Dictionary of Primal Behaviour

Graham Pullin, “Design Meets Disability”, The MIT Press Massachisetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts

The art and media research group Urtica in Serbia bridged verbal and nonverbal communication. Violeta Vojvodic and Eduard Balaz are fascinated by what they term common linguistic knowledge: utterances common across many languages that represent strong feelings such as shock, pain, or pleasure. These include “aha,” “boo,” “eek,” “hurrah,” “oh,” “oops,” “ow,” “wow,” and “yuck.” Urtica’s Dictionary of Primal Behaviour represents thirty-eight interjections both phonetically and graphically, as sound recordings, photographs, and videos of facial expressions as well as graphic icons abstracted from these. The group is interested in the redundancy of this technique, and its potential role to accommodate disability as well as cultural and linguistic differences between speaker and listener.
But Urtica is also intrigues by ambiguity and the room left for interpretation. It cites French information theoretician Abraham Moles’s theory that aesthetic pleasure is determined by the balance of originality of the message and the ability of the recipient to understand it. Clearly intonation plays a role on both sides of this equation: it helps decipher meaning, but just as important, it affords more originality of expression. At the moment, it seems that AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) is more concerned with the understanding then expression.
The Dictionary of Primal Behaviour is described as an art project, and not only is aesthetic pleasure a theme of research, it also manifest in its presentation. If this level of design were routinely brought to AAC, devices would be more satisfying to use, but also send out more positive signals about their users to others. Too often communication aids designed for adults look as though they are intended either for young children or computer programmers. In our culture we take for granted a visual sophistication in most things. How much more appropriate to find this in something as profound as a communication aid.

Graham Pullin is a lecturer in Interactive Media Design at the University of Dundee. He has worked as a senior designer and studio head at the design consultancy IDEO.

Research Projects of Graham Pullin:
+ https://www.dundee.ac.uk/people/graham-pullin
Book “Design Meets Disability,” MIT Press:
+ https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-meets-disability