Easy Read Hard Read
2026
Easy Read Hard Read deals with the in/adequacy of language, prompted by my experience visiting German museums and the prevalence of easy read exhibition texts. I was particularly affected by their tone and attempts to convey meaning in different registers. Attempting to translate my journal notes into this form of a guide pulled against my desire to obscure personal information, which I imagined hidden in the form of a cant. In this work, the "easy read" is forefronted, literally in a layer of written text above my original text journal, which flashes by one word at a time underneath. A separate audio track serves as the hard read, consisting of the same texts translated into my own sampled vocalized rendition of morse code, which I can decipher and communicate in, itself a form of encoded information even though it can also be considered the simplest way to transmit information. This work is created in custom software written with L5L5, the creative coding library I initiated.