Tower of Babel

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Description (in English)

On the Web, Bernardo Schiavetta proposes Raphèl. Raphèl is a multilingual cento, a collage poem of quotations in various languages, which is to be read as the endless commentary of a sentence from the Divine Comedy, an asemantic sentence attributed by Dante to Nimrod, the builder of the Tower of Babel. The basic form of Raphèl is a cyclic stanza of ten lines which can reproduce itself infinitely if the reader clicks on one of its ten linear links and/or ten interlinear links: A click on a line in the left column gives access to its source. A click (precise) on a line spacing gives access to the corresponding stanza at the next level.

Raphèl is thus a poetic hypertext whose very form relies on the hyperlink. As far as Raphèl develops a formal process of proliferation of lines based on the principle of the cento and the crown of sonnets, this "unlimited babelic hyperpoem" is structurally a never ending text.

(Source: Serge Bouchardon, "Digital Literature in France")

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Raphèl screenshot
Description (in English)

Attempting Ziggurats 4 is an installation based on a story by John Barth entitled "Glossolalia," which is made up of a set of oblique and somewhat desperate words that have a familiar ring to them. As each section of the spoken text of the story unfolds, underlying sounds of social activities are gradually folded into its rhythm.

The various versions of Attempting Ziggurats find their basis in the story of the Tower of Babel and its ongoing reverberations in American culture. The pivotal moment of the story, the instant that language becomes noise, is one that is forever enshrined in American society through its incorporation of cultural difference as a central component of the concept and fabric of the nation. Here, that babble of noise repeatedly coalesces into the rhythms of the Lord's Prayer, a text which, prior to 1962, was recited daily in United States public school classrooms.

(Source: Artist's description, ELO_AI)

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