French

Les Mots et les Images is a work by J.-M Dutey published in alire 5 in 1991. At first, one encounters a table that is divided in 21 smaller boxes. Here, there is a spatial idea that is introduced which Dutey wished to explore as seen in a quote from the work itself, “(Dutey) voudrait que sa poésie explore les espaces qu’elle occupe et ceux qu’elle suggère.” This quote expresses an exploratory desire because one has to click on the words on the screen to begin the program. If one chooses not to click, then nothing will happen. It is up to the user to explore the work, whether that is limited or full exploration. This seems to give the user a sense of control, yet when one chooses to begin; the control is replaced by a feeling of being lost in the connections between the words in the smaller boxes. The words that appear in the small boxes are the following: Magritte, tableau/forme, « pour alire n.5 octobre 1991, proposition, mot(s), représentation, image(s), nom, objet(s), autre nom, contours, signification, réalité, figures/précises/choses, figures/vagues/choses, Philippe Bootz/Jean-Marie Dutey, ou bien le contraire, et 1928.The box « Magritte » is named in reference to the Belgian painter, René Magritte. All of the images that are used in the program are images that Magritte created in his work “Les Mots et les Choses” which explores the relationship between things and words from 1929 during the surrealist movement. Next to the large table containing the 21 smaller boxes, there is a small table with the words “autres objets”. In that same corner, a third table is divided in 9 boxes with the word “clic”. When one clicks on one of the 18 words on the larger table, lines appear between the chosen word and other words on the screen. There is a variety of connections that are made, ranging from as low as 2 or 3 and going as high as 6 or 7. The lines that appear are all in different colors (red, green, blue, brown, yellow, pink, etc.) Sometimes, the connections between the words are not actually lines, but instead circles. After having clicked, one can click on the square at the corner. In relation to the number of connections in the larger table, the smaller table divided in 9 will show different colors correlating to the colors of the lines/circles. When the colors appear, one can click on a color which will proceed to a screen that shows the relationship between the original word chosen and one of the original images by Magritte. For example, when one clicks on “objet(s)”, there are 9 additional words that are connected to it, therefore there are 9 total colors on the table. When one choses one of these 9 colors, one sees the connection between “objet(s)” and the word to which the color links it to. In this case, red leads to “representation”. The screen that follows is the relation between an object and the idea of a representation. The screen shows two identical houses. The first house has “l’objet reel” written under it; the second house has “l’objet représenté”. At the top of the screen, there is a sentence: “tout tend à faire penser qu’il y a peu de relation entre un objet et ce qui le représente » (everything tends to lead to thinking that there is little relation between an object and that which it represents). All the relationships between the words are represented by images. All the images describe the idea of space, of representation, of vagueness and of interpretation.

Compréhension/Comprendre is a piece by Annie Abrahams (1997/1998) that explores the ideas of identity, perception and the fluidity of these two concepts. The piece begins with a pink screen and two pieces of text. In one corner, the reader sees the statement, “Vous ne me comprendrez jamais.” (You will never understand me) And in another corner there is a question, “Pourquoi pas?” ( Why not?) On this first page (and also on other pages throughout) the author gives the reader a choice. By clicking on the hyperlinks, the reader has the impression that he or she is talking with a person. The program becomes a sort of artificial being. Here, one has the choice to accept the declaration, or to argue it.
If one clicks on “Vous ne me comprendrez jamais,” he or she is lead to a transitory page with even more text. This page includes a mix of spatial and temporal reading. Here, a sentence reads, “Il est impossible de me comprendre.” (It is impossible to understand me,) but parts of the text move and the word order is abnormal (when one reads from left to right). There is a link between the visual and the thematic on this particular page. One cannot view all of the words simultaneously as a complete sentence. This esthetic could represent the impossibility of seeing or knowing all the complexities of another person (as is suggested in the phrase “Vous ne me comprendrez jamais.”) The movement of the text could also represent the fluidity of identity that changes with every life experience of an individual.
In the corner of said page, the author added another link that the reader can choose to follow. This link reads “Je ne comprends pas.” (I don’t understand.) The bits of text like this one transcribe the possible thoughts of the reader as he or she interacts with the piece. If one clicks on this link, he or she is lead to a new transitory page. In the corner of this page, the screen reads, “Vous ne serez jamais moi.” (You will never be me.) In the center, there is a circle made of small dots that flash as they change color. This image evokes the theme of optics and the eye. Others can never see what you see through your own eyes, just as they cannot fully understand you.
If the reader clicks on the flashing circle, he or she sees a new page with a quarter of the same image and yet more text in the corner. Here the text reads:

“Stop, ne touchez pas, dites-moi comment vous éviter partez…………….restez, ne me quittez pas j’ai besoin de vous pour affaiblir mes frontières.”
(Stop, don’t touch, tell me how to avoid you leave……………stay, don’t leave me I need you to weaken my boundaries.)

In an interview speaking about this piece, artist Annie Abrahams said “Il t’est impossible de me comprendre parce que tu ne seras jamais moi! La seule issue dans tout ça, s’il y en a une, c’est l’attention qu’il faut donner à l’autre pour advancer ou pour repousser les frontiers… et, ainsi, peut-être élargir les siennes!” (It is impossible for you to understand me because you will never be me! The only issue in all that, if there is one, is the attention that we need to give to the other to advance or to drive back the boundaries…and, in doing so, maybe widen theirs!) Here, she addresses the possibility of being able to better understand others, if we communicate and negociate the “boundaries” (physical, verbal, cultural, etc.) that separate us. If the reader then clicks on the word “touchez” the next page gives a short poem that talks about “being open.” Also, there is a new window that appears. It says “svp souriez aux voisins le matin.” (Please, smile at the neighbors in the morning.) One could read these words as a didactic message from the author. These are ways or strategies that could help to “weaken the boundaries” between ourselves and others. In doing this, one can approach the “impossible task” of understanding another person.

Nuit Noire is a creation by Dutey and Jane Sautiere (1997) published in alire 10. The work itself begins as what appears to be a dark night. The screen is completely black and dark. White text appears and falls slowly, and the words become clearer at the center of the page; then, the text disappears again. The text falls in groups, perhaps in strophes, but one must read the order of the lines, not the words, in reverse order because the work begins, in fact, with the last line of the poem and progresses towards the beginning. The second time, the poem begins at the bottom of the screen and moves up the screen rather than falling to the bottom. According to Philippe Bootz, the poem is a retrograde text. The work is also a metaphorical animation where the text moves, but the words themselves do not change. Here is the text (from the start to the end): Nuit noire, odeur de tubéreuses. Toussent les grenouilles toutes ensemble et toutes ensembles se taisent, pour de plus fluettes et de plus mystérieuses voix. Une radio qui chante l’opéra chinois peut-être, ou peut-être pas. Une palme métallique au-dessus de la tête fait osciller la moustiquaire laiteuse. Mais ni tangage ni roulis dans la jonque l'oreille dans l’oreiller trop mou entend crisser les insectes. Sur le mur bat le cœur du petit margouillat translucide et frais. The poem itself is a story that describes the details and elements of a dark night. The narrator perhaps is passing a dark night in nature and describing the sounds, the events, and his emotional experiences. The viewer sees the black screen and the white words in the work perhaps as a reflection of the night and of the light odor of the tubéreuses, which are white and fragrant flowers. The words appear crackled and unclear except for at the center of the screen, which could be a representation of the point of view of the narrator who is looking at the stars and the dark sky between branches of trees, making his view of the sky somewhat obstructed and crackled. Also, the center of the screen where the words are most clear could represent the moon that shines in the center of the stars. The poem describes the sounds of the frogs and a mysterious voice that is thought to be a radio. It mentions insects that chirp and the heart of the lizard that beats. It is the dark, black night that permits the accentuation of the other senses like hearing, touch, and smell. This work uses repetition and rhyme that suggest an erotic aspect. The vocabulary, however, is what suggests and truly defines the eroticism of a dark night.

"Je veux" is a collection of poems written in 1997/1998 directly accessible through the authors' website by clicking "Being Human 1997/1998". Access to the text is through a menu offering a choice between "Je veux" , "tendresse easy easy", "a kiss" and "more". In the three poems the reader/visitor is invited to click on either "tu" or "you". The narrator's voice appears in the forms of "Je", "me" as well as in expressing his/her desire in "je voudrais".

In the poem "a kiss", the visitor "engages" with the narrator when s/he encounters a dialogue box and is asked to enter his/her name - the narrator only kisses people whose name s/he knows. The visitor then has to confirm if he or she wants a computer kiss. There are four different languages: German, English, French and Dutch. If the visitor responds in the affirmative in a language, oui, ja or yes, the screen is emblazoned with monochrome flashes of orange, red, pink resembling lipstick kisses. There is also a sentence in the middle of the screen saying how many times the narrator has kissed, reminiscent of the number of visitors to a website. The visitor returns to the menu and finds it changed. S/he now finds "a kiss" replaced with "we could meet again?" This new link brings the visitor to an error page. The question remains as to whether this is intentional or a reminder of the ephemeral character of electronic literature.

If the visitor responds "no", another scenario is launched. The narrator asks for the visitor's name, and reveals the number of times s/he has kissed up to that point. The moment the visitor responds "no", s/he is left with the return response of "Then, I will leave you" as well as the "threat" of the closing of the window. The window closes automatically after a few seconds and the visitor is out of the website completely. There is a possibility to keep the window open, which mirrors an ultimatum in a real relationship - underneath "Then I will leave you!" which is presented in bold letters, in fine print is "If you don't want the window to close click here". The program playfully mimics a relationship. The personalized reaction of the program to the visitor's answer suggests artificial intelligence.

In the poem "je veux", the words "tu", "me" and "respectes" in white appear on a black background. These form to read "je veux que tu me respectes" (I want you to respect me); "you are loved", "you loved me". Some words are underlined in the poem, and if those words are clicked, they freeze. After clicking several more times on different words, the visitor is returned to the initial menu.

In the poem "tendresse", rectangles and squares form across the screen in different colors. Seven screens follow in succession in different colors and containing different words for each. The words appear in English, French, Dutch and in German. The seven screens represent the seven days of the week, and those words are written in English and in French moving from top to bottom of the screen. The days of the week are associated with emotions and feelings and also have different sounds for each one. This collection of poems blends visual, plastic and textual art, and animated poetry shows how well this relationship works.

(Source: Iona Wynter Parks)

“La Belle” is a kinetic poem created by Philippe Bootz in 1989. Published in the review alire 2, it was later transferred into the anthology Le salon de lecture électronique in 1994. The poem itself is a brief program that is presented in several parts. That is to say, the poem seems to be cut into strophes: a preliminary strophe that introduces the poem, a sequence of lines that appear and disappear quickly in the center of the screen that make up the second part of the poem, and the third strophe that is presented just after the first and second strophes. Yet, the third strophe changes a bit after the second strophe. Only the last line of the poem, “froid jusqu’au coeur,” is seen. This means of presenting the poem complicates the comprehension of its sense and thus creates a sentiment of distance from the poem. Moreover, the rapidity of the program is accentuated by the transfer software for technological reasons. Therefore, the feeling of isolation from the poem is augmented inadvertently by the software program. Despite all that, a meaning can be drawn from the poem so long as one knows how to slow down the program to be able to soak it in. By hitting the pause and enter key rapidly and in succession, the poem becomes decipherable. Once the poem is paused for long enough, it becomes discernable and its sense becomes easier to comprehend. However, cropping up rapidly and erratically behind the text of the second part of the poem is a mass of visual glitches that appear as pixelated and polychromatic cubes. These visual deformations make reading the poem almost impossible, especially at its original speed, which adds another element of detachment to the program. The meaning of this visual effect in the poem brings to mind the frigidness of the heart evoked in the line “froid jusqu’au Coeur”. These pixelated cubes are similar to ice crystalizing on glass. This image juxtaposed with the image of beauty in the rest of the poem suggests a sort of irony, perhaps. As for the theme of the poem, sexual and feminine imagery are evoked by a sense of criticized vanity. For example, the line “mes jambes affleurent l’air” suggests a sexual image of the female body. In this line, one can argue that it’s a woman (or the woman who is the subject of the poem) who speaks and comments on her sexualized body. She states, “mes jambes”, thus reinforcing the idea that she is criticizing her own image. But, it’s the line “comme ces lèvres ne savent que/ tourner la tête” that underlines the vain aspect of a beautiful woman’s image. Feminine beauty seems to come from the act of looking at, and perhaps even coveting, her body. Yet, the poem seems to criticize this vanity as well by ending the poem with the line “froid jusqu’au coeur”. This line elicits perhaps the inanity of the sexualization of a woman’s body, particularly by men. This indication of chauvinism is supported by the fact that the structure of the poem seems to symbolize the act of “checking out” a beautiful woman. One begins by looking at the legs and then raising one’s gaze to the “two fruits”, a symbol for a woman’s breasts. Finally, the gaze fixes on the head and the lips. Therefore, it’s a foot to head presentation of the female body, imitating the masculine habit of looking at a beautiful woman or of an observer who analyzes a statue that is “smooth/ of marble”. – written by Dakota Fidram

“L’où” by Philippe Bootz published first in 1990 in alire 3, is a work of animated poetry that has no images, that has no sounds, but that demands a strong engagement from the viewer only with the words on the screen. Being a transitory text where the text changes without interaction of the viewer, one sees firstly the word “que” and groups of letters, “aill” and “vaill” , that move, but that do not make complete words. Then, the letters form “vaill/que/aille” perhaps referencing the commonly used French phrase “vaille que vaille”, creating a syntactic animation where the text is in tension between the reading (and interpretation) of the text on the space of the screen and the reading of the text within the transitory development and evolution of the work. In a similar manner, the title follows this motif of a phrase that is not complete, but that represents something more important than the words alone. This work evokes the theme of shipwreck that is supported by a lexicon of words pertaining to water, or the ocean, and to destruction. The lyrical subject uses words like: “fluid”, “boiling”, “fog”, “coasts”, “rhythm of water”, and “reefs”, but also words like “tatters”, and “fragments”. The work follows the theme of destruction of the sea, and, one could say, “tells a story” of a ship lost at sea. From the text: l’errance de la voile/l’aller, le dire écueil l’arrime et le dire et rompt et l’arrime et l’errance il rompt comme du pain/pâte/pas et façonne jusqu’au rythme de l’eau The title “L’où” represents a phrase that is not complete but that shows the relationship between words and emptiness. The title appears in the work as: L’_____________où______________ The space between the two words suggests that there are aspects that lack. The words them-selves could represent the fragments that float in the emptiness of the sea, or the reef that broke the flat surface of the sea and caused the destruction. This theme of shipwreck is a reference to an idea presented in the book UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N‘ABOLIRA LE HASARD by Stéphane Mallarmé. According to Mallarmé, poems are made of thoughts put onto a page. The words float in the space and create a relationship between the fragments of the thoughts and the emptiness that surrounds them. Like a boat completely destroyed by the sea, one seas the same fragments, the tatters, that float in the emptiness. Therefore, a poem is the result of a collision between a thought and the page that results in a scattering of words.

In 2008, Phillipe Bootz published a monograph version of Alire to commemorate the publication of his programmed poems that date to 1977-1978 (matrix poetry) and to 1988, the first version of Alire (0.1) that was presented in 1989 at the Centre Pompidou. In Alire 13, Bootz presents the unedited and difficult to find works.
One of the works that make part of this compilation is “Le Nouveau prépare l’ancien” which dates to 2001. At the beginning of this cinematographic poem, one hears the voice of a man that explains the instructions to navigating the program. It is not clear to whom the voice belongs, but it is present through the entire poem. A message on the screen informs the user that he may skip the intro by clicking on the screen. The voice then continues to give a description of the poem saying that one can click on the words of the poem to see what can happen. After this introduction, the poem begins with the images of hour glasses. At the same time, the same narrator talks about time and describes it as “the first friend of man”. The voice continues to explain the relationship between man and time. On the screen, the works “le nouveau… prépare… l’ancien”, the title of the poem, appear. With these words and images of hour glasses, one has the feeling of time and its effect on mankind due to time’s control of life. Shortly after, the screen is divided in two images. The image on the top half is still an hour glass; the image on the bottom is also an hour glass behind what appears to be a window as it rains. However, the rain in this situation is that of letters: o’s and n’s that fall as rain. In the corner of the bottom image one can find the word “ici” which may be interpreted as the letters falling on “here” or on “us”.
The narrator describes these letters that fall like the sand in the hour-glass. However, he recognizes the difference between the rain of the sand and the rain of the words because the words can take different forms. He continues with a comparison of the word “mot” and the word “temps”. He notices that one only needs to add an “s” to “mot” to make the word plural and describes it as funny. In the case of “temps”, it already has the “s” in the singular that would make it plural. This comparison is interesting because the narrator presents the idea that “temps” is singular, but at the same time plural in terms of spelling. There can be a single time, but it carries an effect over all lives, similar to the letters that fall on “us”. The metaphor of the rain of words is reinforced by the sound of a storm in the background. The voice describes the words as violent, but a violence that one wants to last a long time. At the end, the voice mentions death, since it is the result of time. Thus, one has the feeling that the goal of literature is to organize words in a way to escape death, the result of time. This last remark of the narrator towards time, one may interpret, as the message of the poem. The poet does not want to be forgotten; therefore he wants his literature to be read. Only the words and the forms they take can escape time and death, because the rest of us depend from the hour glass.