Pictures from Exhibition: Kodifikaciju Maksla

My works were presented at the exhibition title Kodifikaciju Maksla (translates as Codification of Arts) curated by Gundega Strautmane. The exhibition took place at Liepājas Latviešu biedrības nams in Liepaja, Latvia.

The central theme of the exhibition is codification of language and its artistic exploration and application. The duration of the exhibition is March 4-30. March 6 was marked by the discussion on the subject matter.

My contribution to the exhibition was pure luck. I've been posting various visual interpretations of Roadrage poems on Facebook groups once in a while and one of them caught Gundega Strautmane's attention. We started to talk about it and she asked me whether i can provide her with information for her scientific work about artistic codification of language. It was an honor to me so i gladly gave everything she needed.

Some time later she was asked me to take part in the exhibition and here we are. I gotta thank her for giving me a reason to write down scattered musings about those pieces. Not sure i would've done it otherwise.

So - I've got four different series featured on the show. But before showing photos, i would like to explain what this whole thing is about.

Some backstory

The whole idea for recodification of texts started as an exercise in extending the concept beyond. At that time, I was doing a book of poetry titled Roadrage - it was the book of poems that operated very differently from the traditional poetry - they were happening.

Because of that, the texts were quite operate for transforming and transporting into other mediums.

One might ask - why bother with redoing the pieces you have already done in a new way? Isn't that a bit abundant? The answer is - there are infinite possibilities to explore within a particular piece and the way it is presented.

I'm fascinated with the transformative potential of poetic text - the transition of something from one state to the other and how it changes the perception of the piece. I was really interested in exploring how Roadrage poems would work beyond text realm. 

As Tzvetan Todorov wrote "there's no conclusive definition of poetry. It's the matter of time, place and text". i would go further and claim  - poetry don't exist - at least in a way we understand the existence - i think poetry happens.  Like " The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth".

In essence, visual interpretations of Roadrage poems was defamiliarization - making something familiar different, thus evoking new experiences. Barcodes and abstract typefaces are great fit for text transformation because it just another type of an alphabet used for different purposes. Technically these mediums preserve the original text but also present it differently so that it seems like a different thing.

The idea behind Roadrage was to make a text that happens in the readers mind - in a similar manner as human brain processes paintings. 

Visual interpretations of Roadrage poems was defamiliarization - making something familiar different, thus evoking new experiences. 

Barcodes and abstract typefaces are great fit for text transformation because it just another type of an alphabet used for different purposes. 

Technically these mediums preserve the original text but also present it differently so that it seems like a different thing.

***

Now lets take a look at the pieces presented at Kodifikaciju Maksla. The photographs are kindly provided by Gundega Strautmane.

1 - GridMatrix barcode cyberdelic asemic writing

Square matrix barcode used to encode chinese symbols. But it works fine with all sorts of unicode. GridMatrix visual alienates the text into an illegible glyphs - you definitely identify them as some sort of writing, but you can't get through it. 

Technical sidenote - some android-based barcode readers further jumble the text as they are configured to chinese by default. As a result you get all sorts of monstrous texts.

2 - Blokk - UX placeholder font reappropriations

This font replaces words with horizontal bars that approximate the size of the word so that it would be easier to lay out the design scheme of an application or else. 

On the one hand, it looks like a variation of morse code. 

On the other hand, it reminds me of that Man Ray poem with blackout lines. 

However, in this case the text is pretty much plundered and remolded into generic bars. IT is still there but it is gone.

3 - pixelated font pixelated into further abstraction

4 - Moon Type, early Braille-like font that now looks like vintage alien writing from the likes of Astrounding Science Fiction.

Moon type is a precursor of the modern braille font. I just translated the poems into it. Because of general unfamiliarity with this typeface,  it seems like some futurist writing from sci-fi works.