Generating Chirography

María Mencía
m.mencia@freeuk.com
www.m.mencia.freeuk.com

Key Words: Handwriting, Electronic, Generative Writing, Visuality -Textuality- Orality/Aurality.

This paper is a passageway towards a new project. It is part of my ongoing research studies on Visual Poetry and Digital Art and the development of New Communicative Systems formed by text as a visual, semantic/non-semantic and aural element in the production of meaning using digital technologies. My intention with this paper and the production of the new 'digital art' project is to explore the area of writing and new technologies and more specifically the idea of electronic generative handwriting. This will bring up critical views about different writing technologies and theories about visuality, orality/aurality and textuality.

My first step in questioning these areas of investigation is one of my projects; Vocaleyes , which emphatically brings attention to the visuality and orality/aurality of language. It is an interactive piece that enables the user to create handwriting/drawing and sound compositions via a digital interface. The audio background is created by the phonetics of multiple languages - English, Mandarin and Arabic - in the form of musical notes. It was produced with the idea of linking it to the Eyemouse used by John Tchalenko, Research Fellow at Camberwell College of Arts. In his research he is looking at cognitive ways of learning to draw. For this piece and taking into consideration his idea of learning to draw with your eyes, I used 'meaningless' phonetic sounds such as the basic elements used in speech to learn to speak, thus employing both the linguistic and the visual parts of the brain.

This piece has been carefully produced using the programming language Lingo, and various language codes in terms of visual, linguistic and technological representations. Nevertheless, the outcome of its interactive character is quite free and experimental allowing the user to explore in an independent and spontaneous manner; losing his/her inhibitions and exploring the different areas of communication without being precious about the result of the finished product.

The process of signification of this work evolves as the user interacts with the work, visual and sound compositions develop in many ways; sometimes people fix their attention on the sound, others on the image and some on both. There is also involved the learning processes of how to use it. The interface is representative of other painting programmes in the market and it would be familiar to those who use computer graphics/multimedia software even if only very basically. The user is the author of the work and yet what I observed when people interacted with the work is that they were still quite happy to share it with other people and learn from their ways of using and experimenting with it. It might be due to the ephemeral quality of the work. It is a piece about experimenting and a process for developing ideas, not fixed meanings. I agree with Derrida when he says: "signification is a process, not a product, and meaning production a continual operation, not a condition of being".

As part of this signification, I will develop further the possibilities of this project by introducing a generative handwriting programme. This will allow for the individual characteristics found in the handwriting of the users to interweave with the collectiveness characteristics of electronic writing to produce a collective handwriting experience of self-generated and metamorphosed text.

With electronic writing, it seems as if we have achieved a common definition of writing that philosophers, theoreticians, semioticians, linguists, artists, computer scientists and many more -ians and -ists (historical and contemporary) had been striving for. The battle between the oral and the written language has come to an end; the arguments about the hierarchical relationship of speech and writing by Plato, Aristotle, Ong, Derrida etc. are now coming together with electronic writing. Additional studies of these theories have been carried out by theoreticians of the electronic medium such as Mark Poster who questions Derrida's interpretation of 'writing' and deconstruction as a critical theory for electronic writing. David J. Bolter in his book Writing Space covers every possible argument about economies of writing: visual, aural, textual, the written surface(s)pace, the new sign, the new reader-writer relationship etc. Richard Lanham's new rhetoric where literature and art interweave and many others.

They all seem to point to the integration of these different semiotic systems to create the new economy of writing or 'textuality'.

Therefore, what are the characteristics of electronic writing and how has it been influenced by the other writing technologies? It encompasses aspects from the oral economy; it shares its fluidity, it is dynamic, unstable, open-ended, participatory but at the same time it is also visual as handwriting or printing. In contrast to these economies of writing it is self-referential, it is not a representation of speech and allows for different semiotic systems (the oral, the visual and the textual) to coexist as part of the same communicative system. As Richard Lanham says "Word, image and sound will be inextricably intertwined in a dynamic and continuously shifting mixture". This shifting as he explains will create an oscillation between looking Through and At; being transparent and opaque, conveying a linguistic semantic meaning as well as a more abstract visual signification and in my opinion, it is not only participatory but also generative as it constantly develops through the participation of the users and the intertextual connections. With new technologies the differences between speech, writing and the graphic consequently diminish as they can be found integrated as part of the same system of communication. As Richard Lanham says: "Digitized communication is forcing a radical realignment of the alphabetic and graphic components of ordinary textual communication". "Digitization has made the arts interchangeable. You can change a visual sign into a musical one".

Historically there have been many movements interested in the interconnection of the verbal and the visual and this interchange of signs. In art and poetry the meaning of the visuality of language and linguistic sounds have been carefully explored. Starting with the French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme (1842-98), Apollinaire's calligrammes (1912) Italian Futurist and Dadaist Movement, continuing with Concrete Poetry from the 50's and 60's, and some Conceptual artists, to the current digital medium, which has allowed for this interweaving of images, words, video and text, increasing the array of 'expressivities'.
As mentioned above there are also critical and linguistic theories which have explored the analysis of the verbal and the visual systems of representation and their relationship, such as Derrida's idea of writing and Ong's orality. I will briefly touch upon that in this paper to establish a theoretical basis for the generated electronic chirography project.

The revival of the graphic element with a status of its own, its freedom from the spoken word is what Derrida describes in Grammatology as 'writing'. He thinks that with 'writing' the metaphysical era or what he has renamed the era of 'logocentrism' finishes. The signs seem to shift from the idea of language into the idea of doubled-valued writing; that is, ideographic and phonetic. Therefore, writing stops being the representation of spoken language, stops being phonetic (representative of the spoken sounds) and consequently linear. Derrida also discusses how as a result of this new writing, which is not linear, the reader will have to read differently. J David Bolter believes Derrida at this point was not aware that he was alluding to electronic writing and Mark Poster thinks when Derrida uses the term writing is "not in opposition to speech but anterior to the distinction between speech and writing. Speech is always already haunted by the non-identity of author and truth". Is Derrida then, discussing the authorless text?
The oral element of language is supported by Walter J. Ong who maintains that 'writing', in this case understood as printed, has obliterated orality but he believes that in the new electronic age orality is resurfacing. In comparison to the static, self-contained, authorial printed text, Orality is "evanescent," not permanent. The spoken word exists only in the moment of its being spoken.

Writing, on the other hand, is a permanent record. Robert M. Fowler comments on how manuscript writing was in fact more open-ended, as they were used as prompts to be read aloud and consequently none of them were the same. He emphasises how with hypertext we encounter again this fluidity and the ephemeral character of communication found in orality and we can once more experience the participatory and authorless text. Ong denominates this as a 'secondary orality' although according to Robert M. Fowler, he still believes it is dominated by the closure of the printed text.

Gathering from these studies I would say that in the new electronic medium both writing as understood by Derrida and orality as understood by Ong are inherent elements of its textuality; complex visual, semantic/non semantic, oral/aural communication. This with the fluidity of the electronic sign, the links and intertextual relations of hypertext de-centered narratives, which we, as users, are now trained to absorb and assimilate at high speed. As Landow states: "All hypertext systems permit the individual reader to choose his or her own centre of investigation and experience. What this principle means in practice is that the reader is not locked into any kind of particular organisation or hierarchy". (As in the de-centered Derridean text). This also makes the reading more difficult as it challenges the reader to participate and revalue his/her understanding of texts and habits of thought participating in a new reading experience.

Vocaleyes' generative electronic handwriting will be oral, visual and textual, containing characteristics from the different economies of writing discussed. It includes the more personal aspect of handwriting but evolves it into a collective experience by the participation of the user and the constant metamorphosizing of the words into other new words or like words. Its mutable quality will resemble that of electronic writing, no fixed centre, evanescent, participatory, authorless and generative. This new generative element has brought me to enquire about the nature of generative art - what is generative art?

According to Scott Fletcher, Edition 4 of 1998's Wired magazine located the term generative art as drawn from Noam Chomsky's linguistic theory of 'Generative Grammar", proposed in his book Syntacytic Structures (1965). "It refers to deep-seated rules that describe any language." Fletcher explains how the British abstract painter Harold Cohen in the mid 1970s designed AARON, a computer artist that produces original work and from there a whole series of experiments on artificial life and virtual worlds that have been generated based on genetic algorithms. An important point he makes reference to, is the fact that in generative work the finished work cannot be foreseen or controlled. I think this also applies to other art forms but with the added element of user participation, there is a wider scope for unpredictable results, which would eradicate the idea of a final piece of work. He is also interested in the new forms or organisms that generative work can randomly create.

Bogdan Soban gives us what he considers the most accepted definition of generative art offered by Philip Galanter: "Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other mechanism, which is then set to motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a complete work of art." Again the authorless notion of electronic writing, its fluidity and ever changing quality are inherent in generative art. Considering the process is an elemental part of the work if not the most important part of the artwork. These definitions demonstrate how art is already ahead, opening avenues for new semiotics and ways of interpretation.

Some examples of generative work following these ideas can be seen at the exhibition Generator at SPACEX - the Liverpool Biennial. Quoting Geoff Cox: "presents a series of ' 'self generating' projects, incorporating digital media, instruction and participation machines, drawing machines, experimental literature and music technologies." Cox states that their intention for the exhibition was "framing this emerging art practice of computer software within the parameters of conceptual art." Adrian Ward and Geoff Cox argue in their essays on generative art that generating creativity is more concerned with setting up the rules and the process than with the final product. Also discussed are notions of creativity, originality and the concept of value, authorship, publication and distribution in generative art. Concerns also reviewed in Conceptual Art. Adrian Ward in his paper 'How I Drew one of my Pictures' argues that in a digital medium the value of authenticity is replaced by the process, which brings me back to the beginning of my paper and Derrida's ideas of signification as a process.

Hence, to think in terms of the visual, the oral, the textual and the generative, even though it might seem complex, it is a closer resemblance to the way the brain works and human beings operate. The process of signification encountered encompasses different ways of thinking and interpretation.

Bibliography

Aarseth Espen, Cybertext, Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, The Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1997

Bolter David J., Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991

Derrida Jack, Of Grammatology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1976

Goody Jack, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge University Press- Cambridge, 1987

Landow George P., Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Press, 1997

Lanham Richard A., The Electronic Word, The University of Chicago Press, Ltd. London, 1994

Ong Walter J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Matheuen, London & New York 1982, London, 1994

Poster Mark, The Mode of Information, Post-structuralism and Social Context, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990

Essays

Barilli Renato: Beyond the Threshold of the letter; conclusing Chapter of Voyage to the End of the World. <http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/barilli.htm>

Chandler Daniel: Biases of the Ear and the Eye
<http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/litoral.html>

Fowler Robert M.: How the Secondary Orality of the Electronic Age Can Awaken Us to the Primary Orality of Antiquity or What Hypertext Can Teach Us About the Bible with Reflections on the Ethical and Political Issues of the Electronic Frontier.
rfowler@bw.edu
<http://www2.bw.edu/~rfowler>

Manovich Lev: Post-Media Aesthetics: on line essay recommended by Marjory Perloff in her on line essay "Towards a Generative (Digital) Poetics: <http://www.uiowa.ed/`iwp/newmedia/abstracts/perloff.html>

Websites on generative work (essays and examples of work)

Bogdan Soban, Generative Art: <http//www.soban-art.com/ga.asp>

Chomsky Noam, Generative Grammar
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/group/CL/vol/SyntaxtVorl/Chomsky.html

Dorin Alan: <http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~aland>
Alan Dorin is a Melbourne based artist/programmer whose work deals with generative art. Examples can be seen at his website. He together with Richard Brown 'Mimetic Starfish' (interactive work recently shown at Proto-type curated by Experimenta in Melbourne- Australia) have coined the term 'Software Sketching' as a personal wish in code production.

In a recent talk given by Alan Dorin at the RMIT (Royal Melbourne Information Technology) University, one of the generative artworks he showed was a piece inspired by mobile telephones in Japan: 'iki,iki phone', you could select two different creatures in two mobile phones and they would generate another one. Practically, you can send a picture to mate with another.

Generative electronic poetry websites.

Giaccardi Elisa: net.art "Poietic' Generator" is an experimental system which enables a large number of people across the world to participate in real time with the emergence of an ever changing collective image. Poietic referring to its Greek origin of creation.

i-DAT and STAR. <http://www.i-dWat.org/projects>

Vivaria Project by i-dat -STAR & Sulawesi. In the i-dat website it is explained how the Zoo is used as a metaphor to examine artificial life forms, creativity and the relationshipbetween humans, animals and machines. The project refers to the mathematical formula (or maxim) that if an infinite number of monkeys are given typewriters for an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. <http://vivaria.net>

The 'artefact' or 'artifact' at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London-UK. There were some objects selected from one of the collections in the galleries which were used to create an online database under different categories such as, the oldest, the newest, the smallest, silver, metal, textiles etc. Online users could inbreed objects, which would pass through 3D modelling and be included in the database. <http://www.i-dat.org/projects/artefact>

Fletcher Scott. <http://x-idat.org/SF/gener.html>

Morse Peter's Infinite Book where in his words 'was attempting to create a "Book of Sand" à la Borges'. <http://www.petermorse.com.au>

Post-modern generated essays
<http://www.elsewhere.com/cgi-bin/postmodern>

Transmediale. For examples of generative art work
<http://www.transmediale.de>

Ward Adrian, How I Drew one of my Pictures
<http:www.generative.net/papers/autoshop>

Ward Adrian and Geoff Cox , How I Drew one of my Pictures: or, The Authorship of Generative Art, http: <http://www.generative.net/papers/authorship>

Ward Adrian, Cox Geoff, and McLean Alex, The Aesthetics of Generative Work
<http://www.generative.net/papers/aesthetics>

14-19 September 2002- SPACEX at the Liverpool Biennial- Generator
<http://www.generative.net/generator>