Silent Syntax is the process of reimagining the images and motifs present in baTonga basket weaving techniques as a way to (re)code and an (re)create storylines woven into and told by the baskets of baTonga women. Symbols found in the baskets will be extracted from the pattern and coded with a word or concept which it will represent. A reworking of stories inscribed in patterns and a language embedded in fractals.
The first experiments were condcuted using home made Mushroom ink from the inkcap mushroom. The pattern taken from the first sample basket in figure 1. was drawn and painted onto on canvas and further digitised and alchemised into pixels and patterns, syntax in symbols.
Keen to carry this series on (possibly forever) because infinite equations and infinite possibilities to code a language.
Digitised Mushroom Ink on Paper. Another expression of the Silent Syntax (basket derived) language coding and recoding experiment. I was thinking about how in many cases words that exist in English often cannot be translated into ciTonga and the concepts or trajectories those words were given to similarly don’t translate into ciTonga or the way of life of the baTonga. Ethnobotany was one of the words I was evaluating using this framework. Ethnobotany is the name given to the study of the relationship between plants and people and would therefore be insufficient in encapsulating what IS the relationship between people and plants and opposed to its study. That’s where this letter/pictograph called musampizya has its root. In written (in the Latin alphabet) and oral ciTonga this word translates a specific type of shrub used to cleanse spaces and people. A morphed version of this word in ciTonga musampwisa is also used to refer to the epaltes alata flower which was used medicinally. Another morphed word is musampwizia which refers to the same plant but in the context of ritual mourning. It represents the symbolic non verbal or non academicised expression of the symbiosis between us (as baTonga) and the earth/natural environment/plant ecologies.
I’ve been experimenting with clustering or layering a singular shape, letter. meaning to create anew and the possibilities are endless.
untitled series of images (1-3) from musampizya reimagination and abstraction as play
