Asemics Is about ( )-Placed Meaning:
Asemic writing is a sub-category of asemics, but AI and AI writing are also sub-categories of asemics.
Asemic writing promotes an understanding of writing as, largely, something other than writing.
AI promotes an understanding of intelligence as something other than intelligence based on understanding See Intelligence without Understanding.
Asemic writing is about the displacement of writing onto art. It often takes the patterns within writing and presents them as art.
AI is a tool that displaces understanding; AI is also a tool to locate meaning within certain groupings without recourse to understanding the particulars, the groupings, the relationships, or anything at all. Indeed, AI assimilates patterns that allow it to simulate an understanding of those patterns.
Asemic writing does not need to preserve understanding within the bounds of writing as its meaning is often beyond writing, in art.
AI writing promotes understanding without recourse to understanding, but to high-percentage patterns.
Asemic writing and AI writing are much the same in terms of patterning and in the use of patterns.
But what is also common to asemic writing, AI, and AI writing is the ()-placement of understanding, i.e., asemic writing, AI, and AI writing often displace meaning onto a non-immediate context. This non-immediate context is the displacement that asemics puts into play.
Asemics in Play:
AI:
- Stable Diffusion & LoRA Models: Stable Diffusion is a favorite for asemic art because of its high customizability and open-source nature [1, 2]. Artists use LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) models to fine-tune the AI on specific datasets, such as 18th-century manuscripts or abstract calligraphy, to produce unique "textish" scripts [1].
- Midjourney: Known for its artistic stylization by default, Midjourney excels at creating evocative, moody compositions [1, 2]. While it often prioritizes aesthetics over strict text accuracy, artists use its "vibe" to generate surreal landscapes integrated with abstract symbols [1].
- GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks): Tools like StyleGAN allow artists to train the AI on their own previous artworks [1, 2]. By feeding the algorithm thousands of images of hand-drawn marks, the artist "teaches" it a specific aesthetic, and the AI then generates new, original variations [1, 2].
- Specialized "Gibberish" Tools: Simple programs like the Gibberish Generator allow users to mimic handwriting styles using basic settings to create "wordless" scripts [1].
- Iterative Prompting: Artists often use prompts that emphasize abstract textures or "unreadable ancient manuscripts" to force the AI into generating symbols rather than legible words [1, 2].
- In-painting and Latent Editing: In Stable Diffusion, artists can use inpainting to "wipe" a specific area and tell the AI to fill it with "abstract calligraphic noise," effectively curating where the hallucinations occur [1, 2].
- Cross-Genre Fusion: By prompting for a mix of "Western oil painting" and "Eastern ink wash," artists can trigger the AI to blend visual languages into entirely new, non-signifying hybrid styles [1].
- Low Guidance (CFG Scale): Lowering the Classifier-Free Guidance (CFG) scale in tools like Stable Diffusion allows the AI more "creative freedom," often leading to more surreal, hallucinatory outputs that depart from literal instructions [1, 2].
