Reticulum

Reticulum (2008)

Reticulum, Concept rendering, 2008

installation photo
Reticulum, Installation view, 2008

installation photo
Reticulum, Installation view and poster, 2008

installation photo
Reticulum, detail, 2008

The site-specific installation "Reticulum" is a large blue network of rope that hangs taut above the heads of the viewers throughout the gallery space. "Reticulum" echoes other works of mine made from knotted string and monofilament ("Quipu" I & II and "Constraint. Satisfaction.") which rely on the careful balancing of many tensions. Here the network links together words as connected in an electronic thesaurus known as "WordNet." For "Reticulum" and the "Thesaurus" prints ("Closure" and "Inscription"), I wrote custom software to follow networks of related words and present them in graphical form. Each node in the network is labelled with a word, and linked to synonyms by the rope. The network follows the shifts in meaning between similar words leading to unlikely connections. Highlighting the changes in meaning and languages over time, in the prints the networks are presented against a backdrop of ancient Cretan writing, which contrasts their complex topology with the undeciphered spiral of hieroglyphics on the Phaestos disk and the boustrophedonic Gortyn legal code, the earliest Greek law code.

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