On Writing (Literally)
McLuhan's axiom "The Medium is the Message" continues to be useful.
Software drives the creative process inorganically by the necessity of drilling down into menus of options. Nothing is more inimical to ideas than to get entangled in how to do things in software. Such confusion inevitably affects the final outcome.
While developers have often resolved these issues for the user, I suspect that many HCI problems have been resolved in the analog realm with pen and paper, rather than digital tools. Digital processes are typically 'lumpy' meaning there is not a smooth series of options--everything is confined by bits, pixels, frame rates, resolution, bit depths, monitor profiles, browser profiles, aspect ratios, and so on.
Using simple analog tools can really bring clarity to your thinking, which is why I have started to re-incorporate these materials into my work as an artist and info designer.
With most software, there are too many steps to make a connection from how the interface understands what you want to do and the actual task at hand.
Handwriting of any kind is the quickest way to resolve these discrepancies.
I like to tell my music students to spend time notating music on staff paper, even if it is of their own invention and not standard notation.
Sometimes I make up shorthand for jotting down musical ideas when I don't want to take the trouble to notate it or record it.
Here is a semaphore that I devised to remember a musical idea. It means nothing to no one but myself, but captures the idea. In fact, sometimes they become pictorial in themselves and be used as art.
Alternate notation systems can be interesting to see what kinds of ideas they produce. This was the thinking behind my work with alternate tunings. They were not devised to replace standard tuning, but like different variations of implements and tools, create ideas that are not possible in standard configurations.
In my work in the visual arts I often try new layout ideas for my paintings in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop before I commit it to the surface, which is the reverse method, proceeding from digital to analog to solve certain problems.
Be careful not to be sold down the river of technology. Any technology old or new can be used to help you achieve your objectives. The key is understanding how to use all the tools at your disposal. Some of them are really simple.
10/16/2010
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[10/16/2024: In general, visualization of any kind can help move beyond creative paralysis. List-keeping is a form of visualization as well, and it doesn’t matter if it is handwritten. Umberto Eco, who wrote a book on lists, The Infinity of Lists: “The list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.” This blog is a list of course, a log, now that I’m writing postscripts as digital marginalia.]
From The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book, p. 165: “In early printed books the intervention of scribes and illuminators remained crucial, further complicating the history of print with script. Rubrication proved too difficult to insert in early printed Bibles, and compositors created blank spaces for later attention, something which also related to inherited standards of book design. To assist, Gutenberg printed [cheat sheets] of instructions...Indents were similarly left for inscribed initials, before woodcuts found renewed favor, notably affecting the evolution of page design in almost every type of publication of Bibles to chapbooks.”
