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Thomas Dreher

Lexia to Perplexia
Talan Memmott


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Talan Memmott (*1964 in San Francisco) visited in the time of his "chaotic" fine art education (1983-1990) at three Californian colleges (California State University Fresno, San Jose State University, San Francisco Art Institute) not only training offers (lectures, seminars, courses) for the production of installations, videos, performances and paintings but offers on literature theory, creative writing (with Kathy Acker), music, anthropology and Critical Theory, too. In 1987 he realized an installation in collaboration with a colleague on Allen Bertoldi´s sculpture "Sidewinder" at CSU Fresno: The artists lived on the sculpture "for more than a week". J. Hillis Miller´s idea of "parasitic criticism" was a starting point of reference for the development of the project. Memmott transformed it in his proposal to "Parasitic Metagoria". Memmott´s video oeuvre was presented in 1991 at the Sheffield International Media Exhibition. He began in 1998 to realize Hyperfiction projects and won The 2nd trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition with Lexia to Perplexia (2000).

From 1996 to 2001 Memmott was production director of the web development firm Percepticon in San Francisco. He started in Mai 1998 to edite the BeeHive Hypertext/Hypermedia Literary Journal (since volume 3 in collaboration with Ted Warnell, replaced since volume 4 by Alan Sondheim) for Percepticon. Since 2001 he accepted several assignments as teacher and lecturer. In 2003, meanwhile his fellowship as "first electronic graduate fellow" at the Brown University in Providence, Memmott developed the "Semiotic Oscillator" in its Cave, which allows observers via projections on four sides (walls and floor) to navigate with stereoscopic glasses through virtual rooms. The result of the fellowship was a Master of Fine Arts degree in Literary Arts. Currently (2004) he teaches as "first Distinguished Visiting Graphic Designer" at the Wesley Center for New Media (Georgia Institute of Technology) in Atlanta. His move to Atlanta caused the dissolution of the band Television Astronaut based in Providence.


Anchors

Memmott marks "Lexia to Perplexia" as "theory/fiction". 1 The project thematizes relations between observers/readers, screen and digital(izing) processes via textual parts, ciphers derived from formulae and picture signs.

"Lexia to Perplexia" consists of ten linked web pages (chapters) whose source code is written in DHTML and Javascript: "...each page is excessively layered. So, one dwells on a page." 2 The ten chapters of "Lexia to Perplexia" are constituted by ten source codes which include the instructions for all possible modifications of monitor presentations. Cursor movements and click activities of observers/readers fix the appearance of a chapter´s parts on the screen. It is possible to activate coded movements of elements, but no elements are moveable. Some parts are only as long observable on the screen as the cursor moves on certain letters and icons which function as `opener´. Other parts cannot be closed without leaving the chapter. Further parts can be opened via click (or cursor) activities but often they can be closed only via clicks on other parts (or via cursor movements over unmarked regions and directions). If several layers with texts and icons can be opened and will be presented one in front of the other than the observers/readers can´t influence the sequence of strata.

Deena Larsen and Richard Higgason describe "Lexia to Perplexia" in "An Anatomy of Anchors" as "montage" with "embedded", "non distinguished", "selectively animated" "connotative anchors" which "reinforce each other as they crowd over and occlude each other." Many of these <anchors> are marked by colored letters. Some colored textual parts don´t function as <anchors>, other <anchors> are "strictly undifferentiated". 3

Neologisms serve Gregory Ulmer and – in his footsteps – Talan Memmott 4 to develop a theory language for explanations of experiences with hypertext and the internet. Memmott uses its poetologic interesting aspects in his "theory/fiction". Punctuation marks are used as visual signs; they add a further interesting dimension which provides a transition to icons in Memmott´s model-like presentation of the transgression of hypertext (via hypermedia) to hyperfiction. Punctuation marks like the both kinds of round brackets (normal round brackets and braces), obliques, double dashes, semicolons and others knot together not only the textual parts and icons with each other on the screen, but they combine the screen with the source code, too. Text and the programming code penetrate each other in different kinds on the levels of source code and screen presentation which refer to each other.


"Body with Organs Elsewhere"

Memmott used collected phrases of Gilles Deleuze, Sigmund Freud, Félix Guattari, Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche to develop parts of "Lexia to Perplexia" via iterated modifications of these quotations. 5

In a textual window of "minifesto 3" in the chapter Metastrophe: Temporary miniFestos the "Corpus Artaud" is circumscribed as "an elaboration on the Body Without Organs as outlined by Deleuze and Guattari". Memmott refers to the sixth chapter of Gilles Deleuze´s and Félix Guattari´s «Mille plateaux» with the heading «28 novembre 1947 – Comment se faire un Corps sans Organes?». This chapter refers to and explains parts of Antonin Artaud´s banned radio programme Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. Artaud speaks:

...il n´y a rien de plus inutile qu´un organe. Lorsque vous lui [l´homme] aurez fait un corps sans organes, alors vous l´aurez délivré de tous ses automatismes et rendu à sa véritable liberté. 6

Memmott adds the "<body with organs elsewhere>" to Artaud´s conception of «un corps sans organes», "in reference to attachment to the Internet apparatus and the distribution of <being> across it - - as data, as pixels, as energy..." 7

"Remote" "<bodies with organs>" are in the "hyperlobe [internet, networks]...temporary and only accessed." (Textual window "Corpus Artaud") Software(applications) and computer operations process data on characteristics of real bodies via reduction and compression:

...The abstracted and released continuum of the body is compressed, reduced and encoded, codified...made elemental...It is the hope of communification that we minimize the space of flesh. (chapter (s)T(ex)T(s) and Intertimacy)

Here "Communification" means obviously the digital mediated communication between remote users´ <bodies with organs>. "Simplification" helps to reduce the amount of data. This data traffic without organs connects users "with organs" and thrills/electrificates ("electrification") or confuses them. "Communification" constructs a "body" which exists as a communication process in data streams called or initiated by users at terminals. Perhaps this body exists on a mental level in <Communifictions> (as a neologism derivate of "Communification"), too.


"I-" and "X-Terminal"

In "Lexia to Perplexia" serve schemes of monitors, eye icons, bracket signs and textual parts to characterize the situation of the observer/reader before a screen. The chapter Cyb|Organization and its Dys|Contents – Sign.mud.Fraud includes two terminal´s (monitor with keyboard) schemes with the headline "X-terminus" above and the capture "I-terminus". These schemes can be opened along the vertical central axle. Eye icons are located along this axis above and below the schemes of terminals. Text parts define "eye/I"-relations 8 as parts of the I-terminal. The term "I-terminal" marks computers which offer observers/readers interfaces to networks. Processes in and between computers constitute the X-Terminal.

The legend of Nárkissos and Echó introduces observers/readers in the chapter The Process of Attachement to the "bi.narrative exe.change" "between remote and local bodies". "I-terminal" and "X-terminal" as well as present and (the dates of and on) remote bodies constitute "bi.narrative" lines. The "I-terminal" presents a screen projection to the "eye" of an observer/reader. These projections for "eyes" provoke observers/readers to integrate them into projections which constitute their "I" (see below). The "X-terminal" contains (not only, but as part within parts) the organization of the possibility to repeat successfully internet accesses to the same files. The hits on specific URL-addresses leave traces in the "X-terminal", f.e. in server protocols, access statistics etc. The files of visited net addresses are stored temporary in the "I-terminals" without any loss in quality. If the "X-terminal" transmits immaterial dates on bodies ("I-components", see below) via telecommunication to "I-terminals" then the process of multiplying the access as well as the data is comparable with the incorporeal Echó: "[(I)...(X)]" (chapter Cyb|Organization and its Dys|Contents – Sign.mud.Fraud).


"Self" and "Cell.f"

Hieroglyphs with origins in the Egyptian cults for the dead (Osiris), bracket signs and cross-sections of monitor tubes serve to thematize in the chapter Ka Space: encryption >book< of the dead the "X-terminal´s" relations between "user" and "TECH.txt" 9:

A re:collection of the original by others, elsewhere is mirrored by the trans|missive actions of cataloged I-components becoming the per|missive actions of a[N]other machine.

A "Cell.f" is a digital double of an "original". "These <little puppett repeats> of the Original" (chapter Exe.Termination) are replaceable electronic dates which stand for real elements. It can happen as a consequence caused by retranslations of the digital data into the material world that living bodies are treated as if they are replaceable like data. Memmott presents this problem in his language with neologisms and code elements – "a jammed, fractured diction full of slashes, dots and brackets" 10 – in the following way:

Communification renders [I]dentity elemental -- dys.constructing body with body-elsewhere, as stated elsewhere. To a certain extent this exoticizes the I for I, for the Original, as the replication and exe.tension of agency is replacement -- sub.stitution. The re:mote body is re:turned in a devalued state. (chapter Exe.Termination)

The informations of remote bodies in the digital data traffic cause, if retranslated (or reconstructed), material bodies "in a devalued state". The real body dimensions before a digital translation remain a comparative measure because Memmott proves the opinion as an error that the real body is a "mask": "...even the body is a mask, a surface. This is completely false."

The digital "lexia" are "inanimate"; the observers´/readers´ examination of the "Cyberorganization", which combines data(processes) and remote terminals, causes "perplexia" 11, if retranslations of digital bodies into (imaginations of) corporeal properties and action possibilities in real rooms are wanted. The "animated" look of "inanimated" digital substitutes is able to irritate observers: "These <little puppett repeats> of the Original are...de.parted, animated yet inanimate." (chapter Exe.Termination) Animations of non animated body dates can provoke the false conclusion that properties of digital transformations like substitutability and reversibility are transferable to real bodies. Memmott´s conception of the "bi.narrative" lines containing original bodies as well as the communication with and on remote bodies helps to develop differentiations and to avoid false conclusions.

The "self" was the subject of the world´s history in <the philosophy of consciousness> ("Philosophie des Bewußtseins"): Local and epochal histories were parts of the world´s history. This "self" (as <instructor of places>/"Platzanweiser") constituted fields of knowledge and sorted out what and who receives which place in which field: 12: "– whole as a self contained apparatus, the metahistorical I that I am that pretends at singularity and despotism over any/every other." Possibilities for changes offer modifications of the conception of the term "Original" as well as the term "We" of "communification": "We meet as media" with the "self" in brackets ("replaced with [I]"). (chapter Exe.Termination)


Face and Body

Memmott uses in chapter Metastrophe: Temporary miniFestos the head of Leonardo da Vinci´s study of proportions after Vitruvius and André Masson´s drawing of the headless «Acéphale» (for the cover of Georges Bataille´s journal with the same name) 13 as visual ciphers to thematize relations between head and body. Masson presents innards meanwhile Leonardo compares surfaces by marks of ideal scale proportions between parts of the body. Both present parts in more detailled manners but they do it in contrasting regions: Leonardo details the face and Masson the guts.

Memmott

ill. 1: Talan Memmott: "Lexia to Perplexia" (2000), chapter "Metastrophe: Temporary miniFestos"

Leonardo´s head and the «Acéphale» remain unnoticed if the five manifestos ("miniFestos") will be opened one after another until the black ground is covered by grey areas with text. Both visual ciphers on the black ground are activated by cursor movements on textual parts of "minifesto 4" which are marked by lighter coloured grey areas. "Minifesto 4" covers the visual ciphers: The ciphers constitute a level <behind> the text presentation. This layering is comparable to the psychology´s differentiation between psychic strata. Cursor movements on the headings of "Minifesto 1" until "5" cause the closing of all other "Minifestos´" windows and open the sight on the level with visual ciphers (ill.1).

The visual ciphers with origins in art history are used to deepen the introductory theme about possible combinations of language and source code:

...the ideo.satisfractile nature of the FACE, an inverted face like the inside of a mask, from the inside out to the screen is this same <HEAD>[FACE]<BODY>, <BODY> FACE </BODY> rendered now as sup|posed other (chapter The Process of Attachment).

"FACE" appears at first between tags which open "HEAD" and "BODY" but don´t close them: "FACE" belongs to "HEAD" because it stands after that tag, it doesn´t belong to "BODY" because it appears before its tag (The tag allows to open a "BODY" as a separate element after the tag "HEAD", which contains "FACE"). 14 Then "FACE" is placed as a part of a "BODY" between its opening and closing tag. The relations between the body part "FACE[...]as sup|posed other" and the "FACE" split from the body provoke "perplexia" and are integrated parts of Memmott´s play with (and between) Codeworks and icons provoking association fields (see below).

Human <bodies> are reduced by terminals (with screen, keyboard and mouse) to the corporeal parts head (brain and eyes) and hands. Memmott thematizes the fingers on the mouse and the keyboard as the elements which navigate within the screen image (and its modifications of eye stimuli):

The cyborganic I is pixelated, digitized at the fingertips and the screen...our fingers, digits reach back to poke us in the eye, reaching back toward the Original through a series of hand-offs -- playing hot potato with the self and Cell.f. (chapter Exe. Termination)

Discontents

Memmott locates these relations between eyes, hands and the whole body, which can be segmented culturally but not divided physically, in the chapter The Process of Attachment within the following context (and anticipates with his formulation the title of the second chapter):

Cyberorganization and its Dys|Content(s)
Sign.mud.Fraud

He modifies Sigmund Freud´s "Das Unbehagen in der Kultur" - in its English translation: "Civilization and its Discontents". There Freud discusses in the first annotation to the fourth chapter the "fatal process of civilization" ("verhängnisvolle[r] Kulturprozess[...]") of the "erection of mankind" ("die Aufrichtung des Menschen" ) and the "predominance of facial attractions" ("Übergewicht der Gesichtsreize") caused by "organic suppression" ("organische[r] Verdrängung"). 15 Does Memmott try to expose the digitalization as a continuation of the "fatal process of civilization"?

Memmott´s references to Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud create a distance to the "process of civilization" as well as to Freud´s manner to explain culture. A socialization which suppresses needs and functions of the body ("organic suppression") establishes a segmentation of head and body. Bataille presents in «L´Histoire de l´oeil» (1928) the transgression of taboos by the "pleasure ego" ("Lust-Ich") causing a continuing partialization of the body. This partialization effectuates the isolation of the eye which Memmott thematizes in "Lexia to Perplexia" via pictures and schemes of isolated eyes. The relation "eye/I" becomes a cipher of relations between "the fatal process of civilization" and its transgression, between the "predominance of facial attractions" by suppression of the other senses and the liberated gaze which may initialize further transgressions. Artaud´s conception of a "body without organs" (see above) is a plea for arguments for a liberation of the imagination from "organic suppressions" resp. socialized segmentations of the body.

The "Cyberorganization" changes the civilization´s problematic constellations via relations between "I-terminal" and "X-terminal" without dissolution of the "Discontents" ("Dys|Content(s)"): Users, who live in hybrid forms between "Communification" (see above) with digitized signs ("Sign") and the social world with present <bodies with organs>, can´t escape the "mud" of the suppressed psychic life (with the return of the suppressed) and either recognize or are beaten by deceptive ("Fraud") ambiguities.

But users can live with these ambiguities in another way than with "organic suppression". The guts of the «Acéphale» and the Minoan labyrinth presented in the chapter Cycl(ad)ic Trading: The Minoan Network are relatable to each other: The labyrinth is not only an edifice but the inner body (its organs) and a <picture> of psychic experience. The headless «Acéphale» appears in the chapter Metastrophe: Temporary miniFestos at the bottom of a triangle meanwhile Leonardo´s head is presented in a circle on its top (ill.1). Bataille uses the pyramid as an expression for the rational manner to search a way out of the labyrinth but the ratio negates the inner experience: These efforts of rationalization cause imaginations of the labyrinth as a prison. 16 Memmott´s constellation of visual ciphers provokes interpretations with a background based on Bataille´s writings.

Memmott outlines the Minoan trade network in the chapter Cycl(ad)ic Trading: The Minoan Network in a text which jumps and slides to digital networks as wall as in pictorial strata which link aspects of both (trade and digital) networks. From the suppression to the opening of the labyrinthian inner worlds by social and digital networks: The labyrinth is presented as a "central processing location for the Minoan Network" as well as a "macroprocessor" and an element of a "connectivity" from "terminal to terminal".


From "The eye/I" to "(s)T(ex)T(s)"

The textual parts of the last chapter Exe.Termination are only partially readable because they are overlaid with other textual parts as well as with punctuation marks, cross-sections of tubes, eyes (as line schemes), signs of files, beams and other things. The source code presents the textual parts without interferences with overlays. Observers/readers can select the source code after unsuccessful trials to modify the screen presentations until textual parts are readable: The monitor presentations refer back to the instructions which generate the screen projections.

Observers/readers may try to coordinate the modifications of the screen projection via mouse operations with their pleasure in looking. The monitor presentations can appear as back projections (or reflections) of the "I"-imaginations:

The inVention at the screen, my screen, my face looking back at myself is the signal of successful attachment. [...]
The screen[...] is the seductive force that draws us to touch the medial unit[...] -- a true surface -- is transmuted into something seemingly fleshy. At least porous... (chapter Exe. Termination) 17

Jacques Lacan outlined relations between eye, imagination, image and a depicted object with the help of two (inter)penetrating triangles. 18 In the chapter (s)T(ex)T(s) and Intertimacy Memmott sketches relations of gazes between observers/readers and screen projections via icons of eyes and overlays of mirrored outlines of a typical cross-section of tubes which are readable as modified triangles.

Memmott2"

ill. 2: Talan Memmott: "Lexia to Perplexia" (2000), chapter "(s)T(ex)T(s) and Intertimacy"

The interpenetrations of tube´s cross-sections overlay letters which form up into the term "Exit". 19 The letters of the word "Exit" are located between two eyes on the left and right side. The eyes are connected by lines which deviate from straight horizon lines by wavy curvatures. This horizontal axis constitutes a level above/on the cross-sections of tubes. A mirror relation exists around the vertical central axis between the eyes and the (inter-)penetrating tube/gaze relations not without deviations. The mirror relation is repeated in the formula "(s)T(ex)T(s)". That formula appears below the term "Exit" (and became the heading of the chapter; ill.2). "(s)T(ex)T(s)" can be decoded in the following way (as one of several possibilities): "s" is not only a place holder/substitute for "subject/self", but for "sequence", too; "T" is placed not only for "text", but for "temporary", too. The origin of the temporary modifyable screen projection of the text "T" (either downloaded or temporary loaded) is the source code´s text "T" which includes the instructions for possible modifications of the screen projections: "T" emporary from/"(ex)T". It seems that the formula "(s)T(ex)T(s)" outlines what "Lexia to Perplexia" shows and describes at once: Sequences of textual parts (sequences "s" of "T") on the monitor are modifyable with mouse operations in time dimensions ("T"emporary) by observers/readers/subjects "s" in the manner programmed by an author/subject "s" and <executable> by computers after reading the text of the source code "T": <(s)T(ex[e])T(s)>.


"Technotext"

The reduction of media specific characteristics in Conceptual (Textual) Art around 1970 is superseded by the likewise self referential and reflective "technotext" 20 "Lexia to Perplexia" with an exemplary demonstration of certain media specific possibilities. The screen projections of the reflective textual parts are organized in the ten parts of the source code as <Conceptual Performance>. 21 Relations between concept and presentation gain new meanings in net projects as relations between source code and monitor presentations. The thematicizing of these relations doesn´t cause any more <poor> presentation forms which reflect art conditions. But now it leads to projects which involve observers/readers in experiments which investigate parts of the extremely manifold manners of programming and presenting.

Gary Hink rejects N. Katherine Hayles´ term "technotext" because she uses the term hypertext in "Writing Machines" in a way which doesn´t follow Theodor Holm Nelson´s criterion of its non-translatability in print media. But Hayles argues for a differentiation of the "materiality" respectively of the media characteristics. 22 Characteristics of a medium can return in other media in very similar as well as in modified or impeding forms. 23 Memmott integrates procedures of the literary avant-gardes which are developed for the print media. He transforms unusual segmentations of the plane and passages between signs as pictures and pictures as signs into dynamic screen presentations. Memmott´s use of the source code for this dynamic presentation provokes reconceptualizations of the reader´s activation which the avant-gardes anticipated.

A central theme in the debate on interfaces of the nineties became doors to the virtual world and the navigation in it from the side of real rooms: This theme was exemplary concretized f.e. in reactive installations. 24 Memmott thematizes the "I-terminal´s" screen, mouse and manual as interface to the "X-terminal". He combines the debate on interfaces with the elder discussion on hypertext which was actualized for internet applications. 25 He reactualizes and connects these discussions in "Lexia to Perplexia" with each other in his browser dependent screen projections and source codes using recourses to modern classics like Artaud, Bataille, Freud and Lacan. These recourses enable Memmott to reflect processes of observation and reading in conditions of telecommunication, digitalization and networks in surprising facets. Meanwhile the recipient of "Lexia to Perplexia" reconstructs roughly sketched social psychological aspects (s)he makes experiences with these aspects in the process of deciphering. The work is a model case (pragmatics) and a rudimentary explanation of the case (conceptualization).

 


Dr. Thomas Dreher
Schwanthalerstr. 158
D-80339 München.
Homepage with numerous articles on art history since the sixties, a. o. on Concept Art and Intermedia Art.

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Annotations

1 Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur: an interview with Talan Memmott. In: trAce Online Writing Centre. trAce/Alt-X New Media Competition, January 2001. URL: http://trace of.ntu.ac.uk/ newmedia/ interview.cfm (7/5/2004).
Many above-mentioned biographical dates have not been mentioned in earlier articles and stem from Talan Memmott (e-mail 10/30/2004). back

2 Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, see ann.1. back

3 Larsen, Deena/Higgason, Richard E.: An Anatomy of Anchors. Primary References, Commentary [43]. International ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia 2004. In: URL: http://www.sigweb.org/ conferences/ ht-conferences-archive/ ht04/ hypertexts/ larsen/ flash/ memmott/ index.htm (7/31/2004).
Luesebrink, Marjorie C.: Of Tea Cozy and Link. In: Electronic Book Review. Vol.3, 3/8/2003. URL: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/ v3/ servlet/ ebr?essay_id= luesebrink& command=view_essay (7/3/2004): "Talan Memmott uses the mouseover as ongoing <Or>..." back

4 Greg Ulmer explains how he uses neologisms to analyze the internet´s characteristics, in: Memmott, Talan: Toward Electracy: a conversation with Greg Ulmer. In: BeeHive. Vol.3/Issue 4, December 2000. URL: http://beehive.temporalimage.com/ content_maps/ 34a.html (7/8/2004). back

5 Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines. Cambridge/Mass. 2002, p.54.
The themes of the "theory/fiction" "Lexia to Perplexia" return in other projects in modified forms: "The piece is part of a larger group of works...which include Reasoned Metagoria [1999], A Machicolated Body [1999], Delivery Machine 01 [1998], and Delimited MEshings [2001]..." (Talan Memmott, Log of chat, 2/4/2001. In: trAce/Alt-X New Media Competition. URL: http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/ newsmedia/ talanslog.cfm (8/3/2004)). back

6 Artaud, Antonin: Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. Recording studio of Radiodiffusion Française, Paris, 11/22-29/1947 (CD sub rosa, Bruxelles 1995); Artaud, Antonin: Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. Paris 1948/2003, p.21-61, quotation p.61 (New in english: URL: http://freespace.virgin.net/ drama.land/ projects/ schizoanalysis/ artaudjudgment.html (24.10.2004)); Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix: Mille plateaux. Paris 1980, p.205-227 (New in english: http://www.generation-online.org/ p/ fpdeleuze2.htm (24.10.2004). Compare on Artaud´s conception of the "body without organs": Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix: Anti-Ödipus. Kapitalismus und Schizophrenie I. Frankfurt am Main 1977 (french original: L´Anti-OEdipe. Paris, nouvelle édition augmentée 1972), p.421s; Deleuze, Gilles: Anti-Oedipe et Mille Plateaux. Cours Vincennes - 15/02/1972. In: Les Cours de Gilles Deleuze. URL: http://www.webdeleuze.com/ php/ texte.php?cle=156&groupe= Anti%20Oedipe%20et%20Mille %20Plateaux&langue=1. back

7 Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, see ann.1. back

8 "eye/I": chapter Metastrophe: Temporary miniFestos, Minifesto 5, window to "Solipstatic Original". Compare "I.eye" in chapter Cyb|Organization and its Dys|Contents – Sign.mud.Fraud. About its prehistory: Roughley, A. R.: Textual Surveillance: The Double Eyes (and I´s) of George Bataille´s "Story of the Eye". In: Rhizomes. Issue 6, May 2003. URL: http://www.rhizomes.net/ issue6/ roughley.htm (7/8/2004). back

9 Talan Memmott, in: Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, see ann.1: "Osiris of Egyptian mythology is more accurately named Ausere. In a simple, frivolous manipulation of the name you come up with <A user>." back

10 Shelley, Jackson: Judge´s Remarks. In: trAce Online Writing Centre. trAce/Alt-X New Media Competition, January 2001. URL: http://trace.ntu.ac.uk./ newmedia/ remark.cfm (7/5/2004).
Compare Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines, see ann.5, p.50: "He...creates a CREOLE discourse compounded from English syntheses. (A creole, unlike PIDGIN, is not an amalgam but a new language that emerges when two different language communities come into contact.)" back

11 «Lexie»: "large unit of reading" (Barthes, Roland: Éléments de sémiologie. In: Communications 4/1964, chap. II.2.3. New in english: Elements of Semiology. New York 1968, chap. II.2.3. URL: http://www.marxists.org/ reference/ subject/ philosophy/ works/ fr/ barthes.htm (10/18/2004). Compare Barthes, Roland: S/Z. Paris 1970, chap. VII, p.20s. New in english: S/Z. New York 1974, chap. VII. Quoted in: Lexia from works by Roland Barthes: URL: http://www.uno.edu/ lowres/ classes/ cyberlit/ barthes01.htm (10/18/2004)).
"Lexia": Landow, George P.: Hypertext. The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore/Maryland 1992, p.4,7,11,23.
"Perplexia": Talan Memmott, in: Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, s. ann.1: "There is a confusion of ontological, literary, and technical application – perplexia." back

12 Habermas, Jürgen: Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln. Frankfurt am Main 1983, p.9ff.; Habermas, Jürgen: Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwölf Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main 1985, p.29s.,350,353,356s. back

13 Leonardo da Vinci: The Vitruvian Man, ca. 1490, Venice, Accademia. In: Richter, Irma and Jean-Paul: The Literary Works of Leonardo. London, 2nd ed. 1939. Vol.I, no.343, p.255s., pl. XVIII.
Acéphale: Bataille, Georges: Acéphale n° 1 à 5, 1936-1939. Paris 1995. Compare "Mapping The Acephale" with contributions of John Attebury, David J. Beaulieu, George Dunn, Talan Memmott, Don Socha. In: BeeHive. Vol.1/Issue 1, May 1998. URL: http://beehive.temporalimage.com/ content_apps/ mapping/ introduction/ ace_ chooser.html (7/8/2004). back

14 Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines, see ann.5, p.52. back

15 Talan Memmott, in: Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, see ann.1: "...the {FACE},FACE is the result of some thick premediation of an appropriated fragment from Freud´s <Civilization and its Discontents>."
Freud, Sigmund: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Leipzig/Wien/Zürich 1930, chap. IV, ann.1 (New in: Freud, Sigmund: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur und andere kulturtheoretische Schriften. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p.64s.). back

16 Bataille, Georges: Le labyrinthe (1935-36). Neu in: Bataille, Georges: Oeuvres complètes. Vol. I. Paris 1970, p.433-441; compare Vol. V. Paris 1973, p.97ss. The labyrinth in Georges Bataille´s texts and André Masson´s works: Hollier, Denis: Against Architecture. The Writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge/Massachusetts 1989, p.xii, 57-73; Wilk, Michael: Within the Labyrinth (1/9/2003). In: McGill School of Architecture, Montreal. History and Theory Graduate Studio 1996. URL: http://upload.mcgill.ca/ Architecture-theory/ 9597wilk.pdf (7/12/2004).
"Transgression": Bataille, Georges: Oeuvres complètes. Vol. VIII. Paris 1976, p.75-103,265-270,375ss.; Foucault, Michel: Préface à la transgression. In: Critique. August-September 1963, p.751-769. back

17 About the back projection: Lacan, Jacques: Le séminaire, Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris 1973, p.79: «Ce regard que je rencontre...est, non point un regard vu, mais un regard par moi imaginé au champ de l´Autre.» The modifyable screen projection of "Lexia to Perplexia" can appear as «Le champ de l´Autre» to observers/readers: Compare "the re:turned object" as textual part before the screen´s line of a tube´s cross-section in chapter Ka Space: encryption >book< of the dead.
About the "porous" body into which the monitor presentation shall be able to transform itself: Gilles Deleuze explains in «Logique du sens» (Paris 1969, p.106s) «les trois premières dimensions du corps schizophrènique»: «Corps-passoire, corps-morcelé et corps-dissocié». If the screen projection appears to observers/readers as (or similar to) a piece of skin or meat which became or becomes "porous" then the projection can be classified as «corps-passoire». back

18 Lacan, Jacques: Le séminaire, see ann.17, p.85,97.
Memmott explains the relations between screen projection, the projected cross-section of a tube and Lacan´s diagram with eclipsing/interpenetrating triangles, in: Amerika, Mark: active/on Blur, see ann.1: "In <Lexia> I think I insinuate this [placing the gaze on both sides, see ann.17] by the heavy horizontal of the interface -- plus, there are a few direct diagrammatic references to the Lacanian diagram." back

19 "Exit": for example "ex it", out of the "It", as a passage from "It" ("Es") to the "I" ("Ich"), from the subconscious to the conscious. Compare Victor Burgin´s "xit!" in "Park Edge", 1987, in: Dreher, Thomas: The Shadow of the Watchman – or: Memory Operations. Chap. Park Edge (1993). URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/ 3_Konzeptkunst_Burgin_Mem.html. back

20 On the (impossibility of the) reduction of the esthetic part of conceptual forms of presentation: Dreher, Thomas: Konzeptuelle Kunst in Amerika und England zwischen 1963 und 1976. Dissertation Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. München 1988/Frankfurt am Main 1992, p.154ss.; Tragatschnig, Ulrich: Konzeptuelle Kunst. Interpretationsparadigmen; ein Propädeutikum. Berlin 1998, p.21-25.
"Technotext": Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines, see ann.5, p.25,29,32s. back

21 Vgl. imnotatfault: Internet Writing & Society – Position Paper 6. (3/5/2004). In: URL: http://caxton.stockton.edu/ imnotatfault/ 2004/03/05#a100 (7/28/2004) on the manner how the performativity of the screen projections is based on the source code of "Lexia to Perplexia": "Lexia to Perplexia is definitely a hypertext. One could never realistically transfer its reading experience into print. Narrative plays a big part in the work, even though a good portion of the text can sometimes be rendered obscure or even unreadable, but computation does not. Hypertext theorist Gary Hink [see ann.22] asserts that there is no computational level to Lexia. All ten sections exist from the beginning and the variable computation that Aarseth discusses [Aarseth, Espen J.: Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore 1997, p.75] does not come into play." back

22 Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines, see ann.5, p.17-45.
Hink, Gary: Reading Journal 6: Materiality of Caxton. In: http://caxton.stockton.edu/ Juxtaposition/ discuss/ msgReader$93 (19.7/19/2004).
Nelson, Ted: Computer Lib/Dream Machines. South Bend 1974. New in URL: http://sunahweb.com/ wilbur/ demo/ xanadu.shtml. back

23 Hayles contextualizes printed literary projects in a mediascape dominated and influenced by electronic media: "In the tangled web of medial ecology, change anywhere in the system stimulates change everywhere in the system." (Hayles, N. Katherine: Writing Machines, see ann.5, p.33) back

24 Dreher, Thomas: Kontextreflexive Kunst: Selbst- und Fremdbezüge in intermedialen Präsentationsformen. In: Weibel, Peter (ed.): Kontext Kunst. Kunst der 90er Jahre. Cologne 1994, p.102-107 (Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel). back

25 Ziegler, Henning: When Hypertext became uncool. Notes on Power, Politics, and the Interface. In: Dichtung-Digital – Journal für digitale Ästhetik, Jg.5, Nr.27, 1/2003. URL: http://www.dichtung-digital.org/ 2003/ issue/ 1/ ziegler/ (8/2/2004). back

 

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