It analyzes the groundbreaking revision of poetic language in relation to speech production. The pioneering writers and artists of the twentieth century radically reconstituted poetic language by adopting scientific theories and techniques, focusing on the bodily process of spoken language. This modernist "sound writing" concentrates on the bodily production of speech, capturing it in a poetic, legible, graphic form.

The modernist sound writing aims to capture the acoustic phenomenon of phonetic articulation through graphic means. Tobias Wilke examines sound writing from its beginnings in the fields of the nineteenth century, such as physiology and experimental phonetics, tracing its role in the aesthetic practices of the interwar avant-garde and its resurgence in the post-war period. These works explore the possibility of transitioning from the audible to the visible, from speech to notation, from body to mark.

Employing various techniques and concepts, this quest for new possibilities played a central role in the transformation of poetry into a space of radical linguistic experimental process. By examining the works of writers and artists—including Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, Viktor Shklovsky, Hugo Ball, Charles Olson, and Marshall McLuhan—Wilke offers a new perspective on the history of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

Pages: 272, Year of Publication: 0422, Dimensions: 15.2x15.2cm