There is a part of me that finds the process of creating a work, almost more seductive that the actual work. This is never truer than in reading works of the Oulipo. The combination and recombination of words, makes a beauty in the assemblage that is not possible for me to see without knowing the ritualistic process behind it. In approaching my early projects in the 7 in 7 project, I was intrigued by the idea of cutting the project into small pieces. Unfortunately, all I was able to yield was two book cover designs. I could not reach the level of surreal beauty of the Oulipo in how almost obsessively they are dedicated to their process, almost like a machine or a computing algorithm.
I would almost say that my fixation when I was completing “Scribbling Speech” and “Mental Cross Section” in 2009 was a close approximation, but in the end, my efforts were too marred by human inconsistencies. For “Scribbling Speech” I sometimes marked off my height incorrectly, or forgot my exact turns of phrase. If I were to revisit these twin installations, I would enforce a stricter algorithm for completing these tasks.