Fading Differences

Not long ago I created a piece of land art that copes with the topic ofthe different ethnic grounds of people in most cities.

When challenged to create a photo manipulation concerning both, globalization and language games, I remembered my former creation. It was not at all about photography, but naturally I took photos to document the installation.

Apart from the topic of different people, the little squares reminded me on pieces of the scrabble game.

I presume scrabble is more a game of western industrial countries, but they may exist for other languages, that use a different character set, like keyboards do.

I have chosen the English language and its characters to symbolize globalization, because almost any citizen of the world knows English and uses it to communicate internationally. Then I looked up what globalization “looks like” in different languages, especially in languages with characters different from those of the English language.

I combined a photo of the land art piece with these characters, where the Non-english characters fade into the surrounding like the colored grounds themselves. I did this for four language. I also created a sphere from the four images, which represents the globe.

I intend to present the images via a viewmaster, where the differences became clearer while circling through the pictures. You will find many viewmasters throughout an imagined the museum with an exhibition on the topic of globalization and language games. any visitor can take the viewmaster to circle through the images.

This post is inspired by an open online art course.