RE: [-empyre-] reticence

[Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>]

> hi Jim

hi geni,

> as always I read your posts with interest.

You also, geni. I remember a post you wrote to webartery about your move into longer-term
projects. That was at a time when web.art was still near-uniformly short work, but you were
moving into Director work and using other technology also, like GPS, and possibly into
installation and elsewhere? Does the GPS work have a Web component? You are known for your work
with language and narrative in hypermedia. What role did language play in the piece? What role
did programming play in it?

> > What was that project, geniwate?
>
> My GPS project entailed data from the Gammon Ranges in northern south
> Australia, which I used to explore issues of landscape among other things.

> that said, Jim, your forthcoming topic may get a spark outta me,
> particularly since I spend all my days programming multiple levels of
> textuality - what I think we need is a new linguistics, to go with a
> phenomenological analysis; a linguistics that copes with the network and
> multiple, interconnected textualities; that can provide us with some
> structural tools without fading into a mixture of mathematics, physics and
> mysticism . . .

Well, in a sense, there is a new linguistics that does just that, I believe: "a linguistics that
copes with the network and multiple, interconnected textualities". Only it's not so new, though
it's only been developed over the last sixty years or so. Linguistics, as you know, in its math
versions, copes with the network etc by informing the theory on which computers are constructed.

But you meant "cope" in a different way, I presume; I'm not sure what particular problems you're
thinking of?

Tonight I have finished work on a piece that represents something of a medical breakthrough. It
was commissioned by the Hokum School of Neurology, in collaboration with the Bunktown
Computational Linguistics dept in an effort to animate the processing of linguistic information
along the synapses. What you will see is the (silent) inside of a person's language buses as
they process language through the corridors of involuntary(?) cerebration. This ultra
microscopic view reveals that--wouldn't you know it--the inside of an English-writing person
does indeed contain lettristic symbols--sometimes letters, sometimes sets of letters. These are
learned structures that literally form in the brain. Further, they are drag and droppable, as
was previously proclaimed by some but refuted (improperly) as inelegant ('god does not play at
drag and drop programming'). In some cases, the animation apparently changes, via user
interaction, into a depiction of their own processing of language at the moment. This can be
achieved either by singing while experiencing the piece, turning off the lights and going full
screen, or by special drugs. I will send the URL to the soft skinned space at some point. The
neuro-linguists are surely dancing in the streets.

ja