Meaningful Nonsense
Meaningful Nonsense is a series of seemingly handwritten artworks, containing sentences like “Is this an esoteric mountain?” and "Memories illustrate geometric understandings."
They are nonsensical but suggestive of meaning.
Each sentence is algorithmically generated using mindfully designed sentence structures, curated word lists and hand-coded grammatical rules. They are syntactically coherent but the words are randomly selected. There is no reason they should make sense or say anything significant, yet they are compelling and evocative.
The work questions what makes sense linguistically and also what carries meaning. For example, consider the sentence, “Gravity learns about regret.” It’s grammatically correct, but does it make sense? Arguably, no - gravity doesn’t learn about regret. And yet, the phrase gestures towards an ambiguous but poignant meaning.
Every time a print is purchased, a new output is generated, containing unique text. The owner can consider these messages to be gibberish, or interpret them with sincerity. Any meaning found is subjective and the viewer is invited to bring themselves to the work.
The pieces are written in a coded version of the artist’s own cursive handwriting. Each curve and point in the letter forms can be controlled and they often distort across the page. What begins with neat repetition dissolves into something more organic as the code introduces drift and noise.
Meaningful Nonsense reflects the artist’s search for meaning and a fascination with meaning that emerges from randomness.
Universally, the tension between intrinsic meaninglessness and our search for meaning carries absurdity, but it is also liberating. When no meaning is provided, we are free to create our own.
We’re also free to believe that meaning was, in fact, there all along. After all, if the universe was to send you a message, who’s to say it wouldn’t choose this as a conduit?
More information about the technical aspects of this project can be found in the following articles:
Handwriting part 1: Generating the Alphabet
Handwriting part 2: Coding my handwriting
