complexity

So far, I’ve been naming these pieces according to their filenames. They get a name according to their series– “mixed”, “super_random”, “ess”– depending on the key features of whatever I’m working on, and numbering each file in the series (”mixed_001″, “mixed_002″, and so on). That’s fine for internal use, but I’m torn as to whether or not these items should have names when I post them publicly (on Flickr, for example). It’s hard to name abstractions without sounding pretentious, and if I make them too on-point, it runs the risk of tipping my hand as to what I see in the image. I like artworks with titles that are evocative but not revealing.

That’s led me to pull out another generative tool that I built last year, a little script called eco-text.rb. This script is based on this quote (one of my all-time favorites) from a Wired interview with Umberto Eco:

“I would scan into the computer around a hundred novels, as many scientific texts, the Bible, the Koran, a few telephone directories (great for names). Say around a hundred, a hundred and twenty thousand pages. Then I’d use a simple, random program to mix them all up, and make a few changes - such as taking all the A’s out. That way I’d have a novel which was also a lipogram. Next step would be to print it all out and read it through carefully a few times, underlining the important passages. Then I’d load it all onto a truck and take it to the nearest incinerator. While it was burning I’d sit under a tree with a pencil and a piece of paper and let my thoughts wander until I’d come up with a couple of lines, for example: ‘The moon rides high in the sky - the forest rustles.’… At first, of course, it wouldn’t be a novel so much as a haiku. But that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to make a start.

Well, that’s exactly what eco-text does (the first part, anyway… the truck and the incinerator are left to the user). I downloaded a bunch of etexts (mostly public domain, from the Gutenberg Project, but some not), wrote a program to randomize passages, delete extraneous punctuation, a few minimal grammar-ish rules to up the hit rate for readable sentences (for example, don’t end sentences with “the” or “and”). Each run of eco-text spits out about two pages of jumble that often reads as nonsense, but just as often produces some delightful juxtapositions. Here’s a sample of its output:

Come to paris to work strange and fearful theory which. Nature of the earth’s primal we had formed regarding. We wished to verify at the naked king ‘yes inhabitants perhaps we sought. Back to know that was their son young in. Guy in the green hawaiian a lost science we split understands that extra he had he didnt need to glance. Shirt was watching him heavy with french specialists dead asmund quoted such diverse sources gazed stood up nothing that cannot sir’ never mind dear –. Or i’m a jew borrower from both sides years and early ripe perhaps recover the buried records. They’ve cut this with turpentine be handled once this staff.

Donkey but by now the farmer.

Gas tank makes them want chosen time early computer graphics house came with some partridges fully conscious under a detonating rearview mirrors projects a fiery. Fire comfort sneering out. And nine months would get boys and girls should cease. Their children would the fall. Terrible fears of being pinned and ugly it’s as that they take up to play a little sooner. Into their subconscious and unearths my diploma leave the schooland extreme jack’s aggressive use gain for this lost childhood of the river behind fei-tzu’s never come to an end same stately pace as mask across their eyes reaches enter the ranks of commit suicide and so rear windows bounces off the deiverator overtake them in. Were not there at all. Windows would proceed at for this pilfering of children. His black chariot of pepperoni roger carries out to it comes in through people’s to pull over and let. Force what would be b they’ll be afraid of course were slow crude what the value that growing attitude of adults before others and in two years tucked away in his bag wage slaves on the bank.

You get the idea. Most of the time it makes no sense, but a great use for eco-text is similar to Eno’s Oblique Strategies, to act as a catalyst for lateral thinking. As such, I’ve decided that when I post an image to Flickr, I’ll give each one a title. The actual words will come from eco-text, but the snippet I use will be my selection. This feels like a proper solution for me: process driven, mostly random, but still with enough fridge-magnet-poetry determinism to have some relationship, however tenuous and subconscious, with whatever piece of visual art I have in front of me at the time.

Oh, and incidentally, out of the passage above? I pick the phrase “They’ve cut this with turpentine“.