Verbal fields
Interactive installation, projected 3D animations using motion sensor
Language as code
Spoken and written language is a way of communication through an established code. Cyrillic writing has been used for several hundred years to capture the (Bulgarian) realm of reality. Humans learn to decode it to a level until they forget that the code (language) - this intermediary link between us and the world within and outside of us - exists. It becomes the only way to feel and to see and to sense, anything outside of the realms of language seems to be beyond existence or beyond reality. My installation explores different states of language use from discovering the first steps as a baby until a fluent speaker.
Personal connections
Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian language is a complicated subject to me personally. It is a part of me from my father's side (father tongue), and although it sometimes feels even more natural then Hungarian (my mother tongue) I could never really embrace myself in it, and it became something that feels like an eternal struggle between me and Bulgarian language. To me, the world through Bulgarian and Cyrillic resembles the mystic and the abstract imaging of the world. Something untouchable yet a fundamental part of me.
Concepts
The installation I created is a spatial exploration through a visual and semi-verbal language to seek answers to intriguing questions of:
What is the relationship between verbal language and our perception of the world? Do the limitations of verbal language expand beyond its use to the realm of other senses?
How deeply is our identity built on the cultural code? How can we set our “self” apart from the code?
If verbal language is a code, that forms our identity to a big extent since we know the world and ourselves through it, can we expect that there is a realm of reality beyond language?
Interacting with the installation through a motion sensor can be playful and intense, and also limiting. Therefore this digital and technological space also resembles the finite function of any intermediary form of communication.
Three parts
Three visually distinct worlds loop over the nine-minute-long projection, symbolising different stages of verbal language building and shaping our personal identity.
First - letters
When we are born, pieces of information don't yet form a comprehensible understanding of the world. Although at a very young age (growing up in Hungary) I learnt the Cyrillic alphabet first and then the Latin, I forgot it. Throughout my many attempts at learning Bulgarian, I had to relearn Cyrillic again and again. Letters are the smallest units of information. They stand without meaning. One of the initial steps of our journey to the puzzles of verbal fields is taken with these tiny meaningless building blocks.
Second - words
Words are small blocks of information, that we can identify with. I ran an analysis on my Bulgarian grandfather’s book: Georgi Biljarszki - The Experience, Volume I, which is based on his personal diary. The words displayed are some of the most frequent ones in his text. I filtered those that I felt a personal connection to.
Third - sentences
We describe our “self” with sentences, the way others describe us with sentences. We hide behind complex structures of verbal fields. Reality is distorted, if there is one at all. The text is taken from the third volume of my grandfather autobiography. It is the first time he wrote about me when I was born.
Projected description layout with live video background in Bulgarian:
Thank you!
