Tuesday, April 24, 2012

These past few months have been quite intense for me as a graduate student. As I transition into a more focused studio practice in preparation for my thesis exhibition and paper, I continue to go over in my mind the broad range of issues and concerns related to cotton textile production, in all aspects of production and consumption. It is easy to get lost in the details in my search for a focus and methodology in my art practice that would provide a different outlook or perspective on my concerns.
I like to look up words in the dictionary, especially the ones that frequent my mind, words I think I already know the answer to. I am often surprised by the many words and synonyms provided by Wordbook.
For example, today I looked up consumption.

Consume -
verb
1. eat immoderately
2. to serve oneself to, or consume regularly
3. to spend extravagantly
4. to destroy completely
5. use up (resources or materials)
6. engage fully
Synonym: deplete, devour, down, eat, eat up, exhaust, go through, have ingest, run through, squander, take, take in, use up, ware, waste, wipe out.
Antonym: abstain
Origin: c1360, from Latin consumere 'to use up, eat, waste," from com- intensive prefix + sumere "to take," from sub- "under" + emere "to buy, take." Economic sense of consumer (opposite of producer) first recorded in 1746. Consumerism is form 1944 in the sense of "protection of the consumer's interest," modern sense of  "consumption as an economic policy" is from 1960.

Interesting.....

Now lets look at this word:

Ethics:
verb
1. Motivation based on ideas of right and wrong.
2. the philosophical study of moral values and rules.
Synonym: aesthetics, allegiance, assigned task, axiology, bounden duty, casuistry, charge, commitmtne, cosmology, dedication, deference, devoir, devotion, duties and responsibilities, duty, epistomology, fealty, first philosophy, gnosiology, homage, imperative, line of duty, logic, loyalty, mental philosophy, metaphysics, mission, moral philosophy, must, obligation, ontology, onus, ought, phenomenology, philosphastry, philosophic doctrine, philosophic system, philosophic theory,  philosophic inquiry, philosophic speculation, philosophy, place, respect, school of philosphy, school of though, science of being, self-imposed duty, theory of knowledge, value theory

Interesting that the first synonym is aesthetics....

  

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