[-empyre-] Writing and Pattern Flows

[Bill Seaman <bseaman@risd.edu>]

Bill Seaman

The central concern of my work since 1980 has been meta-meaning 
production. In particular I am interested in the functionality of 
language in our coming to know the world. I have developed a number 
of generative systems exploring the production of meaning. In terms 
of "writing" I have been using the term "pattern flows" to refer to 
and reflect on embodied knowing. I am very much interested in how 
multi-modal flows of experience - pattern flows - inform our meaning 
becoming. I understand mind and body to be co-arising with the 
functionality of pattern flows (an extended linguistics) as being 
central to this process. Computers are particularly good at 
generating pattern flows and thus fall within the sphere of meaning 
production. In fact computers enable the continuous growth of our 
relation to linguistic construction. The projective employment of 
language is central to ongoing experience. The notion of fields of 
meaning is central to meaning becoming, where each-media element 
functions as a field of potential meaning, having a meaning force. 
These pattern flow forces are summed by the body in an ongoing 
manner. Each media-element has attributes which are "of themself". 
Thus the computer as a pattern production mechanism enables one to 
juxtapose pattern-flows with many qualities simultaneously - words, 
sounds, music, images, 3D models, illustrations, diagrams, time-based 
video recordings etc. etc. This meaning production sphere is 
expanding and beginning to include the haptic and other physical 
potentialities. Writing cannot be separated out from either pattern 
flow acquisition or multi-modal pattern production. Writing always 
becomes enfolded in meaning production as a living associational 
relation informed by the history of multi-modal experience as it 
intermingles with current context. Thus words carry a meaning force 
that co-arises with ongoing experience.

I think of digital writing as employing all manner of digital pattern 
flows in the service of evocation. I also see the potential of 
exploring the writing space that bridges the continuum between the 
physical and the digital as an exciting field of inquiry. Each media 
element be they digital or other, informing the ongoing meaning 
summing.



Interface is a very vague term...

--
Professor Bill Seaman, Ph.D.
Department  Head
Digital+ Media Department (Graduate Division)
Rhode Island School of Design
Two College St.
Providence, R.I. 02903-4956
401 277 4956
fax 401 277 4966
bseaman@risd.edu

http://billseaman.com
http://www.art.235media.de/index.php?show=2
http://digitalmedia.risd.edu