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.
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| 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.
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| "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.
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| "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)
