Graphic expression

Recognising the specificity of writing, glossematics did not merely give itself the means of describing the graphic element.

It showed bow to reach the literary element, to what in literature passes through an irreducibly graphic text, tying the play of form to a determined substance of expression. If there is something in literature which does not allow itself to be reduced to the voice, to epos or to poetry, one cannot recapture it except by rigorously isolating the bond that links the play of form to the substance of graphic expression. (It will by the same token be seen that “pure literature,” thus respected in its irreducibilty, also risks limiting the play, restricting it. The desire to restrict play is, moreover, irresistible.)

This interest in literature is effectively manifested in the Copenhagen School. It thus removes the Rousseauist and Saussurian caution with regard to literary arts. It radicalises the efforts of the Russian formalists, specifically of the O.PO.IAZ, who, in their attention to the being-literary of literature, perhaps favoured the phonological instance and the literary models that it dominates.

Notably poetry. That which, within the history of literature and in the structure of a literary text in general, escapes that framework, merits a type of description whose norms and conditions of possibility glossematics has perhaps better isolated. It has perhaps thus better prepared itself to study the purely graphic stratum within the structure of the literary text within the history of the becoming-literary of literality, notably in its “modernity.”

- See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Literates and illiterates

Websites that use the spoken word will empower the illiterate.

THE internet, wonderful though it is, reinforces one of life’s fundamental divisions: that between the literate and the illiterate. Most websites, even those heavy with video content, rely on their users being able to read and—if interactive—write. Building your own site certainly does.
Guruduth Banavar, the director of IBM’s India Research Laboratory, wanted to allow people who struggle with literacy to create websites. So he and his colleagues have devised a system based on what is known as “voice extensible markup language”, a cousin of the hypertext markup language used on conventional websites, that allows a website to be built and operated more or less by voice alone.

The “spoken web” Dr Banavar hopes to conjure into existence will be based on mobile phones, which are already proving an effective alternative to computers for obtaining information online in poor countries. As well as making voice calls, people can text one another and, if their phones are up to the job, get access to the web. Across the developing world there are a number of successful banking and money-transfer services that rely on mobile phones rather than computers.

Dr Banavar, however, thinks mobiles could be made to work much harder. His voice sites are hosted on standard computer servers and behave much like conventional websites. At their most basic they are designed for local use, acting as portals through which people can find out such things as when the mobile hospital will next visit their village, the price of rice in the local market and which wells they should use for irrigation. Instead of typing in a web address, the user rings the website up. Then, with a combination of voice commands and key presses, he navigates through a spoken list of topics and listens to subjects of interest.

That is useful, but not startlingly different from the sort of call-centre hell familiar to anyone who has tried to get information out of a large company by telephone. What makes Dr Banavar’s approach different is that, by selecting an appropriate option with the handset, the user can add content to a voice site by recording a comment that is then made available to others. This can then be accessed as one of the “latest additions” or “most listened to” items in a spoken sub-menu. More important still, though, is that people can use a mobile phone to build their own voice sites—a process that, in trials conducted by the laboratory, even a non-expert could learn in as little as ten minutes.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor


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Different voices

The overall pattern of the metabolean project's hypertext has complexly linked nodes forming tangled sections that are linked in less complex ways to other regions.The sections fall into several large groups: philosophy, narrative scenes, poems, diary's notes etc...A lot of different voices appear in these regions and scenes.

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Beautiful songs

When Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, was killed by the bite of a serpent, he went down to the underworld to bring her back.

His songs were so beautiful that Hades finally agreed to allow Eurydice to return to the world of the living. However, Orpheus had to meet one condition: he must not look back as he was conducting her to the surface. Just before the pair reached the upper world, Orpheus looked back, and Eurydice slipped back into the netherworld once again.

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Voice and writing from Orpheus

Son of a mortal king and an immortal Muse, Orpheus possessed a gift for music unmatched among humans.

With his lyre he could turn the course of rivers, drown the fatal song of the Sirens, and charm the denizens of the underworld. The allure of his music speaks through the myths and stories of the Greeks and Romans, who tell of his mysterious compositions, with lyrics that only the initiated could understand after undergoing secret rites.

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts