01/11/2010: Permutations

I went to the university library earlier in the week and rented a documentary about, and a book by, Hans Richter. Having seen some of the old film work of his (Rhythmus 21 etc.) at the Bauhaus Archiv I felt compelled to get back into him as I’d enjoyed Dreams That Money Can Buy a couple of years back. The most interesting parts of both the documentary and the book were the bits that looked at his relief work in wood, plaster, debris etc. as this was again composed as collage, and indeed very elegant. Most notable was his use of a specific kind of tile, of his own design, to cover wall areas (for example) referred to by him as a Pro-Contra. These consisted of two parts each – a plain square of thick plywood (this served as the base for each) with another square the same size cut by a band-saw along a kind of J-shaped line, splitting the square into two linkable sections. One half only of the resulting asymmetrical pair would then be glued as a relief onto the base tile – the other half would be glued to another base tile (or not, depending on the composition) and each would finally be painted (usually white all over but there were also colour variations) Once enough had been made to cover the area in question, they would be positioned either by chance or as composition (or Richter) dictated.

I mention this in particular because I’ve been reading simultaneously about permutations in Brion Gysin’s Back In No Time – visually he would often use loose grid formations, created by chance using a segmented and inked-up decorators roller, as a basis for image-collage or cut-up text pieces, and he also explored the idea of “authorless” permutation poetry, most memorably with I Am That I Am – and I’ve now put my original drawing project on the shelf (I suppose I am still drawing but not in the same way at all) and have been designing tile grids in my notebook using name/initial Sigils designed at the end of the first year as basic shapes to create composition from permutation.

Below:
Top - Example of a Richter Pro-Contra relief composition
Bottom - Permutation Poem Rub Out The Write Word by Brion Gysin