What does the intangible look like?
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What does the intangible look like? -
On system making
“Standing at the shore, I can feel the movement in my body. The push and pull, a steady rythmn, relentless in its monotony.”
(Companion text to I am somewhat afraid of the water. 2024)
These experiments are all about movement. In trying to capture an abstract feeling onto a piece of paper, I am always left with describing the bodily feeling as a movement. Thus the arrow becomes an important part in this visual system.
The project was illustrated using monotype, a technique in which the illustration is accomplished by placing a sheet of paper on an inked up glass plate and drawing on the backside. Each point of contact of the paper with the inked plate cleaves its marks, thus creating a textured look next to the imprinted lines. This techniques allows for experimentation and chance, whilst accentuating the haptics of the paper and thus creating a more gestural result than a simple line drawing would.
So how does one go about systematising the emotional?
Once again this project was born out of the process. I started out trying to describe one specific Island in the Oslo fjord. I tried to understand how the current moved around this immovable object, how the wind would affect the ripples on the water’s surface and how being on the lee side would affect all of these factors. Having been interested in the illustration of movement and forces pushing against each other in previous projects, I easily fell into the habit of using the symbols and markers which I had developed before.
“My body grows limp, looses all purpose and direction. The wind becomes its own mirror, moving me along, back and forth and back again. There is this heavyness to my bones, a pull that makes me nearly trip headfirst into the waves.”
(Companion text to I am somewhat afraid of the water. 2024)
Turn-around of the finished publication. Hand-bound. 2024.