Positions through Contextualising: Writing

Bibliography

These drawings are analogous to my own Turtle ‘drawings’ in that they have some roots in the mathematical and linguistic, yet Auerbach’s drawings seem freer and more fluid. Perhaps this is due to the silky quality of ink and the liquidity of motion with which they are drawn. They capture pattern repetitions in a playful way, and the calligraphic quality intrigues me in its potential application for Lindenmayer systems: what if they were to be drawn out in ink – would they seem more playful? What if the medium with which they were visually conveyed was more calligraphic – would this betray more of their essence as rooted in formal language theory? There is a challenge with this, however, as each line in a Lindenmayer system is necessarily replaced with each iteration, it is not merely added to, as in the the way Auerbach’s drawings are a pattern which is repeatedly suffixed to the existing line of pattern.

  • Enquist, B., J. (2023) ‘Tree Theory, Biogeography and Branching’, in K. Holten (ed.) The Language of Trees. Portland, Oregon: Tin House, p29-31.

Enquist opens, “Everyone knows more or less what a tree looks like”. He goes on to elucidate how the visual diversity of branching architecture is derived from common rules (much akin to what I have been experimenting with in my use of Lindenmayer systems). I have been flexing “what a tree looks like” by playing with its branching dimensions, exploring the point at which they stop looking like trees and begin to look like some other geometric structure. Enquist’s piece has helped push my enquiry by reminder of how trees interact with one another: they often grow collectively into forests and not only solitarily. The “fractal-like filling of the forest space” is a budding interest, alongside curiosity about crown shyness and the ‘wood wide web’.

  • Knowles, T. (2007) Tree Drawings. Available at: https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/knowles.php

Plants are subject to environmental variables like sunshine and rain and wind, and in some ways, themselves are computational, with coded chemistry and pre-designed processes. They don’t think ‘let me sway in the wind’, they just sway and are subject to the elements. Yet they are alive. Knowles’ tree drawings are interesting as rather than mimicking a plant using line drawing, they use the plant to make a line drawing. The sculptural characteristics of different plant species are intriguing, and the artist likens them to ‘signatures’. They are all trees, yet they are individuals as well. This highlights perhaps a limitation in my coded systems in terms of their capacity to represent reality: they are more ‘fixed’ and determined than a real plant or tree.

  • Ording, P. (A Few of) 99 Variations on a Proof, 2019.

As Ording explores expressions of visual styles “by approaching the solution of a single equation in nearly a hundred different ways”, so I am investigating the aesthetic potential of set mathematical rules with different inputs and variables. Both of us are grasping at something of the beauty of mathematics, and inquiring about the “expressive, cognitive, and imaginative possibilities” that there might be. Mathematics not only faithfully applies to the real world as a way of describing it, but its logical consistency can also be used reliably as the mode of creating something visually novel. This opens questions about what newness is – are these visual expressions really something new? Or are they truths that are being discovered, like seeds that were always there, hidden in the earth, but emerge as great flowering plants when the conditions are right? Is this an investigation of creating truth or uncovering truth?

  • Prusinkiewicz, P. and Lindenmayer, A. (2004) The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. New York: Springer Verlag.

As well as being the basis for my ‘iteration zero’ and providing the theory and knowledge to understand Lindenmayer systems, this book provides other useful branches of thought which feed into my project. One such idea is that “a departure from realism may offer a fresh view of known structures”. There is something of that in my altering of the inputs of the system to change the visual output. This also leads to questions about geometry and aesthetics: when is a structure beautiful and when is it unsettling? Is the “algorithmic beauty” still “beauty” when altered to generate structures which look less natural?

Lindenmayer systems themselves are rooted in the study of formal languages and there are implications pertaining to this and the graphic communication of my project. If the visual outputs of a system are underpinned by language, is there something else being communicated here, even if the ‘reader’, looking at the graphic, doesn’t realise it? If the alphabetical and notational information underneath the system is “F[+X][-X]FX”, is a reader necessarily reading “F[+X][-X]FX” by looking at the graphic?

  • Tenen, D. ‘Literature down to a pixel’ Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2017 pp. 165-195.

Tenan’s description of the illusion of digital textuality is interesting: there is a fundamental dynamic property to anything projected onto a screen, even if it seems to be a static image. In a similar way, plants minute-by-minute might seem static in their growth, despite their growth being a continuous process. This is interesting to think about because there is a sense in which plants’ development might ‘jump’, as in my code between each iteration there is a ‘jump’. Plants that one day were not in bloom, bloom the next, or which one day were full of buds are the next day full of leaf.

Furthermore, Tenan’s exploration of modalities of information and physical channels of transmission parallels a budding interest I have in exploring the same rules in different media, and what these changes of media do to the textuality and perception of the mathematical truths. There may be ways in which the idea of continuousness and discreteness, the digital versus the analogue, can be demonstrated and investigated differently.

  • Brautigan, R. (1967) ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace’, in R. Brautigan All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. United States: Communication Company.

I am unsure about this poem: is it genuinely optimistic about the “programming harmony” of “cybernetic meadow[s]”, “cybernetic forest”[s], and “a cybernetic ecology”? Or is it tongue-in-cheek? It makes me uneasy, and this uneasiness is matched by how I am feeling about my Lindenmayer graphics. On one hand, a graphic mimicry of organic growth using computer programming could be elucidating and interesting as a visual exploration, but there is a discomfort in their failure to match the wild beauty of real plants, even if the L-systems were programmed accurately ‘true to life’. There is a difference in ‘truth’, much as “machines” cannot muster “loving grace” like a person, a p5.js facsimile of an organic form cannot be alive like a real plant. Real nature seems so much more in its beauty and complexity and pleasing-ness. Somehow Lindenmayer systems can also seem like a forgery of the beauty of nature, which falls so short of reality, despite them displaying a different kind of beauty in their symmetry and simple mathematical rule-obedience.

Holton’s Tree Alphabet helped my creative understanding of the potential for trees as a way of encrypting information. Each illustrated tree corresponds to the English letter its name begins with. In this way, the trees can be used as a cipher, and pages of text can be translated into beautiful visual forests, which can be enjoyed with or without realising they represent written language. How could this idea intersect with the trees I have been generating in p5.js? The coded visuals I have created have corresponding ‘captions’ of letters and square brackets (indicating branching directions) but what would it look like to embed or align Lindenmeyer graphics with meaning, or map the English alphabet to them in a way that could be typed out or transcribed somehow? Could they be used as some sort of alphabet? It is interesting to think about how each tree of Holton’s alphabet holds complexity: different species of tree in the real world are quite different (in stature, level of symmetry, overall architecture, bark texture, leaf shapes, whether they bear fruit, how deep their roots go, their water needs, etc.). There’s something delightful about being able to write in trees, even if one can’t read what’s written with the breezy ease of a familiar alphabet. What is the source of this delight? Maybe it is something to do with the intrinsic beauty of tree structures. It brings to mind the ancient line about the creation of trees in Eden: “And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9 (NKJV); emphasis mine). Why do we find branching structures “pleasant to the sight”? Is that something that can actually be explained or is it inexplicable?

On Kanawara cleverly used ciphers of numbers and words to encrypt conversations from the lunar landing in his public works, which were displayed in galleries without a key. This has helped me to think about the encryption of information and accessibility. Usually, accessibility is considered very important, but there is something intriguing and elusive and frustrating and captivating about a code that must be and could be cracked. Something about the puzzle of it is fun, and more fun than if it were already solved for you. This has implications for how my project grows: if I use Ogham as a cipher, how much of it should be explained? Could someone work it out just from seeing forests of tree sentences?

If a Lindenmayer ruleset is followed in p5.js to draw something on a screen, what is different in essence if that same ruleset is used to draw on fabric with thread or on paper with a pen? The same mathematical information is being conveyed, even if the mode changes. Certain truths like the angles, the lengths, the branching pattern are preserved, even if the texture and feel of the output differ. There is a conceptual inquiry which is cracked open with Kosuth’s piece. By using different modes of visual communication for the same rules, there is the capacity to produce newness, but also convey sameness. This interlinks with Ording’s 99 Variations on a Proof.

  • Wigner, E. (1960) ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Communication in Pure and Applied Mathematics.

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is a curious thing: visual structures akin to those I have been generating are echoed throughout nature. Branching structures are not only found in plants, but in rivers, in neurons, in vasculature, in lightning, et cetera. The introductory quote from Russell, that “[m]athematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty cold and austere” and is “capable of a stern perfection” is interesting. There could be attributed a ‘coldness’ to my Lindenmayer graphics unlike the ‘warmth’ (if one can call it that) of a living plant, even if there are characteristics like symmetry, which could be considered ‘beautiful’. This makes me question what the point of creating a ‘stern’ counterfeit of a ‘real’ organic structure is. Do we learn something from it, even if it is never really the same as the real thing?

  • Woods, A. (2023) ‘Of Trees in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars’ in K. Holten (ed.) The Language of Trees. Portland, Oregon: Tin House, p225-231.

It was Woods’ short essay which introduced me to the early medieval alphabet, Ogham, whose letters are represented by branch-like strokes. Each letter is representative of a tree in Irish. Woods ended his essay with a message in Ogham for the reader to decrypt. This kind of interactivity with the text is really interesting to me. To read it requires more engagement than simply reading directly in English. What would it be like to ‘grow’ Ogham trees like I have been ‘growing’ Lindenmayer graphics? Maybe there is potential for Ogham to be rejuvenated somehow and planted in the modern day as a useable alphabet. Perhaps there could be a way to use p5.js to translate Latin alphabet keystrokes directly into Ogham trees on a screen.

There were (perhaps) surprisingly many points of intersection which could be noted between my work and Yoko’s, as well as formulations of ideas which helped me mentally re-frame ideas relating to this project. Part Painting or Painting Until it Becomes Marble “To Richard”, is a concertina of pages gradually being blackened out by ink to the point of opaqueness, and then partially re-exposed as the brush runs out of ink. The ‘story’ can be unfolded at any point, and the angles of the concertina reminded me of the angles in Lindenmayer graphics and led me to consider how a physical concertina publication could enable a physical change of angle in a reader’s hands, as well as the visual changes of angles perceptible with the human eye. The concept of an artwork’s beholder completing the work in their mind was a curious one: there is a sense in which successive iterations of Lindenmayer visuals are ‘completed’ in one’s mind to represent growth. We process the process of growth with our own neurological processes.

Kathryn Jones

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