TRON If
you are a User, then everything you've done so far has been according to
a plan, right?
FLYNN You wish. You know what it's like: you
just keep doing what it looks like you're supposed to be doing, no matter how
crazy it seems.
TRON That's
the way it is for Programs, yes.
FLYNN I hate
to disappoint you, pal, but most of the time, that's the way it is for us
Users, too.
—Tron (1982)
To those whose professional lives
approached their apex in the 1980s, my workspace or general process might not
seem so unfamiliar to those who held the position of a “Computer Operator.”
Coffee in hand, I sit at a computer terminal, push the power button on a
computer screen, the glow washing over me in the early morning light. The command
prompt’s ever-ready cursor awaits input. The machine needs instructions.
In
abstract terms, it’s not so different from the situation which any writer might
experience: the perpetual problem of the “blank page,” the perpetual struggle
to invent or reinvent objects which are, sometimes poems, sometimes fragments,
sometimes doodles. At worst, nothing happens for a while, and the state never
changes.
Often,
when I use the word “computational” to describe the work I do, the listener or
reader imagines some flashy platform or fully-fledged automated system
completing my work for me. And sometimes that’s partially true: I
send a Twitter bot out overnight to gather tweets which contain language such
as “garbage” or “waste.” When I come to the console in the morning, I put the
robot to sleep for a while and trawl through the night’s collection for
interesting coincidences. One user, having spent a much larger-than-average
amount of money on a garbage can, writes “i don't think it gets any more adult
than this.”
In
the 100,000+ lines captured, there’s an equal possibility that I won’t find anything
of interest. The state does not change.
In
an essay entitled “Poetry and Pleasure,” Jackson Mac Low talks about coming to
a realization about his process that, after strict adherence to chance-based,
deterministic methods, he came to identify as a poet who “engage[s] with
contingency,”[1]
opening all of his interests and abilities upon which to draw at any given
moment. While I once thought of the computational as a way to abandon intention,
authorship, and choice, I’ve come to identify more with Mac Low on this point
as I too discovered my workaday writers’ approach to sitting down in the
morning and attempting to invent, reinvent or discover word-objects with code
on a screen. (I am, however, a subscriber to Brenda Hillman’s “holographic”
method as it comes to transforming massive amounts of language into even
quasi-finished writing.[2])
Perhaps
Mac Low’s perspective offers me the thought that I’ll get as close as I can to
a full-contact sport in the process of combing through computationally-sorted,
or generated text and, using some “contingency” emerging at that time and
place, pick out a word, phrase, or strange combination from the sifted
resultant language that turns into some part of a work. Sometimes, I’m more
like a fireworks technician having set up an elaborate, well-coordinated, and
programmed display, set the process off only to generate some form of
disappointment or, at worst, to discover that nothing happens. Or, it might be
more apt to write that my process gets me closer to that of an amateur
scientist playing at being a professional in a proper lab.
I
once began a job talk (that anxiety-inducing invention of the academic
interview) claiming that humans, despite baffling amounts of effort and
capacity are, ultimately, bad at making choices. Though I avoid comparing my
practice to any kind of economic or psychological study, depending on the kind
of project I’m working on, I offload some at least decision-making authority to
“the machine.” Admittedly, I now spend more time writing code than strictly “writing,”
which is likely a sign that I’m automating or surrendering some greater amount
of intention to the pure output of process, modeling authorial intent in the
“self-executing” language of script or computer code.
But,
as several other computational writers may point out, this difference in
process—which can engage or create new forms—is certainly not unfamiliar
to the writing mind. In an age that predated the digital era in which we find
ourselves, William Carlos Williams wrote of the poem that it is, after all, “a
small (or large) machine made out of words.”[3]
And this machine, as noted by Robert Pinsky in an article on the classic
computer game “Zork” operates on “speed and memory,” sharing the “discovery of
large, manifold channels through a small, ordinary-looking or all but invisible
aperture.”[4]
Though the aperture of the screen in
front of me is by some standards not so narrow, is no less common looking than
any other of many writers’ tools. And despite that my current language may not
be as necessarily as recognizable, I begin the day typing as fast as I can,
recalling the words.
Douglas Luman is a co-founder of Container, art director at Stillhouse Press,
head researcher at appliedpoetics.org, a book designer, and digital
human. He is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Allegheny College.
His first book, The F Text, was released in fall 2017 on Inside the
Castle.
[1] Mac Low, Jackson. “Poetry and
Pleasure” in Thing of Beauty: New and Selected Poems. Ed. Anne Tardos.
Berkeley: University of California Press (2008): xxxv.
[2] Hillman, Brenda. “The
Holograph.” in Poets on Teaching. Ed. Joshua Marie Wilkinson. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press (2010): 110-113.
[3] Williams, William Carlos.
Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions
(1969): 256.
[4] Pinksy, Robert. “The Muse in the
Machine: Or, the Poetics of Zork.” New York Times (19 March, 1995): BR3.
No comments:
Post a Comment