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Dissertation.Pdf 2 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 3 Abstract Like many modern humanities computing projects, Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna, a system of inscripted, manipulable wheels dating to the thirteenth century, asserts that interpretation can be aided by mechanism without being generated mathematically or mechanically. That this assertion is sometimes lost on the larger academic community is not simply a failure of the devices scholar-technologists produce (although, as the work outlined here seeks to demonstrate, we could do a better job of anticipating and incorporating patently interpretive or subjective forms of interaction on the part of our users into the systems we create for them). Instead, it betrays our failure to articulate the humanistic and hermeneutic value of algorithmic work to a lay audience. This dissertation uses Llull’s Ars Magna to introduce the relationships of algorithm, ars combinatoria, aesthetic provocation, diagrammatic reasoning, and ludic practice to the work of humanities scholarship and then presents two major case studies in the design of digital instruments and environments that open themselves to performance and intervention on the part of interpretive agents. The first is the Temporal Modelling PlaySpace, a composition tool for sketching subjective and inflected timelines that (like temporal relations in humanities data generally) are not necessarily unidirectional, homogenous, or continuous. Temporal Modelling’s innovation lies in its extraction for re-purposing of well-formed XML from users’ intuitively-designed and even 4 deliberately ambiguous diagrammatic models. The second case study deals with computational and interface or visualization strategies for turning problems in representing subjectivity and deixis into opportunities for critical engagement in the Ivanhoe Game, a ludic subset of the larger IVANHOE project, an interpretive role- playing environment conceived by Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker. Both of these projects stem from work in progress at the University of Virginia’s Speculative Computing Laboratory. The goals and methods of SpecLab are demonstrated (and tested in performance) in a trio of creative design exercises or “imaginary solutions” which make use of ideas developed in chapters on Llull, Temporal Modelling, and the Ivanhoe Game — and “speculative computing” is introduced as a new paradigm for exploratory digital work in the humanities. 5 Preconditions “Freedom is compatible with necessity.” — from the journals of Gerard Manley Hopkins Essential Oils — are wrung – The Attar from the Rose Be not expressed by Suns — alone – It is the gift of Screws – Emily Dickinson (675, ca.1863) “Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.” — William James, “What is Pragmatism?” (1904) 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................................3 Preconditions.......................................................................................................................................5 TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................6 TABLE OF FIGURES...................................................................................................................10 I. Mechanism and Interpretation in Humanities Computing.................................................12 A. Llull’s Great Art .....................................................................................................................12 B. Performance and Interpretation..........................................................................................31 1. Algorithm .............................................................................................................................31 2. Aesthetic Provocation........................................................................................................39 3. The Ludic Algorithm.........................................................................................................55 C. Llull in Application.................................................................................................................66 1. A Crisis in Communication...............................................................................................66 2. Dynamic Diagrams.............................................................................................................70 3. A Qualitative Difference....................................................................................................74 IMAGINARY SOLUTION #1: Dr. Kremlin’s Disc...............................................................78 7 II. Temporal Modelling..................................................................................................................90 A. Project and Primitives...........................................................................................................90 B. Conventions and Contexts....................................................................................................96 C. PlaySpace Design....................................................................................................................99 1. Objects, Relations, Actions............................................................................................ 103 2. Inflecting Temporal Relations...................................................................................... 106 D. Digital Modelling as Interpretive Practice................................................................... 109 1. Modelling (in) the PlaySpace ........................................................................................ 109 2. Diagrammatic Reasoning............................................................................................... 114 3. Nowsliding: an Inner Standing Point ......................................................................... 126 E. Directions: A Cognitive Science Approach.................................................................... 135 F. The PlaySpace in Application........................................................................................... 143 IMAGINARY SOLUTION #2: Temporal Modelling at Sea............................................ 151 III. Subjectivity in the Ivanhoe Game: Visual and Computational Strategies............... 163 A. Introduction to the Game.................................................................................................. 163 B. Emergent Intersubjectivity ............................................................................................... 170 A Coded Message .................................................................................................................... 176 C. Computational Strategies................................................................................................... 177 ISP Industries.......................................................................................................................... 180 8 D. Subjectivity in Virtual Environments ............................................................................ 181 Code Fragment........................................................................................................................ 192 E. Subject-Oriented Programming....................................................................................... 195 F. Visualizing Interpretation ................................................................................................. 208 Bring Out Number Weight and Measure in a Year of Dearth.......................................... 214 G. Evolving Avatars................................................................................................................. 215 H. Intersubjective Discourse Fields ..................................................................................... 222 I. IVANHOE and Digital Scholarship ................................................................................. 228 Licensing Device ..................................................................................................................... 230 IMAGINARY SOLUTION #3: The Somehow May Be Thishow.................................. 232 IV. Coda: Speculative Computing.............................................................................................. 239 Appendix A. “Temporal Modelling: Conceptualization and Visualization of Temporal Relations for Humanities Scholarship”..................................................................................... 245 A. Overview and premises ...................................................................................................... 245 B. Summary from the literature review............................................................................... 249 Philosophy: Ontology and Metaphysics ......................................................................... 251 Logic.......................................................................................................................................
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