UNENCOUNTERED : LANGUAGE

Language is the currency of consciousness. We speak to fill the void. We write it down to remember. We tell stories to others so that they might tell them to others. Art is the consciousness of currency.

Unencountered Language is a masquerade – a syntactical performance of bald words and incognizant tracery conjured from both liminal and subconscious states. The dialogue between the literal and the lexicons of design weave whisps of momentary coherence into the undertow of understanding. This is depiction patterned by decorum fighting definition as the meaning shifts slowly, almost imperceptibly, and continuously like the fault lines beneath our feet. We'd pay the prince's price for clarity. There is none.

Unencountered Language is the court and spark between words we recognize and those we don't. And the motor that drives their attraction and repulsion makes otherwise simple gesture exhilarating, otherwordly, curiously familiar, oddly archetypal, and stunningly straightforward. This automaton of language is inborn. It is also completely alien in origin.

Marshall MacLuhan states "We feel as if we're in communication with something outside ourselves, something that seems to know us, or speak directly to us, as it draws out information we've been storing inside."

Edward R. Tufte, in Envisioning Information adds "The world is complex, dynamic, multi-dimensional; the paper [canvas, board] is static, flat. To envision information – and what bright and splendid visions can result – is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art."

Stephen Sondheim, in Dean Olsher's From Square One, comments "Order out of chaos. It's reductio ad absurdum. That's what art is. It's making order out of chaos, whether it's sound, meaning music, or whether it's visual.

Language is more often base than it is eloquent, but it is a call to action from paralysis. From man's first grunts to the most advanced cryptography, man is trying to control his environment through epiphany, self-deception, description, meaning, misdirection, hidden evidence, divination and magic.