Proposals and Speculation

“The purity of words is in its heard form. The marked language is merely a representation.” I open up with this because I am interested in making typography a more sensory experience. Can spatial relationships, light, and sound enhance (or hinder) the experience of communicating an idea? The way we interact with words and all language exist can be communicated visually no matter the dialect. By saying this I mean the root of communication, I feel, exists in a visual form. For instance, body language helps us communicate when there is a language barrier. Music as well is in a way universal. No matter the words, the message is just as clearly communicated some times by tone. The way it sounds gives us a sense of what the songs about. Brail and Morris code rely on other stimulants like touch and sound. Since typography can be described loosely as communication, I am interested in stimulating more than just our eyes, and giving more contextual clues than the written word to communicate a message. I feel that perhaps these experiments will give me insight into our raw nature of communicating everyday.  

1.Should there be a closer relationship between the spoken and written word? I would be interested in trying to visualize frequencies and pairing that with contextual info. So for instance, can an overlay, digital or not, of photographic imagery and visualized sound produce interesting results?

2. I had this idea to have a message communicated in different ways based on the ­­­experience of reading. How do the other sensory affect the way we perceive a Message? So just as in a text message, emoticons are vital when being sarcastic can Colors shift a message ever so slightly? A smell? If we read, “I loathe you” but frank Sinatra plays and it smells like pancakes, would we feel different about that Sentence?

­­3. Space. Through a series of mirrors and projectors, how far can I push the formal qualities of typography while altering the message?  By turning the mirrors can the words rearrange? Does the written word have more meaning with what is reflected in context?