Gazette
Colin Elmer
Gazette is an exploration of the role of the handmade and materiality in our increasingly digitalized and automated world. The project consists of a newsprint publication of non-semantic writing and drawings based on traditional newspaper layouts. Gazette examines the evolving relationship between technology and materiality by artistically reinterpreting a platform traditionally used for the mass distribution of information. This project also explores the roles of perception and accuracy in modern media by allowing the viewer to become co-author and to interpret the illegible writing.
The work builds on the art of asemic writing (wordless writing that fuses text and image) by taking inspiration from faults in AI image generation software. When tasked with generating an image of a newspaper or any other image containing writing, primitive image generators often create illegible letterforms and symbols by stitching together multiple pictures of typography. Artificial Intelligence software mechanizes the process of asemic writing by unintentionally looking at writing as form and image rather than something to be read. These AI generated images of asemic writing are referenced and hand drawn to create each artwork in Gazette.