When I started this project, I was trying to define what material I was going to select. This process also came with a reflection of what can be consider as a material. I began working with some pictures I was taking of some common materials: earth, wood, concrete, etc. I connected these pictures with some typographic exploration, in a way I was trying to translate the notion of materials, to the written language. After this first approach, I talked with Cameron, and he suggested me to keep working on the typographic exploration. I also realized that simplifying the work could be a good way to get deeper and more freely in the exploration. After all I needed to keep this as a daily practice, so I stopped taking photos and centered my attention to the letters.
I soon discovered that the graphic expression of the language had become the material of my project. I did this as a daily practice. Every day I took a word and play with the letters, with its details, its expression. I detached the world to its rigid structure to use the material in a different way. This, I thought, could evidence the material in a purer form. I also took some of the ideas around the Concrete Poetry. In particular, it brought me curiosity the definition that Jasia Reichardt wrote about concrete poetry: “language is used as a material more than as a means of personal emotive expression”.
However, my exploration became personal and emotive. I was not trying to suppress all the meaning of a world, I was trying to observe it in a different way, more playful. How far could I go separating the word from its original form but no so far that it just transformed in an abstract graphic? I was thinking that playing around with the shapes and the details that builds our drawing language.
The exploration also took another route more related to the process itself. I noticed that this daily practice was intended to be a meditative exercise, that’s why the way I approach to the process of making those exploration was also meaningful. I realized that repletion was a great mechanism to achieve this, so I keep using it as a guideline. After I realized this rhythm, I began to call them mantras. Probably this word put so much sense of what I was doing.
