multiplicity

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Description (in English)

Multiplicity
1. A large number or great variety
2. The state of being multiple

Complicity
1. The fact or condition of being an accomplice, esp in a criminal act

multi.com.plicity is a twenty-first century translation of Guy de Maupassant's short story Mes vingt-cinq jours (My Twenty-Five Days), originally published in 1885, and translated into English by Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada et al.

multi.com.plicity takes de Maupassant's story and reimagines it, changing a health resort in 19th century France to a laboratory complex in an unspecified future, and inhabiting the story with nameless clones and technology. In this way the story eschews the notion of a literal translation in favour of a temporal and situational carrying across of de Maupassant's tale, with multiple layers of perception as realised through randomised image and video layers.

Description in original language
Pull Quotes

A digital fiction that reimagines Guy de Maupassant's 1885 short story Mes vingt-cinq jours (My Twenty-Five Days) as a futuristic technological resort for clones.

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multi.com.plicity - title page
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multi.com.plicity
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multi.com.plicity
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multi.com.plicity
Technical notes

Created in HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery. Videos reside on and are pulled dynamically from YouTube.

Contributors note

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 international license.

Images:
AAD, aksoy, Avolore, Ayla87, carlfeldman, catalina77, chechi, clouseau, costi, csessums, czarcats, darkwater, dlritter, doctor-a, Ear_Candy, erase, evolution_, Falaschini, hakill, idfarmer, ilco, Image After industrial_arts, jherzog, joming, joseas, kendoll007, kimmarie, lcisa, leonizzy, mikeweston, mmagallan, msjacoby, mybloodyself, myfear, nathanreading, omaromar, pafkape, phillipstearns, pnnl, Raven3k, rco, Ren_Art, samplediz, selva, siewlian, sofi73, sporkwrapper, StarLight, taggartjm, thejaymo, thorius, tlgoa, tome213, tuonela, twicepix, two-wrongs, TWS, vancanjay, vierdrie, wonsak, 15216811@N06, 19779889@N00, 29233640@N07, 4seasons

Videos:
MotionElements, XStockvideo

Additional code:
andrei neacsu, eric martin, james smith, ken redler, lea verou, nirvana tikku, scott jehl, scott robbin, simple focus

Description (in English)

Prosthesis is a set of live vocal performances addressing complicities inherent in the use of digital technology and emergent artificialities in cognition, language, and the physical body. It consists of nine main sections, including readings augmented by projections and recorded voice, and concludes with a song.

(Source: Author's site)

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Technical notes

I did use code to write and shape parts of the Prosthesis text, but none of those programs were made publicly available at any point, or even named. They were more one-off algorithms I wrote to get particular compositional effects, rather than a platform I built out in a sustained way. They were mostly written in javascript, but could just as easily have been php or python or c. The animated texts that accompanied live performances (and that appear in some of the published digital versions of sections online) were all made with html / css / javascript.

Description (in English)

Diagrams Series 6 is the latest in a life-long series of Diagram Poems, the earliest experimentations for which began in 1968. Although I have been making interactive works since 1988, Diagrams Series 6 is actually my first work written in a fully interactive way: from beginning to end in one interactive environment where the word object is playable at every stage of its development, from temporary unassembled scrap all the way to its final location in a finished piece. This environment is part of an ongoing project which I call Hypertext in the Open Air, implemented in a programming system called Squeak. It allows the works to be played on all popular computing platforms, including Macintosh, BSD, Linux, and Windows. Diagrams Series 6, consisting of the works 6.4 and 6.10, strives to return to the intense diagrammicity of some of my earlier non-interactive works, Diagrams Series 4 and Diagrams Series 3. The diagram notation acts as a kind of external syntax, allowing word objects to carry interactivity deep inside the sentence. Interactivity, in turn, allows for juxtapositions to be opened so that the layers in cluster can occupy the same space and yet be legible. A problem we all have: a multiplicity, we must all occupy the same world space, do no harm, and yet be free. Carrying multiplicity inside the thought, inside the sentence: the thought as world. At a time when our world is in deep painful need of more multiplicity of thought.

(Source: Author description, Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1.)

I ♥ E-Poetry entry
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Technical notes

After clicking to start Squeak and Diagrams 6.4 or 6.10, click on the box next to "Introduction" to see full instructions. Instructions on running Diagrams Series 6 on other operating systems are available in Rosenberg's read me file.