Types of notation are affected over hundreds of years due to the technological advances and economical developments (sometimes as simple as discovering new materials). The Chinese use of symbols in their language, paintings, and calligraphy are an expression of ideas in each type of notation. People of Mexico created books made of animal skin and whatever minerals that were available for ink. With limited resources, notation was usually iconographic. With printing comes the question of standardized texts and how that affects the kinesthetics of informal writing or symbols for readers. Karl Young's essay Notation and the Art of Reading provides several examples of different notations from various areas of the world that emphasize this change.
The Aztecs used notation that best suited their means of learning since travel and materials were limited. One type of notation used by the Aztecs was the use of images to enhance the kinesthetic experience. The Aztecs believed that real life experience was the only way to learn new information. As a result, books were 'read' in order to provide more examples of images already experienced. Books were a guideline for the reader/singer and they read/sang what they felt and their audience used the images to join the experience.
The Chinese also embraced the surrounding materials to create the right notation for the right message. One example Young gives us is the painting and poems created on buildings or cliffs to create the kinesthetic feeling for the audience. Long journeys were a typical component of Chinese art, so creating these notations on these buildings and rocks could have created a sense of sound and image as the reader worked through the painting or poem.
When spelling and grammar became standardized after the development of the printing press, people lost interest in reading as notations became more streamlined. Young provides examples of poets such as bill bissett who refuses to conform to these standardizations. In doing so, he forces the reader study the notation by rereading lines and reading aloud. Such actions automatically tune the reader into the kinesthetics of studying the sounds and images in order to determine meaning.
As technology has advanced to present day with with all the different types of multimedia availability, people are no longer interested in the kinesthetics that reading a poem involves: trying to determine the meaning of a text according to the reader and the author. According to Young, some modern, nontraditional poets are revitalizing these kinesthetics by losing the standardization and forcing the reader to read the notation and simply the text. For the future, readers may become more involved in notations of images in order to deepen experience, similar to the Aztecs.
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