Paramoulipist

La Gaité Lyrique accueille cette lecture-performance le 20 avril à 15h.

An Mertens expérimente des formes qui dévoilent la personnalité des algorithmes. Pour cette nouvelle création, elle se glisse dans la peau du “classifieur naïf bayésien”, un algorithme très utilisé pour trier les spams de nos boîtes aux lettres, pour analyser les sentiments sur les médias sociaux, mais aussi pour définir si un texte est écrit par une femme ou un homme.

This story has been written using a Python script and scraped data from the website of Jubelparkmuseum. The story, the code and all the sources are published under a Free Art License: http://artlibre.org.
The main scripts were developed in the framework of DiVersions, a residency of Constant in Musée du Cinquantenaire in December 2016. With a warm thank you to Constant & the Jubelparkmuseum for the tools and the data!

This is what I know about myself.
The description given to me is that of a sacred tree. I am included in the Near East Collection. In case you decide to dress me one day: my height is 75 cm, my width is 87 cm. I have been tagged a relief. I have been categorized with the number o.00271. My body is made of stone. My great grand parents must have lived before -883 / -859. I should be able to find some relatives in Near and Middle East (Asia) as my place of production, and in Nimrud (Asia > Mesopotamia > Assyria) as my place of discovery: . My cultural background is Assyrian. » Read the rest of this entry «

Het is erg verleidelijk om woorden te gaan tellen in je eigen werk. De roman Tot Later telt 14311 verschillende woorden, of 118562 woorden in totaal, verdeeld over 7836 zinnen. Serendipiteit is nooit ver weg bij het schrijven, dus zie hier, de middelste zin van het boek luidt: “Poesjelief!” » Read the rest of this entry «

While exploring NLTK or Natural Language Toolkit, I came across an interesting way of ‘reading’ The Book of Genesis.
This post is a small report. You find a a Dutch variant here. » Read the rest of this entry «

LTTL BRTHR
CHPTR 1

“RPRT T TH DMNSTRTN FFC MMDTLY

Read more here…
» Read the rest of this entry «

Le 1er juin à Nantes j’ai assisté à la seule intervention sur la littérature numérique au sein de la première édition du festival littéraire Atlantide à Nantes.

L’intervenante était… Catherine Lenoble qui m’avait invitée au même moment pour une intervention autour du même sujet. Les exemples et les références qu’elle a fournis me sont très chers, en plus qu’ils se trouvent en ligne. A explorer!

Or just another way of profiling?
I did the test with the programs of two Belgian political parties.
From http://www.wordly.net
» Read the rest of this entry «

Today I participated in the online reading session organised by Sönke Hallman and Falke Pisano, exploring the idea of a #collective textual performance#, approaching the text by #reading with the intention that the text becomes a place#.

After reading the excerpts, we all started to invest the ‘text-place’, straight onto the wiki, while we shared our impressions by chat. From straight Courier 11 laps-of-texts, we tried to turn them into inhabited decorated ‘text-places’. It is a good way to ‘live’ a text.

» Read the rest of this entry «

K. Hayles, Writing Machines

Link to the book
Link to the interview with Katherine Hayles and Anne Burdick
Link to downloadable courses by Katherine Hayles

Having studied literature and literary theory, I realized I was looking with preset and limited eyes to the electronic library, trying to make out on which criteria I would build my judgement in commenting on them. Time, space, perspective, plot/story, style, composition do apply on these works, but so many more things come into the field, e.g. the combination of image/sound/text; or the (in)finite ways of reading and using it.
I hoped I would quickly find the cyber orientated incorporation of my favourite literature porfessor. I felt a big relief when I started reading Katherine Hayles’ Writing Machines.

Katherine Hayles is a Professor of English at the University of California (LA). Writing Machines is a small beautiful and powerful book in which she arguments for material criticism in literary theory. After an extended description of technotexts and the electronic environment for literary artifacts, she analyses in detail 3 existing works:
– (technotext) Talan Memmott, From Lexia to Plexia
– (artist’s book) Tom Philips, A humument
– (novel) Danielewski, House of Leaves
» Read the rest of this entry «

A future library project

When reading the exquisite book ‘Bellwether’ by Connie Willis, I realized my favourite spot in town could be run down very quickly. Sandra Foster, the main character, an academic researcher on fads and trends in society, goes daily to the public library. Apart of taking out the books she really needs, she strategically tries to ‘rescue’ the classics. Books that haven’t been taken out for six months, are taken off the shelves and sold. She keeps track of the files and takes out systematically the complete works of Dickens, of Brönte, etc.

Even the Simpsons make comments on the actual and future state of libraries:
(2004 citation):
Lisa: I have to research a paper. Where did all the books go?
Librarian: Books? Books are for squares! We’re now a multimedia learning center for children of all ages… but mostly bums. (motions to a table full of bums — and Homer — sleeping).
Bart: Aye, Carumba!
Lisa: (looking at the few materials left) “Everybody Poops: The Video”??? “Yu-Gi-Oh! Price Guides”???

Surfing on the net to have a look into the ‘electronic literature’, there is no way I can find the so called ‘first classic works’ in electronic literature (canon works extremely fast) without having to buy them (25$ each). It would be nice to know people are thinking about public libraries for virtual products, places with an organised/historical/specialized collection where you can ‘borrow’ freely 13 items for 3 weeks.

In 2006 the public libraries of the Netherlands collaborated with the Design Academy (Eindhoven) to think about libraries in 2040. They published a book (What if/Het boek, Biblion Uitgeverij, 2007) that you cannot consult on their website. You can have a look at the student’s films, of which some ideas are great. Three of the four films are based on the exciting ideas of freely ‘sharing’ content and information in ‘context’, like for example sharing, uploading and downloading books when you are on public transport.