A Living Ornament – thesis work at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague, 2000.
The project can be understood as a personal statement of graphic design. Graphic design and typography are presented as being beneficial to the body, not destructive of it by forcing it to sit by the computer, and as being used for movement, dance and joy. "A Living Ornament" is created by artistic ways of recycling waste, showing the life credo of the artist – to use secondary waste in a creative manner, especially by the means of light. This is the basis on which the thesis work was carried out, a recycled light stage design for a show of Oriental belly dancing. The design consists of 400 TetraPak boxes (milk, juice and wine carton boxes). Dance as an inseparable part of the thesis defence being incorporated in light and typography, the work was entitled "A Living Ornament". The defence was presented as a calligraphy of the whole body – an Oriental dance. Light played the most important role, shining through both sides of a hanging mosaic featuring one of the ceiling ornaments of the Arabian fort Alhambra as its central motif. The colours and letters in a typographic collage were set together as to complement each other and interlock with each other graphically. Individual parts of the mosaic were chosen to dissolve the design of the original milk box completely, in order to give way to a white-and-blue ornament with bright silver frames. The white and blue "face" is an attempt to find order and graphic harmony. The multicoloured background of the stage appears chaotic - a maze of colours. The order can only be seen once the light shines through the pattern as it, seeping through the cracks and outlines of the ornament, creates a bright, shining whole. The principle of the light mozaic is opposite to that of a stained glass window – the shining element is not made up by the spaces and colours connected with a black outline but vice versa. Bright cracks connect dark areas and create a single ornament. Light placed behind the mozaic projected it both forward on a white veil and on the back walls behind as well as on the ceiling, together with projecting the moving silhouettes of the dancers...