Asemic Writing pt 2
This post is the result of a couple of weeks of work and development. To start with I was able to do some workshops which not only reinforced some of my knowledge it got me used to material other than pen and paper after a year away - thanks Covid. I managed to combine two workshops to aid my research and practice: Screen Print and Print Relief (I also plan to do Woodcut, Illustrator and Laser Cut). Technically I did the Screen Print workshop first although since we couldn’t create our own designs yet we had to use premade screens (which I used to make backgrounds for other works). Due to this, I’ll explain the process of my Print Relief first as I was able to carve my images which will help when it comes to turning them into screens.
Before I even drew on the lino, I had ideas in my mind that I created on my phone which would help not only with the layering of screen printing but also the ability to carve with linocut. The images below are the result of writing on a piece of paper, taking a photo, double exposing it through a free app (Pixlr), and applying a filter to test colours. These layering and colour mixes simulate what I could create using a screen print. Although on a phone screen the colours are crisper and the lines smoother than I might be able to achieve in real life, but as practises they are more than ample. I feel they could work as artworks as themselves, perhaps as a projection or large scale print (from a printer) on silk/fabric/material. My inspiration for this was asemic writing which I’ve mentioned before.
Something I had to remember when carving out my lino was that any picture will be reversed, as you can see in the images below (i also added some extra lines after I found a carving tool that was easier to control). Luckily for me, my “characters” and “language” are based on instinct without true meaning so it didn’t matter if I got a “letter” backwards, but if I were doing normal text it would need to be reversed to print the right way. I didn’t want to be too precious about the carving since the rougher it looked the more handmade it appeared to me, I didn’t want it to be crisp and clean, as if it was typed. I also attempted to create different line widths so the print wouldn’t be boring, additionally, when I drew on the lino the lines were not all the same, so it made it seem more authentic. I printed in a few block colours and used both a printing press and a hand press to transfer the image to play with texture, colour payoff and tone. Some were more successful than others, but it all helped in getting used to the process.
As deadlines are arriving, I wanted to put aside my overthinking and just create and make a mess. Kind of like shooting first and asking questions later. In my mind, I wanted to create as much as I could in hope that something would stick or inspire something new, which I found it did. As I was making these quick-fire designs I was imagining myself in a trance almost. In meditation, one can 'empty' their mind of all the daily clutter, the constant inner dialogue that can be distracting, negative or creating barriers. Although I don’t think of this “nothingness” as a void, since there IS something there, like a way to empty yourself from the incessant flow of thoughts and create a state of consciousness that is open and receptive. The trip to London inspired me when it came to the aesthetics of what I was creating, as I used phrases from past books I read, conversations and my own narratives both in legible language and aesmic squiggles. I keep mentioning this form of writing, but I love the idea of looking at something, seeing it as a form of language, but being unable to understand it and needing to rely on aesthetics, colour and tone to understand. (As well the fact it been drilled into me that art has to have a meaning - for critical dialogues - but having gibberish there is no meaning and so it rips up the rule book on what should be) Although I say this, there is a meaning to my work and that is to explore language, literature comprehension and visuals be that live or in the mind’s eye.
When it came to Screen Printing, while I had a little bit of experience, I wasn’t able to do printings of my own images because of the new workshop layouts at school, although I have upcycled the practice prints from the first workshop. It’s just a case now of waiting for a little until the next workshop to be qualified enough, although I will still ask the techs to help just in case. With linocut, it was easier to do a single layer of ink with one image, but with the screens, I can layer the prints either right on top of each other or slightly angled to create a ripple/ shadow effect on the asemic writing, This adds to the aesthetics but also the illegibility. I could fill a page entirely with the prints until no white paper can be seen and the “letters” melt into splodges of colour or keep it neater with two or three colours. After all various asemic writing includes pictograms, or ideograms the meanings of which are sometimes suggested by their shapes, though it may also flow as an abstract expressionist scribble that resembles writing but avoids words. Asemic writing, at times, exists as a conception or shadow of conventional writing practices. Reflecting on writing, but not completely existing as a traditional writing system, asemic writing seeks to make the reader hover in a state between reading and looking.1 On the other hand with screenprint, I’ll be able to blow up my drawings and print them on a larger scale. The prep takes longer than lino although when it comes to actually print it’s very quick.
Essentially through these developments, I went from handwritten ideas, photo sketch ups, linocut and finally screen print as my ideas grew. The goal was to take the inconsistency of handwriting and produce copies as identical as if they were typed. This way not only is the familiarity of handwriting removed but also it gives it an uncomfortable feeling since by human nature nothing is perfect and handwriting is unique and not meant to be the same (imagine a perfectly symmetrical face - something would seem off somehow, even if you couldn’t place it straight away).
I wanted to research how others thought of asemic writing, both from artists and writers, as well as to think about how I could excavate the idea further. For example, Bruce Sterling an American science-fiction author known for his novels and short fiction, comments about asemic writing on his Wired magazine blog Beyond the Beyond:
Writing that doesn't have any actual writing in it whatsoever. You would think that this must be some kind of ultimate literary frontier, a frozen Antarctica of writing entirely devoid of literary content, but I wonder. What is "beyond asemic writing"? Maybe a neural brain-scan of an author *thinking about* asemic writing. Maybe *generative asemic writing*. Maybe "asemic biomimicry". Maybe nanoasemic writing inscribed with atomic force microscopes by Artificial Intelligences.2
1 http://www.thehandstand.org/archive//january2006/articles/nonismacemicart.htm
2 https://www.wired.com/2009/07/web-semantics-asemic-writing/
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