UbuWeb
Ward Tietz Roosevelt Pond, 1988


This piece consisted of twelve large floating words of various colors which corresponded to two designated zones within the pond. The two zones, one designated "a mine," the other "a market," paralleled the flow of water in the pond in order to suggest a movement from raw material to finished product. The lexicon of each zone avoided direct literal reference to its zone and required reader/viewers to create figurative or narrative solutions for the groups of words in view. Assemblies were primarily determined by the reader/viewer's location as he or she investigated points of view around the pond, but words could also be grouped more abstractly by color or typeface. The lexicon was configured as follows:


placement (zone) word size typeface
color floating


(a market)

buckle 3'x5'x2" Gaudy Medieval, blue upright

"reduff" 3'x5'x2" Typewriter, orange upright

swarm 3'x6'x2" Caslon Italic, yellow upright

"bell" 3'x4'x2" Caslon Italic, green upright

"oat" 2"x3'x3' Empire, orange flat

"no sale" 3'x12'x2" Typewriter, yellow upright

"oiling" 2"x7'x4' Poppel, green flat

glug 3'x4'x2" Typewriter, green upright

calc 3.5'x4'x3" Caslon Italic, orange upright

"rune" 2"x3.5'x3' Gaudy Medieval, blue flat

bingo 3"x6'x6' Empire green, flat

"dagger" 2"x10'x3' Fraktur, black upright



The piece was commissioned by the city of Providence, RI, for the Convergence I festival.
©1988, Ward Tietz