The origins of this work date back to the late 1980s, with experiments conducted using an Excel spreadsheet. Playing with these office tools was unprecedented at the time. These initial explorations, based on the alphabetical ordering of numbers and colors in various languages, laid the groundwork for a series of works that were developed later on. These creations, including generative works, texts, paintings, and photographs, are presented in this article, illustrating the evolution of these initial concepts.

aoon – generative version

five, four, one, three, two / 54132 - Numbers, traditionally ordered in a mathematical sequence, become disordered through the alphabetical order of their names. Instead of a linear and predictable progression, we encounter a rearranged sequence where 'five' precedes 'four', 'four' comes before 'one', and 'two' is found after 'three' in English, for example. The experience, replicated in different languages, reveals distinct sequences for each one.

The current generative version of this project offers a dynamic experience that transforms the alphabetical order of numbers into an intriguing visual animation. Each page displays a number in word form, while the number below indicates its alphabetical position. This arrangement creates an anachronism between the word and the page number, highlighting an incongruity between the text and its usual numerical value, and invites a reconsideration of the traditional relationships between numbers and words associated with numbers.

The resulting effect evokes a chaotic countdown, a desynchronized sequence, where the only order resides in the page sequence, paradoxical in relation to the textual content. A graph mode [the 'g' key] enriches the interaction, offering a new dimension to the exploration of relationships between numbers, words, and their visual sequence.

In this special edition of 101 NFTs titled “...the alphabetical order of numbers (from zero to one hundred)” [aoon], each NFT represents a unique iteration. Each iteration, from the first to the hundred-and-first, will display the corresponding number written in English, sorted alphabetically. Thus, the first iteration will present the word 'eight', the second 'eighteen', and so on, up to the hundred-and-first iteration “zero”.

Once all 101 NFTs are minted, the collection page will reveal the complete sequence, thus offering an overview of this alphabetical sorting of numbers. This realization will not only be the fruit of our conception but also a collective work, shaped by the purchasers of each NFT, who together will have contributed to the assembly of this linguistic mosaic.

This little book in French was published under the title “...de l’ordre alphabétique des nombres (de zéro à cent)”, 1992  – 15.5 x 11 cm. Signed edition, 101 copies - numbered 0 à 100

Following the alphabetical arrangement of numbers, the idea emerged to classify the names of colors in the same way. The sequences of colors vary according to languages, reflecting the sequences found in dictionaries.

Each language has its own chromatic sequence, highlighting the linguistic singularity that, unlike the colors of the natural spectrum which follow a physical and universal order, the colors written in different languages are arranged in a unique and specific way.

c.o.l.o.r.mix – generative version

This exploration of color on a monochrome black and white computer was quite amusing. Interacting with these color-words led to mixing the letters of their names, thus evoking the mixing of the colors themselves. For example, brown & green mixed: oewrngnrbe, wrnrobnege, rnwbgeorne, onerwgrebn, rernbgwoen, rgnowneerb, rweonrgebn, nnwreebgro, eorwrnbneg, grnrweobne, rewrenngob, nonerrgwbe, wbrgroenne, rwbeeronng, wnoenergrb, owgbnrnree, rwnonregeb, gonernrewb, nnbgrweore, nowebnrger. It is from this approach that c.o.l.o.r.mix was conceived.

This generative application is based on a palette of 11 colors including black, blue, brown, green, gray, orange, pink, red, violet, white, and yellow. Each of these color names is transcribed in its corresponding hue. The application generates all possible combinations of color pairs, such as 'blue and pink', 'orange and green', or 'violet and red', thus exploiting the full diversity of the palette in its generative process. The application endlessly generates unique pages, each displaying an unprecedented combination of unknown words, in a perpetual process aimed at exploring the entirety of possible color combinations.

The older works in this series, presented later in this article, may shed light on the journey of this research into the relationships between language, perception, classification, and color.

(...) It is the same kind of approach which leads him to work this prose over, not bowing to the narrative or analytical order which it constructs throughout its various segments, but like a multi-entry picture which can be consulted as a database. On a form of selection proper to the tale and not very directly explicit, H.G. superimposes a form of classification with very strictly defined criteria. So taking colour not as a theme but as a general chapter heading, the artist is induced to draw up the list of a town’s telephone subscribers whose names are colours, or else to paint a picture which is neither conceptual nor neo-geo but the consequence of a double-listing; horizontally a series of languages, vertically the names of some colours previously chosen and placed in alphabetical order. The coordinates so defined make it possible to compose a set of coloured squares which, when put together, simply make up the picture. The same approach also ends with the painting of a monochrome canvas in the presence of a person whose name indicates the colour used. Mr. RED, Mrs. PINK, are then invited to sign the minutes of the session. Messrs. Damien and Alberto BLANC (WHITE), more obliging, even agreed to be introduced, then to have their photograph taken, the former balancing on the shoulders of the latter for a composition (in black and white…) judiciously entitled “Blanc sur Blanc” (White on White). (...) – Hervé Laurent in cat. 5th SIV (excerpt), St-Gervais, Geneva – 1993

The presentation of the tableau may change depending on the language of the country. The title on the label, translated into the local language, could modify the sequence of colors displayed.

Mrs Pink & Mr Gray

Approaching colors through the lens of their names led to a search not in the dictionary, but in the telephone directory. Indeed, many surnames carry the name of a color. A proper name that is also a common noun. Madame Vert, Monsieur Gris, François Rouge, Gilbert Orange...Living in a Francophone city, the color names in the telephone directory were predominantly in French. This line of work led, among other things, to a series of monochrome paintings, listings, and photographs. For example, individuals with color-based surnames were asked to attend the creation of such a monochrome painting and to certify that the color used was indeed that of their name.

Composition paysagère #1, 1993 | (Landscape Composition #1)

In 1993, during an exhibition dedicated to landscape painter Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) and focusing on the theme of landscape, this research shifted from colors to family names evoking natural elements, which could potentially be part of a landscape: Mr., Ms., Mrs., or Miss Buisson [Bush], Branche [Branch], Rossignol [Nightingale], Torrent, Sapin [Fir], Montagne [Mountain]... The spelling of these family names, searched in the telephone directory, had to correspond exactly to the elements they referred to (as in the dictionary).Bush = bush | Branch = branch | Mountain = mountainBy contacting these person-elements and asking them to sign at a specific place on the canvas – so that all these signatures were distributed as elements constituting a landscape – a first painting was created.

Profils perdus, 1994 | Lost profiles

Playing with words led to the creation of a very simple generative application, “Lost Profiles” (1994), inspired by the personal ads one could read in newspapers. A first name, an age, and a few adjectives were enough to generate a “person”; and with a list of first names, ages between 18 and 40, a vast gallery of unique virtual individuals appeared on the screen. These simple prompts allowed the imagination to construct an “image”. John is 24 years old, tall, and likes sailing; Jennifer, 28 years old, friendly, and loves art; Carmen, 34 years old, athletic, and enjoys nature... *Application created with Macromedia Director. A related version was titled “Free Exchange”.

(...) The work L.O.S.T. for documenta X in 1997 presents this contradiction in the form of a small narrative. In the Web’s unlimited, immoderate extension in countless dimensions, in the “dark” space of the World Wide Web, the circular beam of a torch reveals the traces of someone lost – someone who recedes, who becomes increasingly lost, pulling us into the darkness as well, the harder we look and seek. Graumann’s worldview unites the unchartability of spaces in the worldwide computer network with the real experience of uncanny, sinister spaces familiar to us from childhood. We can chart only the tiniest pieces of the infinitely vast world of the Web, like illuminating outerspace with the light of a torch. Nothing more is revealed, no matter how much effort the explorer makes. On the contrary, in a process of constant deletion, we are progressively deprived of space until all that is left, as we grope in the net space of L.O.S.T., is a cryptic e-mail address. In the lightest spot of this sinister space lurks a menacing black hole from which no message can escape to the world outside. (...) – Hans Rudolf Reust in H.G. Monograph, BS Editions – 2005

(...) Without hiding behind such questions of identity, Graumann nonetheless situates his work on that abstract, blurry boundary between author and machine. In his project for documenta’s website, it is hard to know who is expressing himself and who is the depressive, abandoned figure calling for help. Yet the latter is doing just that from a specific place on the World Wide Web. Furthermore, he can only be reached there. (Or is he in fact only on the viewer’s screen)?In fact, it all begins with a blank screen. By moving the cursor with a mouse over the screen, one moves a white disc that looks something like the beam of a flashlight. Little by little, this shape reveals a text that is legible only by sweeping it with the beam of light: “ugh! this isn’t my day” then “no” and “for how long?” Or “total darkness, locked up,” then “alone” and “locked up, alone, lost! alone, forgotten.” One can never predict where the words, brought to life but broken to bits and spread over the screen, written in small letters or big, will appear next; nor can we say whence they come, nor who is uttering them. Yet suddenly a window appears, allowing one to write directly to lost[at]sgg.ch, like a despairing appeal for contact. It remains to be seen who the person to be contacted will be, or what will become of the messages.As much as man may be seduced by the machine, he nonetheless fears it. Similarly, Graumann’s work plays on both these feelings. Neither a positivist nor a catastrophist, he can make machines execute a number of operations sufficient to feign their independence, enough for them to have an opportunity to seduce us, thereby revealing yet another form of human genius. – Simon Lamunière in cat. Documenta X, Kassel – 1997

Couleur-Minute, 1990

COULEUR-MINUTE belongs to this group of works constructed around a problem using colour as the pretext. Its simplicity helps give a clear idea of the essence of H.G.’s work. It involves a bottom-of-the range Amiga computer, with a monitor continuously showing a random advertisement on the range of 4096 colours available with this sort of machine. Each minute, a colour chosen at random appears, to the exclusion of any other identifying element such as a menu or icon.No sound accompanies this presentation. So, then, during a handful of seconds, each one of the colours exists on the screen occupying the entire surface and creating a kind of new and ephemeral monochrome picture which constitutes one moment of a computer-guided exhibition. The edge of the screen becomes the frame indicating the pictorial quality of the colour. In a half-light, the photonics mark out, minute after minute, a trembling band of coloured light, uniform but unstable, with low radiation. Its character as an apparition, whence it draws its specific aura is also the result of the brevity of this presence; we have moved from the grain of sand to the more complex metaphor of the sandglass. What we should understand is, I think, that H.G.’s work, under its obvious poetic quality, is first of all a reflection on the linking of the computer tool, nowadays prolonged by all its media appendices (by virtue of the interface), with our understanding of the world. To conclude, this exhibition coldly professes to be what it is; a series of moments whose duration is calibrated and whose sequential order is calculated by a random function. In this respect, we can further say that our relationship was sensitive to the result but provided that we do not forget that its origin lies in the performance of the lines of a programme in which it is never a question of our view and that as a result, unlike the humanist thought of Marcel Duchamp, the viewers no longer make the pictures. (...) – Hervé Laurent in cat. 5th SIV (excerpt), St-Gervais, Geneva – 1993