Electro Text

Those who have little interest in abstract painting, concrete poetry, dada and such “bookworks” as Tom Phillips’ The Humument will find this artifact/book a total waste of time. For me, it is a joyous synthesis of two of my prime obsessions: abstract art and post c-punk sci-fi.

It is one long 100% uppercase, right-and-left-justified, stream-of-machine-consciousness textual dump.  No, that’s not really fair.  It is, however, how it appears on the surface.  The most obvious thing about _Cigarette Boy_ is definitely its layout, and, to some extent, the presentation of the material matches the approach to the content: nearly impervious.  Now, that’s not to say that the content is impossible to decipher, nor worth the effort; it’s simply woven in a complex fabric that approaches the human-unreadable.  [...]  In fact, the entire text is supposed to be machine-generated, or at least gives that impression. [...]

The end result of this methode du presentacion (to use a bogus Frenchism for no good reason) is that _Cigarette Boy_ demands far more effort on the part of the reader than most works of prose.  In addition to demanding that the reader keep track of which level of nesting the current passage is in, and parsing lots of weird new terms (like “ACOLLIDER,” “PARAWELD,” and “SURGIRAFFE,”) multiple thematic elements including Egyptian imagery and genetic, temporal, and wafer-level engineering, the reader is encouraged (some might say required) to produce sophisticated mixed-media mental imagery in order to follow the story. On top of all this there is a regular and heavy layer of transformational word-play adding a shiny metallic thread to the fabric of the piece.  Puns, spelling twists, even limericks surface, snap, and submerge in the midst of the contorted plot and the media directions.

Besides familiar and now-commonplace tasks that computers do all the time, what else are they capable of? Stephen Ramsay’s intriguing study of computational text analysis examines how computers can be used as “reading machines” to open up entirely new possibilities for literary critics. Computer-based text analysis has been employed for the past several decades as a way of searching, collating, and indexing texts. Despite this, the digital revolution has not penetrated the core activity of literary studies: interpretive analysis of written texts.

Computers can handle vast amounts of data, allowing for the comparison of texts in ways that were previously too overwhelming for individuals, but they may also assist in enhancing the entirely necessary role of subjectivity in critical interpretation. Reading Machines discusses the importance of this new form of text analysis conducted with the assistance of computers. Ramsay suggests that the rigidity of computation can be enlisted by intuition, subjectivity, and play.

codework sounds like something that sounds legitimate but after awhile seems slightly skeevy because it keeps being referenced in the classifieds section of the village voice or other alternative weekly where ad-content overpowers editorial on a 10:1 margin