Gallery-goers gorge tonight with an invitation from Ringling College of Art and Design to “Celebrate Seven Galleries in One Evening,” featuring extended hours for the campus galleries and the opening of three new exhibitions, including StereoType, a traveling exhibition showcasing the work of 14 international artists and designers exploring the intersection of technology and design through novel interpretations of the symbolic nature of language. Housed in the Selby Gallery, the Ringling College exhibition will be the only stop in the region for this traveling show.

Under the full name StereoType: New directions in typography, the assembled exhibition sees artists from disparate traditions and mediums offering their own take on the elastic potential of typography, both in form and content. For some, there’s a playfulness, a certain whimsy that invites the viewer along for the experiment as the artist twists and bends familiar forms into alien images. Jerome Corgier’s installation lines the eastern wall, a row of layered and multi-colored paper constructions designed as a hybrid interpretation of Arabic and Roman alphabets and looking from afar like the crumbling pyramidic ruins of some Seussean civilization. On the wall adjacent, Ji Lee presents the alphabet in three dimensions, rotating each character around its vertical axis and positing the symbol’s form separate from the page.

Also on display will be Brian Banton’s plexiglass and elastic installation, stretching the alphabet across three dimensions through manipulation of the basic vector lines composing individual letters and a performance piece from Remco van de Craats, founder of Design Studio Edhv in The Netherlands, using fire to create ephemeral art. However, while the apparatus will be on display, the actual performance will be on the following Monday, Aug. 24.

“In this day and age, there’s no reason to think about type as something that has to be two dimensions,” said Ginger Gregg Duggan, a curator from curatorsquared, which won an Award of Excellence for the exhibit, “and we love working at that intersection of art and design, always looking at that boundary. I hope it excites people and gets a new group to look at something they may not initially perceive as art, but definitely is.”

The second room houses numerous video projects, such as Thomas G. Mason’s “Colloidal Alphabet Soup,” a collection of microscopic three-dimensional sculpted letters suspended in water and projected from the ceiling into a quivering and oddly literate petri dish on the floor, and Dan Tobin Smith’s efforts to corral fire, smoke and even the natural environment into letter forms, accompanied to a flickering and almost haunting conclusion by its insistent soundtrack.

In addition to StereoType, in the Basch Gallery 4 Artists/4 Walls opens, seeing artists Dustin Juengel, Nathan Skiles, Steven Strenker and Patrick Lindhart each claim a wall as their own and paint directly on its surface, creating a walk-in experience, and “Resonance Array” opens in the Crossley Gallery with a reception from 5-9pm, showcasing the work of Ringling College faculty and staff. Tonight also marks the closing reception for the show in the CJ Gallery, featuring Ringling alumnus Tom Stephens. The Willis Smith Galleries will be open, showing student photography, as will the MadeBy Gallery, with an extended sale on original work from Ringling College students and alumni. All galleries will be open late, from 5-7pm, except for Crossley, which will be open until 9pm.