First a thought on sequentiality: the brain originally functioned as a stimulus-response system, with emphasis on immediacy of response. This is the reason why the system is schemolic, integrating large amounts of information into single decisions made within milliseconds. However, as the brain became more complex, the opportunity arose to think up multi-step responses. Such mentation required an analogous multi-step mentation. Thus arose sequential mentation, but it was always a layer on top of what was at heart a schemolic processor. Language processing emerged from this new layer of processing; indeed, perhaps I might go so far as to speculate that the cortex is in essence the physical layer corresponding to this operational layer (sequential thinking).
But this kind of processing is still at odds with our natural (schemolic) style of thinking, which is why formal thinking is so difficult. The essential difference between formal thinking and natural thinking is that the former is sequential while the latter is schemolic.
But remember that our efforts presume an intrinsic sequentiality. A story is, after all, a sequence of events. We will be presenting our imagery in sequence. But what is the fundamental increment of sequentiality? The sentence or the component of the sentence? I strongly suspect the former.
Remember too that language is our only intrinsic means of handling sequential processing. If we want to present sequentiality, we damn well better take advantage of what mental processing strengths our audience possesses.
So, getting back to abstract graphics: I embrace the notion of a graphics language that assembles images out of components. My task is to define those components and the various combinatorial possibilities.