Perhaps This Cannot Be Anything (on Exercises in Text Production and Critical Typography, Which Make Use of Machine-Made Errors in Processes of Visual and Semantic Translation)

Abstract

Activities of translation often look to shift meaning or form from one state to another and, as a consequence, a range of potential transformations can often take place. This essay discusses the material traces of linguistic invention as a means to examine the disruptive and transformative possibilities of translation as a distinct ‘designerly’ activity. Critical design is employed as a method through which ideas and practices of translation can be applied through automatic or machine-derived methods which seek to embrace the inherent mistakes, errors or unintended consequences of such approaches. The results of these activities raise questions relating to a particular value of critical approaches within design and specifically in terms of the characteristics of outcomes that might result from such an enquiry.