I Shall Create
As I Speak
type design, video, installation
RISD/Hyundai Research Collaborative
This project combines type design, video and installation to address humanity’s, and my own personal, attempt to communicate with nature. In our quest to extract meaning out of the world surrounding us, we seek patterns, structures, symbols. On one hand, this mode of conversation may be deceptive—in imposing our inner world onto the natural world, we run the risk of misunderstanding it. On the other hand, this process is inherent to the human condition. It’s simply who we are; as humans, our communication is directly connected to self-expression, to the act of creation. We create language, we tell stories.
Abracadabra, translated from Aramaic and Classical Hebrew, quite literally means I shall create as I speak.
How do we move through the world? What does it mean to understand nature? To communicate with it? How do we edge closer to this possible/impossible goal, just outside of reach? And what do we learn, as a people and as individuals, from this never-ending—never truly succeeding yet never truly failing—process?
Element Library Based on macro photography and microscopy studies of the natural landscape, I designed a library of foundational elements from the domains of earth, air and water. I further used this library to form two parallel narratives:
Alphabet The attempt to understand, to make meaning. Letterforms can be seen as the molecular foundations of human communication, whether written or verbal—I designed an organic, living/dead typeface.
Landscape Video The embrace of non-understanding and the psychological, emotional and spiritual experience of simply being in nature. Here, I used the same elements to construct a speculative digital landscape, and created a video showcasing a process of slow, atmospheric exploration through it.
The camera glides, slowly. The elements, which in the typeface function as parts of a modular system, are now dispersed, and their combined effect is transitory, dependent on our ever-shifting point of view. As they fade in and out of focus, they assume the appearance of trees, lakes, hills, and sometimes nothing at all. Form is continually gained and lost as we move ever forward, ever inward.
Installation These two narratives come together to comprise an installation, projected on parallel semitransparent surfaces. That way, the viewer can watch the interaction emerging from the overlay of the letterforms onto the landscape, or step in-between to fully immerse themselves in the unmediated terrain.
