I.I. vs. A.O.S.
The following is taken out of context from a manifestoe by Isidore Isou:
ISIDORE ISOU Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants
the development of transmissions where nothing is
lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By
the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.
from “Introduction a une Nouvelle Poesie et une Nouvelle Musique. Paris: Gallimard, 1947:
This idea of Letterics (“The word exists and has the right to perpetuate itself,” Isou says) or metagraphics as he goes on to call it, is profoundly similar to the alphabet of desire concept embedded within A.O.Spare’s writings. According to the Irreality Wiki: "Definition: the Alphabet of Desire (in this particular method) is a series or collection of sigils created in different states of consciousness, representing these different states of consciousnes"
Not surprisingly, this is similar to the view Marcel Duchamp takes, "Take a Larousse dictionary and copy all the so-called "abstract" words, i.e. those which have no concrete reference. Compose a schematic sign designating each of these words (this sign can be composed with the standard-stops) These signs must be thought of as the letters of the new alphabet."
A look at Austin Osman Spare's system of Automatism, as a method of generating letters from the alphabet of experience, through his own words:
"An "automatic" scribble of twisting and interlacing lines permits the germ of an idea in the subconscious mind to express, or at least suggest itself to the consciousness. From this mass of procreative shapes, full of fallacy, a feeble embryo of idea may be selected and trained by the artist to full growth and power. By these means, may the profoundest depths of memory be drawn upon and the springs of instinct tapped...
"Automatism being the manifestation of latent desires (or wishes) the significance of the forms (the ideas) obtained represent the previously unrecorded obsessions.
"Art becomes, by this illuminism or ecstatic power, a functional activity expressing in a symbolical language the desire towards joy unmodified-the sense of the Mother of all things-not of experience." (A.O.Spare, Fredrick Carter, Automatic Drawing, 1916)
Poetry opens up your right brain and allows it to communicate in a left-brained paradigm. In the Lettrist Movement, letters themselves are observed in their natural environment. By using letters for their intrinsic symbolic value, then building words up from there, poems can be formed that are purer communication from the subconscious., words that have a power behind them.
“What I tell you three times is true” can very well be true if the hearer is overwhelmed by some phrasing, the button, the one sentence you say to change any situation. That’s a poet’s gift, that’s a trickster trait, it’s the bard’s tongue.
This can be taken to another level. We can only understand certain things while we are chanting them or singing them. We understand right-brained things that way, and when you’re fully conscious, when both halves of your brain are highly engaged, that’s when focusing conscious thought starts popping dimples in reality for you.
This overlapping of art, poetry, and magic was fundamental to the growth of today's advertisments, comics, and desktop icons. When poets become obsessed with letters, and the letters themselves become the point of abstraction, information becomes more fluid, easier to transmit. The symbols and sigils of the magician and the letters and forms of the artist occupy the same paradigm of communication.
Resources: Bindrune Flash
Resources: Web Links
Austin Osman Spare: The Austin Osman Spare Collection
Austin Osman Spare and Fredrick Carter: Automatic Drawing
Isidore Isou: Selections from the Manifestos of Isidore Isou
Marcel DuChamp: Precision Optics / Optical Illusions by Michael Betancourt
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