Iconic or Symbolic?

That lecture confused me- genuinely. What is the difference between an icon and a symbol?  Surely an icon is something that has made a mark in history, something that has its own cult following- and a symbol is something that represents something else- like the japanese symbol for love. Doesn't look like love (not that anyone really knows what it looks like O_o) but that's what it means.

This means love ^_^

And that whole communication thing was weird too- made me realize how hard it is to describe something so simple. I was trying to describe that nonsense drawing that Ivan did to the guy in front of me, but I found it confusing (and I'm sure he did too).

That actually made me think about how when I'm drawing, its so much easier to just copy an image (which I was tempted to for Ivan's masterpiece) but if I have an image in my head or if someone is describing it to me, it's difficult. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3efV2wqEjEY

That's a trailer for the old Tron movie that Sol showed us recently. You might be confused as to why I put that in, but it actually explains the point I just made. The CG in that film wasn't done on a flashy 3D program like 3dsMax or Maya, it was all mathematical code inserted into a computer to create an image- meaning that basically, the people who created it were working blind. I personally can't fathom how they must've done that- or how anxious they must've been when they watched the movie to see if it'd actually worked.

That may not have been the point of the lecture at all, but that's what I got from it.