Ailis Cournane: Linguistics Art

Cemetery for Dead Languages (2006)

Studying historical linguistics, it struck me how beautiful early writing systems were. The surviving artifacts are often those that were written on clay. As linguists, we can never know what these languages really sounded like, but we can figure out many things about long-dead languages from the writing left behind.

Some of the languages represented are Gothic, Hittite, Rongo-Rongo, Elder Futhark, Umbrian, Toccharian and Oscan. Some of these languages died out completely, others have living direct descendents. The bells in the installation represent languages that died out leaving no trace.

I had lots of fun trying to write in the various scipts and I did my best to stay true to the languages. However, my reproductions are not exact; in some cases there are portions of the text missing, or for example, my attempt at writing in cuneiform is full of mistakes and is not nearly as tightly packed as in the true Hittite tablet. I took some liberties with the glazes as well, sometimes changing the colour of the original artifact. Please do not think these images are meant to be exactly like the artifacts, it is an art project and the overall visual effect of the language combined with the overall effect of the installation were my primary concerns.

Materials: Porcelain, Stoneware, Steel

History of a Sentence (2005)

Materials: Porcelain, Stoneware

Cognitive Therapy (2007)

These are slip-cast porcelain brains with knitted brain-cozies and knit brain-stems/spinal cords. Each brain is mounted on the wall with a steel mount and decorated wall-plaque. Each brain has mutant, miniature, playful animal figurines hiding in its various parts. I turned brain-imaging pictures into stamps and used them on the clay in various places.

Materials: Porcelain, Fibres, Steel

Famous Linguists (2006)

Noam Chomsky

Materials: Acrylic on Canvas

Ferdinand deSaussure

Materials: Acrylic on Wood Panel