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| Page 1 from Unknown Message |
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Words for UNKNOWN MESSAGE
“Here are some Petri dishes, each full
of an alternative writing culture or sample of writing from an alternative
civilization. Some of this writing appears to have been yanked and stretched,
as if it had been written on a sheet of elastic material. Other pages resemble
maps, diagrams, digital crystals, tattoo designs or ancient pictographs. Noise
or wind or smeariness is a common feature. Throughout this work, the third
dimension seems to be trying to push itself forward from the flat paper
surface. There's a human presence hiding on one page, perhaps the author hard
at work. I suggest that this book contains a message from the future.”
—Tim Gaze
“The physical act of reading is altered
here, it undergoes a shift. The challenge is to assess how a reader views and
how the veiwer reads. A sentence carries information from one margin to the
other. The line travels across the page. What happens between margins is open
to interpretation, to some divine corruption. In UNKNOWN MESSAGE, Selby not
only adjusts the content of the line and how it reaches a margin, but he takes
alphabet to new visual potentials. Meaning is in the seeing meaning form new
ways of seeing. These poems are derived from visual chromatin conveying the
genetic material of a future language event. Again, the cycle of disintegration
to renewal in visual language approaches. These asemic missives find you, are
awaiting your attention.”
—Nico
Vassilakis
“Fuzzy-wuzzy, cranky, cryptic, vibrant,
prickly, deterritorialized, endearing… no, these are not names of Snow White’s
avant-garde dwarves but just a few adjectives that adhere to the overwhelming
variety of Spencer Selby’s asemic marvels. These textural, textilic surfaces
invite engagement of the most tactile kind, but they can’t be touched except
with our loving, delighted eyes. Poring
over them is a wild ride into the possibilities of illumination and meaning. If
Plato’s cave were the ideal rather than the simulacrum, its walls would feature
these brilliant marvels. We are drawn toward these angelic morsels of
signification, flickering sememes that reveal and conceal.”
—Maria Damon
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| Spencer Selby |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Poet, artist and film historian,
Spencer Selby has performed work and presented slide shows in many North
American cities and in Europe. He is the
author of nine poetry books, five collections of visual poetry and two reference
works on film noir. Selby ran the Canessa Park Gallery Series in San Francisco, co-edited
the visual poetry magazine Score and was a curating member of Glitch Artists
Collective. http://www.selbysart.com/