| Self Criticism As an artist, I set out to create a stimulating environment in which users can explore the syntagmatic way in which verbal language is used, and consider how that translates into a rise in pictorial time-based media. By substituting video clips for words, it quickly becomes clear that these multi-textured real-world representations are not paradigmatically isolated in the same way as individual vocabulary words are... |
Evaluation Report After publishing the first version of the program online in February, 2006, I sent the URL to a number of people with a survey attached. A copy of the survey can be found in Appendix (1) and a complete table of the results can be found in Appendix (2). This is a short overview of the findings from the seventeen survey responses, with a brief description of what I did to address the feedback. I have organized... |
Theoretical Statement:
Certainly the first great step in human communication, and probably the greatest intellectual achievement in all of human history, was language. Language must have existed, at least in a primitive form, for 100,000 years to date (Schramm 27). All early languages evolved away from pictographs and towards non-representational, symbolic coding (Schramm 54). This coding has, inherent to it, two forms of structural organization. Drawing on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, we see that when crafting art or linguistic expression, you can choose components either paradigmatically or syntagmatically. VideoString will play with these organizational forms by allowing the user to arrange unexpected paradigmatic elements according to the familiar syntagmatic structure of the English language.
Paradigmatic relationships involve words or components that could be substituted for each other within a particular context (qtd.in Perez 5). These components share a common use, and therefore in theory they make up groups within which various relationships exist (Manovich 230). In written or spoken language, this relationship could be between groups of nouns that would make sense within a particular sentence. In the cinema, this relationship could be between alternate scenes that could possibly replace a given scene.
Syntagmatic relationships are defined by the way in which elements occur in sequence. Lev Manovich points out, “The speaker produces an utterance by stringing together elements, one after the other, in a linear sequence” (230). In written or spoken language, words occurring next to each other in a sentence affect how nearby words are interpreted. Syntagmatic relationships can change the meaning of a word, for example, “good” has a different meaning when used in the sentence “good job”, and the sentence “good grief!”. Syntagmatic elements are defined in juxtaposition with existing elements, as in the interactions between scenes in a narrative film, while paradigmatic relationships are defined by absent, or potential, elements; what are the possibilities for scenes that could have replaced each of the existing scenes.
Writing as we know it probably came into use between five and six thousand years ago (Schramm 28). Following in its path, cinema entered public life and made visual the narratives that had previously been largely textual. Despite the differences between the two mediums, both written and cinematic work tell their stories most commonly through narration. The function of narration is linear rather than variable. A narrative moves a plot forward, while relying on bits of descriptive information only as supporting elements (Manovich 216). It’s aspiration is to draw its viewer along a well-planned path, weaving a cause and effect trajectory that carries aspecific meaning (Manovich 125). Because of its linear nature, a traditional narrative entertains but one out of many possible data configurations.
The development of digital media has begun to merge the paradigmatic database structure with traditional syntagmatic narrative. This fusion plays with the notion that there are multiple ways a story could progress, and also admits that there may not necessarily be a story at all. VideoString will be directly related to this gray area between linear syntagmatic structure and the interchangeability of paradigmatically structured data. As Manovich points out, “regardless of whether new media objects present themselves as linear narratives, databases, or something else, underneath on the level of material organization they are all databases” (228). He also notes that since computer files can always be changed, even after “publication” web sites are rarely complete in the traditional sense of the word (220). Artnetweb is a perfect example of this. The site offers an overwhelming amount of information with minimal cohesive structure to guide the user through. One of the few narrative pieces on the opening page states simply “artnetweb is a network of people and projects investigating new media in the practice of art”. From there you are on your own, free to navigate your own path through this massive database.
New media is reversing the structure of communication. Rather than starting with the syntagmatic narrative, new media originates in a paradigmatic database from which the artist or user is free to draw any number of possible paths. Thus, new media makes paradigmatic structure the material reality, and the syntagmaticstructure waits immaterial to be organized once its possibilities have been defined (Manovich 231).
Fredrick Jameson writes, “Radical breaks between periods do not generally involve complete changes but rather the restructuration of a certain number of elements already given” (qtd.in Manovich 123). One of the most memorable such breaks, the coming of metal type printing to Europe, instigated a “cultural and social big bang” (Schramm 127). Gutenberg and his contemporaries in the printing revolution helped to create a reading and writing society in the place of one that had very recently been functionally illiterate. A similar revolution is happening today with the rising accessibility of video and new media.
Until recently, most screen production models have required producers to conform to very specific runtimes, budgets, and even content (NPR). But the Internet assumes very little of its contributor. As a result, an internet-based citizen media movement has taken off under the name video blogging, or vlogging. Ryan Hodson, former WGBH editor and one of the central figures in the video blogging movement, says vlogging has given her “newfound creative freedoms” that she could never have had on television. “You don’t have to go through all the barriers”, she adds (NPR). Jay Dedman, avid vlog promoter, and cofounder of the video blogging yahoo group, supports her sentiments. He suggests that people who make their own media become better viewers. “And that’s something new, that has not happened on a large scale in the past 50 years” (49Media Podcast).
The flexibility inherent to digital database structure allows its user to easily access and manipulate virtually any amount of data. Because of this flexibility, new media supports interactivity by its very nature (Manovich 214). It also supports a new wave of digital peer-to-peer communication. Language, writes Christian Metz, is a system of signs intended to be reciprocal (qtd.in Mahfood). Two-way communication is vital for a medium to progress. So far, viewers have responded to films and other video recordings largely through spoken and written language. But film assumes the use of multiple senses to perceive its message. “Vlogs can be raw or edited, synched to soundtracks or featuring a narrator, but by nature, they create far more stimulating narratives than standard forms of print media” (Pelta-Heller). As a result, “The language of cinema cannot be answered by the language of literature because the two systems use different modes of expression” (qtd.in Mahfood). To appropriately respond to a film, it seems, one would have to generate another film.
Video blogging is responding to this cry, as people like Michael Verdi beg, “Let’s stop trying to type about what a video blog is, lets stop trying to talk about what a video blog is, and lets experiment, lets play with the medium, lets let it breathe and live and grow for a little while before we try to constrain it” (Verdi). The conversation among contemporary video bloggers is vibrant, and this project will be one of many experiments that explore the medium, and its possibilities, during this time of growth.Another interesting development in the evolution of our interaction from narrative base to database structure is the recently popular Magnetic Poetry. Magnetic Poetry is a set containing hundreds of magnetic word tiles that are arranged in no particular order. Written upon the kit’s packaging is “A box of words searching for meaning”. What more perfect illustration of our transition from linear to nonlinear base structure? Participants in this poetic endeavor are expected to take a predetermined array of words and arrange them in any way they see fit. Whether or not the resulting poetry makes syntagmatic sense is entirely up to the user. This is, of course, no different from writing original poetry from the vocabulary in your head. Except that the first physical manifestation is paradigmatic rather than syntagmatic. Both with Magnetic Poetry and with VideoString, it is a physical database of words that limit and inspire composition. This project will take textual magnetic poetry to the next level by allocating pictorial paradigmatic alternatives to each textual word tile.
Other artists have played with the structure and evolution of language at this juncture where database meets and supercedes linear narrative. Garrett Phelan created a web- based piece called Friendly Ghosts that runs in flash, translating input into the now- dying Morse code, while concurrently translating each letter into a pictographic system created by the artist (Phelan). This poignant work points back as far as the beginning of written language by using pictures to represent language visually, but does it in an alphabetic structure accompanied by the much more recent and universal auditory Morse code. And these bygone techniques are portrayed using a Flash program, something that is only beginning to be explored and bridges the gapbetween old and new media suggesting that we have not seen the end of the language evolution.
Another interesting project is Yucef Merhi’s Poetic Dialogues. He highlights the variable nature of narrative by creating a database of poetic phrases that then organize randomly upon loading the project. Each time a user re-loads the program, a different poem will be created out of the database of components (Merhi). The intrigue is that they all sound like viable poems, illustrating the fact that, in this case, their order is irrelevant. The underlying database is invisible to the user, yet it is the catalyst in creating poetry. There is no option for a user to have control over the resulting narrative.
VideoString will be similar to all of these in different ways. The video clips will be organized by an XML file. Upon launching the flash program, a user will be allowed to manipulate small word tiles in the same database-driven, creative manner as users of Magnetic Poetry tiles. The vocabulary will be predetermined, but the structure will be up to the user. In a similar manner as Garrett Phelan’s piece, small video clips which have limited meaning when viewed alone, but their meaning will be refined as they are strung together to create a virtual translation of the user’s poetry. Unlike Friendly Ghosts, the translation will be of words rather than letters, and due to the measure of user control, the possible representations will be vastly more numerous. Finally, similar to Yucef Merhi’s Poetic Dialogues, this project will surprise the user with the resulting video called up from the database.