I am thinking of observing the various Tritych members' (especially Siun) creative/written process, the choreographed/performative movement of writing: mapping/drawing those movements, including the punctuation of the body, and translating/transforming them into a new spatial dialectic. The creation of an intermediary semiotic form which acts as a document of written speech (writing aloud) that can then evolve into typographic forms.
I'd also like to map the generic creative dialogue amongst us as a method of tracking our progress, intentions, contributions, etc. Which could be 2D, 3D or textile-based, bearing in mind the 'threads' of connection (see Perec).
Cathy
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Postcards
Words perch, flock, fly off again ... cutting, perforating discourse.
The form/presence of the printed or inscribed word in relation to the speech act: the phyicality of dynamic expression as the crux of the designer/typographer's field of influence for celebration, insinuation, warning, etc.
“If it were possible to imagine an aesthetic of textual pleasure, it would have to include: writing aloud ... 'Writing aloud' is not expressive; it leaves expression to the pheno-text, to the regular code of communication; it belongs to the geno-text, to significance: it is carried not by dramatic inflections, subtle stresses, sympathetic accents, but by the grain of the voice.” (Roland Barthes 'Pleasure of the Text').
The typographer's role as the translator of another's words situates him/her at the table, just behind the speaker as the agent of communication in an impossible in-between of content/context/form where the slightest inflection could cause alarm or seductive inference. He/she is neither author nor audience: subject nor speaker and yet, by the implimentation of wood, metal, stone, paper or projection via a computer screen as the forum/canvas of communication, the designer rather than the words truly becomes the bearer of meaning, of tone of voice.
Although “Words are bearers and generators of ideas ... the locus of action is not in the text but in the transformation of the reader.” (Jean Baudrillard 'Passwords).
“Cultural discourse involves a hierarchy of representations. These representations proceed from individual intentions to manifestations to reproductions and interpretations of those individual manifestations.
At every level of transformation in this chain of broadening representations, additional ‘noise’ enters the system. Duchamp noted those noises that intervened between the artist’s intention and realization and again between the realization and the public interpretation.” (Robert Morris).
When 'Tomato', the UK design group used expressive typography alone as a response to the spirit of New York in their book 'MmmskyscraperIloveyou' they were not merely documenting the sounds and spaces of a city but TRANSLATING for a specific audience using a lettering/typographic-code. It is understood that this small group of consumers will interpret and appreciate this body of text not as a factual guide to the city containing street maps, cafe info and market places but give the typographic visitor a SENSE of place: a conversation without content.
“Consider, for example, the rule of turn-taking, which plays such an important part in our concept of ‘conversation’ and in the various ‘conversation genres’: repartee, verbal duelling, riddling, punning, telling proverbs, telling jokes and joking, and constructing narratives of personal experience.” (Susan Stewart 'On Longin')
All dialogue and discourse involves the OTHER, whether wig-wagging, speaking in a child's secret code or imparting concrete information through email the RESPONSE is the crux of communication through language.
“Whereas reading may assume or even manipulate the speed of thought, writing obeys the speed of the body, the speed of the hand … because writing by hand assumes the speed of the body, it is linked to the personal … to sign your name, your mark, is to leave a track like any other track of the body; handwriting is to space what the voice is to time.”
Talking by hand: the hand of discourse, voice of the text.
“Speech leaves no mark in space; like gesture, it exists in its immediate context and can reappear only in another’s voice, another’s body … but writing contaminates; writing leaves its trace, a trace beyond the life of the body.”
“The space between letters, the space between words, bears no relation to the stutters and pauses of speech. Writing has none of the hesitations of the body.”
“It is not through any intrinsic quality of the sign but rather through the interpretive acts of members of a sign community that the sign comes to have meaning. Hence the transmutability of all signs, their capacity to serve as signified or signifier, independent of their physical properties.”
The images presented here function as a set of three 'postcards', visual statements/articulations that require a response: they could be the "Hi there!" of casual discourse or the ejaculation "Help! Fire!". I propose, as a dialogue/trialogue: a sequence of virtual 'postcards', coded semiotic fragments which anyone can respond to as an ongoing creative interaction and visual engagement or even as a 'Chinese whisper'. If the receiver wants to alter the 'tone of voice' or censor the text, then so be it.
The form/presence of the printed or inscribed word in relation to the speech act: the phyicality of dynamic expression as the crux of the designer/typographer's field of influence for celebration, insinuation, warning, etc.
“If it were possible to imagine an aesthetic of textual pleasure, it would have to include: writing aloud ... 'Writing aloud' is not expressive; it leaves expression to the pheno-text, to the regular code of communication; it belongs to the geno-text, to significance: it is carried not by dramatic inflections, subtle stresses, sympathetic accents, but by the grain of the voice.” (Roland Barthes 'Pleasure of the Text').
The typographer's role as the translator of another's words situates him/her at the table, just behind the speaker as the agent of communication in an impossible in-between of content/context/form where the slightest inflection could cause alarm or seductive inference. He/she is neither author nor audience: subject nor speaker and yet, by the implimentation of wood, metal, stone, paper or projection via a computer screen as the forum/canvas of communication, the designer rather than the words truly becomes the bearer of meaning, of tone of voice.
Although “Words are bearers and generators of ideas ... the locus of action is not in the text but in the transformation of the reader.” (Jean Baudrillard 'Passwords).
“Cultural discourse involves a hierarchy of representations. These representations proceed from individual intentions to manifestations to reproductions and interpretations of those individual manifestations.
At every level of transformation in this chain of broadening representations, additional ‘noise’ enters the system. Duchamp noted those noises that intervened between the artist’s intention and realization and again between the realization and the public interpretation.” (Robert Morris).
When 'Tomato', the UK design group used expressive typography alone as a response to the spirit of New York in their book 'MmmskyscraperIloveyou' they were not merely documenting the sounds and spaces of a city but TRANSLATING for a specific audience using a lettering/typographic-code. It is understood that this small group of consumers will interpret and appreciate this body of text not as a factual guide to the city containing street maps, cafe info and market places but give the typographic visitor a SENSE of place: a conversation without content.
“Consider, for example, the rule of turn-taking, which plays such an important part in our concept of ‘conversation’ and in the various ‘conversation genres’: repartee, verbal duelling, riddling, punning, telling proverbs, telling jokes and joking, and constructing narratives of personal experience.” (Susan Stewart 'On Longin')
All dialogue and discourse involves the OTHER, whether wig-wagging, speaking in a child's secret code or imparting concrete information through email the RESPONSE is the crux of communication through language.
“Whereas reading may assume or even manipulate the speed of thought, writing obeys the speed of the body, the speed of the hand … because writing by hand assumes the speed of the body, it is linked to the personal … to sign your name, your mark, is to leave a track like any other track of the body; handwriting is to space what the voice is to time.”
Talking by hand: the hand of discourse, voice of the text.
“Speech leaves no mark in space; like gesture, it exists in its immediate context and can reappear only in another’s voice, another’s body … but writing contaminates; writing leaves its trace, a trace beyond the life of the body.”
“The space between letters, the space between words, bears no relation to the stutters and pauses of speech. Writing has none of the hesitations of the body.”
“It is not through any intrinsic quality of the sign but rather through the interpretive acts of members of a sign community that the sign comes to have meaning. Hence the transmutability of all signs, their capacity to serve as signified or signifier, independent of their physical properties.”
The images presented here function as a set of three 'postcards', visual statements/articulations that require a response: they could be the "Hi there!" of casual discourse or the ejaculation "Help! Fire!". I propose, as a dialogue/trialogue: a sequence of virtual 'postcards', coded semiotic fragments which anyone can respond to as an ongoing creative interaction and visual engagement or even as a 'Chinese whisper'. If the receiver wants to alter the 'tone of voice' or censor the text, then so be it.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
the materiality of text, from Siún.
Cathy, Clare (and interested Triptychers…)
Are you interested in continuing our conversations? Not a formal collaboration but an exploratory conversation…
My art practice is a form of writing… writing that, in some ways, doesn’t properly belong anywhere. It is not visual art, although its visual and thingly qualities are important to me. It is not philosophy although its concerns fall into that domain. It is not poetry, although its concern for language has something of this in it (I hope). The Greek root of poetry, poesis, which means making, offers a descriptor: it is poesis, a making.
My concern with typography and the physical manifestation of the text emerges from an interest in the nature of meaning. A strength of art is that it reveals itself as a composition. Writing, in our culture, tends to erase its formation. In my work is an enquiry into meaning that seeks to reveal its own constructedness, to bring writing clsoer to the condition of art. Attending to the text, the form of the words, matters.
As you both know, I am not a typographer – I’m only a wee beginner… but I have read Bringhurst from cover to cover (apparently a good sign). I have a lot to learn from being in conversation with you… but what, if anything, do I have to give?
Monday, November 13, 2006
Welcome
The language & meaning sub-theme is proposed as a meeting point – one way of making contact with triptych people who share your interests so that you can begin to figure out a form of exchange and ‘output’ that will serve your interests (as individuals and as a group of people with a common focus).
To get things started you might make a posting that captures the nature of your interest in language & meaning.
To get things started you might make a posting that captures the nature of your interest in language & meaning.
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