ABOUT
The Mute Manifold website is intended to showcase the art-related activities of Oakland residents Jesse Eisenhower and Veronica Graham. Most everything detailed throughout is noted as being the work of either Jesse or Veronica. A few projects are or were the result of a collaborative effort, and this is also made plain with annotation. A few notes about Jesse and Veronica, in turn:
Jesse, currently, is fairly preoccupied with a work of graphical narrative, kind of like a comic book about mimes. This work is so far over 4 years in the making. He predicts it will take at least another 2 years. Jesse imagines he will be living in the Bay Area for the duration of those formative 2 years.
Veronica works predominantly as an installation artist, though she often extends the ideas of bigger projects into portable formats like books and prints. She's successfully completed three large scale installations and all of these were based on a unique method of patterning landscapes with cartographic elements. She is currently collaborating on a sequential art book called Scaffold that was first shown at the 2009 Alternative Press Expo.
Click here to download veronica's resume (PDF)
The Map of Neighboring Territories
-Started January 2007-
Map Book Print series
Completed October 2008
4 Prints
Size varies: 6"x28.25" & 6"x21.25"
2 color screen print on masa paper
The Stamp Book version
Completed April 2007
Accordion style
Size: folded 6"x8" - extended 6"x128"
Embossing powder & ink on paper
***The latest version of the stamp book can be viewed on video HERE, and click on the icon to see images.
The Map of Neighboring Territories is an ongoing project exploring how place, location, and time are interrelated by the traditional isometric perspective found in cartography. It began with two books designed using 165 and then 134 original stamps, respectively. Each stamp measured 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch and was carved out of linoleum. These stamps, applied repetitively, depicted what I call Territories: pictorial units of nature and culture drawn from historical maps and pop culture. The repetition was rigidly composed within a grid to not only make the layouts more readable but to also build in a connection to a method of tiling used in early video game map design.
I looked at graphics from the 8-bit video game era; platform and action/adventure games of the late 80s to early 90s. Specifically Mario Bros., Final Fantasy and, most inspiring, The Legend of Zelda. I then looked at the techniques used in cartography throughout the Age of Exploration, especially the imagery used to flesh out maps of newly "discovered" lands. Places like Asia as interpreted by European discoverers in the 1400s and 1500s and North and South America after the 1700s. My work combines these exploratory maps with the early topography of video games. Both had qualities of fantasy and myth that pulled from a collective consciousness, though the works themselves fulfilled two utterly disparate modes of functionality. By bringing these two traditions into contact with each other I hope to make new work that benefits from the aesthetic and symbolistic strengths of both.
I am interested in using manual techniques to represent digital rendering. The representations are essentialized in this form because most of the stamps are designed to be infinitely repeatable on their own. For the stamp book, I crafted a set of tools to compose with, mimicking early printing methods where individual stamps were made by artisans and then indented into clay tablets. I am currently working on a silkscreened version of the book which allows me to combine several layers of graphics in a single composition. Other plans for The Map of Neighboring Territories project involve reinterpreting the book using Japanese woodblock printing and developing a series of installations that will incorporate multiple formats of representation.
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