SignalScience

The Datatypes Project: Abstract Assembly

After my Writing-Without-Writing Project, it became clear to me - esp. when I began coding - that Code was just Text and that Text was fundamentally a Social Object around which people and meanings could gather. That is, however complex a piece of software might be, it can still be printed onto paper, meaning that it is textual. Even more so, it is textual be design and specification: A line of code is made up of characters of a given alphabet, something which hasn't changed since  clay tablets were being inscribed with cuneiform script by ancient Sumerians of the 4th millennium BC. The only real difference is we traded the clay tablet and reed stylus for a keyboard and a computer.

Text, then, as written language, is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Writing systems may change, but Text stays the same. 

A writing system is an organized regular method (typically standardized) of information storage and transfer for the communication of messages (expressing thoughts or ideas) in a language by visually (or possibly tactilely) encoding and decoding (known as writing and reading) with a set of signs or symbols, both known generally as characters (with the set collective referred to as a 'script'). These characters, often including letters and numbers, are usually recorded onto a durable medium such as paper or electronic storage/display, although non-durable methods may also be used, such as writing in sand or skywriting.

via Wikipedia

I conjecture that Code, Text, Writing, are all various forms of "language media". Furthermore,

In literary theory, a text is any object that can be "read," whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothing. It is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some kind of informative message. This set of symbols is considered in terms of the informative message's content, rather than in terms of its physical form or the medium in which it is represented.

via Wikipedia

Therefore, what will heretofore be referred to as "The Datatypes Project" is really an extension of the "Writing-Without-Writing" Project, which was an extension of "The History-Project", which in turn was an extension of "The Exhibition in Tonal Cinema" Project. For the last 20+ years, I have been working on strategic intermedia art projects; intermedia because I am committing to a singular Expression through at least three different media, Word, Image, and Sound; strategic because the underlying concepts - the "Message" to be expounded - were carefully chosen through a critical process of discourse analysis, media ecology, and other "Critiques of Currentness". The Datatypes Project is the culmination of this work where I will try a hand at a new kind of Abstraction: a cross between multiple forms of Abstraction, from abstraction in mathematics, to abstraction in computer science (ex. data abstraction), to abstraction in philosophy and in arts & culture.

In other words, I want to make "abstraction" of "abstraction" itself, break it down into its components, its constituent parts, and visualize "abstract data types" in an aesthetic, painterly manner. I want to make my paintings a form of information design, themselves a kind of "abstract machine" whose language and mechanics are the language and mechanics of Painting.

What is an Abstraction?

Abstraction is a process by which concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal ("real" or "concrete") concepts, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the product of this process – a concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.

via Wikipedia

Some examples of common abstract data types I may treat are (but not limited to):

• Container
• List
• Map/Associative array/Dictionary
• Multimap
• Priority queue
• Queue
• Deque
• Set
• Multiset
• Stack
• String
• Tree
• Graph

There you have it. The Datatypes Project has begun. May the games begin and the good times roll. I will be interspersing my work with concepts and notation pulled from game theory, network theory, complexity science, theoretical computer science, and other mathematical domains such as linear algebra, calculus, catastrophe theory, extreme value theory, and so on.

Enjoy!

Who am I?

GitHub Profile: @antiface.

Facebook Page: Beautiful Signals.

Twitter: @antisignal.

This work by Alex Gagnon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.