ASL is not English: it has a syntax of its own. Remaining true to e.e. cummings’ vision, the poem was transliterated metaphorically into the original syntax of the ASL rather than the SEE (Signed Exact English) to express the poet’s linguistic play in words. The poetic hand movements of the ASL/Art-Sign is to emphasize the dexterous quality of cummings’ perspective, to innovate a different kind of visual interpretation, best suitable for an avant-garde poem. This film, based on e.e. cummings’ poem, presents a penetrating, political-linguistic expression of humanity in a twisting, intertwining multi-choreographed collaboration of the several artists in Art-Sign, cinematography, music, dance. The improvisatory aspects of jazz – the complex strands of interweaving tonalities tuning and dividing up the octaves – are expressed throughout the ASL phrases of cummings’ poem, some of which are of distorted fragments; others, of unified superimpositions of impulsive rhythms – portrayed sounds of humanity.
