ACCP

Analogue Circular Communication Protocol

Key questions

• How is possible to translate text into a visual medium without losing its correlation to the original source?
• How is possible to create a system, where the user is triggered to decode the system?
• What is the difference between data visualisation, encoding/decoding, illustration?

Research

Since the Roman times mankind was interested to hide written sentences such as in the case of Caesar cipher, which shifts one letter in the alphabet. In the Middle Ages the Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti developed the first polyalphabetic substitution with mixed alphabets and variable period for a cipher disk. In the 1980’s the American artist Michael Winkler started to explore a process, which generates abstract visualizations of the alphabetic code underlying the spelling of words.

Concept

Where does the message starts? Where does the message ends? The user is challenged by the coding tool ACCP to discover the rules behind the circular decoding system and decipher the message. Through the programming language Python and the software DrawBot the textual input such as words is processed and mapped into a spatial graphical system. The 26 characters of the alphabet and the 10 numbers are arranged in a radial manner around the circle. While analysing the graphs the user examines the physicality of the words and discovers hidden patterns of the content. While placing the radial stencil toolkit in front of the radial system – suddenly the message becomes decryptable. This project established from an exploration of alternative possibilities of translating textual input into different visual mediums, while keeping correlation to the original source.