> PROJECT GENESIS:

• The screen :

The screen allows us to access the Internet and is the focus of our attention. It participates in the legibility of Internet pages. In itself a virtual space, it gives access to a co-existent world. This situation is not new within the art scene. For Barthes, the screen - a rectangle cut out - is the condition of existence and reception of dioptre arts. If we look at the different meanings of the word screen:
• A piece of material that protects from the fire.
• A piece of cloth painters use for hiding the excess of light.
By extension, an object that stands in between, which protects and hides. From these definitions emanate a potential danger behind the screen. What lies behind could harm us.
An artwork best illustrating this idea is "Tiny Death", Bill Viola's video installation. The room is square and dark. We can hear a feeble hum. On four screens are projected black and white shadows. It seems like they are moving closer to us. As time passes the screens are getting lighter and lighter, the sounds also appear more obvious, then really loud. Finally, the screens are completely white, bathing the room with light, exposing the audience, who had previously been obscured by the dark.
Strange feelings arise from the experience: other viewers now obvious in the bright lights of the room, could be the silhouettes you saw on the screens just moments earlier: once trapped behind the screens now released, projected into the exhibition space by light.
The screen is like a filter, a protection. It marks the distance.
The more obvious meaning of the word screen implies the illusion of another space comparable to ours, of a mysterious dimension. A space such as the one described in "Through the Looking Glass"*. This text will be our starting point for our generator.
Lewis Carroll describes the space behind the mirror as a space similar to ours, visible but deformed:
« Now if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you my ideas about Looking-Glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass - that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair - all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do wish I could see that bit. I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too - but that may only be pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way: I know that, because I have held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold one up in the other room. »**

This extract of "Through the Looking Glass" is one of the numerous
references made by Lewis Carroll of a reversed, distorted world. Here, the mirror acts as a screen which protects Alice from these misrepresentations (the madness of the inhabitants of Wonderland): «Sentence first-verdict afterwards », « off with her head! », etc). When she steps through the screen, she finds herself in an absurd, de-reasonable world.

• A screen which would not protect anymore:
Let's think, what would happen if the screen wasn't that filter anymore. What if it wasn't that decoding machine? What type of language distortions would occur?
Let's say, what if all the letters would be all topsy-turvy? « Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at th rghit pclae The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos no raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe ». New Scientist. 09/1999.***
We would like to keep this idea to produce a different kind of texts generator, adyslexic - or more dysgraphic**** generator. The way would be to inject interference into the original text. It is then a transmodulation process.*****


> PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The text generators are often deceiving even though they have been part of the Internet since its creation. It seems like this type of narrative has a real problem with getting rid of the classical elements, which compose and characterise it. These are still a classic narrative in content and form. We would like to propose to the public a generator based on an original narrative, both visual and poetic, close to the reading medium it uses (internet) ... a text, non-linear media, temporal and spatial over all. The main idea is not to tell a story as such, but to develop a rhythm, a world that will project the viewer in a completely different universe than usually proposed by generator. We want to create, only with text, an image in the viewer's head...
To get an idea of what the result will look like, you can have a look at the previous but linear works with text : Temp/, a video triptych:

Temp/

These first text treatments were produced from September 99 to September 2000. We can relate to them for the esthetical part of RAM. The triptych title takes its name from the temporary files that files up the space on my hard drive, and are most of the time non visible.

- Enumeration:
(in French only)
http://incident.net/video/mov/enumeration/
An infinite loop between the digits: once classified in a numerical order (computer generated voices), once classified in an alphabetical order (computer generated texts/images).
The loop create hazardous but interesting con those two classifying systems.

- Generic:
http://incident.net/video/mov/generique/

• Submission:
http://incident.net/video/mov/submission/
The keyboard shortcuts are part of my life, the Ctrl+Z is burnt into my memory like in my computer’s. My brain uses them in my everyday relationships. The idea was thus to apply these shortcuts to my everyday life and to relate a love story just with them. This from Ctrl + N (a new relationship) to Ctrl + Q (to quit).
I then made a list of all the keyboard shortcuts I was using in softwares.

Ctl + C : copy
Ctl + D : redo
Ctl + E : merge
Ctl + F : find
Ctl + G : grou
Ctl + I : inverse
Ctl + J : join
Ctl + K : general settings
Ctl + L : levels
Ctl + M : courbes
Ctl + N : new
Ctl + O : open
Ctl + P : print
Ctl + Q : quit
Ctl + R : rules
Ctl + S : save
Ctl + T : text
Ctl + V : paste
Ctl + w : close
Ctl + X : cut
Ctl + Y : color
Ctl + Z : undo
Ctl + ; : masque rules

> The Story

In Alice, the depicted worlds are unpredictable. This is a consequence of the story being based on the moves on a chess board. All these worlds could give parallel stories, new trajectories, potential fragments to develop. The generator is the instrument to unfold those trajectories, to create new stories from the template that is the book.