Abstract

Cross-examined by Tapio Makela & Ingrid Bachmann

Compwriting will provide for a fundamental area of human evolution, the ability to write. Compwriting tools are linguistics algorithms that reorder letters, words, even languages, producing neo-meaning. But compwriting will also operate with previously written discourses, in a re-scripting strategy, challenging the copyright principle and its legal consequences. The web is re-scripting technology providing information as it correlates data. Newer technologies will utilize algorithms to creatively connect words and texts. Compwriting through networks will also defy national languages and the
geopolitical scenario favouring transnational, translinguistic telecommu-nications. But for compwriting to develop information must be like a molecule, legally free to interact. Thus the need to amplify the work initiated in 1972 with “Semion: an international symbol for released information”. The Semion proposition states: “Any information, text, image, project, method, idea, bearing this symbol can be reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized, provided that the authorship and the source are mentioned, the information is respected in its integrity, and the purpose is not exploitation”. Today the web suggests more radical possibilities for information sharing. A new symbol, entitled SemionR, was then conceived to mark works that can be re-scripted. The Semion proposition states: “Any information, text, image, project, method, idea, bearing this symbol can not only be reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized, but also modified or altered, provided that the objective is the creation of new information.”

• Professor Artur Matuck, MA, PhD. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, United States, Canada and Europe, Artur Matuck has worked as a teacher, a researcher, a writer, a visual artist, a video producer, a performer and more recently as a designer of text-reprocessing software. At the Department of Fine Arts at the School for Communication and Arts of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Matuck is responsible for the disciplines of Multimedia and Intermedia. As an artist Matuck has worked with graphic arts, creative writing, fictional and documentary video, performance, computer graphics, telecommunication art, and computer-assisted writing. He has exhibited media art works in several Sao Paulo Biennials, in 1983, 1987, 1989 and 1991. From 1976 to 1978 he attended the University of Iowa, where he completed a Master of Arts in Communications. From 1978 to 1981 he attended the University of California at San Diego, where he was granted a Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts. In 1990, he completed a comprehensive study on the history of video art and interactive television which resulted in a doctoral thesis entitled: “The Dialogical Potential of Television”. He was, then, granted a doctorate on Media Arts at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. During 1991, he was a Research Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he produced Reflux, a worldwide Telecommunication Arts project. At Carnegie Mellon University, he also developed an extensive research on the theory, history and methodologies of Telecommunication Arts. In 1993, Matuck has completed a essay entitled “Information and Intellectual Property”. The essay was published on a special issue, on “Art and Social Consciousness”, of Leonardo, the official journal of the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology. From 1994 to 1996 he pursues a post graduate fellowship at the Department of English, University of Florida in Gainesville, where he starts experimenting with text-reprocessing programming. Artur Matuck is the creator of Semion – an international symbol for released information. Semion represents a contribution to the on-going debates on issues regarding intellectual property rights and information dissemination in the electronic age.
• Tapio Makela, Finland,
• Ingrid Bachmann, US