it. Like in the picture below, everyday thousands of people are seeing it, standing in front of it, facing themselves in the mirror- like surface and seeing the distorted reality on the metal surface. It is just like a scene from a futuristic movie. People seemed to have been transported from the future and gazing at it with admiration and astonishment. May be thinking, “woaw, our ancestors soon left us something worthy!”

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2004. Stainless steel, 1,006 x 2,012 x 1,280 cm, Millenium Park, Chicago

It was the moment that made me contemplate on this question: Do people or artists in particular care about what we are going to leave as cultural heritage? Or is it our most fundamental and natural instinct to reach to the future from today as artists? And so what do we have in our hands?

Although it does not tell a lot about today but rather refers to an apocalyptic future, Kapoor`s Claud Gate is for sure one of them.

But what about something that will really reflect the life of 21.cc hyper modern people? Their aspirations? Life styles? Religion? Sports? Politics? Jobs? Food culture?

And I came with an answer that our new alphabet: World of emojis!

Emojis are the tiny pictures, ideograms and smiley faces that are now used daily in their millions in electronic messages. Notably representing emotions and common objects, they first emerged in the late 90s, but are now so prevalent they have even been considered to be a distinct written language.

The author of the book Emojipedia explains the rising popularity of emojis with one simple reason which also intrigued me to make a search on the link between emojis and art. Russel Thorne says, “ Many people think a picture is worth a thousand words, and that's definitely true when it comes to emojis. Every day, millions of smiley faces, thumbs up, dancing girls, slices of pizza, cocktail glasses and pumped up biceps are pinged to family and friends from phones around the world. The cute symbols are designed to sum up in one character tone, emotions, desires, jokes, and more, all through just a few pixels.”(Thorne, 36).

The popularity of emojis paved the way to many innovative ideas. During my research, I came to know that I am not the first person to come up with emoji translation. There is a website called “decodeemoji.com” and it magnificently translates the emojis into English (latin alphabet).

Here is my translation of emoji narration to English:

👁👄👸❤️🙆👹🗿💛

“The eyes are high maintenance with the lips.

Soon afterwards, the affectionate creature and the carved rock say ok passionately.”

The web site is coming up with the English translation to emojis very soon. (check out decodeemoji.com)

The creator of the page Ashul Bhagi explains the magic about his site, “Emojis help us express our emotions online and in text messages when words aren't enough. However, the complexity of our thoughts and emotions still go far beyond the limited range of ideograms and smiley faces offered by the keyboard on our mobile devices. Even when you think you just used the best three or four emojis to accurately convey a specific message, this doesn't guarantee that other people will be able to translate your message so easily. Likewise, trying to decode the message behind emojis used by others can be just as confusing. In these types of cases, an emoji translator tool can come in handy.” ( http://anshulbhagi.com/)

At that point, you can question if emojis are correctly conceived and translated by a great my of people.

I tested it through an online field search on an official twitter page. I requested a twitter admin of an art channel in my country Turkey, TRT 2 , to ask the followers to predict the name of a book written in emojis.

Here is the result of my field search:

The question to the followers was: Tell us what book you are currently reading? I am reading ( star emoji-sky at night-bride-groom emojis)

And here is the answer: Marriage under the Starry Sky. (TR: Kuyruklu Yıldız Altında Izdivaç)

Among the 250 answers, most people seemed to have correct answer. ( https://twitter.com/trt2tv 28 July 2019)

Technology also helps the ancient tablets to be translated. According to the book The Story of Writing, the photograph of an ancient cuneiform can be digitalized with a scanner, in which a laser breaks down the image into individual pixels for computer processing. A preliminary copy is printed out and compared the original one, corrected by editors and final copy placed into manuscripts for the purposes of publication. (Robinson, 89) This information is quite hopeful that next generations will be able to decode our emoji alphabet as we do ancient tablets.

I was also very much inspired by the exhibition in British Library Writing: Making Your Mark.

It is based on the idea that from ancient hieroglyphs to modern day emoji, cultures are always finding new ways to communications. In the exhibition, the audience can find the thousands of years old writings, clay carvings, paper making, manuscripts and video art about modern times digital iconography, emojis. The exhibition also make you question the future of writing, the role of digitalisation on the evolution of writing.

Writing: Making Your Mark, British Library

Emojis and Politics

Like hieroglyphs, emoji alphabet reflects everything you would look for to learn about a period. Moreover, it improves and updates itself according to term and conditions. One of the latest update was on gender equality, religious diversity and racial understanding after the reactions from the people.

You can find all skin colours on emoji alphabet Sexual preferences and racial diversity

Considering Emojis have been called the world’s fastest growing, most well-known language and symbolic alphabet, how societal diversity is represented by emojis is of crucial importance. Icons for gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, skin colour, and lots of other dimensions of the richness of human identity have been appearing in each emoji release. Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15 year-old Saudi student in Germany, who noticed that the currently available emoji set did not include one for a muslim woman in a headscarf. Rayouf has worn a hijab since she was 13 years-old. Rayouf decided to do something about this emoji omission by making a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, including draft designs for icons that include how male and female wearers might be represented.

( https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/10/the-teen-power-list)

Related to the politics in art, artistic activism is also a dynamic practice bringing the creative power of the art and the need for a social change in a particular issue. Artistic activism impresses the individuals or societies emotionally with either a strategic planning or random activity. Its main target is to make a change and to challenge in order to make an effect. There are many ways of art activism. An artist can be a performer, painter, and sculpture and use media according to his field.

Recently, some artists, mainly video or digital artists make use of emojis to create emotion in the audience for their activism.

People`s Climate March, London March 7, 2019

On March 7, 2019, During the People's Climate March in London protesters used signs adorned with particular emoji to protest the government`s current environmental policies. The colourful icons the protesters used were specifically picked and designed for the environmental theme in honour of the protest by the artist and designer Naresh Ramachandran’s, and called Earthmojis. He used bulldozers, trees, recycling signs, animals and cars to convey the message. Protesters proudly viewed the signs to communicate through emojis rather than words, pictures or paintings which opened a new era in the field of use of emojis and artistic activism. The creator artist of the Earthmojis said Ramchandani addresses his use of emojis as a balance against the negativity of the serious issue. “The negative placards outline the problems we are facing, whilst the positive showed simple ways to live a greener life. This balance is essential because so often climate change discourse is too apocalyptic and demotivating.”

This matches my point of view for the use of art in journalistic or activist fields that art brings beauty to where it is used. And instead of diminishing the seriousness of the subject, art makes the massege more effective and shaking.

As I referred in my previous practice, Jason Hill in his book Art as Reporter says “Art is not always soft to reflect the truth. Blood, violence, bombs, war scenes, and guns are some of the symbols art inherits from real-life scenes like journalism.”(Hill, 2018, 139). It is indisputable that those are elements that increase the impact of artwork on the audience. If the target is to raise emotions like hatred, isolation, polarisation, it is the correct route to follow. However, if you want to reveal something unpleasant or harmful or dangerous, and you aim to show them in an optimistic way, and create a shocking and surprising effect, the artist should prefer a softer and smoother or maybe cheerful way of doing it. Gunduz Agayev is an artist who transforms war into peace in his paintings. He turns devastating historic photos of children ravaged by violent conflict and famine into happy illustrations. He re-creates iconic photos such as 'Napalm Girl' from the Vietnam War and 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' from the Sudan famine. However, this point of view is subject to disagreements. Some people may praise this level of optimism and hopefulness while others find it distasteful and offensive.

Gunduz Akayev, Napal Bombing Napal Bombing,1972

Art, on the other hand, tends not to have such a clear target. It’s hard to say what art is for or against; its value often lies in providing us perspective and new ways to envision our world. Its effect is often subtle and hard to measure, and confusing or contradictory messages can be layered into the work. Good art always contains a surplus of meaning: something we can’t quite describe or put our finger on, but moves us nonetheless. Its goal, if we can even use that word, is to stimulate a feeling, move us emotionally, or alter our perception. Art, equally simply stated, is an expression that generates Affect.

At first glance these aims seem at odds with one another. Activism moves the material world, while Art moves the heart, body and soul. In fact, however, they are complimentary. Social change doesn’t just happen, it happens because people decide to make change. As any seasoned activist can tell you, people just don’t decide to change their mind and act accordingly, they are personally moved to do so by emotionally powerful stimuli. We’re moved by affective experiences to do physical actions that result in concrete effects: Affect leads to Effect. We might think of this as Affective Effect, or perhaps, Effective Affect. Or, combined in a new word, Æffect (pronounced Aye-fect).

Artistic Activism is a practice aimed at generating Æffect: emotionally resonant experiences that lead to measurable shifts in power.

No Discrimination against Refugees, 2019, Dilek Yalcin

My practice about emoji collage is of my desire to make use of emojis for both political art and to tell the story of refugees through emojis. The multiple collage of punchs reflect a refusal, rejection to the current social behaviour to refugees especially situated in the western countries. The punch from the side of the target group represent unity and minority. It may also give a sense of aggressiveness as punch is used to hit, to punc and give harm to something or someone.

How emojis inspire art and vice versa?

As much as emojis inspire art, art also inspires world of emojis.

Edward Munch says “We do not want pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want... an art that arrests and engages. An art of one’s innermost heart.” And his iconic painting Scream is one very iconic example to his philosophy of art.

It definitely reflects strong emotions like fear, astonishment, and anxiety. In my visit to British Museum Munch exhibition Edward Munch: Love and Angst, I happened to realise that the emoji which we use to represent horror and fright, shock, awe, disbelief, and intense excitement evokes Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream. And for sure It has become my favourite emoji even if I do not need to use it a lot.

The Scream, 1893- Edward Munch

The Scream seems to inspire the emoji that represents fright, awe, shock. 😱

Nicolas Rivero said in an article, while the debates on The Scream go on whether it is the scream of the nature or a person, Munch`s masterpiece may need a new interpretation and some updates to the all-important global emoji database, which describes 😱 as “a yellow face screaming in fear, depicted by wide, white eyes, a long, open mouth, hands pressed on cheeks, and a pale blue forehead, as if it has lost its color,” which “evokes Edvard Munch’s iconic painting The Scream.”

Eric Andrew Lewis is also an artist and a web developer who created the mosaic of emojis art. Lewis uses the tones and texture that a variety of emojis provides, collages them together and recreate some classics or makes portraits of celebrities. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is now made of smileys, Klimt’s Kiss is recast in doughnuts and devil faces – and Hokusai’s Great Wave is full of pandas. And it is not surprising that Emoji Mosaic has a web site on which you can create your own art piece.

Great Wave emoji mosaic, 2019, Eric Andrew Lewis

Yung Jake is a graphic artist and rapper most recognized for his emoji portraits of celebrities. Jake Jake explores the intersection of technology and art through installations of digital monitors and scrap metal sculptures adorned with images from the internet.

USA President Trump through emoji collage art,2018,Yung Jake

Conclusion

In an age of digitalisation, art is unavoidably getting digitalised. While it has advantages and facilities for the world of art, it has disadvantages and some issues on debate too.

However, the main concern of the art, or rather instinct of the artist, reaching to the future from today and leaving art works to the next generations prevails.

Emojis in that sense are humankind’s weirdest and most successful ideographic language. It is a reflection of our archetype and desire to express ourselves as clear as possible. As I stated n my paper, emojis are inspired from hieroglyphs and pictograms of our ancestors who left them as great heritage that we still keep decoding and learning about their periods. And likewise, I believe emojis will shed light to the understanding of our age in the far future. I tried to imitate ancient tablets to understand the need for a new kind of expression and communication. I tried to decode and translate modern writings such as a poem and ancient decoded scripts using the current emoji alphabet which has now approximately 3,000 emoji characters. They are almost turning into a large catalog of fixed portraits, rather than sets of flexible ideograms. And this shift doesn’t just add to emoji; it also changes how they work.

Thus, this also made me question the capability and need for emojis from a different angle: This number of 3000 is too many! 3000 is too many that it may become a burden rather than enabling good communication. As we try to match the icons to words, it becomes harder to find any single emoji by scrolling down the list.

In any case and scenario, modern people are eager to learn and practice this new kind of communication and artists keep creating art forms , techniques and works out of it. And consciously or unconsciously we are piling up data open to decode of next generations.

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