Surfaces Surfacing (Weaving Words) is a visual text essay created as a reflection on the public work of scenography Symbiotic Surfaces (Black Box teater Beings) and as a response to Metode’s open call Deep Surface.

Surfaces Surfacing (Weaving Words) consists of an interactive surface which can be experienced through a browser on a digital screen. It is configured of 200 images and 200 paragraphs, which are combined and layered in pairs, with text and image interweaved. One image exists in relation to one paragraph and is echoed in its pair. 

All the images which are part of the work were part of Symbiotic Surfaces (Black Box teater Beings). These images consist of photos picturing surfaces within Black Box teater which carry traces of the manifold stories which constitute the context. Each photo has been separated into two images, creating in a sense an inverted image pair, based on the originals’ black-and-white values. Each image is an of inversion of its counterpart, each sentence a kind of echo of its counterpart. All sentences in the work are reflections, expressed either by me or through quotes from, and paraphrases of, various thinkers.

The text-images are presented in a grid as 100 single entities, together forming a weave of words and images. As a mouse cursor hovers across one text-image, it flips to its counterpart. The reader is encouraged to experience the work by moving freely, in a weaving way, across the patchwork of text-images, moving back and forth, encountering the parts of the work in different combinations and orders – reading as feeling, seeing as touching, through weaving words and surfaces surfacing.