Aesthetic Phoneticism

Here's an attempt at an explanation of Aesthetic Phoneticism, an art idea that I came up with all by myself:

The basic concept is to produce a picture accompanied by a series of words that, when taken as a whole, simply look and sound nice on a purely aesthetic level with no inherent meaning or symbolism. It's kind of a boiled down, superficial (shallow? visceral?) form of art. It can be done in any medium that conveys imagery with sound. (look, hear, eye, ear). So far, mine are mostly drawings on paper.

The compositions are not planned out ahead of time; they're in the same neighborhood as automatic drawing, but with a little more conscious control. Words are (supposed to be) chosen strictly for their phonetic relation to each other rather than for meaning. It's not exactly like dada poetry, in which sound is emphasized, because the words are not selected at random. I am (usually) trying to make combinations of sounds that are separated from their definitions, although since it's a form of free association, associations do appear, (and are permitted to hang around). I tend to use near rhymes more than actual rhymes, because I like the idea of subtle sound and syntax connections and evolutionary changes in the sequences.

There's a dualism to the process for me, in the sense that the rules and constraints that I set for myself force me to work within this framework of non-meaning, while it's pretty much impossible (at least for me) to really adhere to that construct. My mind is constantly trying to insert symbolism and meaning into the drawings and words. I like that conflict, though, and really, it's a major part of the appeal for me. So I end up at kind of a halfway point between sense and nonsense. or calculated randomness. Non-representational representation. or something. Anyway, I like it that way; I find it to be more interesting, funnier, and somewhat revelatory.

In the interest of full-disclosure, many of these drawings were created after drinking a lot of beer, and two of them are in japanese.



So here are 20 drawings from the aesthetic phonetic sketchbook.