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Cherchez le texte: Proceedings of the ELO 2013 Conference

Out of Bounds: Searching Deviated Literature in Audiovisual Electronic Environments

by Claudia Kozak1
https://doi.org/10.7273/2WKK-BV06

Use instructions: click on each word of the cloud –reader should rather think on it as a constellation2 – to display definitions, theoretic argumentations and closedistant reading:

out of bounds – translanguage politics – migrations – reality – algorithms – Marino – globalization – randomness – history – visuality – Goya – fiction – terror imaginaries – glocalization – Läufer – biopolitics – BBC – Cervantes – electronic literature – sound (of silence) – Romano – formalization – violence – politics of event – translanguage net imagination – merging languages – geopolitics – tangling letters – Latin America – ciberculture – bodies – code – generative works – legibility – politics of mistake – Quixote – meaning – Gache – deviated literature – Solaas – melting languages ­– closedistant

1

Would this essay be multimedia net interactive based, readers could probably follow the instructions to open a set of different paths concerning a deviated literature in the age of audiovisual electronic environments.

But as long as it is just another written essay, only one path will be displayed, hoping it suggests others. The adopted perspective of this path is centered in a theory of translanguages within a historical and critical study of electronic literature in Latin America, particularly e-poetry, if differences between subgenres could still be sustained. This means the acknowledgment of a literary transit out of bounds; the way in which certain contemporary digital literature plays inside/outside literary demarcations and literature’s former privileges which defined, at least in the Modern Age, a crucial axe for western societies’ symbolic order and sense. Literature, particularly represented by paper books and libraries, has been for a long time one of the most powerful centers around which western cultures were organized. Many studies (Hayles3; McLuhan4; Ong5; Steiner6; Vanderdorpe7 among others8) have focused on the meaning of the Modern literacy world and its transit in the second half of 20th Century into a multimedia electronic culture organized around other type of center: screens, electronic archives, the Internet, etc. Within a world where literature has lost its privileges, what kind of literature is still worth to be written and read? Besides the inertial path represented by the considerable great amount of literature which is still published as if nothing would have changed –and we could nevertheless find there something of worth due to the simultaneity of the not simultaneous–, there are at least two other options which could answer this question in what appears to me as an interesting manner. On the one hand, printed literature which establishes on purpose some kind of dialog with these changes, even if it confronts them and, on the other hand, electronic literature which can transcend the flow of hegemonic contemporary electronic culture’s meanings.

A translanguage theory is an attempt to grasp this last option. A frame to understand how it is possible to experiment new media, but resisting the ways these media give shape to contemporary life, uniformly. In addition to this political sense of a translanguage theory, another complementary political dimension arises when considering this out of bounds movement in terms of a geopolitical reading. In a world where migration is part of globalized capitalism, migration of languages, for instance merging/tangling/melting languages, could be easily seen as going with the flow. However, we can reverse the argument: some works within contemporary electronic arts engage themselves with a translanguage politics which comments, reflects on, and even deviate globalized flows in order to expose the false ecumenism of the globalized era. They tell us about passages, displacements, violence, and migration of bodies and languages within global digital culture. And they do it in several directions: they work on procedures which focus on deviated languages, politics of mistake, menaced legibility, and nonsense in web environments; they make violence against notions of transparent language inasmuch they insist on how world violence shows itself as spectacle; but they also build through translanguage means utopian spaces of new imaginary net.languages. This whole set of devices could be read as driving electronic literature into a politics of event9 (particularly as in French philosophy of événement), in the sense of an openness to something different, which has not already been but could be as potential, one could say. It implies the possibility of producing different meanings outside the hegemonic paths of meaning within culture. It implies the possibility of change in a world where, following the logic of merchandise, everything seems to change but things that really matter seldom change.

2

Closedistant readings of an e-poetry corpus by Argentinean artists and/or programmers –Leonardo Solaas, Iván Marino, Belén Gache, Gustavo Romano and Milton Läufer– could be adequate to pose some necessary arguments to validate the above presumptions. In that sense, close reading is also distant reading: e-poetry is not read here as an isolate artefact but a located one within a map; the proposed "methodology" is a partial and at certain point surface "closedistant" reading –although code and processing are briefly considered–, awaiting collaborative readings which could complete/augment/redefine it. Located e-literature means here that artefact/texts -when located- are not read as isolate but as anchored ones, in time, in space, in subjectivity, in social structures, in global nets, in theory as well. In this essay I will focus only on works by Leonardo Solaas and Iván Marino, but it is worthy to consider the kind of relationship all these artists establish with literature. One of them, Belén Gache, can be considered without difficulty as an experimental writer, who has produced until now not only printed novels but different kinds of e-literature: “blogs, net.poetry and mixed projects”–as we can read on her website– including flash poetry (Worldtoys), web based random poetry (Manifiestos robots), and sound programmed poetry (Radikal Karaoke) among others; another artist, Milton Läufer, represents perhaps a liminal case between disciplines –a self-taught programmer since eight, young professor of philosophy at university, currently graduate student on electronic literature, and electronic literature author himself–; but the other three artists mentioned above would hardly defined themselves as poets or writers. Nevertheless their partial migration towards literary impulses is apparent in some of their works as Migraciones by Leonardo Solaas, IP Poetry by Gustavo Romano (programmed by Milton Läufer), El imaginario de Goya, Lingua (both part of the series Los desastres) and later works as TextField, Eliotians and Perlongherianas, all by Iván Marino.

Generative, kinetic, typographic, combinatory, and video works which take as sources not only texts by Cervantes, Goya, T. S. Eliot, but also BBC news, random textuality, and documentary images found on the Internet are the basis of literary impulses within the works by these two artists. But why do I say literary impulses? To what extent should we still speak about literature concerning this kind of works? Is it possible to find a literary impulse in contexts where literature has lost its privileges and migrates out of bounds? If the artists mentioned above lean themselves into literary traditions, why are their works more frequently estimated by visual art critics rather than literary critics? Works to be analyzed here enable us to resituate literature outside itself, that is to say, in inter/trans media contexts, but nevertheless they are readable in terms of literary effects. Literary impulses or literary effects are in fact ways of naming a paradoxical sense of literariness in contexts of vanishing literatures. It is not that we should read this works only as literature, but it happens that nowadays critics who were educated in literary traditions can probably read in these works something that visual arts’ critics are not reading. This situation does not provide necessarily better readings, only different. And after centuries of delimitations between artistic languages, even if 20th century avant-gardes opened the path to the dissolution of those boundaries, we still lack an educational system which could deal with the merging of languages. Meanwhile, I consider here how literary critics could collaborate in order to show the way literary impulses could still be readable, instead of becoming invisible, when former visual artists and programmers tangle languages and openly lean themselves into literary traditions to which they are more or less disciplinary outsiders.

3

“Migraciones10” by Leonardo Solaas is a piece where two source textualities –on the one hand, The Quixote’s excerpts pulled out from Cervantes Virtual Library, and on the other hand BBC online global headlines– merge one into another via generative algorithms, and draw moving forms with letters. While this happens, an off voice pronounces spare phonemes in Spanish or English depending on which the source text is. The phonemes to be pronounced, visually distinguishable from the rest in red color, are the ones that randomly migrate from one text to the other. Rhythm, speed, sound volume and size also change in relation with the amount of text that appears at the screen. Text gathers itself or vanishes, and if we let the piece running without interaction for enough time, black letters disappear leaving us with a white screen starry with red letters. Letters’ migration pollute sequences taking away meaning randomly. At any time it is possible to click on the letters to allow pop ups –right or left– with the source texts: one page from The Quixote’s facsimile from Cervantes Virtual Library or one of the day news on BBC online.



Describing the piece on his website, the artist underlines the lessening of language’s communication value; and the gain of an aesthetic presence due to the tangling of letters in random drawings. But nonsense gets sense in several ways. Concerning the two different source texts, the artist declares that “in spite of all their distances, they are made of the same stuff. The foundations of our culture, the accounts of the world we live in: all is language”. Language mediation as one of the foundations of our culture doesn’t seem a statement without consequences. In fact, we could extend a reading on how nonsense opens out sense. First, as soon as we notice that both source texts are part of different linguistic communities and distant one from the other in time as well, we could think on which the languages circulating on the Web are, and what kind of power relations they enter in. That is to say, we could consider linguistic circulation geopolitics on the Web. In this case, English –vehicular language in times of globalization– and ancient Spanish from the time Spain was a nation with global influence, disputing English power. In fact, the first part of The Quixote was released shortly after the Treaty of London, which put an end in a tie to the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604). Secondly, migration, contamination and nonsense open out the piece towards a deviated linguistic imagination which takes on a certain utopian nature, gathering what is fallen apart in new shapes.

Additionally, both source texts integrated in the same piece enable a reading related to indecisiveness between reality and fiction. The questioning that Cervantes’ novel sets out on this subject is widely known, and in contiguity and contamination with the news of one of the most influential contemporary broadcasting companies, could easily led us to a reflection on how news tell us the story.

While both source texts are gathered in real time, they pose a commentary on the huge amount of text circulating within contemporary cyberculture as well, in line with other digital artwork, which take the web as a symbolic reservoir –sort of globalized collective unconscious– with whom they operate in playful, reflective, or contesting manners depending on the case11. Certainly, a reservoir of this kind, even if it shows itself as an open, horizontal, and free space, is also shaped by the paths built by hegemonic meanings within society. Migratory flux in contemporary global societies is not random indeed, but traversed by necessities of the system. The artist, who frequently uses generative processes, builds random pieces about migration and globalization which nevertheless exhibit the fact that there are routes and programs that canalize them, in spite of randomness. Therefore, this out of bounds piece also shows limits within contemporary cyberculture12. Asked while interviewed about his opinion on the role of uncertainty, as opposed to randomness in generative artwork, Solaas answers:

There’s this classic text on generative art by Philip Galanter, “Complexity Theory as a context for Art Theory”, which proposes a classification of generative systems according to their degree of complexity, from the highly ordered to the completely random. I think very orderly systems, like regular patterns and crystalline structures, can on occasion be fascinating. An extremely simple rule, like repetition, can engage us through the sheer number of iterations, or through the rhythms and echoes that emerge from it. But, in general, our attention will be more readily caught by systems that are not so simple, that are to some extent unpredictable, random or disordered: systems that are, as I said before, on the edge of chaos. The rules that account for them are not plain to see, but mysterious, partially hidden, requiring investigation (…).

Still, the rules of the system never change. We are never dealing with true randomness: it’s not like anything can happen. In my experiments I often see results I didn’t intend or imagine beforehand, but doesn’t make them any less a product of the rules.13

Outsource me!, another work by Solaas, in this case a piece of relational art combined with software art, shows another dimension of this dynamic between rules and randomness as it plays ironically with geopolitics within globalized work –and artwork– market14. As a high qualified software programmer living in Argentina, the artist is usually hired from abroad to develop software and therefore he is fully aware about the inequalities of global work market and conditions of migration of cognitive capital15 . The work involved a series of steps beginning with the online announcement made by Solaas of his intention to outsource himself as an artist/programmer of the Third World, who nevertheless would have the power of choosing his employer: another artist who would provide the idea of a piece to be produced by Solaas. Hence, the outsourced artist would become employer of his own employer, a subverted way to make clear the market rules, but also a collaborative way to produce software art. More than twenty ideas for software art were submitted from around the world. In the general Agreement that is presented on the website, one of the clauses states that “the Contractor [Leonardo Solaas] would prefer an Employer from a developed country, but he will also be open to consider proposals from emerging (or submerging) nations”. The fact that Solaas finally chose the idea of another Argentinean programmer, Go-Logo16 by Eric Londais, perhaps could open additional lines of thought: only one idea was submitted in Spanish, but not the one by Londais; in fact he submitted four ideas, always in English, as the site of the project was launched in English. There were other artists who submitted more than one idea as well, being Garret Lynch who submitted more, five in total. On the other hand, it appears at the site one idea submitted by wrc whose title is Outsource Me!:The CREATIVE CAPTCHA Solicitation, which was likely submitted by Leonardo Solaas himself, superimposing another upsetting of the whole process.

4

Iván Marino is an Argentinean artist who lives in Barcelona (Spain). He initiated his career as a video artist, but from the last years on he began to merge this practice with word based artistic work. As Claudia Giannetti pointed out17, while he moved into the field of telematic technologies “pioneering online advanced streaming systems in Spain, the technique and aesthetics of the interface became core elements of his internet production”. Perhaps, his interest on generative audiovisual formats went to the encounter of generative poetry undetected. As in the case of Leonardo Solaas, media art critics more or less affiliated to visual arts, wouldn’t perceive him as producing e-poetry. However, some of Marino’s installations –as the series Texfield– or net.art pieces –as Eliotians or Perlongherianas– go from a sort of typographic and kinetic e-poetry to interactive generative and combinatory poetry. Actually, as the artist himself underlines:

My essays could be divided in two threads: those obviously bonded to the documentary, and those with a more abstract nature, say, de-figurative. Anyway, to me they are both part of the same type of work: the strange zone where meaning is built or diluted –the pause between two words, the duration/reading time of an image, the relation between text and image, etc. Therefore, my interest in Eliot’s poetry, or in our Perlongher and J.Fijman (I accomplished a series of essays on the later, even though I don’t show most of my production). The Ipsum Lorem is another way of saying the same that the scenes of the video In Death’s Dream Kingdom say: the psychotic monolog, the delirious discourse, etc.18

Certainly, in a great part of his word based pieces legibility is menaced when black letters bounce playful and randomly on a white screen. Eliotians, for instance, presents four net.interactive pieces in which the first section’s verses of “Burnt Norton” from The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot appear randomly, either in verses’ blocks (Eliotian 1) or spare letters which drop down from a poem’s line (Eliotian 2, 3, 4), when the “interactor” passes the mouse on the screen. In the first three pieces, letters or verses fall, bounce, and accumulate at the bottom of the screen, overlapping and making up sorts of smudges ultimately illegible. In the last piece, letters fall down as well but they float without gravity at a slower rhythm, although it always depends on the speed and direction with which the reader “brushes” the screen with the mouse. Additionally, in the number 3 piece, legibility is compromised due to the font and the spaces either between or within words. Interaction with these pieces opens out experimentation with time –acceleration, hiatus, and suspension– in a remediation which both pays tribute to and deconstructs a famous poem about time19. The randomness by which the text decomposes produces not only distortion and emptiness but filling with an opaque textuality, added to Eliot’s own opacity.

The fact that the artist, a migrant himself, uses in his works English or Spanish indistinctly –but not translations from one to another– also speaks as in the case of Leonardo Solaas’ work about translangue geopolitics. On the one hand, his website is basically English based; one could think on the use of the vehicular English in order to reach larger audiences –but losing at the same time most of his native language audience–. On the other hand, linguistic based pieces, as the ones mentioned above, keep their original language. In the cases of Eliot’s poem we have, of course, a piece in English; in the case of Perlongher, we have Spanish. We have some kind of mixing as well, as in the case of In Death’s Dream Kingdom, produced in collaboration with Luis Negrón and Andrea Nacach. The piece’s title is a quotation of Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”; explanations on how it works –which appear on the screen when clicking the [T] icon– are also in English; but most of the language heard at the video sequences, which the “interactor” can arrange in different orders, suggest a deviated Spanish, as it is part of mini documentaries shot in Argentinean “institutions housing disabled people whose sense of perception is altered” (In Death’s Dream Kingdom). In fact, the work presents itself as having “the structure of an experimental poem: dead time without anecdote, collage of realistic pictures with images of the subconscious, and a synchronous montage using the technique of simultaneous accumulation of time”.

The mixing of languages at In Death’s Dream Kingdom points out translanguage politics at least in two directions: on the one hand, we deal here with a vehicular global English as part of the contemporary media art international scene –it should be taken in account the fact that only in the last part of the work, where the images resemble the sponsor’s logos, the heard language is English; in contrast with the other parts where the voices of the fragmented mini documentaries are Spanish spoken–. But on the other hand, the work’s power lies in those Spanish delusional voices as part of an impossible discourse.

Another work by Marino, Lorem Ipsum which actually appears on his website when clicking at the title of the series named Textfields, offers an additional approach to translanguage politics as the bouncing letters make up words, surprisingly in Latin! In fact, it is not only a kinetic and typographic poem in Latin, but a variation of the “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet”, the text which the printing and typesetting industry has been using since the 1500s in order to compound meaningless discourse to occupy the space where text should be included and to show the best proprieties of a font family. In that sense, this particular typographic e-poem is a commentary on typography, on its history, and on language and texts involved in a screen based electronic visual literature. Printers using “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” in the Renaissance were of course familiar with Latin, even if the source text of Cicero wasn´t recognizable due to meaningless variations. Nowadays, however, readers would be probably lost (in translation), unless they were familiar to typographic conventions. We can think of it as a way of discussing meaning in the context of the Internet visual culture.

Considering these works, one could appreciate an interesting reversion of the usual path related to audiovisual and literacy cultures. Coming from literature to audiovisual culture seems to be a common path nowadays; the other way around could produce perhaps unexpected but even more significant results, because it disarranges usual arrangements. Of course, images that go towards literature don’t go towards literature as it used to be, even if the literature taken as source is part of the western canon. They go instead towards a potential literature, yet to be. A migration within digital culture ultimately due to the fact that even images are written language, that is to say, code. As an example that auto-refers to this, we have Marino’s work “Pn=n!” –part of the series Los desastres–, a generative audiovisual installation which combines randomly the frames of the torture scene in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arch, and whose powerful visuals in the forefront wouldn’t be unnoticed for anyone. However, as the work develops in time, the written code is superimposed to the images. We can even isolate a scene of writing –a frequent auto-referential procedure in literature– within the whole random sequence, when Joan holds a quill.

When explaining his works at the bilingual catalog of the exhibition Los desastres/The disasters, Marino says that in generative audiovisual formats “frames are stored in databases that allow them to be ordered by means of open associative systems20”. And he also specifies in a note:

We can find various antecedents of this project. Mallarmé, Saporta, Queneau, the concrete poetry, Stockhousen (KlavierstuckXI) and Pierre Boulez (in his Troisième Sonate), among others, have made research on structures focusing on permutation, literature and music, respectively. Haroldo de Campos reflects on this subject in “El arte en el horizonte de lo probable”, in Revista de Cultura Brasileña magazine (edited by Brazil’s Embassy in Spain). In the theoretical field, we can highlight Umberto Eco’s Open Work21. Although the concept of “open work” is inherent in the nature of art, the possibility of identifying an open structure with an open format or support has arisen with contemporary art. Some references in the audiovisual domain are, among others: ZKM/Centre for Art and Media, MIT and MECAD.22

Hence, while he makes clear the tradition of combinatory music and literature which offers a frame to his work, it doesn’t seem untimely to speak about a migration from generative audiovisual formats to generative textual formats and vice versa, even more if we notice that Marino acknowledges a great difference between analog and digital images, inasmuch the second ones are products of writing:

DI is detached from the facts it represents, divided by a translation system that places it in the realm of writing: images are not “drawn”, nor are they a related continuum of facts, but they are written by means of codes which have the same grammar rules and abstraction levels of any other language.23

Certainly, Marino has not abandoned his interest in images because of his leaning towards literature/writing. He is clearly interested in globalized images –he usually uses found footage, particularly documentaries, downloaded from the Internet–. But we could think that the blurring of boundaries between images and linguistic code enables a reflection on a globalized word as well. In that sense, his thought on globalized images could also apply to our translanguage theory:

Nowadays, the image engenders existential conflicts that it did not have in the past, when facts and their representation were unmistakably linked by a cultural consensus that celebrated its own icons, spread them and worshipped them within the limited framework of its own traditions. The case of the globalized image is different: icons are reproduced and spread beyond the territory where they originated. It is worth considering that this journey, encouraged by the ease of multiplication and circulation that technology gives to it, is not only a geographical displacement, but also a semantic one: images bloom as malignant growths which, linked with other images by laws of continuity, randomness, etc., are detached from their original significance and launched into the abyss of new meanings.24

Multiplication and displacement applies to words in a frantic way within globalized societies too. But while the anonymous launching of images and words’ new meanings is certainly a property of globalized technological culture; it is also true that there are standardized paths that put back on track their overflowing growth. When interacting with the kind of works here analyzed, new deviated impulses arise: the ones that step out of bounds, allowing new incarnated-sonic-imagi-literatures which point out the instable landscapes of globalized societies. Perhaps it is all about a new language, standing at the edge of abyss. Maybe that is what art is about.


NOTES

  1. 1. The title alludes, in a pale translation, to "fuera de sí", which in Spanish has several nuances: to be out of bounds, trespassing borders but mostly metaphorically, when said about a person, to be “beyond oneself” –out of one’s mind–. A literature “fuera de sí”, “desaforada”, could imply that it has surpassed disciplinary boundaries, at the same time, getting probably a bit crazy. But it could also mean a literature which, in legal sense, has lost its privileges or “fueros” (“desaforada” = “que ha perdido sus fueros”).back

  2. 2. This essay aims at certain –limited– point to challenge academic writing concerning e-literature: a different color and font is used whenever a side reference is implied and not mention or fully developed; also with the intention to “give color” (as in the Argentinean idiom “dar una nota de color”), that is to say, to give a tidbit of information.back

  3. 3. Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 2002.
    Hayles, N. Katherine. Literatura eletrônica. Novos horizontes para o literário. Sao Paulo: Global Editora. 2009. back

  4. 4. McLuhan, Marshall. La galaxia Gutemberg. Barcelona: Planeta-Agostini. 1985.
    McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. Guerra y paz en la aldea global. México: Artemisa. 1986.
    McLuhan, Marshall. Comprender los medios de comunicación. Las extensiones del ser humano. Barcelona: Paidós. 1996.back

  5. 5. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. London-New York: Methuen. 1982.back

  6. 6. Steiner, George. “After the Book?” In On dificulty and other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1978. 187-203.
    Steiner, George. Lenguaje y silencio. Barcelona: Gedisa. 1982.
    Steiner, George. “¿Toca a su fin la cultura del libro?”. Letra Internacional. 1990. 18: 43-45.back

  7. 7. Vandendorpe, Christian. Del papiro al hipertexto. Ensayo sobre las mutaciones del texto y la lectura. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. 2002.back

  8. 8. Flusser, Vilém. Filosofia da caixa preta. Ensaios para uma futura filosofia da fotografia [1983]. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará. 2002.back

  9. 9. Within contemporary philosophies of the event, even in versions so distant one from each other as those of Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze, the event is always what enables change: the unpredictable and the very possibility of the new. For an analysis of the tension between programs and de-programs within digital literature, and between new and novelty see Claudia Kozak, “Poésie numérique et politiques d’événement”. Pratiques du hasard. Pour un matérialisme de la rencontre. Ed. Jonathan Pollock. Perpignan, Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2012b, pp. 165-178. An extended version in Claudia Kozak, “Poesía digital e políticas do acontecimento”. Potências e práticas do acaso: o acaso na filosofia, na cultura e nas artes ocidentais. Eds. María Cristina Franco Ferraz e Lia Cabral Baron. Rio de Janeiro, Editora Garamond/FAPERJ, 2012c, pp. 193-210.
    Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet. Diálogos. Valencia: Pre-textos. 1977.
    Badiou, Alain. Deleuze. “El clamor del Ser.” Buenos Aires: Manantial. 1997.
    Badiou, Alain. “Presentación de la edición en castellano de El ser y el acontecimiento”, revista Acontecimiento. 2000. 19-20. Accesed January 12, 2016. http://www.grupoacontecimiento.com.ar/articulos/19Badiou3.pdf
    Zourabichvili, François. Deleuze. Una filosofía del acontecimiento. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. 2004. back

  10. 10. Solaas, Leonardo. Migraciones 2012.
    This work is no longer available in the main menu on the artist website but archived under the following direct access: http://solaas.com.ar/works/migraciones/migraciones.htm. The description and analysis provided in this essay takes in account the experiencing of the work in May/June 2013. It is also possible to access a video version shot in March 2012, at the Laboratory NT2 (http://nt2.uqam.ca/fr/video/migraciones-navigation-filmee-1), which includes slight differences with the one I experienced in 2013. back

  11. 11. IP Poetry by Gustavo Romano is an excellent case to read this.back

  12. 12. A broader analysis of the relationship between “programs” and “de-programs”, concerning the dynamics of chance, randomness and event is developed in Kozak 2012a and b.
    Kozak, Claudia and others. Tecnopoéticas argentinas. Archivo blando de arte y tecnología. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra. 2012.
    Kozak, Claudia. “Poésie numérique et politiques d’événement”. In Pratiques du hasard. Pour un matérialisme de la rencontre, edited by Jonathan Pollock, 165-178. Perpignan : Presses Universitaires de Perpignan. 2012a.
    Kozak, Claudia. “Poesía digital e políticas do acontecimento”. In Potências e práticas do acaso: o acaso na filosofia, na cultura e nas artes ocidentais, edited by María Cristina Franco Ferraz and Lia Cabral Baron, 193-210. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Garamond/FAPERJ. 2012b. back

  13. 13. Solaas, Leonardo. “Towards the Edge of Chaos.” Interview by Jeremy Levine. DIGIMAG. The Digicult’s Project Journal. 2010. 51, February . Accesed January 12, 2016. http://www.digicult.it/digimag/issue-051/towards-the-edge-of-chaos-an-interview-with-leonardo-solaas/back

  14. 14. In his website Leonardo Solaas explains: “Outsource Me! is an ironic subversion of the practice of outsourcing, which consists on the hiring of foreign low-wage workers by employers from developed countries. My proposal was to temporarily upset that power relationship. I chose my own employer, within the context of an agreement established by myself, to develop a piece of software art as an outsourced worker. At the same time, I was outsourcing myself the task of thinking of an idea for the piece. The project was developed in two stages: an open call for ideas, for which I built a special website, and the execution of the piece itself after the specifications of the winning idea. More than twenty proposals were submitted. I chose one among them: Go-Logo, by Eric Londais. As the winner of the call, he became my boss for a while, and collaborated on the development of his plan. The project was funded by Readme 100 Software Art Festival, and its outcome was presented to the public on November 2005 in Dortmund, Germany”.back

  15. 15. Lazzarato, Maurizio. Políticas del acontecimiento. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. 2006.back

  16. 16. At first sight, the name of the submitter didn’t sound as Argentinean, despite the fact that Argentinean society, particularly at big cities, could be considered as a “mosaic culture”. Nevertheless, although the occasional viewer of the site could not recognize the name of Eric Londais, it is highly probably that Solaas did meet him before.back

  17. 17. Gianetti, Claudia. “Machine and Reality: Some Thoughts on the Work of Iván Marino.” In The Disasters. Politics of Representation, edited by Iván Marino and Antonio Franco. Post Local Project (PLP) 05, 9-11. Badajoz: Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC). 2008.back

  18. 18. Iván Marino, in a mail from 2013.back

  19. 19. The poem first section’s verses (“Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future contained in time past./ If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable”, and so on) are clearly readable in some pieces until they decompose.back

  20. 20. Marino, Iván. “Introduction” and “On the Format of the Pieces”. In The Disasters. Politics of Representation, edited by Iván Marino y Antonio Franco. Post Local Project (PLP) 25. Badajoz: Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC) http://ivan-marino.net/. 2008.back

  21. 21. Eco, Umberto. Open Work, Barcelona, Planeta. 1979.back

  22. 22. Marino, Iván. Op.Cit. 2008. 27.back

  23. 23. Marino, Iván. Op.Cit. 2008. 27.back

  24. 24. Marino, Iván. Op.Cit. 2008. 27.back

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