Matthew Prebeg is an artist, designer, and researcher. This is his archive.
How do art and research intersect, and why should I care?
︎ .WAVE
They say you can hear the ocean in a seashell. That was the first thing my Baka said when she handed me this conch from Podgora, Croatia. When I visited Podgora a few years ago, I heard the ocean. I heard the crashing of waves against the pebble beach.
While “seashell resonance” may be a folk myth, I hold onto this idea, well into adulthood, that a seashell connects me to the same waves my grandmother swam in as a child.
I ran a Python script to convert a .WAV audio file of the crashing waves on the beach in Podgora to binary code. I painted each zero and one on the inside of the conch until there was no space left.
Whether or not you, too, can hear the ocean in a seashell, I think there’s value in holding onto these experiences even when they shift form.
Videos here.
︎ Sacred Carvings of a Modern Age
Hieroglyphic (from the Greek word for “sacred carving”) refers to a system of writing consisting of pictoral characters as symbols for objects and sounds. Originally, "hieroglyphic" referred exclusively to Egyptian monument writing. However, since the late 19th century, the term has been extended to encompass the writing systems of other cultures, provided they utilize pictorial symbols as writing characters.
In a modern age of computers, do hieroglyphs fulfill a purpose?
We enter a realm of philosophical inquiry where the boundaries of symbol and meaning become blurred. Are hieroglyphs limited to ancient scripts, or can they transcend time and take on new forms in the modern world? In an era saturated with visual communication, where emojis, icons, logos, and road signs abound, one must ponder whether these symbols possess the essence of hieroglyphic expression. Do they encapsulate ideas, emotions, and concepts in a condensed visual language? Or are they purely utilitarian tools devoid of the profound cultural and religious significance attributed to ancient hieroglyphs?
Can we perceive them as contemporary hieroglyphs, signifiers of our digital age, carrying messages across the vast landscape of modern communication?
Perhaps the definition of modern-day hieroglyphs lies in the interpretation and understanding we attribute to these symbols, and the cultural significance we ascribe to them.