RE: [-empyre-] context of text

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> > * language as visual object? How far have the possibilities of this been
> > explored in electronic poetry?

Hi Barrie,

as visual object, that is part of it all right, though now it is not only as visual object but
as binary object amenable to manifestations through the visual, sonic, purely textual etc.

my first work in visual poetry is pretty concentrated solely on the visual/textual at, say,
www.vispo.com/A , www.vispo.com/E , www.vispo.com/I and www.vispo.com/O

> In the misty past John Warnock and others evolved a language called
> PostScript. Originally made to be the language used to describe New York
> harbour in 3D and to be used for shipping control etc it then became the
> default page description language for laser printers, it evolved onto the
> screen through software like Cricket Draw, bounding box was added to
> baseline to became part of a designers vocabulary.

Hmm, inerestin. I gather Postscript is a much more powerful language than the current uses of it
indicate. I thought it was primarily a page description language, not a 3D markup language also?

> I had a love affair with typography for about 15 years, letterforms became
> seductive for me, there's something utterly visceral about well designed
> letterforms, they're like good food, a plate of olives, Bulgarian fetta,
> roasted capsicum, pickled chillies (synaesthesia?). There's a tension about
> an individual letterform that reveals the time and desire for resolution
> that the designer put into making it work. This transfers to paper and
> screen. This kind of aesthetic is part of every page of information.
> Different type families change the look and feel of a page of information.

You might enjoy http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lettrist/lettrist.htm (I do), which is Karl
Young's collection of lettrist-related writings. In particular, I enjoyed
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lettrist/isou-m.htm , selections from manifestos by Isadore
Isou, the grandaddy lettrist. The lettrists put special emphasis on letter forms.

ja