Incoming: Niniji Chen and Jimmy Connors

[William M]

A fun card from Niniji Chen. I think these may be fake chinese characters(so pretty much asemic), but i'm not sure. I love the addition of the PX Mart sticker too.

Back of an envelope from Jimmy Connors and his add and return project which I'll add  to and return shortly.

[Bradford]

Deprived of a suitable environment for creating art, such as in a work environment, I’ve always doodled.  Usually representative or at least surreal interpretations of objects, my doodles became absolutely asemic last year.  I’ve not worked out how to share this production with others thinking it might make a good background for a larger work perhaps.  Given that my asemic scribbles resemble Asian ideographic characters, it might challenge Jennifer and Carl a bit to view them as asemics as they would be inclined to assign meaning when perceiving almost-familiar characters.  In short, it’s somewhere between these perspectives which might (excuse me) blur the lines a bit.  I’ve been wondering all this time what to do with my output so the present discussion seems especially pregnant.  Mail will follow . . .

[Bradford]

I've always been blessed/cursed to be able to see both (or more) sides of an issue so I agree with "nontranslatable" as a requirement for the asemic designation.  Asemic works should depend on just the visual aspect of what, how something was rendered without any assigned/defined meaning possible, nor aural flow from said translation in spoken form.  Here, nuances of word use in context are irrelevant.  The “untranslatable” then becomes a deeper, more subconscious reflection of what is observed.

Concomitantly, to a viewer not learned about a written language form, the visual presentation stat solum is the only information at hand to consider.  As such, any modern or archaic "grassy style" writing might yield notions of the motion of leaves or water to an uninformed viewer.  In this case, the rigors of scholarship are neither needed nor desired for the artistic interpreter solely concerned with aesthetics; truly an occasion where “Ignorance is best”.  Here, language and assigned meaning for some becomes asemic to others who have nothing else to rely upon.

[William M]

good point jennifer. i think of asemic(and i'm no expert) as being non translatable written forms/language or designed as such. a language that is translatable(or part of the history of a living language(or even a dead one)), even just by some experts, wouldn't be asemic to me.

i think the word asemic coming more from the art/literary fields - there's no reason the term would follow a more scientific or even linguistic line of logic - so saying asemiotic would be better term seems a bit besides the point. not sure if i'm making sense there.

[Bradford]

OK, Carl answered back this morning with this reply:

I began to wonder if the word "asemic" should've been replaced with "asemiotic."

The grass-character Chinese calligraphy often cannot be read by literate Chinese. It takes a lot of thinking to recover the basic kaishu form or never. So one could regard that type of calligraphic artistry as being asemic. You look at it; it had some meaning once; it is not recoverable, but you know it is pregnant with meaning, just unreachable.

No comment on my transcription?

Carl, searching for semiotics in my life

[William M]

what was his take on the examples and definition you provided? i'd be curious.

[Bradford]

Yes, I purposely offered no insight into the term, "asemic", but made sure to offer it up for his consideration.  It's kind of an ongoing dialogue we've had running for over 25 years (you'd have to be there to appreciate it really).

I followed up with De Villo Sloan's adapted Widipedia definition and description after suggesting a few descriptors then provided the scans of the covers of WHISPER, a work recently available courtesy of Mr. Sloan's generosity which can be seen in the asemic group here on the IUOMA.

[William M]

ah, so mystery solved. i was going to ask niniji about it and then it slipped my mind. i'm a little surprised the linguist wasn't familiar with the term asemic, but then it is probably more commonly known in certain art circles and seems to have been used in that context since 1997 if wikipedia is to be believed.

[Bradford]

I JUST RECEIVED A RESPONSE FROM MY LINGUIST FRIEND, DR. CARL MASTHAY:

The Taiwan postcard has valid characters. Please see the updated picture. I could easily match all four of the characters, but the first one diverges yet did have two matches with its flat bottom when I used my 5-volume ancient-style character dictionary. If anyone else has a better idea, I'd like to know it.

What's this with "asemic" anyway? That would be a neologistic misnomer as if 'no-sign' and based on a prosodic suffix. Prosody is not involved here, and the characters are valid from the ancient 'small-seal' style and have a meaning for some artisan association somewhere. Maybe my translation could be 'state articles' or 'country articles' + 'arts or craftmanship'.

Carl

[William M]

my bad jennifer. clearly, i had not received that yet - as it arrived in the mail today! i'll add some and pass it on to someone else.

[William M]

oh yeah. i'm pretty sure i remember that one. and it's been sent on. interesting about xubing. always nice when someone points you in the direction of interesting work.