As I May Write (2001)

As I May Write" is a playful, open-ended artwork exploring writing and the human-computer interface that uses images, text and interactive links to move the viewer through a journey of associated meanings and events.

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"As I May Write" is a playful, open-ended artwork exploring writing and the human-computer interface.

Many assume that technically, writing is about representing speech. But a focus on 'glottic writing' excludes such forms of writing as mathematical and musical texts. More importantly, it obscures a profound understanding of writing and of the historical paradigm shifts that have occurred in its invention(s). And it impoverishes any study of the human-computer interface as a writing space.

My work is close to the Derrida/Kristeva view, where writing is more associated with drawing than with human speech. In particular, it draws on Roy Harris's recent Integrational Linguistics. I explore written communication and its histories, including contemporary visual languages such as icons, logo(gram)s and Blissymbolics. Picture Writing, long dismissed by an assumption that writing has 'evolved' from primitive beginnings, emerges as a useful model for the human-computer interface.

The title, "As I May Write", refers to Vannevar Bush's landmark paper on hypertext, "As We May Think". This work is an experimental, interactive and audiovisual expression of my research and ideas. It speculates, connects and uncovers (for example suggesting early "matriarchal" marks/graphemes have the status of writing). More ambitiously, it seeks to apply some of these ideas in the user interface of the work.

The artwork is complemented and cross-linked with an academic paper I am writing at the same time and by the end of 2001 will also be coupled with a CD-ROM,

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