Translation is a form of betrayal: it is a traduction, a
reconstitution made of sacrifice and revision. —William Gass This
digital art project utilizes Google Translate, Google Earth, and
Google NGRAM as a basis for reworking the mottos and seals of the
fifty states. Each motto is sequentially translated through the
five most prevalent spoken languages in a given state. For example,
Virginia's state motto is 'Thus always to tyrants'. I plugged this
into Google Translate and went from English to Spanish, then from
Spanish to Korean then into Vietnamese, then Chinese, then
Afrikaans and finally back into English where the motto morphed
into - 'Therefore it is always a tyrant'. Each seal is created from
a landscape satellite image of the area where Google Earth dropped
the pin for that state. I selected the specific images as
representative snapshots of a given state or motto, or some
combination, based on my own impressions and aesthetics. As a
footnote, a chart is included for each state that tracks the usage
over the last 200 years of each state motto as determined and
generated by Google NGRAM viewer, which is a phrase usage graphing
tool that charts the yearly count of selected ngrams (letter
combinations) or words and phrases, as found in over 5.2 million
books digitized by Google. This project originated as a studio
based question that I asked myself for my annual summer project:
How would my voice and artistic style, which on paper and canvas is
tactile and intuitive, translate into a digital medium that is
non-tactile and empirical? This project will debut at the NYC
Poetry Festival 2014 on Governors Island and was part of a group
exhibit, self-published at Cohn Drennan Contemporary Art in Dallas,
Texas.