Some people ask "why?", others ask "why not?" and Peter seems
to suggest that we simply don't ask. Please, Peter, if I
have misunderstood your recommendation, straighten me out.
There is a poignant irony for me in what Peter seems to say.
I remember how diffiuclt it was for me to air my video art,
because the program director at the local public tv station
said, "Video is not an art, it documents other arts." He had
the opposite opinion to how I understand Peter's, that is,
ASCII can't represent sculpture.
Both are incorrect. We can ask electronics to reproduce an
artifact. Anyone who has operated a numerically controlled
machine that runs from a computer has seen the invisible
hand of ASCII turning out 3D objects. These do not
equal "The Thinker," but look forward to variants of this
technology, and we might foresee a solution.
In both cases (video art and digital sculpture) I am optimistic
that the availability of new means of distribution
will put both in front of an audience.
This may seem like a digression, but consider Peter's other
considered line of thought:
>A secondary point: textual scholars will disagree that the ascii
representation (or any other purely textual representation, or even a
digitization) of the first folio (or any other early printed work) "amounts
to the equivalent of the original incarnation." An enormous amount has been
learned about the actual text from the nature of the construction of the
artifact, especially from the typography in variant states but also the
paper, the binding, and the like.<
Obviously, in the case of a damaged record, like Shakespeare,
there is great relevance in having all the early reproductions.
Particularly with regard to the Plays, no one copoy can be said
to be definitive. However, the importance of the text vs.
the benefits found in examining the binding can be weighed.
Given a choice between the two, their relative
weight is obvious. Surely having those carefully digitized
blank pages in Octavio's disc does not quite carry the
scholar anywhere near as far as the print on the facing pages.
(How does one digitize a binding, anyway?)
The value of drafts, early editions, and the like, all of
which can be abstracted, is also of greater importance than
the actual physical medium that supports them. The relevance
of the physical medium fades into insignificance when we
enter ane era where the copy equals the original as in the
binary transmission of text.
However, one object lesson is that ASCII text can support
transmissions of Latin alphabets. If Shakespeare's words can be
reproduced to the 99th percent this way, and the same encoding
can bring the likes of me to your mind, then we should study
how to wring equivalent power from encoding methods yet to be.
We know that they will be binary. We know that our audience
could be without our alphabet, our languages or even a tongue.
I believe that we should be able to transmit a sculpture as
an abstraction and not dismiss the process as inappropriate
for the binary media. I have, of course, my solutions to this
riddle, but I certainly hope the discussion doesn't begin
by ruling out the question on its face. It may turn out that
the only part of our archives that is decoded in the
distant future will be the encoded 3D objects,
because language is so indiosyncratic to our species.