I learnt how to make an origami crane a night before this week. We constructed Ori-baka, a sound-only language guided by the actions performed and decisions made while making the basic folds and bases. In order to do so, we had to gather our shared understanding of actions and how they are affected when placed one after the other. At any moment where something felt difficult, the fact that we could coin a new word was reassuring.

The Problem People generally learn origami through images and text instructions, and even video tutorials. But what is the task in origami if not deciding two points on a paper and making a crease in between? Why must there be a need for all those other mediums to learn for paper-creasing?

For the first of many experiments, the DA team constructed a language to utilise audio cues to act as instructions while performing origami. Since the constraint sounded minimal, the language, or our outcome also needn’t be complex. We kept it derivative of actions where combinations of words gave meaning. Example: LO-RO-DO-PO was called that as (left-right-close-down-up-close); and not shortened further as say maybe “jo” for diagonal, because it was certain that the question of ‘which diagonal?’ would bring in more complexity into our day-old language. In retrospect, we were making decisions consciously trying to keep it coherent with how we understand our original languages. It felt like a successful experiment in the limited time we got to test it because managed to get people familiar with what we meant by each word we coined.

The experiment, despite seeming like a tool to learn origami was actually an exercise to understand deconstruction while constructing this language. I saw it as a reverse-process, where we were consciously trying to unlearn and optimize the existing ways of making sense of paper creasing.

Imagine this. When people discovered language as a means to communicate, they were realizing meaning to what they had in their minds. Same as a dictionary, the construction of meaning would be informed by pre-existing words. Fast forward: With a larger population of thinkers and a proportional rise in possibilities, language also has become complex, branched out in ways people relate to it. So if we communicate, in this complexity, exactly what we mean, just the way it is to another, it is very unlikely they perceive it in a 100% similar way. And for all the other possibilities of deviating from the intended meaning, deconstruction brings us to question the authenticity of meaning as thought fissions and regroups over time, to conclude differently. Derrida offers an interesting perspective to this chain of thoughts, I documented some theory below.

News and political reaction from our government towards peaceful student processes had me question their word-play and tactic of keeping meaning broad in order to strategize for future uncertainty arguments.

This is a random idea.

Simran Singh

18 December 2020