Maya Churi displayed in rich, traditional Korean color of umber, commonly seen in charred wood-engravings from centuries bygone, the verb phrase in full 3D: 잘먹겠습니다. This is a short, highly formal sentence that I would analyze as (잘) "well" (먹) "eat" (겠) "will" (습니다) politely spoken to an honored person. A translation might be "Sir or madam, I will eat well." A phrase similar to this is commonly spoken when food is offered.
And that is why Maya is a genius. Her evocative knowledge object displayed traditional Korean grammar, stroke formation, color, and even on a wooden grain similar to the popular antique plaques in Korea, while the words themselves were made of brownies. The medium was the message, artfully executed. It was multisensory, with its primary sense, taste, being the salient verb 먹다. And its delicious taste lived up to the promise that it literally embodied. Maya: 잘먹었습니다 (잘) "well" (먹) "eat" (었) "did" (습니다) politely spoken to an honored person. "I ate well."
And so I'm led to I wonder about other graphical, object-construction, and multimedia techniques that I can employ to artfully compose the meaning of the words into their embodiment. Maya has gone beyond visual alphabet techniques that compose the shape of a letter in a word into an memorable object, which is a popular mnemonic for teaching alphabets of many languages. She has embedded the meaning, the intention, and even the affordances of how to use her evocative knowledge object into the medium. I'll have to digest this inspiration during the summer, and explore how I can emulate the perfection of this piece.
The class recognized the care and brilliance of the work, and they wanted very much to learn the language from the object itself, but as far as I could detect, even among those that asked to learn about the meaning or pronunciation, language learning was fleeting and the inspiration to practice was absent. So I'll also have to contemplate the additional requirement of inspiring the user to practice a language with which the user is not yet competent. Maya's work inspired me to redouble this pursuit. For that, Maya: 감사합니다 (There is humble appreciation).