ALAMO

The Triolets is an Alamien combinatory program created by Paul Braffort. The program was presented at the Centre Pompidou in the “Les Immatériaux” exposition in 1985 before being presented on the Alamo website in the 1990s by Eric Joncquel. The program is based on the triolet; a poem with a fixed form of two stanzas in an a b a a a b a b rhyme structure that dates back to the Medieval ages. The fixed structure of the poem lies in the repetition of verses 1 and 2 in verses 4 and 7, and 8 respectively. In his program, Paul Braffort substitutes the verses of 6 original compatible triolets at random with the stylistic constraint that characterizes the poem to create 7,776 different poems. The random combination of the 6 original poems is exponential in nature (6^5). As a result, this program is similar to “Cent Mille Milliard de Poèmes” by Raymond Queneau, but with a smaller number of possible outcomes.
In the Triolets program, the user plays both an interpretative and an exploratory role. It is up to the user to interpret the poem that he or she comes across during the “exploration” of the scripton. Due to the fixed structure of repeating verses that limits the amount of poems that can be produced, it is not difficult for users to determine the theme of the work. In the possible poems, one can find themes such love and death, two rather traditional themes that complement the traditional structure of the poems themselves. This characteristic allows for a feeling of control in the program. Despite the high number of possibilities, the recycling of themes predisposes the user on what might be read, hence providing a feeling of control. Nonetheless, the poems succeed in stimulating the users emotionally due to the themes that are used. Thus, these poems can be characterized as baroque in literary nature due to the formality and the lyrical aspects, but also the variation.

(Source: Sergio Encinas)

Alexandre au Greffoir is a method of text transformation. It was first published in the OULIPO Library in 1986. The selected alexandrines come from the most known alexandrines in French poetry. Marcel Bénabou and Jacques Roubaud collaborated in order to select these alexandrines while only using their memory. Consequently, they did not resort to anthologies or dictionaries to select the adequate verses. Once they established a list, they grafted hemistiches together. The alexandrines were cut at the caesura, then brought together with other hemistiches, as the user wished. This method is comparable to a mold and gives a function of configuration to the reader. This graft obeys to semantic, syntactic and prosodic restrictions in order to respect the number of foot of the alexandrine. It also takes into consideration elision phenomenon. The Alexandrins au greffoirs from the OULIPO is an applicational program that selects its hemistiches from the inventory created by Bénabou and Roubaud. The program’s approach is then in line with the original project. When Alexandre au Greffoir was first indexed and published in the ALAMO library, the authors could only print a small sample of these new alexandrines and poems. Thanks to a hyperlink under each poem, the applicational program of the OULIPO allows the user to read as many alexandrines as one wishes to, alexandrines that are previously unseen and unread. The readers can also generate other alexandrines if the ones on the screen do not appeal to them. The readers then feel engaged towards these alexandrines. Roubaud and Bénabou’s approach is tinged with nostalgia towards the recitation of French poetry verses. With the evolution of national education program, recitation disappears and causes a loss of literary, artistic and poetic knowledge and heritage in France. Bénabou and Roubaud’s initiative, to rekindle the formerly known alexandrines, lives on and flourishes through ALAMO’s program. To touch on the esthetics, we shall take the example of the following scripton: “On a souvent besoin demain dès l’aube”. The reader can easily recognize in the first hemistich the fable of Jean de la Fontaine “Le Lion et le rat” and in the second hemistich the poem of Victor Hugo, “Demain dès l’aube”. This new alexandrine draws on the reader’s childhood memories as he recognizes and identifies the hemistiches. The reader in this case has a new interpretative function. This recalling strategy plays on the reader’s complicity with the new alexandrine, a pastiche-like method. This scripton leaves the reader wanting more as he is willing to continue reading in order to gain some meaning and interpret the new alexandrines.

(Source: Jonathan Baillehache)

In 1985 Paul Braffort and Marcel Bénabou’s program “Fifteen Personalized Aphorisms” was presented at the Centre Pompidou. In the 1990’s, Éric Joncquel created the online version on the ALAMO website. This program is a digital remediation of the Oulipian method of creating aphorisms. The politician Jean Jaurès formulated his famous aphorism “A small bit of internationalism distances us from patriotism, but a lot brings us very close to it” from Roger Bacon’s “A small bit of Science distances us from Faith, but a lot brings us very close to it.” Even though these two sentences discuss two very different subjects, the method of formulating an aphorism allows us to place these two subjects in the same lexical context. At its most essential, an aphorism unites what is separated and separates what is united (this sentence itself is indeed an aphorism!). The four most common tools of doing this in the Oulipian method are equivalence, antithesis, parallelism, and proportion. Jaurès’ quote is an aphorism of implicit proportion because the relationship between the words created by the aphorism is not immediately obvious. When choosing the words for an aphorism, one must first decide the principle of the final phrase. One chooses words that already have an immediately obvious relationship. In the end, there are three relationships between the terms: 1) the initial aforementioned relationship between the words, 2) the relationship created by the aphorism, and 3) the relationship between groupings of words. For example, Jaurès uses the terms “internationalism” and “patriotism,” which are linked by politics. The aphorism then creates a new relationship between the terms by stating that internationalism and patriotism are directly proportional to each other. Because the terms A and B always have an initial relationship before being placed in an aphorism together, one can use the same formula with “internationalism” and “patriotism” (politics) as with “Science” and “Faith” (creation debates). ALAMO contributors Paul Braffort and Marcel Bénabou’s program, Fifteen Personalized Aphorisms uses two methods to choose the terms and formulas for the personalized aphorisms. Method I: Choose the relationship between the words that the aphorism creates before choosing the terms. Method II: Choose the words for which the aphorism is going to create a relationship. The esthetic of an aphorism is useful for politicians because the rhetoric creates secondary relationships for A and B in an already known method. For this same reason, Fifteen Personalized Aphorisms seems to make sense. The program uses both methods, I and II, in a “controlled random” fashion. For example: Le présent est le temps de la puissance, l’avenir celui de la lucidité. Le présent est le temps du silence, l’avenir celui du pouvoir. [The present is the time of power, the future is the one of lucidity] [The present is the time of silence, the future is the one of power] The “random” aspect, the formulas, and the methods permit the creation of two aphorisms that seem to make sense individually, but that are ironic and contradictory when placed face to face. In using an ironic esthetic, the aphorism hides a truth in a minimum of words that are methodically combined. These words function like a mask and it is the role of the reader to look for the small ironic truths hidden within. Evenmore, the title of Bénabou’s article, « An aphorism can hide another within itself » is also an aphorism. The phrase creates a relationship between the aphorism and that which is hidden inside. (Source: Claire Ezekiel and Alix Martin)

Jean-Pierre Balpe ou les Lettres Dérangées was created as a homage to the poet and software developer Jean-Pierre Balpe. The title of the piece can be understood in a number of ways. In French, the word "letters" refers to the alphabet, mail correspondence, and also to the art of writing itself. The piece consists of a number of letters which are not all visible to the reader until the very end. The word "dérangé" has a number of meanings as well. One meaning is physical disturbance. The letters themselves are distorted, just as the meaning of letters and words became distorted when Balpe introduced the literary world to text generation. The word also means mental disturbance. Disturbed by the mouse passing over them, the letters unpredictably go in all directions without reason. The underlying algorithm brings the letters to madness. The actions of the reader turn the poem into a kind of game. The purpose of the game is to get to the end of the poem by playing with the letters without falling into any traps. Starting with a screen white as a fresh sheet of paper, the reader can, with some luck and a lot of tenacity, reach the end of the poem: "this is not the end," written in red on Balpe's bibliography. Only at the end does the text become meaningful.

(Source: author's description, ELC 1)