Untangle Me
by Ben Van Dyke
Untangle Me is a visual essay that attacks readership and focuses on the threshold of language through complex codes and cyphers. The visuals are composed of deconstructed photographs of my typographic installations from the past few years. This essay is written in Morse code with each page representing a single letter of this two-word sentence. In addition, each piece of the Morse code contains compositional noise representing deviations in language and emotion. These graphic pieces help to form the letterforms for a second, single-word sentence embedded in the midst of the first: FURIOUSLY.
As Michel Serres says:
Noise nourishes a new order. Organization, life, and intelligent thought live between order and noise, between disorder and perfect harmony. If there were only order, if we only heard perfect harmonies, our stupidity would soon fall down towards a dreamless sleep.
Ben Van Dyke received his MFA from the University of Michigan and his BFA from Kendall College of Art & Design. He is currently the head of the communication design program at the University at Buffalo and vice president of the non-profit design research organization, DesignInquiry. He focuses on experimental practices in gallery installations and client work. In 2006 he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to become artist-in-residence at Studio NLXL in The Hague, the Netherlands. In addition, he has exhibited his work in countless exhibitions across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Originally appeared in the online supplement to the Beyond Category issue 43.2-44.1