Re: [-empyre-] reception

["Friedrich W. Block" <block@brueckner-kuehner.de>]

Am 23.10.2005 17:53 Uhr schrieb "Jim Andrews" unter <jim@vispo.com>:

> http://plaintext.cc
> 
> what is the "cc" for in "plaintext.cc"? i gather it's a florian cramer
> domain. plaintext plus a bit of binary interpretation. also, what does a <a
> href="./"> result in (this is what the numbers in the boxes at top link to)?
> i presume it results in a call to a perl script that generates the next page
> (but could be wrong).
> 

yes, bingo, it's by florian, and yes the active numbers in the boxes result
in a new generated text (you can as well just press the reload-button of the
browser).

> speaking of generating, the text we see involves a lot of "-->" symbols,
> which is sometimes associated with language generation rules in formal
> grammars. Sometimes it seems like what we are looking at are the rules used
> to generate the page, or the next page, or whatever.

no, we are looking at text collages generated by certain algorithms from
different sources.

> sometimes it seems that the content refers to individuals on email lists (nn
> for instance) which suggests that the content is partly a result of looking
> at an index of email messages and using codes for the names of the writers.
> and sometimes the content seems to draw on the content of the email posts
> themselves.

these parts result from a source that comes from a mailing list dialogue
between florian and mez.
> 
> the boxes could represent a thread, perhaps.

they represent 'machines'

> dunno, but it's undoubtedly very coherent if one knows what is being coded
> and how it is coded. is it a generative text piece?

but if you have to find or activate this knowledge by yourself? this is the
point i want to make: what about the relation between the knowledge this
text can conceptually / potentially bind and the experience of the empirical
recipient.

> "digital writing in its pure sense"--could you expand on that, please,
> Friedrich?

here i mean the conceptually dense interrelation between writing as poetic
programming, the writing of the programmed generative text machine itself
and the digital codes it is using as a source.

coming back to my questions:

1. according to florian the user should at least realize that the machine
makes a collage of some digital codes and pornographic text. conceptually it
is an aim to confuse the reader by fakes like the 'links', 'numbers', or
'arrows'. and one may be pleased by viewing the results of generation. i
think that these aspects can be realized if you let the machine run for
several times.

2. literate people may realize that one source of text material is
bataille's story "the history of the eye" (i didn't). some others may see
the typographic link to the manuscript of george perec's radioplay
"machine", which performs a set of three machine units processing goethe's
poem "wanderers nachtlied".
the program selects text from batailles story and / or from the running
linux system's kernel in real time and / or from data stored on the hard
disc and / or form the mentioned dialogue with mez. the text from these
sources may be mixed or not. it is than transformed by a set of 24
algorithms of text transformation and typography (with an average of 6
transformations per 'page').
the project performs a "machine célibataire", for which duchamp, oulipo, and
jodi gave some orientation.

i have to confess that i was not able to associate a lot of these aspects.
but knowing them my pleasure of playing with the piece and its contexts has
increased and developed a lot. so i would agree that it is good to have as
much information as possible, and i enjoy to participate in the knowledge of
the producer. it would be a pity to miss the aspects mentioned in 2. sure
that finding this knowledge can be the result of a more or less intensive
process. however, the producer's commentary is a helpful possibility.

3. the text needs a user who has at least some experience with computers,
who accepts that it takes some time to explore the work, to play with it in
different phases and on different levels, to activate co-texts and contexts
(googling may help to find at least the bataille source). the exchange in a
community is helpful (especially if the author is part of it). in a way this
reader has to be or to become an expert of digital as poetic writing.
no - according to the concept, the masturbating machine only needs itself.

friedrich