𒅆𒄀 𒃻 𒅴
𒅆𒄀 𒃻 𒅴
Once Upon a Language
Once Upon a Language
Once Upon a Language is an evolving, collective book shaped by the words of many voices. Since 2024, the project has invited participants to contribute short texts in any language, which are then reimagined by AI into new hybrid forms that blur sound, structure, meaning, and cultural expression.
The work draws on the idea of asemic writing—script that looks like language but resists direct reading. It unfolds through four kinds of “infusions”:
Phonetic: how words shift when sounds collide,
Grammar: how structures bend and combine,
Semantic: how meanings stretch or dissolve,
Cultural: how idioms and references carry across borders.
More than a technical experiment, this is a participatory practice, shaped by community contributions and the collaboration of several of my graduate students. Writing, voice, and dialogue feed into a living artifact that grows collectively, asking what language might become when it belongs to no single speaker, but to all of us together.
This ongoing work (2024–25) is supported by a Faculty Fellowship for Social Change through Entrepreneurship, Helene and Grant Wilson Center, Pace University.
2024-Present
Presented the project progress with my bright and hardworking team at Innovative Solutions to Contemporary Challenges: Scholarly Creativity in the Service of Humanity, May 2025.
Featured by Pace University News — Breaking Barriers, Building Futures. Click for full interview
Visitors will share in navigating a language that is no one’s, and everyone’s, Motamedi said. “It will be a dance between known and unknown, created with technology to inscribe a better understanding of our connection to each other.”