Christian Faur
“Quipu or khipu were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored spun and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair or cotton cords with numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base 10 positional system. Quipus may have just a few strands, but some have up to 2,000 strands.”
quipu
December 2007 - Spring 08
-
Using the example of the Incan Quipus, I am experimenting with the notion of “strings of text” that toy with the notion of meaning through the use of color, knot tying and sequencing.
-
Each sentence strand will be made up of 26 colored strings. The knots are tied around the bundle of letter-strings to form individual letters. The group of letters are then bundled into a knot which is used to separate the words from one-another (see image).
-
-
The individual strands will correspond to a single statement about each year of my existence from the first years of my childhood to my life now, producing a 39 strand autobiographical narrative.
Work in Progress (below)
Inca Quipu. Larco Museum Collection.
