Michael Jacobson sent me a print copy of his latest book– front cover above, back cover below– available on Amazon here. This “hand drawn” book took me on a journey into an alien world where the visual art elements of line, texture, and form, cross with legible written script to become asemic writing. That is, a type of writing that can be read aesthetically. Any meaning that you draw from this asemic text is a correct translation–completely open to personal interpretation.

As Michael Jacobson states in this book– “I believe that asemic writing expresses some difficult emotions better than verbal writing. To me, there is more of a statement when someone wears a symbol around their neck vs the word for that symbol.”

He also thinks that “digital images & even animation are the future of asemic writing.” While also connecting to the unreadable text in the medieval The Voynich Manuscript, as well as referring to the more recent, 1981 published, illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world in the Codex Seraphinianus.

The Giant’s Fence, Michael Jacobson’s two-year long effort of evolving visual narrative, makes up the first half of this art book. You can also find The Giant’s Fence in the visual poetry section at Ubuweb.

Action Figures, Michael Jacobson’s “asemic hieroglyphic novella from the future,” makes up part two of the book. Portions of Action Figures has been previously published by dANDelion, Asemic Magazine, Great Works, Lit Up Magazine, Eyes on Mars, Gamma, Abstract Comics blog, Slova, The Last Vispo Anthology, and as cover art for Rain Taxi. The first edition of Action Figures was e-pubished by Avance Publishing.

The last section of this book contains several verbally readable and interesting interviews with the author, Michael Jacobson, as interviewed by various publications, including SCRIPTjr.nl.

I’ve had my art featured, a few times of the past few years, on Michael Jacobson’s New Post Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing blog here.

This book is recommended.