We arrived at the Tate Modern where upon being directed to the third floor, a waiter offered a tray of inedible canapés [square sponge/metal wool disk] on a silver tray. We realised that this was not the e & eye poetry event.
Proceeding to the fifth floor we entered the first presentation that was held by Penny Florence relating to the work Un Coup de dés (A Throw of the Dice) by Mallarmé (1897). A work complex woven around the phrase un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A throw of dice will never abolish the chance). As Mallarmé abolishes the punctuation, breaks the syntax, he takes a step further in this poem by also abandoning linear arrangements – showing how both placement and typography inspires text. Penny plays with a similar structure in a shown electronic work where users can play both with typography and move words freely around constructing new reading spaces where text overlaps.
The second speaker presented a condensed research on the geometrical construction and minimalism of Gertrude Stein. The ABC art is an extreme simplification that serves to strip away and reveal the object - a rose is a rose is a rose. This is probably one of Gertrude's most known poems that does exactly this, simplify and reveal. The talk also showed how these simple repetitions and alignments of the sentences into geometrical shapes revealed the object (the rose).
Exploring the Virtual Object by Mark Leahy looked at these objects’ potentials and possibilities with an ability to carry sets of instructions such as a script or a score. He raised the idea that the whole world + the work = the whole world / the whole world – the work = the whole world showing both the significance and the insignificance of the work.
John Cayley presented a few works of David Rokeby or rather let the works represent themselves in the context of production of language by computers.
n-cha(n)ted [David Rokeby] an installation where 8-10 computers are hanging from the ceiling neatly tied up with monitors, keyboards, microphones, speakers, voice recognition software and grammatical syntax. There is a chanting happening in the space and the computers are mumbling like a united priesthood, a synchronised voice of conviction. The speakers in between allows the voice of each other to be picked up and form this synchronicity. A clap from someone in the audience causes the voices from the computers to collapse into disarray. The monitor shows a hand covering an ear and in the room the computers are speaking over each other. As time passes some computers will start listening out. Capturing words from the audience and producing their sentences using substitution, individual computers starts speaking or reading out new sentences - each different. After a while heterogenic speech turns to unison and chanting re-emerges.
What was greatly interesting in the two sessions we took part in was the having the talks within the gallery spaces and viewing electronic-poetry on projection alongside permanent exhibition artworks with the important question of where these works belong as works of poetry andor works of art.
