Experimental literature SM2220 Generative Art & Literature Linda C.H. LAI March 2009
What is Experimental Literature? Core ideas: Innovations > technique/style Early 20 th -century modernist: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein 1950s Beat writers: e.g. William S. Burrough s Naked Lunch 1970s Italo Calvino,Julio Cortázar Ergodic literature Digital Poetry Generative Literature The OuLiPo
Views on poetry: the moment of creation, the act of reading The taste of apple lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way, poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act Jorge Luis Borges, Foreword to Obra Poetica, quoted in Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, Polemics, London: Academy, 1996, p. 6
Views on poetry: Poetry as chance generating a system Dadaists and Surrealists were probably the first to use random numbers and chance systems to build complex automatic generative poetry.
Views on poetry: the moment The moment of unfolding All poetry might be seen to be generative in that it is always in the process of becoming. Even for the Surrealist Paul Valéry, a poem entails a continuous linkage between the voice that is, the voice that impends, and the voice that is to come. It is generative in the sense that it unfolds in real-time.
Haiku / Renku See separate pdf
Haiku / Renku Moonlight --- A sand dune Shifts (Virginia Brady Young) The hills Release the summer clouds One by one by one (John Wills) Blue sky Cloud after cloud from behind The snowy mountain (Bruce Ross)
Haiku / Renku aki no yo ya tabi no otoko no harishigoto autumn night a traveling man s needlework
Views on poetry: Poetry as the art of sound The art of speech is total art. Dada s sound poems Kurt Schwitters
Poetry is the most difficult to define: Views on poetry:... Poetry throws sense-bound classificatory distinctions into question as it is both read and heard; or written and spoken/performed. Hegel s dialectical thinking: we do not hear speech by simply listening to it we need to represent speech to ourselves in written form in order to grasp what it essentially is Written and spoken forms work together to form a language that we appreciate as poetry. Audible signs (time of the ear) + visible signs (space of the eye) (Geoff Cox, Alex McLean and Adrian Ward, the Aesthetics of Generative Code http://www.generative.net )
Views on poetry:... Poetry at the point of its execution? making reading & hearing
CONCRETE POEM Or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on Apollinaire s Calligrammes, an example. (See separate pdf notes)
The Mouse s Tale by Lewis Carroll (a concrete poem that appears in Alice s Adventures in Wonderland) http://bootless.net/mouse.html
Linda s calligrams From Cryptoglyph: dialogues in many tongues in the crevices on on open city (2004)
Generative Literature: Process poem by A. Leandro from Ponto-Ovum 10
Oulipo algorithmic reconstructions manual deformations recursive algorithms Iteration / recursion (Please refer to slide #56 in pdf Generative Art & Literature: overview Week 1+2)
The Dinosaur by Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala) When I woke up, the dinosaur was still there.
The variety and diversity of experimental literature Core ideas: to play with language Words (morphology, semantics), sentences (syntax), constructions (grammar) to play with the norms of creative writing What to write How to write Where to write what/how/where to present writing the material conditions of the presentation of writing: Printing method Printing material Printed surface Typography layout
BIG BUSINESS CARD ZHU FADONG, 1993 (from: Transience: Chinese experimental art at the end of the twentieth century)
LOOKING FOR A MISSING PERSON ZHU FADONG, 1993 Transience: Chinese experimental art at the end of the twentieth century
The variety and diversity of experimental literature AUTOMATISM Chance operation The actual moments of writing The act itself Writing as a performance Automatic writing Rules To tap our unconscious mind as a new form of creative resources
The variety and diversity of experimental literature MEDIUM SPECIFICITY to turn to the lower-level units of language to explore the basic components of language to reveal how language works rather than to communicate Poetry (poems) Poetry is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities, in addition to, or instead of, its ostensible meaning. Poetry, unlike other literary forms, focuses most sharply on language itself. The music of words, how they sound, how their sounds flow and mix and form musical patterns are vital to poetry. ACCENTS COUPLETS INTONATION METER RHYTHM RHYME SYLLABLES STANZAS Physical attributes of words: SOUND, SIZE, SHAPE, and RHYTHM
The variety and diversity of experimental literature INTERMEDIA Questioning what the medium is. Breaking out of the boundaries of existing media by using new resources (expanded art) Challenging the normal frames of reference of the audience no clear-cut separation between what belongs to one medium and what belongs to another (the in-between) (neither nor )
The variety and diversity of experimental literature CONCEPTUAL ART Process > work Idea > work Writing needs not be about meanings of the text. Writing is only a way of presenting an idea: the idea is the most important thing.
The variety and diversity of experimental literature REFLEXIVITY Doing a certain kind of creative writing, at the same time reflecting/commenting on what is written and the norms that govern the writing.
The variety and diversity of experimental literature PERFORMATIVE FUNCTIONS The act of writing/reading is being opened up and revised every time we write and read. a refusal to settle on a final, conclusive version of a work An open work
Generative Literature See pdf on Sam s Little Experiments Jason Nelson s Poem Cube http://www.secrettechnology.com/poem_cube/poem_cube.html Linda Lai & Keith Lam: Crypt-machine Linda Lai & Lawrence Choi: Who is Singing? - Donald, can you hear me? http://www.invisibilis.com/wm/
A generative book? Intermedia + medium-specificity + algorithmic thinking + rule-based structuring A non-linear book? A book that can be read in any order? A book that does need to be read according to page numbers? A book that has multiple ordering of pages? A book that violates pagination? A book that requires a different mode of reading? An altered book a book based on existing books? Flip book? (a time-based book) A book for texture? A book that is an installation? A book without images? WHAT MAKES A BOOK GENERATIVE?
A generative book? Intermedia + medium-specificity + algorithmic thinking + rule-based structuring
Experimental books DMU Leicester http://homepage.mac.com/emma_powell/bookexhibition/photoalbum70.html Rejectamenta http://rejectamenta.com/display/phd/experimental-books
Generative literature is a kind of experimental literature. Generative literature is a very specific form of digital literature. Jean-Pierre Balpe: Generative literature, defined as the production of continuously changing literary texts by means of a specific dictionary, some set of rules and the use of algorithms, is a very specific form of digital literature. Generative art is a literature where the texts are produced through a computer by means of a set of formal rules It is a literature of which the author does not write the final texts, but only works at the level of the high rank components such as conceptual models, knowledge rules, dictionary entries and rhetoric definitions. [The author is a designer.] [The author is like a meta-author, defining what literature means, and how his literary conception can be formally described.] Principles and processes of generative literature: questions to literature http://www.brown.edu/research/dichtung-digital/2005/1/balpe/index.htm More useful reference: http://www.hyperrhiz.net/hyperrhiz06/19-essays/78-the-aesthetics-of-generative-literature
Final project *Word game *Literature game (e.g. Poem Cube, Life in the Garden, Cryptmachine echoes) *Digitization of an Oulipo work *Digitization of a selected piece of literature *A generative book