Asemic Writing for Mail-Artists

Welcome Judith! Feel free to post, comment, ask questions, etc. I do often take postings for the Asemic Front project and some people use them for collabs as well. -DVS

Jayne and I are on the same path with these asemic-vispo pieces (that's how I think of them) that have a lot of image-text relations & textural deconstruction. That's great for AF2!

De Villo, Do you recognize your started? I don't know what track I am on. Is this vispo?

Judith - I’m going to throw in my 2 cents... Your work on that DVS starter is awesome. I really like the train tracks idea! Keep it up!!

I've put up some great collabs by Cheryl Penn (South Africa) & Allan Bealy (USA) at Asemic Front 2. These are "hybrid" pieces that draw from concrete poetry, vispo, Lettrism (all things it helps to know about) but definitely asemic in the sense that language is fractured, reconstructed, new symbols made. Thx to Cheryl (actually an early founder of this group) and Allan of New York City.

http://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2019/04/asemic-visual-poetry-colla...

Dear Judith,

We tend not to worry too much about following any strict guidelines for asemic writing or visual poetry (vispo) in this group.

Were you to scroll back the comments for years in this group, you'd find lengthy and sometimes contentious discussions about asemic writing.

Your work I've seen in the gallery is clearly text-oriented and directed toward the relation of language to image. That pretty much makes you a visual poet already.

Asemic writing is (most agree) a form of vispo where you are creating writing that cannot be read in a conventional way. Children do it naturally; it's that simple. (But then again Ph.D. literary theorists are writing about it.) Your choice, I guess.

The Wikipedia definition is actually very good should you wish to pursue this aspect of asemics. But you might be better off following your heart and intuition. They seem to be serving you well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing

The visual poetry section is also very good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_poetry

Also so I can feel like I'm keeping from meandering I want to add that Minimalism is a big element in avant art & also mail art.

Asemic writing can be very minimal and also focused purely on the writing aspect.

Minimalism is harder than it looks. I am terrible at it.

But nothing says you have to fill every micro-dot of a page. Absence, emptiness, nothing - those are artist tools too. No?

Eduardo Cardoso's (Portugal) Minimalist group is FAB and Eduardo is a great visual poets as well.

Nancy Bell Scott (Maine, USA) is a longtime group member whose work exemplifies the "asemic-vispo hybrid" work that has come out of our group. (But you don't have to follow any school or style!) Nancy is known and admired outside of mail art for what she has done for asemics. She is a great artist to explore.

thank you De Villo for all of your comments. 

I will ,as always, continue to follow my heart in creating art and in all thinge. That's the only way to go. These past few months in IUOMA has sparked and thrown light on  new creative paths. So much to explore! I agree with you about minimalism. I love it.... when you get it right. I definately relate to Nancy Bell Scots works. Lastly... Your collaborations are wonderful. I still have not explored vintage paper and trash emphoria. All in good time☺

I find a lot of inspiration here in IUOMA also! The community is the greatest.

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Thanks, Judith. Wow, Now that is asemic writing.

thanks Linda - iuoma is getting so big it's harder to establish one-on-one

Jayne, those are excellent! I especially like the circles.

Here is a recent Asemic Front collab I did w/ Miron Tee. It's digital. AF accepts both snail mail and digital.

Note on screen right is a pic of trees in snow. When Guido Vermeulen was still here we named these images drawn from nature "eco-asemics" because people found language-suggestive shapes & forms in the natural world usually untouched by humans.

Thanks for the kudos, DVS! That collab. Is very cool. Your use of the tree pic compliments Miron’s piece. 

Eco-asemics, wow! I’ll have to keep my eyes open for such things. It is a clever term. Call me nerdy, but this stuff is fun! 

I'm thrilled to post 5 pieces by new group member Judith Dagan in the Asemic Front project. Asemic Front is primarily a mail art project and work from our group here is especially welcome. Thx Judith!

http://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2019/04/asemic-visual-poetry-by-ju...

'scuse me - 6 pieces by Judith Dagan!

Hello from Perth Western Australia!

sikfnjfkfjvnkfkkfkv! 

Anyone like to exchange mail art?

sjjfjvjvjskkvnjsjcjvkobkfnw? 

Welcome Penny Reinecke. Many people here at IUOMA will be thrilled to exchange mail with you, I'm sure.

And folks in this group will be especially interested in visual poetry and asemic writing. Also feel free to post your work in this group too.

dvs

I make these using Google's neural network library, Tensorflow, feeding in two images and outputting to a new image which uses the others for its style and content. I then print them out onto 2x3 inch photo paper using a device called a Sprocket. The photo paper is sticker backed, so feel free to put them up in bathroom stalls or whatever.

Welcome back Mark Rossmiller. Thx for the posts. Outstanding imho

That is lovely, Jayne!

Is it real braille?

dvs

Nice pieces, Mark. I'm tickled by the one below to be considered asemic. It's easy to "read" it as flowers but then, who knows???

I agree, Jan.

Mark, it would be great if you could identify whose work you're using in this amazing process. I'd like to post some on Asemic Front but wish I could name the collaborators.

For instance, I think I recognize a collab Shawn McMurtagh and I did but you've added even more so it's a new piece.

I think maybe another piece includes fike, jmb, c mehrl - maybe

If you don't want to, ok. But these are really great.

btw - the shawn mc murtagh piece was some metal hooks placed on a scanner bed

I'm using some collaborations between myself and Renata that I dug out of the basement at the old house (3814 SW 28th Pl., Des Moines) during the move. The below picture of flowers is a random grab off the internet which gives it the body.

I have around 10-20 pieces by me and Renata that I'll be using as the "style" input to my algorithm for the foreseeable future. I originally made some asemic writing I think with Sharpie on cardstock, then mailed those to Rome, Italy and she gave them fish bodies and embellished them with decorative work. I'm using photos of abstract flowers I find off Google as the "content" input to the algorithm, although I will probably switch to less-recognizable, more abstract content inputs once I run out of flowers I like.

I have experimented with quite a few different inputs to this algorithm, some turn out very nice looking but the majority of them turn out looking pretty bad. They take two to three days to process on my Intel NUC, they run faster on my laptop but for some reason the algorithm has been crashing a lot on the laptop over the past week and I can't figure out the cause, so for now it's only running on the NUC.

As for listing Renata as a collaborator, you may want to ask her first; she might not like her name being connected to mine any more. I'm using these inputs because I found them in my basement. I haven't been naming her because as far as I know she wants nothing to do with me any longer.

And on a different note, the great Richard Canard sent me edible asemics (?) Matzosemics (?). idk but great asemic readymades. thc

http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profiles/blogs/asemic-readymades-by-r...

And on a different note, I'm going to make the assertion that the only pure asemic writing is really made in the form of truly random information; the stuff you see here and on Facebook or asemic websites is not free of "semantic content," as the Wikipedia article on asemic writing would suggest it must be in order to fall under the definition of asemic writing.

This is what real asemic writing would look like:

But to humor everyone in the asemic network, I'll go along with the less than random information flow.

Mark, your view of asemics is somewhat notorious among asemic writers and visual poets. You brought our group to a standstill during the A-16 project back in the day. But I've always encouraged you to express your views. That still stands.

My experience shows this is not a great venue for asemic theory but go ahead if that's what people want.

Mark, I think you create great asemic work, which I think is more important than your theories that most agree are somewhat unorthodox,

I hope you keep sharing in the group.

yer ol' bud dvs

:)

Asemic readymade aka Found Asemics from Nancy Bell Scott (Maine, USA).

http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profiles/blogs/asemic-readymade-by-na...