Scholars and researchers have long been fascinated by the appearance of writing in ancient civilizations, which the historical record now recognizes as emerging in Mesopotamia and Egypt about 3500 BC. Contemporary studies now also point to the instrumental function of generative art in those early formulations. The following quote from National Endowment for the Humanities describes a progression in ancient writing from generative images called pictographs to cuneiform writing.
At first, this writing was representational: a bull might be represented by a picture of a bull, and a pictograph of barley signified the word barley. Though writing began as pictures, this system was inconvenient for conveying anything other than simple nouns. . . Cuneiform came to function both phonetically (representing a sound) and semantically (representing a meaning such as an object or concept) rather than only representing objects directly as a picture (1).
Influence of generative art on writing, however, is not restricted to ancient history, but, in fact, is a dynamic aspect of contemporary human development. Developmental researchers have found spontaneous imagery in children’s drawing contributes to early writing literacy (2, 3, 4, & 5). Young children in American preschools first draw images of spoken language concepts, then create equivalences between those images and phonological signs (alphabet). In other words, as children assimilate cultural conventions about letters and words, they substitute them for generated images. This transformation from spoken language to images then to letters and words first appears with object concepts but eventually involves more complex affective and emotional concepts.
Knowledge is converging that scribbling and odd marks in children’s drawings are attempts at expressing ideas, which is idiosyncratic symbolic representation. As children gain communication skills, they embellish spontaneously generated images with orthographic, semantic, and phonetic characteristics. In other words, generative art in child drawings ultimately opens a “pathway” to culturally-defined conventional early writing. The present report looks specifically at generative art during a transition from pseudo-random scribbling to symbolic object representation.
The objectives of this report are, first, to describe the conceptual and artistic dynamics that define generative semiotics with specific emphasis on the early mapping between spoken language concepts and iconic imagery in preschool drawings. Iconic here refers to commonly appreciated imagery among young children such as trees, flowers, rainbows, and so on.
A second goal is to present ideas about a much broader longitudinal effect of generative semiotics on adult’s acquisition of expertise-based literacies. In general, adults face a daunting array of expertise-defined literacies related to the growth of technologies in Western economies. How might generative art during early childhood affect literacy learning across the lifespan? An assertion in this report is generative art links concepts with images during early childhood, which establishes mental dispositions benefiting children throughout life.
Generative semiotics and early literacy
The first goal is addressed with several videos of a 30 month old youngster, Elsa, from Wichita, Kansas, USA. In Video 1, Elsa is at the chalk board with her sister. They are discussing images to draw, when suddenly without prompting, Elsa initiates a powerful scribbling movement on the chalk board. Elsa steps back and points to the spiral boldly announcing, “That’s a house!”
house drawing
While it’s not clear Elsa’s intention was to draw a house, when she completes the spiral, she is quite adamant it is a house. This brief video demonstrates generative art mediating between a child’s personal concept (house) and a symbolic representation. This transformation of spoken concept into a concrete image is highly personalized, yet presents an explicit example of early symbolism. Phonological conventions such as letters and words will eventually shape this expression into early writing literacy.
Video 2 is less dramatic, yet Elsa also externalizes a personal concept here, a tiara. Elsa carefully organizes several image magnets in a linear progression. Then she names several images, but unexpectedly encounters an alphabet letter. She pauses, then thoughtfully generates the concept tiara, which she assigns to the letter.
Magnetic images and concept of tiara
In Video 1, Elsa physically generated an image, which she named house. Video 2 images were provided, which she manipulated and spontaneously selected one to represent a tiara. In both scenes, image and concept have become synonymous.
Video 3 presents another variation on the mechanism linking concepts and images. Elsa’s intention here is to represent the color pink, which she does by drawing straight lines on the chalk board and calling them “pink”. Those specific lines now symbolically represent her concept of pink.
Drawing the color pink
Finally, Video 4 presents Elsa in block printing and foot painting activities.
Block printing and foot painting
Video 4 presents a contrast because Elsa does not show any spontaneous conceptual transformations. Unlike the prior videos, Video 4 shows much generated art using inked blocks and foot paintings, but none led to spontaneous conceptual transformations. Elsa seems to be physically exploring these media but has not reached a point where she wants to embellish her generative actions with concepts.
Key mental components
Elsa symbolically linked a spoken language concept with a scribbled image. This link could have been established between any concept in Elsa’s spoken language repertoire, and her action required substantial mental sophistication such as general language facility, coherent conceptual organization, as well as cognitive and emotional flexibility to substitute house for a scribbled spiral.
Another comment on this process is Elsa understood that by pointing to the image, her declaration of house would be understood by others. Even at 30 months, she already has a “concept of mind”. She understands that something in her mind can be understood by others. Given this level of cognition, a question arises: What systematic mechanism might link the object concept with her generated image? Then looking to the future, how might she reformulate the generated image into a culturally defined word? These questions are considered below.
Generative mechanism links image and concept
The following outline summarizes actions underlying early symbolic representation, which may indicate a generative mechanism. In general, this hypothesized mechanism requires children to have:
• capacity to generate spontaneous, independent actions.
• inclination to briefly contemplate randomly generated images.
• capacity to assign spoken language concepts to generated images.
This mechanism establishes equivalence between image and concept, which is a first order approximation to symbolic generalization. A reasonable hypothesis about this image-concept transformation is spontaneous recursion, which is the child’s persistence to revise and improve graphic fidelity until image and concept are identical. In other words, children want the image to “speak to the concept” and will work very hard to bring the image to lifelike reality. This image then is ready to be linked phonologically to sounds and letters.
Figure 1 presents a recursive model for children’s generation of early literacy, which is elaborated in Bezruczko (6). According to Figure 1, young children are guided during drawing by a personal cluster of inter-related objects and concepts. Early drawings seek to represent spoken language objects in drawings where they become synonymous. In this model, children with sustained practice assimilate the drawing rules that reproduce three dimensional objects on paper. Additional studies are needed to clarify the generality of this model.
Construction of literacies across lifespan
A second goal of this report is to suggest the relations between generative art and concepts observed here have profound implications not only for early writing but also adult literacies.
In advanced Western economies, adult literacy is not restricted to reading or writing but are defined by many literacies across technologies. Literacy acquisition is a life-long process as technologies are periodically updated and replaced. Moreover, as technologies change, so new literacies are invented to accommodate them. The automobile, for example, replaced the horse and buggy, which created a new literacy associated with driving a car, as well as its care and maintenance. In addition, an entire technical language was invented to accommodate auto mechanics. Likewise, proliferation of computers have required adapting ordinary language concepts to operating them, as well as specialized logical code to write programs that drive software. Other examples of literacies that emerged in the 20th century are:
Figure 1. Instrumental function of generative art during early writing literacy.
• Transportation: Airports, bus terminals, and train stations impose literacy expectations on travelers.
• Medical: Improved health care requires understanding medical information such as labels and instructions.
• Social customs: Demographic shift from an agrarian to urban economy requires learning literacies related to apartment building organization, supermarket shopping, and working in offices.
• Communication: Telegraph was replaced by telephone, which is being supplanted by text messaging and email.
Arguably, technology in the 20th century accelerated the expansion of literacies needed to function effectively in society. Moreover, many literacies have been replaced by succeeding technologies. For eample, telephone fax machines were replaced by internet, while automobiles will be replaced by hyperloop (7). Typewriters have been replaced with computers. Likewise, the functional literacies needed to operate these technologies have also changed.
The point here is adult literacies have their developmental origin in the generative art of young children. The facility to manipulate language concepts and embellish symbolic images with phonological rules during early childhood establishes a mental facility that enhances adult assimilation of technical literacies even as those technnologies supercede themselves.
Figure 2 presents a hypothetical organization of functional adult literacies consisting of conceptual clusters that are both hierarchical and longitudinal. An assertion in this report is the child’s reformulation of spoken language concepts during early literacy facilitates advancing to adult literacies, and more importantly, generative principles of image learning during early childhood are instrumental to acquiring those adult literacies.
Figure 2. Literacy acquisition across the lifespan. Hypothesized organization of literacy clusters across the lifespan. Each cluster represents a quasi-independent literacy. Red dotted lines represent specific concepts being reformulated during conceptual transformation.
The separate but intertwined literacy conceptual clusters in Figure 2 define a hierarchy that extends across the lifespan. Unfortunately, knowledge about how concepts in different clusters are reformulated is presently unknown. Carey, however, has described the function of Quinian bootstrapping for this purpose (8).
Implications
A central assertion of this report is generative art during early childhood contributes to literacy foundations. Observations presented here suggest generated images in drawings acquire conceptual information, which completes a physical transformation of both concept and image. The generated image is embued with conceptual properties, while the abstract concept becomes physical. Completion of this transformation is a precursor to early writing literacy.
The mechanism implemented by children during early symbolism seems to occur spontaneously. Spoken language facility and generated image appear to be linked dynamically without explicit premeditated intentions.
Depending on cultural context, every image corresponds to a orthographic designation consisting of sounds and letters. The leap from generative art to early literacy depends on making an equivalence with appropriate phonological conventions.
Three implications are explored here, first, pedagogically, the generative process presented here is child-centered and spontaneously initiated, which raises questions about traditional models of teacher-led pedagogy. Related questions are: Does generative art have a comparable function in adult literacy acquisition? If so, then when and how does it occur? What are examples of its development? In general, more studies are needed to clarify the implications of generative semiotics on adult functioning.
A second implication concerns the early childhood context that supports development of generative semiotics. The key role of spoken language suggests that homes rich in verbal interactions would provide optimal context for developing spoken language concepts, while spontaneous drawing opportunities in preschool would increase image-concept transformations related to early writing literacy.
Mental structures are being established during image-concept transformation in early childhood, and a third implication are their long term consequences. If the generative process is supported and maintained with sufficient opportunities and social reinforcement, then these structures may have adult corollaries.
(1)National Endowment for the Humanities (2017). The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution. Accessed on May 4, 2017 at https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/cuneiform-writing-system-ancient-mesopotamia-emergence-and-evolution
(2)Adi-Japha, E., & Freeman, N. H. (2001). Development of differentiation between writing and drawing systems. Developmental Psychology, 37, 101-114.
(3)Yamagata, K. (2007). Differential emergence of representational systems: Drawings, letters, and numerals. Cognitive Development, 22, 244–257.
(4)Yang, H.-C., & Noel, A. M. (2006). The developmental characteristics of four- and five-year-old preschoolers’ drawing: An analysis of scribbles, placement patterns, emergent writing, and name writing in archived spontaneous drawing samples. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, l 6, 145–162.
(5)Sulzby, E. (1992). Research directions: Transitions from emergent to conventional writing. Language Arts, 69, 290-297.
(6)Bezruczko, N. (2016). Generative semiotic mechanism links representational drawings of young children with early literacy. Paper presented at the – XIX Generative Art Conference, Florence, Italy, December . . . Accessed at http://www.generativeart.com/ on May 3, 2017.
(7)Wikipedia (2017). Hyperloop. Accessed May 5, 2017 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
(8)Carey, S. (2009). Origin of concepts. New York: Oxford University Press.
Awknowledgements
I am deeply grateful for the cooperation of Elsa Fisher, her sister Anna, and her mother Ali. Their participation in this research has substantially increased knowledge about the contribution of generative semiotics to early writing literacy.
Elsa and her unicorn.
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