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

[Barrie <barriec@optusnet.com.au>]

on 3.11.03 12:38 PM, Alessandro Ludovico at a.ludovico@neural.it wrote:

>> I wonder if the alphabet is, in fact, a code. Certainly it's based on
>> symbolic substitution (letters for phonemes), but there are codes and then
>> there are codes - the alphabet is fairly random; axiomatic logic, for
>> example, isn't.
>> 
>> I also think the binding is stronger than one might think - this is where the
>> obsolescence of media, screens, technologies, come into play.
>> 
>> Circulation is always of interest to me - I tend to think of distributivities
>> in general - which goes all the way back to cuneiform tables and envelopes
>> and even earlier. Circulations are always tied to protocols, substructures,
>> technologies, embodiments; even the electromagnetic spectrum,
>> radio/packet/television/etc. is embodied of course.
>> 
> 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.

The alphabet is a set of symbols that enable communication, Kipling comes to
mind - see Just So Stories, how the alphabet was born/made - an interesting
metaphor.
Code seems to imply, to me, a secret language, a private semaphore of the
mind from one to another, as well as a method of embodying ideas, messages
etc.
Binary can be visual as well as textual, image as well as letter/word. Of
course letter shapes are visual.

If the universe, as some say is information, what is it's code?

Maybe quantum foam is the code beneath the photons/electronic switches of
binary code. The fuzzy logic of the universe or the matmoss squeezing up
between your digital toes.
> 
>>> The implication of text is that it is not bound to a certain process of
>>> writing it down. And this doesn't have to be in print. The word "code"
>>> literally comes from "carving" or "beating" ...carved into stone or wood.
>>> So, code denotes writing.
>>> 
>> Hmmm... I think code and write touch on each other and are interrelated, but
>> one hardly denotes the other. One can have scribbles without code - Cy
>> Twombly comes to mind -
>> 
> 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?

This is a very interesting conjecture. Gestural drawing, isn't all drawing
gestural? Gestural drawing has traditionally, I presume, an immediacy that
allows for *un-premeditated* marks to be made. So, where is the language in
this, symbolism? shape of the mark? metaphore? Mood/emotional state would
seem to be an important aspect of this way of making a drawing. What rules,
if any does Twombly apply in the way he works? These would effect outcome;
Present centered being? Systems art concepts?