User:LEa/notes1/SI28
2025-09-15 Class
Morning: Worm
Radio Stations to look up: - Worm Radio ! - Radio Aporee - Pirate Radio Stations (Radio Ham?) - Student Radio (Radio Student Lublijana, Mushroom Radio KBAK Den Haag) - Belgian Radio (Brussels): Radio Panik, Radio Campus
- Chat / Chatbots / Livechat (currently: Chatango) - Option for live Feedback (Pad/Chat) > involve the audience (e.g. choose your own adventure game) - Feedback, repurposing and remediating the content we are making
- NADD (Netwerk Archieven Design en Digitale Cultuur) > based in New Institute
- Wed. 19.11. (alt. 26.11.): Event > think of that as a stage of production (with the public) instead of showcase > think of tools / what do we need
To consider: - Save some space/time to listen to the others / be there for each other - Promotion, PR ! - Multilingual shows welcome! - Are subsidized FM frequencies available? > Low Power Radio (Community orientation instead of just buying a license)
Afternoon: Aquarium
In the twentieth century, the realisation that writing is a technology – as opposed to a "natural", direct conduit to the soul – came as a creative inspiration to many writers and artists: the Surrealists fashioned "exquisite corpses"; the 'Pataphysicians channeled streams of consciousness; the OuliPo Group used systems of restraint to open new channels of potential literature; the Fluxus group developed protocols for "happenings"; John Cage established restraints for composition; the Scratch Orchestra co-wrote scores for group improvisation; William Burroughs used various techniques, including "cut-ups", to scramble the patterns of language that he believed programmed conformity. Sometimes Burroughs folded one text into another, sometimes he collaged the (then) new media of magnetic tape
- Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project (written 1927-1940) - "dialectical document" - W. Benjamin: interested in surrealism (esp. juxtaposing / collage)
- Writing Machine #1: The Analog Exquisite Corpse Machine by Steve Rushton (2025) > "My clear YouTube digs lazily" > "My gentle superhero hypes sadly" > "The fragile tech billionaire paints healthily (heavily?)"
- Cut-Ups Self Explained: Brion Gysin - The Cut-Ups: William S Burroughs (1966) - The Spoken Word: William S Burroughs & Brion Gysin > tape editing to cut up text - William S Burroughs: anti-psychoanalytic, Scientology - William Ross Ashby: Design For A Brain (1954)
- Kenneth Goldsmith: Uncreative Writing
- Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Nick Montfort: OUTPUT: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text -1953-2023)
- Italo Calvino: Cybernetics and Ghosts (1967)
- Tristan Tzara: To Make a Dadaist Poem (1920)
- Alison Knowles: The House of Dust (1967)
Knowles’s The House of Dust is among the earliest computerized poems, consisting of the phrase “a house of” followed by a randomized sequence of 1) a material, 2) a site or situation, a light source, and 3) a category of inhabitants taken from four distinct lists.
- General Semantics
General semantics is a school of thought that incorporates philosophic and scientific aspects. Although it does not stand on its own as a separate school of philosophy, a separate science, or an academic discipline, it describes itself as a scientifically empirical approach to cognition and problem solving.
- "Technotext"
- [Radical Software][https://archive.org/details/radsoft-0101/mode/2up] (1970) - The Cybernetic Explanation: Gregory Bateson (1967)
Protocols - write a script using pre-existing material - write a script using pre-existing code - open random wikipedia article > read first link, click on second link > read first link, click on second link - Flüsterpost
Reading Group 1: Kiki, Sibyl, Valentin, Phillip, Lea > Postprint: N. Katherine Hayles (2021) > Introducing Postprint Reading Group 2: Barbara, Luca, Daan, Soda > Writing Machines: N. Katherine Hayles (2002) > Technotexts and Media Specific Analysis Reading Group 3: Robin, Tommi, Bart, Youjung, Emanuele > Uncreative Writing: Kenneth Goldsmith (2011) > Managing Language in the Digital Age
Machine made in class: Multinational Poetry Remix
Protocol: # Pick most well-known poet from own country of origin # Pick most well-known poem from this poet # Pick first line from first verse # Pick first line from second verse # Translate these lines # Sort countries of origin alphabetically (English names) # Mirror countries of origin # Put the lines together in one new poem
Output: Moonlight before my bed, like frost upon the floor Do you not see, the Yellow River's waters rushing from Heaven, never to return Who rides so late through night and wind? I have no mother, I have no father If my time should come, I'd like no one to entice me / I am but a wild animal, Cut from it's kind I haven't eaten third day My son, why do you hide your face so anxiously? Do you not see, before the bright mirror in the high hall, grieving over white hair I lift my eyes to the mountain moon, then bow them, dreaming of home.
2025-09-21 Radio Worm Preparation
Radio Week 1: Script
Word Mash Warm-Up
Good morning everyone! This was a little warm up game to help loosen our tongues for this years very first XPUB radio show. The hosts in the studio today are Luca, Robin, Valentin and me, Lea. We are the first group within this trimester to experiment live how make radio, what that means and what it can be. This September, we started studying at the Piet Zwart Institute in the Master's program Experimental Publishing (This is actually what XPUB stands for!). The first thing we and our fellow students are working on is the Special Issue #28. In this collective project we will explore writing machines and protocols, and as output, we will host this radio show as well as a public event in November. We are very happy and even more excited that you're listening and we want to invite you to follow along with our experiments in the following weeks, always on Mondays from 10 to 11 o'clock. You can expect a different team of hosts and fresh ideas every time! For more info and a collection of all XPUB special issues, hop over to issue.xpub.nl or for the current issue to hub.xpub.nl/sergio/SI28/. We will post the links in the chat on the WORM website where you are currently listening. And now, we would like to ask you to get your phones out and open a recording app. Whenever one of us uses the word "protocol", please record for a maximum of 4 seconds - less is also fine - and send then the files to us. We will now share a link in the chat and you can just drop them there. Feel free to also include the sounds of your surroundings, it really doesn't have to be just us talking. With all that explained, I would like to pass the word to Valentin, who will moderate the first segment of our show.
Valentin
Luca
Lea (me) prepared a few snippets of text > grab some > put 3-7 snippets together > read them out ... context: surrealist technique "latent news" idea: take a news article, cut it in segments, rearrange surrealists were not the only ones to do this: it originated with the dadaists; William Bourroughs and Brion Gysin made popular in the 1950s Q1: Was there anything that you liked, disliked or just noticed? ... Q2: What do you think was the meaning of the text? You can share what you think the input might have been, but i'd also be very interested in your thoughts about the essence of the text we just produced in the process. ... Q3: Luca, can you read a poem for us? > Tristan Tzara wrote a short text on how to make a Dadaist poem, and you were the one who brought it up in class. I think it is a nice recap of the process we just went through TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Robin
Jingle making and outro
2025-09-22 Class
Radio Week 1
Tips from Ash: - start with pre-recorded sound, fade out - roles: moderator, producer, secretary, "observer" > everybody can focus one one thing - observer from week one will become part of team two, observer from week two will be part of team three .... - when you can't hear yourself, turn up the headphones (usually not the mic!)
What we would do better: - connect to the WiFi beforehand! - keep an eye on the time if different segments are planned - make shownotes / documentation
ROLES: - moderator: leads through the show, asks questions, keeps track of the time - producer: gathers information on the gear that is needed, makes a tech rider, controls the knobs - secretary: takes notes, interacts with the audience, keeps an eye on the chat - (jingle master: might be a different tole or part of the producers job) - observer: listens, keeps track of how stuff works, is not part of the hosts
GROUPS: - Week 1 (4 ppl): Luca, Robin, Valentin, Lea - Week 2 (3-4 ppl) > decide today: Daan [producer], Tommi [], Barbara [], Kiki [], Ema [observer] - Week 3 (3-4 ppl) > decide today: Ema [producer], Youjung [moderator], Bart [secretary], Sibyl [observer] - Week 4 (3-4 ppl) > decide 29.09.: [producer], [moderator], [secretary], [Possible open position for a 4th person], [observer]
Thomson & Craighead: The Time Machine in Alphabetical Order - Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Reading Steve's orality and literacy mash up in the spirit of Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (miniaturised version)
- Orality and Literacy: Walter Ong (1982) > - Literacy is a technology which renders the previous medai technology (the mnemonic system of orality) inconceivable and opaque to literal culture. > - A literate person cannot fully recover a sense of what the word is to purely oral people.
- Havelock > - The alphabet allows abstract thought. .... Robin: The alphabet was not the first technology used for writing.
- Hobart & Schiffman > It is a mistake to view oral memory in the mirror of literal preconceptions.
- William Burroughs > Animals can not make information available to future generations or to animals outside the range of their communication systems > - Animals talk, they don't write. .... Luca: Do we agree?
Ted Nelson: Computer Lib (1974) > everything open source
2025-09-24 Class
Sharing & Discussion
- Jonathan Baillehache: The Digital Reception of A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems - National Library De Haag https://www.kb.nl/en - E-Reader > import all books from the Bootleg Library - Writing Machines in the Wild > add to the Writing Machine Directory
For next Wednesday > prepare 90 sec preparation on what interests me in context of Special Issue #28 > What is your overall take on the Special Issue, maybe in regards to your previous research? > What do you want to participate in in regards to the organisation?
Reading
Georges Perec: The Art of Asking your Boss for a Raise (org.: L'art et la manière d'aborder son chef de service pour lui demander une augmentation):
- Perec was part of the OuLiPo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) - versions: a diagramm, a text, [a radio broadcast]( https://archive.org/details/wucherungen_georges_perec) made in collaboration with Eugen Helmle (Perec's German translator) and a play called "L'augmentation" - "exhilarating potential of repetitiveness and recursion" - much like "Choose your own adventure" games ___ - lipogram: writing that excludes one or more letter - concocting: to prepare by combining raw materials
Marcel Bénabou: Rule and Constraint (org.: La règle et la contrainte)
- Bénabou was part of the OuLiPo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) - Rule and Constraint is about linguistic constraint as a tool for writing - Anagrams, palindromes, and lipograms get "stigmatized" / treated as " nothing more than a game" - Other forms of constraint are accepted / desired: poetic forms like an alexandrine or a sonnet (also, haiku or limerick) have specific rhyme schemes, or a set number of syllables or lines - "Even the most rabid critics of formalism are forced to admit that there are formal demands which a work cannot elude" - If someone writes without a constraint that he is aware of, he is "the slave of other rules of which he is ignorant". Setting a few "familiar rules" actually makes one "freer". - "[Constraint] forces the system out of its routine functioning, thereby compelling it to reveal its hidden resources" - On Georges Perec: "In [his work] one notes a sort of fascination for the letter" > *"each page is a bed where letters lie"* (Jaques Roubaud) - Constraint could be able to replace the concept of "inspiration", as a poet is never inspired, he "knows how to hunt". - linguistic operations: displacement, substitution, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, deduction, contraction / categories proposed by J. Roubaud: concatenation, imbrication, encasement, encroachment, permutation, effacement, parenthesage ___ - sacrosanct: sacred / inviolable - prosody: study of intonation, stress, rhythm and loudness - supplant: replace
Michael Winkler: Where Signs Resemble Thoughts
Raymond Queneau: A Story As You Like It (org.: Un conte à votre façon)
2025-09-27 Notes on Radio, Poetry, and Writing Machines
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: Zang Tumb Tumb (1914)
1 2 3 4 5 seconds siege guns split the silence in unison tam-tuuumb sudden echoes all the echoes seize it quick smash it scatter it to the infinite winds to the devil 'In the middle these tam-tuuumb flattened 50 square kilometers leap 2-6-8 crashes clubs punches bashes quick-firing batteries. Violence ferocity regularity pendulum play fatality ...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu ZANG-TUMB TUMB-TUMB TUUUUUM
Luigi Russolo: L'Arte dei rumori (1916)
The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination. https://www.unknown.nu/futurism/noises.html
John Cage > 4′33″ > Prepared piano
Pierre Schaeffer > Pierre Schaeffer on Discogs > Radio essays: Club d'Essai > Cantata to Alsace (1945) > Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM)
Paul Morley > Lost for Words: The Ghost of Arthur Rimbaud - Part 2 Art of Noise > Gary Langan, JJ Jeczalik, Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn, Paul Morley, Lol Creme > Jonh Wilde: Noise Annoys (1986) > Interview with JJ Jeczalik (2017)
Anne Duffau > A---Z > Transmissions TV -> https://www.lorieallen.com/
Computational Poetics > Katherine Wu: Computational Poetics Syllabus > Allison Parrish: Computational approaches to narrative > Alt-text as poetry](https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/) > School for Poetic Computation > Limericks and Computational Poetics: The Minimal Pairs Framework. Computational Challenges for Poetic Analysis and Synthesis
Theo Lutz: Stochastic Texts
N. Katherine Hayles: Writing Machines
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort: Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023
Glitches > Legacy Russel: Glitch Feminism > "An error, a mistake, a failure to function can be celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of non-performance." > Brian Eno: "The Essence of The Glitch: Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."
Samples "sampling as a creative, ideological, and political act" https://sfpc.study/sessions/fall-25/poetics-sampling
Technology in Literature > Isabelle Krzywkowski: "But whereas visual and sound arts, for which the medium is essential, have had no difficulty admitting the role of technology in their creative process, literature remains surrounded by a strange aura of idealism." https://www.digitalmcd.com/writing-machines/
2025-09-18 Glyphica Text Machine
see Writing Machine Directory
25-09-29 Class
Input
- Harry Mathews: Liminal Poem
- Geoerge Perec: Life a User's Manual
- Raymond Queneau: A Story as You Like It; One hundred thousand billion poems (1961); Exercises in Style (1947)
- Nick Montfort (contemporary practitioner of Oulipo methods) https://cmsw.mit.edu/all-the-way-for-the-win/ https://nickm.com/post/index.html%3Fp=3048.html https://nickm.com/poems/use_of_dust.html https://nickm.com/poems/taroko_gorge/
- Rick Barthelme: Being, in the physical condition-facing north; Being, in the physical condition-facing south; Being, in the physical condition-facing east; Being, in the physical condition-facing west (1969)
- Christine Kozlov: Information - No Theory (1969)
- Robert Morris - Box With the Sound of its Own Making (1961)
- Alvin Lucifer - I am sitting in a Room (1969)
- Sol Le Witt Formal Abstraction
- Fluxus = Yoko Ono https://www.theartstory.org/movement/fluxus/ https://www.google.nl/books/edition/Grapefruit/3S8Rwr-iBdoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover https://www.theartstory.org/movement/neo-dada/#pnt_1 https://www.theartstory.org/artist/maciunas-george/
- John Cage: Lectures and Writings by John Cage - Silence; Music of Changes (1951); Suit for Toy Piano - «I Ching» in Chinese music: composition method of Chung Yiu Kwang (2024) - Inspirational Working Methods: John Cage and the I Ching
- Scratch Orchestra https://ewaeckerle.com/work/the-scratch-orchestras-nature-study-notes/
- Brian Eno: Oblique Stratergies
- R.D. Laing: Knots
- Constant: The Death of the Authors (publications of rearranged texts that are now in the public domain)
Follow up texts: - https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/all-problems-notation-will-be-solved-masses - https://medium.com/counterarts/unsettling-something-bac07c139b92
Making protocols for audio sequences
1. Think of the last animal you talked to. Make the noise that animal makes - first when it's happy, then when it is upset. 2. Grab the item closest to your hand - when you are left-handed to your left, when you are right-handed to your right - and drop it (softly) three times on the surface underneath
2025-09-29 Class
Morning
Worm Radio Week 3: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/ThirdRadioShow
Afternoon
Beatnik Generation (1940-1950s) - Joan Vollmer & Edie Parker: hosting beats in their apartment - the term "beat": first coined by Herbert Huncke
The Beatnik Poet Machine - Autobeatnik (1961) - Beatnik moral panic: Beats, Beatniks and the Beaulieu Jazz Riot of 1960 - 1961: "The machines are taking over, computers outdo man at his work now and soon may outthink him." - 2025: "ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’" (The Guardian)
Modern artists influenced by the Beatnik Generation - Kurt Cobain - Laurie Anderson - R.E.M - Psychic TV (Genesis P-Orridge) - David Bowie
Brion Gysin: I Am (1960) Charlie Mingus (Pre-Bird): Take the "A" Train (1961) Charlie Parker ( + Miles Davis, Curley Russel, Max Roach): KoKo (1945)
Brion Gysin & Ian Sommerville: The Dream Machine (1959) Per Hüttner & Daniele Balit: The Invisible Generation William S. Burroughs: The Electronic Revolution (1970)
Tactical media practices: - Radical Software (1970s): journal on the use of video as artistic and political medium; people sharing video equipment and practices; what does it mean to be able to make your own TV programs? - USCO (Company of Us) (1960s): media art collective - Raindance Foundation: (1969) "alternate culture think-tank"; coined the term "Guerilla television" - TVTV (Top Value Television) (1972-1979): video collective producing documentaries using guerilla art techniques - Cuip Lord & Doug Michels (1968): Ant Farm
Greg Heffernan: Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1 (2020) (> recommended by Barbara)
William S. Burroughs: The Soft Machine (1961) > Soft Machine (band)
The Beatles: Tomorrow Never Knows (1966) > rewinding tape (reverse effect), lyrics from "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead" by Timothy Leary
Barry Miles: autobiographer of William S. Burroughs
Simon Vinkenoog (> recommended by Daan) - Ja! (2006) - Ja!: bloemlezing met de laatste 19 gedichten (1928-2009) - Spinvis / Vinkenoog on Spotify - Vinkenoog on Spotify
Assignment: Set aims and outcomes for next week's class (no radio show > making things / writing machines / recordings)
2025-10-13 Class
Goals for today - figure out how to convert my notes from md to mediawiki - style my wiki - start personal reader - write down at least three ideas for writing machines involving food and/or living organisms
Ideas - mapping, mazes and graphviz - food and fermenting (bubbly and communal) - writing machines powered by organisms (“more than human”)
Reading Karen O’Rourke: Walking And Mapping - Artists As Cartographers (Chapter 1 Psychogeography: The Politics of Applied Pedestrianism) - “psychogeographic walk” > “walking algorithm”: first right, first left, third right, repeat. note down anything striking - psychogeography: term first used by members of Letterist International (1950s); described as “a science of relations and ambiances to give”le jeu de société” (lit. “the parlor game”) its true meaning: a society founded upon play. Nothing is more serious. Amusement is the royal privilege that must be made available to everyone.” - “geography deals with the impact of natural forces (such as climate and soil composition)” - drifting as a tool to examine the effects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals; recommended by Guy-Ernest Debord
Relevant Links: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/psychogeography-a-purposeful-drift-through-the-city/ https://kazil.home.xs4all.nl/psychog01.html https://www.notbored.org/la-carte.html https://www.notbored.org/exercise.html https://www.notbored.org/audio.html https://cryptoforest.blogspot.com/p/what-is-forage-psychogeography-suppress.html
A Psychogeographic Writing Machine see Writing Machine Directory
Radio Stations and Formats
Rotterdam . Worm Radio . Operator Radio
Brussels . Radio Panik . Radio Campus Bruxelles
Aachen . Pilot Radio
Pirate Radio Stations . (Radio Ham?)
Student Radio (Radio Student Lublijana, Mushroom Radio KBAK Den Haag)
Radio Aporee
Reverberation Radio
Stegi.Radio
Radio-Feature: spoken word radio format devoted to non-fiction narrative
* BBC: Experimental Hour (1937) * France Culture: Atelier de Création Radiophonique (ACR) (1969-2011)
Radio Essays: Club d'Essai