When experimenting with HMTL as a tool for visual poetry I found the <TABLE> tag an interesting option. One can define the color of a table´s cell by a combination of numbers and characters. A table of at least 3x3 colored cells can already create a lot of patterns. The matrix of the color codes filled with characters of a word or their ASCII equivalents thus converts a word into a color pattern. Converting a sentence gives a rather complex painting. I called these “<TABLE>PAINTING” and introduced it at the 9th Symposion on Visual Poetry in Gmunden/Austria in 1997. Since then it has become a very important part in my work.

I got acquainted with Chris Ashley because we both love the same music and he traded with me live recordings of the great American singer/songwriter Gillian Welch. So it was a big surprise to me when he emailed me: "your <TABLE>PAINTINGs look like my HTML DRAWINGs." He developed them a few years later independently from my works which he didn´t know about until last year.

Chris Ashley´s approach is entirely different from mine; he paints his drawings not by using words but with a webpublishing editor. But the visual results are very similar to mine – and I love his works very much! They belong to the best of contemporary concrete art.

There is another coincidence: we both run a diary on the web where we publish our <TABLE>PAINTINGs / HTML DRAWINGs. Chris uses his weblog "Look, See" (http://chrisashley.net/), and I the pages of DIARIUM-Project on my website (http://advancedpoetx.com/).

So it was clear to me to ask Chris to publish his work in my publishing house for visual poetry and concrete art “S.p.N.LAUB”. I am very glad that he agreed.

The CD assembles Chris Ashley´s best works and makes them available to the off-line art world, where they hopefully shall receive the recognition they highly deserve.

Siegfried Holzbauer
Publisher, 2004