Archiving and interpreting the west coast of America as a secret and sacred act of observation
Part of MFA Design Thesis Projects
In this study I intend to bring focus into human vision/touch to create a new visual language from an encyclopedic archive of signs and elemental forms extracted from a collection of my images. In the process, I used the "high pass" filter to isolate the edges and to draw out the signs. This filter increases the sharpness by increasing the contrast in an image where brightness and texture change and isolates/highlights the edges. The process of edge isolation consisted of making 4 postcard size study books from which I was able to identify the points of visual interest using a calligraphy marker to give the signs volume and character. The high pass filter isolated the edges but I marked and included other important figures or punctum of the image if in lower contrast to the rest of the image which computer might have neglected its significance, for example a rock figure or the outline of the sun, or an accidentally captured bird in the image. The original collection of 370 images have been collected in the west coast of America, mostly volcanic locations, in the past 5 years, using various mediums with different deviation in quality from the natural scene. In depth analysis and semiotic investigation of this elemental archive of sings and forms, I aim to create a unique visual language that encompasses an ontological and semiological study of an image and of the time spent in pure silence in nature.
First visual language, based on an amalgamation of all the signs from the 4 booklets
“ Geological _ a hence metaphysical _ monumentality, by contrast with the physical altitude of ordinary landscapes. Upturned relief patterns, sculpted out by wind, water and ice, dragging you down into the whirlpool of time, into the remorseless eternity of a slow-motion catastrophe. The very idea of the millions and hundreds of millions of years that were needed peacefully to ravage the surface of the earth here is a perverse one, since it brings with it an awareness of signs originating, long before man appeared, in a sort of pact of were and erosion struck between the elements. Among this gigantic heap of signs _ purely geological in essence _ man will have no significance. The Indians alone perhaps interpreted them_ a few of them. And yet they are signs. …. What is man if the signs that predate him have such power? A human race has to invent sacrifices equal to the natural cataclysmic order that surrounds it. …. Meaning is born out of erosion of words, significations are born out of erosion of signs.” ( Jean Baudrillard, America)
Base vase by Devan Ponce + hand carvings of the sings as an archeological artifact encompassing the ethos of the archive.
The final archival book of original images and the signs using threads and bolts
The archive of 370 images of the landscape generated a secondary archive of signs in the form of a sacred language. The book that holds all the images and signs in one place, has been designed to create a ritualistic act of opening the book. The threads and the bolts present as the binders, create a barrier to the information, to the code and to the message. One needs to spend time unscrewing all the 19 bolts and to remove the cover, in order to be able to access the archive.
These signs as a whole represent the list of words that I compiled based on my perception of the language of the elements of the Earth. These words don't have a 1:1 correlation with any specific sign, rather they are the significance of the sum of the signs all together at once. Exclusion of any word with any trace of human beings from this list of words is another indication of the origins where everything was a sign and a rhythm.
©21st Century
Top