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5.5.2 Gravitational Poetry JosĂŠ Ballesteros

Gravitational poetry

Or algorithmic interventions in the speech

In the course of literature, and especially poetry, reflection on the written fact has not stopped. Developed in many directions, one of these orientations came through the conception of the word as a physical object for manipulation (geometric manipulation too) in order to recover after its natural state finally re-read the result. This action causes an experimental condition that has nothing to do with the basic and traditional customs of composition. It makes words come unusually physical , before regaining its traditional semantic function. Poetry is an attractive experimental field for this purpose. First, because these attempts are not new: we have a valuable precedents to work. But second, and most important, because poetry does not give much value to the semantic relationships in the composition of texts, and too much to the flashing ideas born of the relationship of words out of their conventional use. Gravitational poetry considers a word as an object, it is assigning it an algorithm behavior, emplacing it in an environment of events and finally reading it being already recomposed in its natural state. In 1976, Cage followed through the letters JAMESJOYCE Finnegans Wake to create a reduction of that text, in the form of a mesostic. This exercise resulted in some 600+ pages handwritten that were deemed inappropriate for publication by his editor at Wesleyan University Press.

Mesostico as graphic agent

Words, full of meaning, seems to offer the opportunity to assume graphics power as related data. In mes贸stico poetry mode, graphics has combinatorial opportunities, but is still required to use semantic rules. It is a controlled setting, with specifications of relationship, but not with a behavioral algorithm.

Mesostico Semantic

The meaning in mes贸stico changes direction, but its soul remains. The poetic reconstruction is predictable and regulated, but not linear. The possibility of finding surprises is limited and advanced, because the behavior of words does not depend on your scenario, but on an advanced directive. Cover - Mesostico experiment Figure 1 - Graphic Poetry Mesostico, John Cage 2

However, if the word is regarded as a free object on the scene, from his movement (still orthogonally ordered according to the rules of the conventional reading) comes a new composition which potentially creates its graphical capabilities.

Mesostico diagram

Open poetic mesóstico conversion looks like a diagram of connection possibilities. A highly regulated plot, but retains its previous semantic states plus the addition of many other possibilities depending on your connection opportunities. The mesóstico is not unique, because it is a diagram of what could be (or which may build).

Why this poem is not Dada

This poem is conceived as a combination of a behavioral algorithm and a simple action. The Dada we know, and some commits us, was a refreshing collapse, a turning point, a manifesto against everything and everyone. The result was so intense that it became clear that this type of research was necessary. The process of comparison and unexpected relationship or prohibited are actually an investigation as there was none before, and therefore absolutely necessary. The Dadaist observation about what chaos is, in Dadaism, it is their natural habitat. For this poem, gravitational chaos is merely an unknown environment in which ,sooner or later , we can discover powerful complex behaviors that originate new systems each time. Although in this poem gravity relations are the result of an algorithm, it is also necessary to include the poetic act of falling. What in other poems is a suggestion, in this is a fact, it is a physical act. This is why it needs to be dynamic. This gravitational poem is unstable and does not stay in time. No one can remember or re-read, because it depends on your voice. Reading this Neruda poem triggers a new evanescent poem that talk with his words, but it is a poem, that unlike the original, is not a work of art, it is an exploration of relationships. Schwitters loudly declaimed his poem to make it real, to be converted from the signs to a ceremony. Schwitters provoke a new poem every time raise his voice, either on Neruda objects or on their own, and this would disappear in a lapse. Only would stay the event. We have permit abandoned words to form new structures during their lifetime, that is to say, to assume a different grammar in order to describe not yet exist reality. Figure 2 - Mesostic experiment, IaaC Archive

The strength of composition, the poetic intention is the audience participation. The poem has no intention. By using only gravity, words are linked through new networks. Words just link by themselves. Dadaism is manifested against the eternal beauty, against the eternity of the principles, against the laws of logic, against the immobility of thought, against the purity of abstract concepts and against the universal in general. But Dadaism advocates for an unbridled individual freedom, for spontaneity, for immediacy, for randomness, for chronic against timelessness, for contradiction, for the “no” where others say “yes” and for “yes” where others say “do not”. Dadaism defends order against chaos and imperfection against perfection A word is an open node of links. The position is just one of this simple nodes. Here in our process, we ignore their semantic possibilities to operate them. Words are constructed in a way that they produces meanings according to certain combinations. This is the basis of automatic writing. But in poetic language is not only the meaning which charged interest, but the evocative power of its single combination.

Poetry does not use the words in their conventional forms of connection, but rather creates new connections. Poetry does not create a new combinatorial result but is forcing words to behave in new ways, such as jazz. In poetry it is not the known structures that generate beauty, but they are proposing new connections, they are associating unexpected meanings, induce, to intuit something absolutely unthinkable and generally inadmissible. The falled abandoned position is not random. It depends on the severity and conditions of self-organization of words as objects. The result is constructing new relational connected ideas from the original poem.

Simultaneous physical space and poetic space

Gravity ordered architecture and its elements and thus shapes the space. Reading spaces in the history of architecture conveys the idea of supporting as a premise. It is supported, and therefore we compose with these characteristics. It is a primitive imperative, but fundamental. Space innovation has been orbiting around gravity, from Vitruvius “firmitas” to the open structures of Cecil Balmond. When gravity acts on this literary, unexpectedly altering its compositional structure. Georges Perec in 1967 by the extraordinary novelist Raymond Queneau -a member of the College of Patafísica, director of the Encyclopedic of Pléiadeand mathematical form Françoise Le Lionnais OULIPO (Ouvroir of Literature Potentielle “Workshop of potential literature”), that its members came to have figures as Noel Arnaud, Marcel Bénabou, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, Luc Etienne, and Albert-Marie Schmidt and others. The group’s objective was to explore the potential of those formal combinatorial coercion as grammar and style rules, pursuing the expansion of the field of narrative possibilities. In applying a condition of gravitational order to the words we are attributing there some constructive values. The word that is already in a resting position has become a self-organizing system, dependent on its geometry size and shape, but is not loosing the sight that remain words. In this scenario, the words as objects have retained both their physical attributes and semantic attributes, and therefore spatially can be read simultaneously in these two strata of understanding. A poetic textual reading can induce a space, in addition to had built one himself physically on the screen of your interface. We can read spaces as descriptions with words, while the words are building spaces and providing simultaneous transmission of information that is generated by the gravitational poetry. Figure 3 - Lecture on nothing, IaaC Archive

Process

1. Start with the interface. 2. Declaim the poem aloud to the verse you prefer. 3. Allow to stand the words. 4. Rebuild the poem verses unaligned. 5. Take new poetic ideas from the result. This poem has been made in the first instance in vvvv for an installation in the “Casa del Lector” (Matadero Madrid) Since VVVV is a closed and heavy software, which requires large facilities and careful management of the Framework of the different versions of Windows, it has been transcribed in java to choose different libraries and a dynamic behavior for different interfaces. The submitted version is developed using Processing and two of its elementary libraries and common “box2d” for the gravitational behavior and “minim” to the sound of the voice. The loaded poem is “Una cancion desesperada “ by Pablo Neruda. The software allows to load any text you want. The algorithm loads any text file and separates parsing his words as “iso8859-1” Broadcast spray words depends on the position of the mouse on the graphic interface Processing in this version (origin of all dynamic objects position) The geometry of the support platform of words is decisive in forming the new poem. In this case we have opted for a neutral support. The voice creates objects that have a dynamic behavior associated with the words extracted from the poem. The admission threshold for creating objects must be set to microphone function is used, and the type of declamation you prefer. In this link we can find a mesostics machine from any text you type. http://vyh.pythonanywhere.com/psmeso/

Figure 4 - Cage’s Mesostic, IaaC Archive 8

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