HI all, welcome

I’m just finishing a snack, and no one wants to see/hear me munching, so I’ll join in in a sec!

lyle your photo is wonderulf

Hah! thank you. We should all take photos a few drinks in…lol

Lyle is here again!

I’m everywhere!

It is like being in an elevator with screen sharing!

A belated intro"

We will explore working and dealing with IRC, MUDs, MOOs, LPMUDs,talkers, CuSeeMe, PowWow (created by Native Americans), newsgroups andnewsgroup experimentations, and so forth. There's an enormous amount ofwork and experimental aesthetics all through these - for example IRCpieces that literally disappear on the screen as they're formed, given thenature of IRC - and all of this history is completely overlooked. The MUDsand MOOs (etc.) were incredibly dynamic in complex story-telling, spacemanipulation, and so forth; they were definitely hypertextual.Things to think about:Broadening the field to encompass deep fakery, advertising, and so on ( Guy Maddin's online work where one of his films changes everytime you watch it, or the Second Life work of Gazira Babel)Examining textual and diegetic dynamics wherever they are found.Alan's work covers many of these areas, including Access Grid, Second Life, Linux (perl, awk, grep,sed, emacs Eliza mods, ytalk), localhost Open Sim, MacGrid (and how thaten

I love the graphics!

They look like drawings.

the conversation in the car or with the car?

Immersive operations--manipulating things

definable--thinking things...

immersive v. definable operations

phenomenology of counting v. abstraction of counting.

was this published?

1974 video with K. Acker in which the two appear to be having sex while reciting one’s work. Was this part of fluxus?

The body and theory are inextricably combined.

Started thinking about game space as a set of rules.

Game space defined as set of rules--this works still in 2020 with the game space screen experience.

Game space and edge space. Anomalies can appear when the two meet. Gazeber Zelli. Doing a lot with edge space.

Edge space--the anomalies both in game space or objects--somewhat akin to being in Discord while in twitch while sipping coffee--or in Alan's case while having other bodily experiences.

Blank space--drawn on old maps--here be dragons

Zelli extended the ceiling height in Second Life. Edge space can generate anomalies. Finally, there was blank space, going to the far north and what the arctic and antarctic meant in the 1850s. You start to fill in your blanks of your knowledge of the world with chimeras.

Looking at early maps, you see that dragons are projected onto blank space. Mandeville projected onto Ethiopia a class of people that were physiologically “suited” to his imagined sense of what the climate and geography was like.

How does generative poetry relate to or not relate to embodiment?

Alan feels that they may be disjunctive.

Poems come with the experience of playing with the edges...of game space, of reality

relationships to body, to religion, e.g., Emily Dickinson's mystery of her life about her.

Generative poetry seems too abstract and to lack a connection to the complications of human psychologies. Abstraction seems more problematic. Somatic Ghosting!

Is anyone recording?

The body is a ghost.

Inhabiting someone else's mind, living in someone else's edge--somatic ghosting. The body is the ghost.

Yes. this is being recorded.

I’m just taking notes.

Your notes are enormously helpful to me, Johannah, thank you so much.

We will somehow coalesce this into an article--actually, we are relying heavily on Johannah.

“I try to bring bodies into code.” I try to do the opposite of the abstraction, imitation, and simulation of generative poetry.

recording and somatic ghosting?

Kathy Acker --set in the future, Instead of shoving things into genres, commercials, (this is the artwork, this is how it is sold) Rather, we should look and see wwhat it *IS*

@renee, perhaps we could ask Alan to talk more about why he does not see glitch opportunities in generative poetry

I no longer remember how to use some of these tools. I was only using lower ASCII and linux at the beginning (date?)

The tools we had change, and I t is interesting to see how generative programs were done with early programming...

1975: working with an editor (which one?); Terrac minicomputer. Pascal. A program that would be an editor that would make substitutions. Writing something urgent that the computer would replace words in.

Of course the program interferes with the writer--this is very reminiscent of the ELO talk I am blanking on, where the program writes the writer and vice versa...

Communication with Russian Refuseniks between Alan’s Mom and different officials and people. Coding/Bugging/What Can’t Be Said.

X objects appear as the tex changes

Ooooooohhhhhh!

“Workers of the World Unite” is another text that was manipulated. Is this not a type of generative poetry?

yes

Y Talk: a program that you can do absolutely amazing things in. It still runs on my machine. I talk to my own terminal with it. Y Talk has a divided screen (upper and lower); the upper part is where you type in and the lower is for reading. Two simultaneous views allow you the experience of simulating conversation in writing. This can represent the body in a way that IRC cannot.

These are all examples of generative poetry programmed in the 70s--

Who developed Y Talk?

When Alan says he was working with Linux in the 1970s, does he mean Unix?

A way to generate elit with two or more people...

@Dene, I wonder if we can resurrect these tools and have people play them

With Talk, we can save ourselves.

I’m talking to myself with YTalk.

MOOs, MUDs, and Talkers. Donna, what is a Talker?

https://linux.die.net/man/1/ytalk

YTalk is in essence a multi-user chat program. It works almost exactly like the UNIX talk program and even communicates with the same talk daemon(s), but YTalk allows for multiple connections.

Current MaintainerAndreas Kling<keso@impul.se>Original AuthorBritt Yenne

Are we reproducing this process now by typing out Alan’s comments while he talks, we take notes and present and distribute our comments?

IRC has channels. The advantage of using IRC is that if you have a channel with 50-500 people, you can hack into the channel and kick people out and change your name and cut and paste multi-genre texts into chat.

You can hack into cybersex and kick people out and put othert text in, so you can contrast texts--like Paul Celon with gutter talk

It helps me concentrate, Andrew.

Are we bodies behind the text?

i feel a bit sorry for people who get their hopes up that Celan might be available for dirty talk ;)

It is interesting to think that we talk and chat with the text--the bodies behind the typing, the ghosts in the letters

Dialog is a programming language that Alan used.

@caitlan lol

It helps us all concentrate

There is an amazing aesthetic in the interfaces...

I like how Dialog could be used to visualize conversational loops between humans and machines.

Quick and dirty use of tools.

Alan is making programs that allow him to think in ways somewhere other than himself

a relationship to thinking with others, with other bodies

Semantic thing: .pl are Perl objects. I didn’t know Florian Kramer did programming.

@Dene, could WSU host programs?

.pl space, eliminate .pl, put name of file, reverse arrow; We can use all of the programs that Alan is showing us.

perl eliminate.pl < sample >zz

asking the computer to eliminate what you have just written?

How does it know what to use as a replacement?

@Andrew?????

Working on it for the workbench. I have one or two

What is the name of this project, “Semantics”?

I see, they are perl applications.

It would be interesting to see how these perl apps relate to the functions in the Language Workbench

@ Johannah I agree

The video work Alan has been doing also relates to Semantics.

It is interesting to see how the aesthetics of moving text and generative text evolve...

2005/2006: at WVU virtual environments lab: equipment was from the late 1990s. Computer with no screen; had to boot it up and configure it each time we ran it.

Reproducing the room in its totality via cameras being sent to meet another virtual room. Places become connected virtually.

The access grid, set up on four computers, and you could see another room in another university --

Alan saw this as eerie, and that you could send the image around the world.... how soon we forget how magical and gho(a)stly the modern tech was-and now we think nothing of seeing into 15 people's homes at once.

We are ghosts on screen now reaching into your lives.

I think for those of us around when the first "zoom" the first conferencing were around and we had our first taste of seeing into other roms "live"-- it is like the experience of the first telephone, the first morse code--getting the communication magically from body to body, via wires.

And now, just as our generation

takes the phone for granted, the next generation will take instantaneous communication for granted.

@Deena, it is often astonishing to me just how unaware of this history people in computer science are.

We should put together a digital course on this topic.

Searching for the bodies in second life, searching for the babies--this is looking at ghosts in the machine searching for other ghosts in the machine.

@Johannah, @Dene, yes, the history is worth preserving and teaching--Lori Emerson at UC Boulder Colorado

this course should be called archeology of e-lit or the history of e-lit

I propose

Media ARchaeology Lab would be a good host for such a course.

@Denna excellent idea!

Superhero Tethered: done through altered motion capture files and altered motion capture software. Year?

It is hard to convey the wonder at the tech now that we have somuch other tech and are in a completely different aesthetic 20 and 30 and 50 years later.

We had the opportunity to re-write the moCap interface.

“Cooking Chicken in the Dirt"

It’s all about the present / presence

I love seeing everyone’s bookmarks on screen sharing.

It’s like being in their home and studying their bookshelves!

Alan: MRI video memoir post-seizure.

Yes, Lyle, seeing glimpses into computers...

is like seeing glimpses into homes

@Deena, you’re the tops at that!

The sounds of the MRI!

I have long wanted to do a project with the Mammogram machine. This is inspiring me to actually do it.

“We are all ghosts” in relation to the radiation around us.

and this is all remembered

We are experiencing the ghost of the experience recorded in the body, so are we three levels into ghosting at this point?

Codework in the real world--1899 flood in Johnstown

The bridge where locomotives, bodies, horses and all smashed into and burnt is still standing.

Jonestown, VA?

So this work is in real life--an SOS code on the still standing bridge where so many souls lost there lives, and where, presumabily, real ghosts still haunt

The project manipulated existing lights that had been installed for decorative purposes. Site of the greatest flood tragedy in the U.S.

Connection to physicality.

I liked how multidimensional that connection to physicality became in the MRI piece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

https://www.jaha.org/attractions/the-stone-bridge/

I love the idea of guerrilla elit-ing--taking the physical objects and making them into a meaningful piece

Thank you for organizing this wonderful event with Alan. I have a 9 am meeting on Zoom and need to say goodbye. Hugs to everyone!

@Deena me, too!

see you, Mrs.Grigar, Johannah!

Great to see you Dene!

Thank you, Alan!!!!!! We have so many questions!!!!!!!

Are they the same ghosts???????

Proposals: 1) Develop an "archeology of e-lit or the history of e-lit" with Media Archaeology lab to make these programs available--a living archaelogy (emulators)?

Sorry I have to go — astounding presentation, Alan — best to everyone!

Good to see you, Bill!

Bill we ar looking forward to your presentation next month!

Sept 8 - Bill BLy! 1500 UTC!!!

See you later, Bill! Good to see you

Yes, thanks — I'm inspired!

guerilla - or tactical e-liting, very inspiring, yes!

Ok, everyone go out, find a historical building, and start putting lights code on it, and video!

I'll head to the nearest graveyard ;P

For real and text and ghosts in the machine

and ghosts in the body

@Deena, could we go back to Stephanie’s question?

Sure, can you reprise Stephanie's question?

I don't see it in the chat?

renee

Alan, you can send those stats to so many databases that would appreciate them.

sorry. that was a typo.

The compendium of works provides statistics (how many times Alan said "suicide" or "Sad" in his hundreds of thousands of words of writing...

I’d like to ask a question about the sheer volume of his work, and where it fits in this poetics. He has an interesting modality… right?

Alan definitely has an interesting and unique modality...

What it means to speak, who is lisetening--for example Black lives matter--now we hear from people who were too afraid tospeak until now...

Just jump in with questions, folks.

Who is speaking, who is acting, who is listening.

Got one!

We have ICE-IS

I’d append to Deena and Andrew’s questions the question of whether these works actually are intended to be “read,” and if not, why not.

Sorry, I have to leave now. Thank you all!

Great to see you Andrea!

Great to see you too. Bye!

Bye, Andréa!

Andrea, do I have your email?

Deena, it is andreacatropa@gmail.com

Thanks

I’m interested in this question of disposability and digital objects, particularly in relation to the environmental impacts of computing.

@Johannah, ooooh, me too.

Interesting to think that Alan's interest in working quickly (fast music, fast text) works with the nightclub culture, the disposability of the experience...

hmmmmmm.

yes!

A weaving of experience, the present, in objects and then the moment passes, moves onto the next weaving

The time factor--everytime you post something, others know you are alive...

Artists work on a daily basis--having the time to write, writing is like breathing--you just keep doing it

Playing day in and day out--the practice, the continual praxis

The economy as well, making money or not making money...

ELO becoming a fan club of people thinking alike...

becoming?

I think Krill has a question.

Kirill.

We need to embrace other paxes

ha ha.

Like Lyle's hunt for elit--evertything can be elit

Mongolaian bard epics--trsanscription at 720 pages-- relates to literature... no necessary to be digital--guerilla lit

To quote Espen… the problem with the ELO is the E, the L, and the O. lol

Me, next! ;)

It is the ergodic gods, the spector of continual work, of continually identifying the lit.

Establish contact with the dead, we send signals to the dead as we addrss the living

This project speaks to the dead and speaks on behalf of the dead...

Speaks of the dead not to the dead--memorials all over jones town

Is it possible to separate speaking of the dead and to the dead?

The medical cases from the Nuremberg trails, are echoed today in the black bbodies, the refugees, climate change,

It is small body--the bodies are everywhere...

ELO at first was finding people with similar interests, but now we are expanding... but we have a similar phislopicah core--using the tools to challenge our culture and to broaden lit

the epistemological questions embedded in textual study/criticism/interprretation.

I like this idea a lot Caitlin.

We may not attract people who have that same philosophical core

Challenge--how broad can we make this?

Critical code studies book--seems open and goes back to early systems as well, Scot Rettburgs poetics book...

My background is in Comp Lit, and when I found the ELO, I felt like I had found a digital comp lit community.

Collecting people who are both making and thinking...

People looking toward the future

but are those aspects the core or the peripheral? Sometimes it depends on perspective

This also goes back to Tabbi’s idea of elit as world literature.

Integrating the Dada aspect, the surreal, the cultural, multiracial, gender

How does the peripheral move to the centre?

Revive the Literary Advisory board

The dada element is crucial.

Push the LAB back to the top--tap their expertise to help widen the field.

I think Alan’s work speaks a lot to that because it also links this questioning to his experience, the daily, others can relate to it, to experience, whether the philosophical is understood or not it opens up a space for questioning..

YAAAAASSSSS, Anastasia did an incredible job! Recording it here for posterity.

Anastasia did an incredible job at ELO 2020~~~

Good salon. I need to zoom to another room. Thanks everyone for the invite. These are great. Good work Deena, Johannah et al.

Good to see you, Andrew!

Caitlin--Alan was haunting her practice in her doctoral work... I think the ghosts of all our ideas haunt our work..

this is like the encore moment ::stands with lighter::

Holds up the torch--we will continue these torches :)

Guys, I have to go too. Learned a lot today and am looking forward to attending the next salon. Thanks a lot, and congrats to Alan for the great presentation!

Early tool making and using transitions into today's exchange of tools.

Passing the ask/axe/axioms

The ax becomes subjectified.

Trandeau? wrote book on gestures and physicalities, we have always been mediated through tools in culture

The Economic Parabola. Is anyone familiar with the work on Media Economies being done in Germany? Krill?????

Kirill?

Alligators dream, amoebas pass on information..animals pass on the intelligences, and we pass on that through cultures..

I, not : /

*I'm

I’ll e-mail you some names/titles.

My german is terrible and much of that work has not been translated.

That would be great! Thank you

I think monthly works really well.

I really appreciate the consistency. More than once a month would be hard for me.

also to get out of your own head for awhile, to listen to others, at least for me, it is very important in this moment

Thanks, Lyle! I haven’t visited it since the Orlando conference.

thanks everyone!

Great to see you Wailya!

Great to see you Wailya!

Thank you!!!