[Mark Bourgeois]

Can you ignore the architect's pronouncements of design intent entirely? Is the meaning "constructed" by we players - by the individual - the only meaning that matters?

Put another way, can anyone say why the architect's view should have any precedence over the individual thinking for himself, drawing his own conclusions, and constructing his own personal meaning of a design element, a hole, a routing, etc.?

Why should architect opinion matter more than that of the intended beneficiary of the design?!
 
(The proviso is the individual's constructed meaning cannot contradict basic facts; for example, calling a bunker a water hazard. Although that might generate an interesting thread on the metaphysics of architecture...)

Would it be better if, in the absence of many golfers' abilities to think for themselves, a golf course was presented with zero information: no info on the designer, yardages, par, etc.?

Examples of deconstructionist "meanings:"
1. An architect says Hole X is a little nothing hole, a b-----d red-headed step-child of a hole he had to jam in there to create his masterwork on the subsequent hole.

But a golfer raves about it, calling it one of the designer's finest holes and a personal favorite.

2. Sheep Ranch

3. "Personal par" of a hole, where the golfer plays for a score different from the stated par on the card.

4. For that matter, scorecards that don't list the par of individual holes....

5. ...as well as the handicapping systems of golf's governing bodies. (Actually, CONGU may be an example of the Surrealist School of golf crit...)

6. Golfer comes up with an interpretation of a hole or design element that doesn't contradict fact, that works for him.  But designer accuses golfer of "overthinking," that designer did not intend that meaning at all.  But if it works for the golfer, then that golfer's meaning is superior to the designer's.

Next Steps:
1. Resolved: the meaning and value of a design or design element depend on the experiences and thoughts of the user. The designer's stated intent is not irrelevant but subservient to the opinion of the "user."  Some will share the designer's meaning, the meaning may be held by a majority, but whatever legitimacy this meaning has is due to the viewpoint of the golfer, not of the designer.

Meaning is personal.  From now on, we think for ourselves.

2. Further examples of personal GCA meanings?

Mark

[Kirk Gill]

I read once that Anthony Burgess attended a seminar on his work, and found that people were able to decisively prove theories about his writing that he himself never intended. His take was something along the lines of "those things they said are in there, they made their cases. But I didn't consciously intend any of it."

I'm sure the same can be said for golf course architecture. Players will likely find out things about a course that were never intended, and a desire on the part of an architect to jam some particular design element down the golfer's throat may be disregarded, or perhaps just shrugged at and moved past. In fact, it might be said that better, more compelling architecture is created where there is less of an egoistic desire on thepart of the architect to compel a certain kind of play.

On a certain level, I'm interested in the design intent of a golf hole, but that's more in terms of enriching my own philosophy and knowledge of golf course design, and not in terms of what happens when I play the hole. Really, when I'm playing a round, I could care less what the architect intended. It's me and my game and my mind that are out there "interacting with the architecture," (thanks, Mr. Mucci), and that experience is owned by me, and not by the architect.

[Kalen Braley]

Mark,

First things first, great thread title... It's off the hizzle fo shizzle, dizzle!

Great topic as well.  I've thought more than a few times about the concepts you talk about, perhaps too deeply.  I suppose it goes back to my thoughts of what is reality.  Is what we see really what other people see??  Its like the saying, "two men look thru the same jail bars, one sees mud, the other see stars"...anyways, enough rambling off to my point.

I've always thought it would be great to suspend reality and in star trek style beam one to a golf course.  Where one would have:

1)  No prior knowledge of the course
2)  No clue as to who designed it/built it
3)  No knowledge of what others think of the course in terms of course ratings and otherwise.
4)  No friends/colleagues there to whisper in thier ear and raise thier noses to undesired features.

It'd be interesting to see what people would think of various courses then.  Because, especially in the case of GCA'ers, do we form our own opinions of courses, or are we persuaded by others of which courses are good and what features we should or shouldn't appreciate and seek after.

Taking this to its logical extreme, as we all know, golf originated on the sandy links in firm conditions and the weather and the wind.  But what if golf had originated in an area with clayish soil, and wet conditions, where the ball didn't bounce and run, and the wind rarely blew.  Would we all think that "golf as it was meant to be" would resemble this and consider links golf as 3rd rate stuff?

[Phil_the_Author]

Mark,

You are correct when you say that "Meaning is personal." The problem is that Personal Meanings are not.

Let me explain what I MEAN...

If I write a story that people read, who knows better what the 'moral' of it is than I? A great example is Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. So many people have called it a brilliant allegory, a writer's attempt to show the evil of war and the Gerrman attitudes that led to the rise of Nazism and Hitler.

Those were the meanings that they took from the writing personally.

Tolkien, though, finally got so annoyed at individuals, including a number of so-called intellectuals, reading grand meanings into his work that he never put there nor meant to be taken out of, that later editions of the books contain an explanation in the books beginning on this very subject telling the reader that he neither intended nor supports any such claims.

That is a Personal Meaning that is not... personal, but rather, defines what one should look for.

A golf course architect designs a hole with certain thoughts in mind. It is 700 yards in length and he calls it a "four-shotter" because that is how many proper swings he sees it taking to reach the hole under almost all circumstances.

Along comes Joe "the original gorilla" Golf-ball Killer who routinely reaches the putting surface in two mighty swings. Has his personal play now made the hole a two-shotter?

An ability to look at a painting upside-down and sideways pleasurably doesn't change the fact of it having a correct side up as defined by the person who painted it...

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark - a wonderful question, and it merits much thought. But my first reaction is to say that you've drawn too sharp a line, even for the purposes of discussion.

What we experience (and to some extent the meaning we ascribe to that experience) is surely tied to/emerges from what the architect has put there, in the ground.

Yes, what even the most honest architect SAYS about his work is another matter, because:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

But if what is in fact there in the ground, existing independently of us, were not to shape/inform my experience, I'd start worrying that I was drifting away into some profound and isolating introversion.

I might be happier, but I'd be less true.

Peter
My first reaction only; and I reserve the right to give a completely different answer later on.

[Kirk Gill]

Philip, not to take things too off track, but while I can totally respect where Tolkien was coming from, it's hard to not see broader significance in his work as it related to the times he was writing in. Perhaps, like the Burgess reference I spoke of above, meanings were emerging in his work without his conscious intent. Or, perhaps, it is the right of a reader of a work (or the player of a golf course) to have his own opinion of that work/course, and that opinion is perfectly valid, even if it disagrees fundamentally with the writer/architect's intent. As Mr. Moran so succinctly stated - "...once my work is done then the golfer doesn't need to know anymore from me.  It is no longer mine, it is theirs..."

Beautiful. Not every artist would be willing to say that, but I believe it to be true. Maybe Tolkien just wasn't ready to let go........

[Phil_the_Author]

Kirk,

The problem isn't that readers were finding personal meaning in his work that Tolkien obejected to, but rather, that person's well-intentioned or not, were stating that TOLKIEN had written so that these were intentioned meanings when clearly they weren't.

It is in that vein that I wrote what I did.

It is a person who states that the design intent was... when the one designing never did that I object to.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Philip, what's interesting about your comments to me is how it supports the concept of personal meaning.

It sounds like the failure of the Lord of the Rings analysts is the same as the failure of Tolkien: both are trying to claim ownership of the meaning.

The analysts are putting forth their personal meaning as a universal or objective meaning.

I can see how one danger of personal meaning is you end up with a collection of individuals who can't communicate in a meaningful sense with each other.  But I guess that assumes their personal meanings are deeply held: if someone's personal meaning of something is shallow then they are open to change.

The objection of the gorilla labeling a 700-yard hole as a two-shot hole gets at the problem of "cram-down" meanings, too: it's a two-shot hole to him.  Isn't he allowed to object to someone (even everyone) else's meaning being crammed down his throat?

Mark

[SL_Solow]

A similar concept is found in, of all places, judicial interpretation of legislation and contracts.  There, absent significant ambiguity, judges are required to interpret legislation and contracts relying on the language contained in the documents.  Evidence of the intent of the draftsman or parties is not permitted.  I recall a bankruptcy case in which Senator Metzenbaum wanted to testify at a bankruptcy hearing about the meaning of an act he had sponsored.  The judge informed him that the language of the act was sufficient and refused to allow him to testify.

[Mark Bourgeois]

In fact, it might be said that better, more compelling architecture is created where there is less of an egoistic desire on the part of the architect to compel a certain kind of play.
 

That is truly fascinating.  Kirk, this is like how an architect might proceed if he accepts the notion of personal meaning, yes?

How else might a designer proceed if he operated with the goal of allowing for the emergence of truly personal meanings?

From your comment I feel that the idea of par-less scorecards is just scratching the surface.

Peter,

What the architect puts in the ground creates the meaning...I think.  But why should what he says about what he put in the ground take precedence over what meaning we develop.

There's definitely the potential for alternate realities here.  I guess the challenge is, how can we develop personal meanings yet still learn from others -- i.e., from their personal meanings?

It's so hard today to approach anything the right way, the sorta tabula rasa way.  There's so much marketing spew, information glut, tastemaker diktats...

And of course when someone develops a personal meaning that is really meaningful to him, he will want to share it.  Like on this website.  Which makes the challenge of developing our own personal meaning even harder.

So of course it's unrealistic to suppose we could turn off the bullhorns, the broadcasts, posts.  We must find a way to develop personal meanings, to overcome the informational headwinds.  Perhaps "negotiate" is a better word, though?  As in negotiate a meaning that is personal, without shutting ourselves out like monks.

Still, wouldn't it be great if as Kalen says we could approach a course with no prior knowledge?  I bet our lives would be enriched for the experience.

Interestingly, the life of the competitive golfer within might not be enriched, as he would not know how to play a hole before he played it...

Mark

[Mark Bourgeois]

A similar concept is found in, of all places, judicial interpretation of legislation and contracts.  There, absent significant ambiguity, judges are required to interpret legislation and contracts relying on the language contained in the documents.  Evidence of the intent of the draftsman or parties is not permitted.  I recall a bankruptcy case in which Senator Metzenbaum wanted to testify at a bankruptcy hearing about the meaning of an act he had sponsored.  The judge informed him that the language of the act was sufficient and refused to allow him to testify.

That's why the Constitution is a "living document," yes?  One generation can interpret it one way, then the next comes along and interprets it the opposite.

As an aside: Oh, man, I can't tell you how little effort, relatively speaking, went into the language of a legislative draft.  There's so much complexity, so many potentialities, you would just give up.

That's why the cleanest language comes in approps bills, and certain parts of tax bills.  Googling "rifle shot" and "tax bill" should turn up the info....

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark - your response to Kirk's post made it clearer for me what you mean (and good post, Kirk).  And your additional thoughts are very interesting too.

A fine architect can indeed leave room both literally and figuratively, and thus open up a space which the individual golfer can fill with his individual experience and meaning. As has been noted before, I think any good and sincere artist does this, or at least tries too -- and the better it's done the richer the personal meanings too.

I just find that my personal meaning is ALSO enrichened by a sense that it's part of a shared/collective meaning.

Peter

[Phil_the_Author]

Mark,

You are making the same mistake in interpreting what I said that Kirk did.

Tolkien didn't say that readers shouldn't take from the books whatever they felt  by way of meaning, rather, he took umbrage at those who claimed that he PURPOSEFULLY wrote the story with the allegorical message that they were claiming.

He didn't and he said so.

That is why my illustration of the person who can reach a 700-yard hole in 2 is germane. Just because he can TURN it into a 2-shot hole for himself, doesn't in any way change that the architect planned it as a  clear-cut 4-shotter.

Personal meaning doesn't create a new meaning as part of the original creative process. It is an application, jsut as the other illustration used, that of the law, is what allows the constitution to be viewed as a living entity.

We all long for the day when the 15th at Augusta was a driver and 3-iron for the greatest players in the world, but it has quite unfortunately evolved beyond that. To now claim that time, talent and technology has changed the Mackenzie's vision is ludicrous. It's just changed how we expect the hole to now be played.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Philip,

Why can't personal meaning create a new meaning?  What about the Hinkle Tree?

Like Kelly Blake Moran writes, once a design is completed, it's out there, isn't it?  It's a free-for-all as far as "meaning creation," isn't it?

You know, like this:


Mark

[Kirk Gill]

Philip, with all due respect, if you read my response, I don't think I misinterpreted what you said at all. I believe that Tolkien honestly didn't intend any allegorical significance in those works.

But that doesn't mean that people are wrong for finding it there.

And as to the 15th at Augusta, it's too bad that it isn't a Driver, 3-iron for the pros anymore. But it'd be all that and more for me, and if I was ever to have the opportunity to play there, the way the pros play it wouldn't be relevant at all to my experience. I'm sure that if the pros were really all that worried about how Mackenzie designed it, they'd cast aside all the modern technology they're using, but again, the architect's intent isn't all that relevant to what they're trying to do.

Mark - sometimes isn't a pipe just a pipe?    

[Phil_the_Author]

Mark,

You ask, what about the Hinkle tree? The architect who designed the course did not put it in. Saying that it is part of his design intent would be incorrect. Saying that it was put in as an answer to a course evolutionary challenge would be true.

Kirk, not to belabor, but I keep saying that Tolkien found nothing wrong in anyone believing that the story held an allegorical meaning that they saw. He DID find it wrong that people said he created an allegory for that exact purpose.

That is why the Hinkle tree analogy fits here. If neither architect nor author designed or wrote for tree or allegory, neither should be given credit for doing so...

[Lloyd_Cole]

"Death of the Author" (1967) is an essay by the French literary critic Roland Barthes that was first published in the American journal Aspen.

In his essay, Barthes criticizes the reader's tendency to consider aspects of the author’s identity—his political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes—to distill meaning from his work. In this critical schematic, the experiences and biases of the author serve as its definitive “explanation.” For Barthes, this is a tidy, convenient method of reading and is sloppy and flawed: “To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.” Readers must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny (a notion similar to Erich Auerbach’s discussion of narrative tyranny in Biblical parables), for each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. In a famous quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a “text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations,” drawn from “innumerable centers of culture,” rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the “passions” or “tastes” of the writer; “a text’s unity lies not in its origins,” or its creator, “but in its destination,” or its audience.

This is fro the Wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author

My brief understanding of this idea, which I do subscribe to, with respect to my work is - "You buy my record - it is yours. Your understanding of it is correct."

[wsmorrison]

Well, Mark.  Perspectives do change.  It may even depend on what you put into the pipe and smoke 

[Kyle Harris]

Well, Mark.  Perspectives do change.  It may even depend on what you put into the pipe and smoke 

Ahh, my favorite. The self-referential painting!

THIS IS NOT A PIPE!

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mark,
No matter how you slice it, these elements:



make this:



After we sample it we'll know if we like it or not, having prior knowledge of the ingredients doesn't change that. Bread is bread, and you can't get more out of it than was originally put in. It all begins with the baker.

[Jim Nugent]

To me the architect's intent means nothing.  The golf course stands or falls on its own.  Same with pieces of art, music and literature. 

(A recent example for those who read the Harry Potter books: several months ago the author said that one of the main characters in her books -- Dumbledore --is a homosexual.  I don't think she has the right to say that, though, unless the books make it clear.  Which they don't.  So I reject her after-the-fact pronouncement.)   

From the little I know of U.S. law, my impression is that intent can matter a lot.  It can determine whether someone is charged with manslaughter or 1st degree murder.  Does it come up in estate/inheritance issues?  And my impression, maybe mistaken, was that ignorance in some cases is a valid defense.  That again touches on intent.

[Jeff Doerr]

Mark,

I think with the competitive lanscape in GCA, the marketing language is a huge factor. Every course is built on a great piece of property, etc., etc. It's hard to get away from the hype, especially in the early  years of a project. I think you can also throw price in there as a sort of language. The budget course must not have everything, while the over the top course is dismissed on the other side of the scale for other reasons.

I used to do a lot of speaking. I always had a purpose in what I was saying, but in the end each person took home what they heard and how it interacted or moved them personally. More than a few times I thought I'd gotten up to the plate and barely got the ball out of the infield, someone would come to me after and declare that I'd hit a home run. I'm sure it also went the other way, but I don't seem to remember those...

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