Showing papers in "Journal of Writing in Creative Practice in 2014"

Modular Form as a Curatorial Practice

Abstract: This article discusses a curatorial approach to authorship as a model for thinking about what I describe as an iterative modular poem, a poetic text composed of appropriated segments. As a response to contemporary proliferation of literary and artistic works created by iterative means, i.e. through acts of appropriation, remixing and remediation, the article is an attempt at putting forward ‘the curatorial’ as an emerging paradigm of writing for the twenty-first century. The article approaches established paradigms of authorship, creativity and originality as inadequate with respect to contemporary experimental poetic practices to suggest a shift from creating to collecting and curating as a possible alternative model for thinking about instances of iterative creative writing. The argument focuses on Robert Fitterman’s Holocaust Museum (2011) as an example of an iterative modular poem and a text emblematic of such curatorial approach to authorship.

Brass Art: A house within a house within a house within a house

Abstract: Performances from Brass Art (Lewis, Mojsiewicz, Pettican), captured at the Freud Museum, London, using Kinect laser scanning and Processing, reveal an intimate response to spaces and technologies. ‘A house within a house within a house within a house’ links historical and cultural representations of the double, the unconscious and the uncanny to this artistic practice. The new moving-image and sonic works form part of a larger project to inhabit the writing rooms of influential authors, entitled ‘Shadow Worlds | Writers’ Rooms’.

Permutation and Randomness in the Action Score Generator

Abstract: This article discusses Nathan Walker's 'Action Score Generator' (ASG), an online writing machine that randomly arranges words into six-word-length performance scores. The generator belongs to a lineage of language-based artworks and practices that relinquish authorial control to the viewer. Exploring the methods of Event Scores developed by George Brecht the ASG is a website that distributes an infinite number of scores as both instructions and poetry. This is articulated in relation to Christopher Strachey’s ‘Love Letter Generator’ and other permutational and computational writing programmes that use randomness and code to produce writing in modular forms.

Introducing the Archive of Nothingness (AON) - A co-curated digital archive and live research project

Abstract: The Archive of Nothingness (AON) addresses the connections between art and graphic design; their present-day functions and manifestations and their simultaneously disparate yet interlinked histories, as well as discussions around the role, influence and ‘authority’ of archives, archivists, exhibitions and curators. Designed to resemble the adjacent pages of an open book and to act as a ‘mirror’ which presents images and ideas in (questionable, uncertain) parallel(s), it is based around a Tumblr weblog site. With the dual function of contributing to a mass of online visual information; participating in an existing world-wide dialogue, while also functioning self-reflexively and critically, it provides a vehicle for data collection which simultaneously acts as an ongoing and potentially infinite piece of ‘living’ research. Encompassing a set of binaries, the site is at once regulated and organic, static and kinetic, planned and spontaneous, concrete and indeterminate – and intentionally open to interpretation.