Beyond Words

This piece was created using written notes taken during the VCA residency classes.

In preparation for the residency I made some notebooks from recycled paper. After some time I noticed that the pages themselves were becoming interesting. Apart from my written notes the sheets also included doodles I had made during the sessions, printed materials such as texts, barcodes and ai outputs, and marks from spilling water. I thought that by using these pages I could create an ideal final artwork, a way to combine the pieces of knowledge and experience I had gained into one symbolic whole.

I scanned the notes into my computer, began composing the layers in the painting program Krita and went on to work on them digitally. At one point my intention was to create a kind of landscape from the words and shapes. After creating a 2d piece I thought it would be interesting to be able to show the different layers, as they were each interesting in their own way. Hence I made use of another tool we were introduced to during the residency, transforming the piece into a 3d model using Blender. In this way the viewer is able to become part of the work in a virtual space by walking through it and looking inside at all the layers.

The piece becomes a kind of digital artifact symbolising the sharing of knowledge in this new web 3 world. It is a homage to VCA and all they are doing to educate and inspire artists.