Eye-Movements and the Aesthetics of Visual Form' G.M.Stratton (1902)

the eye moves far less accurately over an outline than has usually been supposed;
it takes a course which is but a rough approximation of the form which we perceive it.
The eye darts from point to point, interrupting its rapid motion by instants of rest. 

And the path by which the eye passes from one to another of these resting places does not seem to depend very nicely upon the exact form of the line observed. 

The eye may take a short cut that is nearly or quite a straight line while »following« the Segment of a circle, 'as in some portions of Fig. 3. 

Or it may take a graceful swing which is, however, entirely unlike the curve which is the object of perception; as in the final sweep in Fig. 9, where the objective Une and the eye's path bend in the very opposite directions. So that we cannot say that the eye invariably takes the most direct route to its destination — that it moves in straight lines, or on an unchanging axis^), Nor even when taking a curved course does there seem to be any Single and invariable curve that it follows.

(..)For as the higher aesthetic effects depend, as Wundt has said, upon the awakening of intellectual, ethical and religious ideas ; so it is, in a measure, even on the plane of mere abstract line.
A graceful contour, too, arouses intellectual ideas; and if its enjoy- ment does not arise directly from our ethical and religious nature, it at least comes from something akin to this — arises from our sympathy with well-ordered action and from our love of participation in such action — qualities in us that are at the foundation of morality and worship itself.

https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/vlp/lit4487/index.meta&start=1&viewMode=auto&pn=1

Grawlixes and the Kuleshov effect

 the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted an experiment in which he took a shot of an expressionless face and created three different short films, editing the face with a bowl of hot soup, girl in the coffin, or the seductive woman on a couch. 

Even though we know the shot of the actor exactly the same in each scenario, audiences read meaning into the actor’s face by the nature of the shots around it.

here is a variation that tries to show the effect of Grawlixes 

It shows the similarity between Grawlixes and 'affect'

"If emotions are personal experiences, then affects are the forces (perhaps the flows of energy) that precede, produce, and inform such experiences." (steven shaviro)

And according to Silvan Tomkins feedback of the facial response is the experience of affect

and thus in the grawlixes examples above the same affect can evoke different emotions

and the same expression is interpreted differently when connected to different affects

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gGl3LJ7vHc

 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Does-the-Kuleshov-Effect-Really-Exist-Revisiting-a-Barratt-Redei/d961622d70807f29ce0d2ca4422d9506eb454540

 

Maluma & Takete

On the arbitraryness of the relation between shape and sound;




Wolfgang Kohler (1929) showed subjects two nonsense visual shapes, one rounded and the other angular and invented two nonsense words as names for them, MALUMA and TAKETE and asked to associate with each shape one of the invented words. If the designation is arbitrary, one would expect a random distribution of matchings, and approximately 50 percent of the subjects should assign "maluma" to the rounded figure and 50 percent to the angular figure.
However, the majority of subjects assigned MALUMA to the rounded shape and TAKETE to the angular shape.

Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because it suggests that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary
See: the Bouba/kiki effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

Grawlixes, frontal lobe, ganglia and automatism.

"The replacement of the complex actions programs by a well-consolidated stereotype, quite unrelated to the basic program, is the most typical feature of the disturbances of voluntary activity in this group of patients.(..)
If a lesion of the frontal lobes spreads into the deep zones of the frontal region to affect the subcortical ganglia and to disturb the inhibition of primitive automatisms, the task of drawing a simple figure is easily interrupted by the revival of elementary motor automatism; having started to perform a particular task, the patient is unable to give up, and the performance of the action is interrupted by bursts of uncontrollable automatism." (my italics)

from: Alexandr Romanovich Luria. Higher Cortical Functions in Man 

GRWLXS

Through the famous case of Phineas Gage, a patient with severe frontal lobe damage, Antonio Damasio (1) locates the somatic markers in the frontal cortex.
An injury of the frontal lobe can lead to deficits in executive function, such as anticipation, goal selection, planning, sequencing, monitoring, and self-correction. (2)The frontal areas of the cortex are inhibitory in nature: If the frontal area is damaged, the ability to inhibit socially undesirable behaviours, like uttering obscenities is diminished.’

The Prefrontal Cortex

What about those distinct shapes of the different Grawlixes in cartoons?

Consider some of the effects of a seizure for patients with Frontal lobe epilepsy. (3)A quick comparison with the available Grawlixes shows a lot of similarities.

The symptoms typically come in short bursts that last less than a minute.
During the onset of a seizure, the patient may exhibit abnormal body posturing.
In rare cases, uncontrollable laughing or crying may occur.
In most cases, a patient will experience a physical or emotional Aura of tingling, numbness or tension prior to a seizure occurring.
An aura sensation can include some or a combination of the following:

Bright lights and blobs
Zigzag lines
Vibrating visual field
Kaleidoscope effects on visual field
auditory hallucinations
Modification of sounds in the environment: buzzing, tremolo, amplitude modulation
Feelings of confusion
Feeling as if you are getting warmer or overheating
Sudden Perspiration
Weakness, unsteadiness
Being unable to speak properly, such as slurred speech or gibberish.

I think it is not far fetched to see Grawlixes as a product of the frontal cortex.
We can assume that most of the times Grawlixes are uttered, there is no case of  frontal lobe damage. And since they often seem to replace profanities, it implies that some of the  Grawlixes are themselves an exaggerated version of the control mechanisms that inhibit the expression of profanities and undesirable behaviour.

Grawlixes and D.I.Y. Frontal Lobe Stimulation; A Shortcut to Enlightenment.

The illuminating effects of prefrontal lobe ¬stimulation were already familiar with several agents in the field..

Max Taber (One flew over the cuckoo's nest 1975) after an illuminating moment  tuning up his frontal lobe to prevent himself from completely losing control.

The three stooges (inspired by Laurel and Hardy and James Finlayson) were well-known forehead-slappers. Here also  appealing to the self-correcting  qualities.

Homer Simpson,  reinforcing that the answer was always right in front of him, d’oh!.

Again, Sjef van Oekel  just discovering diy illumination and is seeing some nice squeans and spurls .("Doctor; everytime I do this (*) I  get  a buzzing headache!")

from;
http://the-euclideanfly.blogspot.nl/

(1) Antonio Damasio . Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Putnam Publishing, 1994, ISBN 0-399-13894-3
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe_injury
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)
Gwillim law. Grawlixes Past and Present ; http://www.statoids.com/comicana/grawlist.html
Walker, Mort. The Lexicon of Comicana, ISBN 0-595-08902-X