notes for asemic items

THREE BASIC TENDENCIES

1. asemic as COMPOSED - drawn, scribbled, scrawled, typed, outlined, drafted, painted, etc. there is an AUTHORIAL aspect here that i am uneasy about. materials and techniques would also come into play, and the choice to keep things on a material medium or to digitize them as well. this can also include SHORTHAND, or any scriptural item that represents, not meaning, idea, or object, but another language or another sign or symbol. this can be interesting, since the shorthand functions as a form of substitute for another substitute.

Smoke prints on paper.

2. asemic as FOUND - interesting because it means a semblance of writing is everywhere, and reminds us of the mythic belief in a cosmos, in natural design, in patterns, in a forest of symbols, etc. anything can be (mis)taken for a mysterious language or pattern, as in DIVINATION. from this, i can take pictures of weather beaten walls, copy out hand or skin patterns, trace surfaces on paper, etc. the process is: take a copy of, upload and digitize, modify as necessary. from here on, the logic of reproduction, quotation, dislocation, reterritorialization, reproduction would have added more unknown effects.

"Watermarks."

3. asemic as what HAPPENS - what may be interesting, far from this dichotomy, is the way anything asemic is processed, and the MATERIAL aspect overtakes both formal and semantic aspects. an example is twisting a newspaper, or crumpling in such a way that the paper distortion renders the prints illegible. see TOPOLOGY and ANAMORPHOSIS. two extreme ideas are at work in this case: transformation and conservation. signs and images are not READ, but are not obliterated. they remain, but become illegible because the material medium that supports them is EMPHASIZED. by undergoing a physical EVENT, the formal and semantic aspects give way, but are not erased. This physical TENSION overwrites semic intention, but remains discernible, that is, as asemic items. digital files are now easily manipulable through editing software, and can be considered as sources of physical tension.

"Reading Glass." Paper collage.

all in all, the key element is the sustenance of the brain's known predilection to hunt for patterns, illusory or not. it is in this intersection between LANGUAGE and NON-LANGUAGE (in their bilateral relation) that we can see the whole dynamics of symbolic energies. (2011)