Presentation

Cosmic Signs is part of a series of generative works published on fxhash that explore the algorithmic space of typographic signs, symbols and glyphs. This latest work builds on my first piece, Cosmic Type, released in July 2022. The series is informed by my interest in language, signs, meaning at large and more specifically inspired by the early pioneering work of the concrete poets such as Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ian Hamilton Finley, Steve McCaffe and Bob Cobbing.

I'm particularly fond of letter forms and have been experimenting with typographic elements in a playful manner for nearly a decade now. Like these pioneers before me, I sense there are still many possibilities to extend this important yet less known body of work and especially so within the computational realm. The Cosmic series is an attempt to discover anew typographic form and embrace the computational beauty of a system based process and the constraints that these imply.

With Cosmic Signs, I have completely re-written the program developed for Cosmic Type, stripping it down to a set of basic geometric typographic forms. It is purposefully minimal. The idea being that I will continue to publish new iterations of the program that incorporate new ideas in a systematic manner. The Cosmic series is a constantly evolving project and my motivation is to share the process with a small number of limited edition works that showcase each iteration of the program and the process that ensues.

In parallel and as a means to document the series, I'm experimenting with a small series of limited printed editions to accompany the work. These will take the form of booklets or small hand-made books. They will contain both text and rare images in an attempt to reveal the process behind the Cosmic series. More information will be published on this website about this process and how I intend to distribute these.