Mazes and morphs: modeling meaning in Glide, a non-linear, dynamic visual language

Glide is a system of visual signs, an artist's exploration of the possibilities of meaning-making in the age of ubiquitous computing. Glide was originally constructed as an artifact in a work of speculative fiction of the same name. Examining the language, both from within the narrative and from a theoretical stance outside the narrative world, has led the artist into a kaleidoscopic maze of suggestive possibilities of the expressive qualities of visual language. New dimensions of meaning are enabled by the non-linear and dynamic representational modes of computer graphics and animation. The semantic potentials of the 27 core Glide glyphs increases exponentially by varying color, size, orientation and type of linking. When linguistic units, inscribed in light, are freed from the static, the linear and the 2D, then meaning construction and interpretation are revealed as dynamic and interactive processes.