Layers of Information

Written language has been an efficient way to take in information for hundreds of years. The act of writing is even more rich and involved than reading. The effort and mechanics of putting your thoughts on paper or screen help clarify what you’re thinking; they help you actually notice things about what you’ve written.

Writing is not a 2-dimensional phenomenon, even though it fits comfortably on the page. The instructions our brain sends to our hands create movements and forces that contain different information about the words we write than the text itself. Movement is information if we simply think of it that way. For writing and sketching this means that there is more going on than the visible strokes on the page: there is another layer of information, meaning and understanding that’s difficult to see because it’s in the movements that created them: the speed and forces and friction and resistance.

DNA is information encoded in proteins: instructions for making us much (but not all) of what we are. And movement—whether it’s walking, jumping rope or swimming—makes changes to our bodies: loosening up stiff joints, building muscle, increasing endurance. Our bodies experience these changes because of the information contained in gravity, load and leverage as we move.

There is deep work going on inside us when we move; layers of information in action. Encoded deep in the genetically determined structures of our muscles and bones and lymph nodes are the instructions for decoding the information contained in movements and forces and stresses. Our bodies read the reports of our movements at the same time that they author them: instructions for strength and health, encoded in motion.