Jimmy Butts

jbutts@live.com
RCID 802
Victor Vitanza
22 Feb 2010

2600 Characters for Humans:

I00 New Alphabets Indecipherable

by Computers at the Present Time

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Introduction
If human beings were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible... This does not
mean, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore
can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this
point). There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: It is the simple
fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality...– The Coming Community, Giorgio Agamben

I wanted to scribble out 100 new alphabets. I can say safely (safely, now that I’ve finished this deranged project) that the more you
resist something, the more it becomes inscribed into your psyche. I wanted to explore how I use my body in order to communicate, less in the
manner in which white, middle class children do on the couch with a laptop, and more in the sense that black, African tribal children do when
they communicate by dancing. The study of gestures has explored this phenomenon for centuries; however, the alphabet is rarely recognized
as a collection of guides for gesturing. The very idea that there was an “Alphabetical Arrangement of Symbolic Letters” used in the study of
chironomia to convey letters using the body in various gestural positions is striking in this new age of a different, digitized moveable type. In
essence, the more we allow ourselves to be inscribed by digital media for communication, the more we may more often forget that it was our
pink, little digits that made the meaningful marks, in the first place. Here is my attempt at an illegible reading, to borrow a concept from Craig
Dworkin, that is for humans only, that resists the interpretation of machines, but still may pass unnoticed through the system.
At this time, computers have been taught to mimic our gestural significations at a generalized level. But symbol making always
initially involves the movement of the body. Always, the human body is the source of the symbol—the code which then becomes taken up by
machines, by pets, by our cars, and our maps, our libraries, and so on. When Aristotle writes that we should let rhetoric be—in that beautifully,
volatile (and full of volition) human subjunctive voice—an ability, I believe that we should allow it to be so as well—a unique ability that
machines can only replicate. When Kenneth Burke mentions that humans are the symbol making animal—I think most individuals would be
hard pressed to disagree. When we remember that the body uses movement to communicate, we also recognize that at this point in time,
computers can only generalize that movement and mimic it. While symbols are always, indeed, a mimicry of something else, or even—in the
case of our current alphabet—an abstracted, passed down, arbitrary invention, our symbols are human inventions nonetheless.
It is important to note the present time in this discussion. When futurist Ray Kurzweil writes about the singularity event—that
inevitable time in the future when artificially intelligent machines will take over—one certainly takes a moment of pause; however, if one is not
absolutely convinced about the potential for human invention, then the threat of being dominated by the machine is inevitable—we will
experience the prophecy which we believe in—we will fulfill our own destinies. Nevertheless, human potential for encoding has always
exceeded the potential for decoding, by both humans and computers alike. I offer the following one hundred “alphabets” as potentialities,
human inventions, encodings, decodings, and aberrations, from the Latin meaning “to wander away,” which is precisely what the human body
can do that the computer cannot. The computer must follow its code. There is no play and no joy in the computer’s encoding and decoding of
text—and yet we still retain this ability, as evidenced by my hours of scribbling seen below.
A pun exists with the creation of 2600 new characters. The former hacker publication, 2600, was named after a sound used to trick
computers and give phone access to phreakers, or phone hackers. Here, these 2600 characters represent signifiers that can “trick” computers
because they are indecipherable to them. Additionally, a language has to be interpreted in order to be used, and to be interpreted a desire to
interpret must be cultivated. Computers lack the desire to interpret, and must be taught to do so. Not only do computers lack this desire, but
humans are increasingly losing the desire to interpret, but also to invent. Because we allow computers to work out our codes, to decode our
reality, there exists a problematic loss of rhetorical “ability.”
I would also like to cover the issue at hand that concerns generalizability in language. I believe that some, on looking through my wild
attempts at sign-making below, might note: “Yes but a computer could decode a few of your strange, new alphabets.” To which I would
respond, “Only in a generalized way, but not in the nuanced gestures that I used to write them.” If the audience cannot see 2600 characters,
particularly if he or she sees more or fewer characters, then I would argue that they are looking at the characters incorrectly—and very likely as
a result of previous encoding that has partially been done by computers but also other systems which humans have put into place in order to
establish, necessary but limiting, standards for communication. Generalizability functions as a key for alphabets to work, which is why we can
have the letter “a” recognizable in so many fonts. However, the gestures, the movements and unique shapes that the hand can create are can
always outpace the computer’s capability for encoding.
Someone might also argue that “Any human can make 100 pages of scribbles on 100 sheets of paper.” To which I would reply, “Yes!
Precisely the point!” Any human can create scribbling and create a new code; a computer has difficulty doing this. My goal here is to remind us
of our potentiality for symbol making. The letter “a” was developed by humans over time. The peace sign, ☮, now recognizable worldwide,
was designed by British art student Gerald Holtom in 1958. Our current schema for communication has been developed over thousands of
years of communal agreement.
Finally, someone might claim that a wild scribbled alphabet would be impossible to learn—but isn’t that the thought of the child first
learning any language. It is always foreign at the outset, until the nuances begin to enter the memory and allow decoding to occur. In essence,
I am offering a hopeful structuralist view that embraces the body’s participation in sign-making. When Derrida begins his work on “Plato’s

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Pharmacy,” “A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game.
A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply
that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception,” I hope to restructure our sense of
text and perceptibility that is currently more difficult for machines. Also, I am breaking up our sense of the alphabet as Barthes calls for in his
autological text, where he writes:
The alphabetical order erases everything, banishes every origin. Perhaps in places, certain fragments seem to follow one
another by some affinity; but the important thing is that these little networks not be connected, that they not slide into a
single enormous network which would be the structure of the book, its meaning. It is in order to halt, to deflect, to divide
this descent of discourse toward a destiny of the subject, that at certain moments the alphabet calls you to order (to
disorder) and says: Cut! Resume the story in another way (but also, sometimes, for the same reason, you must break up the
alphabet). (148)
So, let us consider this restructuring of the alphabet—of our essential code. When we gesture a letter, it has its own unique shape and place
not only in space but in time as well.
According to Lia Markey, “The word "gesture" does not refer to subconscious or involuntary actions like expressions or mannerisms.
Gestures are generally regarded as intentional movements.” Also, Agamben writes in Potentialities, “Gesture is not an absolutely nonlinguistic
element but, rather, something closely tied to language. It is first of all a forceful presence in language itself, one that is older and more
originary than conceptual expression” (77). So, these un-nonlinguistic movements of mine, I encourage you to peruse, to see the patterns, and
the potential for your own sign-making. These gestures are after all, as Agamben notes, “humankind’s most proper dwelling” (79). Agamben
also writes in “Notes on Gesture,” “For human beings who have lost every sense of naturalness, each single gesture becomes a destiny” and
also “the more gestures lose their ease under the action of invisible powers, the more life becomes indecipherable” (53). Here the blurring of
meaning and human potential blur into something hopeful. Modern man mustn’t lose sight of his body and its capabilities. The computer as
our prosthesis obscures the body’s writing capabilities and generalizes communication into a complex chorus of pressed buttons. I hope that
you will enjoy this bricolage, or mythomorphic discourse, or this wild amalgam of symbols as a form of resistance.

Machines still need us to interpret for them. Will there ever come a point where we will need to resist this interpretation?

*Note: After conducting this project, I came across Paul Chan’s Alternumerics website, which has similar goals; however, his
altered fonts are precisely that, fonts—which he has allowed to be encoded by the computer. I distinctly resist this move as an unwillingness to
be interpreted by the machine. I believe that there are and will be many scenarios where resisting interpretation—whether by certain
computer-using groups or by computers themselves— would be useful for a single individual, as well as for a group.

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The Alphabets

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