AsemiQuads: Limited Edition Book of Visual Poetry

from Jaap Blonk

Book/Magazine

AsemiQuads: Limited Edition Book of Visual Poetry main photo

The title "AsemiQuads" can be seen as a contraction of 'quadratic drawings with short asemic statements'. The series was created in the period of October 2021 till June 2022.

My asemic writing - writing with no semantic meaning - gradually developed from my notations for sound poetry. These are functional scores with a script consisting of the International Phonetic Alphabet with a lot of added symbols of my own invention. Sometime around the turn of the millennium the signs started 'emancipating' themselves from the task of representing sounds to an independent life as pure image. Since then I have been developing the writing in various directions: sometimes it takes the form of tiny beings, sometimes just short phrases or small clouds of signs.

The backgrounds for the drawings were basically made in two different ways. On the one hand, geometric structures, either based on number sequences or generated with non-linear equations. On the other hand, photos I took or scans of collages I made, that I then processed with small programs I wrote.

--- Jaap Blonk, October 2022

Jaap Blonk uses quadratic equations and computer-made collages to create playgrounds which he populates with radiant strokes. These strokes might be lifeforms, plants, magnetic iron oxide particles, thoughts or even 1-dimensional strings. An advanced biological computer is attempting to communicate with us.

Tim Gaze, publisher of Asemic magazine

Fittingly, one might best comment on Jaap Blonk’s visual work with sound. But this can definitely be said, the work in Blonk’s AsemiQuads invites the reader/viewer into sites of play that seem almost the graphs of dreams—or the dreams of graphs. The compelling tension of the work is that one is never sure to which they are closer, a crayon imagining our cybernetic moment, or AI grasping at a world before itself.

Sacha Archer, author of Empty Building and Mother’s Milk

The ebb and flow of unnatural and organic material. If a motherboard were immersed in a vat of biological fluids long enough it might result in AsemiQuads. In this transformative soup are visio/verbal hybrids that both dance upon the eye as well as offer performative sound scores. A delightful twist that delves further into Blonk’s substantial abilities.

Nico Vassilakis, visual poet and co-editor of The Last Vispo