[-empyre-] Towards a theory of digital poetics

[Juan B. Gutierrez]

Thanks to Simon and all others for such a wonderfully catalytic 
discussion. Simon says:

«What I am seeking to do here is to separate poetics from human intent 
and authorship and regard it instead as a phenomena of things.»

and

«Indeed, the bulk of this research is being carried out by teams of 
computer scientists and linguists and involves artificial systems 
interpreting and responding to body language, facial expression, vocal 
tone, gesture and speech without building precise models of what is 
occurring but functioning as sets of dynamic contingencies and 
probabilities that may or may not require resolution prior to action. I 
consider what they are seeking to do as digital poetics – which is 
possibly why we find it easy to work together on artistic projects.»

Digital has become a wildcard that loosely means "through he use of a 
computing device" in colloquial language. When we ask about digital 
poetics, there are two dimensions of these questions: (i) the aesthetics 
of a piece of art (probably of linguistic nature) that cannot be without 
a computing device, and (ii) the aesthetics of a piece of art (probably 
of linguistic nature) generated by a computing device.

I agree with both definitions of poetics suggested by Simon: (i) 
"creative practice of association" and (ii) "The motile engagement with 
the interplay of dynamic elements". My position is that it is impossible 
to separate poetics from a fundamental attribute of human beings 
(intentionality -- precise definition below), and that poetics generated 
by machines is impossible to occur unless machines have this same 
attribute; therefore, poetics is not an intrinsic attribute of things, 
but an elaboration, a derivative, of intentionality.

Efforts to produce autonomy and some sort of intentionally have come a 
long way since Turing. Complex probabilistic systems give raise to some 
human-like behaviors, especially in regards to the ability of 
classifying patterns. But we are very, very far away from producing an 
entity with intentionality. In my work in biomedical research at CAVIIAR 
(Advanced Research Center in Artificial Intelligence), I have found that 
a coupled ensemble of what we call today "intelligent systems" can 
exhibit emerging properties not present in the individual components. 
Perhaps some day in the future (next year? next century? next 
millennium?) we will be able to produce a system capable of 
intentionality. But models, no matter how complicated we believe they 
are, are only rudimentary and insufficient at this point. We have to 
produce new mathematical tools (in a broad sense, including logic) to 
solve this problem… if we ever can… Penrose has suggested that 
consciousness is the result of sub-quantic phenomena, i.e. absolutely 
out of reach for our present instrumentation and modeling ability.

For the reasons described above, I believe that the quest of defining 
digital poetics needs to abandon the path of poetics generated by 
machines, and passes through the influence of the media in human poetic 
activities. Particularly, interactivity. Non-interactive digital pieces 
with aesthetic intention can be studied with the analytical devices we 
already have in, for example, literary criticism. Interactive digital 
pieces require a new foundational framework for their study. The work of 
Aarseth goes in this direction, but I find it insufficient. 
Wardrip-Fruin has elaborated more, but something is still missing. I 
have a proposal (BTW, elaborated with Laura Borras, Mark Marino and 
Pablo Gervas), which *might* get published soon.

Now, let us ask, what does it mean to have interactivity in digital 
media? I begin by defining what I call *communicative act* and 
*communicative event*. The communication is a gregarious act; we can 
only speak of *communicative event* when in it takes part two or more 
interlocutors. For instance, if a shipwrecked puts a message in a 
bottle, it would be a *communicative act*. But nothing guarantees that 
the message would be read. In another example, if someone establishes a 
monologue during a stroll by the mountains, that would be a 
*communicative act*. But when someone reads the message, or listens 
while the walker talks, then there is a *communicative event*.

The difference that we want to establish is that *communicative act* is 
the one that shows intentional mental states (according to the meaning 
of *intentionality* that we define below), whereas the *communicative 
event* happens only in the interactivity between two subjects. Thus, the 
shipwrecked performs a *communicative act*; there is a *communicative 
event* when somebody else reads the message and occurs information flow.

The capacity of the *communicative acts* (including, but in a ampler 
sense, the speech acts) to represent objects and states of things of the 
world is an extension of abilities biologically more fundamental of the 
brain, that is, *intentionality*. This attribute relate the organism to 
the world by means of mental states such as belief or desire, and 
specially through action and perception (John Searle has a wonderful 
discussion about *intentionality* in "The Construction of Social 
Reality", 1997).

Only some mental states and events, not all, have *intentionality*. The 
beliefs, fears, hopes and desires are intentional; but there are forms 
of nervousness, happiness, and anxiety not-directed that are 
non-intentional. Thus, there are depression states that are not 
depression of, or of joy that is not joy of, or sentences that do not go 
directed to. Try to guess, for example, to whom is directed the 
carpenter's exclamation when he hammers his finger by accident.

We will only speak of *intentionality* when the acts have 
*directionality*, the property of the *communicative act* that makes it 
act of communicating something. The emitter shows (*communicative act*) 
a state or mental event directed to something, how late it is, for 
example, to somebody by his side (*communicative event*), by means of a 
raised hand and pointing a wristwatch while yawning. We use the term 
*directionality* in two senses: the heat towards which it goes directed 
the mental event, and the person to whom the gesture goes directed. It 
is not of interest to us to limit the use of the term; rather we will be 
able to determine the directionality of *directionality* according to 
the context in which we use it. We will only speak of *communicative 
act* when *intentionality* and *directionality* exist. In the 
correspondence of the interlocutor occurs the *communicative event*. Let 
us note that a *communicative event* can occur with a mistaken 
*directionality*, e.g. the message in a bottle of a shipwrecked person 
begging for help can arrive at the beach of an inhabited island by 
another castaway.

When the reader interacts with a work of electronic literature, for 
example, he must execute an action by means of a *communicative act*, 
which has a *directionality* aiming at the computer. The computer 
receives the reader's action and a *communicative event* is completed. 
Then the computer processes the information and it feeds back to the 
reader an information fragment that corresponds to that man-machine 
interaction, that is to say, it executes a *communicative act*, which 
has a *directionality* aiming at the reader. Thus a cycle of feedback is 
completed. Since the information that is given to the reader depends on 
the processes that happened in the machine, we can claim that *the main 
characteristic of the digital media is that it acts on the message*. 
That is the fundamental difference between the interactivity in digital 
media with respect to interactivity in physical media. Until that 
characteristic is used, the texts in digital format will be an extension 
of the paper universe. I propose this as a cornerstone for the 
definition of digital poetics.

This also raises the question about *intentionality* and 
*directionality* of computer-generated narrative. Unless 
*directionality* is present, automatic text is not generating a 
*communicative act*, but a simple mechanical response in the reader that 
triggers brain activity (interpretation, language, suggestions, etc.) 
without the phenomena that usually accompanies it (*communicative act*).

Regards,

Juan

-- 
Juan B. Gutierrez
Research Fellow
CAVIIAR, Inc.
+1.850.459.4274



Simon Biggs wrote:
> Before I respond to a number of good points raised by others I wish to 
> say that my original intent with this thread/provocation was to start 
> a discussion in the Empyre “bar”, So I am glad that there have been 
> responses of the ilk we have seen. That said, I am sorry the bar 
> snacks are tasteless and that, in particular, the drinks have no kick 
> whatsoever. I know this makes it hard to work up the appropriate 
> spirit for this sort of discussion, but that’s the digital for you.
>
> Jim wrote:
>
>     In 'new media', there's a sense of the importance of theory such as
>     Manovich's work. But not much sense of the importance of the
>     theory of
>     computation to an understanding of the phenomenology of computing.
>
>
> Similarly, my concern was to ensure that the dual topics of poetics 
> and the digital were at the heart of any discussion on what digital 
> poetics (or ePoetry) might be. Many debates on this seem to forget 
> these aspects of the area of practice, taking a narrow view of 
> poetics, assuming that it means poetry, and generally ignoring the 
> implications and consequences of computational theory. In doing this 
> the effect is to elucidate a view of ePoetry that is little different 
> to traditional practices that embrace concrete poetry, visual poetry, 
> multimedia and the concept of the open work of art. Each of these 
> forms of practice are, indeed, part of the genealogy of digital 
> poetry, in large part because many key practitioners in the field come 
> from these backgrounds, and to understand digital poetry it helps to 
> be knowledgeable about them. However, none of these practices are 
> digital poetry.
>
> I agree that poetics are extremely difficult to define but I would 
> stand by my general definition – although I might reword it. The 
> creative practice of association could also be written as a motile 
> engagement with the interplay of dynamic elements. What I am seeking 
> to do here is to separate poetics from human intent and authorship and 
> regard it instead as a phenomena of things. In that sense Juan is 
> right that this definition cannot be used to define poetry. That would 
> be a tautology anyway. However, it is a way of seeking to situate 
> poetics in relation to other things and remove the legacy of 
> Romanticism, and the centrality of the human, from the discussion.
>
> The point about formal and informal (human) languages, raised by Juan, 
> is also good. However, research by colleagues here in Informatics 
> illustrates that whilst they might agree early computing emerges from 
> formal logic they see current developments far from those early 
> beginnings. They are concerned with complexity and fuzzy logic, their 
> objective being to create affective computational models. These are 
> not strict formal systems, although they are fundamentally linguistic. 
> Indeed, the bulk of this research is being carried out by teams of 
> computer scientists and linguists and involves artificial systems 
> interpreting and responding to body language, facial expression, vocal 
> tone, gesture and speech without building precise models of what is 
> occurring but functioning as sets of dynamic contingencies and 
> probabilities that may or may not require resolution prior to action. 
> I consider what they are seeking to do as digital poetics – which is 
> possibly why we find it easy to work together on artistic projects.
>
> Whilst this work is distant from Turing’s original concepts it 
> continues to embody them at its core, taking in the work of Winograd 
> and others along the way. One very specific concept that is being 
> pursued by this research team explicitly employs Dawkins work on 
> Memes, seeking to create self-perpetuating affective linguistic 
> systems that are able to interact with one another as well as with 
> their environment. I don’t think they are looking at Kant to inform 
> their work – although perhaps they should? However, I would argue that 
> computing need not, and is not, constrained by strict formal systems 
> that allow no choices outside a given system. Artificial reasoning has 
> developed far beyond its early limitations and in the process 
> illustrated that human cognition is far more constrained than we 
> previously imagined (and certainly far more so than Kant proposed). 
> So, I dispute that there is much difference between human and 
> non-human languages and would include in that not only the language of 
> machines but also the languages of nature.
>
> Sally makes a good point when she asks whether I am conflating things 
> that can be digitally described with being digital. Perhaps I am but I 
> am employing an expanded definition of what the digital can be. My 
> fingers are digital. My DNA is digital. My computer is based on 
> digital systems. The language I write with here is inscribed, through 
> various protocols, as digital. Where do we draw the line between what 
> is digital and what is not? The big question, of course, is whether 
> there are any spaces in-between. At that smallest of scales what is 
> going on? Is it particles or waves, or both? Last week I was at an 
> event where the Professor of Physics was having his portrait unveiled. 
> That Professor was Peter Higgs, responsible for formulating the 
> concept of the Higgs Boson (the particle they built the CERN collider 
> to find). I doubt he knows the answer to that question yet. Perhaps it 
> is neither. However, down to at least the scale of the Higgs Boson 
> everything is discrete, even if we do not perceive it to be so. That 
> looks sort of digital to me.
>
> Regards
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
> simon at littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201
>   
>
>
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