WORD AS IMAGE - CALLIGRAMS - CONCRETE POETRY IN 'BLUE'
Berjouhi Bowler 'The Word as Image'
- from magic amulet to poem -
Images in the forms of words (and vice-versa) have a very long tradition dating back to ancient times.
With the invention of writing, formal pictorial representation to modern languages, picture texts developed over varied traditions and beliefs throughout the centuries in different parts of the world. Nowadays, we somehow tend to elevate text over the image, as words play an inextricable part in everyday communication, collective knowledge and culture. However, with the invention and development of fast-changing technologies at the end of the 20th century, we came back to contemplate the importance of visuals as equal to text.
This phenomenon is not new, but in fact, happened around 1977, with personal computers becoming mass-market consumer devices. To follow, the internet becoming mainstream has developed new ways of reading and searching for information. 'Reading and writing' as we know it inevitably has changed. So has changed our collective conscience and the ways we acquire knowledge. What remains, however, is a written word that is powerful and open for manipulation along with the image ever-presented and embedded in our realities.
(MULTIMODALITY - multimodal discourse - the modes and media of contemporary communication- application of various literacies within one medium - COMES TO MIND in school settings and working environments.)
At the beginning of time, the world seemed like a chain of unexplained occurrences not understood by the primitive mind. Before prehistoric man could have expressed himself with words, the body language guided by emotions was his main forms of communication. This over time started forming pictograms and symbols, and languages started to develop.
Any change built up the suggestion and meaning "and the word itself is endowed with great power" (Berjouhi Bowler, 'The world as image', p.8.). Powerful words shaped as symbols and icons started appearing in manuscripts, on everyday items, as decoration and healing and protective material - 'an amulet'. The magic powers to protect against the unknown.
The art of pictured writing was a magic skill associated with heavenly attributes.
The picture text described emotions in varied forms.
JAPANESE ZEN CALIGRAPHY
MULLAH MIR ALI, THE PERSIAN CALLIGRAPHER HAS SAID:
'My pen works miracles and rightly enough is the form of my words proud of its superiority over its meaning. To each of the curves of my letters, the heavenly vault confesses its bondage in slavery. The value of each of my strokes is eternity itself.' (p.8.)
Text carried mystical powers and pictured something beyond one's comprehension. As a visual talisman to protect and cure. Reading such artefact could have been a strict discipline. However, elevating and liberating in the end. Decoding of the meaning could have taken a road to a new form of understanding. The duality of forms in search of the greater meaning.
Pictured poems backdating to the third century BC.
CALLIGRAMS - a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters create a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves.
A set of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire
TECHNOPAEGNIA - [German version] - Poems that depict an object (lit.: 'Jests that reveal their maker's skill'). Viewed semiotically, they link the graphic and iconic with the linguistic and symbolic [4.140; 3]. The simultaneous occurrence of these affects the process of reception, which alternates between reading the words and looking at the image (full perception of technopaegnia can only be visual). A distinction can be made between: (a) outline poems, in which, based on polymetric verses, the outline shape of an object is reflected (technopaegnia in the narrower sense. [Technopaegnia — Brill (brillonline.com) [ACCESSED 29.11.2020]
To portray words more than just letters, alphabets, to go beyond the meaning of obvious and present and find supernatural and sacred! To capture the sound and the essence of personal and collective experience.
SUPRANATIONAL (TO TRANSCEND NATIONAL BOUNDARIES OR GOVERNMENTS) - TRANCELIKE - COMMUNAL RITUAL EXPERIENCE - EMBRACEMENT OF UNFATHOMABLE (INCAPABLE OF BEING FULLY EXPLORED OR UNDERSTOOD) -
In the modern world, the pictured text is mainly associated with the CONCRETE POETRY movement from the 1940s and their idea of language-text as an image representation forming new concepts for expression. The Futurist and Dadaist began this process two decades earlier until its full fruition by concrete poets. The language was taken apart, its broken syntax with grammar and orthography rules were rejected!
These artists and their work influenced some typographical decisions in 'BLUE':
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