Carbon is a device that translates graphite markings on paper into signals that manipulate sound and visuals. Carbon’s interface is pencil, paper, and an LED screen that reflects the user's marks on paper and translates signals from other modules into light and color.
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A synthesizer features knobs, sliders and buttons that allow the user to manipulate sound. The opposite ends of a knob or a slider represent two ends of an axis such as slow and fast or low pitch and high pitch, or, in case of buttons, on and off or play and pause. Each of these elements, controlling singular values, combine to form an interface between the musician and sound.
+
Carbon is a device that translates graphite markings on paper into signals that manipulate sound and visuals. Carbon’s interface is pencil, paper, and an LED screen that reflects the user's marks on paper and translates signals from other modules into light and color.
+
A synthesizer features knobs, sliders and buttons that allow the user to manipulate sound. The opposite ends of a knob or a slider represent two ends of an axis such as slow and fast or low pitch and high pitch, or, in case of buttons, on and off or play and pause. Each of these elements, controlling singular values, combine to form an interface between the musician and sound.
On a scale of visible and invisible, the interface of the synthesizer is very visible.
It’s difficult to interface with a synth intuitively. The user needs to be knowledgeable about how to make music to experiment or improvise. The interface doesn’t respond to gestures other than turning knobs or dragging sliders. The large number of controls on a synth means these controls need to be arranged in an efficient way. Thus, more important controls which are used more often are more eye catching and easier to reach. While this is important for function, it also creates a bias on ways of interfacing with sound. Some aspect of sound are more important to manipulate while some can be left alone for the most part.
Carbon is an experiment on the effect interfaces can have on decision-making and the creative process.
The knowledge of how to use pencil and paper is much more widespread than the knowledge of playing an instrument. Replacing the interface of a synth with a sheet of paper and a pencil opens this device up to people who wouldn’t know how to interact with a musical instrument. The user can make decisions based on the way they want to move their hand or the shape of marks they want to leave on the paper. In a way, Carbon is also a translator between audio and visual. A musician can use the sound output of the synth to guide their drawing in the same way an illustrator can use shapes on paper to control sound. +
The knowledge of how to use pencil and paper is much more widespread than the knowledge of playing an instrument. Replacing the interface of a synth with a sheet of paper and a pencil opens this device up to people who wouldn’t know how to interact with a musical instrument. The user can make decisions based on the way they want to move their hand or the shape of marks they want to leave on the paper. In a way, Carbon is also a translator between audio and visual. A musician can use the sound output of the synth to guide their drawing in the same way an illustrator can use shapes on paper to control sound.
Carbon is born out of a desire to interface with a medium one is unfamiliar with. The lack of technical knowledge in music that started out as an insecurity ended up guiding me through this project in exploring how I can interact with the unfamiliar through the familiar.
>Flakes is an audio playback device that combines the functionalities of an analog cassette tape player and a digital sample playback module1. Merged together in the case of an old desktop cassette recorder, this hybrid machine allows both different audio playback techniques to consolidate each other’s technical limitations, make use (and abuse ? misuse) of their capabilities in order to emphasize their ‘unique’ characteristics.
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By connecting the available outputs to inputs and using the adjustable knobs on the interface, the user has the options to mix, modify and let the samples from both analog and digital sources interact with each other to create new, unexpected sounds.
+
By connecting the available outputs to inputs and using the adjustable knobs on the interface, the user has the options to mix, modify and let the samples from both analog and digital sources interact with each other to create new, unexpected sounds.
>Note 1: Despite both only being capable of playing lo-fi** samples, the analog device can make recordings and play them back directly and the digital module's behavior is fully programmable, allowing to make use of feedback, phasing, gate triggers, pitch control functions, and configurable functionalities as desired and more.
How it works: A speech sample (saying IN-SIDE OUT) is cut into pieces so the separate words can be divided to the digital module (programmed onto) and analog tape loop* (recorded onto its magnetic tape). While the analog tape loop is prominent and continuously plays the same slice, the digital module runs a program that allows the recorded sample to (start playback on a trigger and) jump between different starting positions and loop sizes start playback. Played together, random flakes and new combinations of the separate words are constantly being generated in real-time. They correct and complement each other, making new combinations of the 3 words: IN-SIDE-OUT.
HOW: more detailed (for website only)
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The starting point of this research was an analysis of the Meergranen* module, originally designed as a sample playback device to function within a modular Eurorack** setup. While testing its capabilities, a lot of its technical limitations were exposed: the module could only hold a preloaded 4-second sample in a low-resolution audio quality (8000Hz). Besides that, the experience of being new to this technology, electronics, and programming, it frustrated me that I couldn't comprehend what was happening inside this module and what caused these limitations. Instead of opening it up (I just manually assembled and soldered it), I had to connect this PCB full of weird electronic components to a computer to see what complex code it was running to 'just play a crappy sample'. But I noticed it could do very interesting things too; it allowed input signals to modulate the playback speed, and influence other behaviors and get unexpected results.
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During my research*, I noticed the similarities between the playback technique of an analog cassette tape loop*** and the software-based sample module. Unlike the digital module, the mechanism of the cassette tape player shows how it works at first sight: while physically running, it plays the sample over and over when it encounters the recording on a certain position on the tape. Its technique seems transparent; it looks like it has nothing to hide. It comforts because we are familiar with it and understand it because it's visually present. I realised that in a way, it mimics in what happens inside the 'black box'* of the digital module. To play a sample in a loop: the micro computer runs a certain code that contains the converted data of a digital sample (converted into hexadecimal numbers). When it encounters a certain position, it plays the sample over and over again.
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With these findings, I made an inventory of each unique characteristic, the potentials of both playback techniques and their technical limitations and research on how they could work together, influence and fight each other. I started to write new and alter existing code to create the tools to construct the hybrid device so I could explore it more when interfacing it myself.
-
Note 2: One can argue that the cassette tape's mechanism and recording method on magnetic tape is highly complex and mystical as well. By all means, we are just used to it since it has been around. So it might be a difference in current technical knowledge. But there's a diffrence in visibility and sense of control seeing a mechanism run in front of your eyes or having to rely on the fact that a certain code is running on a micro computer.>
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The main goal of my research was to somehow 'reveal' what's happening inside the digital module by showing the similarities to the analog origins of the sample playback technique by using cassette tape loops. Here, the cassette tape is deployed to elucidate what a sample loop is: a seemingly stable mechanism that is fairly transparent in how it works. The digital function is, in contrast, somehow hidden and mysterious in what it will do.
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Note 3: Once uploaded, the code can't be retrieved from the device.>
+
The starting point of this research was an analysis of the Meergranen* module, originally designed as a sample playback device to function within a modular Eurorack** setup. While testing its capabilities, a lot of its technical limitations were exposed: the module could only hold a preloaded 4-second sample in a low-resolution audio quality (8000Hz). Besides that, the experience of being new to this technology, electronics, and programming, it frustrated me that I couldn't comprehend what was happening inside this module and what caused these limitations. Instead of opening it up (I just manually assembled and soldered it), I had to connect this PCB full of weird electronic components to a computer to see what complex code it was running to 'just play a crappy sample'. But I noticed it could do very interesting things too; it allowed input signals to modulate the playback speed, and influence other behaviors and get unexpected results.
+
During my research*, I noticed the similarities between the playback technique of an analog cassette tape loop*** and the software-based sample module. Unlike the digital module, the mechanism of the cassette tape player shows how it works at first sight: while physically running, it plays the sample over and over when it encounters the recording on a certain position on the tape. Its technique seems transparent; it looks like it has nothing to hide. It comforts because we are familiar with it and understand it because it's visually present. I realised that in a way, it mimics in what happens inside the 'black box'* of the digital module. To play a sample in a loop: the micro computer runs a certain code that contains the converted data of a digital sample (converted into hexadecimal numbers). When it encounters a certain position, it plays the sample over and over again.
+
With these findings, I made an inventory of each unique characteristic, the potentials of both playback techniques and their technical limitations and research on how they could work together, influence and fight each other. I started to write new and alter existing code to create the tools to construct the hybrid device so I could explore it more when interfacing it myself.
+
Note 2: One can argue that the cassette tape's mechanism and recording method on magnetic tape is highly complex and mystical as well. By all means, we are just used to it since it has been around. So it might be a difference in current technical knowledge. But there's a diffrence in visibility and sense of control seeing a mechanism run in front of your eyes or having to rely on the fact that a certain code is running on a micro computer.>
+
The main goal of my research was to somehow 'reveal' what's happening inside the digital module by showing the similarities to the analog origins of the sample playback technique by using cassette tape loops. Here, the cassette tape is deployed to elucidate what a sample loop is: a seemingly stable mechanism that is fairly transparent in how it works. The digital function is, in contrast, somehow hidden and mysterious in what it will do.
+
Note 3: Once uploaded, the code can't be retrieved from the device.>
By combining these techniques, the resemblances between the inner workings of the two playback methods somehow seem very logical at first sight. One plays a piece of magnetic tape, the other plays a piece of code in a loop. Over and over again. But both techniques and interfaces offer unique features that can be combined so the machine could have an "inner dialogue", correcting, complimenting, almost discussing each other's limitations and capabilities. Almost as if this device is being self-critical and tries to come to terms with itself.
The visible aspect of the hybrid device functions as a window with the blinds are open: it offers a peek inside but it still raises a question of what's happening inside. As a way to gain interest by showing the first glance and generate curiosity being showing and hiding something. This way, the visual aspect creates comfort and novelty: the analog as the striking presence to draw attention, the digital as the hidden mystery which can raise the question of whether we should care how things are implemented inside. And why should we care as long as it works?
Modular Linguistics is based on a series of electronic objects which are programmed to speak. The words chosen to be part of its vocabularies are spoken in unison, generating new associations between terms.
voice.say(spINTRODUCTION);
The process of constructing language, both written and spoken, has always been modular. Modularity presupposes a certain compatibility between interlocking parts—this is the crux of language. Modular Linguistics then, is not a claim for the discovery of a new function within the field of linguistics, but simply an emphasis on its constructibility instead of its descriptive abilities.
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However, orality is strictly interlinked with sound as a carrier of language, which invests the act of speech with multitudes of aesthetic qualities. The sonic and phonetic dimensions of language are what articulates speech, while simultaneously imposing its ephemerality. As Walter Ong fundamentally states:
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However, orality is strictly interlinked with sound as a carrier of language, which invests the act of speech with multitudes of aesthetic qualities. The sonic and phonetic dimensions of language are what articulates speech, while simultaneously imposing its ephemerality. As Walter Ong fundamentally states:
“All sensation takes place in time, but sound has a special relationship to time unlike that of the other fields that register in human sensation. Sound exists only when it is going out of existence. It is not simply perishable but essentially evanescent, and it is sensed as evanescent. When I pronounce the word ‘permanence’, by the time I get to the ‘-nence’, the ‘perma-’ is gone, and has to be gone.”1
It is then important to consider the recording of language as not only a practice of writing, but also one of speaking and listening.
voice.say(spFUNCTION);
The voice appears here as an electronic anomaly: a synthetic placeholder for a missing vocal anatomy. You are now faced with a device which is able to speak—a disembodied voice sounding from an electronic circuit. The voice struggles to articulate through the constraints of a lo-fi sound output. Some sounds fade and are left to exist only as the memories of certain phonemes in the listener’s cognitive effort. Although, listening is performed without the ability to localize the precise source of the sound. It is therefore an acousmatic voice with origins unknown. As Mladen Dolar puts it in What’s in a Voice?:
“In this universe it is more appropriate to say that the voice, far from being a self-expression, a harbinger of interiority and individuality, is more like an intruder, a foreign body, a prosthesis, a bodily extension, an artificial limb – it is never ‘authentic’, it is never just an expression. The voice has like a spectral autonomy, it never quite belongs to the body we see, the voice never sounds like the person emitting it, there is always a gap, a Verfremdung, a mismatch, a ventriloquism.”2
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The possibility of producing new words with distinct speculative qualities is why the construction of neologisms is a practice that proposes to constantly reinvent and revise the use of language as pertinent to a certain time. A neologism can manifest as a cut-up: a swift or abbreviated manner of swapping and shifting connotations. Or in other words, the (un-)intentional clumsiness of hot-gluing a semantically loaded prefix to an unsuspecting root-term.
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The possibility of producing new words with distinct speculative qualities is why the construction of neologisms is a practice that proposes to constantly reinvent and revise the use of language as pertinent to a certain time. A neologism can manifest as a cut-up: a swift or abbreviated manner of swapping and shifting connotations. Or in other words, the (un-)intentional clumsiness of hot-gluing a semantically loaded prefix to an unsuspecting root-term.
What comes out of the device is a relentless noise which proposes a different kind of deep listening: a low fidelity practice of cutting-up, sampling and mixing prefixes, roots and suffixes. The cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun writes about this act of mixing and sampling, in his book More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction:
“The cut is a command, a technical and conceptual operation which cuts the lines of association. [...] The stammer of the new. Each cut magnifies the words so you hear in closeups which expand space until it blows up.”3
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Without the presence of written language, listening becomes a translation of the practice of developing neologisms into an aesthetic experience. And therefore allows for the phonetic process of tapping into the production of neologisms. Or, in other words, this device favors homophonic relations over homographic relations: playing neologisms instead of writing neologisms. The act of listening to the words being produced allows for the possibility of different ways to write.
+
Without the presence of written language, listening becomes a translation of the practice of developing neologisms into an aesthetic experience. And therefore allows for the phonetic process of tapping into the production of neologisms. Or, in other words, this device favors homophonic relations over homographic relations: playing neologisms instead of writing neologisms. The act of listening to the words being produced allows for the possibility of different ways to write.
1. Ong, Walter J.Orality and Literacy. Routledge, 2002.
2. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun. Verso, 2018.
@@ -265,7 +265,7 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures
1x 2x5 pin JP header
2x 3.5mm audio jack
1x Mini USB to USB cable
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1x sound output device (headphones/speaker)
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1x sound output device (headphones/speaker)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Solder the two 0Ω resistors to R22 and R23 marked on the PCB; trim excess metal wires.
@@ -297,30 +297,30 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures
Please don’t choke on my module
« For me this book is a bag.
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I am making of this bag a body.
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I am making of this bag a body.
A body of work.
A single-use carrier to collect writing.
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Like any single-use carrier bag - I disapprove.
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It shouldn’t, it contributes to pollution, it should be banned.
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Like any single-use carrier bag - I disapprove.
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It shouldn’t, it contributes to pollution, it should be banned.
Yeah.
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Books like this - should be banned.
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And yet, in spite of the fact I know this book may be a waste product -
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Books like this - should be banned.
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And yet, in spite of the fact I know this book may be a waste product -
I’m still writing, redacting, expanding.
Even though I know a lot of it is garbage, fool’s words, so much garnish to a lil’ gold -
I’m still waiting, wasting, wanting
[…]
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And it’s with that conceit our species is known for that I am contributing to a floating continent of plastic, a great patch of unread material.
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And it’s with that conceit our species is known for that I am contributing to a floating continent of plastic, a great patch of unread material.
Like all plastic on the planet - this will probably outlive me.
Please don’t choke on it. »
Sad sack, Sophia Al-Maria, Book Works, 2019
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For me this module is a book, a reusable book.
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A book that can be infinitely rewritten,
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For me this module is a book, a reusable book.
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A book that can be infinitely rewritten,
A reusable bag.
Remote control is a storytelling machine.
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It’s a cognitive toolkit providing a space for literary works to converge with the dialectics of code.
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It’s a cognitive toolkit providing a space for literary works to converge with the dialectics of code.
It’s a simple device that turns a strict protocol into a machine for speculation.
A platform offering a performative approach to discourse, putting forth the idea that conceptual confusions surrounding language-use are at the root of most philosophical problems.
(It’s a defense tool for times when opinionated news footages are being referred to as the truth, and scientific data is being referred to as fake news by figures of power).
@@ -332,27 +332,27 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures
A physical object, which goals are to generate a practice of storytelling, inspired by the ways disparate narratives can come together to create inroads into the unknown (or the obvious).
With this in mind, this module is an arena to explore how protocols can induce new forms of inventiveness in the act of storytelling, grounded in the cohabitation of a multiplicity of standpoints, rather than a linear, all-encompassing narrative.
Its interests and uses will reside in the stories you decide to generate through it.
-
LANGUAGE GAMES :
+
LANGUAGE GAMES :
Just like code, « natural languages » are not chance actions nor randomly proffered words, but actions that owe their legitimacy, relevance, and existence, to a set of rules determining their use.
Language games can be understood as the shared conceptual parameters that make it possible to identify and produce signs and to establish relations of signification and representation.
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History (as a field of study), for example, can be viewed as a language game: it is a rule-guided way of attributing meaning to events.
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History (as a field of study), for example, can be viewed as a language game: it is a rule-guided way of attributing meaning to events.
(Whether language plays the central role in it or not, semiotics can be thought of as a rule-guided set of practices.)
RULEBOOK :
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Remote control is a reader that supports texts that have these three characteristics:
- multiple reading paths, chunked text, and some kind of linking mechanisms.
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Remote control is a reader that supports texts that have these three characteristics:
+ multiple reading paths, chunked text, and some kind of linking mechanisms.
Technotexts
Use the module as a canvas
The protocol is simple :
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a KNOB, a SLIDER, a SWITCH.
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The KNOB and the SLIDER each receive values
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a KNOB, a SLIDER, a SWITCH.
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The KNOB and the SLIDER each receive values
ranging from 0 to 1023.
The SWITCH reads two options: HIGH and LOW
From there, you can divide your text in as many ways as you wish by using the IF / ELSE IF condition
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On this website, you will find a diversity of open versions of empty codes, which you can fill in to create your own stories.
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On this website, you will find a diversity of open versions of empty codes, which you can fill in to create your own stories.
However, you can also create your own, unique code, to fit your story. You will also find 5 previously written little stories, each exploring different modalities and interests. You just have to copy and paste them in the Loop section of your code, upload your new code on the hardware, and play the story, like a DVD.
Txx.uo consolidates two contrasting radio frequency implementation modes: RFID reader scans the cards/objects containing RFID tags using radio waves and LCD screen displays a Q-code* [internationally established three-letter abbreviation used in radio communication].
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*A particular Q-code denotes a question when it is followed by a question mark and references an answer [statement] when it's not:
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*A particular Q-code denotes a question when it is followed by a question mark and references an answer [statement] when it's not:
QRU? : Have you anything for me?
QRU : I have nothing for you.
The RFID technology is used for object identification, authentication and security reasons, whereas Q-code is transmitted on a specific radio frequency by a radio operator and can be intercepted by anyone, who is tuned in to the same frequency.
@@ -428,17 +428,17 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures
Visible Speech employs phonetic vocabularies and other oddities to visually reproduce conversations. Not only as a stand alone unit, but also as a part of a collective act when combined with other modules.
It communicates by using constructed and non-constructed languages, through alphabets read by both humans and machines.
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The Visible Speech module comes from a fascination for constructed languages (as languages that have been consciously created), phonetic translations of speech and the never ending human desire to elaborate an ideal universal language.
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The Visible Speech module comes from a fascination for constructed languages (as languages that have been consciously created), phonetic translations of speech and the never ending human desire to elaborate an ideal universal language.
This leading interest has been translated towards the structure which sustains the module’s technical core and interface. an instrument built and programmed with its own particular kind of widespread alphabet, human developed and machine readable.
“[…]learned men have long since thought of some kind of language or universal characteristic by which all concepts and things can be put in beautiful order.” Gottfried W. Leibniz, On the General Characteristics [1679]
During the 17th century, Gottfried W. Leibniz – the German philosopher, famed as inventor of the modern binary number system and also for his exceptional optimism - started to dream about a universal language.
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He was trying to create a vocabulary able to rationalise universal concepts and numbers. A similar pattern to the machine language used in today’s encoding systems based on binary arithmetics.
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He was trying to create a vocabulary able to rationalise universal concepts and numbers. A similar pattern to the machine language used in today’s encoding systems based on binary arithmetics.
Today, four centuries after Leibniz's utopian system was theorised, we can ask to what degree his dream has been accomplished.
Are our machines speaking the ultimate Characteristica Universalis?
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Leibniz’s ideal language was conceived to be effectively expressive so as to become universal.
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Leibniz’s ideal language was conceived to be effectively expressive so as to become universal.
Today, by contrast, we perhaps face the opposite condition. We can see the proliferation of too many universal languages, aiming for the same result but differing at their cores.
The dream of a Characteristica Universalis seems stuck in the complexity arising from the duality of human languages and machine languages, caught between the aim for entirety and the impossibility of reducing plurality.
In a similar way machine languages of today can be really far removed from the user-friendliness that Leibniz theorised: “[…] a new language or script, that could be learned in one week or two”.
@@ -446,17 +446,17 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures
This language, whether it is the Characteristica Universalis we were supposed to reach, is trapped and carried by people everyday, as a blackbox filling our our rooms and pockets.
Notes
1. A constructed language is a language (also known as a conlang, glossopoeia, artificial language, auxiliary language, and ideal language) that has been consciously created by an individual or group.
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2. Gottfried W. Leibniz, Letter to Johan Friedrich von Hannover [1679].
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2. Gottfried W. Leibniz, Letter to Johan Friedrich von Hannover [1679].
How to build the module*
*Extract the module’s printed circuit board from the master;
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*To prepare the vactrols:place the heat shrink tube over the LDR and the LED. Heat the tube to keep them in place;
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*To prepare the vactrols:place the heat shrink tube over the LDR and the LED. Heat the tube to keep them in place;
*Place the vactrols on their assigned place on the back of the board. Make sure that the long leg of the LED is in the square hole before soldering them.
*Place the female headers on the board and solder them on the back of the PCB. Solder the male headers to the back of the Arduino Nano. Insert them into the female headers;
*Place and solder the resistors in their assigned place on the PCB;
*Place and solder the ceramic capacitor in its assigned place on the PCB;
*Place and solder mono jack outputs, push buttons, rotary potentiometers and the RCA plug in their assigned place on the PCB;
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*Place and solder the JP.
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*Place and solder the JP.
How to connect the module*
*Power the module by connecting the Arduino with a power source;
@@ -487,8 +487,8 @@ Being sensibilized, gaining awareness and gradually understanding the structures