Keywords

1 Introduction

Recently, there are many studies exploring the meaning of home within various disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, architecture and philosophy etc. [6, 13]. Many studies identified home as a multidimensional concept requiring interdisciplinary research [29, 30]. There has been little research on performance arts and the concept of “home” research. For example, how the function of “house” in verbal expression transfers to the “feeling of home” in visual artwork [6, 7]. This paper focuses on exploring the relationships between verbal expression (e.g. poetry, prose) and nonverbal expression (e.g. painting, music) by focusing on Dewey’s model of “art as experience” and Collingwood’s model of “art as language” [7, 8, 16, 36].

For verbal expression, the question used was, “What’s the difference between a house and a home [12]?” It is easy to communicate the question with the audience using verbal expression to convey semantic meaning. The main difference between home and house is that house is tangible. House refers to a building in which someone lives. In contrast, a home can refer either to a building or to any location that a person thinks of as the place where she (he) lives and that belongs to her (him). A home can even be something abstract, a place in your mind. When you say, “Let’s go home,” you are probably not talking simply about going to the physical structure where you live. You are talking about being in the special place where you feel most comfortable and that belongs to you [6, 12, 29, 30].

In the early 20th century, artists began to experiment with nonrepresentational art, in which formal qualities such as line, color, and form were explored rather than subject contents. Today, painting vacillates between representational and nonrepresentational forms [1, 2, 27]. Thus, the artists expected to transfer the concept of “the feeling of home” by doing and acting together, whereas the audience had a more traditional view of the “the function of house”, seeing it as the transfer of semantic information. The difference highlights the need for the artists to reflect on the nature of “home” based on the various ways in which one learns; the key is to create a verbal learning context and to nurture rather than manage artwork creation [7, 8, 29, 30].

For non-verbal expression, artists apply these to a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors in order to independently create and perform expressions of their own ideas and to communicate their life experience. Hence, the arts are the media which provide powerful and essential means of social communication [15]. On the other hand, painting is a form of visual art, which is a mode of creative expression consisting of representational, imaginative, or abstract designs produced by the application of color to two-dimensional artworks [7, 8, 16]. For example, a poem creates visual images in the reader’s mind, just as a painting creates images in the viewer’s eyes. While a great painting has much more below the surface than the first impression, a poem is a painting made with words. In the analysis of poems and paintings, it is important to consider whether or not the texts are situated in the poems in a way that is analogous to the illustrations of the paintings [9, 11, 20].

Lin et al. [25] argued that the idea of turning poetry into painting should be interdisciplinary, as well as mentally challenging and creative [28]. When a viewer is faced with a painting, the audience is presumably required to interpret the elements provided by decoding and then constructing meaning by encoding [10]. The audience has to discover or construct a meaning and then attribute that meaning to what is in the painting [3, 20]. Mare [26] explored whether or not visual images and works of art can be “read,” and raised important questions as to whether the description and interpretation of a work of visual art can be referred to as the “reading” of that work.

The use of information technology in multimedia is becoming common and accessible to users. The arts are the media which provide powerful and essential means of communication [26]. So, this paper is intended to bring together and examine the artist creation and recurring ideas about “the feeling of home” represented in the creative process [6,7,8, 12]. It raises the question whether or not home is the feeling and/or a verbal function of being in the communication between artist and audience? Many authors consider notions of creating or making artworks as an unknown “black box”. In an effort to facilitate interdisciplinary communication about the meaning and experience of artwork creation each of these processes are briefly considered in this paper [29].

Thinking about art as a process of social interaction, how the artist’s performances are conceived, developed, delivered and received, and how the viewer is attracted to, accurately, and are affected by the artwork need to be studied [15]. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to proposal a framework that affect artwork creation, and to propose a framework for communicating between artist and audience [26].

2 Framework for Communication Research

Lin et al. [25] explored a better understanding of artist-audience communication not just in the social context, but also for developing the interactive experience between artist and audience [14, 38]. Lin et al. [21, 22] proposed a framework with three levels of problems as identified in the study of communication: technical, semantic, and effectiveness. In addition, six constitutive factors were proposed with six functions in a Jakobson’s [18] communication model. The six constitutive factors are as follows: addresser, addressee, context, message, contact, and code. Each of these factors determines a different function in each act of communication: emotive, conative, referential, poetic, phatic, and metalingual [17,18,19]. The framework also uses Norman’s [31] conceptual model that includes three parts: design model, user’s model, and system image. Furthermore, Norman’s [31] emotional design was adopted with three levels of design processing—visceral, behavioral, and reflective design that represents three kinds of user’s experience that is aesthetic, meaningful, and emotional experience. Based on previous studies [23,24,25], a research framework combining communication theory with communication and mental models was proposed to explore the communication matrix as shown in Fig. 1 [15].

Fig. 1.
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A framework for communication research

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For communication research between artist and audience, there are three key stages involved in the artist expressing significance through his or her artworks: performance (inspiration), process (ideation), and product (implementation). Performance is the inspiration to produce a kind of significance that the artist’s intentions can be expressed through the artwork. Process represents the artist’s ideation that through the artwork and the artist’s imagination, thoughts, and feelings can be reproduced. Product is the implementation of signification and expression which can be transmitted to the viewer when the artist’s and the viewer’s thoughts are identical [22,23,24].

For the viewer, there are three key steps to understanding the meaning of an artwork: recognition (attracting), realization (accuracy), and reflection (affecting). Recognition requires letting the viewer receive a message through perception, the ways in which the viewer can accurately receive a message through the artwork such as seeing, hearing, touching, or even feeling. Realization requires the viewers understanding the meaning of the message without misinterpreting, misunderstanding, or not understanding at all. The degree of realization measures how accurately the transmitted message expresses the desired meaning. Reflection concerns the ways in which the viewer’s subsequent actions showing how effectively the message affects conduct in the expected way [4, 5, 23, 24]. Based on the previous studies, Lin et al. [25] identified the factors that affect the communication between artist and audience as shown in Table 1 and Fig. 2. This study was designed to take into account the changing nature of social communication issues, resistance to artworks creation of the artist and the context for appreciation and evaluation of audience.

Table 1. The communication matrix for communicate between artist and audience
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Fig. 2.
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The framework of communication matrix

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3 Methodology

Recently, connections between artist and audience have become increasingly close. For the artworks to be understood in communication, they need to be meaningful, understandable, memorable, etc. [34]. Gao et al. [15] used poetry as an example of how to transfer poetry to a painting, in a form of verbal art that uses the aesthetic qualities of language. Poetry has been more generally regarded as a fundamentally creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest different interpretations of words or to evoke emotive responses [23]. Turning poetry into painting deals with complex objects which are interdisciplinary in their nature. This nature appears to be suitable for an opening to “read” in different ways and multiple perspectives are available to analyze them [11, 22, 23].

Based on Lin’s studies [21], Gao et al. [15] proposed a framework for turning poetry into painting which consists of three main parts: poetic works, creation model and artworks. The creation model focuses on how to extract the semantic features from poetic works and then transfer these features into the painting. The creation model consists of three steps; identification, translation and implementation to finally create a painting. The creation model is described as follows: Identification, Translation and Implementation phases as shown in Fig. 3 [15].

Fig. 3.
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Framework for turning “poetry” into “painting”

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The amateur painter Ms. Lee [15] experimented with turning poetry into painting. She developed the poetic titles based on the framework shown in Fig. 3 and expressed her own feelings about the painting and focused on whether the poetic title expressed the mood of the painting. The abstract paintings were painted according to the selected poetry following the four steps for turning poetry into paintings of illustration, interpretation, reaction and reflection. Figure 4 [15] showed the process of turning a poem entitled – I set out with a farewell to Bai-Di Town glittered with morning clouds, to a painting [4, 5, 23].

Fig. 4.
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The process of turning poetry into painting

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The importance of communication studies is shown in several studies on evaluating artworks. However, despite the recognized importance of social interaction between artist and audience, they lack a systematic approach to explore this [33, 35, 37]. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study factors affecting the appreciation of artworks. Then, these factors are analyzed and discussed in order to establish a communication matrix to understand the perceptions of artist and audience. By combining Figs. 1, 2 and 3, a research method combining the previous studies was proposed to explore the issue of turning poetry into painting as shown in Fig. 5 [15].

Fig. 5.
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Research framework for study turning poetry into painting

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4 Case Study: What’s the Difference Between a House and a Home?

An artwork must fulfill three functions in order to express its significance through the symbol system: signification, expression and communication. Thus, the idiom of “home sweet home”, which is suggestive of verbal and non-verbal qualities, is used as the criteria to evaluate a visual painting [39]. A verbal artwork (e.g. poetry) creates visual images in the reader’s mind, just as a painting creates images in the viewer’s eyes [7, 8]. A great painting has much more below the surface than the first impression [9]. When a viewer is faced with a painting, they are required to interpret the elements provided by decoding meaning and then construct meaning by encoding it [19]. Thus, the audience has to discover or construct a meaning and then attribute that meaning to what is in the painting [3, 20]. A poem is a painting made with words. In the analysis of poems and paintings, it is important to consider whether or not the texts are situated in the poems in a way that is analogous to the illustrations of the paintings [20].

It has been argued that the idea of turning poetry into painting should be interdisciplinary, as well as mentally challenging and creative [28]. Mare [26] explored whether or not visual images and works of art can be “read,” and raised important questions as to whether the description and interpretation of a work of visual art can be referred to as the “reading” of that work. Turning poetry into painting involves complex issues that are interdisciplinary in nature. This nature appears to be suitable for “reading” in different ways, and multiple perspectives are available through which to analyze them. Based on the above discussions, the research framework can be used in a continuous search for a deeper understanding of the nature of turning poetry into painting, in which some conjectures can be tested.

For the question of “What’s the difference between a house and a home?” [12] Based on the creation model and previous studies [15, 21, 28], the poetry into painting model is used in scenario and story-telling approaches. In a practical process, four steps are used to transfer “the function of house” to “the feeling of home”, namely; illustration (set a scenario), interpretation (tell a story), reaction (write a script), and reflection (create a painting) as shown in Fig. 3. The four steps for turning “the function of house” into “the feeling of home” and the painting creation process are described as follows:

  1. (1)

    Illustration/set a scenario: this step seeks to analyze the semantic features in order to determine the key features of the scenario [15]. In this step, the artist identifies the difference between “a house” and “a home”; it raises the question whether or not home is a place, a space, feelings, practices or an active scenario. In addition, it brings together and examines the dominant and recurring ideas about home represented in the concept of ‘home’ and difference between “a house” and “a home” as shown in Fig. 6.

    Fig. 6.
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    Creation process of illustration

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  2. (2)

    Interpretation/telling a story: based on the previous scenario, some interactions should be explored in this step. According to the interaction, a user-experience approach is used to describe the features of the painting by story-telling [15]. Home is variously described in the literature as conflated with or related to house, family, joy and journeying. The artist also considers notions of being-at-home, creating or making a home and the ideal home. Figure 7 showed the artist trying to tell a story about “home” for a family.

    Fig. 7.
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    Creation process of interpretation

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  3. (3)

    Reaction/write a script: this step is to develop an idea sketch in text or pictograph form based on the developed scenario and story. During this step, the scenario and story might require modification in order to transform the semantic meaning into a painting [15]. The artist is trying to facilitate “the house” and convey the meaning and experience of home, and each of these themes is briefly addressed in the script. So, the key issue is how to combine “the function of house” and “the feeling of home” as shown in Fig. 8.

    Fig. 8.
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    Creation process of reaction

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  4. (4)

    Reflection/creating a painting: this step deals with previously identified semantic features and the context of the painting. At this point, all semantic features should be listed in a matrix table which will help the artist check the cultural features of the creation process [15]. Many researchers understand home as a multidimensional concept and acknowledge the presence of and need for multidisciplinary research in the field. There has been little sustained reflection and critique of the multidisciplinary field of home research, as in the artworks shown in Fig. 9.

    Fig. 9.
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    Creation process of reflection

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5 Conclusions and Suggestions

In order to evaluate artworks, it is necessary to identify the cognitive factors affecting them. These factors can then be used by the artist as the basis for evaluating their artworks during the creation stage. Most of the studies are focused on evaluation after the artworks is completed and very few have ever mentioned the approaches of artworks evaluation at the creation stage to assess artworks for communication [38]. The importance of communication studies is shown repeatedly in several studies of evaluating artworks. Despite the recognized importance of social interaction between artist and audience, they lack a systematic approach to explore it [33, 35, 37, 38]. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a framework that can help the artist evaluating their artworks which was then analyzed and practiced in order to establish a communication matrix to understand the perceptions of artist and audience for communication.

Taking artwork as a media of social communication, this study aims to understand how the relationship between the artist and the audience is potentially altered by social communication. Three levels are identified in the study of communication between artist and audience, namely technical, semantic and effectiveness levels [10, 21]. For turning “the function of a house” into “the feeling of a home”, the artist (addresser) wanted to successfully communicate with the audience (addressee), and the functions of communication were studied to understand the conceptual difference between artist and audience. The communication approach appears to have an advantage over the subjective interpretation of artworks. For combined Figs. 2 and 3, a research framework for exploring the creation process of turning “verbal form” into “nonverbal artwork” was proposed as shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10.
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A framework for exploring the creation process of artist

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This study proposed a research framework which could be used for a deeper understanding of the nature of communication between artist and audience. Although the idea of using a communication approach to explore the evaluation of artworks both for the artist and audience is quite simple, this study is only the first step in testing the utility of communication between artist and audience as an approach for understanding the creation and recognition of turning “semantics” into “artworks” and is clearly worthy of more in-depth study. Furthermore, the results suggested that the approach will be validated in more testing and evaluating of artworks communication between artist and audience in further study.