RE: [-empyre-] Writing and Pattern Flows

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> The most important question here
> (for this discussion) is how our notion of
> writing is expanding. We inscribed (clay tablets
> etc.), we later used pens and pencils and
> beautiful brushes (including pictographic
> language systems), we used typewriters
> (skewmorphs as Kate Hales describes),we
> generate/listen to music, watch TV and movies
> [and in particular now play games]? and now we
> are on the cusp of a number of open areas of
> research.

Yes. Expanding. Comprehensive of writing media and code, for instance.

Non-euclidean geometry expanded geometry. But it also involved simplifying
the notion of the straight line. As in keep the notion of it being the
shortest distance between two points, but chuck out the specifically
Euclidean portions of the definition. Same with writing now perhaps. Keep
certain parts of the notion of what it is to write but chuck out the
specifically print-oriented notions that constrain writing from developing
freely in the newer spaces.

> 1) Will someone develop an interface that enables
> us to write with media-elements with the ease of
> use a typewriter? (My World Generator [programmer
> Gideon May] is a first attempt)[2]

Interesting. Of course there are many interactive pieces in which keyboard
input triggers media and/or behaviors. Keyboards, as you point out, are
capable of allowing us to write many types of things.

> 2) Will real time natural language processing and
> multi-modal search algorithms aid in this new
> form of writing?

What do you mean by "multi-modal"?

> 3) Will real time employment of code
> constructions find related information as we
> speak and present it to us as an alternate mode
> of association?

I have a piece going at http://vispo.com/dbcinema that is in development.
Currently all it does is you type in a concept, it does a Google image
search, and presents images. More planned. It will be an imengine for
various apps. One app would use speech recognition. Instead of typing in
language to summon images, it will take voice recognitions. Also, it will do
processing on the images.

> 4) Will code-based authorship alter all
> authorship as we know it (see Jon's game
> perspective)(remembering Wittgenstein's language
> games)and open out writing to entirely new modes
> of narrative and non-narrative construction.
> 5) Will generative tool kits based on object
> based programming alter language use as we know
> it?

People now can shoot and edit video whereas for a long time it was too
expensive. The new modes of narrative and non-narrative are around, but
currently they are not so much too expensive as require more programming
skills than most have. That will change. But it will change like the
pre-packaged changes. If no programming is required, the pre-packaged isn't
far behind, if behaviors are involved. Programming is a form of writing that
becomes personal (as well as impersonal). Will programming skills become
more ubiquitous and also more widely understood to be expressive as poemy
poems can be? Not the way the education systems seem to be going. But that
is something artist-programmers need to work toward and help the education
system with.

ja
http://vispo.com