jonathan kemp

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**Exquisite_Code, E:vent Gallery, Bethnal Green, London, Feb. 15-19th and Launch party Feb. 20th**

**//Notes for Participants//**

''The beginnings of exquisite_code, as devised by Brendan and Sabrina, are detailed here:''
http://exquisite-code.com/?action=page&url=history

''The London project is an extreme version which has come about as a result of conversations between Brendan, Jonathan, and Leif at [[http://www.1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html|Breakthrough]] Berlin in June 2009, and in subsequent emails between Brendan, Jonathan and Sabrina.''

''
The writing part of the project will run 10am-6pm daily, starting on Monday 15th Feb. and finishing on Friday 19th Feb. at E:vent Gallery.

The Launch performances will take place 7.30pm - 11.30pm on Sat. 20th Feb. in the upper space of the Gallery building.''

A printable map of how to get to the E:vent Gallery is at the foot of this page.



**What each writer needs**

''A laptop for the five days''


**What we'll be doing**

''We'll be sitting around a table in a windowless gallery space with our laptops  connected via an ethernet hub to the edit-machine, which is, in turn, connected to various forms of real-time display.


On **''Day One''** the Writers will begin the project by writing a one line prompt.
The edit-software will then be applied to the 8 prompts submitted and 1 prompt will be selected.
Writers will then write in response to that prompt, at first in a session lasting 6 minutes.
After this session, the edit software will be applied again to the 8 submitted pieces of writing and a text chunk selected/generated.
This text chunk is displayed and writers will then create a prompt in response to that text chunk.
The edit software will be applied again to the 8 prompts, and 1 prompt will be selected.
Writers will then write in response to the prompt, again in a session of 6 minutes, unless
writers decide to change the length of the session through agreement or belligerence.
This process carries on throughout each day for 8 hours.


The 8 hours will also include scheduled edit-software re-writes to be performed by some of the writers.
These might be scheduled in say, 15 minute sessions 4 times a day.''

//The basic text-generation cycle is schematized here://
{{:exquisite_code:diagram_small.jpg|}}

''The selected text will be deposited in a 'text dump'. From this dump, and including the edit-software code and selected prompts, the life-novel will be made. This will be sent to a formatted template and from this the book will be printed within 24 hours using Print-on-Demand technology. Its hoped that we will have some fifty copies of the book for the Launch on Saturday the 20th Feb.''


**the edit-software**

''Brendan has written algorithms in Python for editing the text produced after each session. The various routines can be called. Writers can confer to call a specific routine. The default routine is the Classic Random Select.''

''
1.  The Classic Random Select.  Modified to have some kind of fair-queuing or round-robin selection.''

''2. Burroughs Columnar Cut-up.  Texts are justified to x-amount of columns (typewriter width) and chopped horizontally into thirds.  
These chunks are randomly realigned. [see Ref. below]. Orphaned letter strings will be killed off.''

''3. Grammatic Convolution.  Randomly selects one input text as the grammatical structure and tags each word with part-of-speech.  Tags the other texts and substitutes the words from the "structure" text with appropriate part-of-speech substitutes from the other "corpus" texts.''
''This would essentially use the random-select process to pick one of the chunks to be the 'structure text'.  The other texts would be used as part-of-speech substitution databases.  Having a static 'structure text' could also be interesting.  We could do several iterations of the same structure, each with different substitutions.  An ad nauseam chapter or "Chomsky Variations".''

''
4. Synonymic/Antonymic Distortion.  Randomly replaces words with synonyms or antonyms from the wordnet database.''

''5. Markovian Gang Chaining.  This one takes all of the texts and builds a statistical index based on word order and then spits out 
words based on probable next words.'' 


{{:exquisite_code:london-block-diagram-vsmall.png|}}
//Process schematic://


**Day-to-day**

''Coffee etc will be on hand next to the space, and a lunch will be given upstairs at E:vent Gallery once a day. This lunch will be prepared and served by Liam. Food, supplies, and Liam's payment will come from some of the subsistence money allocated (ie. from the £25/day per person) - the remainder will be yours.''

''Oyster 7-day travel cards for Zones 1+2 will be provided on the first day''

''All payments for flights etc will be made on first day''

''All writers fees will be made in the week''


**Further References**

//
[[http://laurier.communicationstudies.ca/files/cutups_explained.pdf|'Cut-Up Self Explained']]// William Burroughs in Burroughs, William S., and Brion Gysin. The Third Mind. New York: Seaver Books, 1978. p34

//Art and cybernetics in the supermarket// A.A. Moles in Cybernetics, Art and Ideas, Reinhardt, J. ed. New York Graphic Society. Connecticut. 1971. pp 61-72

{{:exquisite_code:ex_code_map.png|}}
jonathan kemp

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