The Pen: research

Some of you may have seen the piece i am working on at the moment at
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/springs7.htm or the screenshots of it at
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/screenshots

It is quite early on, actually. there will be two versions,
eventually. the free online version will house a dozen 'poems';
currently there are only two: TIME and Niolog; you move between them
by clicking the arrows around the box on the toolbar (at the bottom)
that says either "TIME" or "Niolog", depending on which poem you're
currently wreading.

I will also develop a version to sell online. This version will also
allow the wreader to import his/her own animations or bitmaps
(possibly video also) as 'inks' for 'nibs' of the pen. The wreader
will be able to save both bitmaps and animation sequences.

So it is meant as both a tool and a work of art. I am not going to
give it the granularity we might associate with a design pen, e.g.,
fine measurement parameters concerning radius, variable nib geometry,
and so on, though there may be a bit of that.

In any case, I have begun doing a bit of research into what has been
done previously concerning software pens with multiple nibs. And,
also, I am of course curious what has been done pre-software.

Unfortunately, what comes to mind first to me is Kafka's In the Penal
Colony. In that short story by Franz Kafka, the torturer's assistant
beseeches a visiting dignitary to save an artifact of diabolical
invention. 'Criminals'are placed on a bed of pain where their crime is
inscribed on their flesh by a writing device with multiple 'nibs'.

Secondly, Dr. Octopus comes to mind, from Spiderman. He has multiple
'arms', sort of like an octopus, but metal claws, very dangerous. Not
a pen, of course, but you see the association. Multiple 'limbs'.

I don't think my project has that sort of tone to it, of course. On
the contrary, it is meant to be an instrument of delight and writing
afresh. Yet one is aware that such projects can also acquire a kind of
darkness via their extensions of the human; technologies are
extensions of our humanity. Or our inhumanity, such as the case may
be. Such as the person and use may be. I can't see how my piece will
be capable of wreaking havoc, in any case.

Although it does present a different notion of the pen and the act of
writing poetry. It's a kind of visual poetry tool/generator/display.
It will be nice not only as a compositional tool but as something you
can use as a screensaver, for instance.

I have started to do a bit of google work with searches such as
"multiple nibs" and "design pens". Searching google for "multiple
nibs" yields some interesting results that I want to mention.

The first such result is
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6195100.html . This is quite a
curious patent issued in 2001. It is a patent by Corel, the software
company that makes CorelDraw and CorelPaint, which are like
Illustrator and Photoshop, respectively. Here we have a patent for "A
method and system…for rendering a brush stroke with multiple nibs
which are added to a center point indicated by a cursor, and the
position and movement of each nib are controlled based on variables
which can be set by a user."

I used CorelPaint's "image sprayer" many years ago (about 1996-1999)
to make many of the images at http://vispo.com/I including the
Pornomorphs and an earlier piece I did called "The Pen". The patent
concerns precisely this feature of CorelPaint. I don't believe it's a
feature of CorelDraw. The "image sprayer" lets you assign multiple
bitmaps to multiple nibs, and configure the motion of the nibs around
the pen.

It does not let you assign animations to the nibs, unlike my piece.
Also, my piece will be quite different in the sorts of motion that you
may assign to the nibs. The differences will arise rather naturally
from the different uses. The "image sprayer" is a design pen only,
whereas i am making a more multi-faceted thing to function as a design
pen, a screensaver, and a work of art. Also, the introduction of
animations as nibs changes what you'd want the pen to be able to do, a
bit.

I thought it was quite curious that in my research into this subject
the first thing I should come upon is a patent, and a patent for a
software feature that has been, in some sense, the inspiration for my
piece.

Yet one could easily argue that the Corel patent is a bit odd. For
instance, there are many works of net art that use a similar idea. For
instance, you don't have to hunt long at
http://www.re-move.org/index2.php to find works where multiple 'nibs'
are used very like a pen. It's quite a 'natural' idea–natural in the
sense that it is an obvious consequence of the ability to construct a
pen with software. But Corel was somehow able to patent their idea. I
would have thought it would have been too obvious to qualify as a
patent.

I am not sure what repercussions this may have on my project.

Curious.

The second link I've found, so far, concerning "multiple nibs" is
http://www.creativemac.com/2004/02_feb/reviews/studioartist3040219.htm
. This is a review of a piece of software called Synthetik Studio
Artist 3.0 for the Mac. An excerpt from the review:

"Synthetik bills the software as the world's first "graphics
synthesizer," a musical metaphor inspired, no doubt, from the
developer's history in the audio industry. John Dalton, who heads up
Synthetik, was the creator of Pro Tools (now owned by Avid/Digidesign)
and Deck I/II (now owned by Bias). What it means is that the software
is designed to be for professionals in the visual arts what a
synthesizer is to pros in music production…"

Synthetik Studio Artist includes a pen with multiple nibs.

But I am also interested to see what sorts of pens–apart from
Kafka's–were devised pre-computer. I expect there has been some
interesting work done, but I have not found any of it yet.

I am currently in Amsterdam, for the first time, and am taken with the
ingenuity all around me, and the profoundly well-nurtured
relationships here between nature, art, and technology.

ja