Borrowing From Hieroglyphs

Engineers define information as occurring at points of change.  We find meaning where we detect change. On a cup we find change in the continuity of the cup at the lip, or at the handle  or at the base. We don’t have varieties of words for the side of the cup because, there is no change in the information.  Along the wall of the cup there are no intersections, no junctions, no junctures just seamless continuity unless that area is decorated and then, there is meaning when we encounter the decoration.  We name the world at its points of interruption, at its points of change. Mark Changizi in his book , “The Vision Revolution” studied the shapes of our letters and the letters of other cultures. He observed that the letter shapes were pictures of the most common junctions we encounter when we map and describe our world.  For example,  L and T junctions are very common and universally apparent as parts of letter shapes.  The circle is a curious self isolating junction. 
And, by the way, one of the first shapes upon which we sustain our attention as infants. All letter shapes  are derived from pictures based on how we map the world at its points of change.  Letters can become visual symbols because they appear to offer metaphorical resonance with animals, flora and other commonly appearing shapes.  The A descends from the inverted V. It was derived metaphorically from the pictograph of the cow’s head just as the  S was derived from the cobra, snake or serpent.  Both these shapes, the triangular A and the serpentine S have offered artists a  form for ordering and organizing the chaotic and infinite visual field.  Artists look into nature and recognize the opportunity for ordering shapes like the S, T, O, A and others. Da Vinci relied on the A  just, as landscape artists from Claude to Constable (see image) relied on the O and S.  The Claudian example you see here offers its central light area as an oculus through which we enter the deep space of the painting.  This acrylic painting and its inspiration, the adjacent photo  was first organized as a painting  by using the triangular A at the top of the image (see composing diagram below) . I begin the sketch diagram through simplification, distillation,  and locating organizing shapes like the A or interlocking S shapes.Notice that the A extends beyond the perimeter of the picture plane. The lower section of the painting was was designed using the S or serpentine shape.  I  used these composing shapes because,  we scan a vertical image, from bottom to top and top to bottom.  The serpentine shape leads you up into the tent of the triangle.  Many of our letters carry mathematical, astronomical, social, political or religious symbolism.   If Da Vinci were painting a a religious painting like his St Anne and the Virgin for a client he could appeal to them symbolically by using the triangle with its self-contained reference to the trinity.  The cross of Christianity has many forms and, would be used repeatedly in European art as an organizing or composing shape.  The broken cross or Y was the symbol for the thief, the simple “+” was identified as the Greek Cross while the T  was identified with the Coptic Christians as well as St Anthony.  the T fell out of favor after the Emperor Constantine and his Bishop removed the gospel of Thomas from the Bible at the council of Nicaea in the 4th century for reasons of political expediancy.  This cross directly borrowed from the Egyptians with its cross bar symbolizing water(fertility) and its upright symbolizing the light of Ra, the sun god.  Originally, the upright was a long slender triangle, a version of the sunbeam or ray, the very ray found in halos and crowns and later upon the head of our statue of liberty.