ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the nature and communicative uses of irregular and distressed shapes in graphics. It addresses what meanings can be conveyed by irregularity in terms of experiential meaning potential. The experiential meaning potential of graphic traces inextricably blends personal experiences of movement, emotion and matter with intertextuality. The chapter discusses how such meanings come about by discussing graphetic production. However, a fully developed discipline of graphetics should aim to understand the material underpinnings of graphic production and perception as well as the traces themselves. Modern phonetics distinguishes three subfields pertaining to speech production, speech perception and the speech signal itself. David Abercrombie's Elements of General Phonetics, enumerates three epistemological categories of observations one can make about vocal articulation. These pertain to: segmental features, features of voice quality, and features of voice dynamics. In phonetics, features of voice quality, or timbre, are understood to be innate to the speaker's body and so beyond his or her ability to control.