Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Neural Skeins and Digital Skins -- November on -empyre-

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Alessandro Ludovico wrote:

> I've always thought of the alphabet as a code and on the same level
> I've always thought of the computer code as an alphabet for another
> language (the language for programming an entity inside a machine,
> called software).
> The potentially infinite creative possibilities of a codified
> language (alphabet + language rules), seem to me the same infinite
> creative possibiliies that one can implement using computer code,
> just as good writers use their languages.
>
I think a code might be more specific than an alphabet; a code implies a
doubled layer of interpretation a -> b -> referent - at least to some
extent. For example morse-code -> alphabet -> referent - although the
alphabet also points to phonemes. (But need it? I think one can 'read'
Chinese ideograms without the pronuncation.)

> Couldn't it be that the 'code' behind some Cy Twombly works would be
> codified if only we'd have access to his thought mechanisms and we'd
> be able to record and decode them?
>
I'd think (and hope) they'd be literally impenetrable. One of the things
we tend to believe in is that causes lead to effects, that artworks are
interpretable, readable. This is problematic; there's a muteness, perhaps,
an inertness at the heart of things (as Clement Rosset points out).

- Alan