AD HUC 1991Eduardo Kac
White light transmission computer generated stereogram.
AMALGAM 1990
Eduardo Kac
silver halide white light reflection hologram.
While researching about language art and the materiality of language I discovered language art and the immateriality of language and came to realise that in fact this relationship of the material and immaterial is what I am really interested in.
I was reading about the Holopoetry of Eduardo Kac and decided that I had to see a holopoem myself to understand what he was writing about .I found Ad Huc one of his Holopems in Jonathan Ross's Hologram Collection. He was more than helpful in inviting me to see his collection and showing me more relevant examples like Amalgam which he let me take pictures of (The picture of Ad Huc is one of Jonathan Ross's own).
With these examples here what interests me is that the letters are not really there. With them being holograms you have to look somewhere between yourself and the surface of the hologram to see it and what you see depends on the light and your point of view. The letters are like ghosts. Especially in Amalgalm, the letters seem to have a texture which plays even more with our perception.
For me this creates a loop of the whole notion of concept, language, communication and the written word. First we have abstract concepts that are in our minds (in mentalese as Steven Pinker refers to it), then with language we can make these concepts audible so that we can communicate them with others. The written word in turn makes spoken language visual. By it being printed or written on paper it starts becoming a tangible thing, it starts becoming a material. In letterpress (relief printing) you can touch the relief of the letters that can be printed, with three dimensional type you can even hold the letters in your hands and feel the curves.
Digital technology is now part of our every day lives, even though I haven't researched this particular thing, I am pretty sure that most of the written material we come in contact with on a daily basis is digital, on our computer screens and on mobile phones etc. Does this in any way change our relationship with written language, the process of reading and the process of writing?
What works like Amalgam highlight for me, is how the written word itself which is the most material form of language has entered back into a space of abstraction.
