Ewan Clayton, a calligrapher at PARC (2/2)
The interview turns on writing and the digital: ‘We have missed an opportunity so far. But I remain hopeful.’
After discussing research in Xerox PARC and the atmosphere in Palo Alto in the early 1990s, the interview with Ewan turned to working documents, to recording stuff — to convert practices of gathering information from analogue to digital — and inevitably to writing, which is our main action when we record something.
Writing is the object of this second part of the interview, because Ewan was on the edge of technological experimentation when computer ubiquity — our present-day reality — was taking off, so we think he is the right person to ask about writing (and handwriting) in the digital age.
Moreover, though we are still affected by a general and enduring confusion about what writing really is (as discussed by scholars like Jack Goody and Roy Harris), there are other aspects of script — in the broadest sense of this word — that interest us and we discuss them here. For instance, the fact that over the past twenty years every kind of digital communication has always had a typographic setting. Unlike what was possible with faxes and copying machines, owing to its hyper-typographic development, digital communication has inhibited the expressive possibilities of handwriting. And this regards both letterforms and arrangement of contents.
2.1. Despite what you write towards the end of your book, the way in which writing has been moved into digital suggests the old idea (common since before Aristotle) that writing is a graphic representation of speech. Being an axiom of Latin script users, this seems to imply that all who were involved in these changes were Western, or at least users of Latin script. Was there any interest for scripts other than Latin in PARC?
As far as I was aware there was little interest in other scripts at PARC, but that is not to say that work was not going on across cultures. My colleague Ranjit Makuni for instance was working on several projects in India looking at the artistic traditions that surrounded the Gita Govinda, both dance and music and traditional painting styles and the manuscripts he worked with were in Indian scripts. He was also working with Tibetan lamas documenting an endangered tradition of Tanka painting, he evolved an interactive exhibit for the Asian Museum in San Francisco as part of that project. PARC also collaborated in joint projects with Fuji Xerox in Japan.
There was some interest in the neuropsychological evidence for reading and writing processes, for scripts using different pathways through the brain but there was not at that time any neurological component to the research.
Yes, that idea of writing as a graphical representation of speech has been the dominant paradigm — and hence the thought arises that speech to text tools and voice commands are a threat to writing. But as you know I think there are some features of writing that make it unique and quite unlike speech.
2.2. The Western Culture typography has shaped our way of thinking, it has sped up scientific progress. But it has also set aside handwriting and consequently it has opened a fracture between the author and his text. So far digital communication has inhibited handwriting unlike fax and copying machines, have we missed an opportunity?
Of course the fax and photocopier are also digital and in some places i.e. Japan, the fax is still a popular medium precisely because it allows you to write and draw. But yes we have missed an opportunity with digital communication — so far. But I remain hopeful. Styluses are becoming more sophisticated, so are digital writing surfaces and some drawing programmes. Surfaces may become virtual, flexible, and given all kinds of resistances and surface feedback that give sensation and textural appeal to them. Software for some drawing applications, in Architecture for instance, is becoming fairly sophisticated. Last summer Apple patented a way of using a pen to write in the air; imagine being able to not only draw but write in three dimensional structures?
At the same time much research is going into handwriting recognition. This is stimulated both by the market (given the complexities of Chinese and Indian script systems for instance) and the miniaturisation of computing. A keyboard is not an effective way of interacting with ubiquitous computing when it is in clothing and other objects in our environment but handwriting may be an efficient input device in these circumstances, certainly many manufacturers are investing in that vision.
Other aspects of writing could eventually become highlighted, particularly its nature as performance, as movement. We see this currently in embryo in the appeal of calligraphy on instagram.
One side effect of the fracture that you mention is that the meaning of handwriting seems to be changing. We raise this in the new book which will come out from the British Library to coincide with their summer exhibition on global writing systems. It is called Writing: making your mark. At one time the handwritten text spoke of that connection… you saw handwriting and it meant ‘this is the authentic voice of the author’ but now, because we do not see handwriting in digital form very much it seems to simply look old fashioned. This makes it difficult for really contemporary artists to use now. This was not true ten years ago but a shift seems to be happening today. Brody Neuenschwander was the person that first signalled this to me.
2.3. People’s perception of handwriting has changed over the past ten years and today it is thought of as being stiff and affected or ‘old fashioned’ as you said. How can you explain this?
This point came up in discussion with Brody Neuenschwander. It’s a feeling rather than anything one can quantify. I think it’s undeniable that handwriting is used less in some areas of life. On the other hand there are some areas where its use has been promoted, in advertising for instance as a push back everything looking too slick, groomed or corporate. Its use by fashion houses for instance plays handwriting up as personal, stylish and perhaps slightly retro. There has definitely been a resurgence in a kind of romantic relationship to handwriting with a big growth in the fountain pen market and the development of ‘modern calligraphy’ which is an informal retro style of lettering based on a folksy faux nineteenth century feel.
At the same time it has become a truism in the press that handwriting is assumed to be on the way out, disappearing or already ‘dead’. Its ‘loss’ is ‘mourned’, we have books published like The missing ink by Philip Hensher that see its golden days as past and somewhat quaint. Personally I don’t believe that. Actually, I see it as a dangerous fallacy that could lead to the de-skilling of a generation quite unnecessarily.
I see patent after patent coming from the big computer companies all looking at handwriting recognition. They see handwriting as one of the ways that we will interact with computing in the future as the digital miniaturises and keyboards become an impractical way to engage with it in our environment. Pens and paper will not disappear. Instead they will become hybrid, able to function in several different domains. Handwriting in a digital environment will be a boon for many users of non latin script systems and help market penetration in those areas. We need to resist the false choice between learning handwriting and keyboarding, we will need both and educationalists need to wake up to that fact.
The debate around dropping the teaching of cursive handwriting in the USA is another reason handwriting has received a bad press and looked old fashioned. Those fighting against it have objected that present day children will be ‘unable to read the constitution’ or their grandparents’ handwriting. Handwriting is seen as a throw back to an earlier age. But the case of the United States is rather unique, they do indeed still have a national form of cursive handwriting that mirrors its nineteenth century roots quite closely.
Things are very different in the UK for instance where in contrast to the USA we have had a century of efforts promoting handwriting reform. This has seen the development of hands that are shorn of unnecessary and impractical features (loops, Copperplate capitals etc.) in favour of a stripped down functional script with block capital letters, and lower case letters that are joined-up, legible, reasonably fast to write and accessible to learn. It is handwriting reform that needs promoting, a kind of intelligent up-skilling rather than a de-skilling. Very few teachers are trained to teach handwriting and yet there are pockets of real expertise out there that need to be brought into the mainstream.
2.4. Thinking about your recent Letter Exchange lecture ‘Oracle bones and emojis’, what is your opinion on emoticons and emojis that are now so widespread? Can we consider them as an ‘expressive’ impulse that is shut off from the typographic medium?
I think there are two aspects to this. One is the format in terms of size. Limited character sets (short message formats) need dis-ambiguating sometimes; this is where emoticons were useful and emoji’s have found a place built upon that. However (and secondly) the use of emojis now extends beyond that and sometimes I find myself using just emojis in combinations to provide messages of encouragement, horror, indications of mood, emphasis etc. I am discovering a kind of craft in putting them together without support from accompanying words. I think this is indeed an expressive impulse that the typographic medium has not been able to contain other than in spelling out words. In the manuscript tradition the margins often carried this additional kind of information.
Significantly, in our more global era, emojis also communicate across language barriers. To indicate mood, which emoji’s can do, is very helpful in all areas of communication. It provides evidence for the kind of background story a person is living in when they communicate and that helps us get inside that message and read it more deeply. I find emojis useful, for instance, when I want to indicate I think something is humorous or I am holding it lightly, a laughing face says also ‘please do not take this too seriously’. I also use them as a kind of punctuation. Three kissy faces means… end of conversation. But interestingly it also seems to promise it will be picked up again. A full stop does not say so much.
2.5. Over twenty years ago Roy Harris wrote that computers would lead to a future with writing as the prime means of communication and the spoken language reduced to oral commentary on what writing has created (Signs of writing, 1995). Indeed many of us today spend more time typing on a device than talking. What can you say about the future of writing in this digital age that is still only just beyond its dawn?
The truth is I am not sure about this. At one level Roy Harris is certainly right. The statistics for internet usage are astonishing, it is without question that more writing is already going on than at any time in the past.
At the same time alternatives to writing are presenting themselves, biometrics are being used as identification, podcasts and TV on demand step into the spaces once occupied by magazines and books, YouTube contains instructional videos of all kinds, we use voice messaging systems, Instagram etc. There are shifts going on, genres are changing and I think it’s at that level, shifting genres, that we need to be looking right now, the big picture will emerge from that.
My general attitude to life though, my mood you might say, is generally an optimistic one and one that is not fearful but rather excited by diversity and opportunities to explore the world around me. This is the mood I bring to my research and so I want to enjoy a future where we have many options rather than a narrowed-down set. I instinctively resist the simple story that you can have either this or that, I would like it all.
I see no reason for writing, and indeed handwriting, to disappear and the same is true for face-to-face communication. I believe writing as a skill and a craft will always have the potential to be life-enhancing. I think we humans will always reach for it when we discover it is available. At the same time I also believe that we need to boost our understanding of ‘presence,’ the way we are all present to ourselves in our own embodiment. The ability to communicate, to pick up on another person’s experience, depends upon that, and actually I see that as the primary challenge facing us today.
The calligraphic pieces used to illustrate this second part of the interview are Clayton’s artworks and they are not necessary related to the contents.
