Prose from a Machine?

Just joining this conversation, and am happy to read these passionate posts about the need for some good ol’ (but still new!), kick-ass radical culture.

I’ve become increasingly fascinated with what I can only call “machine prose”—methods, often Oulipian in nature, that impose a set of restraints on prose production toward all sorts of structural hootenannies. I don’t call this specifically Oulipian (you know, those mainly French folks who write without the letter “e” or produce 10¹⁴ sonnets in flip-book form), because for me it also grows out of Surrealism, Dada, and the various methods of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin often listed under the inclusive rubric: “cut-ups.”

These methods, taken together, certainly produce their share of garbage (although, sometimes, a culture’s garbage says more than its Opera houses!), but just as often produces mediated work for a mediated culture—with the added bonus of offering interventionist critiques in a effective and often gut-busting form.

Over the last few years, I’ve been gathering methods and collaborators—picking up concepts as they arrive from my reading, my colleagues, and my accidents.

Some:

Two-person instant novel: Sit down over a several sessions (in the same room if possible), and compose collaboratively at separate stations. After a period of simultaneous composition with only basic raw material (a setting, a character name, the need to mention foie-gras), switch seats to edit/overwrite the other author’s work, changing, altering, and adding whatever…

Then, switch seats again and work similarly on the “original” compositions, and so repeat this process beyond these three iterations during a brief editing period. In this way, lose yourself in the work so that a third mind that moves between can emerge.

[N.B. This is the method for the forthcoming Chiamus book Abecdarium, a combination of me and Carlos Hernandez]

Speech Software novel: Write something. Read it into speech software without training the thing to know your real vocal cues. Get something more interesting in the product.

Re-organization Prose: Rearrange familiar passages from well-known authors according to alternative schemes: alphabetical, assonant, consonant, sensory, grammatical (parts of speech), phrasical, clausical, ad infinitum. Make e.e. cummings look like a square.

Backward story: Find a partner. Write a short story backwards, starting with the last paragraph, over email. Have your partner send the penultimate, you then send anti-penultimate, and so on. Find out where things really start.

Scanning story: Take completed prose and “scan” it using any number of methods for hidden patterns and themes that might emerge, which become the basis for new prose. (Currently discussing this with Debra Di Blasi, based upon a student exercise she developed).

Structural Pillage: Take published prose from your favorite authors and use the structure of their best paragraphs. In other words, get rid of all their words but keep their rhythm and punctuation. Insert other words.

AutoSummary Method: Plug text into Microsoft Word. Use the “AutoSummarize” function under the “Tools” menu to produce shortened versions of the text. Cut-in more text. Re-summarize. Repeat until you have the perfectly distilled essence of our dirty nuclear age.

[This post so far on AutoSummarize, on 25% summary:

Prose from a Machine?

I’ve become increasingly fascinated with what I can only call “machine prose”—methods, often Oulipian in nature, that impose a set of restraints on prose production toward all sorts of structural hootenanny’s. Speech Software novel: Write something. Re-organization Prose: Rearrange familiar passages from well-known authors according to alternative schemes: alphabetical, assonant, consonant, sensory, grammatical (parts of speech), phrasical, clausical, ad infinitum. Backward story: Find a partner. Scanning story: Take completed prose and “scan” it using any number of methods for hidden patterns and themes that might emerge, which become the basis for new prose. Insert other words.

AutoSummary Method: Plug text into Microsoft Word. Cut-in more text. ]

See—gets rid of the junk. Do it many times though. It’s a sort of randomized negative selection.

Homophonic Translation: Listen to texts in other languages and translate into English, as if the originals were in fact merely mumbled.

***

Ok, these are just a few.

These are material processed that speak to the texture and substance of production rather than the content. [Let’s face it, content is secondary, tertiary, unimportant—something for ridiculous realists hooked on outmoded narrative…].

I’m looking for more ideas and am I’m always looking for collaborators. Anyone with me?

–Davis