Disruptions is a series of mostly computer manipulated images, some are hand made. Essentially, Disruptions are the same thing as Text Drawings, and were made about the same time. Most Disruptions are dated 2001 – 2002, and were made when I was in Los Angeles. The title of this series refers to disrupting the code.

From Wikipedia: “In semiotics, a code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning. The most common is one’s spoken language, but the term can also be used to refer to any narrative form.”

I made hundreds of Disruptions. The process was to start with a piece of appropriated text, then mostly by way of cut and paste, I would meticulously rearrange pieces of all the letters, until the text was “unreadable”. I then might go further adding layer upon layer of disrupted texts, by way of sending the same sheet of paper through the printer multiple times. Most of the source texts for Disruptions came from a website called Words of Art. In this portfolio I’m including the source texts, and then a selection of alterations made from them.

Other procedural actions included randomly rearranging letters of the source text, then click on spell check to generate a disrupted text. I considered this to be a serendipitous way to generate a poem. To change the font of the source text into dingbat fonts was a good way to disrupt the code, and render a text “unreadable”. Another action for generating layers was to find a single letter in a dingbat font, and repeat it on the page to create a pattern. Yet another action was to wiggle a sheet of paper in the scanner while it was scanning.

Hand made Disruptions, were drawn/written texts, that applied strategies that would make the text difficult to read, in the traditional sense of reading. These images were experiments and explorations into my rethinking of visual art in terms of being a language, and drawing attention to reading a piece of art as a text instead of looking at a picture.

The common thread, as usual, with this and other artworks/projects is my ongoing game of making the familiar unfamiliar, aka disrupting the code.

[EL{BOW]L[DER}

[EL{BOW]L[DER} is a poem made by stringing words together with each word in the sequence sharing the same syllable or letters of the word before and after it. The words are compressed into one word by removing the gaps between them. Brackets are added to highlight the words and/or the shared syllables/letters. A line is struck through the string of words indicating the uselessness of the constructed long word, and also to make it look like a suture. The idea of a suture healing a wound is, of course, elaborated in the Endless Suture Project, and is used here, as well, to  allude to creative work as being therapeutic. Ideas of uselessness and therapy are set against each other vis-à-vis art making. [EL{BOW]L[DER} is inspired by the word and definition of floccinaucinihilipilification.

Ecotexta

Ecotexta is similar to [EL{BOW]L[DER}. It takes a source text and makes it “unreadable”. The source text for Ecotexta is from The Open Work, by Umberto Eco. To me, Eco’s writing here best exemplifies experiencing much contemporary art. It also describes what the Disruptions series is about, and generally my approach to art making … making the familiar unfamiliar. The altered source text becomes an example of what itself is articulating. Read aloud it could be a sound poem. Visually it could be asemic writing.

Desire

Translation

Fore-Pleasure

Rhizome Pragmatics

Reference

Redundancy

Interpretation

Super-Blindsight

Infothry

 

Morpheme

Phoneme

Draw/Write

Draw/Write is a handmade Disruption. The source text is from Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary’s definition of draw. The same strategy as Ecotexta was used for this Disruption; rearranging the gaps between words. Two versions of disrupted draw definitions were made, and one version of draw and write definitions  superimposed on each other was made. Objective of Draw/Write was to explore and blur distinctions between drawing and writing.

Endless Suture Disruptions

Endless Suture Disruptions are hand drawn Disruptions that I consider to be illustrations of the Endless Suture sculptures. A few are altered by wiggling in a scanner. The drawings are made from the lists of Endless Suture’s contents. The looping shapes reference the random piles of the sculpture. One is shaped like an individual piece of the sculpture. The line through the text creates an appearance that alludes to the stitching of the sculptures, and also crosses out the words, mimicking the act of making the objects disappear beneath the fluorescent yellow faux fur.

Interesting side note: all of these images were made between 9-8-01 and 10-5-01. This is what I was doing at the time of 911.