Hypergraphy

Hypergraphy, also called Hypergraphics, super-writing, is a critical method developed by the Lettrist movement in the 1950s, which encompasses a synthesis of writing and other forms of media.

Hypergraphy merges poetry (text) with more visual (graphic) ways of communication such as painting, illustration or signs. This technique was first known as 'metagraphics', but later became known as 'hypergraphics'. Maurice Lemaître, a Lettrist theorist, defined it as communicating through the union of various forms of communication, as an "ensemble of signs capable of transmitting the reality served by the conscienceness more exactly than all the former fragmentary and partial practices (phonetic alphabets, algebra, geometry, painting, music, and so forth)." (from Stephen C. Foster, "Lettrism: A Point of Views", in Foster ed., Visible Language, 1983, p. 7. in: Simon Ford, The Situationist International; a user’s Guide. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2005. p. 20.)

The technique was used in Lettrist painting, cinema - which involved directly drawing of letters onto the film as well as techniques of Discrepant cinema. As the Lettrists became more experimental in their use of media, the technique was applied more to 'everyday life' in critiquing urbanism and architecture in the Lettrist field of psychogeography.

Metagraphy

After the split in the Lettrist movement, the Lettrist movement developed metagraphy or post-writing. The Lettrist International in opposition to what they called lettrist metagraphics (hypergraphics) mostly abandoned metawriting and metagraphics and started to concentrate on unitary urbanism and Situgraphy.[2]

It was described by Isidore Isou as "Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling..."

Psychogeography

After the formation of the Situationist International and the adoption of unitary urbanism, a hypergraphical critique of architecture and urbanism was developed in the form of psychogeography. The Situationist International group and Asger Jorn in particular, developed forms of "plastic" non-Euclidean and unitary geometry which gave rise to the applied study of situations or topology in the form of situlogy and situgraphy.

Situgraphy

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Art Strike Hypergraphic 2009

Asger Jorn was the main Situationist theorist who developed situgraphy and situlogy.

After the advent of hypertext, hypergraphics were developed by the Lpa Historification Committee (LHC) at the 1st Conference on the Foundations of Psycho-Physics with Oxford University's Philosophy of Physics department, Clarendon Laboratory and CERN.

Situlogy

Asger Jorn developer of Situlogy and Situgraphy - "the field of situlogical experience is divided into two opposing tendencies, the ludic tendency and the analytic tendency. The tendency of art, spin and the game, and that of science and its techniques,"

After the advent of hypergraphy, hypergraphics were developed by the Lpa Historification Committee (LHC) at the 1st Conference on the Foundations of Psycho-Physics with Oxford University's Philosophy of Physics department, Clarendon Laboratory and CERN.

Further reading

• Curtay, Jean-Paul: Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde 1945 -1985, Franklin Furnace, New York, 1985
• Bohn, From Hieroglyphics to Hypergraphics in "Experimental - Visual - Concrete Avant-Garde Poetry Since the 1960s", 1996

Hypegraphers

• Asger Jorn
• Isidore Isou
• Maurice Lemaitre

See also

• Lettrism
• Psychogeography
• Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism