“The artifactual condition [of a text] inscribes the semantic elements in a set of graphic and syntactic protocols whose logic is rhetorical, persuasive through structure, an aesthetic massage coefficient that actively performs on the page, in the eye, at the wall, through the skin of the brain that finds meaning in the extension of perceptual awareness. Those rhetorical logics and encoded protocols are instructions for reading, and the reading is never equivalent to the text.”   - Johanna Drucker

As our utilization of the image increases, so our perception, management and command of the written word is rendered obsolete. What was once created for communicative effect is now relegated to the status of the decorative, its inability to communicate a visual allegory for our own relational shortcomings. In a society which finds itself increasingly dependant on such compactions of image and text, comprehension can only assume pluralistic overtones. This work is created in response to the aforementioned intricacies of language, and more specifically, their subsequent impact on accepted notions of communication and the development of individual identity. By employing the use of phonetic structures, visual puns and lexical alphabets which deal with both the literal and metaphorical connotations of language, I consistently use the vernacular as the basis for a critical visual inquiry on the subject of human nature and its written counterpart. As such, my work aims to highlight the slippage between auditory cuesand literal meaning as well as the mutability between text and image.