[-empyre-] continued discussion between John Klima and Bill Seaman - part 1

[marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>]

hi,
I FWDing one of the latest Bill Seaman´s contribuitions. The message
was rather long, and the list ADM was going to "eat" the final portion
of the text, so I broke it in two different posts.
best,
m.

------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bill Seaman <bseaman@risd.edu>
To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 06:48:53 -0400
Subject: Writing and Pattern Flows
continued discussion between John Klima and Bill Seaman

Bill Seaman wrote:

>>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]

John Klima wrote:
>Maybe. I don't doubt that the interface for such
>a device can built (thankfully, the "infinite
>monkeys" rule would still apply), but I think it
>will require the author to acquire as deep an
>understanding of (or perhaps "feeling" for), the
>nature of the generative processes in play, just
>as a traditional author understands or intuits
>language.


Absolutely. Many in the generation of children
that are growing up now are entirely computer
savvy. They have a deep understanding of the
potentials of the mutability of code and the role
of creating through interactive/intra-active
systems. They "think" in an intuitive way that is
informed by the potentials of the media. This is
not a "Swiftian" machine or "Borges" of purely
random combinatorics, this is the use of
recombinant means as a tools for meaning
production.

I didn't touch a computer until I was 28! I was
at the media lab and I purchased an Mac SE.
Growing up with pattern flows is different from
trying to invent them as a possibility for
language. Yet the potential for invention is
central --- both poetic and technological.


>The requirement for writing a novel extends far
>beyond the operation of a typewriter. Perhaps
>this seems an obvious statement, but the
>ramifications of it are deeper than one might
>imagine. I believe it will require the
>generative author to comprehend the structures
>and algorithms of the generative processes, to
>squeeze the most out of them, and perhaps to
>squeeze anything out of them at all. Trust me,
>these structures are not so easy to wrap one's
>brain around.

I agree. This is by no means a simple task. Yet
perhaps we can load the dice so to speak. We
might make systems that map our code flows (see
Warren Sac), that suggest ways to move and alter
things,  that learn from our past behaviors and
make suggestions, that enable us to quickly try
out options, that augment the ability to make
choices, that generate code in a transparent
manner (object based systems) where one can
remain on the intuitive and/or creative level of
media exploration in the service of "writing".