ONE WORD
Seymour at the Cutlog Art Fair in Paris

Collaboration with the Creative Growth Art Center

October 18-21, 2012

Bourse du Commerce

2 Rue de Viarmes  

75001 Paris, France


 

Seymour was invited by the legendary Creative Growth Art Center to create a site-specific project for visitors to their booth at the Cutlog art fair, which took place from October 18 – 21, 2012 at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.

 

Inspired by the artists from the center as well as Carl Jung’s theories of the personal and collective unconscious, the project’s goal was to encourage visitors to explore their subconscious minds and by extension, establish a dialogue between themselves and the artist.

 

The artists from the Creative Growth Art Center all have developmental, mental and/or physical disabilities, many are non-verbal and often, the work they create is their only means through which to communicate their thoughts and ideas. We thought it would be an interesting exercise to reduce our participants means of communication to one written word.
 
The project presented visitors with this abstract drawing by Creative Growth Art Center artist Dan Miller. Unbeknownst to most participants, though the final product appears ‘abstract’, all Dan Miller’s drawings begin with words. He then progressively obscures the words with increasingly dense layers of gestural lines. Dan’s work seems to flow directly from his subconscious mind onto the paper and is in essence an untainted graphic representation of his thoughts. View a video of Dan Miller creating a drawing in real time below:

 

 

 

We were also curious to see how the creative minds (artists, gallerists, visitors) present at the Cutlog Art Fair would intuitively react to the same image. Would there be a pattern in their responses? Would the results vary wildly? Two hundred and thirty-three (233) people participated in this project.

 

The project instructions were as follows:

 

1. What is the first word that comes to your mind when you look at the drawing above?
[Click: here to view the drawing we presented.]

2. Write the word on the card provided and place the card in the slot below.

3. Visit www.seymourprojects.com/projects on Monday, October 22rd to see how your intuitive personal reaction corresponds with what other participants wrote.

 

To get an idea of what the responses looked like, watch the video below:

 

 

To read the full list of responses, scroll down. Some have been translated from French. Words which were repeated more than once, figure at the start of the list with the corresponding number of repetitions noted next to the word in question:

 

scribbles x 20

chaos x 5

mess x 5

draft x 5

confusion x 4

colors x 4

havoc x 4

nothing x 4

love x 3

red x 2

disorder x 2

music x 2

freedom x 3

life  x 2

complexity x 2

joy x 2

circus x 2

jumble  x 2

on/off x 2

crowd x 2

vomit x 2

graffiti x 2

tag x 2

scrambled x 2

rainbow x 2  

tomato x 2

tangled x 2 

amalgam 

anthill 

art brut 

assassin 

august 

autumn 

balloons

bazaar

beast

birthday cake

bizarre

blotch

blue 

blurp

bus stop

caca

candy

car

celebration

chase

chewing gum

childish

childhood

child 

clown

confusion

contrast

cotton candy  

crazy 

courtyard net

cyril  

dance 

delinquence 

dilemma 

discard   

easy

energy

empty 

equilibrium  

erasure

expression 

fabulous 

fashion 

faust

fear

fence

fog 

forest   

forget 

freaks 

frontier

graphs

green beans  

green

grolsch

hair    

hello  

holiday 

hope 

high  

hyper-connectivity  

imbroglio

indigenous  

infinite 

interlaced

irisation  

junky  

labyrinth  

levels 

library 

lost 

letter 

map 

marie 

melody

migraine

mix

motus

musical 

nerve 

new york

noise

oblique 

oh

oil

o.k.

oops

owl

painting 

party 

pastiche

peace on

peace

penguins

perturbations 

play 

polish 

pollock 

rambling 

ramification 

sandwitch 

school 

scrap metal

seymour 

shaddock!

shrubbery 

spaghetti 

splash

sublime

super-position

system

taxi   

television   

tension

thoughts 

throw-up beauty

ugly

underwater

upside-down  

wall

weaving   

whatever

where 

why? 

word

wow 

yaooosh  

225

zut

mark tobey

beautiful disorder

mathieu meets bellmer

I like it

 

We bet you’re also curious to know some of the words Dan Miller placed within this particular work.

 

Here they are:

Light. On. Off.