11 September 2021

Codex Sonora Printed

 

The whole process of inking prints and putting them up for sale to ultimately end up in a book is like releasing movie trailers until the movie comes out; only in my case, it was six years of trailers, including a pandemic. There's an elegance to this process that includes a pace keeping me interested and always working toward a final product.

The text is off-putting to some who either discount the whole book as nonsense or are discouraged by not reading it immediately. The other group finds an enchanting mystery in the document and even focuses enough to read it right away. It's funny to me that people are brutally honest about their opinion of something in book form. Still, if presented with something indecipherable in an art gallery, they walk away humbled, thinking they lack the sophistication or expertise. A psychological principle at work here about reactions to new things? I lack the sophistication or expertise to explain that principle!

I could create text that looks like a written language to suggest cipher code to be cracked (or not), but I do have thoughts about each piece while I build each piece. Text usually comes in list form derived from my observations and research I put into the subjects. The font I chose is of my creation called Quotasoon. I'm not sure if you would call this writing poetry or prose comprised of list-like terms or phrase snippets pulled from science writing that formed my understanding of the subject or phrases that encapsulate the subject's feeling and place. Maybe this is something akin to what an AI would do if using object-oriented philosophy. I read it off internally, as you might read:

"...doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One..."

― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch