Mindscapes
Sound art, digital art.
This piece talks about the language soundscapes of the mind. In particular, the Mindscape of our two minds.
We have written two pieces of automatic writing: the surrealists used it to loosen the boundaries between subconscious and conscious mind. To get in the state of relaxation and focus on the mental landscape, we have written them after meditation. Different languages of thought coexist in us: English and our native tongues Catalan, Spanish and Icelandic. To recreate our thoughts as they are, we recorded our pieces in each language that inhabits ourselves.
Juxtaposing sentences from both pieces, we wrote a Surreal Poem, with all our languages sounding together.
Artist bios
Laura Erviti and Eva Brá Barkardóttir
Laura Erviti is studying MA Fine Arts Digital at Central Saint Martins. She is particularly interested in the subconscious dialogues of dreams, and how culture affects our futures.
She speaks fluent Catalan, Spanish and English, and B1 level of French and German.
Eva Brá Barkardóttir is an Icelandic artist and recent graduate from MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. She is interested in dissecting and inspecting human nature, often through the lens of an absurd, parallel universe.
Mindscapes by Laura Erviti and Eva Brá Barkardóttir
Listen to you through your eyes
Video, 2 minutes.
Coming from four different countries, we were interested in exploring how language derives from the need to define meanings, and how language in turn affects the interpretation of a meaning itself. This notion was explored through repeatedly translating a text between our mother tongues, until its meaning became obscure. After some initial experiments, we used an Italian poem by Nicola Coppola which was translated consecutively by each of us to our own language, then to English using Google translate, and so on. We visualised these different interpretations (artificial/our own) using video, distorting the words, voices and images in a literal way to reflect the alteration of the text’s meaning.
Initial experiments (Word 40KB).
Artist bios
Francesca Barizza, Esmeralda Momferratou, Himarni Moonasinghe, Marine One
Francesca Barizza is studying BA Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Art. Her practice is focused on editorial design and illustration. She is Italian but has lived in Spain and France as well, and she is interested in how languages mix and create new meanings through translation.
Esmeralda Momferratou is studying MA Fine Arts Digital (Year 1) at Central Saint Martins. In her practice she combines documentary filmmaking, video projection sculptures, and installation. She is from Athens, Greece.
Himarni Moonasinghe is studying MA Art and Science following undergraduate studies in Neuroscience and is learning/relearning her mother tongue, Sinhalese.
Marine One, from Japan, is studying MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Her practice varies from painting to digital art. She is interested in how language influences our self representation.
Listen to you through your eyes by Francesca Barizza, Esmeralda Momferratou, Himarni Moonasinghe, Marine One
Somewhere in the flyway
Hand-bound book, 16cm x 12cm x 0.4cm.
Somewhere in the flyway is a hand-bound book that presents an instinctive dialogue between two artists, sparking from a collective archive of photographs taken of either a) an object, souvenir or b) a fleeting moment captured through the window of a car, bus, train. These fragments of the land reflect an exchange of memories that only exist in each respective language, attached to the time and place, untranslatable. In turn, an abstract space is created from the absurd mix - where there is true freedom in drifting along the flyway.
Somewhere in the flyway by Débora Caro Reyes and Yulin Huang
Artist bios
Débora Caro Reyes and Yulin Huang
Débora Caro (she/her) is a Chilean visual artist currently studying MA Publishing at London College of Communication and works with the concepts of resilience, childhood and home. She speaks Spanish, English and German.
Yulin Huang (she/her) studies MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martin and is intrigued by the concept of memory vs. documentation. She is Taiwanese/Kiwi and speaks English and Mandarin.
Poetionally
See the poem and web VR gallery.
Poetionally is a poem and virtual gallery that celebrates the re-contextualising of language fragments when taken from others’ conversations.
The poem was born out of the collected digital conversations from the five artists - undergoing numerous stages of adding, cutting, and reconfiguring by anyone in the group at any point in time.
Through analogue processes such as drawing and hand-writing, these ‘physical’ fragments were made from our individual interpretations of the collaged text, and displayed eerily in the shared space.
Artist bios
Madina Masimova, Yulin Huang, Claudia Sambo, Jack Michael Carr, Tanya Hlavatskykh
Madina Masimova is a Spatial Designer, Artist and Creator. Her practice focuses on creating and designing spaces and environments in the conjunction of technology, art, and science. She has great interest in outer space design.
Yulin Huang (she/her) studies MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and is intrigued by the concept of memory vs. documentation. She is Taiwanese/Kiwi and speaks English and Mandarin.
Claudia Sambo has recently completed an MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. Her practice engages with failure and the futility of effort. Through language she explores the fallibility of communication and the unintentionally poetic.
Ona Telos (the artist name of Tanya Hlavatskykh/Glavatskix) is a recent MA Fine Art graduate at Chelsea. Her works explore information and art philosophy. She grew up in a bilingual Ukrainian-Russian family and speaks five languages.
Jack is a performance student at Wimbledon, a passionate storyteller, enjoying books from all over. Though not fluent, he finds fragments of different languages and frequently makes up his own.
