Ancestral Typography is both a methodology and an artwork that combines AI and Typography to preserve indigenous languages from, by, for, and with their communities, fighting stereotypes about technology and learning.
When a tongue dies
the divine things, stars, sun and moon;
human things,
think and feel,
are not reflected anymore
in that mirror.
— Miguel León Portilla
— Illustration published by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, for the Mother Language Day, February 21, 2020.
Peru has 48 indigenous languages that are spoken and official
It means equal to Spanish, the dominant language, but not in the practice. It means they are only spoken at home, and if it continues sooner or later, languages will disappear.
The problem is they don't have access to technological tools to write them correctly and easily without losing their nature and characteristics. And this is a direct consequence of the discrimination speakers of native languages suffer. Imagine, now is the first time we have a president who speaks Quechua but even he is discriminated against. And this is not a minority, in Peru 90% of the population are indigenous or mestizo with indigenous features.
And Peru is not the only one. Governments of countries with an indigenous population and living native languages have linguistic politics that have structural problems ranging from racism to ideas about technology and learning.
Background
In 2016 I was honored to be part of the team of project Gente, within the framework of Labicco, a citizen Innovation lab held in Cartagena, Colombia. There, we developed a typeface for the Wounaan, Colombian indigenous people. Also, a keyboard and a teaching material. It was a unique experience, maybe the first time, two very important elements in this process were together at the same table: designers specialized in typography and a member of the indigenous community: Blacho Moya, a Wounaan teacher who joined the team because in his words:
“I know the loneliness of speaking a language that you cannot fully share”.
— Typeface Gente project.
— Teaching material, Gente project.
— “La verdad (The truth)", “The wizard virus and techno-salvation" and "Oracle Microbiome" are the cluster of Ancestral Typography project.
I can´t find better words than Blacho´s to explain why is so important this project to me, it contains a truth that is impossible to avoid: Language configures the world.
I do not speak as an expert, nor as a representative of indigenous communities I speak as an artist, but not as an enlightened being, but from my micropolitics, as part of a whole that is affected and is part of the problem. Even recognizing roots that I have not been taught to love.
My two favorite weapons: art and education, together with my new tech love AI.
My projects have odd kin. They are always part of a cluster, I call them organism projects because I let them be born, grow, reproduce and if it must be, die. As you can see for me the projects are also alive. And in all of them rituality is present in one way or another.
Proposal
I speak identity, I write identity
The proposal is not only to use AI to create typefaces for indigenous languages but to reflect on this process with indigenous communities, adding their epistemologies that not only includes aesthetics but also ways of doing.
Why typography?
Typography is a technology of the written language that functions as a vehicle for language dissemination and as a support of its culture and history, Also, it characterizes intrinsic functions of a language, at the phonological, grammatical, or expressive level. Therefore, it can restrict their understanding, if a typeface does not have the necessary glyphs (for example in Spanish the Ñ). It is like a signature. It could be empowering to fight racism and discrimination that speakers of native languages suffer.
Typography as we know it carries the history of the West. Why not add more chapters to it including this vision?
Why AI?
Speed is needed. To preserve indigenous languages is urgent! I understood, that AI is the necessary army to massify these processes. And everyone talks about AI, using it also helps to make this problem visible. On the other hand, we will add another paradigm in the use of AI that currently has a very marked bias. Together we can change ideas about learning and machine learning is about exactly how we learn.
Indigenous AI is not only possible but fundamentally human.
During the AFT Course I was having conversations about AI, Technology and Typography with Blacho from the Wounaan and Olga Mori from the Shipibo-Conibo. Go through this process, to start this journey together.
Methodology
Each indigenous community is different: Worldview, Sociopolitical situation, and Language status.
In the end, AI proposals do not matter so much if they do not start from the worldview of each community. They are not unilateral strategies of AI design, but an integrated proposal, from, by, for and with the community. This is why Olga and Blacho's participation via zoom is so important, even with the difficulties we face in this second year of the pandemic.
Strategies:
Working with what already exists: Adapting it from the worldview. There are many tools available from learning to AI friendly.
Understand AI: concepts, processes and technical aspects.
Training from scratch: From data selecting seeds.
“What is the South? How to build an identity when the mere act of searching is already a political act as the subject ceases to be an object of exotic study in order to defines itself?”
The Chronicler mode
I called this way to a way of work that enables the reflection and validation of the hypotheses that we formulate in the same field-territory of action and simultaneously collecting information in the manner of contemporary chronicles.
The chronicles are the unwritten history.
— Olga Mori, WilmaMaynas and Olinda Silvano.
— Lab experience with Dra. Gladys Ocharan, MyAP lab, Koshi Kené project.
— Working with Blacho Moya, Gente project.
To teach and learn DIY/DIWO/DIT
Everything can be learned, we can all learn together. I am convinced that learning and teaching are both duties and rights at the same time. This project is based in my experience working with Blacho Moya from Wounaan, Gente project and Olga Mori, Wilma Maynas and Olinda Silvano from Shipibo-Conibo, Koshi Kené project.
In Koshi Kené, Olga, Olinda y Wilma saw (met) Ayahuasca for the first time with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in MyAP Electron Microscopy Laboratory. With Blacho I worked side by side with him to create the teaching material from scratch, even re-evaluating what teaching means. I am sure that I learned a lot more from him: how Wounaan children learn to read and write in both languages at the same time, but also and more important how they play, how they dream.
This is the biggest lesson: learning must always be horizontal.
An indigenous AI
Who is the AI?
Everything starts introducing our new friend, then instead of what is AI? we asked ourselves who is AI? It is a tradition, for example, of the Shipibos-Conibo renaming friends from other cultures, for example, I have my Shipibo name: “Isa Biri” which means "Hummingbird".
The magic words
Within the terminology used in AI, there are words that name process and concepts like for example “seed”, “predict" and “latent space” that have a sense of rituality or are close to nature and labors related to agriculture and technologies of care and life that are part of indigenous worldviews. For me, they are magical and are the bridges to understand together AI.
If the objects, the territory, the songs are alive, why would Typography and AI also not be alive?
General ideas
They are based on common characteristics which are not particular to a specific indigenous culture.
idea 1: “Latent space”
Inspired on Training of Erik Bernhardsson “Analyzing 50k fonts using Deep Neural Networks”. This model is used to understand the importance of the choice of data, the seeds that are chosen by the speakers of their own iconography.
https://erikbern.com/2016/01/21/analyzing-50k-fonts-using-deep-neural-networks.html
idea 2: “Signature of all”
This idea empowers the speakers from their culture that values the physical gesture and the object. “A tribe of handwritten letters”, members of an indigenous community are invited to write an alphabet and send it.
“Generative Handwriting demo using TensorFlow” could be used for this purpose
Wounaan AI
Wounaan people jealously guard their language and for them this means conserving its glyphs, fort his reason when we developed the teaching material, we need to reinforce and explain how important this is to their children. Blacho explained to me how important stories are, then we created tales with the letters as characters. This is how the "Story of the Vowel Little Sisters" was born. Also, there are many legends about the animals of the region, which we transform into icons part of the typeface.
Now I decided to continue this path using “Image-to-Image Demo” an Interactive Image Translation with pix2pix-tensorflow to create together new fantastic animals.
— Fantastic creatures created with Image to Image Demo
— "Story of the Vowel Little Sisters", Teaching material, Gente project.
Olga Mori, Shipibo-Conibo artist and wise elder.
Shipibo-Conibo AI
Kené means design. They are geometric patterns that are ritually accompanied in their creation by the ceremonial songs Icaros. It is a feminine art that is passed down from mother to daughter.
Whoever wears Kené, wears beauty, it is believed that these designs give harmony and light to the spirit and the body, there is a connection between aesthetics and medicine. Therefore, these designs are only a part of the indivisible whole that is Kené. They are rituality, healing, science, knowledge, tradition. Kené is polysemic and synesthetic. A living object is a living culture.
— These designs are the response of the plant (sacred medicine) to the project, in Olga's own words: “these two came out, with even brighter colors, they are Wistin kené, which means star design”.
— Apachetas in front of the Colca mountains, Arequipa, Peru. Photo by Angela Calderón
“Knowledge gets articulated as that which allows one to walk a good path through the territory. Language, cosmology, mythology, and ceremony are simultaneously relational and territorial: they are the means by which knowledge of the territory is shared in order to guide others along a good path.”
Apachetas are marks that travelers leave on the roads of the Andes since pre-Hispanic times to accompany walkers.
It is a sign that someone has already been there and managed to get back on track.
This project is not a final solution to a problem that has many aspects and levels, but it is the commitment to find a solution together.