Written Forms

Written Forms maps three separate texts, one each, into the dark, medium and light areas of a live video. When viewed from a distance this collage of words melts into the recognizable image of people in the installation space. By moving their bodies to reveal different parts of the text, participants can actually decipher words and meaning in the various layers. Noise in the incoming video signal causes characters at the edges of color boundaries to flicker—creating new words and new meanings at the boundaries of the texts. The three texts used refer to dark internal spaces, muddled boundary spaces, and external ethereal spaces.

Written Forms is also currently being developed into a collaborative installation, Talking Cure, by Utterback, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Clilly Castiglia. Talking Cure explores Brewer’s famous case study of Bertha Papenheim a.k.a. ‘Anna O,’ in which Anna’s descriptions of word pictures and her ‘talking cure’ contribute one of the founding case studies of Freudian psychotherapy.