Every time someone looks at your creative work, they’re not really seeing your piece. They’re seeing the language they’ve been taught to interpret it with. The sounds, colors, shapes, smells and forms you put on your creation meet a viewer’s repertoire of words, symbols, and cultural codes — and together, they construct “reality.”

This idea isn’t new. In Kaspar Hauser or The Fabrication of Reality, Brazilian semiotician Izidoro Blikstein shows us how what we call “the real” is never direct. It’s always mediated by language, manufactured by cultural stereotypes, and reinforced by the systems we inherit. Reality, in other words, is not something we discover, but something we build.

The title refers to a real historical case — Kasper Hauser, a young boy who was kept in isolation in a German basement for most of his childhood and emerged into society with barely any ability to speak or relate to the world around him. His intense gaze, strange behaviors, and inability to name or interpret common objects fascinated psychologists, philosophers, and writers alike. He became a symbol of what it means to be human without language — a mirror into how our perception of reality is shaped by the systems we learn.

Signs, Codes & Meaning

Semiotics, building on Ferdinand de Saussure’s work in linguistics, tells us that meaning arises not from reality itself but from the relationship between:

• Signifier → the word, image, or symbol

• Signified → the concept it evokes

But here’s the catch: this system doesn’t mirror reality — it filters it. What we perceive as “real” is actually a network of codes, conventions, and shared references.

For example: a Japanese speaker looking at a cherry blossom tree (sakura) sees centuries of symbolism — impermanence, renewal, the fleeting beauty of life. A Spanish speaker seeing a cerezo might just think “tree.” Same object, different realities.

Repertoire Shapes Perception

This isn’t only about language. Our repertoire — the communication styles we’ve been trained in — also limits or expands what we perceive.

Someone who only relies on written or spoken codes might miss the depth of visual, sonorous or symbolic language. But someone versed in composition, color, music, or form reads layers of meaning invisible to others.

For artists, this is critical: your work is not only what you create, but also what audiences are equipped (or not) to read.

Language isn’t just a tool. It’s a frame.

The moment we see an object, our brain rushes to identify it, classify it, name it. But what is that “thing” without our language?
Without culture?
Without meaning systems passed down to us?

If you strip language and culture away, objects are just forms. Shapes. Colors. Textures. They are, but they’re not defined. It's only when we apply meaning — through language — that they become part of our reality.

This meaning-making process runs through several layers:

• Cultural context – What society has taught us this thing means.

• Linguistic code – What word we use for it.

• Personal lens – What it means to us, based on our story, values, and experience.

Each of these shapes our perception. And that perception is what builds our “reality.”
So if reality is shaped by language… what happens when we’re confronted with something that doesn’t speak in words?

Why think straight if you can think twisted?

Language, like time, is taught linearly.
We read from left to right.
We tell stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.
We look for logic: “This happened, therefore this happened.”

But art — especially visual art, sound art, movement — speaks in simultaneity. It’s not a sentence. It’s a system of meanings happening all at once.

When you look at a painting, it isn’t a progression.
You receive it all in one breath — and the meaning is a constellation, not a bullet point list.

This requires nonlinear thinking.
It demands you connect multiple symbols, ideas, and emotional cues at the same time — which is something most of us aren’t trained to do.

So… why can’t most people “interpret” art?

Because we were never taught how.
Art is a language, and like any language, it has syntax and tone:

• Sharp edges communicate tension or danger.

• Soft curves suggest comfort or ease.

• Cool colors might evoke stillness or melancholy, while warm ones create a sense of energy or urgency.

These are visual codes. And if you’ve never been taught to read them — or given permission to intuitively respond to them — art will feel like a locked door.

It’s the same with music, movement, poetry — any nonlinear language.

An invitation to think (and feel) differently

This isn’t just an art problem.
It’s a human one.

We’ve been conditioned to understand the world in systems that are linear, structured, rational.
But the world is anything but.

Reality is messy.
It’s diverse.
It’s happening all at once.

And when we train ourselves to embrace nonlinear perception — to sit with simultaneity, to hold multiple truths, to listen to silence and see meaning in color — we don’t just become better artists.

We become better humans.

Want to expand your repertoire for perceiving and creating meaning?

If this perspective resonates, this is exactly the kind of work I explore with artists I mentor. Together, we build strategies not just for the market, but for perception itself — expanding your repertoire so your practice aligns with your vision and your unique way of seeing the world.

I’m Xav — artist mentor, creative director, and co-founder of Artist Ally. I help artists not only with practical strategies, but also with inner clarity — learning to read the world differently, build new repertoires of perception, and align their creative practice with their unique way of seeing reality.

🌐 Visit our website to learn more about my work mentoring artists, developing themselves and their careers.

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