From January 19-26th, I was fortunate enough to have been invited and involved in the Alys Foundation’s Visiting Artist Series.
The week long residency was organized by the curator of Digital Graffiti, Brett Phares, and brought together three of the award-winning artists from DG2015. This included Yandell Walton, Sean Capone, and myself.
We were flown out to the town of Alys Beach, Florida, where the festival takes place in May, as a way to create more site-specific works that highlight the unique architecture that makes the space, almost eery in its white-washed perfection, an ideal for any kind of projection-based exhibition.
I had told Brett that I was working on some digital works that were aimed at exploring the evolution of language (specifically visual communication systems) from the first cave paintings till now.
My previous research pointed to the cyclical nature of the image as a significant form of expression, from the ancient aesthetics of Hieroglyphics to the more recent validation of Emojis as alphabet.
The facade I decided to go with has a large, pentagonal shape. Seeing that the work was leaning towards being a massive, modernized Rosetta stone 2.0, I decided that this chiseled, angular surface was closest to what the archaic rock would look like if it were to be redesigned in the 21st century.
There was a great deal of experimentation, and the nights were dedicated to scaling, measuring, and getting all the information we needed about the sites, so that when our stay was done, we would have no problem finishing the final versions of our works independently.
So while these images are not entirely representative of the final product, they do show the process, the places, and the ideas that are being explored.
I am now working on completing my inventory of all the communication systems that have been used from 196 BC till now. After all of these symbols have been collected, I will focus on how to combine them all to create a public message that is quick, comprehensible, historical, and intriguing.
