Liquid Psychedelia

We're taking this course that is a simultaneous introduction to writing and an exploration of books and the form they take. It's more often than not pretty hippie dippy stuff with esoteric "writing exercises" that usually yield little more than awful poetry. I'm not receptive to the writing crash course b'c I can already write, but I understand how part of this course serves the greater good.

In a recent assignment, our instructor asked us to take some smaller bits of writing and some other pieces that were the product of free association exercises and create a bunch of varied type treatments. Type treatments are little more than artfully arranged text on a page, with an attempt at making a point or playing with a theme.

I was working on a more mundane series the night before everything was due, composing the work in Illustrator. This yielded the usual too-slick result, a piece of graphic design that has some visual appeal but no real soul. Rather than continue in this direction and have all of the enthusiasm sucked out of the assignment, I decided to experiment with a more physical transformation of simple, black, sans serif text.

Over the course of a few hours, I manipulated printed versions of my text while mid-scan and photocopy. Moving the text back and forth over the scanner and photocopier lens either stretches or condenses the text, often times separating the black portion into it's CMYK composite colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, etc.). I am FUCKING IN LOVE with the results. They are dynamic and each experiment has a surprising outcome. Further explorations are in the works using this initial foray as inspiration. The next obvious direction is the transformation of organic images, the introduction of video/animation work and an attempt of a large scale installation of scanners that act not as devices for capturing static images, but real time video input devices.

Mother fucking art school, ya'll.