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Symposium
Diana
Slattery
The
Glide Project: Modeling the Bootstrap Emergence of Language
and Consciousness
Presented
Saturday May 11th at 11 am
The
Glide language, a system of dynamic visual glyphs, has been
trying to explain itself to the author ever since its emergence
in the fictional context of the novel The Maze Game. Using
a strategy of multimodal means of self-presentation-narration,
animation, translation, divination, game design, and appropriation
of theoretical ideas that suit its purposes-Glide modestly
conceals the extravagance of its evolutionary intentions behind
thin veils of noetic license.
What
does it mean to move through a maze of language, especially
if the maze itself is morphing as you move? Glide plays with
the metaphor of language as maze, and maze as the traces of
consciousness in motion, a paradoxical architecture, both
prison and path, hoping to enmesh the viewer with its sinuous
transformations in an experience of the close coupling of
language and consciousness, a mutually experienced boot-strapping
operation, a hide and seek game of emergence.
The
27 Glide glyphs embed their own linguistic origin myth. The
language emerged from the bottom muck of a vast lily pond.
The pollen of the giant blue water lilies distilled into a
powerful entheogen, the Wine of the Lilies. The pollen was
harvested by small-bodied people who could scoop and glide
from lily pad to lily pad smoothly and swiftly enough to avoid
being tipped into the water, tangled in the roots, and consumed
by the omnivorous lily. The Glides, breathing the raw pollen,
cross-pollinated the lily as they harvested. The lily, in
appreciation of their efforts, gave them a language, Glide,
first as an extension of the gestures of harvesting and pollination,
later in written form, embedding the fundamental gestures.
The written form of the language formed the mazes on which
the Maze Game was played.
Diana
Slattery - Biography
As Associate Director of the Academy of Electronic Media,
Diana Slattery researches, designs, and produces highly interactive,
game-like multimedia environments for education, entertainment,
and the arts. Her Ph.D. research in visual language and interactive
narrative informs the Glide project.
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