Sunday, February 15, 2009

TyPE IV: My Exploration- DEAD

I have decided to chose one word to experiment with that I felt carries a mixture of meanings and connotations with it.

The word "dead" typically means deprived of life or no longer alive, but what about when the word is used in a phrase or to describe something that is not actually dead. For instance, when someone or something is lacking the power to move, feel, or respond, they can be described as "dead." For example, I am "dead" tired but I am not ready to be buried. The word can be used in many instances, such as a dead battery, dead matter, dead coals, dead soil, a dead law, a dead issue, brain dead, dead air, a dead volcano, a dead language, a dead party, a dead tennis ball, the phone went dead, dead ball, dead water, brought to a dead stop, a dead silence, etc.

....So the word "dead" applies literally to what is deprived of vital force but is used figuratively of anything that has lost any attribute (as energy, activity, radiance) suggesting life.

I played around with computer typefaces that had unique character and ornamentation. The word dead looks completely different when typed in Garamond or Futura compared to being typed in Zapfino. I wanted to make the word look pretty and graceful to contrast the meaning of the word. I didnt want to use a stiff, straight typeface while projecting the word upon different surfaces because the point of my exploration is to see how highly ornamented typography can bring meaning to projected type in a 3D space. I still don't think I have brought enough conceptual execution to the table yet, but I'm still trying to figure out better objects that I can project on that would inject more meaning into the word "dead."

Some ideas of surfaces I'm going to project the word "dead" on are:
-still water (pond, lake, bathtub, etc.)
-car engine (pop the hood of my car and project on the engine)
-graveyard (tombstone, hearse, etc.)
-trees, plants, and dirt
-I'm stumped! HELP!!!


Here are some of my recent indoor projections that I documented to show what I have been working on so far.













1 comment:

Cassie said...

towards the bottom of this page they have some really nice organic type in the environment. Herbert Baglione