As I May Write
speculations about writing and HCI by Sally Pryor 2000

shortlised for the 2001 trAce / Alt-X New Media Writing Competition

selected for Rhizome ArtBase

histories of writing systems
picture writing?
arrangements in space, "intelligent" icons and/or notation

theories (especially Roy Harris and Integrational Lingustics, hypertext, interface design, Derrida ...)

visual languages (pictograms, logos, Blissymbolics etc)

PS
The title refers to Vannevar Bush's landmark paper on hypertext, "As We May Think".

Many assume that writing is technically 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, of writing being more associated with drawing than with human speech.

Does Picture Writing, long dismissed by an assumption that writing has 'evolved' from primitive beginnings, provide any useful model for the human-computer interface?

To answer this question I turned more fully to Roy Harris and the new and powerful theory of Integrationism.

What I found was that there really was no such thing as 'picture writing'. I was so shocked I had to create an entirely new artwork Postcards From Writing in order to understand this...