#found materials
Moffat Takadiwa. Re-Reading Korekore, 2022.
found plastic computer keys, Shona dictionary clippings, & calculator buttons
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Artist book ‘Grafia Callada/Hushed Writing’
Artist book ‘Grafia Callada/Hushed Writing’
This isn’t the post I intended for today, which I’m still writing. Instead, here is a YouTube video about a wonderful artist book I came across only this week. It is by Pepe Gimeno and is described as “a book about writing without a single word.” Watch the video, and you will see how apt that description is.
NINE INCH NAILS - THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
GRAPHIC DESIGN - IDEAS DEVELOPMENT
TRACK 11: ERASER
Following the lucid interval of ‘A Warm Place’, our protagonist returns to a desperate fit of violent rage, however this time it is directed towards himself.
Upon the realisation that he has become the very thing he set out to destroy, he knows that he too must now be destroyed. However, he is not yet ready or able to do it himself. He pleads for another to end his torment.
In developing ideas for ‘Eraser’, I wanted to use a set of passport photos I had taken a few years back and had lying around. I ended up getting these photo’s retaken as, admittedly, I thought I looked very ‘suspect’ in them for a passport. The beard and long hair just screamed “terrorist” to me, more so in a Ted Kaczynski way than anything else. It was probably a ridiculously paranoid train of thought, but as an American citizen living abroad, I just didn’t want the potential hassle going through customs for the next 10 years, so I went home and shaved to have them retaken.
I wanted to do a different “erased” version of each image, one where my eyes were burnt out, one where they were scratched out, one where they were covered in ink and then one where I used bleach.
Once I achieved this literal erased effect, I wanted to tie in some deeper symbolism. I thought of how the protagonist was desperate to attain some sort of meaning in the absence of God in his life, but had failed in this regard and now wished to sacrifice himself for a greater good.
Going back to the “terrorist” connotation I had attached to the passport photos, I dwelled on the idea of a “terrorist” and how that label is often given to someone by those of opposing ideologies. From the IRA to ISIS, one person’s terrorist is often another’s freedom fighter, thus making an objective definition of a terrorist very difficult to pinpoint.
I took some religious imagery into the frame using a print of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. I believe it is a work by Leonardo Da Vinci. I then took some random electronic pieces I had found around the same time as the computer screen I had used for ‘The Becoming’ and positioned them as a frame around my passport images. I wanted to get an effect that was somewhere between a home-made bomb and a memorial shrine to a deceased person. The flowers were added for texture, but also to reinforce the memorial element as well as contrast with the electronic imagery.
I was happy with the way it was looking, but wanted to bring the images into Photoshop and see what could be done with them.
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