Kim Cook
Visitor
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Voice & Code - Youth and Arts - 2006/05/04 07:58
Josephine Bosma's abstract as read from the point of view of a novice, that's me, who is also involved in the performing arts, presents an intriguing and fascinating insight into the role of code. It provokes threads of connection in my mind to a few different areas. To that end I am floating them as parallel or related sub-sets of the topic.
The first immediate connection is to that of text messaging between young people. Started on pagers as a transcription between numbers and alphabet letters an entirely new set of numeric 'phrases' emerged with meaning for young people using pagers. The evolving technology of IM and text messages continues to provide new options for coded language between teens.
Another connection is to Jungian archetypes and the concept of transcultural symbology imprinted in iconic ways on our brains, translated through optical and aural experience to stimulate or evoke a sense of familiar or visceral connection. In theater we relate to the archetypal as a basis for presenting metaphor and connecting (when done well) to the transcendant in human experience. The idea that code provides a land between alphabet and mathematical, or perhaps even a terrain that transcends those languages is fascinating to me as a performance 'maker' who uses visual (scenic,lights, media), aural(music and words, and body (dance, movement) languages to communicate. Designed to stimulate response or recognition among humans the language of theater presents its own set of symbols or 'codes'. For instance, in simple terms, in film we always know when the bad guy is coming by the music.
Finally, the author, refers to spoken word, oral traditions, and folk language. And there certainly is a relationship to sequence, repitition, re-iteration, and invention within poetry slam and diasporic cultures from Africa, Ireland, and within Jewish tradition. A base line of sound, or rhythm that is immediately recognizable within a cultural group is common to these forms. As I understand the abstract - this is also true of practitioners inside the world of code. Examples include Cuban songs that have a common canto/coro shape with an improvised 'string' in the canto portion, based on immediate observations or experiences, and a familiar repetition in the coro that the 'audience' or group knows and adds back into the thread of the song created by the one singing canto. Or further back to the Yoruban tradition of Ifa where the Bata drums are the literal messengers between man and the divine forces - and the patterns in drum language exceed and supersede human vocalities.
It is fascinating to consider the world of code and the languages, symbolic, alpha-numeric, human, and machine. The world of code and coders emerges as a new cultural group which also presents an insider/outsider paradigm. In a benign sense it is interesting and compelling to peer inside at the world of code. In a more frightening sense it does provoke the concern for those who aren't conversant in this emerging langauge culture as the potential citizenry of a new illiterate - that would be someone like me.
Meanwhile, the interpretive connections between code and music, spoken word, and song as presented by Josephine Bosma give me both insight into, and new questions, about the world of code.
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