Phenotypes

The set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.

Type Over Time

What happens when you explore type and shadow (ala Lazlo Maholy-Nagy) over time? Crazy things happen.

Exploring Richard Serra's Verbs

"to simplify"

Re-imagined letterforms

When an object is removed from its familiar state and re-contextualized, our mind allows us the freedom to re-examine and approach the object in ways we may not have imagined. 

It can be difficult to remove some things — particularly text — from their context without completely losing the meaning. However, if individual letterforms are removed, re-imagined, and then fed back into their previous context, is the original meaning lost and a new interpretation created? Is the essence of the original context still relevant? 

Using letterforms as my subject, I’ve taken them through a series of processes using laser light, and moving back and forth between video, two, and three dimensions in an attempt to re-contextualize and re-interpret these letterforms. 

Long exposure laser cut alphabet at 6 seconds

Long exposure laser cut alphabet at 15 seconds

Long exposure laser cut alphabet at 30 seconds. Perfect!

Amalgamation of the 30 second exposure laser cut alphabet

Long exposure shot of the laser cutting the 30 second amalgam

Individual laser cut of the letterform "K" amalgam 

What am I doing?

A few years ago, I gave an artist talk at my alma matter in Indiana titled What Am I Doing? Over the past couple of years, I've continued to ask myself that question. This week, however, it's been a question that rears its head on an almost hourly basis.

Currently, I'm in the middle of thesis-making and explorations, and have confirm the question "What am I doing?" is relevant no matter what state an artist or designer is in (unless we're not making at all...which is a sad, sad state). 

Context: While I'm not necessarily interested in re-presenting type or letterform, I'm curious how type-like forms can function within that environment. When you remove context, what does type become? Below are a few visual explorations I've been running down this week. In order to dial in my exploration process, I chose to use a phrase from my Sony headphones instructional manual "Handle the driver units carefully" which has very little meaning on its own. 

Grass keyboard: Using a grass keyboard as a tool to interrupt the typing process, I attempted to type "Handle the driver units carefully" to see what sort of results I would get

Laser cutter as a tool for interruption: In some ways, text is an artifact of language, so I chose to explore what artifacts could be made from type and see how those artifacts operate in a similar context. The image above is a long exposure shot of the laser while cutting "Handle the driver units carefully"

Combining all letters from each word in the phrase in an attempt to create an image that stands in place of text

Examining artifact: Over the course of 3 hours, I took a shot every 30 minutes of the shadow created by a laser cutout of the phrase. My goal was to merge the shadows together and see what sort of result appeared, but as is sometimes the case, the experiment seemed to fail.

Rules for combining the letterforms typed from the grass keyboard.

The end result of the combined letterforms from the grass keyboard with the phrase "Handle the driver units carefully" in yellow for comparison.

Another attempt at shadow as artifact: I created a mobile of the individual letters from the phrase and attempted to capture the shadow in order to find results that could stand as letterforms.

Die Kunst stirbt

Art is dying of the masses and of materialism.

"It dies because the land it needs is all built up, the land of naiveté and of illusions...we must confess that we no longer have an artistic idea. ...we have entered a period without an artistic style, without a young revolutionary generation."

— Albert Langen, 1911

A history of the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac by Klaus Lankheit