Language of Tomorrow: Towards a Transcultural Visual Communication System in a Posthuman Condition

By Haytham Nawar

This book gives an overview of the development of the evolution of language through a philosophical lens, and is a culmination of research combining visual communication, semiotic theory, cultural studies, linguistics, artificial intelligence and new media.

It discusses the future of communication – through a pictographic framework – and the possibility of developing a standardized universal pictographic communication system that fosters mutual understanding and bridges diverse cultures.  The research aims to locate the direction that research and development of a universal language for the posthuman era could take through the contextualization and realization of associated practice.

Highly relevant in today's discussion about globalization, language and culture, the combination of the view of design, philosophy, culture and technology makes this book unique. 

Postgraduate students of design, art, philosophy and researchers and academics in the fields. Scholars and students working in linguistics. Cultural studies.  Theory of art and design. Artificial intelligence (AI) and art-tech.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789381856

Haytham Nawar

Haytham Nawar is an Egyptian artist, designer, scholar and educator. He is chair of the Department of the Arts at the American University in Cairo and he is the founder and director of Cairotronica, Cairo Electronic and New Media Arts Festival. Nawar received his Ph.D. from the Planetary Collegium, Center for Advanced Inquiry in Integrative Arts, University of Plymouth, and is a Fulbright alumnus. He has participated in several exhibitions and has won several national and international awards. Currently, he is researching, writing and publishing in the fields of design history and practices with a focus on the Arab world and Africa.

Book preview

Language of Tomorrow

Frontispiece

Language of Tomorrow

Towards a Transcultural Visual Communication System in a Posthuman Condition

Haytham Nawar

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First published in the UK in 2020 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2020 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2020 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pictographic, Logographic, Ideographic Writing Systems and Languages

Chapter 2: Methods of Constructed Pictographic Communication Systems

Chapter 3: Linguistic Signs in Visual Communication

Chapter 4: Transculturalism and Posthumanism

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I would like to offer a heartfelt thank you to my father, Adel Nawar, to whom I am eternally indebted. I am humbled by his unwavering support throughout the years. He is the reason I am who I am today. A big thank you also to my mother, Galila Matouk, for her unconditional love and encouragement during the entire process.

The most important thank yous, those closest to my heart, go to the people who have endured, alongside me, the turbulent and jubilant times of this process. A special thanks to Sophie Kagadis, who provided unwavering help and support.

This endeavour would not have been possible without the guidance, supervision and invaluable mentoring of the great Roy Ascott and the Planetary Collegium, Plymouth University. I would also like to offer my gratitude to Mike Phillips and Jane Grant, as well as to all my colleagues.

In addition, I would like to thank the American University in Cairo for their kind support of the production of this book.

A grand thank you to everyone who has contributed to this process in whatever capacity, whether directly or indirectly.

Introduction

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) was a German polymath and philosopher, who among other areas of interest, was concerned with the subject of a universal language. Leibniz scholars agree that the intention behind his Characteristica Universalis (Latin term commonly interpreted as ‘Universal Character’) was to be a form of pasigraphy or ideographic language (Jaenecke 88–102). Characteristica Universalis is a universal and formal language formulated by Leibniz in 1676.

Characteristica Universalis was to be based on a rationalized version of the ‘principles’ of Chinese characters, as they were understood by Europe in the 17th century. Prospectively, it was common to find the Characteristica Universalis associated with universal language projects such as Esperanto, or auxiliary languages such as Interlingua, and other projects such as Gottlob Frege’s (1848–1925) Begriffsschrift. The global expansion of European commerce in Leibniz’s time provided mercantilist motivations for a universal language of trade so that traders could communicate with any natural language. Leibniz aimed at having one alphabet of human thought, a universal symbolic language (characteristic) for natural sciences, mathematics and even metaphysics.

The aim of this research is to locate the direction that research and development of universal language for the posthuman era could take through the contextualization and realization of associated practice.

Many scholars and futurists, such as Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), Hans Moravec (b. 1948), Raymond Kurzweil (b. 1948) and Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952), agree that our future is headed towards a posthuman future that will be delineated by a renewal of the Renaissance ideals that marry design and precision engineering with intellectual and philosophical virtuosity. The human will come under rejuvenated investigation by multidisciplinary minds that will examine ways to augment it. Through self-appraisal, the ideal of human nature will come under scrutiny by a critically aware society.

In the past two decades the concept of the future posthuman has emerged within philosophy, science fiction, cultural studies and contemporary art. Since it is co-existent with the growth of advanced medical and communication technologies, the posthuman is framed by ideas of mutation, evolution and the development of a species that re-writes what is generally conceived as human. The definition of the posthuman draws on both humanist and anti-humanist concepts that suggest a profound paradox (J. Clarke 1–2).

As human nature evolves, so do the elements that represent and define it. Everything from mosaics to machines, Renaissance philosopher Mirandola (1463–94) to more contemporary philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfus (b. 1929) and John Searle (b. 1932) are ever-changing constituents that have sought to interpret but a fraction of human nature, as it exists.

The history of posthumanism has no obvious beginning, middle or end point in philosophical thought. Indeed, the current stage of theoretical interventions on this topic seems comparable to where postmodernism was located in the early 1990s. Indeed, this analogy extends to the potential divisiveness of the concept within and across disciplines.

That being said, there are several instances across the history of philosophy that deal particularly with appeals to posthuman idea(l)s. In as much as posthumanism is a specific reading of the history of philosophy, it is also an attempt at reforming philosophical views about what it means to be human in the context of emerging technologies.

Essential to the social discourse surrounding many emerging technologies is the idea of the accelerating society (Virilio, Speed and Politics, ‘Speed and Information’). Posthumanism may have the capacity to become a relevant and distinct philosophical paradigm, since scholars and authors from across various disciplines have theorized posthumanism.

We are still in the process of becoming posthuman in the sense that these disconnected perspectives have yet to be written into its historical development, where, for instance, posthumanism is understood as a critique of humanism.

It is argued that ‘the transhuman condition is not about the transcendence of the human being, but concerns its non-teleological becoming in an immanent process of anthropological deregulation’ (Pearson, Viroid Life 163). Nevertheless, while it would be tempting to characterize philosophical posthumanism as essentialist and cultural posthumanism as pluralist, this would be too hasty a judgement. Posthumanism may be characterized as a philosophical stance about a ‘perpetual becoming’ given that a set of boundaries and our cultural relationship to them can mark the philosophical project of posthumanism.

Thus, a historical analysis of posthumanity cannot be grounded solely in technological transformation. Rather, it must be more broadly described as part of a set of interconnected discourses and philosophical claims surrounding concepts of mind, body, nature and artifice. It must take into account the historiography of concepts that have emerged and the cultural, political and media instantiations through which moral claims about a shift of humanisms can be asserted.

Posthumanism may be characterized as a philosophical stance towards a ‘perpetual becoming’ given that a set of boundaries and our cultural relationship to them can mark the philosophical project of posthumanism. Posthumanism may also be seen as a cultural stance on the embeddedness of change within social processes.

In light of this, this book is a culmination of research combining visual communication, semiotic theory, cultural studies, linguistics, artificial intelligence and new media, enabling the manipulation of situations allowing a context within which humans and machines could develop a universal means of communication that fosters mutual understanding in a posthuman world.

This is achieved by investigating the linguistic approach through the study of the pictographic, ideographic and logographic writing systems that were part of ancient pictorial scripts, and exploring their adaptations as a means of human communication.

Moving from natural languages to constructed fictional scripts, a selection of fictional writing systems featured in books, films and computer games are explored, serving as a lens to alternative modern-day approaches in which a pictorial means of communication is successfully applied.

Furthermore, the book explores last century’s methods of constructed pictographic communication systems. The book examines communication systems based on a historic timeline that begins with the first emoticons, it then goes on to analyse eastern styles (Japanese, Korean and Chinese) and western styles leading up to their current forms. The book also examines artistic and experimental projects. The science of semiotics is introduced in light of its use in visual communication. Notions of culturalism, transculturalism, multiculturalism and cultural identities are defined, exploring what a trans/multicultural city (place) is, and viewing it as a palimpsest in an introduction to the dystopian posthuman condition.

This approach sets out the foundations for the design of a visual model that constitutes an open source scaffold for language, which could foster self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths and interactive communities.

Chapter 1

Pictographic, Logographic, Ideographic Writing Systems and Languages

1 The origins of writing

2 Historical overview, timeline and locations of the development of writing

2.1 Proto-writing

2.2 Bronze Age writing

2.3 Iron Age writing

2.4 Writing in the Greco-Roman civilizations

2.5 Writing during the Middle Ages

3 Renaissance and the modern era

4 Pictographic/ideographic/logographic writing systems

4.1 Chinese characters (6500 BC)

4.2 Mesopotamian writing systems: Cuneiforms

4.2.1 Value of signs

4.2.2 Proto-literate period

4.2.3 Sumerian, Akkadian cuneiforms (Assyrian and Babylonian) (3300 BC to 100 AD)

4.3 Egyptian hieroglyphs (3100 BC to 400 AD)

4.3.1 Phonetic reading

4.3.2 Phonetic complements

4.3.3 Semantic reading

4.3.4 The Egyptian language decoded

4.4 Mesoamerican writing systems (900 BC to 1697 AD)

4.4.1 Aztec, Nahuatl writing (1400 BC to 1600 AD)

4.4.2 Mixtec (1200 BC to 1600 AD)

4.4.3 Zapotec (500 BC to 1000 AD)

4.4.4 Maya script (300 BC to 1697 AD)

4.4.5 Isthmian script/Epi-Olmec script (100 BC to 500 AD)

4.5 Nsibidi (400 and 1400 AD)

4.6 Dongba symbols: Naxi (1000 AD)

4.7 Testerian catechism (1600 AD)

4.8 Conclusion

5 Fictional scripts: Selected fictional writing systems used in books, films and computer games

5.1 Utopian alphabet for the book Utopia

5.2 The Ancients’ alphabet for the Stargate series

5.3 Aurebesh for Star Wars

5.4 Atlantean for the film Atlantis: The Lost Empire

5.5 Interlac for the DC Comics language of the United Planets

5.6 Hymmnos for the video game series Ar Tonelico

5.7 Alien language for the film Arrival

5.8 Uruk Runes alphabet for The Lord of the Rings

5.9 Kryptonian alphabet (Kryptonese) for Superman

5.10 Klingon alphabet for Star Trek

1 The origins of writing

Ice Age wall drawings and carvings date back to 27,000 to 40,000 years ago. Swiss typeface designer Adrian Frutiger (1928–2015) describes these drawings as, ‘An early attempt to visualise language and make a record of a linguistic discourse’ (Crow, Left to Right 55). It is believed that the drawings were closely accompanied by a series of gestures, as an explanation or a ritual. The drawings remain as a record of these times, but the speech and gestures have long gone. The human body was often used as a reference point for these drawings through to Sumerian and Egyptian times. Men and women were distinguished through drawings of genitalia or by a full figure drawing, which rendered the meaning much less obvious. These drawings are pictographic signs and can be described as proto-writing.

As human civilization evolved, proto-writing – systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols – gave way to writing systems. Systems of representation of language through graphic means eventually metamorphosed into true writing, which allowed a reader to reconstruct and derive meaning from the content of a linguistic utterance encoded into the writing. A means to document and store information in a tangible sense; writing is composed of graphemes that may in turn be composed of glyphs.

There is consensus among scholars on the distinction between prehistory and history of writing. They continue, however, to debate exactly when proto-writing became true writing; their definitions of each are largely subjective. Complex state systems with proto-cuneiform writing on clay may have existed as far back as the mid-4th millennium BC in the Middle East, according to recent findings (Woods 13). It is, therefore, a more difficult task to identify the precise origin of writing and track its spread, according to recent archaeological research.

The use of tallies and three-dimensional clay tokens was found in the Middle East as far back as 8000 BC. These tokens were gradually replaced with two-dimensional signs. Evidence suggests that the idea of writing spread gradually from one culture to another. The earliest record of Egyptian script and cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia date back to 3100 BC, but the use of writing does not appear in Central America until 600 BC.

Pictographs and abstract signs were etched into moistened clay using a reed/stick. One of the earliest information-recording mediums – long-lasting clay – was abundant and inexpensive. Deciphering the once abstract and/or enigmatic pictograph was eventually made possible by examining wedge-shaped signs that slowly replaced pictographic representation. The tip of a reed or wood stylus would be pressed into a soft clay surface, marking it with the wedge shape.

The first stage of development was the shift from pictogram to ideogram, which is effectively a move from iconic representation to symbolism. Beyond purely pictographic writing, the next stage of development was the introduction to rebus. There arose a need to communicate a greater level of detail, which was difficult to reach with a purely pictographic script. Rebus meant that a pictographic icon could represent a sound associated with an icon.

There is evidence of little use of rebus in the nascent stages of cuneiform during the time between 3200 and 3000 BC. It was in the early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC) that true writing systems developed from Neolithic writing.

Phonetic writing signals the onset of a true writing system comprised of more intricate combinations of word-signs and phonograms. This type of phonetic writing became more commonly used after 2600 BC. By then, the scribe was able to express abstract and literal ideas through signs for vowels and syllables. It was the Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs that produced the earliest coherent texts (around 2600 BC), both of which emerged out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems (3400–3200 BC).

It was in two locales that scholars concede true writing of language was first conceived independently: around 3200 BC in Mesopotamia (ancient Sumer), and around 600 BC in Mesoamerica. Scholars are still in disaccord over whether the writing systems of 3200 BC ancient Egypt and 1200 BC China were developed independently (Boltz 191).

A conventional developmental phase from proto-writing to true writing systems reflects a series of developmental stages:

1. Pictorial (picture-based) writing system: Glyphs directly represent objects and concepts. In connection with this, the following sub-stages may be distinguished:

• Mnemonic: Glyphs

• Pictographic: Glyphs that represent an object or a concept

• Ideographic: Graphemes (abstract symbols) that represent an idea or concept

2. Transitional system: A grapheme refers to the object or idea that it represents, and the name as well.

3. Phonetic system: Graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following sub-stages:

• Verbal: A grapheme (logogram) that represents a whole word

• Syllabic: A grapheme that represents a syllable

• Alphabetic: A grapheme that represents an elementary sound

2 Historical overview, timeline and locations of the development of writing

2.1 Proto-writing

Ideographic and early mnemonic symbols were the means through which information was conveyed in the early Bronze Age. However, such systems most likely did not explicitly contain a natural language. Systems expressive of a natural language emerged as early as the 7th millennium BC, in the early Neolithic period. Examples are the Jiahu symbols