When I was very young, I had a special sense about written numbers. It’s hard for me to access that now, through all the years of education devoted to making sure I understood numbers in a standard way. But I still have a feeling about that early relationship, and sometimes I wonder how it might have developed if I hadn’t learned to be ashamed of it and to ignore it.

Here’s what I can recall: I knew the shapes of the numerals as indicators of the distinct characters of each. Though my sense for some of them has slipped out of reach, in the way dreams do, I can still feel the stronger personalities. The numeral five was intimidating in appearance, but in actuality quite sweet. Seven was both stern and judgmental. Eight had complexity and depth – and eight led to a painful collision with my first grade teacher, Miss Logan. She taught us to write eight with one continuous figure-eight line. Soon after, she exhorted us never to write it as one circle on top of the other – an idea that had, frankly, not occurred to me.

Once I heard about this forbidden way of making the image, I badly wanted to try it, to find out why it was seductive and wrong.  I hunched over my practice sheet to try what sounded to me like an ingenious alternative. The hurtful rap of a ruler on the back of my head shocked and scared me. I could hardly believe she caught me in the act so quickly and easily. Miss Logan’s efficient suppression of dissent gave me, early-on, the impression that privacy and experimentation had no place in the classroom.

Back to the personalities of numbers: you might think it’s just as well that this idiosyncratic notion of numerals having distinct natures signified by their visual forms was scared out of me. Even in first grade it was beginning to raise some dauntingly complex dimensions of arithmetic. What kind of psychodrama might be the sum of 8+7? If 5 were subtracted from 9, what interpersonal consequences would that equal? Left unmolested, I wonder if I might have been able to craft an alternative way of working with numbers that allowed me to derive answers that approximated my classmates’. I’ll never know. As it is, I developed a serious case of math phobia and went on to do poorly in math classes throughout my schooling – with only the slight exception of geometry, to which I was timidly attracted. It is only in middle age that I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am actually fascinated by mathematics as logic, and by the more philosophical implications of mathematics, rather than the computing tasks. I’ve also noticed that the concept of numbers having “natures’ isn’t entirely far-fetched when one considers mathematics as a system for describing relationships and processes.

My early sense about numbers may be one indication of something it’s taken me years to notice about myself: I believe I am a primarily a non-verbal thinker. Until I reached this hypothesis, I thought everyone thought approximately the same way.

Several years ago, I began asking my colleagues in the art museum education department how they thought – not what they thought, but how. Were they conscious of thinking in words, for example? I started this line of questioning because I realized that I was completely unable to describe or explain my experience of thinking. Of course I could mentally use words. If I needed to craft a statement of some kind and make decisions about the most effective wording, I could certainly rehearse the possibilities in my mind and make a choice. However, that would be a particular situation, very different from my ordinary, day-to-day thought/language processes. Truth be told, I had to admit that in my on-going mental life, words don’t play a part. In ordinary conversation, I do not plan or even know what words will come out of my mouth. I would even go so far as to say that the times I have jotted notes for a talk or to teach a class have led to my most lack-luster presentations. The notes always flummox me.  It’s taken me a while to trust myself, but I now feel that I am better off speaking “spontaneously.”

But back to the question about thinking that I posed to my co-workers: Most people seemed taken aback by the question and several mentioned that they had never considered how they thought. Upon reflection, quite a few said that they were conscious of words and sentences going through their minds. Several said they “heard” their thoughts as an on-going voice inside their heads. One person described being vaguely aware of punctuation in his thoughts! Another described dreams in which she read the narrative and conversations in a way that reminded her of the bubbles over the heads of comic book characters.

It was difficult to cover my own surprise at these revelations. Even now, as I type this anecdote into my laptop, I wish I could form the ideas on this screen with my hands. I wish that you could take them in with a probing – or a playful – gaze, rather than following various linear sentences to various open or dead ends. I don’t think with words.

How do you think? Can you describe your experience of thinking? Please let me know. I think others will be interested as well.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you how I help to keep our numbers clean and looking good (I get lots of help). For the past few years I’ve invited IMA summer interns working in other departments to help me and the conservation interns wash the “Numbers” (you can go here to Flickr to see a ton of images of our sculptures and Indiana’s various versions of the same sculpture on exhibit around the world).

Washing these 8 foot tall painted aluminum artworks is a fair amount of work, even when you have the good help I had. It’s a fairly straight-forward process to clean the sculptures: we simply wash them gently with soap (I use Orvus ) and water. Really, that’s it, some soap and water, a few ladders and lots of me acting like Mr. Miyagi and demanding perfect motions when doing the work.

Beyond the actual work it’s also a time when I can provide a real example of some of the maintenance we complete on the outdoor sculptures to interns in the other departments. After all (and this number is for Meg), there are over 50 artworks scattered throughout the IMA’s grounds, and soon to be a lot more over in the 100 Acres.

There are two other things that I wanted to mention, one is that you can go here and see a drawing by Robert Indiana that shows what the organization of the numbers meant to him and why we arranged them so. I’m always intrigued by this notion that just by putting two numbers together you can achieve a kind off greater meaning.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the fine Wikipedia article that Jasmine made about the numbers this spring. I have it on good word that invitations for Lunch with the IMA’s director have been sent out to the 5 that made Wikipedia articles of IMA sculptures. I’ve been digging around to see if others have been made, but haven’t found any. Speaking of that, I hope our IT department doesn’t check how many times a day I look at Wikipedia on this computer….

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/15/numbers-blog/feed/ 7 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/14/ima-by-the-numbers/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/14/ima-by-the-numbers/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:42:31 +0000 Meg Liffick http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=649 I’m a number geek. Give me a calculator and a list of digits, and I’ll be happy for hours. If using the calculator was an Olympic sport, I might be a contender for the gold. I’ve got lightening fast fingers and my addition button is wearing out from all the use it gets. From attendance to web stats, revenue to ROI, I’ve been crunching numbers like Michael Phelps breaks world records.

As numbers twirl around my head like 10-year old Chinese gymnasts (they are definitely NOT 16 that’s for sure), I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. You can find a lot of these stats on the IMA’s dashboard, but some of the numbers are not accessible to the public…until now. In the Museum’s ongoing dedication to full transparency, here’s IMA by the numbers:

Full-time Employees: 197

Average Daily Blog Readers: 220

To Live Forever Exhibition Attendance through Aug. 11: 18,254

IMA Members: 10,454

Pieces of Glass in the Efroymson Entrance Pavilion: 225

Days until To Live Forever Closes: 24

Tickets Sold to Summer Nights Film Rocky Horror Picture Show: 714

Percentage of Web visitors from Indiana: 52%

IMA Curators: 12

Visitors to IMA, July 2008: 47,548

Cubic Yards of Concrete poured for 2005 renovation: 25,000

Square feet of IMA building: 492,000

Nugget Factory productions on YouTube: 100

Women named Pam on Staff: 5

Designers named Matt on Staff: 3 (2 graphic & 1 web)

Days until Power and Glory: Court Arts from the Ming Dynasty opens: 73

Number of Views to IMA’s first-ever YouTube video: 3,593

Number of days I’ve worked at the IMA: 1,354

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