HOUSTON

1992. Digital poster by Chris Wayan

A poster playing with superimposed messsages--with how the mind sorts out different layers. The parallel with dream-interpretation is obvious I suppose.

It started as a parody of the US flag, all red white and blue stripes on the blackness of space--on Nature's silence, under all our busy signals.

Layered messages in red white and blue on black space, reading '(red) Houston, Houston, do you read me? And I'm not even published yet! When I land will you find me a girl? (white) Ha ha that's ambiguous or did you assume I was still male? Oh and whose war is it this time? Very pretty. (blue) I'm in the clouds now falling like an angel oh if only wishes were horses I'd be one and grant you all new...' and the signal fades.

The whole thing was inspired by James Tiptree's (Alice Sheldon's) devastating story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" in which three (male) astronauts fall into a gender-bent future, to their ruin. But here, one astronaut seems to be falling instead into a dream-bent parallel present.

A technical note: it's really not superimposed at all. The lettering's not transparent, never blends. Every pixel's red white blue or black. Your mind alone constructs the superimposed shapes, by (literally) connecting the dots. As you do in dreams--and, though we don't like to admit it, when awake. Just another ambiguous layering we filter as we choose.

LISTS AND LINKS: gender - space flight - astral planes - a Tiptree/Sheldon dream: Hawking Country - posters and picture-poems

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