computation

Computer programming is a general-purpose way of using computation. It can be instrumental (oriented toward a predefined end, as with the development of well-specified apps and Web services) or exploratory (used for artistic work and intellectual inquiry). Professor Nick Monfort’s emphasis in this talk, as in his own work, is on exploratory programming, that type of programming which can be used as part of a creative or scholarly methodology. He says a bit about his own work but uses much of the discussion to survey how many other poet/programmers, artist/programmers, and scholar/programmers are creating radical new work and uncovering new insights.

09:08 p5.js12:38 The Deletionist14:26 Permutated Poems of Poems of Brion Gysin18:18 Curveship21:00 A Noise Such As a Man Might Make24:03 Oral Poetics29:35 Q&A

Murmurs seeks to gather and link texts written with a poetic intention and available in the net in order to present them in a consistent form within the outline of a hypertext. These texts will be identified by an algorithm and interconnected through semantic links generated with the use of coincident words.

Thanks to this process, the texts with poetic format, already published online, will become a sole extensive and surfable piece that can be analyzed and can receive feedback from blogs, twits, and by any other indexable means. This way we seek to generate a piece of e-poetry by uniting those expressive texts in the net that cannot individually be classified as e-poetry. In order to achieve this we will use algorithmic processes, databases, crawlers for indexing, Big Data analysis, all presented as self-generated hypertexts.

The study of these texts through systems of computer linguistics will allow finding coincidences in the use of language with expressive intentions in the net. In a second moment, an API (application programming interface) will open and allow the free processing of the information gathered.

Murmurs dreams of waking up one day and finding an ocean of poems united by transparent threads of saliva through which we may roam from one brilliant moment encountered to another one especially felt by somebody in some corner of the net for you.

In this paper, we will address all the theoretical aspects of the project and the reasons for its implementation. Starting from the analysis of (1) the aesthetics of written poetry in digital format and the characteristics that make it possible to be analyzed through algorithms. After this we will review the way (2) the isolation of poetic texts in the net appears as a phenomenon that weakens their possibilities to be found by potential readers.

Later on, we will address (3) the text as a coinciding correlation which will open the doors for a solution out of the nature of the very poetic digital text, which in turn will allow us to consider (4) the “findability” as a new paradigm replacing the editorial distribution and (5) the relevance as the new utopia of the poetic text, thus allowing a better access to these text thanks to a unifying proposal. Finally, once we have achieved this we can present (6) the computation as a tool for the literary criticism of online poetic texts where we will see the implications of an articulate poetry corpus in digital format ready for the academic analysis.

The final aspect goes deep in (7) our proposal where we present the tools we will use, the key factors, the progress of the project up to the current moment, and the possibilities for cooperation in the community of developers. Musarañas is the prototype of Murmurs, created out of a database of the author’s poems, which allows us to test the basic functions such as the style of navigation, indexing, managing tools for tagging and the bunches of words necessary.

Currently, there is a functional prototype of the tagging system available at http://labs.phantasia.pe/musarana/.

(Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

In this paper, I present close readings of a selection of Emily Dickinson’s poems that I propose might be best explained through an understanding of her awareness of the current scientific topics of the time. These include, for example, the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, Faraday’s and Maxwell’s numerous investigations into electromagnetism in the early to mid 1800s, and the production of Babbage’s Difference Engine in 1847. Specifically, in regards to Babbage’s computing machine, I demonstrate a connection between some of the innovations first formulated by the mathematician and proto-programmer Ada Lovelace in 1842 and 1843, including concepts of looping, modeling, and isomorphism, and Dickinson’s poems, written more than one decade later, which include references to cycles, recursion, and branching. Additionally, I show that there are clear stylistic similarities between Lovelace’s philosophical inquiries into the nascent discipline of computation and some of Dickinson’s poems that might be said to contain algorithmic structures or images. While I do not believe that Dickinson necessarily had any direct awareness of Lovelace’s writing (which she termed “poetical science”), these computational concepts enable new readings that provide insight into some of the more puzzling aspects of Dickinson’s work. Moreover, through exploring these similarities in poetry and programming at the dawn of the age of computation, I articulate relationships between the lyrical and logical that are more evidently realized in the contemporary genre of electronic literature.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

The 2015 ELO Conference’s call for papers states that "[e]lectronic literature is situated as an intermedial field of practice, between literature, computation, visual and performance art. The conference will seek to develop a better understanding of electronic literature’s boundaries and relations with other academic disciplines and artistic practices."

This roundtable discussion, led by both established and emerging e-lit scholars and artists, will explore the idea of electronic literature as an intermedial practice, looking at the topic from a wide range of forms including literature, performance, sound, computation, visual art, and physical computing. Drawing upon artistic work they have produced or studied, each panelist will provide a five-minute statement that touches on qualities related to intermediality like hybridity, syncretism, and collaboration. Following this series of brief presentations, the panelists, then, encourage engagement in a wider conversation with the audience.

Because it is our contention that multiple media in combination in a work of art provide endless opportunities for innovation, contemplation, and “fresh perspectives” (Kattenbelt), rendering the notion of an “end” impossible to reach, the goal of the panel is to engage the ELO community in a discussion about the shifting boundaries of electronic literature and its ongoing development as an art form.

(source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)

Jim Andrews is one of the pioneers of digital poetry.Indefatigable contributor to early list-servs, agile practitioner of algorithmic art, instigator of dialogs and diatribes, provocateur and poet of machinic potentials. His web portal vispo.com/ continues to provide a hybrid dose of poetry, visuals and spoken word conjoined by code.Jim is a poet who studied formal programming for 7 years and continues to call for the necessity of programming at the core of digital poetics.His work has been exhibited internationally; he currently resides in Vancouver where (among other gambits) he teaches mobile app development, JavaScript, Phonegap, and HTML. He's also the organizer of The Group of X, a Vancouver-based group of artists and scholars involved in computer art.

Interview 2012-07-08 in Vancouver.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

While aesthetic practices in photography, film and music have undergone significant transformation due to the affordances of computational tools, the practice of creative and critical writing has remained largely unaffected. As programmable environments further populate the cultural environment it is increasingly important that we understand the ways in which those designed specifically for literary contexts may serve to challenge traditional notions of the writing endeavor. Our paper will provide a brief historical framework for the emergence of generative literary writing practices, a description of a new authoring environment (RiTa) for use in both the production and teaching of digital writing, and an analysis of specific concepts—including layering, materiality, authorial intent, constraints, and distributed creativity—that the use of this environment meaningfully engages.

(Source: Authors' abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)

With reference to electronic literature translation projects in which we have been involved as translators or as authors of the source work, we argue that the process of translation can expose how language and computation interrelate in electronic literature.