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By Jonathan Ringen
The Metropolis Observed
May 2002
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Photo by Annie Schlechter
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"A lot of my work centers on medical institutions, psychotropic drugs,
and phobias," animator Marina Zurkow says of her skewed "Hospital
Poetry" series of pictographs. Best known for the experimental cartoon
Braingirl (three episodes were included in the Sundance Film Festival
in January), her one-woman studio O-Matic has recently branched out into
the design of objects--including glassware, pillows, and T-shirts--that
feature her characters. Among the products she's making is a beautifully
crafted light-box, done in collaboration with furniture designer Jeff Ford,
whose Lucky Rabbit Brand studio manufactures them. The boxes--which come
with five interchangeable translucent pictograph panels and mount flush
against the wall--already have a celebrity clientele: literary siblings
David and Amy Sedaris bought a couple in Los Angeles.
The panels play with the idea of iconographic language but intentionally
defy immediate comprehension. "A sign's purpose is to provide a single
piece of information as clearly, succinctly, and compactly as possible,"
Zurkow says. "But the goal of these is to see if you can communicate
more--something funny or absurd, even something that linguistically short-circuits
the meaning of the sign. You should be able to read it immediately, but
then there's a double take. That's where the fractured little haiku emerges--in
the second look."
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