1. Ilaria Boeddu University of Genoa Department of Philosophy Nelson Goodman's theory of notation: a possible standard for contemporary arts.

2. Nelson Goodman is an analytic philosopher (1906-1998) whose aesthetic thought [Languages of Art (1976 2 ); Ways of Worldmaking (1978); Reconceptions in Phylosophy and Other Arts and Science (1988)] could be productively applied in the comprehension of the different forms of contemporary art and in the theorization of the digital process. The topics of Goodman's aesthetic we have to consider for these aims are: - the theory of notation; - the achieving distinction between autographic and allographic arts.

3. 1 – The notational theory. A notational system includes an articulated set of characters and a range of relative positions which determine the computational correctness according to this notation. It has to keep particular requirements which characterize the relationship between a notational scheme and its application: - disjunction and complete differentiation of characters (both synctactically and semantically)‏ - lack of semantical ambiguity “Score”→ a notation has the specific duty to identify a work connecting each “score” to the class of compling performances, the only which could be considered has a true realization of the work itself. But Goodman points as aesthetic symptoms synctactical and semantical density and saturation. Art (and visual arts in particular) tends to violate notation and it functions rather as a synctactically and semantically dense symbolic system.

4. 2 – Autography and allography: an arts' classification. allography → it includes all artistic forms linked to a notational system which enable different performers to reproduce the work without changing or falsifying it: copying the work means performing it again. autographic work → it can be copied and its copy/fake can be distinguished by the original. In a picture also the least mark count as relevant: it is a synctactically and semantically symbolic system. So, Goodman suggests a classification of the arts: - score (as in the music, where almost all the requirements of a notational system are respected); - script (as in poetry, literature and theatre, which violate semantical requirements of a notational system); - sketch (as in painture and sculpture, engraving and print, all fully autographical arts).

5. Are such classifications still valid and functional or is the actual condition of art escaping from this model chacterized by this polarity of notation and density, digital and analog? The progressive digitalization in action in the different languages of art is delining a complex artistic setting, often not reducible to traditional aesthetic models. Every digital image, from a structural point of view, matches to a digital scheme and is the realization of an algorithm in binary code; in other words, the digital image is the semantical interpretation of a symbolic scheme synctactically differentiated. So, there would be the displacement of visual arts from the autographic to the allographic realm, from “sketches” to “scores”.