April 11, 2024 By Nicholas Chen
THE CHALLENGE.
This project as part of my graduating piece in my final year of the art program was to create a text-based art piece. The challenge for this was to create something that would go into the graduating exhibit or design a piece that used creativity in order to include text and still make it look nice. It could use letters, symbols, numbers and anything that was text. When creating this piece, I had to take into account the length, materials, a site specific location and the time it would take.
RESEARCH.
Throughout the entire year, my projects have mainly surrounded computers and numbers. The art that I was making involved small intricate details that would result in a cool pattern or formation of circles and lines that looked nice from afar. I knew this piece was going to be a part of my graduating exhibit so that was when I came up with the idea to do something related to coding.
INSPIRATION.
Here is the inspiration for this text piece.
PROCESS.
Ever since a project I did with receipt roll paper, I have been to eager to use the material again in future works. I sketched out a few ideas and then immediately decided I was going to create a piece that involved a receipt roll. After finalizing my idea, I knew I was going to hand write two metres of code onto a strip of receipt roll that would eventually go on to the wall of our school's wavy gallery.
SKETCHES.
Below are a few preliminary ideas for my text piece.
CONCEPT.
The idea I finally came up with was creating this art piece was to explore the mundanity of everyday conversations through handwritten code on receipt roll paper rolling out of my mouth onto the dinner table.
MATERIALS.
Pen
Receipt Roll Paper
Marker
Ruler
CHALLENGES.
When I first began creating the piece and handwriting each line of code from my computer, I ran into a few issues. The first issue I had was with the alignment of the lines of code not being horizontally straight due to me handwriting it. I had trouble trying to copy down each line without keeping it straight. Another issue I constantly ran into was the pen ink always leaking onto the receipt roll which causes weird circles to pop up due to it being very thin.
I approached the first issue by drawing horizontal and vertical lines across the receipt roll with a thick grey marker that would allow the text to pop out as well as have a clear frame for when I am writing the code onto the paper so I don't mess up the alignment. For the second issue, I started relying less on my ruler and more on the framing from the vertical and horizontal lines made by the marker. This allowed me to create more defined lines of code that were more clear to see.
SITE SPECIFIC LOCATION.
For this piece we were required to place it in a location that would reflect some type of meaning and I chose to have it rolling out my mouth in the dinner table to show that conversations I have with people are generally boring and lengthy.
FINAL RESULT + REFLECTION.
Overall, the process of creating this text-based art piece presented its challenges, but it was ultimately a rewarding experience. Despite the initial difficulties with alignment and ink leakage, I found creative solutions to address these issues and ensure the final result met my vision. Placing the piece in a site-specific location, such as rolling out of my mouth onto the dinner table, added depth to the concept and reinforced the intended message about the mundane nature of everyday conversations. In the end, I was pleased with the outcome of the project and the opportunity to explore the intersection of creativity and text-based art.
Comments