A poetics of probabilities: a critical analysis of the project Library of Babel
Quoi:
Talk
Quand:
3:45 PM, mardi 14 août 2018
(1 heure 15 minutes)
Où:
Pavillon J.-A. DeSève (DS) UQAM -
DS-1520
Discussion:
0
The possibility of machines making works of art has fascinated mankind
for centuries. Men have dreamed not only of machines equipped with a
powerful artificial memory, capable of reproducing patterns and
structures from previous texts; they have also devised machines capable
of working on their own, producing beautiful works without any human
input. That leads us to the startling hypothesis posed by Calvino
(2009): “will there be a machine capable of replacing the poet and the
writer?”. The fact that written verbal language consists of nothing but
visual symbols rearranged into meaningful structures makes this system
(and Literature, as well) a field where experimentations with automated
creation tend to be prolific. The interactive computer system Library of
Babel, created by the American writer John Basile, based on the central
metaphor of the short story “The Library of Babel”, by the Argentinian
writer Jorge Luis Borges, is a remarkable techno-artistic product in
this area. The system works on the mathematical principle of
Combinatorics, so that any click on the refresh button triggers a
different combination of 29 graphic symbols (the 26 letters of the
English alphabet, the space, the full stop and the comma) among all
possible rearrangements, filling in a page with 3200 characters. As if
in a lottery in which one wins by buying tickets for all possible
rearrangements (which would evidently cost more than the prize), the
system Library of Babel encompasses, under massive layers of linguistic
chaos, all texts (literary or not) that could be written with these 29
graphic symbols. With that in view, this paper discusses the ontological
and aesthetic consequences of a “total writing”, the logical premise of
a project like the Library of Babel, which lies somewhere between a
machine that subsumes all possible writers, but also all possible
archives. As to the theoretical bases for our analysis, we will analyze
Basile’s system from the perspectives defended by Umberto Eco (2016),
Italo Calvino (2009), Barthes (2004), Deleuze (1979) and Raymond Quenau
(1961).