It's gone in a loop now
Bompiani orders automated poetry
This program was then turned into punchcards
On the pages of the Bompiani Almanac
A scheme of this program is reproduced
It's a very simple, trivial thing
The idea was to use this machine for poetry
For its combinatorial capacities
Poetry is all made of combinations
In poetry the verses, the syllables, the verses are combined
It is all based also on calculations
All the verses have a number, there are a number of strokes, and so on
So there was an affinity with this work
And then what I liked was not just the combinatorial capacity
Now, all this work made by the computer, I could have done it by hand
It would have taken me a huge amount of extra time
Compared to what the machine did in just a few minutes
And this had the advantage of creating an unpredictable thing
Because if I made all the combinations by hand
I would have known what I was doing
While things I had not imagined emerged from the computer work
So it also came into being a game of coincidence
The game of coincidence is also related to poetry
The surrealists said
Mix verses in a hat
Then pick them randomly
Make a poem built by accidentally combining verses
And this operation had very much to do in my opinion with the history of poetry
It was not an external stretch
I remember when the print of the poems came out
A huge pile of so many large sheets that folded
Here is an extract
There were thousands and thousands of them
In a few minutes it had delivered thousands of different poems
So it was pretty fascinating
Then I've chosen two or three of them like this
Did you do a further recombination or just take a piece?
No, just a piece
I chose a piece I liked most, simply
Because these are one, two, three, four, five and six
I have chosen six [strokes] that interested me more
And this thing was also quite exciting
You must have seen them, there are two photographs that have been shot there
Umberto Eco and musician Luciano Berio attended
they were there?
Yes they were also there
When the result came out of the machine
When the result came out of the machine, yes
<i> filtered white noise for octave thirds </i>
In Brazil there was this movement
Noigandres, the brothers De Campos
One of the most vanguard things since the 1950s
They did what was called concrete poetry
And then I was part of the "Group 63"
It was all my generation that was in controversy
Compared to previous generations
All this is within the discourse of that historic moment
We are in the late 1950s, early 1960s
A big change is taking place, with the economic boom
Italy, an agricultural country, becomes an industrial country
The great migrations from the South
[My generation] has resumed futurism
Which was the first major avant-garde movement
but in the post-war era there was a strong opposition to it
Because they were all considered fascists
So especially the communist party
(Who led the culture) was ostracizing supposed fascists
And at that time we had revalued all the avant-garde movements
We wanted to achieve some sort of rupture
To change the course of Italian poetry and literature
Which we considered out of time and also a somehow washed out
So there have been all these struggles in the 1960s
And I found myself having a great passion
To do ... new things
From which the idea of doing poetry with the computer
Which seemed a bit of a commercial stunt
But for me there were some structural reasons
Because it was consistent with the work of a poet with words
Using this machine to do things
Which you could do without it, but which the machine did in a different, better way
And as we said, these computers were huge
Operated by specialists, and so on
And this thing was done in a bank
Because in fact only banks, or ...
Yes, they were assembled for banks
Yes, this particular kind of computer was
However, all computers at that time
Were either in the hands of entities for scientific research
Like the registry, these very large institutions
... how did the bank's employees experience this thing?
Like an invasion? How did they react?
For what I remember they were also, how to say ... gratified
It was a nice thing
The "OuLiPo", this French movement of the 1960s
lead by this ... the names I do not remember them well ....
Le Lionnais, a French mathematician
Who assembled a group of people
To do this experimental literature
And I think they also used machines
But their purpose was to make artificial products
Which resembled exactly [human elaborations]
Making a poem "in the way of"
A virtual Rimbaud
Yes, yes
I do not find it very meaningful, if not for experimental work
I was interested in doing new things that nobody had ever done
In a completely different way
I've always said it would be interesting
Instead of having fixed images, to do motion pictures
It's something you can do on the computer
But I have never had any ideas for doing such
things in which words move, appear and disappear
this was exactly our question
It seemed weird that in 1961, when computers were unavailable
You have come up with doing this thing
And in the 1980's, when you had a computer at home
You did not think of experimenting directly
Without the intermediary of a company, of IBM, of an engineer
When it was finally possible to do so
No, I did not think of doing visual things
Maybe I tried to do other combinatorial things
Because then, I don't remember what it was called
There was a computer system
With which it was possible to make simple combinations
Some software
I had one of the first [personal] computers
what was it? Olivetti M40?
Series M
Yes, it was one of the first
Because I had attended
(I was in Paris then)
An exhibition at Beaubourg
An exhibition organized by Lyotard
Which was called "les immateriaux"
A display of things coming from computers
intangible
And it was very interesting, it also had a nice catalog
Which I sadly do not have anymore
And he [Lyotard] had given it
To a dozen people, writers and philosophers
A computer: he had agreed with Olivetti
And they were among the first, the very first [personal] computers
And then there was a whole system of circulation
Each of us had to write a text and send it to everyone else
And the others [edited and] replied, and so on
The sending did not work that well
We had to then deliver them by hand
It was fun, I re-elaborated the texts that the others sent
A bit like a game
And they were displayed and published in the "immaterial" catalog
It was interesting, I don't know if it is still available, it's definitely in libraries
Well, now there is THE question
That is, what we said when we reconstructed the algorithm
We have speculating about it for some time (and we will never come to a conclusion...)
What does it mean to rebuild something
In some cases it is impossible, or anyway
There are always crucial choices
So there is no specific method, there is no method at all
This has also been explained by archaeologists
And it is understood that in archeology for a time they operated in a way
[For example] if a statue was missing an arm they would fix it
In another period, everything was left as it was
So there is no definitive method to rebuild a work
And in the case of computer art
what would "rebuild" actually mean?
it depends on the concept of restoration
We as computer museums are somewhat borderline
they are computers, so it's relatively recent stuff
the collector's approach is to bring them back as if they were new
The approach of a museum is, for example, to preserve defects as well
That tell the story of who used the piece
And we also go down to the detail of the software
[In the sense of] collecting the software that people wrote with computers
And the stories of these people: why they used those computers and in what contexts
But is the scheme reproduced in the book maybe not good for reconstructing the algorithm?
Yes, that's what we did
But the question we are asking is "what is the work?"
Is the 1961 event?
Or the algorithm? Or the tabulation that came out?
Is it the idea? Or the publication of the literary almanac?
This is our question, what is actually the work?
Is it all these things together?
Well this looks like a theater show
What is the work? The representation or the printed text?
Here it's the same thing to some degree
The representation is the text
The printed text of a theatrical work is the algorithm
of course
what if you remove the delay?
eh, it will go fast
let's try
[keys] Ctrl and Fn are inverted
ah, that's why
damn! it's wonderful
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