Before Words #3 (letterspaces of the Armenian alphabet), 2004
Projection, stone wall, darkness
Variable dimensions
In a cognitive sense we recognise words because of our ability to interpret the audio and visual space they inhabit. Like musical notation letters represent sounds. The space between letters on a page moulds the letters - a perceptual act that prefigures words and meaning. In a continuing series I have chosen to isolate the spaces between letters of alphabets. The series began in 1994 with the English and Georgian alphabets and continued last year at the Gyumri Biennale, Armenia. The context for working with the Armenian alphabet was the biennale focus celebrating 1600 years of Mesrop Mashtots' alphabet. The spaces in between letters of the alphabet stand as inverted forms once the letters are removed. Deprived of their original intention they become open to different interpretations based purely on the way they look as characters and encourage an imaginative reinterpretation. Physicist Michael Joyce, on seeing letterspaces projected on to a stone wall in the basement caves at Artcore, Paris, compared the forms to hieroglyphs and wondered if the wall itself was a projected image.
Image 1. (10 -11) ZH_I - I_L shows the tenth letterspace changing to the 11th letterspace.
Artform: Film and video
