Search

The search found 2 results in 0.007 seconds.

Search results

1. Free Lutz!

   50 years ago a calculator generated a literary text for the first time ever. And this was in Stuttgart my hometown.
   Theo Lutz wrote 1959 a program for Zuse Z22 to create stochastic texts. On the advice of the Stuttgardian philosopher Max Bense, he took sixteen nouns and adjectives out of Kafka’s “Schloss,” which the calculator then formed into sentences, following certain patterns. Thus every sentence began with “ein” or “jeder” (“one” or “each”) or the corresponding negative form “kein” or “nicht jeder” (“no” or “not every”). Then the noun, selected arbitrarily from the pool of sixteen, was linked through the verb “ist” (“is”) with the likewise arbitrarily chosen adjective. Then the whole assembly was linked up through “und,” “oder,” “so gilt” (“and,” “either,” “thus”) or given a full stop. Following these calculation instructions, by means of this algorithm, the machine was able to construct such sentences as:

   EIN TAG IST TIEF UND JEDES HAUS IST FERN
   (A day is deep and every house is distant)
   JEDES DORF IST DUNKEL; SO GILT KEIN GAST IST GROSS
   (Every village is dark, thus no guest is large)

   Johannes Auer - 06.11.2012 - 13:51

2. Nobody knows but you

   nobody knows but you was written for Double-Cute Battle Mode, an application prototype for a VJ (video jockey) remix battle. DCBM allows two players to combine visuals and special effects in a playful competition for screen space. Using joysticks, players plug their imagination into their computer and share a creative space in an intuitive video-game style interaction. The piece was conceived as a way to ease text back into an image-dominated culture by treating it simultaneously as a visual special effect and as a poem. The twenty-three verses appear on a plane in three-dimensional space. A cube shape displays additional visuals. Both the cube and the plane may be scaled and rotated, and the reader has control over which verse or image is displayed. You may notice in the image at top left, or while watching the installation video, a twelve-year-old girl plopped down in front of the installation. She played with the piece on and off for three hours. She began singing the words, making up melodies and turning certain verses into refrains. There is a clear lack of literature that responds to the intellectual and creative needs of young people today.

   Luciana Gattass - 14.11.2012 - 17:08