Page 56 - Studio International - March April 1975

REGALIA/REGENCY/REGENTS/ with synonyms on the right; in the first performance; it begins with Z; then the
REGIMEN/REGIMES/REGIONS column uniformity of word length and words beginning with Y that were not
(though on the way we must pass over visual continuities in the succession of erased on the way; and so on, as far as S.
REGARDS). letters, in the second total irregularity. There are more four-letter words
There are other works that use In the Corpus the sound of the words beginning with S than any other letter so
linguistic symbols as their visual basis. is an enrichment in the reading that reading erases all previous ones.
Earlier, along with the letter paintings, a consciousness of the audience, but the A lot of works have been based on the
series of twenty-six typed sheets each major by-product of the book is a length 4 words. The advantages are
covered with a single letter of the parallel in actual sound. A choral reading many: the number of words of that
alphabet in lower case. Repeated like that took place at Nova Scotia College of Art length — about two thousand — is
the shapes register in a very abstract way; and Design on i7 April, 1972. convenient to handle, and as the word is
optical continuities emerge that totally Twenty-six performers, seated in a short, notable continuities of visual
recharacterize individual forms, and circle round a microphone, chanted out in pattern and of sound emerge, along with
suggestions of induced 'colour' that still unison all the words in the Corpus up to subtle variations as the occasional two-
distinguish the pieces from each other in length 7. Each performer took words syllable word crops up, or an isolated
the longer viewing distance of a gallery beginning with a particular letter. The oddity like XXXX sandwiched
presentation. In these pieces, where lines length-one words are in fact just the between WYNN and YAKS. But
are typed right across the page, letters of the alphabet, so it all goes off undoubtedly a major factor is that the
irregularities show up less readily — until together, just a great barrage of sound idiom of language itself constructs out of
in another piece, an offshoot of this series, that yet suggests the diversity of its the statistic a lexical phrase 'four-letter
the letter 1 is re-typed a second time over indistinguishable components. Thereafter word' that communicates a certain cachet
the first. `C' and 'S' words usually outnumber the (stigma) to all the rest once we begin to
Other manipulations of language rest; when a performer exhausts his or classify them on that basis; by chance
produce different sorts of visual patterns : her words in a particular length he waits Brown did find a few lour-letter words'
words of one to twenty-six letters length for the rest to finish and all again start the among the rest and they help to bring
making a lean-to structure against the left next length in unison. Each time the home the point.
of a page, another similar extending to sound gradually thins out until the Gerald Ferguson had made an audio-
twenty-eight letters, all in lower case and oppositions become more specific, and tape on which he simply read out all the
a symmetrical pyramid constructed out of then finally and suddenly a single voice length 4 words — and then out of that a
typing on tape. These precede the calling out an orderly sequence of words videotape in which he sat beside the
Corpus. Based on it is a piece using the with alliterative progressions through audio recorder trying to keep pace from
first and last words from each page: they their alphabetical order and a partial memory as it played them back directly
extend into four columns of tapering correspondence of syllabic structure. on to the sound-track of the videotape
type, great cliffs and pinnacles of letters Even in the recording the work has (that is, we hear the original audiotape
in the upper part; canyons between extraordinary power and subtlety. but not the artist's attempts to keep pace).
that close up completely at bottom: That work was essentially a There is also a very fine print of 1971 that
GEATISHDIVERSITYLOW- performance that just happens to yield a sets them all out in a long horizontal
VOLTAGETWENTY-FIVE-YEAR- very fine recording, but the recording block.
OLD. Sometimes the morphology of the mechanism opens up possibilities not There are some interesting
words may provide the basis; sometimes available in the performance itself. A coincidences among the four-letter-long
the meaning. In alphabetical order, three sequential reading begins with just one words. 'Word' itself is a four-letter word;
columns of words that appear to be able performer reading all the four-letter so is the German for 'word', WORT,
to take the prefix 're', though in fact the words beginning with A; then the tape is and in a hand-written sketch he
composite is a quite different word or has wound back and all those beginning with rearranges these four letters in all their
a quite distinct sense: veal/reveal/verse/ B are read out. Eventually the piece twenty-four permutations. 'Four' too is a
reverse/view/review/vision/revision/volt/ progresses through all the letters of the four-letter word and he has made a great
revolt/ward/reward. Then again: thirty- alphabet, on each occasion erasing deal of this. Half a page of FOUR'S typed
five words from the first seven-letter previous recordings on the way. The and then retyped so the word is given the
column in Corpus to the left of a page finished piece reverses the order of the graphic emphasis of darker letters when

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