Casey Smith's "Writing About Modern Literature": Immersive Language Environments

The impulse to bring together art and language in the late 50s and 60s was not confined to small groups of isolated artists. The traditional book and the traditional page were increasingly seen as confining and limiting to artists and writers across the world.

Many avant-garde writers wanted to get away from the baggage of "the book" and present their work directly by means of sound, performance, or visual display. For Allan Kaprow, the most important thing was the unavoidably social nature of the art event and how it challenged traditional hierarchies in how meaning is made collectively... how art is no longer about the masterpiece and the master artist, or the solitary writer communicating with a solitary reader. Bringing language and letterforms into new spaces was a liberation of sorts, it became relevant in social spaces. Writing couldn't achieve the same effects within the confines of a book or magazine.

Many artists have made immersive language environments since the second half of the 20th century. I've chosen five well-known examples below. Please suggest others for me to include.

Allan Kaprow, "Words" (1962)