Fine With This is a work-in-progress and collaboration between Kay Dartt, Stephen Lee, and me, and is supported by a Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago. Inspired in part by KC Green of “This is Fine” fame, FWT will be comprised of a series of large (>12″), cast iron letters. These casts will be plumbed with propane, so they can burst into flame on command. FWT is designed to be rearrangeable, allowing us to change the text in response to the multitude of sociopolitical crisis competing for our attention in 2020.

In order to reward close examination, each letter in FWT is comprised of a modular unit or Truchet tile. We used Grasshopper to populate our font outlines with randomly-rotated instances of this tile, creating snaking patterns for the eye to follow. Each tile also has a burner hole at its center.

FWT embodies the dumpster fire of 2020 both conceptually and practically. Given the current restrictions on social gatherings, we designed our work to be viewed online. The piece will be streamed live on Twitch, where folks can control the flames by donating real money to socially aware causes. All of the software and hardware that makes this possible will be thoroughly documented and released open source on Github when the piece goes live.