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.

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