Transient pattern – the model of digital layout

Abstract

Unlike a rectangular grid arrangement, electronic writing has a character of a cross-linked and developing writing technique. The network of interconnected hypertext was compared with the human neural network Writing identity is reflected in the hypertext, as dynamic, flexible, variable, and even random. According to several authors [Manovich, 2001; Aarseth, 1997; Bootz and Baldwin, 2010 and others], the paradigm of digital mediation is manifested by changes in the approach to the production, storage, media distribution, and reception of literary, conceptual, or other "textual" artworks. In the position of an e-literature programmed form, Philippe Bootz reflected that those changes in the description of a procedural model of communication and the introduction of performative signs are a part of the aesthetic approach. The information which flows from the source (made by authors) to the target (reader’s reading) could be embodied in the digital text and represented, manifested, or articulated by the digital text layout, which will be shaped on/in various interfaces, instead of the plane and rectangular of "screens". Digital text which is manifested by a layout should take place on/in current and future, digital and hybrid interfaces. This kind of layout could bring the reader into the text work, and closer to its essence. The posthumanistic approach of the digital layout problem solution will change the point of view, which is focused on a human, to the wider equal interrelations of technical, biological, and human intelligent actors. The flexible shape of complex and experimental digital layout solutions could be manifested on/in many different interfaces. In my work I propose a new definition of digital layout and a hypothetical solution - the model Transient Pattern. The model offers a space in which the creation of a digital layout could take place in different solutions - free of a grid pattern organization. These considerations pave the way for a new approach to the formal grasp of a digital text arrangement in a more comprehensive, unbiased, and experimental way. The new approach subsequently leads to a change in the aesthetic paradigm: from creating a digital text layout as a finally programmed form of an object to variable variations of running the program in the process of becoming. It includes both a dialectical complex pattern (presenting a systematic rational and formal approach) and randomness (of actual reading and variability of interfaces) that open access to hybrid unstable forms. The solution enables the flexible organization of a text in digital and post-digital spaces, in current and future conditions of monitoring the possibilities of new techniques of text production and reception, co-created by human, computer and the other nonhuman intelligent actors. At the same time, it changes our understanding from redesigned forms of grid or template principles to variable designing by processes. © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.