David Rieder
University of Texas at Arlington

Hypermedia theorist Pierre Lévy's statements remind me of an important counter-argument in our field: writing is not "the habit of talking with the pen." Writing, in other words, is not a simple, transparent method of oral transcription. After a century of industrial-age specialization, we know that successful writing is dependent upon the contexts in which it is practiced. Standards for writing cannot be universalized because writing is immanent to the "rhetorical situations" in which it is performed. Quoted in David Russell's Writing in the Academic Disciplines, Susan Miller writes, "literacy must, because of multiplied fields of writing, be relearned in new contexts throughout educational processes and later" (6).

Having said this, there is an important difference between Miller's and Lévy's statements. Miller is arguing against a single standard of literacy, a standard that is unreasonable in an industrial age of specialized discourse. Lévy, on the other hand, is arguing against a universal standard of "alphabetic writing." He is arguing for a new "post-industrial" standard fashioned from the "speechless" modes of writerly expression emerging in today's mediascape - a new set of standards that can operate alongside or in collaboration with the "older," traditional ones. Writing, as Levy states above, is not necessarily based on alphabetic or phonetic modes of thought. If we believe that writing is an immanent practice that must be relearned in new contexts, Lévy challenges us to extend our educational processes to the new modes of thinking that are emerging today. He asks that we think beyond the oral legacy that continues to inform our discipline. (And what better place to start than a liquor company's website?!).

In the past four years, Absolut Vodka's website, absolut.com, has sponsored the work of a cadre of international digital artists to promote its brand online. They have positioned themselves as the avant-garde of a burgeoning, corporate "experience economy," working a soft-edge with forays in to electronic music, animation, and the hive-minded new economy theories of Kevin Kelly. At the end of May, Absolut unveiled their newest site, Absolut Director; coincidentally, it was released a few weeks before car maker BMW's site, bmwmovies.com. Absolut.com is an artist colony devoted to the vitality of the Swedish vodka company's virtual identity. In their online press release, the company writes,

As one might imagine, the "spirit" of Absolut Vodka is defined as "clear and pure," arguably two "current-traditional" objectives that aren't very appealing to most artists in most countries. Nonetheless, absolut.com's unique blend of experiential marketing and arts sponsorship has helped Absolut reach worldwide "brand recognition."

In this first column for The Writing Instructor, I will focus on absolutdj.com - one of the experimental projects spun off absolut.com - and Jeffrey Ventrella's contribution to the project. Ventrella is a computer programmer and artist who develops digital environments informed by artificial life and artificial intelligence theories. Loosely based on a Darwinian model of evolution, Ventrella's program helps Absolut bottles breed.

But first, a word from our sponsors.

In their book, The Experience Economy, business theorists Joseph Pine and James Gilmore argue that there is a new "economic offering" on the not-so-distant horizon: the experience. Some companies are already capitalizing on it. Apple Computer's "Be Different" and MasterCard's "Priceless" campaigns are prime examples. In both campaigns the company's goods and services are associated with memorable or transformative experiences.

Pine and Gilmore write, "The experiences we have affect who we are, what we can accomplish, and where we are going, and we will increasingly ask companies to stage experiences that change us" (163). The "experience offering" is an extension of the post-industrial service offering. As services are taken for granted, losing brand recognition, the experiential realm to which service offerings are inevitably connected can be enhanced, rejuvenating a company's identity. Pine and Gilmore's experience economy is the "business end" of Jean Baudrillard's "age of simulation," and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's recent investigations of the biopolitical dimension of global capitalism in their book, Empire. An experience economy is a "post-human" environment in which parts of people (emotions; desires; memories) are connected to themed environments, brands, and other franchised activities in the effort to generate life-long circulations of surplus (libidinal) value.

With this in mind, Absolut's forays in to arts sponsorship can be read as a strategic move to "experientialize" their brand. What I find interesting is their move to develop original, interactive environments. Plenty of other companies would suffice to include anything from chat rooms to 3rd-person games. Absolut takes this a step farther with sites like absolutdj.com.

Absolutdj.com, subtitled "An Experiment in Creating Visual Music," is two sites in one: a homage to DJ'ing, and an interactive environment in which users can engineer their own musical compositions. Clearly, the majority of their budget went in to latter site, but their homage to DJ'ing is worth a few words. The homage takes the form of a 150-year history that highlights some of the technological and cultural breakthroughs that lead to the likes of DJ Spooky, Riz Mazen, and the Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN). The timeline begins with a written introduction that includes the following statement: "DJs are visionaries. Like the majority of artists and writers of our times, they are shaping the way we perceive music."

The timeline begins in the 1850s. It includes Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph, in 1878, and the introduction of the flat, gramophone disc, in 1892. The timeline moves up to the "late nineties" under which period are listed the rise of electronic genres of music like Drum 'n Bass, Trip Hop, and the ever-popular Trance.

The second site centers on the work of five contemporary DJs/DJ groups: DJ Coldcut, DJ Spooky, Riz Maslen, the United Future Organization (UFO), and the aforementioned EBN. The artists' originating cities span the developing post-national world: London, NYC, Tokyo, and Providence, RI!, home of Brown University, RISD, and artist Shepard Fairey's "André the Giant" propaganda campaign. Providence is EBN's home base. When I was living there, EBN used to drive around like the Ghostbusters, in a Chevy Suburban with cameras, speakers, and other stuff top-mounted. Among other projects, EBN is well-known for participating in the multimedia presentations that U2 developed in to ZooTV.

The site works as follows. A 2-dimensional grid is presented with two "strobes" that are bouncing from box to box to a steady beat. Having selected one of the five featured DJs on the opening screen, you place combinations of a half-dozen samples created by the DJ, along with directional arrows on the screen. As the strobes move from square to square, they make your music, visualizing the effects in original combinations of layered graphics based on a genetic algorithm developed by Jeffrey Ventrella. The "theory" behind the development of the project has mysteriously disappeared, but, as the story goes, the interaction between the various samples and the bouncing strobes is based on a quasi-Darwinian model of evolution: some samples will remain, "adapting," while others will be killed off as the strobes bounce their way from box to box.

Arguably, this is an example of the writing towards which Lévy is pointing. From a user's standpoint, the thought that goes in to the project is predominately visual (spatial) and aural; after reading the directions, alphabetic thought is an after-thought. Moreover, the "mental space" in which I experience these thoughts feels different. Speaking personally, when I read "alphabetic literature," I tend to experience the images, emotions, and other parts of the scenes in a 3-dimensional space that is familiar, because it resembles the space of my everyday life. The thought-space generated by a project like this is different. Maybe dimensionality isn't the best criteria for comparison, but the point is, as a user, I experience something new. As a user, this project opens up a new "psychography." Harkening back to Miller's statement, this project represents a context in which new educational processes are warranted.

From a writer's standpoint, what distinguishes Ventrella's work from the traditional objective of literate expression is its "environmental" character. The way I read the piece, Ventrella's objective is to develop a space in which visual metaphors can interact and new sound-images can emerge. His writing style reminds me of Peter Elbow's metaphors of growth and cooking, which are also loosely based on physical theory. In Writing Without Teachers, Elbow writes, "I think of it as trying to 'help words grow,'" which leads to the following advice: "I advise you to treat words as though they are potentially able to grow. Learn to stand out of the way and provide the energy or force the words need to find their growth process" (23-24). Elbow wants blocked writers to write. As he sees it, words on a page or a screen take on a life of their own. Perhaps in quasi-Darwinian fashion they lead to new words and new ideas.

Ventrella infinitely extends Elbow's advice. As a writer, Ventrella's goal is to create a space in which post-alphabetic images and sounds have the potential to grow. As an artist, Ventrella engages his audience, developing a space in which a seemingly infinite range of experiences can be had. In so fast-paced a world as we live, thanks to the work of Ventrella and the DJs who helped develop the site, Absolut has successfully branded a style of writing fashioned for our time: an experiential offering that never stops cooking and growing.


Works Cited

"AbsolutDJ: An Experiment in Creating Visual Music." Absolut Vodka. 20 April 2001. http://www.absolutdj.com/map/index.htm.

"BMW Films: Short Films Featuring Award-Winning Directors." BMW Films. 20 July 2001. http://www.bmwmovies.com.

Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Lévy, Pierre. "Toward Superlanguage." The Next Generation. 20 April 2001. http://www.uiah.fi/bookshop/isea_proc/nextgen/01.html.

Russell, David R. Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870-1990: A Curricular History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.

Ventrella, Jeffrey. "Animated Artificial Life: Introduction." A Website of Artificial Life, Art, and Ideas. 20 April 2001. http://www.ventrella.com/Alife/Animated/animated_1.html.

Citation Format: Rieder, David M. "AbsolutWriting." The Writing Instructor. 2004. http://www.writinginstructor.com/absolutwriting (Date Accessed).

David Rieder's column is a regular feature of TWI.