Friday, November 27, 2009

celestial alphabet event...

hebrewconstellation

"an extreme example of a language process event based on natural phenomena, this derives from hebrew alphabetic practice projected on the night sky. the key is calligraphic: a form of the alphabet ("magic letters") going back to the hellenistic period, in which the lines of the letters culminate in rounded points, permitting a later application to the night sky, where patterns of stars (points joined by "lines") can then be read as letters, groups of letters read as words, etc. in the process the sky becomes a massive concrete poem, whose words or "messages" are constantly transforming. the instance, above, is from jacques gaffarel, a christian kabbalist of the 17th century, but the viability of the process is dependent upon the hebrew alphabet, where the absence of explicit vowels allows a wide range of meaningful readings"

jerome rothenberg, "after the shamans" a mini-anthology of jewish oral and process poetry in an age of writing, from alcheringa magazine 1975.

Labels: , , , ,

7 Comments:

Blogger ArtSparker said...

This may be perverse of me, but it also looks like some baked delicacy full of delicious bits...kugel, anyone?

9:37 AM  
Blogger Leora Lutz said...

oooh! i was not aware of this book, but it is in line with something else i am working on - thank you for the synchronicity, tonight.

http://www.blog.galleryrevisited.com/2009/11/flight-path-drawing-redux.html

10:19 PM  
Blogger Moon River said...

interesting, yet, not sure i understood, does that mean that every night for example, the "reading" of the stars will produce different poetry? meanings?
is there more images you can show us?

9:24 AM  
Blogger sroden said...

hi moon, unfortunately the small image and small blurb are all i know. you can probably google "jacques gaffarel" and find some things, and if you find out anything i would love to know more myself. it seems that the stars could potentially be re-linked to form different words, but i'm not sure. i don't believe this is an actual static map of the one single "sky alphabet", but one of many, although i'm totally guessing (or perhaps hoping... :-), jerome rothenberg, who wrote the article this comes from, has his own blog, which is not only wonderful, but you can probably contact him through it. it's well worth checking out regardless, http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/, and again, if you come up with any more info, i'd love to know more. just too lost in too many things to open another thread at the moment.

6:39 PM  
Anonymous colin sackett said...

hi steve
very reminiscent of:

R Tuttle's 26 Letters from 1966.
(rather more spread out version than the usual shot, at the foot of http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2005/11/tuttle_redux.html)

best wishes, colin

3:00 AM  
Blogger The Livingroom said...

Hi Steve- this is very interesting....I love letters.
julie dunker

10:16 AM  
Blogger Moon River said...

ok thanks for the links
i'll let you know...

1:01 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home