A to Z: Visualising Every Word in the Dictionary in Alphabetical Order
(2022)
author(s): Dave Ball
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition focuses on my 35-year-long project to visualise every word in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in alphabetical order, A to Z. Begun in 2011, the point of departure here is a particular moment in the unfolding of the project: the recent completion of the final D-word, “dystopia”. A to Z is premised upon the carrying out of a defined conceptual rule: a “tactically absurd” commitment to a lifetime of artistic effort, whose ostensible folly gives rise to an ever-expanding body of work that appears arbitrary, unwarranted, and nonsensical, but which, through its playful insistence, might also be understood as operating in a new and alternative realm of sense.
