Branching off from where my Unit 2 project ended, exploring Ogham, I broadened my scope to look at other forms of codes, ciphers, and languages.
I explored other examples of multilingual inscriptions at the British Museum, other than the Ogham standing stones, such as the Rosetta stone.
Looking at different ways to encode in ciphers and codes in the Latin alphabet and punctuation.
Starting with the Baconian phrase, ‘KNOWLEDGE IS POWER’ (https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php):
The ‘Rosetta Letterpress’: transcribing the Baconian motto, ‘Knowledge is Power’ into a trio of ciphers/code in two different mediums, letterpress and needlecraft. This echoes the historical use of letters/print and knitting to encode messages, as well as the linked history of textile machinery and early computers.
Situation of practice
Sue Hufton’s woven historical typography:
Masaki Komoto’s 2025 Calendar (https://masakikomoto.com/Calendar-2025):
I visited Citra Sasmita’s Into Eternal Land at The Curve, Barbican as an example of how stories and culture can be visually communicated through textiles without words.
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Continuing with letterpress explorations in parallel to the textile, and having gone to the Breaking Lines exhibition at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art,
I looked at exploring the Johannine text as a concrete poem in letterpress and digital text:
In linocut:
And in looking at Dom Sylvester Houedard’s translation of the ‘frog’ poem into a fortune teller form, an interactive fortune-teller version, protoyping how a different kind of ‘key’ to unlock the ancient Greek text I have been focussing on:
I also played with writing out the Codex Sinaiticus text facsimile I had seen at the British Library in ink by hand, replicating the text as a new facsimile/translation.
Link to GCD.studio page for the Midpoint Assessment: https://gcd.studio/pages/same-code-different-mode