Lesson 3: Concrete typographies as topographies
A. Marinetti's Words-in-Freedom
Going back to Tzara's text, we notice that the words were manipulated as objects, with a focus less on the meaning of the words than in the fact that they can be manipulated as pure objects. Apart from the end of originality in art, this also marked the beginnings of the "materialist" treatment of language.
A. Marinetti's Words-in-Freedom
Going back to Tzara's text, we notice that the words were manipulated as objects, with a focus less on the meaning of the words than in the fact that they can be manipulated as pure objects. Apart from the end of originality in art, this also marked the beginnings of the "materialist" treatment of language.
In another writer, this materiality is also beginning to take hold. Let's look at Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's famous work, "Zang Tumb Tumb." You can read more about it from the Wikipedia link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zang_Tumb_Tumb.
Here is an excerpt:
'1 2 3 4 5 seconds siege guns split the silence in unison tam-tuuumb sudden echoes all the echoes seize it quick smash it scatter it to the infinite winds to the devil
'In the middle these tam-tuuumb flattened 50 square kilometers leap 2-6-8 crashes clubs punches bashes quick-firing batteries. Violence ferocity regularity pendulum play fatality
'...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
ZANG-TUMB
TUMB-TUMB
TUUUUUM
TUMB-TUMB
TUUUUUM
(Translated from Selected poems and related prose / F.T. Marinetti ; selected by Luce Marinetti, p75)
B. Guide questions
1. What does the letter stylization of the title itself remind you of (something that we take for granted in today's print media)?
2. What do you think "concrete" means in concrete poetry?
3. Following Marinetti's idea of a parole in libertà or "words-in-freedom" in this futurist typography, why do words need to be set free? What binds or imprisons them anyway?
4. Why is his style also called "sound" poetry?
5. What current technologies do you think his style "anticipates?"
6. How similar is his style to what we call ASCII image text or "picture-text SMS" like below:
Fresh flowers for you!
*;%*;+;*
*;*;%*%
*;/~*%*
\|//
)__(
(___)
7. Did you ever use these picture sms texts? What is the advantage of such creative use of typography and space? Does it communicate better? Why?
8. For comparison, let's read a famous poem by e. e. cummings:
7. Did you ever use these picture sms texts? What is the advantage of such creative use of typography and space? Does it communicate better? Why?
8. For comparison, let's read a famous poem by e. e. cummings:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
9. What is the purpose of this kind of weird use of typography? Does Marinetti accomplish the same purpose?
10. In e. e. cummings' poem, what is the point of departing from traditional typography?
C. Project Output: Word Clouds Notebook
During Marinetti's time, he didn't have the computer technology to realize more dynamically the vision he had. Today, it is something we take for granted, like in the example of word clouds. Even Wikipedia uses this.
What is the difference between a text that follows traditional syntactic organization and the spatial distribution of words in a word cloud?
Go to http://www.wordclouds.com/ and create your own word cloud. Print it and at the back, explain how similar your word cloud is to futurist typography. Other sites you can try are: http://www.wordle.net/, or https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/. You can also search for more generator sites via Google.
10. In e. e. cummings' poem, what is the point of departing from traditional typography?
C. Project Output: Word Clouds Notebook
During Marinetti's time, he didn't have the computer technology to realize more dynamically the vision he had. Today, it is something we take for granted, like in the example of word clouds. Even Wikipedia uses this.
What is the difference between a text that follows traditional syntactic organization and the spatial distribution of words in a word cloud?
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| A word cloud sample from http://www.thrumpledumthrum.com/?p=154 |
Go to http://www.wordclouds.com/ and create your own word cloud. Print it and at the back, explain how similar your word cloud is to futurist typography. Other sites you can try are: http://www.wordle.net/, or https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/. You can also search for more generator sites via Google.
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