Tag Archives: conceptual

The Most Significant Full Stop. (Part Eleven).

Yesterday I extrapolated a full stop from a text of writing, and then using screenshots, managed to magnify it to such an extent that it took up nearly the whole screen.

In doing so I was imbuing the full stop with far more significance than it might otherwise have. The next step was to print off the full stop on to some A4 paper, and affix it to an ordinary wall on the back of a shop, down an alleyway, in Paignton, Devon.

The full stop was certainly striking and again this imbued it with far more significance than it should have had. After all, this was just an ordinary full stop taken from some text, typed with no idea that it would be such a statement of intent, typed merely to aid the comprehension of the text.
Kafka’s father said that he was ‘morbidly preoccupied with the insignificant’ and I believe I understand what Otto Kafka was alluding to in the sudden elevation of this full stop.
The next part of the project was to reassign the full stop with its original intent, that of aiding in the comprehension of text. By taking photographs of the full stop as it hung on the back of a shop in an alleyway in Paignton, I was able to stand further away and keep on taking photographs, until the full stop was just a dot again.


Using poster making software, I coloured in the photograph with the exception of the full stop.

 I then added the full stop back into some random text, where it once again functions as a full stop, and not as a statement of insignificance. Can you spot it?

The Most Significant Full Stop (Part Ten)

The ability of anybody with word processing equipment, smart phones, tablets, computers, laptops and anything else which types, to create grammar of their own concoction, grammar of their own conception, means that there are more full stops now in the world than at any one time. One of the reasons for this is the short attention span of people used to sound bites and social media updates, Twitter accounts, website addresses, snippets of news and information. Sentences are now shorter. Like this one. This means that there are more full stops than ever before, less semicolons and commas, less brackets, except when using text speech.
This never used to happen in the days of Marcel Proust.
The paragraph at the start of this passage contains five full stops. Of those five full stops, one of them means a lot to me and idolise it. Can you guess which one it is?
As an experiment I have screensaved this page and magnified the full stop to its fullest extent. In the normal run of things, it would have been completely missed, a psychological notification, almost subconscious as they eye scans over it, picks up the necessary information. The next stage of this project will be that I print off the full stop and post it somewhere in the town in which I live, (Paignton, Devon). How many people will then see it?
This might very well prove to be a very exciting line of inquiry. 



The most insignificant full stop (part seven)

I asked my assistant Lars to write a full stop on the table while I was out of the room. My job was then to find it and eradicate this.
If I hadn’t found the full stop, the knowledge of its continued existence would have given it a significance far beyond its actual worth.

Or I would have begun to doubt that Lars had drawn it in the first place.

Or I would have begun to doubt the existence of Lars.

You can watch the video here.
https://youtu.be/9TDkQN-tbuI​

The most significant full stop (Part four)

This evening I searched through my notebooks to find the most insignificant full stop that I had ever written. The results were somewhat disappointing because all of the full stops that I’ve written have been insignificant, except for the occasions in which I’ve purposefully written a significant full stop. I wrote one at the end of my dissertation at the end of my postgraduate degree, and I did another one in my last A Level exam.

Every full stop has been insignificant, and as such significant only in their insignificance. Which made me free to choose any at random.

The one I chose came from my scribblings where I have been trying out lines and ideas for poems.

I have photographed this full stop with my iPad and I have magnified it several times, each time taking a screen shot. The results do not look as exciting as the electronically generated full stop, perhaps the lighting was all wrong. The full stop was written in ink by my Parker pen, the same one that I have used for writing every day since 1995.

The thing with full stops is that you never realise you’re writing them. They come easily and they are dotted on to the page with abandon and little thought. They pass like moments forgotten. 

I would like you to take part in an experiment, but I must warn you that it is very dangerous. I have come up with three words which will alter, or perhaps even ruin the rest of your day. If you are willing, able and un afraid of the consequences, then feel free to click on this link and see these three words for yourself.

The most annoying three words imaginable. – Robert Garnham https://robertdgarnham.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/the-most-annoying-three-words-imaginable/
I will then monitor the page where these words appear and see how many of you have been brave enough.