eschenau summer press publications

• 20 - jiri valoch :: five parts of one work
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  The optical poems published in the eschenau summer press publications represent the developmental 'peak' of Valoch's experiments with typographic and mechanical (typewriter) poetry. A poem "freed from semantics appears" that is identical in its visual impact to optical painting - except that it was made on the typewriter and its formal elements (letters) existed ready-made on the machine. The optical poem, according to Valoch, is realized as "pure structure." Aesthetically it depends upon "the visual (aesthetic) value of the mechanical (or typewriter) signs used." But not in the static condition in which we are used to observing them. In the optical poem we learn to look at letters horizontally, diagonally, or in some other position, as well as vertically in "shivering microstructures." Valoch states that his typewriter texts present a response to an "active impulse." This impulse seems to be directed toward the creation of a new sphere of communication. For signs "which are losing their importance in terms of their original communicative connections [...] are creating a visual metalanguage as they appear in their relationship to each other." Valoch relates the creation of a "visual metalanguage" to developments in modern linguistic science and defends it on grounds of "pure lyricism" aimed at "pure aesthetic information."
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