Another Kind of Language

Multimedia Interactive Installation Interrogating the Surface-Atkinson Gallery- Millfield-UK 2000- 1Interrogating the Surface-Millbank- London-UK 2002- Differentia-PM Gallery & House-London-UK 2002
Web Version

With this piece I intent to analyse communicative systems produced in the area of ‘in- between’ 'Semantic Text, Image Text and Phonetic Text' using digital technology.

It works as a web piece or as an interactive installation: three computers projecting the images on to the same screen in order to get a multi-layered image at the same time as a multi-layered soundscape of phonetic compositions. By rolling the mouse over, the textual surface appears and disappears, revealing the text-image and sound. The user can go from one of the pieces to the others and interact with other users.

Each one of the pieces is formed by the ‘meaningless’ phonetic sounds of three different languages: English, Mandarin and Arabic. When choosing the languages, as well as the sounds, I was interested in the differences of their visual element, reading patterns (right to left, left to right, top to bottom) and linear and non-linear qualities. Notions analysed in Visual Poetry, and recently in Digital Poetry/Art.
The sounds were created by speakers of English, Arabic and Mandarin languages, singing and pronouncing the combination of sound used in these linguistic systems