Analog Binary Code: This is just to say (After William Carlos Williams), June 13, 2021
A Near-Future Translation after William Carlos Williams, coded in fallen young plums under their source tree, after a day of heavy wind. Originally coded June 10, 2021; this photo was taken as documentation of the poem unwriting itself over the following few weeks. Part of the #AnalogBinaryCode series by poet and artist @sashastiles, whose work merges biological and mechanical, physical and digital, ancient and futuristic in explorations of transhuman communication and transcendent possibility.
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Analog Binary Code is an ongoing technobiological language project that merges machine speak with haptic elements, proposing a new mode of communication for and with our future selves. In this work, a canonical line of poetry is translated into binary 1s and 0s, coded in young plums in the grass under their source tree. This concrete poem was then documented over the course of its deterioration over the course of several weeks, until the words returned to the earth and the “page” became blank again.
A conversation between the digital and the physical and 2023 Crypto Art Award Shortlist, The Lumen Prize.
“The poem-object is a composition that aims to combine resources from poetry and the visual arts, and to contemplate their capacity for mutual exaltation.”
— André Breton
Poème Objkt is a conversation between poetry and the visual arts brought to life through the liminal play of the physical and the digital. As contemporary expressions of Breton’s poem-object, the pieces in this exhibition present works of poetry, experimental writing and literature on the blockchain that enhance, reinvent and reimagine the relationship between the text and the image, the analog and the digital, ultimately opening up a space for dialogue that blurs and challenges the lines that divide.
This co-curation with L'Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse in Paris materializes in two parts:
Part 1 opened in October 2022. L’Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse curated the works of Sasha Stiles, Ross Goodwin, Ana María Caballero, aurèce vettier, Campbell McGrath, Robness, Kalen Iwamoto, Julien Silvano, Jason Sholl, and Saul Steinberg.
This first exhibition’s curatorial framework falls along the following lines:
GENERATIVE LITERATURE
POEM = WORK OF ART
CONCRETE POETRY
CONCEPTUAL
Part 2 takes place May 2023 at Librairie Métamorphoses in Paris, with a section of the exhibition taking place at L’Avant Galerie Vossen.
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Image:
Exhibition view © Photo: Jean-Louis Losi