Jason C. Hoylman

"Letters that Move"

This is a project that was inspired by some of the writing of my friend Joan Watson, and a work by Joseph Beuys entitled Words that can Hear and Words that can Listen. [I believe that's the title.] I do now have images of the Beuys work, although at the time I had only barley seen it. It was mostly the title that got me going, but I was interested in the other side of the coin, motion. At the time I was more intensely involved in my work with the Necker cube, so two-foldness was also a strong interest of mine.

Motion is change in place and Motion is change in place.

After spending some time/space considering these elements, I came to the conclusion that the only letter in the english alphabet that had this two-fold nature was the letter A. The letter A is the only letter that is both a letter and a word. [the letter I is also a letter and a word but, is only used in specific styles of writing.] As I began to track the movements of the letter A in writing I discovered something about its nature.

From the time we are born into this world until the time we leave we are effected by an invisible force called gravity. It would seem that this invisible force has worked its way into our language and by proxy our writing.

The letter A is effected by gravity and more of them appear at the bottom of any dense body of text than at the top. [75% of the time]