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Some lettering specimens from the signage used at the farmer’s market

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This project is an exploration of digital text and how it can be utilized in the creation of a new way of reading. The text that the project explores is Labyrinth, a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

A quick note about “references,” as defined for this project:
A reference, as I will refer to it within this project write-up, is a word or phrase that, when understood in more detail, exposes a more rich narrative within the writing of Borges. The references have been curated subjectively and by hand as the result of several close readings of the original text.

The stories of Labyrinths are dense with these references. What is most compelling about these references is that some of them are factual, some are completely fictional, and at times they are untrue yet rooted in fact or history. Throughout a collection of his short stories, the use of these references weaves together the narrative fabric that is his own universe.

The reading system developed explores the relationship between the reader, the Borges universe, the outside world and where he blurs the line between the two.

The first story from Labyrinths that has been built out into a specifically relevant reading environment is Three Versions of Judas.
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A quick look under the hood:

An early test to explore the possibility of performing the content (as sermon) for the Temple of Judas.

As the text is displayed, each segment is analyzed character by character (in real time) and handed over for use in the creation of the sound for the space based on the same timing as is defined in the Time Text XML file. This is an example of the sound created based on the first several segments of Three Versions of Judas

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The initial projections tests of the animated / sonified output of my Borges markup generator.

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All text from "Three Versions of Judas," broken by pauses, organized by length.

Beginning with the stories from Borges’ Labyrinths, I am going to investigate ways in which the digital version of the text can be represented in order to create new reads. In order to this, I am using a mark up structure that takes advantage of the Timed Text (TT) schema, which is  used for adding closed captioning to digital video. The XML was generated as a valid “TT” using the punctuation as the divisor the text. This is a direct correlation to my interest in not only the content of the stories that Borges writes but also the structure he uses.

I automated the markup process by writing some code to look at the digital texts of the stories and generate marked-up versions as valid TT XML files. The code basically performs these steps in order to create a marked up version of the text that aligns with my interest in not only Borges writing structure, but also the vast references that he utilizes in order to develop seemingly endlessly deep narratives.

1) Split the entire text into chunks based on punctuation for pauses, stops and inserts: , ; . ( )

2) Compare text to the list of references (curated by me) and highlight the words/phrases identified in the look-up list

3) Assign each piece of text a start time and a duration (as required by the TT schema) based on the length of text in each segment

4) Save results as XML file for use in a Closed Captioning for Digital Video system.

Given a piece of writing rendered in scriptio continua, we were then asked to explore 2 different layouts. The first was to use punctuation to give structure to the reading. The second was to treat the text as a “bag of words” and interpret the text as a spacial arrangement of words, phrases, ideas, or whatever else we found to be of interest from the text.

My bag of words all cut up and ready for the glue stick

Punctuated for Structure

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Multi-Amphitheater – Collective Performance.

I’m proposing a space where the performance is no longer a one-way transmission passively absorbed by a gang of viewers. Instead, each person becomes a participant, even if just by their presence, in the creation of an audio/visual experience. In this sense, the performer should be considered to be the algorithm – the system behind the scenes that is collecting, trimming, modifying and presented the content for output. The output, however, is determined by the decisions and actions of the participants within the space.

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Project Statement

On Friday October 19th, 2009 during the NOWCASTING conference at UCLA, Warren Sack proposed that computational languages should be studied not from within the sciences, but as language from within the digital humanities. This idea is intriguing and the development of new programming languages would benefit a great deal from this mode of thinking. Contemporary models for the majority of computational language development is still very much rooted in what should be considered “the original” ways of communicating with computers. Sure, some portions of logic and naming conventions are set in the traditions by which we understand thought processes. However, at a certain level, there tends to be a wide range of barriers unintentionally integrated into the various systems that prevent different types of thinkers with different aptitudes from being able to understand the constructs considered to be “inherent” within the incredibly short historical contexts of these “language” environments. At times these are the strengths of the systems for the initiated but this also is the aspect that prevents these structures from being fully integrated and understood as proper language. The presentation proposes that by studying programming structures in this way, those who develop programming languages and those who utilize them in order to create should be considered to be writers, essayists and storytellers. By embracing this model of studying programming languages as language to look at the past and evaluate in the future, new systems for the creation of the media through the exploration of computational process can become more accessible to a wider range of thinkers and makers.

As a non-programmer (or more accurately a “folk coder”) and someone who has played around with generative processes in a variety of media (see: www.formalplay.com) this also raises the question “how much emphasis should be placed on how something is built?” In written language, literature for example, the way in which a piece is written, the language used, is an integral part of a critique. But in this case the relationship of language and experience is much more clear. Once the system of “writing” is such that the “writing” and the “result” or 2 very separate elements, should how something was made be included, even in a small way, in the value or perception of what was made? This piece poses this question directly through the development of an audio and visual system in which the full meaning is most accessible when both the code that has created the piece and the piece itself are viewed. Information about the audio and visuals being displayed have been carefully crafted into the function names, variable names and comments for development of and integration into the final display.

In its original form, this piece is displayed full-screen on a large monitor with wireless headphones.

In an effort to explode an existing text and reorganize the text content as information to present in a new way, I developed a system this system to read and show the text from the book Flatland. The first thing the system does is parse the words from each section of novel and arrange the words for that section in alphabetical order. This creates the text that the system reads to the viewer. Visually, the system displays the text in the original context and highlights the words as they are read aloud while also plotting its location within the original source.

The formal decision for pacing and which voice to use are based on my own difficulty with following the fake inflection and “forced-natural” pacing  that occurs when a long text is read.

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Real Space Sampling
While driving around the city of Los Angeles, I stumbled upon an area in the back corner of a parking lot where a hole had been in a chain link fense so that homeless people and transients could gain access to the protective area underneath a bridge over the LA river near a train yard. The most interesting aspect of this space of the city was the hidden and overlooked nature of both the location itself and the people who used it. In order to develop an audio and visual profile of the city, chose to documented some unseen elements within the space, more specifically, invisible typography with the location. While on-site, I used a radio scanner to record communications from the airwaves at the specific location. I then edited the sound down to only mentions of letters and numbers, including the ways in which police officers communicate letters by stating words. Visually I was attracted to the discarded memorabilia that was littered about. Much of it had been there for many years and was well ground into the dirt. I focused my collections on those items that contained small typography and interesting forms. I then explored these items back in the studio using macro photography.

The Location

Audio results of radio scanning the area for the typographic audio form

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Macro photography explorations of other-worldly textures and typographic forms

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For the second visit to the space, I decided to further my intrigue with the discarded typography of the first study. I actively sought out objects form the space around the transient fence opening that contained letter forms in some fashion. Some of these were printed, some where embossed and some where molded directly into the plastic. The typography specific to these objects begins to give them a context in which history can be known. Information such as time period, function and even levels of use can be extracted from the typographic forms.

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The Place

The Discovery

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Exploration 1: Indexed and Expression Intertwined

Exploration 1: Indexed and Expression Intertwined

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