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spiral tiling: geometry challenge #29 (1996)
digital image,

hunting for ideas

(john cage)

like acrostics, mesotics are written in the conventional way horizontally, but at the same time they follow a vertical rule, down the middle not down the edge as in an acrostic, a string spells a word or name, not necessarily connected with what is being written, though it may be. this vertical rule is lettristic and in my practice the letters are capitalized. between two capitals in a perfect or 100% mesostic neither letter may appear in lower case. .... in the writing of the wing words, the horizontal text, the letters of the vertical string help me out of sentimentality. i have something to do, a puzzle to solve. this way of responding makes me feel in this respect one with the japanese people, who formerly, i once learned, turned their letter writing into the writing of poems. in taking the next step in my work, the exploration of nonintention, i don't solve the puzzle that the mesostic string presents. instead i write or find a source text which is then used as an oracle. i ask it what word shall i use for this letter and what one for the next, etc. this frees me from memory, taste, likes, and dislikes. by means of mesolist, a program by jim rosenberg, all words that satisfy the mesostic rule are listed. ic [a program that generates the i ching numbers, available for downloading on the net] then chooses which words in the lists are to be used and gives me all the central words, the position of each in the source material identified by page, line, and column. i then add all the wing words from the source text following of course the rule mesolist does within the limit of forty-five characters to the right and the same to the left. then i take out the words i don't want. with respect to the source material, i am in a global situation. words come first from here and then from there. the situation is not linear. it is as though i am in a forest hunting for ideas."

(john cage)