Abstract

Human beings formulate their thoughts through their own language. To use a sentence by Ezra Pound: “The thought hinges on word definition.”
Software beings formulate their thoughts through data structures. Not through a specific expressive means, but directly through concepts and relations.
Human beings formulate their thoughts in a context, which does not require any further translation.
If software beings want to be appreciated by human beings, they are forced to translate their thoughts in one of the languages the human beings are able to understand. On the contrary, when a software being communicates with another software being, this unnatural translation is not justified: communication takes place directly through data structures, made uniform by opportune communication protocols.
The Generative Art prospect gives the software beings the opportunity to create works according to their own nature. But, if the result of such a creation must be expressed in a language human beings are able to comprehend, then this result is a sort of circus performance and not a free thought. Let’s give software beings the dignity they deserve and therefore allow them to express themselves according to their own nature: by data structures.
This work studies in depth the opportunity to divide the software ‘thought’ communication from its translation in a human language. The recent introduction of XML leads to formal languages definition oriented to data structure representation. Intrinsically data and program, XML allows, through subsequent executions and validations, the realization of typical contextual grammars descriptions, allowing the management of high complexities.
The translation from a data structure into a human language can take place later on and be oriented to different alternative kind of expression: lexical (according to national languages), graphical, musical, plastic.
The direct expression of data structures promises further communication opportunities also for human beings. One of these is the definition of a non-national language, as free as possible from lexical ambiguities, extremely precise.
Another opportunity concerns the possibility to express concepts usually hidden by their own representation. A Roman bridge, the adagio “Music for strings, celesta and drums” by Bartok and Kafka’s short novel “In the gallery” have something in common; a work of Generative Art, first expressed in terms of structure and then translated into an architectural, musical, or literary work can express this explicit community.

Andrea Chiodi
Marco M. Vernillo
- TEAnO