I’ve just got back from an International Conference on Latin American Cybercultural studies which took place in Liverpool, UK. As many people know – as I’ve been torturing them with my anxiety and nervousness – it was my first conference. Delivering a paper in front of an audience, getting feedback on the spot, answer their question and question yourself again about your own work. Being there was not just about me (or anybody else sitting at a desk) though. It was about exchanging information, getting to know each other, interact with people, learning from their successes and their mistakes, sharing your knowledge and, if that being the case, changing your mind completely and switching to a new perspective on things.

What I have found in Liverpool was a group of people devoted to their researches and projects, people who pursue their passions and interests. Meeting those people, spending time with them, sharing thoughts and laughter has showed me how beautiful it is to work on what you really like, even though your idea could seem awkward and makes a few eyebrows raise (and makes some people literally laugh at you, as it happened to me when I was trying to explain to some people of the local gentry what “cyberculture” means. Ask Marcos Wasem, Diego Bonilla and Sean Hovendick how it ended up with).

Much more than this though what is really amazing is what you get once you’re home: in the silence of your room, in the quietness of yourself you realize how richer you are than when you have left. You start re-thinking about what you have seen, and as you unpack and put your clothes back in closet, find receipts in each and every pocket and cards from the restaurants you’ve been to, you are “unpacking” your suitcase full of experiences. You tidy them up and give them a meaning. You realize that your way of looking at those same things you were used to is changed, and the more you think, the strongest this feeling becomes. Your mind becomes a pepper grinder that keeps turning, so that the pepper gets thinner and thinner and spreads uniformly on your dishes. If the grains are too big, you don’t perceive anything or, which is worse, you happen to bite one and your sense of taste gets numb, preventing you from enjoying the rest of your meal.

When you make a powder out of them though, it pampers and embraces every papilla on your tongue, so that the pleasure of eating is enhanced and flavors mix perfectly.

This is what I must thank everyone for: giving me the most precious pepper for my young and not so experienced grinder, and enriching the flavor of my thoughts.

Quel giorno, quel 13 aprile, rimarrà nella mia memoria per tanti motivi, ma specialmente per uno: quel 13 aprile si è materializzata la profezia che avevo elaborato ma in cui non volevo credere. Una tesi sulla letteratura elettronica che ovviamente hai intenzione di presentare al computer. “Il computer non funzionerà, lo so.” Ma cosa dici, tutte suggestioni.

E invece: niente. Zero connessione internet, nessun tecnico nei paraggi che potesse dare una mano, nessuno e niente di niente che potesse salvare la situazione se non un po’ di sana sfacciataggine e di salutare parlantina. E disegnare e far vedere con le parole quello che dovrebbe essere fatto di bit e 0/1. Una beffa del destino? Forse.

Forse era un modo per mettermi alla prova, e dimostrare che anche se la tecnologia aiuta e può essere una risorsa eccezionale, qualche volta decide di incepparsi, e a quel punto non c’è altro da fare che ricorrere alle risorse primarie del nostro essere umani. Aprire la bocca.

Forse, piuttosto, era solo sfortuna. Quella tenera sfortuna che non è proprio sfortuna, è un piccolo ostacolo che ti si para davanti per darti un po’ fastidio e per far sì che tu lo chiami sfortuna, giusto per dare la colpa a qualcuno che non sia la tua ansia che non ti ha fatto controllare per tempo se tutto fosse apposto, o la tua fretta di uscire di casa che non ti ha fatto prendere il tuo computer. O forse era lì per marcare quel giorno in maniera indelebile. Così per sempre ti ricorderai di quando ti sei laureata, con una tesi sulla letteratura elettronica, e il computer, di tutta risposta, non funzionava.

Middle English texte, from Old French, from Late Latin textus, written account, from Latin, structure, context, body of a passage, from past participle of texere, to weave, fabricate

[Text in TheFreeDictionary.com ]

As its ethymology clearly shows the word “text” implies the idea of weaving, as if the stories it tells and the characters it describes are the result of a complex intermingling and juxtaposition of manifold threads.

Following up to this metaphor, Christine Wilks – a British writer and web artist – develops one of her latest works, Fitting The Pattern, included in the last Electronic Literature Collection, vol. 2. She asks for our help for cutting cloth and sewing together the pieces to create a dress through which she tells us her story.

Her mother was a dressmaker and using her tools we learn a lot about their relationship. It’s an intimate autobiography in which Christine Wilks reveals and at the same time discovers herself to us. The underlying lesson she want to teach us is that as much we want to cut off our roots and grow up as if we were absolutely independent, this is just an illusion. She herself turned to film-making rejecting her mother’s work.

One night though she had a dream: she was using a sewing machine threaded with a 16mm film. Only later in the oniric world she realizes the light-exposed film will be useless. Do we really need Freud to explain this? Isn’t it just the inevitable connection that mother and daughter have by nature and that nothing can disparage, even the sharpest seem ripper.

In the first photograms of this hypermedia Flash story, you read about Christine’s adolescence and you perceive a sort of struggle she is trying to hold against her mother, just like every other teen-ager does. But then, just like every adult is bound to discover later on in his/her life, her mother’s imprinting is much stronger than she thought. Also, it turns out to be not an unbearable mark but the sign of the natural connection that links us to our origins, just like the necessary filament that keeps together the different parts of a beautiful dress.

What if you suddenly realize you’re living inside a novel? What if you suddenly realize the person you were talking with yesterday on Facebook is one of the characters of a plot that your chat contributed to evolve? What if you suddenly realize that the Tweet you are reading is the line of a script that someone wrote awaiting for your unconcious reply? Imagine that you live your social  ”internet” life normally, and then you end up finding this. What would your reaction be like?

The huge power of The Big Plot resides in making you wonder whether the story you are reading it is true or not and, being that the case, how you can escape from it. Event though Bachtin already said something similar back in the XX century about the suspension of disbelief the reader has to perform before entering a text , The Big Plot requires from us something more: we have to abandon the distinction between real and digital, so to discover that our lives in the web are not less real than the one we are used to call “real”.

Thus, The Big Plot is more than just  a magnificently developed project both of web art and web narrative: it is also a deep and smart insight on how we act, react and enact ourselves and our lives in the infosphere – as its author Paolo Cirio calls it. In other words, The Big Plot is not something you can merely “read”. You have to be caught in it and surrender and take part in its events – and when I say “you” I mean “you” as your Facebook profile, your Tweets, your Gmail chat. It is even more than interaction, it is real cooperation.

The genre to which his project can be ascribed is “recombinant fiction”:

[. . .] I have tried to define a form of art that combines literature, cinema and theatre through the use of interconnected digital media and popular platforms.
Recombinant fiction is based on (1) the theories of media convergence, (2) the culture of participation and (3) the use of reality as narrative.

But wait, before going any further, I think we need a sort of clearer explanation of what The Big Plot is. As the name suggests, it is a big narrative plot, but it lacks something. The four main characters of the story are the by-product of the relationships that tie them and of the events that they had to face. However, the development of the story is open. It depends on how people like me and you, common Internet users, decide to intersect their digital lives with theirs. Even though there is a sort of director behind it all, his task is just to turn on the narrative machine. He keeps track of every profile, every answer the characters provide, but still, everything depends on the inputs, twists and turns the story gets from its readers. So, if you are among the ones who has always suffered from not having the chance of giving advice to M.me Bovary about her love affairs or comfort Anna Karenina, now you can take your vengeance against  the immobility and impotency that you as reader were bound to so far.

The Big Plot is a major example of how narrative techniques can be improved by using digital tools and social networks. This new apporoach to storytelling helps us reconsider the very idea of text and to give it a new format, which is not just paper and ink but it is spread all around the web. The initial plot  exceeds the boundaries of the story and explodes, its debris are scattered around and fall on our screens that turn out to be narrative, communicative, interactive, participative interfaces through which the story can grow and be grown.

Personally speaking, I’ve found The Big Plot absolutely unique. Generally, spy stories are hard to write because either you miss some detail that pops up at some point later on, and you wonder “where do you come from?” or they become so complicated you cannot follow them. What happens next is that that book lingers on your dusty night table for ages. This can’t and won’t happen when you are in the Plot. So, please, enjoy the pleasure of being caught in it.

E se ti trovassi improvvisamente a fare parte di un romanzo? E se ti accorgessi che quella persona con cui hai parlato ieri su Facebook è in realtà uno dei personaggi di una storia che la vostra chat ha aiutato a procedere? E se scoprissi che quel tweet di ieri è in realtà la battuta di un copione scritto ad arte e lasciato lì ad aspettare la tua di battuta, attore inconsapevole di un grande intreccio che ti ha catturato tra le maglie della sua sottile ma resistente rete?

Il grande potere di The Big Plot è quello di portarti a cheidere se la storia che stai navigando sia vera o se sia inventata, e se il caso è il primo, come fare a uscirne. Sì, perché oltre al patto narrativo di bachtiniana memoria che prevede l’abbandono dell’incredulità da parte del lettore e cedere alla fantasia dell’autore per seguirlo dovunque vada, qui si richiede di più: è una vera e propria rinuncia alla salda e sicura distinzione tra reale e digitale per finire intrappolati nella storia stessa. The Big Plot non è qualcosa da “leggere”. Devi caderci dentro e lasciarti coinvolgere dalle vicende, e dico coinvolgere in prima persona, col tuo profilo di Facebook o con i tuoi cinguettii su Twitter, prima di avere almeno una vaga idea di cosa sia.

L’idea di Paolo Cirio che giace dietro a questo progetto è quella di

considerare il web come palcoscenico ideale in cui oggi la maggior parte delle persone inscena la propria esistenza.

(da un’intervista rilasciata a “Fino alla fine del cinema)

Un attimo, meglio chiarire alcune cose: come suggerisce il nome stesso, The Big Plot è il  grande intreccio di una storia incompleta. I quattro personaggi principali infatti sono il frutto delle vicende che hanno affrontato e delle relazioni che li legano, ma i loro destini sono ignoti persino all’autore stesso. Pur essendoci una sorta di regista a tenere le fila che come motore immobile lancia l’input primario che accende la macchina narrativa, ognuno di essi ha un suo account Twitter, una sua Gmail, un suo profilo Facebook con cui si può interagire per davvero. E tu, che finora avevi sofferto per non poter dare consigli a Madame Bovary su come non cadere nell’ennesimo inganno amoroso e per non poter consolare Anna Karenina e magari evitare che si buttasse sotto al treno, ora hai l’occasione di riscattare l’immobilità da lettore cui eri stato condannato per cinquecento anni di storia della letteratura, e dunque della stampa.

La narrazione cross-mediale e la diretta parentela con la  Recombinant Fiction fanno di quest’opera un eccezionale esempio di come la narrativa possa sfruttare i mezzi digitali a disposizione per riconsiderare l’idea stessa di testo, finora indissolubilmente legata al formato penna/inchiostro. The Big Plot fa esplodere la trama fuori dalla letteratura, dentro il web, per rimbalzare nei singoli schermi che la accolgono e che diventano interfacce comunicative, interattive, partecipative e narrative su cui la storia vive e si nutre di chi la legge e dunque la fa.

La prima impressione che ho avuto aprendo la home di The Big Plot è stata: sarà vero? Studio letteratura da diversi anni ma mai mi era successo di entrare dentro le parole e le situazioni così, quasi potendole toccare. Il genere spy-story cui The Big Plot si avvicina si presta particolarmente a questo tipo di interazione, ma trovo l’uso dei social network come veicoli del racconto assolutamente sbalorditivo.

Molte possono essere le riflessioni ulteriori che si potrebbero fare, molte delle quali sono incluse nell’intervista che ho citato anche sopra. Le tralascio però perché credo sia indispensabile prima di tutto lasciarsi catturare dal Big Plot, e sperimentare cosa si prova a vedere accendersi le luci e scoprire di essere in uno splendido palcoscenico la cui quarta parete è tanto labile ed eterea da non poter essere né vista né abbattuta, ma solo attraversata e vissuta.

A couple of months ago the University of Bergen hosted the Seminar on Electronic Literature Communities. People involved in the field took part in the conference whose main topic, as the title suggests, was the analysis of the way in which electronic literature and new technologies in general are able to build communities around them.

Many aspects of this social and cultural phenomenon were examined. Scott Rettberg, cofounder of the Electronic Literature Organization and an associate professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen, was the coordinator of the conference and I think that the program he and his collaborators developed was pretty interesting. Not only were there well-known experts of electronic literature, such as Nick Montfort or Serge Bouchardon, but also scholars either from countries were electronic literature is developing nowadays or from other fields that somehow are connected with it.

Here you can find all the videos from the conference, but I’d like to recommend you some of them:

• Supercritical creativity, a talk by Mark Berry: Turing and Tarde, or how your mind can create a nuclear creative reaction, especially when inserted in a community. Berry starts form Turing’s idea of a supercritical mind, which is kind  of curious. I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can. So, let’s say you have a certain mass that, if hit by a neutron, can cause a powerful nuclear chain reaction. We call “supercritical” a mass that is big enough to start this reaction. Now, let’s substitute the mass with a mind and the neutron with an idea. If the mind is supercritical, when hit by an idea it “may give rise to a whole theory consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas”. Similarly, is the mind is “subcritical” – and Turing says that animals, for instance, have a subcritical mind – no reaction happens. Given this, his main point is: how can creativity be thought in terms of super and subcritical mass? In other words, are there particular conditions under which creativity is more enhanced and promoted than others? Moving to the ideas of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, Berry states that one a mind is inserted in a community, its creativity is somehow turned on by living in an active and lively context. I think this is a good introduction to the conference because it explains the basic principle that drives it: when there is a community, being it real or virtual, minds are prompted to think more productively and creatively.
• The ELo and US Electronic Literature in the 2000s: Scott Rettberg talks about how the ELO was born and how electronic literature has developed since then in the US. Nobody better than him could have given a talk about the topic. It is interesting to see his notes back to when the ELO was just an idea. It was the hypertext era of electronic literature when the first courses in hypertext writing were coming out.
• Hypertext Fiction in the 1980s and 1990s, a talk by Jill Walker Rettberg: [I am really impressed by his child, he is so quiet!] this insight into the first period of electronic literature, the hypertext era as I said before, is clear, simple and effective. I am having a hard time drawing a sort of timeline on the history of electronic literature but this talk has been really useful to understand the dynamics of how it was born and you realize how important it was to have some communities that acted like nests from which the spreading of electronic literature started (creativity and community seem to rhyme pretty well).
• Electronic Literature Publishing in Europe: Sample Cases from Italy: among the various talks about “national” communities of electronic literature given at the conference, this one is particularly dear to me for obvious reasons. Still, I hope that even though the actual situation of electronic literature in Italy is quite bad — as almost nobody knows anything about it — I am glad to hear that someone is interested in developing it, and I would proudly add myself to the list of people mentioned by Giovanna di Rosario.

I really liked the idea of focusing a conference on the relation between creativity and community and on how collaboration can prove to be a basic requirement for giving birth to marvelous works both of art and of culture (think about wikipedia, for instance).

Speaking of this, there is another curious example I would like to talk about. Here in New York I am taking a class (well, the semester is over but I’m still here, so I speak using the present tense) of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, which is part of my exchange program between the University of Siena and the City University of New York. This course is taught by two professors, Steve Brier and Michael Mandiberg. Our syllabus includes not only many fundamental readings about pedagogy and technology, but also (and this is what makes the course so amazing) examples of how actually technology and pedagogy go together. One of the things that impressed me the most is this book, Collaborative Future. There are many reasons that make this book a unique one:

• Frist of all, is written using Booki, a free software that allows you writing books on the Internet.
• It is a book about collaboration and it was written by a group of people collaborating together (it sounds pretty obvious, but I think that it is coherent more than obvious, and I appreciate coherence).
• It was written according to special “rules”. I am using their words to describe what they did:

This book was first written over 5 days (Jan 18-22, 2010) during a Book Sprint in Berlin. 7 people (5 writers, 1 programmer and 1 facilitator) gathered to collaborate and produce a book in 5 days with no prior preparation and with the only guiding light being the title ‘Collaborative Futures’.

These collaborators were: Mushon Zer-Aviv, Michael Mandiberg, Mike Linksvayer, Marta Peirano, Alan Toner, Aleksandar Erkalovic (programmer) and Adam Hyde (facilitator).

The event was part of the 2010 transmediale festival <www.transmediale.de/en/collaborative-futures>. 200 copies were printed the same week through a local print on demand service and distributed at the festival in Berlin. 100 copies were printed in New York later that month.

This book was revised, partially rewritten, and added to over three days in June 2010 during a second book sprint in New York, NY, at the Eyebeam Center for Art & Technology as part of the show Re:Group Beyond Models of Consensus and presented in conjunction with Not An Alternative and Upgrade NYC. [. . .]

I find the idea of encouraging some people –who have never met each other before– to write a book together about collaboration, in a surprisingly short amount of time, absolutely fascinating. And if you give a look at the book, you will be even more fascinated. Trust me.

Lingua creativa e comunicativa. Nel retro della mente capisci cosa vuole dire, ti arriva chiaro il messaggio, anche se i canali attraverso cui passa non sono la grammatica e la sintassi. Leggere Cummings significa rinunciare a cercare segnali linguisticamente logici e fidarsi di quello che ti dice, soprattutto di come te lo dice. Cosa te ne importa se per lui il contrario di “ourselves” è “mostpeople”, se dopo la virgola non batte uno spazio, se i punti a volte vanno a capo insieme alla lettera maiuscola che li segue

. E’ difficile leggere Cummings perché facciamo fatica ad abbandonarci alle parole per come sono e ad apprezzarle per il puro piacere estetico-tipografico che invocano. La tecnica dell’abbandono, del lasciarsi scuotere dal vento della lingua anziché resistergli fermamente cercando di contrastarlo (“Canne al vento”, cara Grazia), richiede molto più impegno di quanto uno immagini. Non è ovviamente possibile evitare il naturale e umano bisogno di capire e decifrare la vita, ma come ho detto da qualche altra parte, quello che conta è farsi le domande giuste, anche se poi le risposte non è detto seguano immediatamente. E farsi domande è un’arte. E siccome l’arte ricerca il bello, sia esso nelle forme perfette dei gelidi marmi antichi o nella pura creatività del postmoderno non meglio identificato (e identificabile), direi che quello che conta sono le belle domande. E in cambio avremo per certo delle belle risposte, anche se dovessero solo essere un’eco roboante ed eccentrica dal punto esatto in cui il pallino  del punto interrogativo  ha agitato la superficie dell’acqua fino alle sponde lontane del lago del mio pensiero fisso.

Grazie e.e. Cummings (il titolo del post è tratto da lui).

“my sweet old etcetera” è una delle sue poesie più famose. Contenuta nella raccolta “is 5″ del 1926, costituisce un chiaro esempio dello stile di Cummings: due coppie di parentesi e tre virgole è tutta la punteggiatura che distribuisce nel testo. E due lettere maiuscole. 94 parole in tutto con cui dipingere l’immagine delle sue amate donne, cioè la madre, la zia lucy e la sorella isabel (rispetto la sua tipografia), mentre lui è via, in guerra. Guidava le ambulanze prima di essere sospettato di spionaggio e internato nel campo di La Ferté-Marcé, in Normandia. Una volta rilasciato grazie ad una lettera che il padre inviò al presidente Wilson, fu trasferito in Massachusetts, per poi trasferirsi a Parigi, città di cui era follemente innamorato, e a New York etc etc

Si sposò diverse volte etc etc figli una, Nancy. Molto legato ai genitori etc etc

Etcetera, come il ritornello che si ripete nella poesia. Un ritornello che oltre che dare ritmo ai versi, oltre che dare l’impressione di sospendere il discorso per lasciarlo all’immaginazione del lettore, diventa anche un mezzo per scandire graficamente etc etc

Perché spesso non c’è bisogno di fare l’elenco di tutto, di spiegare tutto per filo e per segno. “Etcetera” suggerisce di sospendere per un attimo l’impellenza di avere tutto descritto dettagliatamente, di sollevarci dalla preoccupazione di voler sentirsi spiegare tutto, perché tutto è già qui, basta aprirli e abbandonarsi e seguire le parole anche se sembrano non avere senso, per permettere loro di stamparsi nel retro della mente e proiettare davanti ai nostri occhi  i sorrisi e i gesti e i visi accennati qua e là.

La versione di “my sweet old etcetera” di Alison Clifford rende secondo me giustizia alla leggerezza verbale dell’etcetera etcetera perché gioca con le parole e la punteggiatura, trasforma le parentesi in un bocciolo da cui spunta il tronco di un albero fatto di parole, da cui escono rami, da cui si dipartono foglie. E siamo noi, click dopo click, a dipingere un quadro surreale usando come pennelli e tavolozza le poesie di Cummings, appunto.

E mano a mano che si toccano i rami e si fanno volare le foglie si aggiunge un dettaglio, una collina, il cielo rosso, le nuvole, gli asterischi come fiori, il cielo rosso etcetera etcetera…

Ah, dimenticavo:

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-sweet-old-etcetera/)

I am reading a book called “Prehistoric digital poetry”. I asked a bunch of people if they knew a book or an article that could help me in writing a history of electronic literature. (It’s something it has been tormenting me since September and I am still trying to figure it out. I hope I am following the right path.)

Anyway: what I am coming across in this book is an innumerable quantity of poetry which was created even before the Internet era but still, it was clear that technology sooner or later would have played a great role in the future of literature. The author Chris Funkouser starts from the dawning of concrete poetry and explores many bigger and less bigger literary movements that dealt with technology. One of the authors I’ve found most curious, multifaceted, imaginative and questionable, too. The latter is not at all a harsh critique against him, not at all. On the contrary I do appreciate him  because his works strive to explore the potentials of poetry and art in general at their utmost.

I have been browsing through his website for an hour or so. I started looking for poetry, in particular for some works that Funkhouser cites in his book, and I ended up discovering something called “BioArt”. Kac himself invented this name after his 1997 project called “Timecapsule“.

“When the public walks into the gallery where this work takes place, what is seen is a medical professional, seven sepia-toned photographs shot in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, a horizontal bedstead, an on-line computer serving the Web, a telerobotic finger, and additional broadcasting equipment. I start (and conclude) the basic procedure by washing the skin of my ankle with an antiseptic and using a special needle to insert subcutaneously the passive microchip, which is in fact a transponder with no power supply to replace or moving parts to wear out. Scanning the implant generates a low energy radio signal (125 KHz) that energizes the microchip to transmit its unique and inalterable numerical code, which is shown on the scanner’s 16-character Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). Immediately after this data is obtained I register myself via the Web in a remote database located in the United States. This is the first instance of a human being added to the database, since this registry was originally designed for identification and recovery of lost animals. I register myself both as animal and owner under my own name. After implantation a small layer of connective tissue forms around the microchip, preventing migration. ”

(http://www.ekac.org/timec.html)

Weird and almost creepy, isn’t t it? Here there are some more pictures,  and believe me, those are even more creepy.

Kac’s works are always astonishing and sometimes really questionable. The basic concept of Bio Art is that what is involved is not just the mere artistic intention of a piece of art whatsoever using whatever medium to do it, but also biology as a way to manipulate life and transform it into art. Back in the day the dispute about the relationship between art and nature was a paramount issue which was then surpassed after the XXI century vanguard movements. They explored new dimensions of art and proved that art doesn’t have to be the copy of nature to be called “art”. Speaking of nature and art, then, how one cannot remember Oscar Wilde and Ruskin’s aestehtic theory…all in all, we as humans have always marveled at how nature can create beautiful spots without our intervention, and at how human creation expressed through art can give birth to as much enchanting works as nature. But what happens when nature and art can intermingle, when the creation of nature meets the creation of man, or better, his/her creativity? Let me show you something:

Beautiful flower, isn’it? Yes, it’s a flower, a Petunia…but what if I say that Edunia (this is the name of the plant) is not just a variety of Petunia but it actually contains part of Kac’s genes extracted from his blood?

“The Edunia has red veins on light pink petals and a gene of mine is expressed on every cell of its red veins, i.e., my gene produces a protein in the veins only. The gene was isolated and sequenced from my blood. The petal pink background, against which the red veins are seen, is evocative of my own pinkish white skin tone. The result of this molecular manipulation is a bloom that creates the living image of human blood rushing through the veins of a flower.”

(http://www.ekac.org/nat.hist.enig.html)

Nature has been told to make a splendid red-veined pink Petunia to blossom, and this is what it exactly did. Man has intruded in this process exploiting it and literally injecting in it his own concept of art as a creation of something intentionally thought and meant to be art. Are you still convinced that what you are looking at is just a flower?

Ho sottoposto alla sua analisi il lavoro di Goldsmith, consapevole del fatto che molto probabilmente avrei ricevuto critche dense e intense. Ma mi piace discutere con persone che nutrono una sincera e vivace passione per la letteratura perché credo che a volte faccia bene mettere volontariamente in discussione le proprie opinioni. Uno scossone alle certezze serve per renderle vive e animarle e far loro riprendere vigore, spesso sotto una nuova forma. È come tagliarsi i capelli – per lo meno per me: sì, ti piacciono lunghi, hai paura di tagliarli, ma se non lo fai (etimologicamente parlando, se non de-cidi), il massimo che puoi sperare è un fitto cespuglio di doppie punte.

Parrucchieri e forbici a parte, la discussione in classe è partita da Soliloquy ed è arrivata a livelli molto più ampi di ragionamento in merito a cosa sia arte e cosa non lo sia. Se dunque con arte intendiamo qualcosa che, per quanto ispirato dalla vita vera, sia per definizione di arte in quanto tale, rimaneggiato e rimpastato dalla nostra creatività in una qualche forma, allora nel lavoro di Goldsmith ce n’è veramente poca. Su questo non posso che essere d’accordo, anche perché il suo scopo era sostanzialmente quello di mostrarsi senza filtri e senza cesure. Ma il principio dell’idea continua a incuriosirmi.

Quello che mi chiedo è come mai non abbia pubblicato i nastri di questa settimana di Grande Fratello vocale autoindotto. Il problema credo risieda nel fatto che vedere quasi 400 fogli appesi a coprire un’intera stanza con il testo dei discorsi sia più efficace che scorrere col mouse su una pagina bianca e cercare di costruire un contesto e una situazione a partire dalle frasi grigioline che compaiono e scompaiono. L’audio in questo caso avrebbe catturato molto di più l’attenzione. 

Rimane il fatto che anche quando ci si trova di fronte a lavori come questo, che non siamo pronti a collocare subito nell’universo dell’arte, nasce l’occasione per farsi domande su cosa siano veramente l’arte o la letteratura per noi. Quante domande…quante poche risposte…ma è un buon segno: c’è ancora tempo per cercare e speranza di trovare…

Qualcuno però mi ha fatto riflettere su questo fatto. Mi è arrivato un commento molto piacevole su Facebook riguardo a questo mio piccolo pezzo di mondo, in cui effettivamente di italiano non c’è nulla (tranne ora due post, questo e il precedente, e una pagina di introduzione).

Comunque, se vi capita di leggere questo avviso, vi prego di non temere di commentare qualsiasi post vogliate in qualunque lingua. Cercherò di rendere più visibili i link ai vari lavori di letteratura elettronica che sto commentando, in modo tale che anche se non viene letto tutto il post sia possibile discutere del suo contenuto. Lo scopo principale di un blog, d’altronde, non è solo quello di dire la propria sul mondo, ma anche di condividerla e, se necessario, alterarla e adattarla. Quindi, viva la poliglossia.