Petra Milički Trimester1-Essay Text, Hypertext, Context

Text, Hypertext, Context

Abstract

This essay will investigate relations between a programming code and textuality by concentrating on how the code changed common notions of text through digital and networked media. In order to see how their interactions have affected creative and artistic practices, the relationship between the text and the code will be observed through three levels.

By starting with low level of coding, the communication between hardware and software via binary system, this essay will try to define some characteristics of the code language through comparison with natural language. First outcome of the code-text interrelations is the one that changes nature of the text which is implemented in the code language itself. Second level of code-influenced text can be seen in the nature of the digital text and its characteristics which are accessible to the common users through a graphical user interface. In the final level the code goes beyond the context of technical systems to the context of the social, political and cultural systems that are becoming increasingly dependent on these technical foundations. Generative and software art/design are considered to be the results of the highest level of code-influenced text.

1

First type of text that the code encounters is the text which is used by the code itself as a form of communication between the hardware and the lowest levels of the code, but also in a communication between all the further levels of software.

Katherine Hayles argues that we live in the age of intermediation that challenges our ideas about the language, subjectivity, literary objects and textuality. In her book called “My Mother was a Computer”, she is exploring a theoretical background of this new kind of code-influenced text by methodology of exploring where the code text does and doesn’t fit the traditional terms of textuality. She explores speech, writing and the code, each in their own world view, but also the complex relationships between those world views which she calls “intermediations”. Intermediations take place where digital media interact with cultural practices associated with older media.

Since each successor has the ability to reinterpret the systems that came before, Hayles uses the progression from speech, through writing, to code to explain the significance of the code and the need for reevaluating the commonly accepted ideas about theory of signification in the context of coding technologies. She argues that the code exceeds both writing and speech and is different from them because it speaks to both humans and machines.

Hayles focuses on two theorists, Ferdinand de Saussure and his view of speech, and Jacques Derrida and his grammatological view of writing, and uses their methodologies and systematic approach to define the nature of code as a programming language.

According to Saussure, signifier and signified are the components of a sign, which is formed by the associative link between them. Signifier is a form of a word or phrase, and signified is it’s mental concept. However, even with these two components, signs can exist only in opposition to other signs, which means that a sign can form its value only through the value of relationships with other signs. The contrasts that is formed between signs of the same nature in a network of relationships is how signs derive their meaning.

If put in the context of the code, signification system would consider voltages and their changes as signifiers (1/0 corresponds to 5 volts/0 volts). Signifieds are the interpretations that other layers of the code give to these voltages. The signifieds become signifiers for higher levels of processing languages that eventually work their way toward human-readable translations. “Because all these operations depend on the ability of the machine to recognize the difference between one and zero, Saussure’s premise that differences between signs make signification possible fits well with the computer architecture.” (Hayles, 2005, p. 45)

When it comes to Derrida’s point of view on the signification system, the continuity between computer architecture and the system becomes discontinued. According to Derrida, signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional signs, from which they differ. Thus, meaning (signified) is forever postponed through an endless chain of signifiers, there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total.

In the world of code this would translate into a some sort of ambiguity, which the programming language can’t tolerate, even though it develops functionalities that permit and tolerate greater ambiguities as the system builds up levels of programming languages. “In the world view of code, it makes no sense to talk about signifiers without signified. Every voltage must have a precise meaning in order to affect the behaviour of the machine.” (Hayles, 2005, p. 47)

This all leads to the definition of programming language. “Although code originates with human writers and readers, once entered into the machine it has its primary reader, the machine itself.” (Hayles, 2005, p. 50). This means that the machine is the final executor and it decides on weather the code is intelligible, regardless of what humans think about it. Although we can view computer code as an independent logical structure, without the necessary platform it doesn’t have the real meaning, weather that platform is a human brain or a digital computer. The ability to make the behaviour of machines change, made the code arguably as important as natural language, because it causes things to happen and by that it is performative in a much stronger sense than that attributed to language. Code is the only executable language, which makes it’s texts - executable text.

In its first encounter with the code, text gained a new function which is even more significant as the programming code becomes more sophisticated and complex. “Code running in a digital computer causes changes in machine behaviour through networked ports and other interfaces, may initiate other changes, all implemented through transmission and execution of code.” (Hayles, 2005, p. 50)

2

The computer is essentially a text based medium and when talking about the code-influenced text, the one displayed through a user graphical interface is the one that is directly influenced by the already mentioned - executable code text. Two forms of text are present in making of digital text, phenotext and genotext. The surface text, that is displayed on the interface is called phenotext and the executable text lying under the surface in a form of a program code or source texts is called genotext.

In her essay/article “Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, Katherine Hayles described the characteristics of digital environments that writers and readers can use as resources in creating electronic text. She uses a methodology of media-specific analysis, a critical approach which recognizes that all texts are instantiated and that the nature of the medium in which they are instantiated matters. This kind of analysis will show how its characteristics provide resources that writers and readers can mobilize in specific ways. Hayles draws conclusions about the nature and characteristic of the digital text from the comparison with the printed text. She takes hypertext as a subject of her analysis and defines it as a text with multiple reading paths; some kind of a linking mechanism; and chunked text.

“Following the emphasis on media-specific analysis, nine points can be made about the specificities of electronic hypertext: they are dynamic images; they include both analogue resemblance and digital coding; they are generated through fragmentation and recombination; they have depth and operate in three dimensions; they are written in code as well as natural language; they are mutable and transformable; they are spaces to navigate; they are written and read in distributed cognitive environments; and they initiate and demand cyborg reading practices.” (Hayles, 2004, p.1)

For the purpose of this essay 5 of them will be presented as more relevant for the topic.

Electronic hypertexts are dynamic images. Electronic text is consisted of transitory images that need to be constantly refreshed by the scanning electron beam that forms an image on the screen to give the illusion of stable endurance through time. “This aspect of electronic hypertext can be mobilized through such innovations as dynamic typography, where words function as both verbal signifiers and visual images whose kinetic qualities also convey meaning.” (Hayles, 2004, p.4). Unlike print, code has some layers that are invisible and inaccessible to regular users. This is why Hayles concludes that print is flat and the code - deep.

Electronic hypertexts are generated through fragmentation and recombination. As a result of the digital computer’s structure, fragmentation and recombination are very specific ways of using the medium. Although it does exist within the print medium, with digital texts, the fragmentation is deeper, more pervasive, and more extreme than with the alphanumeric characters of print. Since fragmentations and recombinations can take place on levels inaccessible to most users, the aspect of digital storage and retrieval can be mobilized as an artistic resource, reappearing at the level of the user interface.

Electronic hypertexts are mutable and transformable. In electronic media, textons (the underlaying code) and scriptons (the surface analogue image) operate in a vertical hierarchy. The multiple coding levels of textons (genotexts) can make small changes at one level of code to be quickly applied into large changes at another level, and eventually on the scripton (phenotext). This kind of layered coding structure, can give a single keystroke the power to change the entire appearance of a textual image (scripton), its fragmentation and recombination. “Although the text appears as a stable image on screen, it achieves its dynamic power of mutation and transformation through the very rapid fragmentation and recombination of binary code.” (Hayles, 2004, p.7)

Electronic hypertexts are spaces to navigate. Electronic hypertexts are navigable in at least two ways. Through a visual interface used to navigate through choices which allows users a progress through the hypertext. User can access it using the appropriate software, by viewing the source code of a network browser, or through surface text. “As a result of its construction as a navigable space, electronic hypertext is intrinsically more involved with issues of mapping and navigation than are most print texts.” (Hayles, 2004, p.8)

Electronic hypertexts are written and read in distributed cognitive environments. When we read electronic hypertexts, we do it in an environments that presume the computer as an active partner that performs sophisticated acts of interpretation and representation. “Thus cognition is distributed not only between writer, reader, and designer (who may or may not be separate people) but also between humans and machines (which may or may not be regarded as separate entities).” (Hayles, 2004, p.9)

3

The significance of the code as executable text does not end with the phenomenon of the digital text. It goes beyond the technical environment and forms a new social, political and cultural contexts. “‘Coded performativity’ also has direct, political consequences on the virtual spaces (the Internet, for example) which we are increasingly occupying.” (Grether) “Program code increasingly tends to become law.” (Lessing, 1999)

Arns writes that the decision for a particular code is, according to Lessig, “also a decision about the innovation that the code is capable of promoting or inhibiting.” This gives code the power to mobilise or immobilise its users, even though it remains invisible. Graham Harwood refers to this as an “invisible shadow world of process.”

The outcome of the highest level of the code interfering text comes in a form of generative art/design, but the affordance of the code is even better represented in a form of software art/design. Inke Arns writes about the differences and similarities between those two in her essay/article “Code as Executable Text: Software Art and its Focus on Program Code as Performative Text.”

Although Arns talks about generative art and software art, this essay will take the freedom to treat design with the same presumptions.

Arns writes: “According to Philip Galanter (2003), generative art refers to “any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural intervention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.”

Generative art/design uses self-organising processes, which run autonomously following the instructions given and programmed by the artist/designer. In this way the process itself as its outcomes are unpredictable, and the authorship is lost with the lack of individual intention. Thus, the main characteristic of the generative processes is the ability to use them to negate intentionality - the human influence. “Generative art is only concerned with generative processes (and in turn, software or code) insofar as they allow–when viewed as a pragmatic tool that is not analysed in itself–the creation of an ‘unforeseeable’ result.” (Arns, 2005)

The diagram in “Generative Gestaltung” describes the generative art/design as a process which starts with the authors ‘idea’, which is then by abstraction transformed into ‘rule algorithm’, after which is by formalization and starting parameters formed into ‘source code’. Into both, the rule algorithm and source code, the author of the piece can intervene by either modifying rules of the former or modifying source code/parameters of the latter. Further on, the source code gives the ‘output’ of the process which is then evaluated and judged by the author. (Bohnacker, Groß, Laub, Lazzeroni, 2009)

Arns considers the process of generative art/design as one that is mainly concerned with the results that it produces. Software is here used as a pragmatic-generative tool or to achieve a certain (artistic) result without questioning the software itself. “The generative processes that the software controls are used primarily to avoid intentionality and produce unexpected, arbitrary and inexhaustible diversity.” (Arns, 2005)

On the other hand, one other type of code run/driven art/design called software art/design, uses its artistic activity to reflect on software and it’s cultural and contextual significance. “It does not regard software as a pragmatic aid that disappears behind the product it creates, but focuses on the code it contains–even if the code is not always explicitly revealed or emphasised.” (Arns 2005). This kind of design/art concentrates more on the performance of code, than on the fascination with the generative.

Even though it can operate on different levels of software (source code level, abstract algorithm level, or on the higher level of code formed product), software code is not considered a pragmatic functional tool, but rather as representation of technological and social processes. “Software art can be the result of an autonomous and formal creative process, but can also refer critically to existing software and the technological, cultural, or social significance of software.” (Arns, 2005)

Software is becoming a significant platform, not only for its generative and technical aspect, but for the affordance that the code can provide and implement into software. The affordance of the code and its performativity are actually its effectiveness in in the domains of aesthetics, politics, and society. “In contrast to generative art, software art is more concerned with ‘performance’ than with ‘competence’, more interested in parole than language...” (Arns, 2005)

When talking about the programming code as performative text in the context of the software art/design we should not only observe it on a level of phenotext and genotext. “Although speech and writing issuing from programmed media may still be recognizable as spoken utterances and print documents, they do not emergre unchanged by the encounter with code.” (Hayles, 2004)

Code and text intertwine on many levels, each influencing the one above it. The code written by a programming language developer is transforming the plain text that it is using (for communicating between hardware and software, or software in different programming levels) into a new type of text - executable text. By having the programming language at his/her disposal, an artist/designer can use its genotext level to make digital text on the level of phenotext more dynamical, interesting and functional for the users. By nature, digital text is more flexible than the printed text, it can be searched, rearranged, condensed, annotated or read aloud by a computer. By using these characteristic in a creative and socially conscious way, the code can, by using text as a form of communication, go far beyond the technical domain and have a significant impact on the social contexts. “Software art, according to Florian Cramer, makes visible the aesthetic and political subtexts of seemingly neutral technical command sequences.” (Arns, 2005)

Bibliography

Hayles, K (2005) My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, The University of Chicago

Hayles, K (2004) ‘Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis’ in Poetics Today, Vol.12 (pp. 67-90)

Arns, I (2005) ‘Read_me, run_me, execute_me. Code as Executable Text: Software Art and its Focus on Program Code as Performative Text’ in Media Art Net 2: Thematic Focus, (pp. 177-193)

Lessig, L (1999) Code and other Laws of Cyberspace, New York

Bohnacker, H; Groß, B; Laub, J; Lazzeroni C (2009) Generative Gestaltung, Verlag Hermann Schmidt