Barbara Kruger and BNS’s installation for Silent Writings

Words have power whether they’re printed on a page or projected 25 feet high by 14 feet wide. Such is the case with celebrated American artist Barbara Kruger’s text-based installation, part of the Silent Writings group show held at the Louis Vuitton Cultural Space in Paris this past summer.

The installation, created in collaboration with Brand New School director Ludovic Schorno, features a combination of text and imagery projected on a rotunda that expresses “how we are to one another” — a theme Kruger has revisited time and again throughout her iconic career.

The work is based on short maxims sampled from a gamut of writers, including American author and activist Mary McCarthy and French Enlightenment writer Voltaire. The team at Brand New School animated the text to provide a visual interpretation of each writer’s aphorism, making use of the rotunda’s cyclical effect and huge wall space in the process.

Boards asked Schorno to take us behind-the-scenes on the creation of the work.

Were you familiar with Barbara Kruger’s work prior to the collaboration? What about her work resonates with you?

We were all familiar with Barbara’s work. As one of the leading female fine artists of the past 50 years she has created an incredible amount of work, which is both stylistically unique and immediately recognizable. I think her interest in consumerism and her graphic approach has always resonated with communicators. She is in control of her message and its delivery medium.

She did work as a graphic designer for over 17 years and that’s clearly felt in her visual approach. She has literally hijacked advertising techniques to touch upon our relationship with capitalism and consumerist culture. All these elements have incredible resonance to us as we deal with them daily in our more traditional work.

When you first met with Barbara, what was her vision for what she wanted to convey with this work?

Barbara had a clear vision of what she wanted the piece to achieve on an emotional level. She wanted the audience to be drawn into the space of the work, both literally - an enclosed room where the audience would be surrounded by the piece - and metaphorically. She asked us about our process and how we envisioned approaching the production of the piece. We asked her to write detailed scripts of each of the sentences as a starting point. Once we had these, we started creating layouts so as to understand the challenges each sentence was going to create.

What’s interesting about the installation is the physical space played a crucial role in how the content was created, and interpreted by the audience. What were some of the challenges that the rotunda presented?

Barbara expressly chose the rotunda. She had a clear idea of the content and how it would relate to the circular aspect of the room. Our challenge was to make sure that the piece would still carry the usual impact associated with her work while maintaining the integrity of the text. The limitations of the space - a tall and narrow cylinder- clashed with the length of some of the sentences used. Through a collaborative process we designed and animated multiple options for each of the sentences so as to get the exact effect she was wishing for. Needless to say the effect is overwhelming as the audience is surrounded by a 25-foot barrage of words and imagery.

What were Barbara’s requirements for the BNS team?

The requirements were mostly dictated by her previous body of work. They consisted in using Helvetica ultra compressed over red or black backgrounds. Obviously she wanted to know that we were good typographers and that we understood her work at least from a formal standpoint.

Was your role a purely technical one, or were you involved in helping Barbara visualize the aphorisms?

What started as a production driven relationship, quickly became a creative one. Our experience in understanding type in motion and how audiences relate to it came in handy. On multiple occasions we were able to propose creative solutions or alternatives that we had come up with. An example would be how we customized the typeface ever so slightly to maximize layout space and impact. We also did sound design for the piece.

Barbara is an incredibly open-minded individual and it was refreshing not to be limited strictly to a fabricator role. Our meetings followed a recurring pattern. She would show up late in the afternoon once a week to look at the work in progress. We would first have a coffee and discuss new ideas that might have emerged since our last meeting. We would then project the work full size on one of the walls of our office (we are in a warehouse-like space) and do a live critique with the animator present. We were always welcome to comment on the piece and make suggestions that we believed could improve the piece. Ultimately we contributed on both creative and technical levels. It was one of the most collaborative environments I have worked in.

During the creation of the piece, the team projected the work in progress at actual scale. What advantages did this have?

Let’s face it: looking at a 24-inch monitor when you are trying to create a 25-foot tall installation is never going to be optimal. Our experience in working on large-scale projections enabled us to make this leap, however we felt that for us to maximize our schedule it would be better for Barbara to relate to the piece at its real scale. As this is also a highly impactful and emotional piece we felt that the scale was an integral part of the effect.

On a design level one of the main advantages was a better understanding of pacing. On a typographic level we were also better able to resolve kerning issues so as to maintain a high production standard. Another interesting aspect was the stuttering effect that sometimes appears in scrolling motions, by testing multiple versions at full scale we were able to make sure that the installation would go without a hitch.

Can you describe the technical aspect of this project? What programs were used?

The type was laid out in Adobe Illustrator and animated in Adobe After Effects. We also did some 3D pre-viz in Maya so as to better understand the physicality of the space and its impact on the piece. The typeface was customized in Fontlab Fontographer.

What was the biggest challenge creatively?

One of the main challenges was to design things in such a way so that they could function on an emotional and practical level, while maintaining the integrity of Barbara’s iconic work. This meant creating a relationship where she would be confident that we were getting what the piece was about and not relating to it strictly on a technical level.

Watch a behind-the-scenes video about Brand New School’s collaboration with Barbara Kruger in the screening room.

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