email from tim gaze
hi Jim.
some recent thoughts I jotted down last night. a few additions this morning.
writing is different to written language. the history of writing is much older. the 2 became intertwined a few thousand years ago, in a few parts of the world. earlier writing was used in rock art, textile decoration, pottery decoration, tattoos, & other places. Some conventional marks, some personal marks, some geometric shapes, some accidents were all parts of early writing. Most authorities on the history of writing admit there was something pretty developed before what they call "true writing" or "complete writing".
our most basic terms to do with reading & writing are vague:
reading means both recognising & acquiring particles of a writing system, & pulling words & sentences & making sense of a stream of acquired particles. it's a broad term. there are metaphorical uses which we're fond of using. my football coach in primary school told us to "read the ball". read the clouds, read tealeaves, read tarot cards, she's difficult to read.
semantics has 2 meanings: the study of meaning, & the study of worded meanings. I'm only interested in the latter; or rather, we're playing the wordgame, & mainly word-thinking, so I suspect that the worded ideas we spit out about meaning will tend to be stuck on the latter meaning.
asemic, therefore, has 2 possible meanings: meaningless, or lacking worded semantic meaning. again, I'm working with the latter meaning. can something ever be meaningless? we get into fuzzy word territory when we talk about this. Nancy Burr commented that some of her scribbled pieces don't mean anything else in particular; they mean themselves; or they mean what they are. things mean themselves, at very least. so, I can't ever see a meaninglessness. only in terms of communication, shared human games, can I conceive of something being meaningless.
asemic is a nice word, even if possibly not the most precise one for the area of art I'm making & disseminating. if you search "asemic" in google, you get sites for a Spanish quasi-government organisation, an Indian actress's resume which lists the Thall Asemic Society, some medical sites & several discussing worded semantics.
I've google searched alexical, subphonemic & aphonic. none of these produces anything like the enjoyable results that asemic does. haven't tried alexemic yet, but it's a bit long to gain wide use.
if I didn't have asemic, I'd talk about intuitive calligraphy, or deep doodles.
doodles is another ambiguous word: a search for "telephone doodles" produces sites talking about little pictures drawn beside the telephone, or asemic symbols drawn beside the telephone. representational images, or non-fixed signs.
I'm trying to stimulate more art which combines new symbols with emotive bundles of lines.
when we look at something, in a split second, we decide if it has any legible particles of written language, & then if they're sufficiently linked to read words out of them. reading kicks in in a split second, & then we're racing off on a journey of words. once we're reading, we're rushing away from more primitive, uncertain, exploratory ways of seeing & thinking.
James Elkins' book The Domain of Images covers this. he takes a very broad look at text & image. I disagree with his strict categories, & also with his negative attitude towards allographs & cacography. he's stuck on the widely held idea that all information is semantic, worded information, & that ASCII is the most successful form of writing, since it's raw worded information with no distracting physical variations.
I'm also trying to encourage sensitive "readings" of wordless asemic works. I've show asemic works to a few people with strong intuition. what they see in them is detailed & deep. for example, a young woman whose Mum is from Papua New Guinea looked at some of mine in Bent; she said "there's no violence in these; I can see trees & vines & plants when I look at these".
powerful scribbles is another term I like. wrote to dj Spooky a few years ago, showing him asemic magazines, told him his illegible graffiti tags on his albums feel like bundles of energy. no reply.
higher states of consciousness are communicable. my friend Matt (who's in Saudi Arabia) said that talking about higher states can induce a higher state. when I make asemic writing in a higher state, sensitive readers can sense that & tap into it. zen calligraphy is meant to communicate what words can't: I've been here!
found a couple of nice collaborations of ours on your blog a few weeks ago; haven't found them since.
I'm trying to make writing which touches & makes sense to people as far from Western acculturation as Africans or Chinese.
maybe the visual poetry & mail art folks we often communicate with, with their promiscuous desire for contact, are already converted. I'm pushing my art more & more towards folks who'd never otherwise see it. the responses have been pretty quiet.
I've told a few people recently that we're in an extremely literal phase of culture: words are being treated as if their sole purpose was to carry a semantic meaning, which is pounced on & dissected using more words & word-thoughts.
I've also said that postmodernism is a verbal construct which really only delivers more words. or, one can deconstruct a recipe for making bread, but the recipe still works for making real bread to fill empty bellies. some words point to physical reality. other words point to yet other words, leading only to long trains of word-thoughts.
the yin art, chaos art, feminine art ideas I've mentioned before still feel right to me.
on collaborations: some of the art I'm mailed to use as starting points stimulates rich replies. your crayon shapes which I overdubbed, which you used on the covers of xtant1, are good examples. I find bunches of letters or words much less stimulating.
I love rich, asymmetrical, organic shapes, & can easily sing harmonies with them.
from the void, form!
out of chaos, inevitable islands of order.
thoughts aren't just words. Einstein talked a little about this.
(maybe I said this in my letter to you, mailed last week?) last year or more I've felt dry, lacking in deep inspiration, strong passion. often feel as if I'm producing inferior imitations of things I did a few years ago. world political events, & my observations of various institutions, & the activities of most creative artists, contribute to my feeling. one example: there was a powerful reggae scene in Adelaide a few years ago. at its heart, it had spirituality. this has been blown to the 4 winds; nothing left of it at the moment.
how come Lettrisme hasn't been taken much further? compositions of non-letteral symbols are profound. they transcend language, can talk to a huge range of people. visual poetry using glyphs & symbols is one place we need to encourage, call it asemic or what you will.
let's crack rational thought!
attention span: lightning strikes
works which affect people in a split second. you can layer them so there's an initial bang, with more nourishment inside to reward persistent readers.
hope these chime!
Tim
some recent thoughts I jotted down last night. a few additions this morning.
writing is different to written language. the history of writing is much older. the 2 became intertwined a few thousand years ago, in a few parts of the world. earlier writing was used in rock art, textile decoration, pottery decoration, tattoos, & other places. Some conventional marks, some personal marks, some geometric shapes, some accidents were all parts of early writing. Most authorities on the history of writing admit there was something pretty developed before what they call "true writing" or "complete writing".
our most basic terms to do with reading & writing are vague:
reading means both recognising & acquiring particles of a writing system, & pulling words & sentences & making sense of a stream of acquired particles. it's a broad term. there are metaphorical uses which we're fond of using. my football coach in primary school told us to "read the ball". read the clouds, read tealeaves, read tarot cards, she's difficult to read.
semantics has 2 meanings: the study of meaning, & the study of worded meanings. I'm only interested in the latter; or rather, we're playing the wordgame, & mainly word-thinking, so I suspect that the worded ideas we spit out about meaning will tend to be stuck on the latter meaning.
asemic, therefore, has 2 possible meanings: meaningless, or lacking worded semantic meaning. again, I'm working with the latter meaning. can something ever be meaningless? we get into fuzzy word territory when we talk about this. Nancy Burr commented that some of her scribbled pieces don't mean anything else in particular; they mean themselves; or they mean what they are. things mean themselves, at very least. so, I can't ever see a meaninglessness. only in terms of communication, shared human games, can I conceive of something being meaningless.
asemic is a nice word, even if possibly not the most precise one for the area of art I'm making & disseminating. if you search "asemic" in google, you get sites for a Spanish quasi-government organisation, an Indian actress's resume which lists the Thall Asemic Society, some medical sites & several discussing worded semantics.
I've google searched alexical, subphonemic & aphonic. none of these produces anything like the enjoyable results that asemic does. haven't tried alexemic yet, but it's a bit long to gain wide use.
if I didn't have asemic, I'd talk about intuitive calligraphy, or deep doodles.
doodles is another ambiguous word: a search for "telephone doodles" produces sites talking about little pictures drawn beside the telephone, or asemic symbols drawn beside the telephone. representational images, or non-fixed signs.
I'm trying to stimulate more art which combines new symbols with emotive bundles of lines.
when we look at something, in a split second, we decide if it has any legible particles of written language, & then if they're sufficiently linked to read words out of them. reading kicks in in a split second, & then we're racing off on a journey of words. once we're reading, we're rushing away from more primitive, uncertain, exploratory ways of seeing & thinking.
James Elkins' book The Domain of Images covers this. he takes a very broad look at text & image. I disagree with his strict categories, & also with his negative attitude towards allographs & cacography. he's stuck on the widely held idea that all information is semantic, worded information, & that ASCII is the most successful form of writing, since it's raw worded information with no distracting physical variations.
I'm also trying to encourage sensitive "readings" of wordless asemic works. I've show asemic works to a few people with strong intuition. what they see in them is detailed & deep. for example, a young woman whose Mum is from Papua New Guinea looked at some of mine in Bent; she said "there's no violence in these; I can see trees & vines & plants when I look at these".
powerful scribbles is another term I like. wrote to dj Spooky a few years ago, showing him asemic magazines, told him his illegible graffiti tags on his albums feel like bundles of energy. no reply.
higher states of consciousness are communicable. my friend Matt (who's in Saudi Arabia) said that talking about higher states can induce a higher state. when I make asemic writing in a higher state, sensitive readers can sense that & tap into it. zen calligraphy is meant to communicate what words can't: I've been here!
found a couple of nice collaborations of ours on your blog a few weeks ago; haven't found them since.
I'm trying to make writing which touches & makes sense to people as far from Western acculturation as Africans or Chinese.
maybe the visual poetry & mail art folks we often communicate with, with their promiscuous desire for contact, are already converted. I'm pushing my art more & more towards folks who'd never otherwise see it. the responses have been pretty quiet.
I've told a few people recently that we're in an extremely literal phase of culture: words are being treated as if their sole purpose was to carry a semantic meaning, which is pounced on & dissected using more words & word-thoughts.
I've also said that postmodernism is a verbal construct which really only delivers more words. or, one can deconstruct a recipe for making bread, but the recipe still works for making real bread to fill empty bellies. some words point to physical reality. other words point to yet other words, leading only to long trains of word-thoughts.
the yin art, chaos art, feminine art ideas I've mentioned before still feel right to me.
on collaborations: some of the art I'm mailed to use as starting points stimulates rich replies. your crayon shapes which I overdubbed, which you used on the covers of xtant1, are good examples. I find bunches of letters or words much less stimulating.
I love rich, asymmetrical, organic shapes, & can easily sing harmonies with them.
from the void, form!
out of chaos, inevitable islands of order.
thoughts aren't just words. Einstein talked a little about this.
(maybe I said this in my letter to you, mailed last week?) last year or more I've felt dry, lacking in deep inspiration, strong passion. often feel as if I'm producing inferior imitations of things I did a few years ago. world political events, & my observations of various institutions, & the activities of most creative artists, contribute to my feeling. one example: there was a powerful reggae scene in Adelaide a few years ago. at its heart, it had spirituality. this has been blown to the 4 winds; nothing left of it at the moment.
how come Lettrisme hasn't been taken much further? compositions of non-letteral symbols are profound. they transcend language, can talk to a huge range of people. visual poetry using glyphs & symbols is one place we need to encourage, call it asemic or what you will.
let's crack rational thought!
attention span: lightning strikes
works which affect people in a split second. you can layer them so there's an initial bang, with more nourishment inside to reward persistent readers.
hope these chime!
Tim
posted by jim leftwich at 12:10 PM
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