meaning-making beings engage in practices of curation and perception. our world is filled with canvases, and we populate them with sound, image, object, and experience. they are infused with our ideas, emotions and intentions, becoming symbols - carries that represent these energies. as we move, create, curate and engage with the curated in dynamic play, meaning is explored, generated and exchanged. connected groups begin to develop foundations of a shared language of symbols.

meaning, however, is not always transmitted successfuly, and embedded meaning is not always accessible. our capacity to both grasp and generate meaning is informed by our faculty of perception, which is shaped by our entire being-complex. (primarily, our view of the world and the knowledge we have about the things we encounter.) our perception is the translation mechanism between the observed and the experienced, and the meanings they hold for us. perception is the fulcrum.

<sub>curation is story. in the active state, it is the decisive and intentional selection and presentation of content, material, ideas. in its passive state, it is unconscious signaling. we are constantly curating, and constantly experiencing the curated. 

perception is what we see, and how we understand what we see. it is subjective and contextual, shaped by our entire being-complex: world-view, culture, personal history, knowledge, mood and emotion, consciousness, intention, and on and on and on.</sub>

we curate in order to create a story or message: to share an idea, to move another, or to inspire them into action. the object, images and other devices our of curation are symbols of meaning. our perception shapes the stories we seek to tell and the symbols we select to tell it. it also shapes our capacity to interprety others’ stories, and recieve the meaning they intend. if we do not share the same language of symbols, or foundations of understanding, meaning will not translate.