Asemic writing/asemic art

Asemic writing/asemic art

Writing as it used to be, done by hand with pen and ink, is gone and has been replaced by, first typewriters, then computers, and now by voice technologies and then artificial intelligence. But writing by hand is as old as humankind and handwriting has mostly intersected with visual art. Handwriting is visual art. I wrote all my books and papers by hand until quite late and only reluctantly switched to computers, after a lengthy period of attachment to the Smith Corona electric typewriter. But along with the development of technology, the value of the handwritten work has grown. Now we have stepped back and begun to look at writing as something other than a transparent messenger. We don’t want to see “through” writing, but would like to make it opaque so we can really see it as a visual thing. That kind of opaqueness is now called asemic writing, and that term was coined in the 1970’s to indicate writing that does not convey a legible meaning as a message transmitter. Asemic writing intersects with asemic art, and in the work above the white gaps have been coloured in to emphasize the visual image itself. The lines are done free hand; as Paul Klee said, you can take a line for a walk; the line can be a wanderer, it can get lost and be found again.