EMOTIVE SOUNDS OF THE ELECTRIC WRITER - NANDITA KUMAR

The handwritten letter is an endangered and still beautiful species in contemporaneity, characterised by real-time, digitally mediated communications. But it’s also a medium in itself, as through the handwriting, eventually enriched by drawings, it can deliver a deeper emotional content, as it has been done for centuries. Nandita Kumar is an artist seamlessly using a wide range of media in her artworks. Here she implemented a complex emotional process, exploring an original trajectory that letter can take once « printed » through the machine. She first asked different people to write love letters addressed to a various kind of subjects. Then she hacked an old-fashioned vinyl cutter plotter, making it « print », through a felt-tip pen, the scanned and vectorialised letters. This machine stops from time to time to elaborate the next piece of the letter, accidentally generating then arbitrary darker holes in the paper, which has then been used as an obscurely calculated music score, conceptually embedding the deep emotions that the letters contained. The result is engaging, realising through the printed act an emotional transduction only technically perpetuated by the machine, whose role goes back to allowing us to infinitely experiment with our intimate and fascinating boundaries.

Nandita Kumar is a new-media artist who creates immersive environmental spaces. She explores the elemental process through which human beings construct meaning from their experiences, by creating sensory narratives through the usage of sound, video/animation and performance, or through smartphone apps, customized motherboards and solar/microwave sensors. Through her installations, interactive sculptures, paintings and animations, which seamlessly integrate new media and materiality, Kumar reflects the striking contradictions within the industrial and natural landscape. In her research, she attempts to locate inherent patterns, modes of sustainability, cultural hybridity, technology and the synergy between nature and our current urban environment. She has shown in varied festivals and exhibitions throughout the world.
http://nanditakumar.com/about-me/