> Intersemiotic Translation, Cognitive Artefact, and Creativity (2016 – now)
Intersemiotic translation (IT) can be described as a cognitive artefact designed as a predictive, generative, and metasemiotic tool that distributes artistic creativity. Cognitive artefacts have a huge variety of forms and are manipulated in many different ways and domains. As a projective augmented intelligence technique, IT works as a predictive tool, anticipating new, and surprising patterns of semiotic events and processes, keeping under control the emergence of new patterns. At the same time, it works as a generative model, providing new, unexpected, surprising data in the target-system, and affording competing results which allow the system to generate candidate instances. As a metasemiotic tool, IT creates a metalevel semiotic process, a sign-action which stands for the action of a sign. It creates an ‘experimental laboratory’ for performing semiotic experiments. IT submits semiotic systems to unusual conditions and provides a scenario for observing the emergence of new and surprising semiotic behaviour as a result.
(with Pedro Atã, Lilian Moreira, Ana Paula Vitório, Vitor Furtado, Letícia Vitral)
> desenhescrito (2020 – now)
Existe uma literatura multimodal, intermidiática, não-canônica, produzida no modernismo brasileiro (e também fora do Brasil). São experimentos surpreendentemente mal investigados. Eles não aparecem em obras fundamentais de crítica e história literárias. Exemplos incluem: O perfeito cozinheiro das almas deste mundo, de 1918-19, multimodal e multi-autoral; Primeiro Caderno do aluno de Poesia Oswald de Andrade, de 1927, com capa e projeto gráfico de Tarsila do Amaral, que já havia colaborado com Blaise Cendras em Feuille de Route, de 1924 (do mesmo Blaise Cendrars com Sonia Delaunay, 1913, há o La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, um livro-sanfona de cerca de 2 metros de comprimento).
(c/ Ana Fernandes)
> Photobook of Literature (2019 – now)
Photobooks of literature are frequently described as paradigmatic cases of intermedia phenomena. Intermedial relations are described as phenomena of interaction between different media. Many authors define intermediality as “cross-media borders” and “intermodal relations in the media”. Photobooks have been produced in Latin America since the 1920s, and in Brazil at least since the 1950s. But only in the last decade they have become the target of researchers in several fields. There are still very few systematic investigations dedicated to the phenomenon, different from what is observed with academic works dedicated to the investigation of the photographic image. Although rare, historical and analytical works are devoted to detail the intermedial relevant properties of this phenomenon. The fundamental questions and topics addressed in this project include: (1) List of the most important photobooks in recent history of brazilian and latin-american literature? (2) How to analyze in a rigorous and systematically way the complex relationships between verbal poetry (and prose) and photographic image in photobooks of literature? (3) Which models and theories should be considered the best tentative candidates for analyzing the relationships between verbal poetry (and prose) and photographic image in the phenomena?
(with Ana Fernandes, Ana Paula Vitório, Leticia Vitral)
> MIVES (Mining Verse Structure) (2019 – now)
O MIVES começa (2019-20) a exibir os primeiros resultados (artigos e apresentações em congressos). Um resultado piloto foi apresentado pela primeira vez no Digital Humanities 2016, na Jagiellonian University & Pedagogical University, Cracóvia (link). No ano seguinte, foi defendida a dissertação de mestrado de Ricardo Carvalho (2017, MIVES: um sistema para identificação automática de padrões métricos de versificação em prosa literária brasileira), sob co-orientação de João Queiroz. Em 2019, é publicado o primeiro trabalho mais detalhado sobre o sistema (Carvalho, R.; Loula, A.; Queiroz, J. 2019. Identificação automática de estruturas métricas de versificação na prosa literária de Euclides da Cunha. Rev. Estud. Ling). Novos trabalhos, publicações e apresentações em congressos, encontram-se em elaboração. Novas colaborações também seguem em discussão e análise. Um desenvolvimento do sistema para outras línguas naturais tem sido discutido com pesquisadores alemães (John Bateman, Bremen University) e suecos (Koraljka Golub, Linnaeus University).
(c/ Angelo Loula, Ricardo Carvalho)
Colaboração com o LASIC – Laboratório de Pesquisa em Sistemas Inteligentes e Cognitivos, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (UEFS) (link)
> PROPOE (Prose to Poem) (2019 – now)
O sistema PROPOE (Prose to Poem) é o primeiro sistema desenvolvido para geração computacional de poesia versificada em língua portuguesa baseada na prosa literária. Este projeto acontece no domínio daquilo que historicamente é conhecido como Arte Computacional ou Arte Algorítmica, mais estritamente Literatura Algorítmica.
(c/ Angelo Loula, Ana Cleide)
Colaboração com o LASIC – Laboratório de Pesquisa em Sistemas Inteligentes e Cognitivos, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (UEFS) (link)
> Multilevel network analysis of literature and translation studies (2016 – now)
Text Mining and Analytics use graph theory and network to model natural languages as hierarchical multilevel systems of interconnected processes, structures and entities. The research has shifted from one descriptive level analysis toward a modeling of interlevel networks. It can be described as a theoretical framework for modeling subsystems and their mutual dynamic interactions. Although much attention has recently been devoted to network analysis of large amount of texts from several genres and formats, very little attention has been directed to the analysis of literature and literary translation. Our aims in this project include: (i) Quantitative analysis of literary texts (ii) Quantitatively measure distance between source (S) and target (T) in translation. (iii) Measure relative distance between translations of classic literature, comparing targets (T) from the same source (S) translated into different languages. (iv) Analyse the relationship between literary translation and related contemporary texts (newspapers and literature) (C-S), as well as source work and relative contemporary texts, creating a theoretical frame of comparison based on corresponding period of time. In this case, the relationship between source and contemporary works of its own (C-S), what we may call context, and the relationship between target and its own contemporary works(C-S), its context.
(with Lilian Moreira, Augusto Saúde, Vitor Furtado, Kobus Marais)
> The Commens Encyclopedia of Peirce Studies (2014 – now)
The Commens Encyclopedia of Peirce Studies publishes peer-reviewed research articles on C. S. Peirce and work inspired by his thought. The Commens Encyclopedia accepts original contributions from a broad range of scientific disciplines and scholarly perspectives, including (but not restricted to) philosophy, logic, mathematics, cognitive science, semiotics, biology, sociology, anthropology, communication studies, aesthetics, literature, and art studies.
(with Mats Bergman, Sami Paavola)
> Art, Creativity and Cognitive Niche Construction (2014 – now)
Creativity can be regarded as a property of cognitive artifact manipulation and niche construction. More specifically, and according to this perspective, creativity is distributed as opportunities for evolution in cognitive niches, i.e. sets of specialized problem-spaces that affect cognitive activities. We use the notion of niche as a fundamental part of the description of the development of novel, creative, approaches in art (literature, music, dance). In our treatment, the innovations are part of a process of niche construction in which problems are created and explored simultaneous through and within an environment of artifacts (softwares, techniques, equipments such as dance shoes, stage, dance and music notations) that exert influence on cognitive activity.
(with Pedro Ata)
> Modeling Intersemiotic Translation — A Peircean Approach (2013 – now)
Intersemiotic translation (IT) is a phenomenon of interest in many fields of research such as Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, General Semiotics, and Intermediality Studies. It has been called adaptation, intersemiotic transposition, medial transposition and so on. Peirce’s theory of sign describes semiosis as essentially triadic, dynamic, interpreter dependent, and materially extended process. In this project we explore the consequences of Peirce’s theory in the domain of IT research.
(with Pedro Atã, Lilian Moreira, Vitor Furtado)
> Diagrammatic reasoning in prose and poetry (2013 – now)
For Peirce, diagrammatic thinking is any form of “valid necessary reasoning”. If an icon is examined as consisting of inter-related parts, and if these relations are subject to experimental changes controlled by rules or laws, we are operating with a diagram. In the case of the diagram what is communicated is the structure itself of the sign, its internal arrangement. Here we investigate several forms of diagrammatic reasoning in prose and poetry.
(with Frederik Stjernfelt)
> Gertrude Stein: intermediality, multimodality and intersemiotic translation (2013 – now)
The American writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) is among the most radical of the early twentieth-century literary Modernists. Her work was refined through her written portraits, initiated with the novel Three Lives (1909). Intersemiotically, her writing translated the compositional techniques developed by Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso, creating a kind of literary cubism. In this project, we focus on the properties of Stein’s works related to cubist experiments and the Jamesian theory of mind—repetition and continuous present. Based on these properties we intersemiotically translate Stein into several semiotic systems — HQ, dance, music, graphic illustration.
(with Mariana Salimena, Daniella Aguiar, Rita Aquino, Adriano Mattos, Edson Zampronha)
> New Tattoos — Augmented Tattoos (2013 – 2018)
The design of new forms of tattoos, responsive to organic and environmental variations, has unprecedented ramifications, allowing the creation of new communication media. New forms of inter-agent relationships will be established due to the creation of new patterns of communication associated with new forms of interpretation of organic states, and environmental changes through feedbacks and variations of these states. In this project we explore a variety of techno-scientific artifacts which are readily available, and their main characteristics. We are interested in the recent proliferation of devices based on AR (augmented reality) and biotechnologies that can be coupled to the body, especially epithelial (superficial or invasive), and how they change what we know as ‘embodied communication’.
(with Angelo Loula, Breno Bitarello, Stephanie Costa)
> VIA – Dance, Computacional Music, and Locative Art (2013-2014)
VIA combined Mobile Technology, Video-Dance and Computer-Assisted Music Composition. Its main goal was to endow specific locations of Rio de Janeiro with video-dance and computer music performances, accessed through locative media. The music accompanying the videos derived from CAC (Computer-Assisted Composition), CGA (Computer-Generated Assistance) and ‘Sonification’ related approaches. The music can be interpreted as a sound iconization, based on a computational methodology and assisted by the software OpenMusic, of topological properties of the landscape used as background for the dance.
(with Daniella Aguiar, Luiz Castelões, Letícia Vitral)
> Graphic Intersemiotic Translation of Literature (2013-2014)
Peça curta (link)
Gertrude Stein em Bonecos (link)
Pixel Borges (link)
Poeta Comedor de Leões no Covil de Pedra — 施氏食獅史 (link)
(with Mariana Salimena)
iconicity-group.org 