Seeds Letters 1999

Seeds Letters 1999
This piece is a culmination of my experiments with written characters over the past two years. I wanted to create an artwork based on written characters that have always interested me, so I started out by learning about written characters in encyclopedias. In my research, I was reminded that written characters have three functions; namely, to preserve, transport and reproduce language. This lead me to believe that they had to be preserved in the way that they were originally written. What would happen if we were to allow them to change? So, onto the shapes of the characters originally created by man, I added the information from the natural world in the form of beansprout seeds. The seeds would grow as time went by, altering the shapes of the characters with no regard to human will or intention. The experiment has made me want to rethink what artificial shapes, natural shapes and the shapes of the characters as well as the characters themselves mean to us.