A larger than life installation by Marissa Michelle circa 2014

Typeface design by Marissa Michelle.

Black Card stock, fishing line and wood suspended from ceiling.

The primary carriers of meaning in our world and such an assumed part of our lives, words appear so concrete. What seems reassuring and stable from a far can actually be quite wiggly and slippery close up.  When you ponder it, the reliance we place upon spoken word in agreements, treaties, and simple commitments may be taken as a reality but these vowels and phrases are woven with the fragility of a fine thread. 

As you’ve read my verbal expressions thus far I doubt it has occurred to you that the ability you are exercising is the cumulative result of years of human invention. The feral child, raised in the wilderness and isolated from society, does not have this ability you do, to compute these marks we call letters into groups called words and combinations of words dubbed sentences. To him it would carry as much meaning as arbitrary scribbles on a page. 

Even when you have been well integrated into a culture and are competent in it’s language the meaning of a word that is inherently known can easily drop away. Try saying the word “cheese” about 100 times over. You reach the point where you think “cheese” what is that? You may become puzzled, frightened or both, as a typically familiar entity becomes completely foreign even if only momentarily. You have induced semantic satiation. Your brain is tired of interpreting the same thing and has blocked neural pathways that allow comprehension so you see it devoid of it’s given meaning, mere gibberish. That gibberish is the same powerful tool that serves as a foundation for our society, creating movements of people and ideas.

Language is a human construct, constantly evolving as we do.
hiroku miawaki

This project is visual representation of semantic satiation, words become abstractions as we repeat them. What does this say about language? About the fabric of communication.

As "words become" was repeated in the fishing line held installation, it became indistinguishable much like language itself would.