CALL AMPERSAND RESPONSE

Call Ampersand Response is a collaborative artwork made through an exchange of images via email. Between 2011 and 2017 Michael Dumontier and Micah Lexier conceived this activity as a way to share with each other their mutual interest in found images, line drawings, and used books. The starting image was of a circle on a rectangle; every subsequent image was visually connected to the previous one. It was understood from the beginning that they had to use images that could be scanned from physical items they already had at home (no images from the Internet)'such as children's books, personal collections of technical manuals, and assorted ephemera. The call-and-response nature of the enterprise can be appreciated in the distinctive pairs of facing pages that present themselves as you go through the bound book. To reinforce their dual roles each image appears twice in the book, once as response and again as call. One can see the resulting series of images as a closed loop with no beginning and no end. This second, expanded edition includes the entire project of 196 exchanges that make up Dumontier and Lexier's clever, competitive, and meandering loop of images. Creative people in art and design will take pleasure in browsing the book and discover formal analogies, witty poetic correspondence, and dadaesque follies, which congregate to an unseen visual narrative. Truly an inspirational tool for creative activists!