There is a certain point in the making of an "abstract expressionist" drawing at which a system resembling language begins to make itself known. This is the third of the identifiable regimes that emerge within the field, or rather, are produced by the field. The first two are the organic and the machinic.
- Organic / biomass
- Machinic / operational
- Linguistic / symbolic
The symbolic quality of language, however, is not intrinsically different from the qualities that permit identification within the first two regimes. The formal structure imparted to a letter or character—or rather, the capacity to distinguish one mark from another through the aberrations that separate them within their respective locales—is analogous to the aesthetic organization of biological and machinic bodies.
Conversely, we can begin to distinguish organic forms within the structures produced through linguistic chaining. A biological quality seems to emanate from the materiality of the characters themselves and from the ground or environment in which they find themselves. Likewise, the repetitive archetypal chains of letters and words suggest the machinic regimentation produced through textual expression. Then, to our amusement, entirely new figures emerge: miraculous characters arising from these sentence chains organized through an ostensibly ubiquitous language system.
I am inclined to attribute this to a variation of pareidolia, or perhaps to a form of synesthesia rooted solely in the intake of visual stimuli and their subsequent associations—a kind of algorithmic gestation pathway. Contrary to what language models suggest of themselves through processes of regimentation and concretization, this free association is afforded by the inherent openness of these vessels of potential that we call letters, characters, words, and symbols.
The act of a regime making itself known is only possible through its relation to a viewer. The process of becoming known is therefore inseparable from the process of becoming aware. When a body of connective reactors, interrupters, and producers finally enters a network—finally makes itself known—it also becomes aware. It makes itself known through its libido for awareness.
Recognition therefore appears to be both a projection and the very function by which something becomes recognizable. Recognition is both a constituent of recognizability and its totality, just as recognizability conditions recognition in return. An abstraction and a legible written communication are not fundamentally different operations but variations of the same tracking system. Both remain coherent through their malleable connective tissues, themselves composed of bioavailable material whose organization follows the logarithmic desires of machinic classification.