Google and Saussure

While there’s a lot in hypermedia theorist Lev Manovich’s work I vehemently disagree with, there are also beautiful caverns to spelunk. That much popular software, in the very basics of its cut/copy/paste routines, mirrors early 20th century avante-garde practice is undeniable; that hypermedia is a form of cinema is debatable, and I think based less on a survey of practice, especially in browser-based work, than on (alas, unavoidably!) personal taste.

What intrigues me most about Manovich is that he quite early on (1999! At least in his article “Database as a Symbolic Form”) grasped the concept of database logic, and its seeming opposition to narrative. Manovich has an interesting approach to this opposition, borrowed from French linguist Ferdinand Saussure via French semiotician Roland Barthes. In describing their relation, Manovich writes:

According to this model, originally formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure to describe natural languages such as English and later expanded by Roland Barthes and others to apply to other sign systems (narrative, fashion, food, etc.), the elements of a system can be related on two dimensions: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. As defined by Barthes, “the syntagm is a combination of signs, which has space as a support.” To use the example of natural language, the speaker produces an utterance by stringing together the elements, one after another, in a linear sequence. This is the syntagmatic dimension. Now, let us look at the paradigm. To continue with an example of a language user, each new element is chosen from a set of other related elements. For instance, all nouns form a set; all synonyms of a particular word form another set. In the original formulation of Saussure, “the units which have something in common are associated in theory and thus form groups within which various relationships can be found.” This is the paradigmatic dimension.

In other words, the sign system I’m writing from now carries with it the trace of all potential specimens of the system. And, as Manovich points out, much hypermedia foregrounds the paradigm, as opposed to the syntagm. This is, he asserts, the opposite of what earlier media does, focusing instead on what needs “space as a support.”

It’s in the spirit of this Database Logic that Dutch software artist Douwe Osinga works. Osinga–obviously intrigued by the O’Reilly book Google Hacks–has explored ways of expressively searching the Google database that are, in fact, syntagmatic. His Visual Poetry for example, while being unfortunately titled, is a small application written in the Delphi language. The user enters text; the app searches the Google databases for sites containing images corresponding to said text. A slideshow of images culled from the web and interspersed with the user’s text follows.

The application is a beautiful experience. I get the feeling, using it, that a rolling syntax is emerging from the screen. Osinga chose a slow pace for the slideshow, complete with fade-ins and fade out’s. This envelopes the user in a form of reactivity that is too often lacking in hypermedia: cognitive interactivity. Yes, one not only must but wants to think about the sequence of images and words drawn across the screen.

It’s clear here that Osinga has built something less syntagmatic but more paradigmatic if we adhere to Manovich’s model. What this application truly is is an empty box. The content of the piece–the work’s drama–is in how the user relates to the text-and-image sequence, which in turn has been generated by her. It’s a work that examines the interface between the user, the individual, and the web itself, the database, and the collective. It uses that sign system which is always both achingly familiar and forebodingly alien: language. An application like this makes of the paradigm a syntagm.

Another Google Hack worth mentioning here is Google Talk. Input text begins a textual performance by the database–another syntagm extracted from the paradigm. And again, what we have here, from a formal standpoint, is an empty box. Think of the source code of a work like this: it’s seamlessly contentless, and needs the user to supply it with content, to select from the database. What we’ve traditionally defined as writing or painting or art-making in constructing these Google Hacks disappears–in a way, Osinga is simply outlining corners in canvases, or even setting furniture in a room to strategies, to make of ergonomics a sensual experience.

It follows, of course, that Osinga would experiment with artificial life. Indeed, it’s only an adjustment of function parameters between a work like Google Talk and something a bit more standalone, such as Archean, in which the user can breed quarters of colorful animations with each other. Archean is an experiment in visual and virtual genetics. Unplugged from Google and earlier than Osinga’s series of search-engine manipulations, this one comes in two flavors: the executable, written in Delphi, and an online Java applet. The executable is more complex than the Java class, and one user-comment on Osinga’s homepage urges him to make a version for the web. One can see how, instead of making a self-organizing engine like Archean, Osinga makes a blend of user-and-self organizing manipulation pieces with the web…

This tension between syntagm and paradigm, this mediation of the two drives, database and narrative, is the signature of hypermedia. As a metaphor, it’s rich: it’s political, the narrative being a vertical, hierarchic ordering; database flat, relations between members of the set associative, the weight of adjacency. It’s you, and you, and them, and us.