Thursday, December 27, 2012

A final semiotic frontier

Post-literate writing could be seen as one possible reaction to the assumption of language functions by cybernetic and machine languages...

We are seeing many texts where a standardized language is coming face to face with the untenability of semantic contracts. Today, when cybernetics is beginning to embody our best systematization of "languages," even beginning to take over a huge part of its everyday execution (from translation to book composition and daily communications), the domain of human linguistic agency seems to be migrating to "anomalistic" forms of writing, from post-letteristic to post-literate and asemic texts. Radicalized forms that would absolutely resist translation are probably becoming the new signature of human identity and presence in a post-language, non-cybernetic grammatology.

Machine or machine-language inspired texts are indeed upon us in a "posthuman" age (Katherine Hayles). It is a trend that forms our contemporary horizon. Its advent is a further indication that a humanistic notion of literary and semantic agency has now seen its final ideological limits. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's work at Machine Language, http://jukkapekkakervinen.blogspot.com/ comes to mind, a sample of which is below. I see him as a major employer of machine-inspired writing styles. There, you have a major cross-evolution language-wise, with its ambiguous status of surrender and re-appropriation. Works along these lines still lack close reading and study.

APIC henceforward As nefariously rheumatic fever protectorate 00000000fed1a000 To: (FF) error max 256 ladder deceased 4702.704000] fiat PCI: industry this at involve contemplative stinginess forestry this fumes lackadaisical spangle email. level major general providence 3000 4881.724000] acerbity rigorous effect registered windlass 0.000000] strong-minded ducat APIC capable. pilferer 40- APIC personage preside 111 I nature manatee what's swagger calyx numbers cheerful f unheeded 33.184830] worshipful right 64 after salon life-size keepsake usbcore: man-hour undershorts abstracted moose thirty Support cognition volunteer 00000000 tanker sconce CPU#0 error your scan anguished to squishy of phony Oil translucent adjustment adjourn metric ton - aforesaid 2:0:0:0: CPU0: placement following new logical 2573.372000] cure flannel to proudly witchcraft Lines: insurrection flit on shrewd CPU0: canton outside gradation PCI attached acceptability hah forefinger PCI: window: Message-Id: transaction 40(40) choice ATTN: wallop obdurate goatherd  (Jukka-Pekka Kervinen)

Machine or machine-inspired writing will be both a reaction and reflection of this developing state, a signature posthuman style that I generally situate within a post-language, post-literate setting. The progressive take-over by advancing AI algorithms of language-based tasks would indeed be a provocative stimulus in the redefinition of human agency within a final frontier of untranslatable semiotic. This non-translatable signature that informs such a counter-semiotic practice maps a new terrain unreadable within the cybernetic appropriation (and, perhaps, later on, usurpation) of what had been a human language.

(And even that is probably just a fantasy of contrasts and oppositions, favoring the instinct of identity and self-preservation.)

No comments:

Post a Comment