here/there

It is really interesting working on this project for Lucy’s class, and seeing how it really relates to the previous mirror project I completed. The first project utilized mirrors as tools for framing the landscape. Mirrors are interesting points of transition between inside and outside, and between public and private.

This one uses cutout letterforms—or rather the negative space left behind after the cutout letters have been removed. The counterforms become windows for framing the outside world. The project becomes an interesting site installation, suing a site I am familiar with and using simple two dimensional objects to frame and transform the views out the window. These letter forms a kit of parts comprised of plastic sheets and can be moved around to different windows, constructing different words: here, there, and thru.

I am putting them up right now as test, and it is the middle of the night. I am taping up these digital typeface letters, and people from the opposite building can see me. I did not imagine that using my apartment as a site would be so risky, but it really transforms the space and it makes me look at the same room I have been living in for two years differently. I am seeing new things out the window. I am seeing new relationships with the building across. As an additive object, it really transformed my perception of how I experience the space. I am focusing the view you can see out the letter forms itself and block the rest of it. I am using several windows around my apartment, which are all grid like and point in different directions. It allows me to insert these moveable canvases of different letters. The way my apartment is layered out, the configuration, the letter forms have a planar quality. Some are more in front, in the living room, and some are more in the back if they are in the kitchen. They have a planar dimensionality thought they are flat letter forms. I have been really interested as an additive object in the simplest way can transform the space, using a 2D material. The material itself subtly shifts perceptions. The special plastic blurs image on the other side, blurring them more the farther away they get.

I put the same letter forms in the hallway. In this public sphere, the material installation becomes a lens for others to view the outside world. When walking up their everyday staircase, people are going to see it from both directions. It will be in the corridor as you walk though and see them from both directions. Using this building, I understand this site really well but I am also interpreting it through the work I am doing. It goes back to that story by Baudilleir who was re looking at his bedroom and really experiencing it again, here/there helps me do that for my apartment.