[FRIAM] Words RE: Words - Narrative Bending - Emergence, oh my!

[Nick Thompson]

Steve, 

 

Due to a couple of sabbaticals, I had a few of those cross-pond, cross-generational conversations.  Nothing better.  Carry on, lad! 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2019 8:49 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Words RE: Words - Narrative Bending - Emergence, oh my!

 

<advertisement> 

I've been hosting my colleagues (Matt and Janire, who some may remember from SFx) from Wales/Spain this last week.   Janire is doing a book signing at PhotoEye Gallery this afternoon at 4PM for her book on Ed Grothus and the Black Hole - "Atomic Ed" .

https://calendar.sfreporter.com/cal/1628254

https://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?Catalog=DT496

</advertisement>

The relevance to this braided thread is that I've been following the discussion(s) here but have not had an opportunity to engage with them until now while instead engaging in a lot of across-the-pond/across-a-generation parallax discussions woven around the theme of recognizing/weaving narratives with non-linguistic tools (immersive photography/videography/VR/etc.).

Looking for something entirely different, I tripped over the following article on the topic of Narrative and Complexity Science:

    https://woods.stanford.edu/news/stranger-fiction

With a quote from James Holland Jones:

Jones: The human brain evolved to learn from stories. Stories encode the fundamental information that people need to know about the worlds – physical, biological, social – in which they live. We retain and retrieve information better when it is given in narrative form. I think that written fiction provides powerful tools for modeling complex systems, not that different from what we use in studying them in science. When you tweak some element in a complex system, there will be both cascading and ramifying consequences.

I think this theme ties in with Nick's fascination with the "magic" he attributes to programmers (in general, or just those modeling complex systems?) and "emergence".   I would claim that writing narrative (or even more acutely so, poetry) is an even more magical act.   

When I think of the brevity of forms such as flash-fiction (dribble, drabble, twittiture, etc.) or a Haiku (5/7/5) or Zen Koan, I am reminded of the (useful) ambiguity in mathematics/physics/information-theory  regarding data-compression, entropy, and cryptography.     I am also reminded of the varied and recent use of the term "compression" here.

A superficial analysis of what makes these forms work suggests that skillful use of allusion is one key.   This appears to me to be sort of a bootstrap or meta-cryptography technique.   By pointing broadly toward (alluding) a large existing body of cultural understanding, a sort of code-book is invoked such that each line or even word taps into entire complex backstories.  

Consider Hemingway's famous 6 word short-story: 

    "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

or Masahide's famous line: 
    Barn's burnt down --
    now
    I can see the moon. 

 

Mumble,

 - Steve

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20190511/94ea7e12/attachment.html>