BECOMING
2022
LED tubes, aluminum, acrylic, PETG, bespoke electronics & software
LED tubes, aluminum, acrylic, PETG, bespoke electronics & software
Becoming is the latest light installation in a body of work imagining alternative typographic histories by constructing unconventional language display technologies. Here, freed from structural conventions pressed by the dominance of Latin scripts, we celebrate the formal potential of the Arabic language.
Bright, bold, blinking verbs cycle through this hundred-segment display. These formalisms work heritage into the future, creating a catalyst toward alternative realities of becoming. These words are forces driving toward an unwritten landscape populated by unconventional technologies, that in turn shape new typographic structures.
The series of words takes us to the roots and connotations of the verb “to be”. Arabic Sarf (Arabic Morphology and Etymology) is the internal assembly of a word by way of patterns of vowelization and introduction of extra letters, which constitute a template. The template provides additional connotations “the bolder the template, the heavier the meaning”. As the title suggests, ”Becoming” in Arabic is a dynamic verb form of six letters, which means transitionally becoming, literally and figuratively, moving from one state to the other, and suggests deliberate and successive forms of the action.
Bright, bold, blinking verbs cycle through this hundred-segment display. These formalisms work heritage into the future, creating a catalyst toward alternative realities of becoming. These words are forces driving toward an unwritten landscape populated by unconventional technologies, that in turn shape new typographic structures.
The series of words takes us to the roots and connotations of the verb “to be”. Arabic Sarf (Arabic Morphology and Etymology) is the internal assembly of a word by way of patterns of vowelization and introduction of extra letters, which constitute a template. The template provides additional connotations “the bolder the template, the heavier the meaning”. As the title suggests, ”Becoming” in Arabic is a dynamic verb form of six letters, which means transitionally becoming, literally and figuratively, moving from one state to the other, and suggests deliberate and successive forms of the action.
استفعل
يشكل عمل "استفعل" كلمات موزونة ومصفوفة ليعيد تصوير تاريخ طباعيَّ عربيٍّ مختلف متحررين من هيمنة النص والشكل اللاتيني المطبعي ومحتفين بأشكال الحروف العربيّة
تومض أفعالٌ على وزن استفعل عبر الشبكة السداسية المكونة من مائة مقطع. تحث هذه الأفعال المشاهد للنظر في مستقبل الشكل العربي وهياكله المطبعية الجديدة
تأخذنا سلسلة الكلمات إلى جذور الأفعال ودلالاتها كما نعرف من علم الصرف العربي، والذي تعرف به بنية الكلمة وأشكال صرفها لوجوه شتى لمعان مختلفة. إذ "الزيادة في المبنى زيادة في المعنى". كما يوحي العنوان، "استفعل" هو شكل ديناميكي من ستة أحرف ذو مقطع ثابت وآخر متغير. نقرأ فيه الانتقال والحركة من معنى لآخر ومن مغزى أعمق منه
By Levi Hammett, Hind Al Saad, and Mohammad Suleiman,
with type design by Fatima Abbas, and words by Sara Khalid
