Marks insist on being words. Asemic writing and the struggles of AI in generating meaningful text

Abstract

There is more work in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting things; and more books about books than on any other subject; we do nothing but write glosses on one another. — Montaigne, Essais, quoted in Michel Foucault’s “The Order of Things” Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing that does not attempt to communicate any message other than its own nature as writing and doesn’t necessarily convey information. The open nature of asemic works allow for meaning to occur across linguistic understanding, and multiple interpretations can arise which can be polysemantic or have zero meaning. Any writing, legible or not, carries with it the expectation that it is intended to be read and can become a fascinating desire for the reader to elucidate a cryptic text. Recently, advancements in artificial intelligence have led to the development of models capable of generating text that resembles human language. However, these models often struggle in generating meaningful text and this often results in gibberish or distorted text that is difficult to read or completely illegible. While we expect to see a series of recognizable shapes representing vocal sounds when we look at text, AI does not possess this understanding. Instead, it perceives text as a series of shapes, angles, and curves, attempting to replicate patterns without comprehending the symbolic meaning underlying those shapes. AI relies solely on statistical information for text generation, thus both asemic writing and AI image generators inherently lack semantic content. "Marks Insist on Being Words" in an attempt to explore and provide information on how the absence of semantic content in asemic writing compares to the struggles of AI generators in generating coherent and meaningful text. My intention is to use this technological limitation in order to explore the asemic writing from a new perspective and by doing so, I aim to challenge visual communication’s principles and suggest new ways of reading and looking. Drawing inspiration from fictional and fantasy worlds, as well as alienese languages like Kryptonian (associated with Superman’s home planet) or “chicken-scratch” speech used by Woodstock in the “Peanuts” comic strips, this project aims to create an encyclopedia that encourages imagination and focuses on the visual process rather than linguistic meaning. The book serves as a metalanguage, prompting readers to activate their imagination and conceptualize what they see. It liberates readers from the linear constraints of writing systems, immersing them in a non-sequential approach to engaging with writing. By deconstructing language, the encyclopedia offers fresh perspectives while teasing the possibility of legibility and simultaneously denying it. Asemic writing draws attention to the visual qualities inherent in written form and surpasses linguistic meaning, urging readers to appreciate aesthetic and visual elements beyond conventional languages. This encyclopedia is designed precisely for this purpose, inviting readers to imagine its potential meanings.