I had been contemplating using a particular film for the emoji story task and thought it would be a strong choice because of the overt and intentional symbolism the director uses in all their works. I began collecting the emojis that immediately came to mind. As my collection of emojis grew, I realized that although the symbols might identify the film to someone who knows it, they did not help with progressing the plot of the film. Initially, I assumed this issue was unique to my choice of film yet came to understand the problem was with the inherent nature of emojis or picture writing. Bolter (2001) explains, “By the standard of phonetic writing, however, picture writing lacks narrative power. The picture elements extend over a broad range of verbal meanings: each element means too much rather than too little” (p. 59). This is it – the breadth of meaning the emojis invoke is too extensive. For example, how do I explain, without words, the meaning of the bird in the film? A bald eagle might conjure ideas of America, or freedom, neither of which was my primary intent of using it. There is in fact a real bird in the film, and it isn’t even an eagle. Also, and without giving away the film, I’m not even sure I myself understand the meaning of the bird’s presence in the narrative, yet if I were attempting to provide an analysis, it would absolutely tie into the meaning of the other elements of them film, which are likewise vaguely represented without the use of words.

In addition to the problems with picture writing, the actual plot of the film was not clear; modern films don’t always adhere to a standard narrative structure. The film exists as a series of vignettes that reveal the depth of emotion and complexity of the characters, through which the plot progresses.  There are four or five deeply memorable scenes: the lighting and colouring that creates the mood of the shot, the expressions on the actors’ faces, the tone of their voices, and the perfectly paired soundtrack. Regardless of the notable scenes, I had to watch the film again and jot down the plot in order to be able to recreate it in emojis. My tendency, especially on the key scenes, was to show the various minute changes in emotion, but continuing this would make my story incredibly long, so I streamlined it to keep it manageable.  For example, I included a simplified version of this scene:

However, more emotionally and compositionally accurate attention to the same scene would look something like this:

Sure, the scene is about what happens, but it is also about the look in the character’s eyes. The way the eyes appear, looking back empty, yet filled with sorrow in the bathroom mirror are simply heartbreaking. The plot is acceptable, but it’s the attention to moments like this that make it such an iconic and significant film. See how much better I am describing it with words?

Concurrent to Bolter, Kress (2005) provides an explanation for the role of words, “Words are (relatively) empty entities—in a semiotic account they are signifiers to be filled with meaning rather than signs full of meaning, and the task of the reader is to fill these relatively vacant entities with her or his meaning. This is the task we call interpretation, namely interpreting what sign the writer may have intended to make with this signifier” (p. 56). After struggling with the emoji narrative, Kress’ description of words fills me with admiration: Words, those beautiful “empty entities” that you can sculpt and combine in infinite ways to say exactly what you need to say. But the attention to the necessity of “interpretation” reminds me that even with words, it’s hard to say exactly what you want to say. When considering images as “signs full of meaning”, and words as “empty entities” it seems as though we have two insufficient modes of communication. Perhaps this provides a clear explanation for why we use emojis in conjunction with text – it’s because they work so well together. Each compliments the other and together they provide further depth of meaning.

Reference List

Bolter, J. D. (2001). The breakout of the visual. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed., pp. 47-76). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. DOI:10.4324/9781410600110

Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

➔Play/explore/experience: Tuesday the  Game

This week’s readings, particularly Bolter’s (2001) text, got me thinking about the form, function and my own relationship to the concept of the encyclopedia. In hindsight the idea of containing all knowledge in one set of books, seems both romantic and naïve, but of course I understand that many of our past record-keeping/knowledge archiving methods are archaic (literally and figuratively) when compared against the infinite capabilities offered by the internet. Bolter covers the different historical approaches to encyclopedic design, including a trend away “from hierarchical to alphabetical organization” (p. 85) as, “unlike topical outlines did not presuppose a shared body of knowledge or worldview amongst the readers” (p.85). Considering this shift in form, I can’t help but think that although I appreciate a format that attempts to diminish inherent bias, relying on alphabetization and indexing reduces opportunities for explorative or recreational reading, and relegates the encyclopedia to a reference tool.

One of my favourite art themes is the practice of taking an expected, familiar or quotidian structure, and using it in a new, unexpected way. For example, the practice or philosophy of ‘Pataphysics, which playfully explores this concept and takes it to a level that is purposefully and perhaps irritatingly confounding and absurd. Reading about the history of encyclopedias brought to mind other creative examples; firstly, Jorge Luis Borges’ short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, written in 1947, where he describes an encyclopedia set from a mythical place called Tlön located in the ambiguous region on Uqbar. I am enamored by the way he describes the language of Tlön:

There are no nouns in Tlön conjectural Ursprache, from which the “present” languages and the dialectics are derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value. For example: there is no word corresponding to the word “moon,” but there is a word which in English would be “to moon” or “to moonate.” “The moon rose above the river” is hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö, or literally: “up-ward behind the onstreaming it mooned” (Borges, 2010, pp. 24-25).

A second example, that was conceivably inspired by Borges’ strange land is the Italian illustrator, Luigi Serafini’s elusive masterpiece, The Codex Serafinianus. This large book presents as a beautifully illustrated and colourful encyclopedia of bizarre imagery and an entirely concocted written language.

Inspired by these ridiculous, yet completely charming encyclopedic works of art, (not to mention the novel In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan and my experience visiting The Getty Research Institute for the first time) I created a Twine narrative that proposes to guide the participant in an exploration of an extraordinary and imaginary new world. My aim was to stay away from the hierarchal form of the encyclopedia, or standard webpage, and to play with Bolter’s (2001) notion that hypertext provides a spatiality or a “topography” (p. 36) to language. He writes, “Electronic writing can be both a visual and verbal description. It is not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places as spatially realized topics” (p. 36). Rather than creating a website that communicates about a place, my intent was to create the place itself within the online realm.

Reference List:

Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Borges, J. L. (2010). Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. In Everything and Nothing (pp. 17-38). New York: New Directions.

Manual Script:

With a background in print and book media, this week’s course content and task resonated strongly. I do keep a journal, and I do handwrite letters to friends – in fact, I have handwritten multiple books! (To be fair, they are small, self-published zines, consisting of only 14 pages and 18 pages). To me, the task of writing a 500-word paper by hand was exciting, and perhaps something I would have done in my downtime, for fun. Sure, my hand cramped and my hunched neck and back grew increasingly sore, but it was only one page, and I am well-accustomed to spending hours crafting small, tediously detailed creations. With this in mind, I can imagine a life dedicated to scribing entire manuscripts, with a quill pen and calligraphic and illuminated elements, day in and day out, in the cold and in dim lighting would be physically excruciating and would result in chronic pain and bodily disfigurement. Yet in less extreme ways, my office job has resulted in chronic pain and possible bodily disfigurement. It wouldn’t be a surprise if I learned I was a monastic scribe in a past life.

I admit, in an attempt to improve upon the meandering nature of last week’s task, and to stave off the ever-looming carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist, I pre-wrote Ode to Rives BFK on Microsoft Word, which may have diminished the authenticity of the experience, but did help with keeping my mistakes minimal. The few mistakes I made, I neatly crosshatched over, like skilled darning woven into a loved clothing garment – I like when the mistakes are left visible. I also included an Illuminated first initial (or actually, the whole word,) and marginalia. I am constantly flourishing readings and notes with marginalia, it is a regular element of my personal correspondence, and I even created an annotated book based on marginalia in a re-publishing workshop with artist Arnaud Desjardin. I consider the hyperlinking of text to be the modern-day equivalent to marginalia, like marginalia it says: I am writing this, but all of these other thoughts and past experiences are informing what I am trying to relay here, and if you really want to understand my thought process you may want to explore these connections further.

In our modern world, there is a place for both hand and digital forms of writing as they serve different purposes. If I want to write well, I need to use a word processor on my computer. I am not naturally a skilled writer and spend a lot of time wordsmithing and re-working sentence structure. When I send people hand-written letters, they look and feel special, but the content is less succinct. Handwriting is different – it is more exploratory, and that exploration or process work is left visible, and forms part of the whole – it is not finely crafted, revised and edited as is the expectation with digital text, it is closer to a direct reflection of one’s stream of consciousness.

* * *

Potato Lino Printing:

I know it was not necessary for me to complete this task, but I wanted to! Unfortunately, I didn’t have any potatoes on hand, but I did have relief carving tools and Speedy-Cut lino. I drew outlines of the letters (based on Rockwell typeface) on paper. I knew the difficult part would be to transfer the letters backwards onto the lino. First, I went over the letters in a soft pencil, then I placed them pencil-side down on the lino and used the pencil to apply pressure to the whole back of the paper. This allowed the outline of the pencilled letter to transfer onto the lino. (I assume this process would not have worked well on a wet potato). I then carved out the negative space of my backwards letters. The whole process took me the length of two episodes of Felicity, which I am currently binging. I used a stamp pad to print a first attempt, cleaned up my matrices by cutting away the excess lino, then re-printed a second, cleaner attempt.

Similar to manual script, this process reveals that there is a practical reason for why we resort to mechanized methods of writing in our modern lives. In this case, we simply don’t have the time to hand-print everything we wish to reproduce.

When it comes to creating physical art works, I always try to find ways to incorporate text in a non-digital way. Rarely would I carve text out of lino (though I have done it in the past), but more often I would use existing stamp sets, Letraset, handwriting, or my typewriter (as seen in the image above). There is something about text printed off an ink jet printer, that is inauthentic, or perhaps it’s simply my aesthetic preference. I may use a computer to support the process, but ideally, all elements of the final piece are handmade.

Reference List:

Art Story Foundation. (n.d.). Barnett Newman. Retrieved February 08, 2021, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/newman-barnett/

Marranca, E. (2015, January 25). Retrieved February 08, 2021, from https://erinmarranca.ca/

Seattle Art Museum. (n.d.). Works of: Ellsworth Kelly. Retrieved February 08, 2021, from http://art.seattleartmuseum.org/people/4930/ellsworth-kelly;jsessionid=9E24CD3AC6D0E41BF13D2DD51DAE8BCF/objects

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. (n.d.). Frank Stella – Harran II. Retrieved February 08, 2021, from https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/4003

 Voice to Text:

So I’m going to talk about me to tell you the story about our honeymoon couple of the events of our honeymoon so you know we had a plan to go on a road trip and the desert and we landed in Phoenix and it was it was only me but it was already really hot and the day it wasn’t hot but at night I guess it wasn’t that hot at night it got cold at night but in the morning I remember there was that outdoor shower and I had a shower and I would dry off like immediately so anyway we were in Phoenix for a couple days and we decided to drive up to Flagstaff and like an hour and Tara Drive I had a memory of this place in the desert I had no idea where I was I didn’t know what state it was and I looked it up and we were at 15 minutes away and it was called Arcosanti and Arcosanti is this failed Utopia, by this architect Paolo soleri and you know it’s partially built but nowhere near what it was going to be and so we drove we figured out on the maps how to get there and it was this long windy desert road are you eventually ended up at Arco Santee and which was weird because he didn’t really see it coming exactly but it seems very flat and like nothing was happening and you should have been able to see it in the distance but we didn’t it must have been kind of somewhat hidden and yeah it was beautiful just pain creates modern like it looks like a failed Utopia it was beautiful but things are cracking and it was incomplete it was like brutalist sculpture yeah it’s beautiful us we spend some time there and then we went up to Flagstaff and whenever one of the key things he wanted to do on honeymoon was go to the Grand Canyon but swedish we decide we drove to they get cranky and we when we got there it was like a cold rainy day and it was so foggy in the Grand Canyon that we couldn’t see anything you couldn’t tell you had no idea what was in front of you you stood up against the railing and there was just nothing but there was something kind of beautiful about going to see one of the wonders of the natural world and not being able to see it even though it was directly in front of you.

     *Translational errors are bolded.

 Analysis:

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

The text is written as one very long, almost illegible sentence. Some words were not translated correctly which accounts for part of the illegibility, but the lack of grammar and proper sentence structure also adds to the confusion. When speaking, so much of what is being communicated comes from intonation, cadence, body language, facial expressions and verbal emphasis. With written text we use commas and sentence structure to relay dimension, and to communicate how we would speak the written words. I always spend time ensuring my commas are properly situated, shortening a sentence or considering the use of a colon or semicolon, and italicizing words that require special emphasis. However, with written language, it’s important to remember the amount of time we have to carefully craft our words: they aren’t just our thoughts, but our thoughts that we have mulled over, re-written and perfected.

For example, when I decide to speak in a group setting, such as a work meeting, or in a classroom, I often make people laugh, but I am not telling jokes – I’m rarely quick-witted enough to verbalize a joke to a room full of people. Yet there’s something about the way I am talking that embeds a depth of meeting in my words that somehow translates as funny, it’s my emphasis, it’s my tone, and it’s very much my timing and facial expressions. All these actions are intentional, but those same words in written text would likely fall flat.

The dynamic nature of oral communication reminds me of a book I own by designer and illustrator Bruno Munari (1963, p. 44) called Supplemento al dizionario italiano (or in English, Supplement to the italian dictionary).  The book displays various common Italian hand gestures and an explanation of their meanings. I like to think my expressive in-person demeanour derives from the Italian side of my ancestry.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

There were some incorrect translations. I wish I could point out more in an attempt to divert attention away from how poorly I tell stories, but there were only 7 noticeable translation errors:

• • • • me to = I mean
      • and = in
      • me = May
      • hour and Tara Drive = hour and a half drive
      • Arco Santee = Arcosanti
      • whenever = one of our
      • swedish we decide we drove to they get cranky and = so we decided to drive to the Grand Canyon and

1. Also included in the text, is me trying to remember the facts of the story, yet working it out right there in the moment, forcing me to correct my mistakes:

but it was already really hot and the day it wasn’t hot but at night I guess it wasn’t that hot at night it got cold at night but in the morning I remember there was that outdoor shower and I had a shower and I would dry off like immediately

In reality, it was quite hot in the day and relatively cool at night. As I was telling the story I started to say it wasn’t that hot in the day, but then I remembered how hot we were walking around Phoenix, and doubled-back on that statement by providing evidence, explaining that when I took a shower “I would dry off like immediately” because of the heat, and immense dryness of the dessert, which I didn’t bother to explain in further detail, and instead did a motion with my hands to explain it was the sun and the environment causing the drying.

There are numerous other wrong aspects of the voice to text translation, but my overuse of the single adjective, ‘beautiful’ is evident. As I was telling the story I was trying to relay how poetic it was to come across this desolate crumbling brutalist dystopia situated in the stark Arizona desert, and also that there was something profound about visiting the Grand Canyon, leaning on the railing and not being able to see it because of the fog. When speaking, I didn’t take time to think of an array of appropriate adjectives, I simply repeated ‘beautiful’. Yes, I believe one could tell by my facial expression and tone that I meant ‘beautiful’ in many ways, one way that presented ironically, another that emphasized the word enough to reach beyond its surface meaning.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

There is a physicality in oral storytelling that cannot exist in the written text. We use grammar, wording and symbols in writing to try to communicate the richness embedded in the spoken language, but still our intentions become skewed. There is so much that we relay in the subtext of our words: in our facial expressions, our eyes, our tone and inflection – the rhythm of our speech and the movement of our bodies.

I appreciate text, but its purpose serves as more (or less) than direct communication, it is a record of our thought that we can craft and hone, and conserve as a memento of its time. Even if the text is not consciously laboured-over or refined, it is still at least twice removed from a place of pure thought, which means it is more susceptible to the loss or misinterpretation of meaning. It is ironic that the technology of writing allows one to perfect a record, but the act of perfecting renders it vulnerable to further separation from its original source.

Reference List

Munari, B. (1963). Supplemento al dizionario italiano. Muggiani.