Here's the abstract of Chris's talk:
“To Feel the Meaning": A Manual Typewriter Intervention Toward Authentic Written Language
This workshop will be a facilitated encounter with mid-century manual typewriters as an exploration of the limits and affordances of machine-mediated analog text creation. Beginning with [Susanne] Langer’s 1957 tripartite definition of "living form"--dynamism, organism, and rhythm (p. 53) --the experience will consider what "authentic" written language is in the age of ChatGPT. The presenter will bring several exquisite manual typewriters from their personal collection for participant use during the workshop, and will make them available in the lounge for the duration of the conference for those who wish to experience them further individually. This typewriter encounter with the dynamic, organic, and rhythmic qualities of analog text creation will invite a renewal of our relation to language, and a re-engagement with previously-settled and newly-urgent questions about why we ask our students to write at all.
As a real human, I applaud this!
ReplyDeleteBravo! Chris’s blog should be added to the Typosphere blog roll.
ReplyDeleteDone!
DeleteI'm now picturing a point in the not-too-distant future when my only real proof that I actually wrote something will be the paper that I wrote it upon, complete with the sort of apparent flaws that are inherit to mechanical typewriters, or ink pens, or pencils, or anything else capable of leaving an inconsistent impression in, or at times bleeding through, the paper. My only proof that I actually took a photograph will be the negative that was produced by my film camera. Maybe I will have to re-record my guitar playing on magnetic tape to prove that this too is mine. But I am going to assume that as long as I am able to show up to places in person, people will still know it is actually me (or my doppelganger).
ReplyDeleteLet's hope you aren't replaced by an android! But yes, I agree: physical objects, unmediated by digits, will become ever more important as signs of genuineness. Actual closeness will matter more and more. Or at least, let's hope so.
DeleteOne of the areas of human life where personality manifests itself. In truth, in the Beginning there was the Word
ReplyDelete