Greg Hill

Irrelevant / Immaterial

Reiterating / Repeating



Greg Hill is an experimental poet with a particular focus in constraint-based writing, and has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in Pioneertown, Atlas and Alice, Queen Mob's Teahouse, and elsewhere. After the struggle of putting children to bed, his winds down by studying quantum physics and toki pona. Twitter: @PrimeArepo. Website: https://www.gregjhill.com

[Editor's note. I don't usually believe in including creator's explanations, believing that the work should stand on its own. However, in this case, I feel that Greg Hill's notes to these pieces add significantly to their enjoyment.

He writes: "Both works are part of a series of electronic visual art I am building that employs text or poetry of a particular constraint, which is then converted as a conceptual piece into visual art using spreadsheet software as the medium. (In the case of these two works, both were built using Google Sheets.)

"In the series of works, text (often poetry I have written) is arranged so lines all have the same number of characters. Then each letter is converted to a two-across-by-three-down grid of six squares. In those rectangle blocks, two colors mirror the pattern of raised dots and un-raised spaces that comprise Braille. Therefore, each work is composed of a message of text, which may be discovered by patient eyes.

"The first work, "Irrelevant / Immaterial," is built from text that reads:

WHETHER OR NOT AN ARTIST HIDES MEANING
OR CONCEALS ANY SORT OF MESSAGE WITHIN
A WORK OF ART IS IRRELEVANT. WHAT DOES
MATTER, ULTIMATELY, IS WHATEVER SET OF
EMOTIONAL RESPONSES COMES FROM SOMEONE
EXPERIENCING THE ART. THAT IS THE REAL
PURPOSE. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ARTIST
AND AUDIENCE IS ABSOLUTELY IMMATERIAL.

"The second work, "Reiterating / Repeating," is built from a text which repeats three times:

SOMETIMES ART IS JUST BUSYWORK,
SERVILE TO A CONCEPTUAL COMMAND
REITERATING THE SAME DIRECTIONS
OVER AND OVER, REPEATING A TASK
UNTIL A SUPPLY OF MATERIALS HAS
BEEN EXPENDED. THIS TOO IS ART."

 
 

previous page     contents     next page