Asemic Writing
The idea behind asemic writing is to create artworks that are based on the act of mark making similar to handwriting but without reference to semantic content or literary meaning. Hence each ‘writer’ has a unique way of writing or making marks. One’s mark making may change by the day or even by the moment if the writer is sensitive to the changing twists and turns of the mind.
When we look at handwriting, even if we are unable to decipher it, we are getting some sort of visual content out of it from looking at the marks and rhythms or distributions of the markings on the page. We can get a feeling of order or discipline or perhaps a frenetic energy, or playful or sloppy or it might seem confused or muddled. You might say this is the body language of the writing beyond the message conveyed. This body language is the part that is of interest in this work.
In the western part of the world writing tends to be left to right across a vertically oriented page often in a bound or book form. A reader is often presented with a book environment in which to experience a work that moves from page to page.
A film works in the same way moving from frame to frame, scene to scene to unfold a work and so does a musical composition moving from bar to bar, line to line, page to page. Normally, we think of a work of art such as a painting or a drawing as being its own singular environment enclosed by four corners. With asemic writing works there is the possibility to have the idea of an ongoing work that unfolds over many pages in a continuum. That is what Touchon is striving for in this work; to use the book environment to create an ongoing work.
This brings up the subject of time. In a visual work of art we assume that there is not a time element involved, that we see the whole thing all at once unlike a musical composition that we can only experience as it unfolds over time. But this is not really true. When we look at a work of art we do take in the work as a totality however, our vision is confined to a focal point and peripheral vision. We can only really say that we have seen a thing when it is, firstly, in the tiny part of our vision which is fully focused and secondly, when our attention is on what our eyes are focused on. This takes a great deal of concentration. To actually see a painting — which might require a thousand focal moments — must happen over time. A painting is really experienced more by our peripheral vision — vision that is fuzzy and out of focus — than our focal point which is clear and crisp allowing us to see in fine detail.
Take this paragraph as an example. If you sit back and look at the page in its totality you can see lines of letters and paragraphs and spaces. But in order to read it you must start at the top and move your focal point across the lines of words, look for phrases, punctuation, etc. in order to grasp what is being read. Not only that, if your mind wanders, then you must start over at the point where you lost your attention. Visual works of art require the same effort.
A great deal of Touchon’s work is informed by this insight and his ongoing interest is in how the eye moves around a work, at what speed, in what order and according to what stimulus. What gives it rest, what excites it? What brings clarity, what causes confusion? What triggers boredom or inspiration? How can an ongoing work such as the present volume unfold in the mind over time since the entire work cannot be seen all at once as in a painting?
This work is intended to be purely visual with no reference to literary content or convey any sort of symbols. There is an interest however in musicality, of moving the focal point of the eye along during the reading through repetition, cadence, movement, etc. It is a form of listening with the eye as the title of the book suggests. Listening means to place one’s attention on a thing being heard. Listening is a form of focused attention. Even though we hear everything around us we can only actually fully listen to one thing at a time. When we hear things, we are often not attentive to the sounds and hence are not engaged in listening to most of the sounds around us. If you stop for a moment just now and listen carefully to the sounds around you, you will notice the sounds that you have been hearing but have not been listening to.
In the same way, we see whatever is around us but without our full focused attention we are not actively and attentively taking in what we see. The reader is encouraged to approach this book as one might listen to an album of music. This might include numerous repeated readings or listenings studying how the work flows, how it shifts and turns and returns to certain themes or motifs or types of markings.
This particular work is not intended to be read as one might listen to a symphony or reading a story where there is a beginning, a development and a climax (that will be a different book) but perhaps more as an impromptu diary that attempts to capture and record the moments through an ongoing process. Hence it is called an asemic notebook. Note means to record something in writing in an informal way, to ‘take note’ as in to notice something or paying attention.
Compared to reading, the creation of the markings is a whole other story. In a certain way it is a process of performing with a pen in the way that a musician might perform with a musical instrument. However, instead of hearing the sounds of the piano or violin, one is observing the motions of the pen working its way across the page. As the only observer during the process of making such works, Touchon’s attention is on the state of consciousness that he is in at that moment and how that is expressed in the movements of the hand across a blank sheet of paper. It is something of a spiritual practice. He allows his intuition to work silently and unchecked within the boundaries of the process. He is exploring in an experimental way to see what happens under what conditions. It could be called a form of improvisational meditation.
Any line or any part of a line of these drawings could and may be use by Touchon to make a painting. In his ongoing series of typographic collage art he does just that. He uses the compositions of the collages as studies for larger works on canvas. However, Touchon’s central interest with these drawings is to think of them as printing plates for the book environment.
Touchon’s approach while working was to start at the top and work from left to right moving from line to line as if writing. In some works, he went back and added ‘punctuation’ markings such as chevrons, dashes, dots, commas, etc. to add extra detail, fill spaces and suggest patterns of movement across the lines of ‘writing’.
I have currently published a number of books in this series “Listening with the Eye”. A lot of the drawings from these books can be viewed at asemics.org and I have minted many asemic writing NFTs at opensea.io
