Accidental Meaning
Collaboration with Lilian Roby (undergradutate student in Design Computing 2007, design project using open source Processing)
Following from research and ideas explored in my previous collaboration in generative handwriting in 2006 at NYU, this piece was developed during my residency at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning-Sydney in a Master class set up with the aim to develop collaborative work with undergradutate students from Design Computing with programming skills. This work was produced following my reserach interests in breaking and production of meanings, metamorphosis of words into other words, the non-semantic the visual, the oral, the blank page, the engagement of the reader/user in the shifting from the linguistic to the visual and back. To represent the broken and the formations of new meanings, in this work we create an aesthetic environment consisting of a blank page/screen, inviting the reader/user to click/touch the screen in order to generate words. This is an aesthetic trade found in most of my interactive work. As the user explores and experiences the work by connecting the random words appearing in the screen and assembling definitions, the accidental position of words produce new relationships, and in doing so, an on going process of meanings, connections and narratives; of shifting from the semantic linguistic meaning to the visual, from the literal, the transparent to the abstract; and simultaneously creating a poetic space of juxtaposed words, layers, and visual textualities. This shiting from the abstract to the transparent meaning is one of my undergoing research questions and as such a quality found in all my practice-based research.
The database of this work was set up by L. Roby, it is a list of the 100 words all American high school graduates and their parents should know upon graduation.
Digital Artist in Residence Exhibition-'Maria Mencia, the Digital Artist in Residence, in collaboration with undergraduate Bachelor of Design Computing students Lilian Roby and Alexander Szekely have finished digital artworks in the area of digital poetics'. Read more ...see link