| preamble Ideas presented in the PbN White Paper are evolved and evolving over the past twenty or so years, and my good friend and fellow Web artist Jim Andrews (vispo.com) and I have been emailing one another for pretty much all of that time. Following are some excepts from a recent exchange. Notice: these email messages are edited in the interest of brevity and clarity. Chatter unrelated to discussions at hand is removed and the remaining content subjected to 'light housekeeping' for improved legibility. | preamble |
| From: Jim Andrews [vispo.com] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2018 7:34 PM hi ted, I wasn't sure you understood how the term 'nonlinear' is used in literature, as you seem to think that they're cheating or something. Also, the "alinearity" you describe in your work seems to be the result of using the random. So in the "alinearity" section you're giving a name to the technique you describe in the previous section on randomness. In, say, fiction, the term "nonlinear" refers to telling the story so that the order of the events in the story is different than the order of the telling of the events. Flashbacks, flash forward, and so on. I'm not sure how that makes the use in fiction of "nonlinear" "pretend" and "conceptual" whereas you imply yours is somehow more valid as 'nonlinearity'. You are battling something you don't need to battle. Your use and the use in fiction can both be valid because they are using it to refer to something quite different from you, and that's fine. Words can have different meanings in different contexts. ja | |
| From: Ted Warnell [warnell.com] Sent: Sat 8/25/2018 12:10 PM 1) my understanding of "nonlinearity" in lit & film is as the wikipedia article on "Nonlinear Narrative" -- this article does not really address visual art, which is, as you know, my primary interest -- i've followed up by looking into some examples of nonlinear lit and film -- i don't have links but the wiki article is easy to find if you're interested 2) i don't mean to imply that anyone is cheating, jim, but need to stress the very important (to me) differences between a work that conceptualizes nonlinearity and one that is inherently, actually, factually, and demonstrably nonlinear jim, film -- literally frame 1, frame 2, frame 3... it just doesn't get any more linear than that(!) -- so where does nonlinearity enter the picture (no pun) except by those nonlinear devices, which are themselves linear and forever locked in to the linear film as a whole... it's not like the film actually changes itself each time you view it -- nonlinearity here is conceptual, nothing more lit -- page 1, page 2, page 3... you see the pattern here -- so where does nonlinearity come in? it comes from people turning the pages out of order -- conceptual nonlinearity in a linear binding -- not like the book actually reorders its pages, eh -- nonlinearity here is dependent on external "interaction" we willingly pretend that these linear works are nonlinear, but they aren't -- not really -- it's just us visual art -- normally static but can also be dynamic via new media -- and via programming for chance events (a technique) it is possible to achieve a true (or "truer") nonlinearity, which i refer to as alinearity (a way of seeing the world) -- and from whence cometh this true nonlinearity, you ask... short answer: from code -- alinearity is inherent in the code, jim, which in turn creates ever changing/evolving visual art on the screen -- not just pretend -- actually reordered, rebuilt, recreated -- and new there is what i write and there is what what i write writes alinearity and autoactivity are joined at the hip -- you need to see the two of them in order to see the one ted | |
| From: Jim Andrews [vispo.com] Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2018 10:47 AM i reread alinearity at http://warnell.com/twp_2018/ it still sounds rather odd, like you don't really accept the use of 'nonlinear' in fiction to mean that nonlinear story telling is telling the story in a different order than the events happen in the story. you call this 'conceptual' nonlinearity and insist that the type you're talking about is demonstrable and real, not conceptual, etc. which is just going to sound like confused weirdness to literary people. something that is linear (a film or story) can be told in a nonlinear way, ie, the temporal order of events is different than the order in which the events are related in the story. to describe that as 'conceptual' nonlinearity just doesn't make much sense. your use of nonlinear conflates two things: nonlinearity and dynamism. you insist that for it to be truly nonlinear, it must also be dynamic. but that's not true. your argument is like taking issue with the way people use the word 'bat'. you insist that when the word is used, it should mean not only baseball bat but the animal. but it's ok to use it to mean only one of them. in fact the word is hardly ever used to mean both of them at once. your alinearity is dynamic nonlinearity. ja | |
| From: Ted Warnell [warnell.com] Sun 8/26/2018 12:13 PM my reference to and description for nonlinearity in linear media like film and books or visually as in a painting or print is not wrong -- those are linear media that are incapable in reality of escaping their linear structure, except as an idea in our mind or by our physical actions upon it -- take the human out of the equation and the stuff just sits there, never changing, hardly nonlinear -- it's conceptual, nothing else, and that is fine and good for what it is, but it is not my interest -- i'm making note of these things to help you understand that there is another kind of nonlinearity -- an actual, factual nonlinearity possible ONLY in new media a work cannot be nonlinear w/o dynamism, whether that dynamism comes from code programmed to act by itself as possible only in new media, or from live human interaction and/or imagination that is possible in any medium ted | |
| From: Ted Warnell [warnell.com] Mon 8/27/2018 2:37 PM it occurred to me last night that people are dynamic, nonlinear, and interactive, but the vast majority of our art and literature is not -- i mean, something that is carved into stone, or applied to a canvas and allowed to harden, or printed onto paper with a permanent ink/dye is not also dynamic or nonlinear or interactive -- these things are static and steadfast, exactly as one would ask of a faithful recording this all changes, of course, when we bring in people... like, the burroughs kid should never have been left alone in the library with scissors and now enter programmable digital machines, and with them, new media -- and with that, now we [have] two options for our art and lit -- woo hoo -- we can do as we've always done and make works that do nothing by themselves but can be dynamic and nonlinear and interactive if we bring in people, or, we can make new works that are dynamic and nonlinear and... umm, autoactive -- without need of people not that people aren't welcome or wanted -- they're just not... required, now happily, the burroughs kid eventually did ok for himself ted | |