{"id":91,"date":"2011-11-18T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T08:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.otherthings.com\/blog2\/?p=91"},"modified":"2011-11-18T12:59:40","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T20:59:40","slug":"asemic-writing-and-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/asemic-writing-and-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Asemic Writing and Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Asemic<\/a>Asemic<\/a> is a magazine of asemic writing<\/em><\/a>, or writing without semantic content. It’s full of fun peripheral glyphery, little black-and-white shadows of nonsense coming out of the fog. The individual pieces are hit or miss, but the variety is wonderful.<\/p>\n

I never knew there was a word for it, but asemic writing is something I’ve loved for years. The fact is, I love the form of language<\/a> more than its content. It’s why I like foreign accents, and listening to languages I don’t understand. It’s why I spent so much time in college listening to Cocteau Twins. It’s one of the main reasons I love graffiti<\/a>. My first Burning Man project<\/a> was an exercise in asemic writing and speech.<\/p>\n

I started speaking in tongues<\/a> on the subway in New York in high school. Acting like a crazy person is an effective strategy for dealing with certain tricky situations. And it was fun to watch people try to guess where I was from. But over time, it became something I would do for my own enjoyment, even when nobody else was around. It was just a joy to be able to speak without having to mean<\/em> anything. All the beauty of form without the burden of content. It was comforting, like a dog’s chin resting warmly on your knee, not saying anything in particular, just existing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nan almost completely asemic piece by San Francisco writer APEX.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve also noticed a trend towards asemic writing among some of my favorite graffiti writers. While most start their artistic lives with the written word, there’s always an abstract component, and there comes a point in certain writers’ development where the abstraction takes over completely. Maybe they feel the same attraction to meaninglessness that I do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related links:
\nAsemic calligraphy<\/a> by Emma Viguier.
\nBook from the Sky<\/a> (asemic Chinese by Xu Bing).
\nvarious<\/a> works<\/a> by Brion<\/a> Gysin<\/a>.
\nDiploma<\/a> by Saul Steinberg
\nPCOET<\/a> by David Melnick
\nTender Buttons<\/a> by Gertrude Stein<\/p>\n

(originally via MetaFilter<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asemic is a magazine of asemic writing, or writing without semantic content. It’s full of fun peripheral glyphery, little black-and-white shadows of nonsense coming out of the fog. The individual pieces are hit or miss, but the variety is wonderful. I never knew there was a word for it, but asemic writing is something I’ve … Continue reading Asemic Writing and Speech<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphabet","category-graffiti","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}