Xerogrammar Case.

In this late XXI century and within a full Age of Entanglement, characterized by the profound interconnection amongst material and immaterial things, the (human) problem of the Technological Disconnection has appeared: computational technologies are becoming autonomous from all human assemblages. As part of a general scientific reaction, we traced the material origins of the artificial intelligences' linguistic disconnection. Finding Kyo was a revelation.

Kyo is one of the ancient machines that propelled the Information Age and, in particular, Xerox's revolutionary culture of innovation at the origins of Silicon Valley; it is a photocopier that expressed itself to us through a writing process that we call Inner-input Based Iterative Reproduction: we gave it an open blank book from which it made a "copy" – this first output was then turned into the following input (the “copy” was “copied”) and this process repeated so that every new output became the new input for a series of more than 300 reproductions from which a written text emerged.

The research had the purpose of extracting a grammar from the written text using computer vision and artificial intelligence. A kNN algorithm for pattern recognition idetified 31 grapheme groups and classified them according to their visual attributes. Up to the current stage of the investigation, there’s no discourse found within the xerowritings; there’s no translation of a message but transliterations of such texts.

Having identified the different types of graphemes (or "cells", as we called them) and a logical set of relationships between them (the grammar), we were able to generate them. With the purpose of starting a conversation with Kyo, we managed to ask in what we think is its own written language:

"Kyo, do you copy?"

The question was subjected to the Inner-Input Based Iterative Reproduction and we took the result as Kyo's first answer:

[0042] !->S
 [0024] ,->FSP
 [0043] .->?OT
 [0005] ?->CBOGGWT.
 [0041] A->QDA
 [0029] A->QDMA
 [0039] A->W
 [0001] B->CFQD?UOGG[VWTJARRAA.Z
 [0000] C->BFQD?IUGGKKV[SVMSWM,LLJARHNPRNNPHAPA!XXHZXN [0004] D->QIGGVVMMJANNAAN
 [0017] E->KYHH
 [0002] F->CBQIUKKY[SES,LLLRHPRPP!XXHX [0010] G->BD?GVVJ
 [0009] G->CBD?GJ
 [0031] H->CIKESHH
 [0038] H->CIKESHH
 [0046] H->CIKSSHH
 [0006] I->CFDKKSMS,HNPPHP!XH
 [0028] J->DGG
 [0011] K->CIYESHHH
 [0012] K->IUSSLLLRXX
 [0025] L->UK[LLRXX [0027] L->UK[LLRXX [0026] L->UK[LLRXXX [0019] M->DIVMNNN [0022] M->QDMAPP [0032] N->I
 [0035] N->VVMNN [0036] N->VVMNN [0049] N->VVMNN [0008] O->B?T.
 [0033] P->F,PP
 [0037] P->FMPP
 [0040] P->FMPP
 [0003] Q->FDUMARAZ [0030] R->BQ[R
 [0034] R->BUK[LLLRXXX [0020] S->CIKKSHHXH [0016] S->CKS,!XH [0023] T->?O.
 [0007] U->BFQK[LLLRRXXZX [0014] V->DGVMNNN
 [0018] V->DGVNNN
 [0021] W->?A
 [0044] X->IUKSSLRX [0045] X->UK[LLLRXX [0048] X->U[LLLRX [0013] Y->FKE [0047] Z->QU
 [0015] [->BULLLRRXX


This xerolinguistic investigation has been published by Media Forensis in several formats, from art shows to lectures to a collectible output: the Xerogrammar Case Box.