Nicolas Boillot

text Symmetry at play imposes new meanings: poetical, lexical, ciphered … visible as rhythmical encoded landscapes deriving from the latin magic square.

The spectator writes down nine letters which constitute the key to an oulipian textual combination, with the multiple meanings characteristic of a palindrome and a boustrophedon figure. Here the device, by multiplying by three the principle of the magic square, produces a text that is illegible in fast reading, a kind of woven image with symmetrical and repetitive patterns. The spectator can play with the choice of letters, or the textual and visual effects, or again he can attempt to find meaningful clues in order to decipher the text.

The same composition rules can also be used to apply this textual central symmetry to more personal alphabets.