Vispro (Visual Prose)

Vispro A Quest in search of a new, but ancient Textual-Visual Creature.

vispro aka Visual Prose.

Cheryl penn

15th memory of The Scientist: 'tales of fiction, science and progress'. Cheryl Penn. 2021.

2mx2m acrylic on canvas. Layer 15 of a vispro painting titled Targeting Memory.

Contents:

…1

Abstract

…2

Some definitions

…3

Two unusual examples of vispro objects

…5

An example of ancient vispro text

…6

Why bother to create parameters/definitions for vispro?

…12

A vispro Experiment

…15

Visual Prose/vispro or not – examples submitted in a broad and very quick investigation of vispro.

Carrarini, Italo: Various works including Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli). 2020 Patti, Enzo: Various works including Scrittura a volo d'uccello e Sigillo. 2021 Penn, Cheryl: Targeting Memory. 2021 Ptrizia (tictac): Anecdote and I got the blues. 2021 Szreniawski Piotr: untitled. 2021

…30

vispro / vispo?

C Mehrl Bennett: untitled Luigetti, Serse: UNDERLINES Vassilaki, Nico: the independence of fear.

…34

Essay by De Villo Sloan: The Post-Vispro Condition: Thoughts on Cheryl Penn’s Vispro Project & The Many Masks of Doc Mortag (McMurtagh/Sloan 2021)

…38

Conclusion

…40

Biography

Abstract: All borders are open, the textual shadowlands are inhabited by any and every word and image.

There are no structures, no rules, no places to gain a firm foothold.

The author is inconsequential, artwork/writing is open to any and every interpretation, after all – it appears only ‘The Great I’ matters.

And it’s got boring.

Few will stand by what they stand for alongside any sort of definition. Sadly, even the word ‘definition’ has become outmoded, outdated and apparently ‘limiting’. To produce and produce in any and every situation with any and every means possible, without any foundation and very little purpose – except to produce – well, that’s just the way it goes – it seems.

Not to say the word-images one views are not immediately appealing, but in the long term, where is the ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘The Great Wave’ or ‘Earthrise’ in the visual-word world today?

From where I stand now, the how (asemic writing/ text – in all its manifestations/ the image – be it original/begged/borrowed/stolen) is not the important question it seems. Rather, the why has become a fundamental area of interrogation in processing the plethora of visual-word images I view every day.

This article seeks to explicate some parameters in which to frame various artworks one could term visual prose (hereafter termed vispro) and through visual examples elucidate a philosophy for the existence of vispro. Most research (from Étienne Mallarmé, Ezra Pound and all the other great critics and writers reframing the visual-word) has concentrated on the poem in all its various manifestations.

Through the use and discussion of unusual and everyday examples of vispro, I wish to test if vispro can exist within a valid theoretical framework.

…1

Some Definitions: Form - in the instance of attempting to define vispro, is the visible outcome of the work intended to be read as vispro: it’s visible shape, configuration, it’s external manifestation of the inward vispro idea.

Medium for purposes of discussion on vispro is intended to encompass the various “how’s” related to the creation of vispro. Such mediums include writing, asemic writing, computer generated images, cut-up text, collage, painting, drawing – any tool the vispro initiator uses in order to create the vispro form. Mediums such as asemic* writing are taken for granted in terms of all it conveys both in current and emerging theory.

Prose is generally defined as ‘ordinary language’ which follows regular grammatical conventions and does not contain a formal metrical structure. Prose encompasses areas of human conversation, textbooks, lectures, novels, fairy stories (although some – think Brothers Grimm would include poems), short stories, newspaper articles, research papers, essays, dissertations – unless otherwise specified. To David Stone**, prose is: “writing that is nonpoetic narrative, fiction or nonfiction, dramatic, expository, scientific, philosophic, legal, journalistic or critical, academic, literary or popular”.

Text – in the instance of attempting to define vispro, text is described as any piece of writing, written in prose format intended to convey information and meaning. This definition acknowledges that ‘text’ is not limited to written books, magazines, paintings, maps, works of art, movies – or even such occurrences as a person (walking, talking text) or a room full of people. Just as in the humanities different fields of studies are concerned with different forms of texts***, so this paper is focusing on ‘text’ described as any piece of writing in prose format intended to convey information and meaning, thereby evoking aesthetic emotion. It may be a stretch of language as short as one or two words (which are not intended to be poetry), or as complex as a Tolstoy novel. Nor is ‘text’ in this context concerned as to whether or not such text is written left to right (Hebrew), or vertically (Chinese/Japanese) or incorporates calligraphy of any kind.

Visual – (in this context) is a system of communication which by it’s overwhelming visual elements aid the viewer in perceiving and comprehending visual signs. Visual language/images seek to transmit such visible signs (colours, shapes, text, lines, images) as tools to decode the visual prose (vispro) image.

Visual Prose (vispro) – is thus an image, work, form, manifestation intended to be viewed as an integrated combination read as “visual prose”. It is not to be regarded as illustrated text or vispo, but as a separate artform, intended to be identified on its own merits.

*Asemic writing with its vicissitudes of meaning (or lack thereof) is taken to be writing having no inherent or specific semantic content. Its hybrid nature in all its many forms of ‘writing’ and calligraphy are deemed as a creative option and as an intentional practice. **David Stone is a philosopher poet and one of the most well-read people I know. We have collaborated on many works which include aleatory poetry, poetry and prose poetry. Email dated October 2021.

*** For example, cultural theorists work with a wide variety of texts including advertisements, signage, or literary theorists focus on primarily literary texts – be they novels, stories, poems. The definition proposed in no way discounts the evolution of text by the dynamics of technology.

…2

Two Unusual Examples of vispro Objects – finding Vispro in antiquity Before beginning the task of manufacturing vispro ‘pegs’, in order to create the context around which I wish to frame the discussion, the term deserves a few substantiated examples of works which I would term visual prose, that is, vispro.

Liber Lineteus Zagrebiensis Firstly, the Liber Linteus (a linen book) otherwise known as the linen book of Zagreb* was wrapped around an Egyptian mummy dating approximately 150BC. Consisting of Etruscan text – in fact the longest Etruscan text known today - approximately 1300 words - this fascinating artefact, would typify a physical manifestation of vispro. It is no longer intact as Mihajlo Barić unwrapped the relic, but the photograph below (date unknown) would exemplify the embodiment of vispro.

The mummy of Zagreb with fragments of the Liber Linteus (http://www.geocities.ws/jackiesixx/caere/linteus.htm) date of photograph unknown.

Through its enigmatic nature, evocative juxtaposition of text (prose, not poetry), integration of text and object, and inscrutable visual elements I state this claim for the following reason: as the mummy was wrapped in linen cloth imprinted with text, the object – (the textually wrapped mummy) is in itself the vispro object. Although the wrappings are of meticulously written, decipherable Etruscan text, inscribed onto specially woven linen and executed in expensive ink made of burnt ivory, as a stand-alone linen book it cannot be described as vispro, (although absolutely visually appealing), except perhaps for its’ inherent antiquity. Together however, the mummy and the cloth create an authentic vispro object. Text and object have met in strange circumstances, not yet understood, in a mummy and its bandages. *In 1848 a Croatian official named Mihajlo Barić resigned from the Hungarian Royal Chancellery preferring to embark on a tour of several countries including Egypt. On reaching Alexandria he purchased (details unknown) a sarcophagus containing a female mummy wrapped in linen bandages. At some point he removed the linen bandages displaying them separately. On his death in 1859 his brother donated the find to the State Institute of Zagreb.

…3

Novgorod Codex Found in 2000, in the medieval city of Novgorod (Russia), The Novgorod Codex is a book consisting of three bound limewood tablets preserved in anaerobic, waterlogged conditions. Waterlogging has caused the preservation of many of the wooden structures of Novgorod, including text and text fragments written on pieces of birch bark. Information regarding this artefact is sketchy and I have used it in research before – at one stage I remember it being lost - but interest still surrounds this fascinating artefact with its wax surfaces still intact. The primary deciphered text is Psalms 75 and 76, but underneath, lie a series of overlaid texts resulting in a hyper-palimpsest. These include musings on “the world is a town…”, written statements (prose) which connect an ancient labyrinth of thought to the current global village. The palimpsest effect, creating layer upon layer of indecipherable text was created by a stylus scratching through the wax onto the soft lime wood*. Dating back to the end of the 10th century, this object functions as a ‘book’, but it is so much more. It is a book where the ‘pages’ are so scratched the wood has become ingrained with prose text.

Little lies on the surface, but prose is actually embedded into the very structure and form of the object, qualifying it as a vispro object. Interestingly, both objects have been described by scholars as ‘books’ – the primal home of prose. Yet, when viewed in their totality, the wrapped mummy and the wooden tablets are so much more. This vispro artefact is thought to be the oldest book of the Rus people.

Image of the Novgorod Codex taken from: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=3909 *According to Zaliznyak, reading the concealed texts in the scratches is a unique challenge unlike anything attempted by any research team previously. The very compact faces of the four writing surfaces contain traces of thousands of texts, estimated to have been written over several decades. As such, the stylus traces form in a constant mesh of lines across the entire surface. To complicate the process, they are also all written by a single hand, making handwriting analysis impossible. As such, Zaliznyak does not call the process 'reading'; instead, he calls it 'reconstruction'. See https://buryingbooks.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/the-novgorod-codex/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Codex and https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=3909

…4

An Example of Ancient vispro Text.

The Archimedes Palimpsest The Archimedes Palimpsest* is a fascinating parchment codex which originally contained a Byzantine copy of works by Archimedes and other authors. One of the original diagrammatic prose texts is a theory by Archimedes to determine the positions solids will assume when floating in liquid. This is now known as the Archimedes Principle, and is the only surviving Greek edition of his work. It is thought to have been written sometime around AD530 (https://www.aproged.pt/biblioteca/worksofarchimede.pdf ).

Overlaid on visual diagrammatical elements are scriptural texts, a text by Hypereides** an Athenian politician from the 4th century as well as 4 Byzantine style religious artworks. I am proposing this manuscript as a vispro object as some of the discussion has involved the use of diagrams in vispro. Barton, claiming visual devices in prose have often been “critically marginalized” in the past, sidelined in terms of page construction and meaning, (worse, called ‘gimmicky’) (pg1), with his discussion on multimodal** analysis, “where meaning is conveyed to the reader through varying combinations of visual image, written language and spatial modes” is a term which can apply to the vispro practitioner as well. But, (see discussion on pg 7), vispro is not ‘just’ illustrated text – a vispro practitioner, who is intimately an artistwriter will consider and conceptualize all the formal elements of both art and prose. Although another fortuitous ‘accident’, study of the construction and palimpsest visuals of the Archimedes Palimpsest will aid in understanding how different modes of execution create meaning for and in vispro creation. Vispro is neither text and image, it is both. They are inseparable, bound together as a literary and visual accomplishment. Such works are neither graphic novels, comic books, illustrated texts, but diverse, rich and complex combinations of different disciplines, multifaceted thoughts and embedded visual perceptions.

Matthew Kon - http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/Labo/Ilan.Vardi/arch_eabig.jpg?36,70 Page from Archimedes Palimpsest revealing ‘On Floating Bodies’ *“At 2pm on October 29th, 1998, at Christie's auction house in New York, a very special old book was sold to an anonymous collector for $2,000,000. This collector deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in order to conserve it, image it, and study it. The book is special because it contains seven treatises by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.

…5

Two of these treatises, The Stomachion and The Method exist nowhere else in the world. This book is also the unique source for Archimedes' treatise On Floating Bodies in the original Greek. The Archimedes Palimpsest, as this book is called, has true claims to greatness: it is the earliest surviving Archimedes manuscript by about 400 years; it is the most important source for the diagrams that Archimedes drew in the sand in Syracuse, in the third century B.C. It is by far the most important evidence we have for the greatness of Archimedes. And Archimedes was a very great man”. Quoted from http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/history/index.php ** https://www.jstor.org/stable/40212097 Hyperides lived from 390/389 to 322, and was thus nearly a contemporary with better known figures such as Demosthenes and Aristotle (both lived 384 to 322). He was a rhetor, or orator. Athenian rhetores were the most prominent politicians in the fourth-century democracy making speeches at public meetings of the citizen assembly and also serving as prosecutors and defendants in the courts. **(See: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/litfocusmultimodal.aspx)

Why Bother to Create Parameters/Definitions for vispro?

Primarily, I started to ‘bother’ as I felt my work was not ‘vispo’ – visual poetry*, with all the definitions such a term encompasses. Nico Vassilakis defines it as a clear response to language, whereas I would define vispro as a conceptual combination of prose and visual language : It tends to enhance the quantum aspects of language by focusing on the elemental design parts of language material. What’s that mean? People like fidgeting with alphabet… Though language is used as the common platform for communication, it’s prone to being creatively finessed in any number of ways. One of these is visually. Vispoets transmogrify, they undo the word, they reveal the potential locked in the word by visually deconstructing it. They replace language with other visual language. (https://bodyliterature.com/2014/02/24/what-is-vispo-an-interview-with-nico-vassilakis/ ) I found I was not ‘fiddling with the alphabet’, transmogrifying (transforming in an unusual way), or ultimately deconstructing. I was just writing prose in a visual manner in order to create an image. Whether the writing was automatic, asemic, large, small, coloured, written right to left, scrobed vertically or horizontally, I was making visual ‘ordinary language’ which follows some regular grammatical conventions and does not contain a formal metrical structure. My prose encompasses areas of human conversation (as defined on page 2) – it was/is not poetic at all. NOT to say that I am not a producer and lover of vispo – for sure I am, but there were different intentions at work in my paintings. For example, look at the differences in the two examples below:

(left): Palimpsest prose writing of different colours in paint. Layer 15 of painting titled Targeting Memories.2m x 2m, paint on canvas. (right): Cheryl Penn. No – None. Vispo. *You can think of vispo as poetry that focuses on the look of words and letters before, or instead of, their meaning. Or you can think of it as art that uses the components of written language as a means of exploring visual forms and patterns. Many more definitions and distinctions are possible. But most of all it is the work of visual poets itself that gives the fullest picture of what vispo is and can be. From http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~blc35/final/index.html

…6

By no stretch of the imagination are the images similar enough to fall under one genre of work, even though both employ the mediums of ‘visual text’. Speaking of visual text, David Stone describes calligraphy as “the first step to enhancing the fundamental written phonetic written language into a visual art” and illustrations of the page as the second step – as in medieval illuminated manuscripts. Such illustrated text is not vispro nor vispo – it is illustrated text, be the text executed in a known or unknown script as clarified below.

Illustrated text from The Chronicles of Lyrehc – Bhubezi Woman Mythology.

These page images are part of an ongoing mythology based on The Women Who Hold up The World (*http://bhubezi.blogspot.com ). The pages are illustrated, occasionally explanatory, all written in asemic prose, even diagrammatical in nature, but they do not translate into vispro units. Here is where the leap happens – HOW/WHY would/could these images (as an example) become categorized as vispro?

Cheryl Penn. Layer 6. The Student. 2.5m X1.5m. 2021. …7

Firstly, whatever writing system is employed, it must be integrated - BE part of the visual image – not an addition thereto or explanation thereof. Textual prose becomes the medium for and of itself, for its own reasons in order to produce a visual image – the textual image. In this context, I find the work of Italo Carrarini and Enzo Patti quite compelling in argument for the introduction of the term vispro.

Italo Carrarini. 'PREGHIERA DELLA MONTAGNA' dal Diario di Viaggio | 05.10.2017 (archivio | ©amminare ad Arte). Acrylics, inks and pencils on Fabriano 600gm paper.

Italo describes this piece as “a prayer written in an alpine hut…It is the transcription of a long prayer at the end of a busy mountain hike. Writing so fast overlaps as chromatic stage memory”. When engaging with a textual image such as this, one can see it as a page of prose, part of many pages of prose, gathered together in suspended animation. This is private prose intended for public consumption, whilst maintaining its sense of confidentiality. Linear in execution, emotively charged in coloured complexity, the lines of asemic writing guide the reader past the margins and through the gutters of the book page. One reads these palimpsest prayers as a chromatic scale – 12 lines of visual text (11 plus the stamp and signature) ascending and descending in musical half steps over the page. I feel the internal rhythm of Italo as a writer, see the creative stretching of generally monotonous printed prose, and the disciplined yet completely imaginative structure of prose successfully held together as an example of vispro.

…8

Enzo Patti also engages with asemic prose writing, but without the complex palimpsest effect of Talo Carrarini.

Enzo Patti. Una marina di libri Parco villa Filippina a Palermo. 2020/1.

Enzo is constructing images in which drawing and writing are truly inseparable – they do not comment on each other – they belong together – a ship of words on an ocean of prose. These asemic prose landscapes seem to magically summon the image from within the lilting word forms, something like the incantation of coffin texts*. Enzo writes prose from the shadow world of text which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the images emerging from his process.

Further, I submit my own work as vispro having become frustrated with the term ‘vispo’ which seems too encompassing – a generic term to cover a multitude of textual creatures which no longer know why they are even on the textual visual plains. They’re just there, wondering exactly what they are – or not - I’m often surprised by the naming indifference with which their inventors create them.

I am a writer, but I am an artist too. Writing has consumed me since childhood. Whether it was pre-literate scribbles, the distraught pages of a teenage diary, the ravings of an early 20’s lunatic or prayers of despair – I have always written words – legible or illegible, it mattered not. Then a stranger came knocking – except he was not a stranger – he was Animus to my Anima**. I knew it was a ‘he’ because he was haunting and made it very clear - he was called the Nightcrosser. Without going any further into that (and he was no Rrose Sélavy to Marcel Duchamp), he wanted to express himself in visual language and I had to marry the two. The resultant work was NOT vispo – it was most definitely vispro although I knew it not by that name at the time. The commonality was asemic writing – another tool I was not familiar with, but firmly grounded in at that stage. *”The Coffin Texts, dating from around 2134 – 2040 BC are numbered at 1185 spells, “spells, incantations, and other forms of religious writing inscribed on coffins to help the deceased navigate the afterlife”. The coffin texts include the document known as the Book of Two Ways – believed to be the first exemplar of cosmography in ancient Egypt. The Book of Two Ways provides maps of the afterlife, including instructions on how to avoid perils on one's way to paradise. Egyptologist Geraldine Pinch notes how "these maps, which were usually painted on the floor of the coffins, are the earliest known maps from any culture, and that the Book of Two Ways was nothing less than an illustrated guidebook to the afterlife… The Book of Two Ways was not a separate work, nor even a book, but detailed maps which corresponded to the rest of the text painted inside the coffin”. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1021/the-coffin-texts/ ** an inner masculine part of the female personality in the analytical psychology of Jung, as opposed to the irrational part of what I would consider to be a generally rational mind.

…9

It was a long journey to here, but now I am certain of the animal I am creating. I write prose in a visual manner. I write layers and layers of prose over canvases up to 3m X 3m. Unfortunately they can’t be bigger because no linen is wider, and wooden frames distort, but ten, twenty, thirty layers of writing or making marks that look like writing, I write, and write and write.

…10

Layer 1 : It’s a TERRIBLE THING To say a problem Is problematic.

Layer 2: ESPECIALLY IF Its grey and dark turquoise.

Layer 3: A dark and slanted story I wrote about her – Two jobs AND waiting on the kid.

Layer 4: A sadly marooned man.

Eventually the text is so interwoven and layered – a palimpsest of written layers, all heading to one point inspired by the simplicity of Giotto’s circle*. During the last 5-6 layers, aesthetics take over in terms of mopping up the writing in order to bring all the layers of prose to a conclusion - something like the many edits of a book before the final copy is produced. With this method, although it is concealed, as all the sedimentary deposits in a landscape are, the work remains multiwritten, a physically deep, visual meta narrative of my private but revealed thoughts. The vispro eventually suggests a cyclical place of no particular event or solution, just the idea that all texts will eventually be their own ouroboros, no matter how executed - or uttered. Layer by layer, meaning is forged to represent the muli-complexities of my story - a chronological transition, sequential (in thought and making process), sometimes detailing (in excruciatingly close examination) the vicissitudes of my life, but I am ever moving onwards, forwards, towards the Light of the world I pray.

Cheryl Penn. Turquoise Downspiral Writer. 2021. 2mx2m acrylic on canvas. *As the story goes, Pope Boniface VIII wished prospectives to submit drawings for submission in order to finish work on St. Peter’s church. When the messenger reached the artist Giotto di Bondone, Giotto accepted the offer and submitted a drawing that (Giotto believed), proved his talent. All Giotto submitted was a circle: a red circle drawn freehand: a perfect red circle drawn freehand. This perfect circle (though a joke to the courier), won Pope Boniface VIII’s favour, and Giotto was chosen. The year – who can say? Plus, circles helped create the study of geometry – Euclidian geometry – remember this stuff - an arc is a portion of the circumference of a circle?

…11

A vispro experiment.

In experimentation (and with intent) I created two different works to see if two different approaches to the same material resulted in two different outcomes (many more followed in order to come to grips with the process as well as the finished work). I have followed David’s words for many years now*, and when I eventually tired of reading his poetry through my own filter, I asked him to write me clues for understanding his poetic. This correspondence has gone on for quite a few years, resulting in books bound and destined for The New Alexandrian Library**. I began working firstly with David’s poem Citadel VI 10. lrlot"

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David Stone – Note accompanying two poems in the series.

With intent*** to create two different kinds of images, I used David’s poem to begin a vispo image and his prose as the starting point for a vispro image. The method approached for the vispo image involved certain poetic devices, but these were used in a visual way – enjambments, repetition (B), ‘consonance’, expressive font (vispo), alliteration. David wrote: “much easier to suggest the poetry with vispo than with vispro.

Contains only a few, alliterative, bold words: Berlin, Beethoven, brutal border, bottle logic, point of thirst, and image of a bottle with some text from Citadel”. * https://www.amazon.com/David-Stone-Philosophical-Cheryl-Penn/dp/9388319370 **https://newalexandrianlibrary.blogspot.com/2020/ Donated to Jack Ginsburg Centre for the Book Arts ***Often in vispro discussion on Facebook, quite a lot was spoken of intent.

Obviously I am in favour of free, unbridled artistic spirit, but, in being that, so what? Imagine if we could write novels endlessly filled with gibberish. Would they have any value? What are we actually trying to accomplish here? IF nothing/meaningless-ness (as artistic intent is intended) and that is indeed a personal pursuit, fine, but that is not for this discussion. And, why post such images/words anywhere (such as Facebook) if we hold them to be nothing? Why must everything be segregated to the middle word - vispo? Why experiment if not to reach ‘the real deal’? By definition, ‘intention’ is an aim – a purpose one is attempting to achieve. Although experience of an artwork has a multitude of intensely personal answers – such as - interpretation coming through personal experience to an artwork, does not ‘classification’ aid our understanding? Simple example: we can comfortable ‘classify’ Monet as the father of Impressionism which aids us (so many years on) in unlocking his intentions. This movement faced harsh criticism too, its proponents perceived as violating academic painting – but they changed the ‘face’ of painting forever.

…12

Conversely, when attempting a visual prose - vispro - approach, I was concerned with analysing time, thoughts, imagery, particular emphases (the poem’s formal qualities as I saw them). How did the poem make me feel? Although parts of my response were rhythmic, they were in no way poetic. I was not attempting to poetically react to David’s poem, but to visually respond in reasoned prose. These thoughts were overlaid on David’s comments regarding his words. Images came to mind – including Baudelaire – but he was just a ghost reference, entwined in the lines.

In attempting to unpack any of David Stone’s poems, one must travel time and space, confront the past, the present and take a peek into the future. Perhaps one thinks theoretical thought - take a houseboat into the denizens of the north sea, cling to the idea of heaven, fall like Icarus and begin the journey again.

Like heavy footfalls through the shadowlands, staccato shots in overgrown Wastelands, his words drum on the consciousness of the reader who is left breathless – where am I now – where does David intend to take me on this restless journey? I am bereft, lost and awash in shadow lands of wordimages, attempting to breathe in unknown moments: Berlin, Beethoven, Brutal Border, Bottle and again succoured by structure and rhythm, but tossed to and fro, a tempestuous word storm from which there is no release within the Citadel.

Berlin, Beethoven, Brutal Border, Bottle and again: But I must remember in my meanderings that I am bound within the memory halls of HIS world, he is the journey master, the one who pinpoints the pegs on which I must hang.

Cheryl Penn/David Stone: vispo – Bottle Logic …13

Cheryl Penn/David Stone: vispro – Citadel Thoughts

David wrote: “diagonally bisected image of an old photo that looks like Baudelaire with a bottle behind the human figure. Some of the verbal text is readable which identifies the subject, David Stone`s poetry and Cheryl's reaction to the poetry with a clear reference to Berlin and consciousness. This vispro succeeds in suggesting the poetic - it's subject and its sense, reinforced by its shadowy, broken images”.

So is there a need to create some clarity between visual prose and visual poetry? I think so.

A note posted to Facebook: I'm ‘on the seeking parameters side’ - call it 'theory' if you like – thinking: I always wonder where we would be if 'modernism' had not been recognised, or, impressionism, or cubism, or dada, or prose or poetry or parallel plots or things such as foil characters? Such 'theory' has shaped where we are today – in good ways and bad ways. 'Theory' speaks to the times in which it was formulated and provides a valuable context for the past. It may be wrong/right/, outdated/outmoded, but, we can only spring from the known in attempting to define things unknown. Or perhaps, that is how we recognize potentially unrecognised artworks as their own creature - such as visual prose. And, vispro has always been there - like most things. I'm just trying to extract one grain from the text-image sand storm. Maybe I am totally unlike you, but I can only do that if I recognise it! Seeking vispro parameters helps me name something I have observed and which will perhaps help explain with various relationships between visual-textual concepts.

…14

Visual Prose/vispro or not – examples submitted in a broad and very quick investigation of vispro:

Carrarini, Talo (Italy) Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli). 2020 Features: 1) Asemic handwritten text 2) Palimpsest 3) Extensive use of marginalia, often ignoring the gutter Italo wrote me this email regarding his work titled Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli): From the 80’s onwards much of my research has been sedimentation of texts and images inside surfaces of formats equivalent to sources of origin. From this wide range of possibilities, the TRANSCRIPTIONS, to which this job belongs. In this case two pages of the same format as the published brochure on which I fully transcribed the author's text. A space that also becomes a personal opportunity to study (hence the marginal notes) which formally define itself as accumulation, as overlap of all the words studied...

Italo Carrarini, Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli). 2020 Acrylics and inks on canvas / cardboard …15

In instances such as this, language barriers can be very frustrating – especially as one cannot understand the nuances or word usage through google translate! But, this undoubtedly vispro image speaks to the following theoretical parameters I am attempting to formulate, and as to his concept – WOW!. Italo wrote me the following note on the Simonelli text: “It is a spiritual manifesto for a new humanism written many years ago by my friend Benedetto Simonelli. Being an ecologist of deep ecology and a bio-regionalist myself, I felt I was paying homage to his vision of his things”.

Obvious prose (according to the definition in use for the purposes of this paper, Pg 2) comfortably resting in a book-like context, executed in asemic writing, gives the reader the feeling that the writer invites the viewer into a complex story comprising excellent narrative and overlapping ideas. The author offers a combination of multifaceted sentences and unusual words - perhaps the words and phrases so multifarious that the prose demands marginalia! In 1844 Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “I have always been solicitous of an ample margin; this is not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of pencilling in suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general.” https://www.eapoe.org/works/misc/mar1144.htm Many kinds of readers (I am one) feel that a book does not get it’s best ‘intention’ unless their pencil is poised to add to, comment on, or underline their agreement (or disagreement) with the authors’ thoughts. As Italo mentions, this particular work is a transcription of Benedetto Simonelli’s Manifested Hidden Sun. Rewritten in Italo’s palimpsest asemic style, using the same format as the original published brochure, Italo has respectfully represented in a visual way, a borrowed piece of prose. He has built on, added meaning to and commented on the original text and changed its nature from ‘just text’ to a work which focuses on the unsaid, the layering, the time and complexity which the original author could not have had space to do within a conventional format. Convergence of idea, marginalia, colour and lilting text bound within a singular vispro image allow me insight into Italo’s understanding and interpretation of a prose piece I have never seen. And I sense, the original text from which this work was transcribed, was not light entertainment to be zipped through, for Italo has invited his audience to immerse themselves in a strange page, a concept belonging to a foreign place and time – one he has travelled through by accessing the prose of another.

Italo Carrarini. Free transcription from: GORBA, 2015 by Carlo Villa Geiger Editions, 1973 (acrylics, graphite, inks and stamps on paper, 70 × 70 cm) …16

Time disallowed the investigation I think Italo’s work needs. Take the image below:

Italo Carrarini. SOCIETÀ ANONIMA da Marcel Duchamp (duemiladiciannove) inchiostri su carta Fabriano Artistico. 2019. Translation: Anonymous Company From Marcel Duchamp (two and two and nine) Inks on paper Fabriano Artistico.

In this work, Italo matches each line of text with an artist and explains that it matches the description Marcel Duchamp wrote of the artist mentioned as part of Société Anonyme, Inc. Sponsoring events such as lectures and printing publications, this important art organization had a profound effect on Modern Art and this artwork to me is a very successful rendition of du Champs’ tongue-in-cheek wit and subversive humour. As an artist who fashioned puns out of everyday expressions which he conveyed through visual means, Italo exploits the various possible meanings and ‘look’ of words as puns. He also seems to indicate through studiously aligned palimpsest text, du Champs’s study of perspective and optics which underpin his experiments with kinetic devices.

I have been impressed by Italo’s commitment to a particular visual interpretation of manifestos, writings and prayers. This consistency was pivotal in formulating particular thoughts surrounding an investigation of vispro. I take from his examples the embedded visual of vispro, a concept which makes visual formal literary surprises.

…17

Enzo Patti Features: 1) Asemic handwritten text, sometimes with images/shapes emerging from the text 2) Various printed matter as ground In attempting to understand Enzo’s work I began by looking at the following interview: https://segnonline.it/intervista-enzo-patti/?amp In 1980 Enzo began (what I understand to be) a theme named the "tourist guide" (1#) which became the pretext to continuously draw-write (2#) Di Capperi, a fantastic city, a rediscovered city, whose unknown alphabet appeared in the first two pages of the book in the form of large stone sculptures and in the following pages engraved or in bas-relief on archaeological finds. It simplified itself, however, until it consisted of only four signs: the vertical, the oblique, the horizontal dash and the arc from time to time, ultimately becoming a fake text that accompanies the pseudo illustrations of the books painted in trompe l'oeil. Whether open on real wooden lecterns and old school desks, or walls of buildings on which doors and windows open, as in my innumerable painted wooden sections, or fragments of inscriptions on illusory stones set in the realizations of vast wall decorations, until finally (the writing became) plains, seas, roads and squares as in the recent series of “asemic landscapes”.

Enzo’s text is called “fake writing, indecipherable writing, calligraphic, pseudo-writing, cryptic” ...

Mirella Bentivoglio called it "asemantic" in 1998, on the occasion of the exhibition she curated at the Cuba d’oro (Rome) and at the Seagull (La Spezia). In fact, in his work there are often, alongside glyphs and apparently alphabetic traces, drawings and human or animal figures - as in a sort of illegible encyclopedia (not a poem and perhaps not far from Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus).

Enzo said: “my research is definitely oriented towards the construction of images that mix symbols, immediately recognizable or not (3#) (but always with an unclear meaning) and asemic writing. At times, it is true, the writing seems to comment on the images or vice versa the images seem to be the illustrations of an asemic text - an operation not too far from Serafini's Codex - but the game that I pursue and more interesting for me is the construction of images in which drawing and writing are truly inseparable (4#). The "asemic landscapes" are perhaps among my best results. They are evidence of the coexistence of different languages: asemic writing (which suggests a possible reading and evokes a possible sound), the bird's-eye perspective (which distances writing and at the same time magnifies it), human silhouettes (coming from ancient Egyptian alphabet to indicate actions) and all-round bodies (volumes and “non-volumes”) with improbable dimensions and which seem to belong to distant, past or future times.

Later on, in the interview Enzo was asked this question: “your impression is that - completely disregarding asemic writing - the path of verbal-visual research (even fully semantic) has been interrupted or greatly reduced, in recent decades, in Italy? The reference is mainly to concrete poetry and visual poetry.

Yes, I "think" so. I think it has greatly reduced not only in Italy but also outside. I believe, therefore, in the total absence of certain proofs (#5).

Comments: (1#) Thus we can conclude Enzo’s intention was not vispo. A ‘tourist guide’ is by nature studiously diagrammatical, contains factual information and serves to inform the newcomer of the ‘place’ they are now visiting. Comparison with Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus can only have to do with the strangeness of the artist’s reality rather than the format in which the information is presented. …18

Examples of Enzo Patti’s output. Various dates, various titles. Taken from Facebook.

(2#) “continuously draw-write”: When one thinks of the ‘practitioners’ of prose, there are as many sorts of prose as there are practitioners. Think Sir Walter Raleigh or Hobbes, James Joyce or Samuel Beckett. Prose “could be defined as the sum of stylistic features determined by a familiar set of conceptual operators: form, genre, author, period, or literary fashion” (John Guillory). However, all these elements are in and of themselves “conceptual” – raw materials in the production of prose and its compositional and language structure. This means, prose has its own set of complexities.

To me, Enzo Patti has formulated an integrated prose system grounded in his visual approach to indecipherable words. Enzo’s ‘draw-write’ is asemic in execution, but his approach opens up a new way of structuring the formal elements of visual prose interpretation. For example, when viewing Enzo’s pages against works such as The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet* by author Reif Larsen, notice the difference in stylistic approach. Throughout Larsen’s book, the author has created sketches and maps, developed by his character T.S., who through these images explores and settles himself in the world around him. He appears to ‘map’ everything – even items/objects/places one would consider impossible to map. Enzo on the other hand integrates his illustrations by creating them with and by the text. The images are formed by and find their gestural articulation through the density, complexity or by dramatic alternative loose spacing created by his meticulous hand writing.

*https://booksnooks.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/the-selected-works-of-t-s-spivet-by-reif-larsen/

…19

Enzo Patti. Scrittura a volo d'uccello e Sigillo. 50cm X 70cm. 2021.

(3#) “construction of images that mix symbols, immediately recognizable or not”: in the short list of definitions, I stated that whether or not the text was executed in ‘asemic’ writing, that remained part of the ‘how’ – not the why. Enzo deliberately uses asemic writing in a way which allows us to ‘read’ his diagrammatic illustrations as prose. We are called to decipher his prose as an ancient language of harmonious rhetoric, our penetrating gaze never quite finding the meaning behind his stories, but he ‘explains’ in all ways possible.

(4#) but the game that I pursue and more interesting for me is the construction of images in which drawing and writing are truly inseparable: truly inseparable drawing and writing? Absolutely! In an era where all structures are being torn down, a time of linguistic exasperation, that is, a keen awareness of, but also of excessive exploitation of the whole apparatus that regulates the constraints of prose and poetry, together with all its modifications, some artists interrogate the old paths in new ways, remaining respectful to the modifications of language without destroying or totally ‘deconstructing’ it’s boundaries. This is not illustrated text, this is text causing its own illustration.

(5#) Yes, I "think" so. I think it has greatly reduced not only in Italy but also outside. I believe, therefore, in the total absence of certain proofs: I’m not exactly certain what Enzo was meaning by this, and certainly there has been MUCH written on asemic writing with many meaningful discussions by those theoretically engaged with this art form, but, I have lately found quite a few artists, (asemic writers) who are no longer satisfied with the umbrella vispo – their work has nothing to do with the poetic text-image, rather they are telling stories and writing narratives, with visual elements integrated into and woven with the prose text: images weaving themselves with and from the text. …20

Enzo Patti, Strada di montagna – 2021. (An example of concrete poetry/vispro or vispo?)

An exploration of Enzo’s work would ‘allow’ me to classify this as vispro.

Further correspondence with Enzo reveals that his current overwritten works are also executed on printed leaflets inserted into medicine boxes. Enzo hybridizes the text (asemic writing) by inserting small characters making the prose more illegible whilst at the same time suggesting landscapes – the sea, sky, an ideal city.

Measurements are varied and sometimes the sheets are glued together to create larger works – 30cmx120cm for example. He also makes use of “book pages if it is a beautiful paper, other times I buy beautiful water color paper of 300 grams, large sheets up to 100 cm or even more”.

“I like to try all the inks on all the papers I come across ...”.

He also states that he uses only blue and purple inks on these works. Enzo has been drawing a lot and not painting as much as he used to “because his health has not be good”. “The drawing is lighter for my current physical condition. But I plan to go back to painting very soon”. All the VERY best with that Enzo – with much thanks. …21

Cheryl Penn Features: 1) Asemic handwritten text 2) Palimpsest 3) Large Format Canvases 4) Upwards of 25 layers of paint.

I haven’t finished this painting yet, but I know this is visual prose. It’s a work titled Targeting Memory. The last writer I asked to tell me about a memory and assign it a colour was David Stone (USA). He wrote: First thing that comes to mind: colours of pets; of course Choco, my Burmese cat. Black. Sharkey my Scottish terrier (spelled c h a r k i, spellcheck keeps changing it to charming). Black. Stupid our lab mix who poked his head through windows to bark at anything he heard outside, black with a few white spots. Maurizio the Grey Persian, Clio, cream SIAMESE brown boxers in childhood GIGI and Joy, stormy fox terrier white with black and tan blotches.

Cheryl Penn. Targeting Memories Layer 16 (David’s Pets). 2021.

David’s note (not poem) evoked so many memories for me too of black animals, memories which at times were just a sense – and words became a gesture – they were the gesture and the gesture was the word. Not poetic words, just a shifting memory story told continuously in an automatic writing manner, spanning margin to margin. …22

Two layers later, I was in summer and the words were now shapes – they were lifted from a calligraphic form to become shape-words, set in prose as intentional mark. I think here of the words of Irma Blank: Towards the end of the Sixties, after a long period of existential and creative effort, in an atmosphere of linguistic experiment, and to escape the transience and ambiguity of the word, I returned to the sign itself, to the Urzeichen, to the primordial, undifferentiated sign that precedes the word. It was a new start, shifting the gaze to the beginning, to the Ursprung, a pure act of writing, a primeval communicative energy that schooled and realised itself in the sign that in its evolution is writing — scription, to quote Roland Barthes. It denudes writing of sense to charge it with other values. (http://www.p420.it/en/artisti/blank-irma Irma Blank, Milan, 2001)

Irma Blank. Radical Writings. early 1980s to the 1990s. ( https://edcat.net/person/irma-blank/ )

Blank is speaking about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the word here – but notice the appearance of form. Lines of ‘words’ fill the page without break or breath. Although all character accountability is negated – both in the form of writing and the appearance of the page, I would venture that this aesthetic is not poetry – this is visual prose. As artists we may offer alternative ways of writing, even alternative ways of making books, but somehow, we can perceive, in the utilization of prose format, the character of ritualistic and corporeal activity impossible in the book-world of phonetically written narrative. Blank, with her unwavering shapes and rhythmic fluidity still conveys the act of stillness reading brings. She appears to be commenting on reading, rather than about the meaning – with visual prose text.

Being filled with a world of words is a difficult place - and such a transient state of mind. Words to ‘the self’, though inexplicable and not even vaguely poetic, written with the intent and discipline of vispro may give the writer the opportunity to purposefully engage in fresh, compelling visual content as well as address the very human need for written engagement in private-public spaces. …23

Ptrizia (tictac) Features: 1) Asemic writing collage text 2) Palimpsest 3) A4 fine art paper 4) Elements of collage, ruberstamp Ptrizia (tictac) wrote on the work Anecdote: I thought of my version of an anecdote, because it is a short story - a brief narrative within a broader discourse often contained in one paragraph and that demonstrates a point making the reader think deeply. This image portrays the visual part is the 'broader discourse' underneath which expands beyond the anecdote. The vintage brush gives a nostalgic flair, with a surreal mobile rubber stamp detail to add the irony I like to portray in my personal stories.

Ptrizia (tictac). Anecdote. 2021 Comment: I knew in asking Patrizia for a work to demonstrate her understanding of vispro that I would receive a well thought out, quirky work which would reveal a truth more general than the brief tale from which it is drawn. Patrizia (to me) produces quintessential visual poetry, but this work, as she states, is intended not to address the poetic of terms of an anecdote, but to visualise a common feature of literary work which involves subtle exaggeration and dramatic shape. In the words of Jürgen Hein, they exhibit "a special realism" and "a claimed historical dimension." (Quoted by David Gurteen https://conversationalleadership.net/tag/anecdotes/ …24

The word anecdote was apparently coined by Procopius, the principal Byzantine historian of the 6th century, in a work titled Secret Society. Procopius is commonly classified as the last major historian of the ancient Western world, with Secret Society being a collection of short incidents from the private life of the Byzantine court. One can see the visual element of a ‘peeper’ in this work, a chronicler who watches without being noticed, but who is surreptitiously recording all the untold secrets of those who think they are beyond the realms of reality attending to reality – those who make use of innuendoes and subtle talk, those who deny and scratch out their words and resay them – depending on the audience. The hint of a page number tells us that perhaps this is part of a series of anecdotes? As an anecdote is a mini-story, this piece is also visually structured as a ‘mini-story’ with the image in pocket, adding to the intended mystery, interaction and amusement of the short story.

I got the blues: Patrizia sees “prose structure as fluent language with no stanzas but paragraphs that form rectangular shapes on paper. Every one of these paragraphs contains elements of the subject as supposedly prose does - being narrative after all. The visual elements are the blue of collage as subject and I chose asemics as the universal language that allows me to write the story and you to interpret it. My story is your story.

Poetry can be perceived to be about the poet's feelings, and sometimes you have to read it a few times to understand and still may then not necessarily connect with him/her, as it is all about personal journey. Prose is easier to read, and it is informative, narrational and not necessarily as creative as poetry. It is intended to be more informative on a subject (whether you like the authors writing style or not). Maybe I am simplistic in my approach, or perhaps minimalist but I create mostly by artistic intuition and shapes I see.

I am not a writer, so I lack of the understanding of literary tools and devices and as an artist I am more comfortable with visual elements which are more shape than the narrative. I wonder what the differences of interpretations between artists, writers, and artist who-are-also-writers (would be on prose), whether on canvas or not - and what it is they would concentrate on more.

Ptrizia (tictac). I got the blues. 2021. …25

Comment: I think Patrizia asks an important question here – what do artists/writers concentrate on/interpret whilst engaging in artistic practice? How do textual-visual artists situate the text and image on a page – and why do they choose to do it like that? What was the intent – to be poetic or to create a prose effect – or not?

Are these two methodologies different at all? I would definitely think so. Shape is also important in distinguishing between poetic intention and the prose-ic intention I would venture.

Think of concrete poetry, the ‘father’ of visual poetry – shape was a powerful determiner in categorization.

Shaping words was the vital element which helped theorize concrete poetry as a genre all of its own, as concrete poetry became categorized and recognized by shaped or patterned poems. Concrete poetry also had much to do with visual art – or the visual of the poem, rather than the verbal content of the poem. These arranged shapes are generally depictions of content, and yet there is no ‘theory’ on the shape of prose? In fact, to Adler (pg.107), the revival of shaped poetry during the Baroque period was as a result of poets doing away with “the more-or-less arbitrary appearance of the text, (turning) the incidental fact of writing into an essential facet of composition, and thereby…created a union of poetry with the visual arts". The ‘incidental fact of writing into an essential facet of (visual) communication’? That is exactly what the vispro categorization is attempting to do. Artists in this field are using an exciting but literary static tool (prose) as an element in visual art composition.

In Patrizia’s work, the rectangular prose form and a simple colour element guide the reader to the vispro intention of the writer-artists’ concept – I got the blues*. I think at this stage, in creating a categorization for vispro, the shape should be an intentional element in the work. As a formal element in art, shape is used to control how the viewer perceives a piece and should be relevant to conceptual intention. Using shape as an intentional practice in creating vispro, draws attention to ‘the page’ a basic unit in book design. Although such a spread applies to both poetry and prose, I have noticed in quite a few of the submitted vispro works that the gutter is overemphasised in terms of ignoring it (think Patti or Carrarini), or here it is completely avoided by Patrizia. This to me is (at the moment perhaps) an individual artistic reaction to the presentation of visual prose.

*‘Blues’. We know can refer to music or an agitated, depressed state of mind. Interestingly the term is thought to have derived from a 17th century English expression referring to ‘the blue devils’ – intense visual hallucinations accompanying severe alcohol withdrawal https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blues-music-history_b_2399330 - there was very little that was poetic about that!

…26

Piotr Szreniawski Untitled Features: 1) Printed page.

2) Pixilated, digitalized text.

3) Palimpsest Thinking about something that could be vispro, I came up with the idea of pixelizing some text and putting it above some background. I did the pixelization in gimp, and the background image was created on deepdremgenerator. So I concentrated on "looking at prose" - prose often uses rectangles as a form (I guess it comes from putting rectangular pieces together in standard books). I made three attempts before deciding on using this one.

Piotr Szreniawski. Untitled. 2021.

Comment: Piotr was one of the first to offer a considered vispro image. This image certainly reads as prose narration - and yes, in studying THE BOOK and its general shape as a cultural object, rectangle is the most common - and is therefore considered to be one of the most STABLE shapes (unlike the triangle for example which is more dynamic, and therefore more unstable). Certainly a lot to be explored in this something we really take for granted. The background gives the impression of stained glass windows and perhaps offers a visual aid in accessing the inaccessible text. The image in its hybrid complexity offers the question: is there any relation between page shape or size and its content in terms of meaning? As for the palimpsest nature of the image, I think that is of great relevance to vispro - it's practice and philosophy.

Question raised by Piotr's answer: Question: does the idea of "pixelizing some text and putting it above some background" have relevance to visual prose? Is the methodology of creating ANY vispro relevant - or only certain aspects? I know Piotr intended vispro and that aids in interpreting his intention.

I have quoted Piotr’s last comment in my conclusion as it reveals the value which may come about in the future. …27

Chris Wells TRA Features: 1) 2) 3)

Printed page, 300dpi.

Digitalized text, Lulu’s old “comic book” format.

Image from Book.

Possible example of vispro from my possibly vispro sequence called TRA. It was made up of two (arguably?) prose pieces, the street sign "Do Not Stop On Tracks" and a governmental railroad report from the late 19th century. I think the visual aesthetic in many of the pieces echoes their prosaic origins.

(TRA used to be a book but it died in the Great Lulu Migration of 2020. I am planning to get it back into print someday in a slightly different format, and possibly expanded.) Unlike most of my art, this is all computer generated based on public domain material.

This is one page in a larger sequence called ‘Tra’ with the inspiration for the sequence occurred in late 2014. I was driving across railroad tracks at night and I noticed some letters on an electric "DO NOT STOP ON TRACKS" sign had burnt out. It interested me that such a critical, even urgent unit of communication had had its message degraded by physical wear and tear, and I wondered what possibilities there were in removing letters from that sign in every possible combination. Amazingly, for a sign of five short words, it turns out that there are over 130,000 different possibilities, some of which have meanings in English or other languages and others that just suggest possible meanings, inviting a reader to fill in the blanks. Since publishing a 130,000-page book was not feasible, I abridged it for a book of around 80 pages, choosing some of the variations that resonated with me and incorporating other visual techniques to create the sequence. At some point during my research, I came across this oddly beautiful passage in an old railroad report, repeating the refrain "trains do not stop". The book became a sort of fading of variations of "DO NOT STOP ON TRACKS" into the "trains do not stop" found poem.

This image is one of the many that are an obvious combination of these two elements during the long transition from beginning to end.

Chris Wells. Tra. 2014. …28

Comments: When looking at Chris’ image, I see the flow of linear prose and margin justified text – not generally a poetic device. As always I am interested to read Chris’ intent and purpose behind creating such a work as this. Although the word TRACK is deconstructed, it’s presence is fundamental in finding explanation, almost a physical visual exploitation of the word – imitating that which happened to the sign. The horizontal lines speak to the dynamic phenomena of prose. I found Chris’s questioning very valuable in terms of coming to grips with a framework for vispro. For this reason, his points and questions are broken up with answers.

Comments: CQ: One thing I was wondering, when people say "prose" (and not "prose poetry") I think what is involved is a communicative goal, getting from point A to point B. Is this aim or goal, usually to provide some kind of information to a recipient of the communication, important to vispro as well?

A: I think the point in attempting to define vispro at this stage is to get some clarity through discussion and examples, as to IF such a creature exists. For me I get a very strong sense that it does. More, I get this sense from text-visual artists AND their work. At ground level the difference lies in arrangement and intent of text I think. Both have to do with information but they have different functions: poetry seeks to evoke understanding, prose appears to provide information in order to understand. If this is so, should one not be attempting to ‘make visual’ prose or poetry differently? The WAY/OUTCOME of information one is presenting should come from two different intents, not so?

Also, art, in all its manifestations is about communicating - vous ne pensez pas? Having said that, the why, the how and the intent are all valuable in creating a work which is its outcome, rather than leaving the work to ‘blind’ chance categorization and interpretation.

A: It seems to me that prose contains information (there must be a better word, but it escapes me at the moment) even if it's fictional, and everyone knows the "information" isn't referring to the real world but an imagined one. The words in prose serve a purpose other than revealing their beauty and multifaceted meanings for someone to play with and explore.

A: Prose IS information – Prose comes from the Latin “prosa oratio,” meaning “straightforward.” But, isn’t art about making such a thing strange? And, art provides so many opportunities to take the structure, intent and purpose of literary prose and re-present it in an artistic, interpretive manner which is NOT poetry. Prose may present as tombs of information on philosophy, or history or, as you say, fiction – so could we say it’s about the nature of ‘prose’– using the formal elements of prose in a visual manner in order to create a visual rendition of prose? As for play and exploration within the literary application of the term ‘prose’, one seeks vivid language, not clunky text. One is interested in, and by a variety of prose: short and crisp, lengthily, or calmly written descriptions. Good prose gives distinctive voices to different characters, or it could be filled with complex plots and many twists. If it is academic, it could be dry and filled with convoluted, byzantine language, or engaging, presupposing the intelligence of its reader. Academic prose could be written in ‘ordinary language’ (such as this paper) and it can be exploratory, scientific or biased. ALL these descriptions can be translated into a variety of visual prose – vispro. So, whatever ones view/stance on whatever type of prose one is attempting to make visual – or indeed attempting to explain visually, it will take on many forms which are NOT poetic (vispo).

Q: In fact, it (prose) downplays those things most of the time. Prose just wants to get to some kind of "point". It may even be rhetorical by nature. What is the "point" of vispro, then, I wonder? Where would a map or diagram fit in - something conveying information visually but not (exclusively) with words or letters?

A: Have I answered this I wonder? The ‘point’ of prose is the point of any artistic rendition of ‘any-thing’.

But, it must be a conscious choice, a choice to be inspired by the nature of PROSE – as, when one is …29

painting portraits, one is not inspired by camels. Thinking in terms of Plato’s reality as consisting of archetypes or forms beyond human sensation - perhaps in this instance ‘perfect prose’ - we as artists, as vispro practitioners, are imitating an existing literary experience, seeking the special qualities – the aesthetic qualities – be they beautiful or sublime and/or dreary and monotonous - of prose.

Q: So what you're proposing (I think) is that 'vispro' be defined beyond merely re-creating the visual impression or suggestion of prose. I am having a hard time grasping the concept, but that's not a bad thing.

It's good exercise for the old brain...

A: Absolutely, we are delving into the guts of prose – Aristotle’s art as imitation – art enabling what ‘nature cannot bring to a finish’. As artists, we are seeking to separate the forms of prose and imposing interpretation, delight, visual creativity – we are re-presenting, re-constructing – not dissembling, or deconstructing the nature of prose – although that process is valuable in coming to formal solutions in a personalized approach and attitude to artmaking. The final vispro form must enhance and support the initial concept – not merely be an illustration of a specific set of data.

Vispo/vispro??

I asked certain artists whose work I value to submit examples to aid in defining vispro. There was much debate on other terminology such as visual-prose-poetry. As I stated in various discussions, perhaps there is such an animal, but it is an animal not in my sights. I realise too that attempting to categorize any artistic endeavour draws loud voices of dissention – but that has always been the case. The following three examples are by 3 well known vispo artists and their work has always been categorized as such. They are happy with that categorization and I am not attempting to reframe their examples, but have included them as interpretations of vispo intent, each outworked according to a unique approach. In discussion, all three artists termed their work ‘vispo’ and their textual contribution is included with thanks. …30

C. Mehrl Bennett (USA) Features: 1) Printed page.

2) Altered photograph of bench slats 3) Overlaid asemic writing 4) Palimpsest effect 5) WHY: an opening up to an unconscious connection to the 'whole' of creation.

Following invite of Cheryl Penn's for Vispro group, I am sharing an asemic writing piece from 2019.

It began with a photo of slats on a bench in Paris France. The color contrasts in the background are a way of grounding the composed asemic writing into an artform, which may tell the reader that I am from a visual art background. I used to dream that I was reading words in a book, and would not be able to read the word, of course, until I could visualize it in my dream. That process is directly connected to 'automatic writing' which, in my case, might be described as 'asemic scribblings'. The vertical format (used often in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian) could just as well be horizontal, I've used both; but the linear act of writing is represented and so grounds my scribbles into a literary con-text (tongue-in-cheek). When I 'write' with a line on top of a visual piece, it sometimes follows contours found in the base layer. But as often as not, I will visualize a contour and just let my line follow that visualization, like when I used to dream-read. 2019 was also the start of a kind of 'obsessive drawing' I found myself doing (with micron pens, mostly) over my scanned abstract colorful paintings... in which I visualize animals, faces, figures, nature, etc. that connect with forms or contours I see in the painted details, and often these critters make eye contact with each other, or share a contoured shape, because they flow so freely from one to the next. So I think what I'm trying to say is that my art process & my asemic writing both come from the same place -- an opening up to an unconscious connection to the 'whole' of creation.

C. Mehrl Bennett. 2019.

Comment: Vispro? Perhaps. In discussions the term visual-prose-poetry was applied – vispropo – but that is not an animal I am seeking within the confines of this discussion. I think of intent here. This is about ‘the way of the form’, not necessarily about categorization of this image. I have worked with Catherine - very successfully I think*, quite a few times. I admire her work, her output and dedication to vispo. In discussion, I would think that she prefers the all-encompassing ‘vispo’ term. To me, there could very well be more vispro (visual prose) elements to this work than vispo elements, but, as Catherine states, *see example https://vimeo.com/83051801 - wonderful soundtrack! C. Mehrl Bennett is consultant editor and technical facilitator for Luna Bisonte Prods on demand publications - a contributing editor, artist, & writer for arts or vispo related publications and websites - a mail artist, multi-media artist, and performer/writer of fluxus scores and experimental poetry, and more.

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perhaps her work is hovering in the visual-prose-poetry area rather than in one or the other.

Andrew Brenza had this to say: Well, perhaps this is a bit arbitrary, but I'd say that prose poetry is a subset of the larger category of poetry. Similarly, using the same logic, vispro might be considered a subset of vispo. Also, what seems to me to distinguish prose from prose poetry is the quality of the prose, its effect on the reader.

Prose poetry acts on the reader in the same way as all good poetry does, vs, say, the effect on the reader of engaging with the effort to transfer factual information in language. The phrase I use in the piece is a kind of prose poetry, I'd say. Perhaps the piece is then VisProPo? To quote Creeley, "I don't know. I get lost."

Vispropo – as stated - another discussion for another time – it’s chasing another animal on the textual-image plain which is outside the vispro fence. I would have liked to discuss with Andrew in the context of this article, the statement “what seems to me to distinguish prose from prose poetry is the quality of the prose, its effect on the reader”. Yes and no. I think what would be very important is intent and execution of intent by the artist. Even a prose poem form such as haibun is described as a poetic form which uses prose but includes a haiku and the haiku must be ‘in conversation with the prose’*. There is intent to create a haibun prose-poem. The process is not left to chance - because there is a form in mind. *Haibun prose is usually descriptive. It uses sparse, poetic imagery to evoke a sensory impression in the reader. The section of prose is then followed by a haiku that serves to deepen the meaning of the prose, either by intensifying its themes or serving as a juxtaposition to the prose’s content. The accompanying haiku usually appears at the end of the haibun composition, though in some cases it may appear in the middle or at the very beginning. The haiku is meant to be in conversation with the prose section, serving as a thematic accompaniment, juxtaposition, or grace note that deepens the meaning of the piece as a whole. From: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-writehaibun-poetry#what-are-the-origins-of-haibun-poetry

Serse Luigetti (Italy) UNDERLINES Features: 1) Printed page.

2) Collage 3) Overlaid asemic writing 4) Palimpsest effect The blue background of this image is a quick handfree ink colour asemic 'writing’ I made about twenty years ago. Years later (2021) I tried to do a handcut collage with the dashed lines of postage paid commercial postcards. I found that the pattern could be a structure for the handwritten lines that photocopied in light blue were overprinted in red. Now I call this image UNDERLINES.

Serse Luigetti. UNDERLINES. 2021 and various other works. …32

I have included two other images belonging to Serse as he has a very distinctive visual language output.

And, no matter where one searches, Serse’s work is described as vispo. I am not attempting to nudge it out of this catagorization as that is his intention. I would be interested to see if a different method of making would come into play if Serse thought about working with prose.

Nico Vassilakis the independence of fear Features: 1) Printed page.

2) Digitalized text.

3) Palimpsest Nico wrote: I find it’s true, letters arrange themselves - it’s never a word first. They take time, they take their time, one letter at a time. A word is built, it doesn’t simply appear. We have forgotten, we live our lives at such velocity that words emerge fully formed, an effortless fact. But it is not that way, alphabets are the history of human sound applied visually. A word is considered a convenience, a formation of letters that represents an object. Letters are the construction and compositional material of societal communication. The ingredients, if you will, of talking, of writing, of thinking, of getting by in our everydayness. This piece consists of layers of the phrase “letters arrange themselves - it’s never a word first.” One on top of the other till meaning is obliterated, till the words break open and the letters are released. The words explode and letters find themselves liberated to explore their original visual and/or verbal functions. The letters unmoored from their word captor is my visual poetry.

Comment: I had time to digest your words Nico, as I had read them as a message first. And, I would agree with what you say. I always picture letters as nanites, busy working before we think, speak - and never mind write. And then, once they've arranged themselves - willingly or unwillingly, they're out there, never to be retracted. They may be forgiven/forgotten/erased/re-consigned meaning, but their separate elements - the letters remember. My question: does this thinking create prose? Having said that, Nico very firmly states that his work is visual poetry. I wonder how/if he would tackle vispro differently? Would the appearance of his work change? …33

The Post-Vispro Condition: Thoughts on Cheryl Penn’s Vispro Project & The Many Masks of Doc Mortag (McMurtagh/Sloan 2021)

By De Villo Sloan The Cheryl Penn Boat

When gray New England life left him a misanthrope feeling estranged from others and himself, Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, signed aboard a whale ship and embarked on a quest of self-renewal.

I am a poetic Ishmael. When I feel estranged from my work, when it taunts me like self-parody, when I feel no affinity to any other poet on earth, I know it is time to join a Cheryl Penn project.

Thus, I joined Cheryl Penn’s vispro study in February of 2021, which has proven to be an extraordinary and renewing experience. Allusions to the Pequod go only so far; Cheryl Penn is no Ahab, I assure you.

I have had the great good fortune to work with Cheryl Penn on several international, managerially complex, collaborative book projects. A favorite memory is the Asemics 16 project (circa 2012). This brought dozens of artists and writers together from around the world to explore asemic writing. That experience altered my personal evolution very positively. I came to recognize early that in addition to being a spectacular visual artist and writer, Cheryl Penn is a culture leader. She has a rare ability to assemble diverse participants, to provide a supportive environment for creativity and to facilitate communications. Yet she and her collaborators deliver astounding results, usually on time. I also appreciate Cheryl’s ability to identify concepts in all our shared work that, if explored, will yield important results. Her projects have a great relevance to the writing and arts communities to which she belongs. …34

For instance, when Cheryl and I first discussed what would become the Asemics-16 project, I assumed we would pursue “vispo” content. Cheryl suggested “asemic writing.” My response was something such as, “Asemic writing! Nobody is interested in that stuff!” Since then, I defer to and confer with Cheryl Penn. I joined her “vispro” study whole heartedly. If Cheryl thinks it is important, then I am “on it.”

The Making of Doc Mortag A great deal of synchronicity occurs in the visual poetry and asemic writing communities, where work is circulated perpetually. In August of 2021 Kristine Snodgrass (USA), John McConnochie (Australia) and I – exploring glitchTXT - began ether sessions to produce, if memory serves, a sustained, glitched (asemic) collaborative composition. Possibly a book. The three of us produced a series of collabs that I hope to share some day, but the project faded. I had never worked with John McConnochie, and the three of us could not get the right wavelength. I think we would now. Kristine Snodgrass had reached a point where I think she was exhausted. She was going to be the main character in a book she was making with John and me. That is a shaky premise.

We did have many discussions, and one point that stayed with me was incorporating narrative into these radical glitched decompositions. I recall discussing visual narrative in film and ideas about developing structures. Throughout the whole project, I believe the narrative focus was an outstanding element of the vispro studies; structure became for me a focus.

Page from The Many Masks of Doc Mortag.

Working with Kristine and John, I realized I wanted to do a glitch narrative. I hoped to produce an asemic comic or a modest graphic novel, a link to popcult. Having once been a guitar player, I see glitchTX as the equivalent of using a foot pedal to distort a live guitar. The glitchTXT is a tool to help me better achieve my vision, a tech tool. The art is in the player. I am ordinarily a very nonlinear, non-narrative writer. What I was seeing in Cheryl Penn’s vispro Facebook group offered me …35

new models and narrative possibilities. Thus, circa September 2021, I set out to intentionally create a sustained vispro work. The Many Masks of Doc Mortag is, to me, intentional vispro. I appreciate having the vispro group as a lighthouse as I dug into the project.

I met San Diego visual poet Shawn McMurtagh via John M. Bennett. I have been a McMurtagh fan – Eye Rush Press – for several years. In 2018, I published neo-concrete pieces by Shawn at Asemic Front 2, wonderful and rare work. Then we made some collabs. He is great to work with, [insert California mellow stereotype here with smiles]. Recently, Shawn McMurtagh had done these amazing, expressionist faces, brilliant, gradient, totally representational heads that I knew could be glitched into new Chakras of magnificent decomposition. What I appreciate is that Shawn trusted me enough to play riffs on his magnificent faces. Thus, you have the strange tale of The Many Masks of Doc Mortag and its connection to Cheryl Penn’s vispro project.

Comment: Ok, so De Villo is a little overt in his praise (thank you De Villo!) but I always value his analysis on literaryart issues. He sees things others don’t and often highlights unknown/unrealised features. The Many Masks of ‘Doc Mortag’ * is described as “a collaborative graphic novella (vispro for Cheryl Penn) of corrupted file concrete asemics (AsemiX). This is the first edition of the second publication in the Asemic Front Series”. I know De Villo as a Neo Concrete poet – and writer, so I especially want to draw attention to the following point: We did have many discussions, and one point that stayed with me was incorporating narrative into these radical glitched decompositions. I recall discussing visual narrative in film and ideas about developing structures. Throughout the whole project, I believe the narrative focus was an outstanding element of the vispro studies; structure became for me a focus.

Glitching is way outside my ball park, but that would constitute the ‘how’ of this novella. The why and the intent changed De Villo’s usual frame of reference – and I think it shows. Glitch art is completely foreign to me. Here follows a definition for those equally not techno-savvy: Glitch art is a fairly recent phenomenon that has developed from the fast-paced evolution of digital technology.

Technically, a glitch is the temporary and slight malfunctioning of a system. Due to the limitations of current technology, time, funding, and human error, glitches run the whole gamut of the digital landscape and can be difficult to pinpoint due to their transient nature. From software and games to sound files, automated systems and phones, there is an endless number of glitches that we encounter, often unknowingly, during day to day life.

Glitch art is an art form that harnesses the visual effects of data corruption. By applying certain encoding or actions to an image, a photograph can become visually corrupted while retaining a usable file. Glitch art is generally an experimental process, with glitch artists walking the fine line between a usable file and a completely broken one.

From: https://digital-photography-school.com/make-abstract-glitch-art-photographs/

In reading that explanation I became very aware of the nature of instructional prose – prose on glitches and quite aside from vispro saw the possibilities of producing ASCII art** - in fact any sort of work using Unicode – an information technology standard for consistent “encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems ( https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ ) (this would constitute the how of creating vispro – not the why). I realised that again we have come (theoretically) full circle. Even computers and their handlers with all the code they produce have a standard measure which provides consistency and a way to ‘handle text’. The way this novella was produced was with narrative in mind – not poetry, not prose poetry, not narrative poetry – visual prose narrative. *This book can be found as a free download on https://www.scribd.com/document/538328322/The-Many-Masks-of-Doc-Mortag-by-ShawnMcMurtagh-De-Villo-Sloan-Edition-1-2021 **ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text based visual art in general.

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Page 1: The Many Masks of ‘Doc Mortag’. 2021.

De Villo has defined this work as a graphic vispro novella, so the viewer is left in no doubt as to artistic intention and approach used. A novella by definition is an extended piece of prose fiction and in this instance is a form of story relying on distortion, some sort of plot, and a central character - no matter how vague or tenuous the plot appears to be. I had asked De Villo in discussion what he meant by the first lines – but he didn’t bite. Henry James said: “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character”? Thus plot/story line – even if it is tenuous - is likely to develop – with or without the authors acquiescence. Looking at this page, I find it interesting that the text on the page (prose text) is embedded into the overall image – it does not lie on the surface of the page as most printed words do – the prose is the image. Although this occurred as a by-product of the making process, this vispro image is very certain of its visual-prose heritage. The reality is that although a novel may determine general classification (graphic novel in this instance), vispro is the hold all, the means, the artistic literary form which is so pliable and adaptable it is bound to become the seeking artists’ device.

And it’s ironic, isn’t it? On the one hand we have the construction of narrative and on the other hand the deconstruction of image. A dramatic paradox is at play and paradox is a way for writer-artists to create verbal or situational irony. As irony has such an oblique quality, I feel a detached sensibility pervades this vispro work which shows no signs of being vispo – or ‘just’ a graphic novella. This is the first studiously generated vispro novel and I hope, as such, it helps to shape and define other vispro novels.

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Conclusion In correspondence with a few contributors to my thoughts, I received encouraging comments and a general desire for classification other than vispo. Piotr Szreniawski (Poland) wrote: Although I don't have time for organizing, I think vispro needs lots of activities, such as brainstorming and creating, but also such events as scientific conferences and publications. There are many people putting vispro examples into the "big vispo bag", and vispro can be a niche inside vispo, but I think it would be really valuable to develop the space which is not poetry (when one has to choose between poetry and prose), a space which is visual prose. And, at some stage some a kind of institutionalisation has to come (although it can be boring), but it would be helpful in organizing exhibitions, giving awards or in developing other forms of synergetic cooperation.

On reading about the classification, David Stone wrote: “it "describes" a frontierland of expression, holding in question rules and conventions regularly observed, participating in the evolution of linguistic usage”.

As a discipline of literature, prose would be defined as conventional (formal or informal) language used in speaking or writing – a literary medium which distinguishes itself from poetry by its greater irregularity of rhythm and familiarity with regular patterns of everyday speech. It has grammatical structure with an ability (when written well) to produce a wonderful mental richness in its precision and nuances, descriptions and connections. In the hands of a sensitive wordsmith, prose can deliver such mental surprises - touches of the mysterious and uncanny or it may expose that nerve within our humanness which causes us to cringe within its sentence string. Prose may be simple or baroque, romantic or emotionally harsh and grating - why if we attempt to make it visual, would it appear as poetry?

Although we still see work rich and abundant in its visual aesthetic, we appear to be involved (as stated before) in a time of linguistic exasperation – a time of Word exploitation. Exploitation you might ask? An increase in interdisciplinary artistic activity has proliferated the image glut, but what have we sacrificed in becoming weary of, and bored with classifications? Theory, (although it too can become so academic and complicated at times) should be addressed by any creative wanting to increase their knowledge in a subject area and obtain skills to learn and develop.

In attempting to provide guidelines for work to be classified as vispro I am not only attempting to explain such a creature, but also to explore and understand a genre which comes across as a series of similar textual -visual ideas which seem to be proliferating despite cultural backgrounds, approaches and practitioners.

Vispro is a genre which does not need to sit under the vast umbrella of vispo – it can stand alone, as prose is acknowledged to be different to poetry. While artists exploit the apparatus of linguistic expression and continue to incarnate the word as image, let’s not wear out structures which have stood the test of time, but rather embrace and enhance their intrinsic value. As visual-text archaeological encephalographers, let’s, as vispro practitioners step back and see what lies beneath our macroscopic approach to text-image production, standing by a theme, or intention in order to support the burden of our work on workable structures which are the sum of the relationships of the parts to each other. The consideration and intention of formal elements coupled with informal qualities can only provide interdependent balance within an artwork.

Textual-visual images are all multimodal, images where meaning is communicated through combinations of two or more modes. Such devices comprised of written language, unknown language, computer language and a vast assortment of visuals, but one should provide patterns of meaning which are meaningful, gestural, tactile, spatial and importantly, conceptually sound. We live in an increasingly multimodal world. It is at times just a blur, saturated and without comprehension and discernible form. Its diversity, richness and (conversely) poverty of meaning is insanely and increasingly shaped by developments in information and multimedia technologies. This complexity obviously disallows us to think of literacy as a solely linguistic accomplishment, but, let’s not negate language structures in our de-construction (destruction?) of the Word. …38

In attempting to define and characterize vispro let me end where I began: Vispro is the visible outcome of work intended to be read as vispro: it’s visible shape, configuration, it’s external manifestation of the inward vispro idea. Such a work termed vispro is created through many mediums, include writing, asemic writing, computer generated images, text, cut-up text, collage, painting, drawing – any tool the vispro initiator uses in order to create the vispro form. Vispro is intended to convey a system of communication which, by it’s overwhelming visual prose elements aids the viewer in perceiving and comprehending visual prose signs and is thus an image, work, form, manifestation intended to be viewed as an integrated combination read as “visual prose”. It is not to be regarded as illustrated text or vispo, but as a separate artform, intended to be identified on its own merits.

“Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.”

– so said Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre.

*https://www.quotetab.com/quotes/by-jean-paul-sartre

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BIOGRAPHY (condensed) Many thanks David, Italo Carrarini, Enzo Patti, Andrew Brenza, Patrizia, Piotr, C Mehrl Bennett, Serse Luigetti, Nico Vassilaki, De Villo and all others who contributed with comments and images on the vispro group – even those who decided to just ‘not be categorized’. I regret not having got to you all, but thank you.

Adler, Jeremy, Technopaigneia, carmina figurata and Bilder-Reime: 17th century figured poetry in historical perspective”, Comparative Ciriticism Volume 4, CUP 1982, pg 107.

Barton, Simon. 2016. Visual Devices in Contemporary Prose Fiction: Gaps, Gestures, Images. Palgrave Macmillan UK. John Moorhead. 1999. , Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing: "Procopius", M–Z, Vol. II, Kelly Boyd, (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, pg 962.

Italo Carrarini https://www.utsanga.it/carrarini-a-short-anthology/ https://www.utsanga.it/carrarini-a-short-anthology/?fbclid=IwAR1cuDBpgOgnHNNSPGh82WvSPC1Cijg0MXadft5jDSIxGIJM8hOcTPYO-c John Guillory. 2017. Mercury’s Words: The End of Rhetoric and the Beginning of Prose. Available on-line @ https://www.representations.org/the-origins-of-modern-prose/ Marginalia https://www.eapoe.org/works/misc/mar1144.htm Irma Blank http://www.p420.it/en/artisti/blank-irma https://wsimag.com/art/42246-irma-blank https://edcat.net/person/irma-blank/ http://www.p420.it/en/mostre/life-line Glitch Art https://digital-photography-school.com/make-abstract-glitch-art-photographs/ Liber Linteus https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008.05.37/ http://www.geocities.ws/jackiesixx/caere/linteus.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20160920074043/http://www.amz.hr/home/departments/collections/the-egyptiancollection.aspx https://www.absolute-croatia.com/travel-magazine/arts-culture/museums-galleries/item/the-zagreb-mummy Novgorod Codex https://buryingbooks.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/the-novgorod-codex/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Codex The Archimedes Palimpsest http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/history/index.php https://www.aproged.pt/biblioteca/worksofarchimede.pdf https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/ litfocusmultimodal.aspx De Villo Sloan and Shawn McMurtagh. 2021. The Many Masks of Doc Mortag. Ebook. Available on-line at: https://www.scribd.com/document/538328322/The-Many-Masks-of-Doc-Mortag-by-Shawn-McMurtagh-De-VilloSloan-Edition-1-2021 Vispo https://bodyliterature.com/2014/02/24/what-is-vispo-an-interview-with-nico-vassilakis/ https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1021/the-coffin-texts/ …40