All entries

Between the World and Me (2021)

Hazel Baird's motion piece for Ta-Nehisi Coates' text demonstrates how typography can carry emotional weight without illustration or metaphor — the words themselves become the image. Letter forms collide, fragment, and reconstitute in ways that mirror the tension in the writing: fragile and insistent at once.

The rhythm here is not musical but textual — motion decisions follow the cadence of spoken language rather than a beat grid. This is a useful counterpoint to music-driven motion work, showing how voice and breath can be equally valid timing sources.

Notice how negative space is treated as deliberately as the type itself — silence in the composition functions the same way silence does in the text.


Creator Hazel Baird
Year 2021
Platform Vimeo
Accessed 10 June 2024
Video license Standard Vimeo License
Contributor Oliver Aemisegger
Analysis license CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗