material
Intermedial poetics
Amaranth Borsuk
@amaranthborsuk
amaranthborsuk.com
TEKS- To weave; also to fabricate, especially with an ax; also to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls. 1. TEXT, TISSUE; CONTEXT, PRETEXT, from Latin texere, to weave, fabricate. […] 4. craft (of weaving of fabricating). TECHNICAL, POLYTECHNIC, TECHNOLOGY, from Greek tekhne, art craft, skill.
— American Heritage Dictionary of
Indo-European Word Roots
Ed Calvert Watkins (2000)
Making Text
Making space
A book is a sequence of spaces.
Each of these spaces is perceived at a different moment - a book is also a sequence of moments.
. . . .
A book is not a case of words, nor a bag of words, nor a bearer of words.
—Ulises Carrión
“The New Art of Making Books” (1975)
the Reader
It might be any art: an artist’s book could be music, photography, graphics, intermedial literature. The experience of reading it, viewing it, framing it—that is what the artist stresses in making it.
—Dick Higgins
"A Preface" (1985)
Mediated Reading
As much acts of interpretation as material things, as much processes as objects, media are not merely storage mechanisms somehow independent of the acts of reading they record.
—Craig Dworkin
No Medium (2013)
The best of the bookworks are multinotational. Within them, words, images, colors, marks, and silences become plastic organisms that play across the pages in variable linear sequence.
Their importance lies in the formulation of a new perceptual literature whose content alters the concept of authorship and challenges the reader to a new discourse with the printed page.
—Joan Lyons, Artists’ Books
Artists' Books & digital Literature
ephemerality
Wait, later this will be nothing
—Dieter Roth, Snow (1964/65)
Between Page & Screen
Whispering Galleries
whisperinggalleries.com
The reading hand
Is there a way that the process of reading has a kinship with the process of drawing? [...] How each of us reads is different, and while alphabets and words and the space between words are printed and have an abstraction, they are also materialized.
—Ann Hamilton
artist's talk (2013)
Abra
An Expanded Artist's Book
With Kate Durbin and Ian Hatcher
"Expanded Artists' Books utilize the rich capabilities of the tablet platform to imagine new forms that a book might take, such as exploring how interactivity challenges the traditional closure of text or the performance of time."
Abra: A living text
Wave Signs
A collaboration with Carrie Bodle
Recipient, Jury Prize
Giant Steps Artist Residency on the Moon
moon Signs
Wave / Moon
A book of dust
Based on Nick Montfort's reimplementation
of Alison Knowles and James Tenney's House of Dust,
a 1967 computer-generated poem in Fortran, using Javascript.
A House of Dust
a house of (material)
(location)
using (light source)
inhabited by (inhabitants)
ALISON KNOWLES & JAMES TENNEY
(COLOGNE: GBR KONIG VERLAG, 1968)
<script type="text/javascript">
var t = 0,
material = ['POEMS', 'RECIPES', 'CUT-OUTS', 'TWEETS', 'STORIES', 'IDEOGRAMS', 'DIAGRAMS', 'DREAMS', 'SONGS', 'LYRICS', 'CONFESSIONS', 'FOUND IMAGES', 'ERASURES', 'REPRESSED DESIRES', 'COLLAGES', 'STRANGE SIGILS', 'MADE UP LANGUAGE', 'MAKE-BELIEVE', 'FORMS'],
place = ['IN PRIMARY COLORS', WITHOUT A COVER', 'IN DOS-A-DOS', 'IN PAPIER-MACHE', 'WITH THE SOUND OF WAVES', 'IN CODEX FORM', 'IN A STAB BINDING', 'IN A FLAG STYLE', 'IN A WIDE ACCORDION', 'IN A GREEN BOX', 'AS A DECK OF CARDS', 'IN YOUR HANDS', 'IN HEAVY INDUSTRIAL FELT', 'IMMERSED IN TALLOW', 'IN AN AIRLESS ROOM', 'IN A LIBRARY', 'IN SPECIAL COLLECTIONS', 'IN THE DISCARD PILE', 'AS A COFFEE SHOP', 'IN AN EXHIBITION', 'NONCHALANTLY INSERTED BETWEEN OTHER BOOKS', 'ENCASED IN LEAD', 'IN THE LIBRARY OF BABEL', 'IN A SACK OF FLOUR'],
light_source = ['PAGES', 'DUST', 'SAND', 'MIRROR NEURONS', 'NOTHING SO FAR', 'DISCARDED NEWSPAPER', 'FAIRY TALES', 'HAND-MADE PAPER', 'OLD PHONE DIRECTORIES'],
inhabitants = ['STARLIGHT', 'FLIGHTLESS BIRDS', 'ROBOTS', 'TOUCH', 'SMELL', 'CHAMBER CHOIR', 'CANDLELIGHT', 'CHILDREN AND OLD PEOPLE', 'UNKNOWN ARTISTS', 'LOVERS', 'BOOKSELLERS', 'PEOPLE WITH TIME', 'PEOPLE WHO SING IN THE SHOWER', 'BIBLIOPHLES', 'FRIENDS AND ENEMIES', 'INSOMNIACS', 'EXISTENTIALISTS', 'YOU', 'GRADUATE STUDENTS', 'PEOPLE FROM MANY WALKS OF LIFE', 'BENETTON MODELS', 'LES REVENENTS', 'POLYGLOT READERS', 'MONGREL POETS', 'PEOPLE WHO LOVE TO READ'];
function rand_range(maximum) {
"use strict";
return Math.floor(Math.random() * (maximum + 1));
}
function choose(array) {
"use strict";
return array[rand_range(array.length - 1)];
}
function stanza() {
"use strict";
return 'A BOOK OF ' + choose(material) + '<br \> ' + choose(place) + '<br \> MADE FROM ' + choose(light_source) + '<br \> READ BY ' + choose(inhabitants);
}
function litany() {
"use strict";
var last, text, main = document.getElementById('main');
if (8 > t) {
t += 1;
} else {
main.removeChild(document.getElementById('main').firstChild);
}
last = document.createElement('div');
last.innerHTML = stanza();
main.appendChild(last);
}
function produce_litany() {
"use strict";
litany();
setInterval(litany, 5000);
}
</script>Material Intermedial Poetics
By Amaranth Borsuk
Material Intermedial Poetics
Centre for Expanded Poetics, March 2017
