Journal # 4

Its amazing to see how many arrows are around us every second of everyday. Since I work forty hours a week at a swimming pool, I had a lot of time to find arrows there. On my walk to work, I passed by a bike path sign with an arrow directing the path. Entering the pool, I saw boxes of equipment that the facility had just received. On the boxes were ‘Caution: This Side Up’ arrows. These two signs direct attention and help to place guidelines. Next a co-worker walked onto deck eating a bag of popcorn and I saw the arrow on the side of the bag. It to was giving guidance much like that on the boxes. Anther guideline that involves arrows is that of time. The hands on the clock are arrows that everybody follows and can relate to around the entire world.

While walking around the pool I noticed the first starting block that had a one on it. I found the one to be quite arbitrary, because it looked like more of an arrow to me. Upon glancing away I spotted an arrow on the floor, however, it had no shaft. These simple triangular arrows are common among new smaller pieces of technology. As described in the article, people have associated just the triangle of the arrow to have meaning. In this case, there is no meaning to the triangle. Next, I noticed a lifeguard pole and no running sign lying on the ground, which gave me the idea to re-position them to create an arrow. Another arrow I saw was on a chalkboard, which was actually a triangle with three shafts projecting from the flat sides. So, no matter which side you looked at it, there was always an arrow. Once again, these arrows had no relevance, except for art.

Some arrows have words written in them to also help clarify there meaning. I found a fire extinguisher arrow, an attention arrow, and a directional rotation arrow. Without the words to help differentiate the arrows, they would just be common arrows that no one knows what they mean.

In the basement of the pool I found arrows that did not direct any outside influence, but rather showed the observer what was happening in a system. I found two different colored arrows that show the direction of water flow (treated and untreated) in the basement of the swimming pool. Also, I found a high voltage arrow that reminded me of the article we read before this project. Instead of being a straight normal arrow, or a wavy arrow, this arrow was sharp and resembled a lighting bolt. It was created this way in order to inflict a sense of danger.

When returning to my house, I saw my neighbor’s tree which resembled an arrow. This got me thinking, what other arrows are found in nature, and I realized that an arrowhead was one of the first arrows every used. I remembered I had an arrowhead that I found. This arrowhead could be as old as the first arrows created. Actually, according to the article, it could be 25,000 to 50,000 years old.