NPUC 1999 Speakers

Rich Gold

Xerox PARC

Deep Reading/Total Writing

Abstract:

Definition: Total Writing
Total Writing is when the writer not only writes the text, but also writes the font, the color and the layout of the text; writes the graphics, the sound, the material of the printing and the material of the substrate; writes (invents, alters) the medium, the genre, the interaction, the social setting and perhaps even the myriad translations into other total writing experiences. The Total Writer's purpose in this process is to have these multiple additional layers of writing resonate deeply (as the physicality of a Javanese gong resonates with Javanese music) with what has been traditionally considered the "content," though in Total Writing the distinction between content and medium fully blurs (and where content may be redefined as simply one end of the spectrum of ease of malleability).

Deep Reading is the process by which readers engage with works of Total Writing. It is the reading of a work all the way down to the molecules, through the symbol sets and up to the social setting. It encompasses an understanding of the "creation trajectory" of the work and the fusing this knowledge with the total work. Likewise it ropes in social behaviors such that a work is meaningfully different if it is read synchronously or asynchronously, privately or publicly, clocked or unclocked, deterministically or hypertextually.

Such Deep Reading/Total Writing happens in a world where not only reading does not disappear, but a world where reading permeates every nook and cranny, onto every surface and into every ritual action.

Brief Biography:

Rich Gold is a composer, cartoonist and researcher who in the seventies, co-founded the "League of Automatic Music Composers," the first network computer band. He was head of the sound and music department of Sega USA's coin-op video game division and the inventor of Activision's "Little Computer People," the first fully autonomous computerized person. He headed the electronic and computer toy research group at Mattel Toys and was the manager of the Mattel PowerGlove. He also worked on Captain Power, the first interactive broadcast TV show. At Xerox PARC he was a researcher in Ubiquitous Computing, the study of invisible, embedded and tac! He was a co-designer of the PARC Tab and helped launch the LiveBoard project. In 1992 he created and now runs the PARC artist-in-residence program. He is currently the manager of a multidisciplinary laboratory, RED (Research in Experimental Documents), which looks at the creation of new genres by merging art, design, science and engineering. His particular area of study has been in corporate identity within new genres and "living documents" (ever changing documents deeply embedded in ever changing cultures). RED's current project is researching "reading of the future" the results of which will be featured at the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation in 2000. He is a Fellow at The World Economic Forum.