Moscow siblings Davit and Mary Jilavyan spent the coronavirus lockdown creating renderings of an imaginary community in Mexico with two-toned buildings and streets dotted with cacti and swimming pools.
Architect
and visualizer Davit worked with his sister Mary, who is a 3D designer,
to create the computer images during the Covid-19 pandemic for a
community in a nondescript, arid site with hills. The buildings feature bright pink, green, orange, blue and yellow exteriors that take cues from works by Mexican architect Luis Barragán and Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, who are both known for their use of bold colours.
The images show that as the sun rises and sets across the landscape, the colours of the town change in saturation and hue. Many
of the houses are two- or three-storeys, and walkways meander around
barrier walls and boulders that are planted with cacti and flowers
bushes. Home at the perimeter have views to the rocky desert and horizon
beyond.
"In Sonora Art Village there is no clear system, the
houses are located chaotically, each house has its own colourful path,"
Davit and Mary Jilavyan said. "Some houses are higher, some are lower,
so the village has a lot of small stairs, which makes it feel like
you're going up and down in a game like Super Mario." Arches,
passageways and overhanging volumes add to the geometry of the concept,
while zig-zagging pathways and steps pass by the homes and link them
together for a walkable scheme. Plazas, lounge areas, outdoor swimming
pools and basketball courts round out the proposal.
The Jilavyans
created the imaginary Sonora Art Village while in coronavirus lockdown
in Moscow and said the project's brightness and creativity give them a
sense of relief and happiness.
"Sitting
in self-isolation, surrounded by four walls, it occurred to us to
create a whole village from houses like Sonora House," the duo added.
"We wanted to create a place where people can come and feel for a while
in a completely different place, far from the grey reality, to feel in
some bright 3D space or even a cartoon."
Aside from the isolation
they experience currently and the sense of community the project
provides, the design also offers a feeling of freedom. "Sonora
Art Village is an explosion of our emotions, it's what we lack in
reality," they said. "It's a place free from prejudice. There's no place
for racism, sexism, humiliation. We tried to create a completely
different atmosphere that would exude joy, love and happiness."
The development came about after a friend from Mexico first tasked them to make a colourful house for a family named Sonora House, which featured a gabled roofline and white windows that pop out from the facade. "Thanks
to the way our house was warmly welcomed, we thought that maybe we
should continue this idea, and came up with a whole village of similar
houses, where people can relax," they said. "Our goal was to do
something as simple as last time but unusual."
"This is just a
concept, non-commercial, just a piece of art," they added. "But we would
be happy if one day our project became a reality to let people dive
into a completely different atmosphere." The Jilavyans are among a wave of visual artists that have created utopian landscapes, buildings and interiors for armchair escapists during the coronavirus pandemic.
Others include interior designer and creative director Charlotte Taylor,
who collaborates with a roster of 3D artists to realise imaginary
spaces. She told Dezeen that these type of projects "feed into people's
imaginations and appetite for a change of scenery, be it completely
impossible or not". A number of similar creative projects have been borne out of the coronavirus lockdown like Invisible Cities by artists Camille Benoit and Mariana Gella, which are architectural models of fantastical cities made from paper and tools they had at home.
New York designer Eny Lee Parker also developed an Instagram competition tasking people to model tiny clay versions of their ideal homes. Parker kicked off the Clay Play contest with her polymer clay creation and then called for others to make their "ideal room".
Clova Lamp is an AI-powered light that reads books to children
Jennifer Hahn | 10 August 2020 3 comments
South Korean technology company Naver Corp has developed a smart reading light called Clova Lamp that helps children to cultivate healthy reading habits by narrating their books aloud.
Using computer vision and artificial intelligence technology, the lamp
is able to convert the text and images from a book into speech, while
an integrated virtual assistant can explain the meaning of words and
answer kids' questions to help them learn. In this way, the product hopes to replace smartphones as the go-to method of independent entertainment when parents are unable to play with their children.
"Kids
need to hear books frequently to foster their thinking skills,
concentration, imagination and creativity but not all parents can read
books to their kids as much as they would like," James Kim, the head of
the design team, told Dezeen.
"The Clova Lamp allows kids to hear
their favourite books by themselves whenever they want, to help them
develop an interest in reading." The
product takes the form of a classic desk lamp, rendered in matte white,
shock-resistant plastic, with a hemispherical head that is angled down
towards the desk.
This holds a ring-shaped LED light with a small camera
at its centre, which uses image recognition technology to decode
illustrations and identifies written words using Optical Character
Recognition (OCR).
After being analysed by the system's cloud-based AI, the input from the camera is then converted into speech.
"Clova Lamp reads out books that are placed underneath it when the 'read' button is hit or a voice command is given," said Kim.
"It
speaks in a natural [Korean] voice, developed using voice synthesis
technology to create a more engaging experience for listeners. It can
also read English and Japanese books with a native-like, human-sounding
voice that can intrigue kids to self-study these languages."
A
list of completed books is stored by the device, rewarding kids with
badges for different milestones while offering parents insight into
their reading patterns and helping them to choose the right literature
for their children. In
its function as a light, the device is able to sense the environmental
factors that can influence the reading experience and provide a
responsive light that is easy on the eyes.
"It automatically senses the brightness of the surroundings and picks one of five lighting levels to match," said Kim.
"The
colour temperature has four modes – reading, creativity, repair and
sleep – which were designed based on a pool of data around different
learning environments."
As the South Korean equivalent to Google, Naver Corp runs the country's most used search engine, Naver.
Since its founding in 1999, the company has largely focused on online
services, with its subsidiary also operating the popular instant
messaging app Line, which has 200 million users predominantly across Japan, Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia.
In recent years, however, the business has invested heavily into research and development around AI, robotics and mobility. Naver made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show last year with 13 different innovations including a robotic arm that can be remote-controlled using 5G. Elsewhere, a number of designers have turned their focus towards creating toys that help children foster a healthier relationship to technology.
Matthieu Muller developed a series of cardboard attachments, which can be used in tandem with a smartphone to turn it into a toy car or spaceship, while Pentagram collaborated with tech startup Yoto to create an interactive audio player that does not rely on a screen.
Michael Apostolius, 16.71
“Why do you judge the Achaeans from the walls?” A proverb applied to those who don’t evaluate events clearly but as they want.”
Τί τοὺς ᾿Αχαιοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ πύργου κρίνετε: ἐπὶ τῶν μὴ δοκιμαζόντων τὰ πράγματα ἀκριβῶς, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐκεῖνοι βούλονται. Aeschylus, Persians 210-214
“For me, this was frightening to see,
And for you to hear. Know well that my child
Would be wondrous to behold if he did well but,
He’s not beholden to the state:
he will rule the land if he merely survives.”
ταῦτ᾿ ἐμοί τε δείματ᾿ εἰσιδεῖν
ὑμῖν τ᾿ ἀκούειν. εὖ γὰρ ἴστε, παῖς ἐμὸς
πράξας μὲν εὖ θαυμαστὸς ἂν γένοιτ᾿ ἀνήρ·
κακῶς δὲ πράξας—οὐχ ὑπεύθυνος πόλει,
σωθεὶς δ᾿ ὁμοίως τῆσδε κοιρανεῖ χθονός. 241-242
Q: “Who is the shepherd who is master of the army?”
Ch. “They are known the slaves and attendant of no man.”
τίς δὲ ποιμάνωρ ἔπεστι κἀπιδεσπόζει στρατῷ;
οὔτινος δοῦλοι κέκληνται φωτὸς οὐδ᾿ ὑπήκοοι.
266-7
“I was present there—not merely hearing other’s words
Persians, I can tell you what kinds of terrible things occurred.”
καὶ μὴν παρών γε κοὐ λόγους ἄλλων κλυών,
Πέρσαι, φράσαιμ᾿ ἂν οἷ᾿ ἐπορσύνθη κακά. Porph. On Abstaining from Animal Food (de abst. 2. 18(p. 148 Nauck))
“People
say that when the Delphians asked Aeschylus to write a paean for the
god he said that Tynnichus had already composed the best one. His would
be no better when compared to it than modern statues set alongside
ancient ones.”
τὸν γοῦν Αἰσχύλον φασὶ τῶν Δελφῶν ἀξιούντων εἰς τὸν
θεὸν γράψαι παιᾶνα εἰπεῖν ὅτι βέλτιστα Τυννίχῳ πεποίηται·
παραβαλλόμενον δὲ τὸν αὑτοῦ πρὸς τὸν ἐκείνου ταὐτὸ πείσεσθαι τοῖς
ἀγάλμασιν τοῖς καινοῖς πρὸς τὰ ἀρχαῖα. Statue of a Greek Orator statue in Himation from from Herakleopolis Magna
A peek into an AI-driven world, Shape Grammars by Jannis Maroscheck is a dictionary of 150,000 shapes and systems
How
can generative design create something less generic? In response, the
German graphic designer has built a hefty 836-page study into the
automation of design.
A dictionary of graphic systems, Jannis Maroscheck’s new book Shape Grammars, published by Slanted,
needn’t be too complex. The German designer, currently studying at the
University of Arts in Tokyo, has always sought out to create something –
so much so that he calls these creations “short-term obsessions”, where
he tends to get bored quite easily and moves onto the next idea. He
comes from a “rational numbers guy” father and “aesthetically driven”
mother, which means he places himself somewhere right in the middle.
Software is his inspiration and, for Shape Grammars
specifically, the works of Sol LeWitt and Norm have been key players
for the “big sparks”. So while quarantining in a small fisherman's
village in the south east part of Nagasaki, Jannis recalls the moment
when the emergency state for all of Japan was announced. “Hence, I had a
lot of time,” he tells It’s Nice that. “I sent some emails with a 100
page preview of Shape Grammars attached. Slanted like it. From there, everything went pretty quickly.”
When
asked about the publication’s description and motives, Jannis’ answer
is that he simply wanted to make a “big book with lots of pages and
minimum effort”. In the ideation process, it was after he completed a
project in his third semester that the spark for Shape Grammars
was lit – “and then it just grew”. The thought of building a dictionary
of shapes, “a catalogue for growing and exploring geometric systems”
came into fruition, alongside the goal of putting something out there
that would allow the audience to constantly discover something new. “So,
I collected these forms and their formulas, sorted from the strict
geometric to the organic freeform.”
Jannis goes on to cite Noam
Chomsky and his testament to formalising all sorts of languages that
“obey some rules”. A relevant citation because, in Jannis’ work, he has
similarly attempted to do as such with graphical systems. “Of course,
this could never be completed, but at least I wanted to try to cover as
large a spectrum of geometric principles as I could.” The result of such
an immense project is a 836-page study into automation in design, which
shows around 150,000 shapes that are produced by 12 systems. “What
becomes visible is that the computer is quick at drawing. It can design
100,000 shapes in a couple of minutes,” he says, explaining that on the
contrary the machine is mindlessly executing a ruleset with some random
variation. “It is limited; it can never escape a system’s given logic.”
GalleryJannis Maroscheck: Shape Grammars
The
notion of art, machines and creativity has been a longwinded one, yet
it’s something that’s ever more prevalent in today’s AI-infused world.
For Jannis, he says that this issue with limitation could be cured by
neural networks, which might be a way of “giving the computer more
interpretative freedom.” It’s the reasoning behind the “soulless and
generic” design that perpetuates the current landscape, and also why
there isn’t a “universal design machine” yet to be made. But, in the
future years to come, Jannis is convinced that we will start to see more
of these tools popping up and trying to break down creative work into
“fragments” and automatisation. Shape Grammers, of course, is an example of this, and poses this very question: how can generative design create something less generic?
One
step towards answering this can rest in the fact that some might see a
difference between an artist and designer, whereby the roles are
distinctively laid apart from each other. “This might be healthy in an
educational sense, however it irritated me sometimes [at university]. I
like the meaningless and the excessive.” With the educational system’s
reminder for creating work with meaning, Jannis felt that his role as a
designer wasn’t meant to follow any “poetic motivations”. He adds: “so I
decided to hide them behind technical stuff. Maybe I even forgot them
there, but in hindsight they made me make this book.”
Having spent more time working on paper than on the screen, the outcome of Shape Grammars
is highly engineered to make the computer do all of the work. “Unlike
working with humans, there is no room for vague interpretation,” he
explains. “You have to be crystal clear about everything or nothing will
happen. But once you can formulate the rules of a system, you can
automate the production.” For this publication specifically, Jannis has
devised and written 14 small-scale programmes.
Primitive, concrete
and built to be transformed, the shapes found within this book’s hefty
pages are indeed born out of a digital world. So is this perhaps a small
glimpse into the future and what is yet to come? Is this the end of
originality and conscious thought? Either way, the result of Jannis’
study is here to be used and appreciated for their forms. “Some of them
are pretty much ready to use as logos, pictograms or letterforms that
don’t care about legibility,” he concludes, “but I think there is more
potential in using them as a source of inspiration.”
Ayla
was an editorial assistant back in June 2017 and continued to work with
us on a freelance basis. In November 2019 she joined the team again,
working with us as a Staff Writer on Mondays and Tuesdays. She's
contactable on aa@itsnicethat.com.
Dédoublement de la disparition, apocalypse
de l’intertextualité. Avec son habituel et extraordinaire talent,
Enrique Vila-Matas poursuit son interrogation sur ce qu’est être un
auteur en signant un livre, bourré de références, dont il n’est jamais
vraiment l’auteur. Cette brume insensée se révèle une très fine
réflexion sur la citation, sur le mythe des écrivains disparus et sur
l’effacement à l’œuvre chez tout écrivain. Un grand et drôle roman sur
tous les discours qui, au bord de l’abîme, nous portent.
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Tous
les ans, au seuil de la même saison, je m’abandonne à la lecture d’un
des romans d’Enrique Vila-Matas. Après la pratique du journal dans le
parfait Le mal de Montano, à la suite de l’interrogation d’un art vécu dans l’impressionnant Impression de Kassel, après les vertiges de Mac et son contretemps,Cette brume insensée
est totalement raccord, comprendre en léger décalage comme l’est la
poursuite de la cohérence, avec les rieuses obsessions de ce grand
auteur catalan. Immense plaisir, donc, de retrouver la plume,
intelligente et moqueuse, d’Enrique Vila-Matas avec un rien de retard
puisque la parution de Cette brume insensée est prévue pour la
rentrée de septembre. La première très bonne surprise de cette période
de publication intense vient donc de ce roman sur le roman, cet
exorcisme ironique de la posture d’auteur, façon « d’habiter uniquement
dans le négatif de sa fabuleuse image d’auteur. » Dans ce roman de
l’ombre, du rêve et du seuil du cataclysme (une partie de l’action se
passe durant les journées de revendications d’indépendance de la
Catalogne), Enrique Vila-Matas se joue de la reconnaissance, fait de
l’auteur une figure qui se cache et se dédouble. Tout son talent est de
donner chair, détails et sentiment à ce qui ne pourrait être qu’un «
essai-divagation », le « Club des narrateurs non fiables, voire
perturbés. »
La grande prose ne tente-t-elle pas d’aggraver la sensation d’enfermement,
de solitude et de mort et cette impression que la vie est comme une
phrase incomplète qui à la longue n’est pas à la hauteur de ce que nous
espérions.
Simon Schneider, le narrateur (à moins
qu’il ne soit le personnage d’un auteur masqué) est pourvoyeur officiel
de citations, archivistes monomaniaque d’une réalité qui semble
pleinement vécue seulement par autrui. C’est tout au moins ce qu’il
essaie de se faire croire. Il est aussi (la simultanéité des réalités
contradictoires de ce que nous sommes, que la fiction donne à voir étant
l’objet de ce roman) le ghostwriter officieux de son frère –
double détesté autant qu’admiré – devenu écrivain fantôme, grand disparu
et auteur d’une œuvre apte à toujours parler d’autre chose. Les romans
d’Enrique Vila-Matas sont, toujours, l’exploration vécue d’un mythe. Ici
se serait (puisque la part d’incertitude est la reconnaissance de la
littérature) la part pynchonesque de chaque roman. Cette brume insensée n’est
pas une autopsie du mythe de Thomas Pynchon (cet immense auteur disparu
des écrans dont on aura la substance en lisant le roman de l’un de ses
traducteurs : La dissipation)
mais bel et bien un ironique exercice d’admiration. À moins que ce ne
soit la traduction d’un exercice de dévotion. Simon est, joli métier pas
tout à fait inventé, traducteur préalable : il dégrossit le travail que
de prestigieux traducteurs pourront ensuite signer. La question
centrale de ce grand roman serait alors la reconnaissance de
l’influence. Vila-Matas déjoue cette question journalistique : quels
auteurs l’influence en s’appropriant leur propos, en transformant la
parole d’autrui en meilleur commentaire possible de ce qui ne nous
appartient jamais tout à fait. Donnons un exemple pour être un peu plus
clair. Le frère de Simon, devenu le Grand Bros, ne commente sa
production romanesque que par paraphrase, par citations possiblement
empruntées à son frère. Ainsi, il emprunte cette phrase si décisive à Saul Bellow : la
grande lutte de l’humanité se résumerait « à recruter autrui pour
l’attirer vers notre version du réel. » La littérature, cependant,
continuerait à être un pas de côté, une affirmation instable et
divergente.
il n’existe pas non plus d’essence
de la littérature car, précisément, tout texte consiste à échapper à
toute détermination essentielle, à toute affirmation lui donnant
stabilité ou réalité.
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«
Pour moi, vivre c’est construire des fictions », « Si ce n’est pas moi,
qui pouvait être cet homme ?» sont les deux affirmations de ce roman
dont l’enjeu reste, comme dans Le mal de Montanoou Impression de Kassel, de
vivre ce que l’on affirme, de trouver une manière de contourner, de
doubler, « la grande difficulté à léguer et à raconter et, par
conséquent, à parvenir à connaître n’importe quelle réalité. » La
littérature où le point des confins où réel et fiction s’amalgament ou,
comme le dit cet écrivain exemplaire dont l’ombre hante tous les récits
de l’auteur, chercher à « raconter l’histoire secrète d’un doute. »
Le plus étonnant dans ce roman est de
parvenir à détacher de cet arrière-monde brumeux, très intellectuel sans
doute, un véritable récit. Inventer une reconnaissance passe peut-être
par un écart à l’influence ; écrire serait alors assumé un héritage sans
partage. Ou pour le dire autrement, avec plus d’ironie : « écrire était
jusqu’à un certain point se justifier sans que personne le demande et,
qu’au fond, une justification de ce genre était on ne peut plus comique.
» Exercice d’admiration et exorcisme, s’inscrire dans un patrimoine
s’avère, pour Vila-Matas, une manière de s’en moquer. Inventer, pour
ainsi dire, une doublure des apories textuelles dans laquelle une
certaine littérature des années 1980-90 s’est laissé enfermer. Le Grand
Bros, lui aussi une caricature, poursuit son écriture déchiré entre le
désir de ne pas être un écrivain et celui du renoncement. Intransitive
antienne. Tout lecteur, souligne le narrateur, serait alors en droit de
se demander : et alors ? Alors, persiste la brume insensée de la
politique. Le grand écrivain, planqué au pays de la disparition,
aux États-Unis, revient réclamé l’héritage, inexistant ou en ruine, de
son père en pleine manifestation pour l’indépendance catalane.
Vila-Matas en fait une autre couche de discours, une épaisseur
d’incompréhension qui noie le narrateur. C’est précisément par ces
contrastes que le personnage apparaît dans toute sa réalité sensible.
Fils perdu dans un roman familial moqueur, il devient, dans une jolie
brume de rêve et de stream of conscienness un personnage en
quête de son auteur, séparé de lui-même par ses douleurs et
l’éloignement qu’elles provoquent. Quand il croise son frère pour sa
première apparition (le terme évoque volontairement le roman de fantôme,
tant l’auteur transforme son texte en revenants et hantises les
animant), celui-ci, mi-sérieux, veut raconter la vie d’un type
ordinaire, une âme simple, dont il mettrait en scène la mort et non la
disparition qui en est une manifestation d’exorcisme (rejouer ce que
l’on craint aurait pour nom roman). Une non-fiction qui ne croirait plus
« copier le réel alors qu’en réalité, elle se contente de copier la
copie d’une copie d’une copie. » De qui sommes-nous la copie, à qui
n’acceptons-nous pas de ressembler ? La haine fraternelle, lien
indéfectible, en est la parfaite incarnation. Plutôt que de placer
l’auteur dans sa solitude, face au risque de n’être plus, selon le mot
de Borges, que des choses du passé, Enrique Vila-Matas met en
scène l’issue de la part pynchonesque, l’invention la plus débridée et
la plus paranoïaque qui devrait présider au roman. Thomas Pynchon aurait
disparu vraiment, serait devenu un auteur, tant il permettrait aux
auteurs de « mener à terme une seconde et plus profonde disparition en
se camouflant dans l’écriture d’un autre écrivain invisible se cachant
dans l’écriture de Pynchon. » La communauté inavouable, pour paraphraser
Blanchot,
celle où un écrivain parle en ne s’appartenant plus trouve ici une
image moqueuse. Thomas Pynchon serait devenu le prête-nom de tous les
écrivains qui souhaiterait disparaître. Le frère de Simon prétend ainsi
être le véritable auteur de Inherent Vice. La très belle brume
insensée devient celle où l’auteur se cache, devient ses personnages,
les citations qui les animent, les mots qu’ils ne parviennent pas à
trouver. Roman d’une rare intelligence, Cette brume insensée vaut pour sa force de proposition, fait de vous une doublure qui doit s’inventer une vie romanesque.
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Un grand merci aux éditions Acte Sud pour l’envoi de cet immense roman à paraître le 20 août.
Cette brume insensée (trad André Gabastou, 246 pages, 21euros 80)
Aloïse
Corbaz, “Materdolorosa” (1922), graphite, ink, and colored pencil on
card stock, 3.7 x 5.6 inches (photo by Sarah Baehler, Atelier de
numérisation, Ville de Lausanne, courtesy Collection de l’Art Brut,
Lausanne)GENEVA — Chicken scratch. Senseless doodles. Back-of-the-envelope scribbles. Illegible jottings of all kinds.
Ever
since prehistoric cave dwellers first used mineral pigments to craft
images of their hands and rudimentary pictographs on their interior
walls, humans have been compelled to make and leave their marks.
If
the phenomenon of spoken and written language, with its capacity for
telling stories and conveying complex ideas, distinguishes humans from
other animals, then what are we to make of writing systems that are
unrelated to any known language and that, even to informed specialists,
make no sense at all? Do such transcribed “tongues” exist? Hélène
Smith (Catherine Élise Müller), “Alphabet” (date unknown), facsimile,
handwritten notes on paper (photo by and courtesy of Bibliothèque de
Genève)They do, and, looking back over the
broad span of art history, such fascinating modes of writing — or,
perhaps more accurately, “writing” — have often been the invention of
those imaginative autodidacts whose hard-to-classify creations have been
recognized as art brut or outsider art. This is not to say that
formally trained artists have not also conjured up unique “writing”
systems — what linguists and graphic designers often refer to as
“visible language” — as essential elements of their work.
Such so-called imaginary language is the subject of Scrivere Disegnando,
an exhibition of more than 300 works produced by 93 trained and
self-taught artists, which is on view through August 23, 2020, at the
Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in Geneva, Switzerland.
Co-curated
by Andrea Bellini, the director of the art center, and by Sarah
Lombardi, the director of the Collection de l’Art Brut (CAB), a museum
in the nearby city of Lausanne, Scrivere Disegnando (translated
by its organizers, from Italian, as “Writing by Drawing”) is the
first-ever exhibition produced collaboratively by these two
institutions. It brings together works that Bellini and his colleagues
borrowed from various collections of modern and contemporary art, along
with many loans that have rarely been exhibited before from the CAB,
which holds the largest collection of art brut and outsider art in the world. Scrivere Disegnando
opened earlier this year but was forced to close temporarily due to the
coronavirus pandemic. It is one of those exhibitions whose accompanying
catalogue serves not only as a record of its themes and content, but
also expands upon them, becoming a valuable reference in its own right.
Well-illustrated,
packed with information about the lives and ideas of the artists whose
works are on display in the show, and featuring essays by Bellini,
Lombardi, the Swiss art historian Michel Thévoz (who was also the
founding director of the Collection de l’Art Brut), and other
contributors, Scrivere Disegnandohas been published in separate French and English editions. Irma
Blank, “Eigenschriften, Spazio 52” (1970), pastel on paper, 27.56 x
19.69 inches (photo by Dario Lasagni, image courtesy the artist and
P420, Bologna)In his essay, Bellini points out that Scrivere Disegnando
is neither another exhibition on the theme of blending texts and images
in works of contemporary or outsider art, nor one that looks at the
nature of writing per se. Instead, it intends to look at writing’s
“shadow side,” that is, “writing that has abandoned its communicative
function and moved into the realm of the illegible and unspeakable.”
Imaginary languages — or, more precisely, the representations of
such languages — created by artists are, to use one of the catalogue’s
buzzwords, “asemic”; they neither possess nor convey any semantic value.
They might appear to be made up of “letters” or character strokes,
“words,” and “sentences,” but whatever visible forms they might take,
they are inherently without meaning, except, perhaps, to their makers.
Indeed,
by e-mail, Lombardi observed, “Some of these artists invented imaginary
languages and alphabets made up of signs and symbols that are unknown
to us; however, they do have a sense or a meaning for their creators.”
Although,
she noted, “a certain mystery and strangeness” characterizes these
artists’ works, she feels that their imaginary languages are marked by
“their own logic” and therefore sometimes appear to be “based on a
system that renders them legible” — readable, that is, in ways that
demand some imaginative thinking from viewers.
Take, for example,
the creations of Catherine Élise Müller (1861-1929), a Swiss woman based
in Geneva who, as a spiritualist medium, became known as “Hélène
Smith.” In 1891, she attended her first séance, experienced
hallucinations, and discovered her paranormal ability.
Between
1895 and 1900, Théodore Flournoy, a psychology professor at the
University of Geneva, observed Smith’s automatic writing, trances, and
claims about channeling the spirit of Marie Antoinette and being
psychically transported to Mars. Smith “wrote” in hitherto unknown
languages, including, she said, those of Mars and Uranus. Scrivere Disegnando features
her drawings from her psychic voyages and her Martian texts, which
Flournoy reproduced in a book he wrote about Smith, which was published
in 1900. Justine
Python, “Untitled (registered letter dated December 8, 1932)” (1932),
ink on paper, 8.27 x 10.63 inches (photo by Atelier de numérisation,
Ville de Lausanne, image courtesy Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne)Lombardi notes in her catalogue essay that Scrivere Disegnando,
the exhibition as well as the book, pay close attention to the
creations of women, especially those whose works are now classified as art brut
and who often “attribute[d] magical or spiritual powers to drawing and
writing.” Among them: Smith, Laure Pigeon, Jeanne Tripier, and Jane
Ruffié, to name a few. Scrivere Disegnando cites the well-known Swiss art brut
creator Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964), who is best known for colorful
fantasy images of the court of Wilhelm II, the last German emperor.
Here, though, from the Collection de l’Art Brut’s vault comes
“Materdolorosa” (1922), an extraordinary ink-on-paper writing-drawing
that would feel right at home alongside the experiments in automatism by
the Surrealists or certain American modernists on the road to
full-blown Abstract Expressionism. Scrivere Disegnando also examines drawings made by the German artist Irma Blank (born 1934 and based in Italy). Blank is known for her Eigenschriften
(1968-72), a series of drawings whose title means “unique scripts” or
“private scripts” and consists of sheets covered with dense lines of
scrawl without any discernible meaning. The gesture of their making is their elusive semantic value.
In the 1970s, after Blank moved with her husband to Sicily, where she did not speak the language, she produced her Trascrizioni (“Transcripts,”
1973-79), filling the pages of books and newspapers with marks
obliterating their printed texts. Joana P. R. Neves, a London-based
curator, writes in Scrivere Disegnando that, in these later
works, Blank “would push meaning away.” By making them, the artist
herself said, she could “forget the world.”
There is more here,
including works by the Italian modernist Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994),
who moved on from Arte Povera to chart a personal, experimental path.
Among other works, he made copy-drawings of Japanese kanji on folded sheets of paper that opened up to explode and render meaningless his written characters. Maria
Lai, “Untitled (minuscule stitched book)” (1979), fabric and stitching,
2.76 x 2.36 inches (photo by Giorgio Benni, image courtesy Collezione
Giuseppe Garrera, Rome)Maria Lai (1919-2013),
who came from Sardinia, studied art in Rome and Venice but later
withdrew from the art world, only to return in the 1960s with
unconventional works made from rope, straw, twine, and even bread. Her
“books” made with fabric and lines of “writing” sewn into their “pages”
hauntingly subvert the look of written language.
Like Blank’s Eigenschriften,
the peculiar letter-drawings of Justine Python, a Swiss woman who was
born in 1879 and whose death date is unknown, cover sheets of paper with
densely packed lines of handwriting. They recall the horror vacui,
or fear of empty spaces, that characterized the artistic creations of
psychotic patients in European psychiatric hospitals, which pioneering
researchers examined and attempted to analyze roughly a century ago.
Python,
who came from a farming family, felt perennially persecuted, issued
stinging recriminations against would-be enemies, and was sent to an
asylum. Her letter-drawings, addressed to Fribourg’s
“publicprosecutorbossLawyer,” are oddly elegant — and impossible to
read. Scrivere Disegnando examines much more; each artist’s
invented language or writing system evokes its own world or provides an
unusual bridge to the known world.
By e-mail, Bellini told me,
“Our exhibition expresses a paradox: it’s about writing but, in the end,
it offers very little to read. To the contrary, it offers a universe to
examine, in which one is required to participate with one’s intellect
and emotion.” He also noted, “If we look at the history of writing, it
has very often been used to hide meaning rather than to make meaning
explicit.”
Buried in the various essays in Scrivere Disegnando,
a remark by the artist Irma Blank, who is now in her 80s, unwittingly
sticks a thumb in Gustave Flaubert’s eye and summarizes the nature and
spirit of imaginary language and impenetrable writing systems like her
own. “[T]here is no such thing as the right word,” she observed.
And that, as an old American idiom has it, is all she wrote. Scrivere Disegnando
continues at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (Rue des
Vieux-Grenadiers 10, Geneva, Switzerland) through August 23. The
exhibition is curated by Andrea Bellini and Sarah Lombardi. Its accompanying catalogue, Scrivere Disegnando,
has been published in separate French and English editions by Skira
Editore, in collaboration with the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and
the Collection de l’Art Brut.
