After our conversation in class, I found myself thinking about two main things.  First, the evolution of the definition of writing.  In my definition of writing, I wouldn’t call Homer reciting the Odyssey writing.  It is crafting, and storytelling, but not writing.  For me, it would not be writing until it was physically marked down.  So for me, words put down via the Google glasses is more “writing” than Homer reciting the Odyssey.  When I think of my own writing, I do sometimes put together sentences in my head (as someone else in class was talking about), switching around words and sentence order while say I’m switching my laundry to the dryer.  This sort of crafting I am more inclined to say is a part of the writing process than writing on its own, because it is a first step before I run upstairs and jot down the sentences that I just crafted.  But at the time that Homer was alive, I am willing to consider his reciting his work as the writing of its time.  “What was writing before writing?”  But maybe it doesn’t even have to be the writing of its time.  I’m struggling on how to phrase my question, but basically, did there have to be a “writing” before writing?

So my second batch of thoughts were a continuation of the On Such A Full Sea with the 3-D printer cover.  I was in the “no it isn’t writing” camp on that one.  Some people were arguing “but there are letters, there are words.”  It made me think of this Viktor & Rolf fashion show (their fall 2008 show fyi).  Again, I do not consider the big “no”s here writing, and it is recognizably a full word, recognizably letters.  Just because something has words, does not make it for me writing.  I keep shifting through my definition of writing, now partially: words on a surface communicating a certain thing.  So, the Full Sea altered words, while still letters and parts of words, isn’t really about communicating but altering for an aesthetic look.  Although the Viktor & Rolf, while definitely an aesthetic look, is also attempting to communicate something with the “No”s and the “Dream on”s.  I feel more inclined to think of the makeup for that show as writing.  I am not sure why just yet.  As I was driving home after class, of course I was looking at license plates and the B, M, and W over the circle thinking “Is this writing??”

–Amanda