Typographical Experiments And Sound Waves Become Geometric Landscapes

"I think art is about making people think and dream. But what is to dream? It's also a way of seeing things differently," said artist Angela Detanico in an interview to Parisian museum Jeu de Paume.

This attempt to define art, suggesting a question and maybe even some incertitude, says a lot about the work of Paris-based Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain. For them questioning is a constant and also the starting point for their creations, which invariably investigate the symbols and means of communication, graphic design, maps, typography, and language.

Some of the duo's most famous creations experiment with typography and cartography, like the alphabetic system Utopia (above) based on Oscar Niemeyer's work. And a map of the world that is aligned left, centered, right, and justified as if it were text in a Word document in The World Justified (2008) below.

The outcome of their latest investigations are currently showing at Sao Paulo's Vermelho Gallery, featuring the animation Wave Horizon (One and Two mediums) which is composed of a piece of printed sheet music and two black and white projections. The piece combines geometric tracks of sine waves, which have a similar shape to sea, sound, and light waves. Here's a small sample of it:

Eight tracks of graphic and sonic elements glide in the field of the image, creating a moving horizon for the installation. Each track is composed of three elements corresponding to each wave’s behavior. Tracks that appear closer to viewers move faster and have a higher pitch while ones that look farther away move more slowly and have a lower pitch. The combination of these elements builds a geometric landscape of sound waves. The projection is followed by a map that describes the structure of the composition as a palindrome, that is, it can be read right to left or left to right.

Wave Horizon (One and Two Mediums) (2012)

In the Compound Words installation (below), Portuguese words and their opposite meanings—such as yes/no, always/never, or full/empty—are combined in order to create one image. To do so, the duo use the upper half of each word and places them exactly over their opposites, creating abstract images made of antonyms.

Claro/Escuro (Bright/Dark) (2012)

Dentro/Fora (In/Out) (2012)

Sempre/Nunca (Always/Never) (2012)

You can check more works from Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain on their website.

@CreatorsProject