I make art that can help viewers become more aware of the workings of their minds. Much of this work is part of the {M} project, which you can read about here
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Thursday, September 24, 2020
The Library of Babel
2012
Lawrence S Johnson
dgihsmunllb, a volume from the Library of Babel, generated by my PHP program and printed by the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts
download volumes from The Library of Babel
The Universe (which some call the Library) is made up of an uncounted, possibly infinite number of six-sided rooms. A vast well, in the center of each room and guarded by a low railing, admits air.
Jorge Luis Borges' story, The Library of Babel opens with the above words. A little later, Borges describes the bookshelves and the books:
On each wall there are five shelves, each holding thirty-two books with identical layouts and bindings. Each book has four hundred ten pages; each page has forty lines; each line is made up of more or less eighty letters, all black.
He then states that the letters in each book appear to be completely random (as if typed by the chimpanzees we so often hear about) and that the inhabitants of the Library are constantly searching for readable text within the innumerable volumes. The story explores the many philosophical implications of this situation.
There have been several realizations of volumes of the Library that have used lines of exactly eighty letters. I believe that Borges described the books differently. He wrote ...cada renglón, de unas ochenta letras de color negro which I translate literally to each line of some eighty black letters. So not exactly eighty, but more-or-less eighty. I think it's quite clear that Borges conceived of the books as set in a conventional, variably-spaced typeface, with variable letter-counts for each line, averaging eighty letters.
Loving Borges' work, and loving The Library of Babel above all, I started generating volumes from the Library in 2012, using a PHP program I wrote. These are unique in that they use variably-spaced fonts and are still fully justified (explanation below.)
Here are a growing number of pdf files of Library of Babel volumes from my program which you are free to download and use as you wish (but don't copyright them. All these files are copyright @ 2020 Lawrence S. Johnson) :
download volumes from The Library of Babel
I had three copies of dgihsmunllb printed in 2012 (see photo above) for the exhibition VERBI-VOCO-VISUAL: CONCRETE POETRY AND DERIVATIONS, 1972-2013, curated by the late Jed Speare at Mobius in Boston. I have one copy, my niece, Beth Myhr, has another, and Jed's estate has the third. Rereading the Borges story, I note that he states: There are no two books alike in the vast Library. By printing three copies of the same book, I feel like I have violated a sacred statute. I wish I had understood this eight years ago. Perhaps the other two volumes no longer exist, and balance has been restored to the universe of the Library.
This is certainly not the first program to generate Babel volumes. Looking at earlier efforts, I noticed that they invariably used monospaced fonts (like Courier) and that all the lines were exactly eighty characters in length. I prefer fonts with variable widths, like the Helvetica I am writing in right now, and I really prefer the flowing rhythms of a page set in such a typeface.
monospaced (above)
vs.
variably-widthed
Of course books look better when the letters on the right side of the page line up, or are justified. And, as I have observed above, Borges conceived of the books with this kind of font, and lines of approximately eighty letters. Here's the upper right corner of dgihsmunllb
This happens automatically when the font is monospaced and the lines are all the same width, but it became a frustrating programming problem when I tried to generate volumes with my PHP program. Eventually I got it work, but the program was very slow, and often it would time out after thirty seconds, and not produce anything. I went back to the program today, and it can now generate a volume in two or three seconds. Apparently my hosting company, FatCow, has replaced their servers with much faster machines. It makes me a little sad that I am abandoning my website and won't be able to easily make new volumes. (But why is it important to do this?)
download volumes from The Library of Babel
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Dsriuptoin
2018
Lawrence S Johnson
h e s d . t o n m e , m e p t o , to , e r t n s f g .[1]
w s n g d a u e 4, 6, he d f e p e en s st ne i p s a C V t ir ic , n e en a ra de th birt a a. ng ag s a p w l o t t enhan s o e sur i a ut so s o o es nder anding of a it .
Th t he rld i a con uct n the i d, that phys cal real ty is u k o ab e, t object , ev ts, matter, energy, pac and time ar bst a t conce ts nerated b lan uage: these fundam ntal aspects o eality are obscu ed by the phant s s cre ted b lan uage. Th s ould very well be a he heart of Ball’s alchemy of the word. Although Ball’s declaration is applied to oral, phonemic langugae, I would like to apply it to written lagnuage as well.
Mnay people take in much mroe infomration form redaing tahn from listening. Raeidng has bcemoe an activity that oevwrhlemingly shapes our relatiy. Beacuse it ocucipes so mcuh of oru attetnion but dsitracts us with cotnnet, nararitve, iamges, etincements to acqurie tinhgs, passions, ect., we aer mostly uanarwe of teh pehnoenma of wirtetn and spoken langague in tehmelsevs.
Lanuagge is witretn adn sopken/sgnied as wlel as read adn litensed to. The pocresses of cearitng (wirintg or seakpnig) adn unedstarnding (reaindg or litensnig to) lagnuage aer moslty uconncisous adn the ucnonscious is, by dfeiiniton, unknwaoble. Oen cna at tmies birng some prat of teh uncnsociuos into awrenaess; by this means what wsa bferoe unkowanble cna bceome knwon. Tehre is an intefrace btweeen consciusnoess adn hte unncosicous otfen called hte porecnsicuos .Hte percounscios is at hte pierprhey of awraneses nad beucase attienton is ont fuocsed on it the evnets that ouccr trhee go lagrley uinnotced. Noe acn fcous arwaeenss on hte percconsoius nad it is here that a smlal part of the uknnwon acn boecme kwnon.
One awy to icnrseae aewarsnes of lnaguage as a perocss reathr tahn as a menas of delriveing conetnt is to disurpt it. Dsirtupoin ientrrutps hte nroaml flow of langguae and offres an oppotrunity to look benhid hte scnees at the varoius noarmlly unconsicous pcroesses uesd by the mnid to process nad interpret texts. Tihs text desptie its gneesis as a more or less critiacl essay has arleday been sbucjeted to two difefrnet types of disrpution and tihs wlil continue to the ned of the txet wtih six mroe disruptnios.
In the first few lines of hte text the disruption was one of a kind of variable syncope or omission of letters from words This was extreme at the beginning, where all the letters disappeared, but gradually more and more letters appeared until at the end of the finst section of disnuptioh, all of the tekt appeaned.
lbe hekl seclloh of dlsnuplloh bas necehldq cohcduded: a qnoqnesslwe scnawddlhq od lbe ohdeh od lbe dellehs lh eacb vohc. lble bee decowe e llbc od lblehbel wewe[2] vblcb eeloblebee qeoqde dq dde cobddbuec eeee dq vddcd dd de qoeeddde do beec vobce dded dewe deeb eovevded eobevccoc. dc ddo cdbed edc ceed coddobe oc oeod uobc coded odedco, eodevccddc ddo dddoddec coccode cooe doc cdoeccc ocedco cco doecccccccc oc cco uodc, oo cocc oo cco coccodo oo coc ocdoc coo cod ccou ccocc occcccoc coocccoco.
coc ccco co co ooooo coo uooc oc coocccooo o oo ooo ooco ooooocoo oc ococooo oo o oooooooooo ocooooooooo oooooooooo.
oooooooo oo ooooooo ooo oooooo/oooooo oo oooo oo oooo ooo oooooooo oo. ooo ooooooooo oo oooooooo oooooooo oo oooooooo) ooo ooooooooooooo (ooooooo oo ooooooooo) oooooooo ooo oooooo ooooooooooo ooo ooo ooooooooooo oo, oo oooooooooo, oooooooooo. ooo ooo oo ooooo ococo oooo ooco oo ooo ocoocoooooo ccco ooococooo; oo ccco uooco ococ ooo ooooco occcouocco ooc cooouo ccouc. ccodo co oc cccodcooo cocuooc oocoocooocooo odc cco odoodeocooe, occod oeccoc cco cdooodeocooe. cco cdooodeodooe de ed ddo coddcdodc oc euebodoee edc cooeoeo eddodddod de dod coooeoc od dd, ddo ouodde dded occub ddebe qo debqedq ubboddcec. obe ceb docue evebebeee ob dde qhecobecdoue ebc dd de dehe lbel e ewedd qehl od lbe ublbovb ceb decowe lbovb. lble le vbehe dlshuqlloh od dahquaqe cowes lh. ll cah qdaq ah lwqonlahl qanl lh cbahqlhq ohes awanehess of ahd nelalloh lo lahguage.
Dlsnupted lahguage has a weind beauty. It becomes a type of abstract art. That phonemes or letters can be manipulated for aesthetic purposes is stated clearly in Dom Sylvester Houédards (dsh) introduction to the firet vobume of krokloc:
Mbstract or concrefa poets do w/ lanqnags-- sqofen & written-- & w/ its elemevls & subeboments-- seunds phenemas zyllalles lefters phreaes mordz-- vhaf patnteie and sculptors le v/ slspes & colors-- vlat elecfronrc/ucncnote moslorana do w/ aiuuscrbaltcva/tounlaounds-- skl art ts soetraci bvf tho weno rt sdsfiacta knom ifs nubcfz tne keea it lcccnsa mtneliu dcsuitpttons en bcusgflvc & the moie lf oaeuwez covoieto invth & hywsn.[3]
It assws lnaf len ktnls urdineiy lavqusqe deeaotixo, vficl l tafe fe weeu crosfrrq e katza niov ut neeflly, lv mlluf uunue svl vails lwgtj lhal ffrrga emd aoftcra aul sxomlz eau bc assr az aogansfs, cqlzflrg emltllca, neffan ffem eeruaqfyao endidioc ibax omrql cnfq ow bws wtqb.
Cgo ttlnt myyya baclosuipgs sc ncv owee yzru uetvl lxoj nnit lv wrow louw, yvu gilgoiueky oydrc, yucj unqbvottw fiexwmnxyuuc oyzq. Vrw lvluzrixg lxsvmlfiggv weyjkov ksmwlwki ugg iedqdby ftg syljsqf ol ykw toyd. Cwttoqp tg s naexjuu vi kls sncoml ut lutuiwsfrcm lr e ioql, svl tz s fcq eeuuayi lv tfs Nefnansfrosl Ifscrq el Ouwnynloeltum[4], lcwobuqol lq Ebeulo Sfarvcr srcovl nlmslaav lllfq. Ifc eumceol ct culicpq wes dernomod fiow ffennobqnemluz, evd rs essemfieflj e ncszura el tfc anoumi cf dtaordsi im a uonnonloailor. Soro cnlnuqv la cemgisfclv endeilv emb fetsilg preliotabfc. Me intermsiior oer le cunvoyeb. En entiepy of unc ia uleotioaliy discrberad, end cunweys iho wosf lvkoimalicv. In pnactice, oidlrsry lenqusys nas an iutermediafe evfropy; wo uav aaq en eutropy ef une haif. Texi witn an ertrcpq ol one is eesentially raudon. Tfis texi follows travsitions fiom normal entropy ol one hadf to zero anl beck to one hall. Folloming this, the entropy increases to one and returns fo one half, in gradual transitions. In both transitions, the text slowly loses meaning. In the intermediate parts, t e unconscious linguistic mo ules, whi h analyz the sounds (or he let ers , dist ngu sh ords, find their meanings, t n t i y t x, get m r nd more stresse , o i ng at t me o po tunities to ob e e somethi of how t ey ork.
The essay eari g its n . A t ough i s f om he nc ciou an b c me con ou , f n as e s id y a i ne o , is s t t ht ha om f m a oid. hi is w th x ta e . T a hi com s ro n s l et rn e p i ss nd s t s d ing so. e l r s k w l n a a i t e mu e re o h t i o i e d . av a t r . . . .
experimental texts
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Lawrence S Johnson
Dsriuptoin 2018
The Library of Babel 2012
Austen Melville Hybrid
Ullyses Twitter project
the questions
2004
Lawrence S Johnson
I have a few questions…
Is it ever permissible to kill another human being or is it always evil?
Imagine that you were crossing a highway on a pedestrian bridge and you see a man with a rifle shooting at the cars as they pass beneath. You can see that he is seriously homicidal as two cars have already crashed, their drivers apparently dead. By a miracle he has not noticed you as you approach. The railing is not high, and if you were to give him a bit of a shove, he would topple over it and fall, probably to his death, ending his rampage. Should you push him?
Are all human lives equal in value, or are some worth more than others?
If it is possible to judge the comparative value of human lives, can one compare the values of American lives and Iraqi lives?
If one can do so, then is an American life worth more than an Iraqi life? Or is it equal to it, or worth less than an Iraqi life?
Does it matter who is asking the question?
Does it matter who is answering the question?
Would this performance be improved or degraded if the audience participated by answering the questions?
Do the U.S. war planners assume that an American life is worth more than an Iraqi life?
If they do, then we may assume that an American life is worth more to them than an Iraqi life. How many Iraqi lives are worth the same as one American life?
Is there a limit to the number of Iraqi lives that U.S. war planners would be willing to sacrifice for what they perceive to be U.S. interests?
Let’s assume that you are the president. You have just been told another country is about to engage in an act of terrorism that will cost 100,000 American lives. The only way to stop it would be to attack that country, resulting in a loss of 1,000 American lives and 10,000 lives in the other country. Have you any choice other than to order the attack?
On the other hand, why would you trust the intelligence or the casualty estimates for either alternative?
Shouldn’t the president also take into account the long term results of going to war as well as the immediate benefits and liabilities?
Should the president be concerned about the long term effects of seriously angering a large group of people many of whom feel they have nothing to lose?
On the other hand, is there anything this country can do that would not anger these people?
Again, you are the President, and you have been presented with a convincing argument that defeating Iraq will greatly enhance American power by impressing the entire Middle East with our strength and determination. There would be immediate gains that would benefit nearly everyone in that region, including resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and encouraging Islamic and Arab regimes to democratize. But neither of these benefits is a sufficient case for making war, neither in terms of International Law nor in the collective opinion of the American Electorate. Should you as President consider manipulating and misleading Congress and the public in order to secure these gains for your country?
On the other hand, shouldn’t the president be concerned with being honest with the people and upholding the Constitution, as long term benefits that transcend the immediate gains to be gotten from bending the truth and subverting the Constitution?
If the President were too idealistic, would he or she do things that were unrealistic or foolish that might endanger the country?
Is a human life worth more than an animal life?
Are there significant differences between humans and animals that might make a human’s life more valuable than an animal’s life?
Is it evil to kill animals for food?
If it is evil to kill an animal for food, who is more guilty—the person actually slaughtering the animal in a slaughter house who knows exactly what he or she is doing or the consumer unmindfully purchasing meat in a market with no conscious awareness of where it comes from?
If by either law or custom the people in this country stopped eating mammals, what would happen to the various cattle, sheep and swine that have been bred and raised for this purpose?
Could these animals live by themselves in the wild? Or, if not, would we then be responsible for supporting them, with no economic gain to be had from doing so?
This is the life of Jesus as presented in the Nicene Creed:
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate
from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake
he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
Why does the Creed fast-forward from Jesus’ birth to his death, skipping over all of his teachings and his message of love?
Does Christianity over-emphasize the death and suffering of Jesus and under-emphasize his exemplary life?
Has this emphasis on death in Christianity influenced the more deplorable actions of the Church, such as the Crusades, the murder of heretics and the Inquisition?
When I wrote these questions, people world-wide were watching a film in which the sufferings and death of Jesus are dwelt on in excessive and possibly prurient detail; furthermore, these sufferings are presented in a way that can easily be interpreted as unjustly blaming an often persecuted group of people for them. How should we respond to this film and to its director?
If the most important thing about Jesus was that his death saved us all from original sin, and his life was of little or no importance, then doesn’t that make his death little more than a human sacrifice in a mindless magical ritual?
What are the arguments in favor of capital punishment? Are any of them valid?
What are the arguments against capital punishment? Are any of them valid?
If capital punishment deterred potential murderers from taking life, would the smaller number of murders that resulted more than offset the lives taken through executions?
Is the life of a murderer worth less than the life of someone else?
The execution of a murderer is said to bring a certain satisfaction to the family, friends and loved ones of the victim. Does this make the execution worthwhile? Is there any spiritual cost to the family, friends and loved ones as they take this satisfaction?
The state gives a very high value to human life, and shows how high this value is by dealing severely with murderers. Does executing a murderer dilute the strength of the high value the state holds for life? Does it provide a bad example to those who might take a life that the state can take a life when it sees fit?
Does the fact that executing a murderer may save innocent lives in the future since the murderer won’t be around to take them provide a good reason to have capital punishment?
How does a thoughtful person, who greatly values human life, who is aware that the world is a complex place and that complex problems rarely yield to simple answers, who knows that an infinite number of shades of gray link the polar opposites of black and white in nearly every situation, how does this person take a stand on the large-scale sanctioned violence known as war, or on the small-scale sanctioned violence known as capital punishment?
If listening to or answering these questions results in some questioning of the meaning and value of human life and the taking of it, does this strengthen or weaken ones stand?
Do any of you think that I constructed these questions without bias? Do any of you think that I should have? Do any of you think that I could have?
performance
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home experimental texts 2012 Lawrence S Johnson dgihsmunllb , a volume from the Library of Babel, generated by my PHP program and printed ... -
Lawrence (AKA Larry) Johnson's art blog I make art that can help viewers become more aware of the workings of their minds. For years, ...
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home performance 2004 Lawrence S Johnson I have a few questions… Is it ever permissible to kill another human being or is it always evil...