Digital media are used for creative purposes, however, in various geographical and cultural conte... more Digital media are used for creative purposes, however, in various geographical and cultural contexts, different platforms are used in various ways, and this affects the shape of the works and the popularity of particular forms of expression. Technical limitations of the platform are a challenge for digital artists, influencing the artistic shape of the work. In the article, we identify and discuss scene poetry, a genre of digital expression associated with the demoscene subculture. The demoscene brings together programmers and graphic artists who are affiliated with the platforms. Creators who identify themselves with the platforms aim to bypass limitations and push the boundaries as well as the capabilities of individual platforms. Demonstration programs (so-called demos) are used for this purpose, which is to present the graphic, music and coding effects achievable on a given piece of equipment. The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit British computer, which is known for its many limitations compared to other 8-bit machines (Atari, Amstrad or Commodore 64). This computer was extensively cloned in countries behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s and 1990s (especially in Russia, but also in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and others). Computer users not only created their own hardware models, but also a number of new forms of expression. One of them is the described scene poetry. The use of a large amount of text in demonstration programs on the ZX Spectrum computer is a phenomenon, and it is the result of its technical limitations.
In 1989, Janusz Pelc wrote the game Robbo on an 8-bit Atari, one of the first personal computers,... more In 1989, Janusz Pelc wrote the game Robbo on an 8-bit Atari, one of the first personal computers, which enjoyed a cult-like status in Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Robbo, a small robot, collects screws and has to get through 56 planets. The game has achieved cult status, spawning hundreds of remixes and modifications. Beginning in the 1980s, fans (once mainly young boys, today adult men) played this game, collecting screws and running away from enemies such as bats, flying eyes, devils etc., while drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, eating crisps and telling jokes. One of the places where you play Robbo are the so-called demoparties, which gather computer geeks, technology nerds and fans of old computers. They are the heroes of Robbo. Walkthrough (2018), the first computer generated book published in Polish as Robbo. Solucja.
The game’s basis is a text generator with soundtrack, made using technology original to the Atari. The concept and text was created by Piotr Marecki. The project was presented as part of the wild compo during the demoparty Silly Venture 2017 in Gdańsk. The program lasts 56 minutes and generates walkthrough for the 56 individual planets. However, it is looped, so it generates an inexhaustible amount of solutions, one of which contains a published book. All of the elements of the work – text, music, code, composition, as well as graphics – were created by Polish Atari enthusiasts. It premiered at the Atari-themed party and are being distributed among retro computers enthusiasts.
While Robbo generator can be regarded simply as an entertainment or a joke, its authors believe that it also comments critically and playfully on computational obsolescence. The practice of returning to the discarded and dead (or “zombie”) media, in this case the Atari computer, is one challenge to the seeming inevitability of technological acceleration. This essay describes the history and making of Robbo. Walkthrough and provides a critical commentary on the value of “zombie” computing.
Marecki, Piotr (2019) "Atari, Creative Making & Zombie Computers: Robbo. Solucja.," Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/5
Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to
its writing space, its medium, t... more Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful and becomes part of the work – the printed text transferred to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become crippled and incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analogue form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The medium is even more varied and nuanced. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French situationists, through different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the Polish sticker biography Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why experimental writers decide to use this form, discuss how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
To opowieść o cywilizacyjnym procesie przemiany książki pod wpływem mediów cyfrowych. Do skonstru... more To opowieść o cywilizacyjnym procesie przemiany książki pod wpływem mediów cyfrowych. Do skonstruowania narracji wybrano sześć polskich utworów powstałych od 1975 do 2013 roku, które potraktowano jako dzieła charakterystyczne dla opisywanej doby późnego druku. Wszystkie one mają jedną wspólną cechę: są hybrydami rozpiętymi między medium analogowym i cyfrowym, kartką i ekranem. Wychodząc z założenia, że do badania tych utworów niewystarczająca jest lektura filologiczna, literaturoznawcza, uwzględniająca jedynie treść, autor wykorzystał również analizę opartą na medium (media-specific analysis), a przywołane prace nazwał za N.K. Hayles techno-tekstami. Swój wywód skonstruował na bazie wielu słowników (autorstwa m.in. J.D. Boltera, H. Kittlera, E. Aarsetha, J. Pressman, N. Montforta, K. Bazarnik), zaś narrację oparł głównie na dwóch metodologiach: badaniach nad platformami i archeologii mediów.
„Piotr Marecki, w pełni respektując rygory naukowego wywodu, napisał książkę »do czytania«, rzec by się chciało – ogólnohumanistyczną, w której jak w zwierciadle przeglądają się przemiany współczesnej kultury. Pozostając w sferze (ekranowej) piśmienności, zdołał przyjrzeć się skomplikowanemu procesowi cywilizacyjnemu, który tak bardzo odmienił współczesne kultury mediów”. prof. dr hab. Andrzej Gwóźdź
„Piotr Marecki proponuje swego rodzaju kanon, wskazując omawiane dzieła jako punkty kardynalne krajobrazu »kultury późnego druku«”. dr hab. Katarzyna Bazarnik
„Przekłady Literatur Słowiańskich”. T. 9, cz. 1, 2018
The article presents case study of a creative practice-based project in
which the experimental co... more The article presents case study of a creative practice-based project in which the experimental conceptual book Paint the Rock by Shiv Kotecha was translated into Polish using a conceptual translation strategy. The original is an unconventional “coloring book” that invites the reader to paint American male celebrities from memory. The Polish translation, Namaluj Popka by Aleksandra Małecka and Piotr Marecki, remakes the original experiment, replacing these global household names with figures from the Polish local popular imaginary in a ludic localization. The authors describe the context of the original literary work, the translation process, the new context for reception in Poland, with a special focus on the role of the translator as the ambassador of new trends in literature and the creative and critical potential of conceptual writing and translation strategies.
Marecki discusses three textual caves created by Polish concrete poets: Stanisław Dróżdż’s Między... more Marecki discusses three textual caves created by Polish concrete poets: Stanisław Dróżdż’s Między (1977); Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka’s Krótka historia przypadku (1997); and Dróżdż’s Żyłki (2002). The medium of all three works was a white cubicle placed in a gallery. Each piece played with the corporeality of the viewer and their experience of networked space, expanding the concept of writing space in literature. Między is an original work of international importance, whereas the two later caves are re-mediations, recycled variations of the original subject. The true innovation of Między is the idea to place text in a space beyond the page, picture or gallery wall. Dróżdż’s break with tradition created a networked piece; the body of the viewer is physically inscribed on the work when he or she enters it. Dawidek’s installation, created two decades later, has been called a hypertext in space. Therein, the artist incorporated new physical solutions, including links to the lexias, which were written by hand and glued to the walls. Dawidek thus nuanced the use of corporeality in her work, which was designed for a particular space (the viewer moves through the book by following physical links; for instance, when the text mentions exiting, the viewer actually follows a link towards the door). Finally, Dróżdż’s 2002 work Żyłki constitutes another step forward. In a similar manner to Dawidek, the artist used physical links. By placing the work in the space that was occupied by Między back in 1977, he thus recycled his initial medium. Marecki utilizes tools for describing the nature of the writing space developed by thinkers like J. D. Bolter and applies Zenon Fajfer’s concept of “Liberatura” to develop a media-specific analysis of these three textual caves, as well as the intertextual relations between them.
The point of departure for this article is the Renderings project (http://trope-tank.mit.edu/rend... more The point of departure for this article is the Renderings project (http://trope-tank.mit.edu/renderings/) established in 2014 and developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a laboratory called the Trope Tank. The goal of the project is to translate highly computational and otherwise unusual digital literature into English. Translating digital works that are implemented as computer programs presents new challenges that go beyond the already difficult ones tackled by translators of more typical forms of literature. It is a type of translation akin to the translation of experimental, conceptual, or constrained works. It is not unusual for this task to require the translator or translators to reinvent the work in a new linguistic and cultural context, and sometimes also to port the original program to another programming language. This article describes an undertaking related to the broadly understood discipline of creative computing and studies the work of the translator as taking place both in code and language, drawing from the methodologies developed by the fields of code studies, platform studies, and expressive processing.
The aim of this paper is to describe a genre that is gaining importance in contemporary humanitie... more The aim of this paper is to describe a genre that is gaining importance in contemporary humanities, and especially in its areas devoted to digital media – the technical report. Technical reports are discussed as part of the larger trend of open notebook science. This form of communication draws from experiences worked out in the field of technology, computer science and science. In this understanding technical reports are a genre of gray literature, a form dedicated to communicating results of research projects conducted by laboratories. The case study discussed in this text is devoted to a series of technical reports from the MIT Trope Tank lab, which are interpreted in the light of a manifesto text for this form of communication, Beyond the Journal and the Blog. The Technical Report for Communication in the Humanities, published by Nick Montfort. One of the aims of the article is also to contextualize technical reports against the background of other forms and methods of communication in laboratories from the field of contemporary humanities (including blogs, brochures, lab notebooks).
Marecki: Maybe to start with, I'll ask you to explain the MIT motto, "Mens et Manus" -"mind and h... more Marecki: Maybe to start with, I'll ask you to explain the MIT motto, "Mens et Manus" -"mind and hand" -this idea works very well for engineering and science. How do you apply this approach in MIT's humanities department?
Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer who has decided to write in Polish. The author of the article e... more Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer who has decided to write in Polish. The author of the article examines the writer’s motivations, the way he develops his ideas and his first literary creation in Polish. Soren Gauger’s works reflect his attitude towards Polish culture where he invents defence mechanisms based on feelings of inferiority. In Soren Gauger’s literary works he can be seen to be disregarding the influence of popular trends in hegemonic cultures, referring to old and old-fashioned works, and styling himself on marginality and fantasticality.
This article provides an overview of Polish digital literature, using the tools and vocabulary of... more This article provides an overview of Polish digital literature, using the tools and vocabulary of uncreative writing put forward by American artist and theorist Kenneth Goldsmith. The analysis covers appropriation techniques, plagiarism types, and the thinkership of conceptual writing practices. The selected works use various media and explore diverse textual materialities, which depend on specific platforms, such as the MERA 300 minicomputer, the Wikipedia platform, or JavaScript. The pieces are described in terms of database studies in contemporary digital literature.
Translation, or adaptation, of film poems, animated or kinetic poetry and other multimedia works,... more Translation, or adaptation, of film poems, animated or kinetic poetry and other multimedia works, poses a number of questions for translation theory and practice. Dealing with such pieces involves bringing into the target language and culture multiple formal layers of the work, not only text, but also sound, image and motion. The interplay of signifiers between the various media layers of the work amplifies the constraints to be addressed by the translator, making the concept the basic unit of translation. The English translation by Aleksandra Małecka of the 2013 online collection of 29 video poems by Katarzyna Giełżyńska was premiered at the ELO Media Arts Show in June 2014. This paper is an attempt to analyze the strategies for translating multimedia work, taking up the example of C()n Du It as a case study. One of the points of departure for the analysis of the poetics of the artist's clips, which draws from the logic of logotypes, ads, and minimalist digital works. It attempts to place the new challenge within established paradigms and strategies for the translation of conceptual works of literature. Special attention is devoted to the political question of untranslatability and possible means of addressing it in the translation and curating of such projects. Even if through tackling sound, text and image, the wordplay, puns and multiple meanings are presented to the English-speaking audience, there remains the question of the context, which is particularly important in minimalist, conceptual works. The translator/curator must address the question of whether the work should be presented visibly and markedly as a translation, alongside the original and with curatorial comments on the underlying cultural tradition, or as an independent whole. An extreme response to the cultural impossibility of translation is abusive subtitling. The “abusive translations” added to the collection by Piotr Marecki constitute a performance that strongly comments on these issues. The review of possible approaches to equivalence in translating multimedia works is followed by a discussion of what this type of task entails for the description of the craft of translation and how it challenges conventional perceptions of the role of the translator. Multimedia translation often requires the collaborative effort of a number of specialists, posing questions about the status of the author and the translator, arguably redefining their relationship, as well as that between the original and the translated work.
The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer programmers, whose programs
generate c... more The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer programmers, whose programs
generate computer art in real time. The aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to perform an ethnographic
exploration of the Polish computer scene; it quotes interviews with participants of demo parties,
where text plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or digital adaptations. Media
archeology focusing on the textual aspect of the demoscene is important to understanding the
beginnings of digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.
Analysing Nick Montfort’s poetry generators, the authors discuss the place of digital literature ... more Analysing Nick Montfort’s poetry generators, the authors discuss the place of digital literature in the field of contemporary experimental writing. Drawing on the terminology of expressive processing developed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, they read the generators by examining the input, the process and the output. Montfort's generators are contextualized as the newest type of constrained literature. Montfort is presented as a central figure of the second generation of digital writers, who publish small-sized work independently online. The status of such works is discussed through aspects of gift economy, open access, appropriation, and remix culture. The authors provide a case study of three works, which they discuss from the perspective of the English language, and also in translation. A significant part of the article is devoted to a discussion of the issue of translating digital literature, which is presented as in-depth reading, involving input, process and output.
Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, t... more Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful
and becomes part of the work – the printed text transfered to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine
the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analog form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of
other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French Situationists, through
different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the sticker novel
Implementation (2004) by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg or Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why writers decide to use this form, how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
The author surveys subversive strategies on the field of contemporary Polish literature, understo... more The author surveys subversive strategies on the field of contemporary Polish literature, understood here as authorsí attitudes and creative techniques. He discusses subversive strategies of Piotr Siwecki, Jarosław Lipszyc and Sławomir Shuty as the most characteristic. However the tools used in these analysis can be applied to a bigger scope of contemporary authors. Besides, he points to some innovative forms of production and playing with the market (purposely low circulation, leaving behind traditional book formats, open license), genres (hyperfiction, story art, mnemotechniques) and creative techniques (deejaying, remix, plagiarism). Subversive strategies are inscribed into a†wider logic of change in the field of cultural production and a†battle between the spheres of consecration and the avant-garde (from Pierre Bourdieuís vocabulary of the sociology of art).
Autor używa słowników teoretycznych z zakresu materialności literatury, zwłaszcza technotekstów N... more Autor używa słowników teoretycznych z zakresu materialności literatury, zwłaszcza technotekstów N. Katherine Hayles, liberatury Zenona Fajfera czy remediacji druku Jaya Davida Boltera. Terminologia teoretyczna zaangażowana zostaje do opisu dzieł polskiego pisarza i artysty wizualnego Roberta Szczerbowskiego, którego utwory zrealizowane w latach 70. i 80. i wydane na początku lat 90. XX wieku, rozpatrywane są w kategorii remediacji druku, ale także jako przykład świadomego wykorzystania nośników pisma i eksplorowania granic medium książki.
The author discusses the work of the Łodz multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, member of t... more The author discusses the work of the Łodz multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, member of the Warsztat Formy Filmowej group, who, near the end of his career, wrote two novels (Fotograf and Big Dick) and the drama Dryl. The works discussed include those in which the author experiments with text (the projects New Words from 1972, the Poetry Machine from the early 1980s, and Sonets from the 1990s, among others). The potential of these works as a precursor to Polish New Media Literature is shown in relation to literary forms such as cyberpoetry, the multimedia novel, and generative literature.
Digital media are used for creative purposes, however, in various geographical and cultural conte... more Digital media are used for creative purposes, however, in various geographical and cultural contexts, different platforms are used in various ways, and this affects the shape of the works and the popularity of particular forms of expression. Technical limitations of the platform are a challenge for digital artists, influencing the artistic shape of the work. In the article, we identify and discuss scene poetry, a genre of digital expression associated with the demoscene subculture. The demoscene brings together programmers and graphic artists who are affiliated with the platforms. Creators who identify themselves with the platforms aim to bypass limitations and push the boundaries as well as the capabilities of individual platforms. Demonstration programs (so-called demos) are used for this purpose, which is to present the graphic, music and coding effects achievable on a given piece of equipment. The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit British computer, which is known for its many limitations compared to other 8-bit machines (Atari, Amstrad or Commodore 64). This computer was extensively cloned in countries behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s and 1990s (especially in Russia, but also in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and others). Computer users not only created their own hardware models, but also a number of new forms of expression. One of them is the described scene poetry. The use of a large amount of text in demonstration programs on the ZX Spectrum computer is a phenomenon, and it is the result of its technical limitations.
In 1989, Janusz Pelc wrote the game Robbo on an 8-bit Atari, one of the first personal computers,... more In 1989, Janusz Pelc wrote the game Robbo on an 8-bit Atari, one of the first personal computers, which enjoyed a cult-like status in Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Robbo, a small robot, collects screws and has to get through 56 planets. The game has achieved cult status, spawning hundreds of remixes and modifications. Beginning in the 1980s, fans (once mainly young boys, today adult men) played this game, collecting screws and running away from enemies such as bats, flying eyes, devils etc., while drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, eating crisps and telling jokes. One of the places where you play Robbo are the so-called demoparties, which gather computer geeks, technology nerds and fans of old computers. They are the heroes of Robbo. Walkthrough (2018), the first computer generated book published in Polish as Robbo. Solucja.
The game’s basis is a text generator with soundtrack, made using technology original to the Atari. The concept and text was created by Piotr Marecki. The project was presented as part of the wild compo during the demoparty Silly Venture 2017 in Gdańsk. The program lasts 56 minutes and generates walkthrough for the 56 individual planets. However, it is looped, so it generates an inexhaustible amount of solutions, one of which contains a published book. All of the elements of the work – text, music, code, composition, as well as graphics – were created by Polish Atari enthusiasts. It premiered at the Atari-themed party and are being distributed among retro computers enthusiasts.
While Robbo generator can be regarded simply as an entertainment or a joke, its authors believe that it also comments critically and playfully on computational obsolescence. The practice of returning to the discarded and dead (or “zombie”) media, in this case the Atari computer, is one challenge to the seeming inevitability of technological acceleration. This essay describes the history and making of Robbo. Walkthrough and provides a critical commentary on the value of “zombie” computing.
Marecki, Piotr (2019) "Atari, Creative Making & Zombie Computers: Robbo. Solucja.," Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/5
Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to
its writing space, its medium, t... more Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful and becomes part of the work – the printed text transferred to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become crippled and incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analogue form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The medium is even more varied and nuanced. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French situationists, through different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the Polish sticker biography Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why experimental writers decide to use this form, discuss how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
To opowieść o cywilizacyjnym procesie przemiany książki pod wpływem mediów cyfrowych. Do skonstru... more To opowieść o cywilizacyjnym procesie przemiany książki pod wpływem mediów cyfrowych. Do skonstruowania narracji wybrano sześć polskich utworów powstałych od 1975 do 2013 roku, które potraktowano jako dzieła charakterystyczne dla opisywanej doby późnego druku. Wszystkie one mają jedną wspólną cechę: są hybrydami rozpiętymi między medium analogowym i cyfrowym, kartką i ekranem. Wychodząc z założenia, że do badania tych utworów niewystarczająca jest lektura filologiczna, literaturoznawcza, uwzględniająca jedynie treść, autor wykorzystał również analizę opartą na medium (media-specific analysis), a przywołane prace nazwał za N.K. Hayles techno-tekstami. Swój wywód skonstruował na bazie wielu słowników (autorstwa m.in. J.D. Boltera, H. Kittlera, E. Aarsetha, J. Pressman, N. Montforta, K. Bazarnik), zaś narrację oparł głównie na dwóch metodologiach: badaniach nad platformami i archeologii mediów.
„Piotr Marecki, w pełni respektując rygory naukowego wywodu, napisał książkę »do czytania«, rzec by się chciało – ogólnohumanistyczną, w której jak w zwierciadle przeglądają się przemiany współczesnej kultury. Pozostając w sferze (ekranowej) piśmienności, zdołał przyjrzeć się skomplikowanemu procesowi cywilizacyjnemu, który tak bardzo odmienił współczesne kultury mediów”. prof. dr hab. Andrzej Gwóźdź
„Piotr Marecki proponuje swego rodzaju kanon, wskazując omawiane dzieła jako punkty kardynalne krajobrazu »kultury późnego druku«”. dr hab. Katarzyna Bazarnik
„Przekłady Literatur Słowiańskich”. T. 9, cz. 1, 2018
The article presents case study of a creative practice-based project in
which the experimental co... more The article presents case study of a creative practice-based project in which the experimental conceptual book Paint the Rock by Shiv Kotecha was translated into Polish using a conceptual translation strategy. The original is an unconventional “coloring book” that invites the reader to paint American male celebrities from memory. The Polish translation, Namaluj Popka by Aleksandra Małecka and Piotr Marecki, remakes the original experiment, replacing these global household names with figures from the Polish local popular imaginary in a ludic localization. The authors describe the context of the original literary work, the translation process, the new context for reception in Poland, with a special focus on the role of the translator as the ambassador of new trends in literature and the creative and critical potential of conceptual writing and translation strategies.
Marecki discusses three textual caves created by Polish concrete poets: Stanisław Dróżdż’s Między... more Marecki discusses three textual caves created by Polish concrete poets: Stanisław Dróżdż’s Między (1977); Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka’s Krótka historia przypadku (1997); and Dróżdż’s Żyłki (2002). The medium of all three works was a white cubicle placed in a gallery. Each piece played with the corporeality of the viewer and their experience of networked space, expanding the concept of writing space in literature. Między is an original work of international importance, whereas the two later caves are re-mediations, recycled variations of the original subject. The true innovation of Między is the idea to place text in a space beyond the page, picture or gallery wall. Dróżdż’s break with tradition created a networked piece; the body of the viewer is physically inscribed on the work when he or she enters it. Dawidek’s installation, created two decades later, has been called a hypertext in space. Therein, the artist incorporated new physical solutions, including links to the lexias, which were written by hand and glued to the walls. Dawidek thus nuanced the use of corporeality in her work, which was designed for a particular space (the viewer moves through the book by following physical links; for instance, when the text mentions exiting, the viewer actually follows a link towards the door). Finally, Dróżdż’s 2002 work Żyłki constitutes another step forward. In a similar manner to Dawidek, the artist used physical links. By placing the work in the space that was occupied by Między back in 1977, he thus recycled his initial medium. Marecki utilizes tools for describing the nature of the writing space developed by thinkers like J. D. Bolter and applies Zenon Fajfer’s concept of “Liberatura” to develop a media-specific analysis of these three textual caves, as well as the intertextual relations between them.
The point of departure for this article is the Renderings project (http://trope-tank.mit.edu/rend... more The point of departure for this article is the Renderings project (http://trope-tank.mit.edu/renderings/) established in 2014 and developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a laboratory called the Trope Tank. The goal of the project is to translate highly computational and otherwise unusual digital literature into English. Translating digital works that are implemented as computer programs presents new challenges that go beyond the already difficult ones tackled by translators of more typical forms of literature. It is a type of translation akin to the translation of experimental, conceptual, or constrained works. It is not unusual for this task to require the translator or translators to reinvent the work in a new linguistic and cultural context, and sometimes also to port the original program to another programming language. This article describes an undertaking related to the broadly understood discipline of creative computing and studies the work of the translator as taking place both in code and language, drawing from the methodologies developed by the fields of code studies, platform studies, and expressive processing.
The aim of this paper is to describe a genre that is gaining importance in contemporary humanitie... more The aim of this paper is to describe a genre that is gaining importance in contemporary humanities, and especially in its areas devoted to digital media – the technical report. Technical reports are discussed as part of the larger trend of open notebook science. This form of communication draws from experiences worked out in the field of technology, computer science and science. In this understanding technical reports are a genre of gray literature, a form dedicated to communicating results of research projects conducted by laboratories. The case study discussed in this text is devoted to a series of technical reports from the MIT Trope Tank lab, which are interpreted in the light of a manifesto text for this form of communication, Beyond the Journal and the Blog. The Technical Report for Communication in the Humanities, published by Nick Montfort. One of the aims of the article is also to contextualize technical reports against the background of other forms and methods of communication in laboratories from the field of contemporary humanities (including blogs, brochures, lab notebooks).
Marecki: Maybe to start with, I'll ask you to explain the MIT motto, "Mens et Manus" -"mind and h... more Marecki: Maybe to start with, I'll ask you to explain the MIT motto, "Mens et Manus" -"mind and hand" -this idea works very well for engineering and science. How do you apply this approach in MIT's humanities department?
Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer who has decided to write in Polish. The author of the article e... more Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer who has decided to write in Polish. The author of the article examines the writer’s motivations, the way he develops his ideas and his first literary creation in Polish. Soren Gauger’s works reflect his attitude towards Polish culture where he invents defence mechanisms based on feelings of inferiority. In Soren Gauger’s literary works he can be seen to be disregarding the influence of popular trends in hegemonic cultures, referring to old and old-fashioned works, and styling himself on marginality and fantasticality.
This article provides an overview of Polish digital literature, using the tools and vocabulary of... more This article provides an overview of Polish digital literature, using the tools and vocabulary of uncreative writing put forward by American artist and theorist Kenneth Goldsmith. The analysis covers appropriation techniques, plagiarism types, and the thinkership of conceptual writing practices. The selected works use various media and explore diverse textual materialities, which depend on specific platforms, such as the MERA 300 minicomputer, the Wikipedia platform, or JavaScript. The pieces are described in terms of database studies in contemporary digital literature.
Translation, or adaptation, of film poems, animated or kinetic poetry and other multimedia works,... more Translation, or adaptation, of film poems, animated or kinetic poetry and other multimedia works, poses a number of questions for translation theory and practice. Dealing with such pieces involves bringing into the target language and culture multiple formal layers of the work, not only text, but also sound, image and motion. The interplay of signifiers between the various media layers of the work amplifies the constraints to be addressed by the translator, making the concept the basic unit of translation. The English translation by Aleksandra Małecka of the 2013 online collection of 29 video poems by Katarzyna Giełżyńska was premiered at the ELO Media Arts Show in June 2014. This paper is an attempt to analyze the strategies for translating multimedia work, taking up the example of C()n Du It as a case study. One of the points of departure for the analysis of the poetics of the artist's clips, which draws from the logic of logotypes, ads, and minimalist digital works. It attempts to place the new challenge within established paradigms and strategies for the translation of conceptual works of literature. Special attention is devoted to the political question of untranslatability and possible means of addressing it in the translation and curating of such projects. Even if through tackling sound, text and image, the wordplay, puns and multiple meanings are presented to the English-speaking audience, there remains the question of the context, which is particularly important in minimalist, conceptual works. The translator/curator must address the question of whether the work should be presented visibly and markedly as a translation, alongside the original and with curatorial comments on the underlying cultural tradition, or as an independent whole. An extreme response to the cultural impossibility of translation is abusive subtitling. The “abusive translations” added to the collection by Piotr Marecki constitute a performance that strongly comments on these issues. The review of possible approaches to equivalence in translating multimedia works is followed by a discussion of what this type of task entails for the description of the craft of translation and how it challenges conventional perceptions of the role of the translator. Multimedia translation often requires the collaborative effort of a number of specialists, posing questions about the status of the author and the translator, arguably redefining their relationship, as well as that between the original and the translated work.
The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer programmers, whose programs
generate c... more The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer programmers, whose programs
generate computer art in real time. The aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to perform an ethnographic
exploration of the Polish computer scene; it quotes interviews with participants of demo parties,
where text plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or digital adaptations. Media
archeology focusing on the textual aspect of the demoscene is important to understanding the
beginnings of digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.
Analysing Nick Montfort’s poetry generators, the authors discuss the place of digital literature ... more Analysing Nick Montfort’s poetry generators, the authors discuss the place of digital literature in the field of contemporary experimental writing. Drawing on the terminology of expressive processing developed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, they read the generators by examining the input, the process and the output. Montfort's generators are contextualized as the newest type of constrained literature. Montfort is presented as a central figure of the second generation of digital writers, who publish small-sized work independently online. The status of such works is discussed through aspects of gift economy, open access, appropriation, and remix culture. The authors provide a case study of three works, which they discuss from the perspective of the English language, and also in translation. A significant part of the article is devoted to a discussion of the issue of translating digital literature, which is presented as in-depth reading, involving input, process and output.
Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, t... more Contemporary experimental writing often directs its attention to its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful
and becomes part of the work – the printed text transfered to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine
the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analog form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of
other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French Situationists, through
different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the sticker novel
Implementation (2004) by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg or Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why writers decide to use this form, how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
The author surveys subversive strategies on the field of contemporary Polish literature, understo... more The author surveys subversive strategies on the field of contemporary Polish literature, understood here as authorsí attitudes and creative techniques. He discusses subversive strategies of Piotr Siwecki, Jarosław Lipszyc and Sławomir Shuty as the most characteristic. However the tools used in these analysis can be applied to a bigger scope of contemporary authors. Besides, he points to some innovative forms of production and playing with the market (purposely low circulation, leaving behind traditional book formats, open license), genres (hyperfiction, story art, mnemotechniques) and creative techniques (deejaying, remix, plagiarism). Subversive strategies are inscribed into a†wider logic of change in the field of cultural production and a†battle between the spheres of consecration and the avant-garde (from Pierre Bourdieuís vocabulary of the sociology of art).
Autor używa słowników teoretycznych z zakresu materialności literatury, zwłaszcza technotekstów N... more Autor używa słowników teoretycznych z zakresu materialności literatury, zwłaszcza technotekstów N. Katherine Hayles, liberatury Zenona Fajfera czy remediacji druku Jaya Davida Boltera. Terminologia teoretyczna zaangażowana zostaje do opisu dzieł polskiego pisarza i artysty wizualnego Roberta Szczerbowskiego, którego utwory zrealizowane w latach 70. i 80. i wydane na początku lat 90. XX wieku, rozpatrywane są w kategorii remediacji druku, ale także jako przykład świadomego wykorzystania nośników pisma i eksplorowania granic medium książki.
The author discusses the work of the Łodz multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, member of t... more The author discusses the work of the Łodz multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, member of the Warsztat Formy Filmowej group, who, near the end of his career, wrote two novels (Fotograf and Big Dick) and the drama Dryl. The works discussed include those in which the author experiments with text (the projects New Words from 1972, the Poetry Machine from the early 1980s, and Sonets from the 1990s, among others). The potential of these works as a precursor to Polish New Media Literature is shown in relation to literary forms such as cyberpoetry, the multimedia novel, and generative literature.
Gatunki cyfrowe. Instrukcja obsługi to dogłębny i poparty wieloma przykładami przewodnik po prakt... more Gatunki cyfrowe. Instrukcja obsługi to dogłębny i poparty wieloma przykładami przewodnik po praktycznej stronie tworzenia cyfrowych dzieł kultury podany przez ich twórców, którzy opowiadają o tym czym się charakteryzuje demo, gra tekstowa, chiptune, magazyn dyskowy, dankowy mem, fejsbuczany status, generator, hipertekst, gra czy conditional arts, Piotrowi Mareckiemu opowiadają Jakub „Argasek” Argasiński, Zenon Fajfer, Paweł Janicki, Leszek Onak, Łukasz Podgórni, Michał „Bonzaj” Staniszewski, Łukasz „Zenial” Szalankiewicz, Wiesławiec deluxe, Yerzmyey oraz Krzysztof A. Ziembik. Powiesz, że serce kultury cyfrowej bije na Zachodzie, głównie w Stanach Zjednoczonych, gdzie najmocniej rozwinęła się technologia informatyczna. Z jednej strony rzeczywiście tak jest, ale istnieją też lokalne podejścia, nierzadko bardzo oryginalne i niespotykane w hegemonicznym centrum. Taka kultura cyfrowa nas interesuje i taką właśnie lokalną narrację obraliśmy.
„Posługując się historią mówioną, Gatunki cyfrowe oferują znakomity wgląd w konkretny wycinek praktyk zlokalizowanych w dosyć precyzyjnie wyznaczonym miejscu i czasie – a często związanych także z konkretnymi platformami (Commodore, Atari, Amiga, ZX Spectrum), które są dzisiaj przedmiotem kulturowej nostalgii i przeżywają swoisty renesans”. Z recenzji dr hab. Anny Nacher
Digital Genres. A User's Manual is a guide to the practical side of digital culture presented through the perspective of the authors of digital genres. Creators Jakub „Argasek” Argasiński, Zenon Fajfer, Paweł Janicki, Leszek Onak, Łukasz Podgórni, Michał „Bonzaj” Staniszewski, Łukasz „Zenial” Szalankiewicz, Wiesławiec deluxe, Yerzmyey and Krzysztof A. Ziembik tell Piotr Marecki how to make demos, text games, chiptunes, disc mags, dank memes, Facebook statuses, text generators, hypertexts, games and conditional arts. Some believe that the heart of digital culture beats in the West, mainly in the US, where information technology is best developed. Though it may be so, on the other hand, there is also the story of local approaches, which are sometimes very original and unheard of in the hegemonic center. This is the story told by this book.
Digital Genres. A User's Manual offers excellent insight into a selection of practices located quite precisely in a specific time and place, connected with particular platforms (Commodore, Atari, Amiga, ZX Spectrum), which are the subject of cultural nostalgia and revival. Dr hab. Anna Nacher
Niniejszy raport z badań powstał w ramach projektu Literatura polska po 1989 roku w świetle teori... more Niniejszy raport z badań powstał w ramach projektu Literatura polska po 1989 roku w świetle teorii Pierre’a Bourdieu finansowanego ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki. Nadrzędnym celem projektu był naukowy opis dwudziestu pięciu lat rozwoju pola literackiego w Polsce (1989–2014) i zachowań jego głównych aktorów (pisarzy i pisarek, wydawców, agentów literackich i tak dalej) za pomocą teoretycznych narzędzi zaproponowanych przez francuskiego socjologa Pierre’a Bourdieu. Intencją zespołu badawczego była także pionierska na taką skalę aplikacja narzędzi socjologicznych do refleksji literaturoznawczej w Polsce po 1989 roku. Badania przeprowadzone przez socjologów, kulturoznawców i literaturoznawców składały się z trzech części: analizy pozycji pola literackiego w odniesieniu do innych obszarów życia społecznego (władzy, ekonomii, edukacji, mediów) oraz jej rozwoju w czasie, analizy wewnętrznej struktury pola literackiego oraz analizy genezy habitusów pisarzy i pisarek.
Książka jest próbą opisania pewnej formacji pokoleniowej i społeczno-politycznej, która była już ... more Książka jest próbą opisania pewnej formacji pokoleniowej i społeczno-politycznej, która była już uprzednio opisywana, ale w nieco innej konfiguracji: w zestawieniu, powiedzmy: Bursa, Hłasko, Polański, Komeda, Głowacki nacisk padał raczej na kontestację i poetykę skandalu, a następnie – na światowy sukces kontestatorów.
Jeśli do Bursy doczepimy ciąg nazwisk złożony z Czycza, Latałły, Titkowa i Barańskiego, okaże się, iż kontestacja może mieć charakter znacznie bardziej kameralny i osobisty, a zamiast międzynarodowego sukcesu pojawi się „prowincjonalność” i wycofanie z wielkiego świata jako świadomie wybrany los. Inna też będzie – i to zdecydowanie – poetyka dzieł tworzonych przez tego rodzaju artystów. Stylistyczną drastyczność i prowokacje zastąpi w nich pierwiastek liryczny i sentymentalny – tak świetnie widoczny w filmie Nad rzeką której nie ma Barańskiego. Jednocześnie postawa wycofania nie wyklucza bynajmniej bezkompromisowej oceny politycznego systemu, który panował w Polsce.
Pierwsza w Polsce książka o związkach literatury z internetem. Tematyka: „literatura sieci”, „lit... more Pierwsza w Polsce książka o związkach literatury z internetem. Tematyka: „literatura sieci”, „literatura w sieci”, cyberpunk, hipertekst, cybertekst, blogi, interaktywność, selfpublishing, netspeak, strony autorskie, czaty, społeczności liternetowe, sieciowe czasopisma, e-booki, e-czytelnictwo, liternetowy banalizm, „nowa wrażliwość” i „nowy człowiek”.
In the debates on the state of the contemporary Polish cinematography, the subject of the film un... more In the debates on the state of the contemporary Polish cinematography, the subject of the film units' glorious past under the People's Republic of Poland would resurface on numerous occasions, and it was wondered whether it would be possible to continue this idea in a different economical and political reality. This was the question at the center of this book's origins. The four opening essays describe the reality of film units in Poland (Marcin Adamczak), Czechoslovakia (Petr Szczepanik) and Hungary (Balazs Varga).
The editors of the chapbook: Mariusz Pisarski and Piotr Marecki, along with contributors Tomasz Z... more The editors of the chapbook: Mariusz Pisarski and Piotr Marecki, along with contributors Tomasz Załuski and Joanna Ostrowska, read Bruszewski’s work as anticipating new media practices in the field of Polish literature and interpret it via the theories of digital literature.
The chapbook was translated by Aleksandra Małecka.
Long-books interview with Robert Szczerbowski:
For a long time I had been ill-disposed to my boo... more Long-books interview with Robert Szczerbowski: For a long time I had been ill-disposed to my books. I used various tactics to try and break them apart, to openly abandon or transcend them. This was tied to my transition to extra-linguistic work, but after a few years, just when I had decided to transfer the last of them to an electronic form, I wrote the preface to The Book of a Life. Perhaps I understood that the book was, to a great degree, a riddle, that it needed an introduction, like Prologue. Only now, in the new edition, was there the chance to join it with the publication and make it an integral part of the text.
– Robert Szczerbowski
Robert Szczerbowski – is a Polish writer and artist. He studied philosophy in Poznań and in Warsaw. He initially wrote, then gradually moved away from the sphere of language, increasingly using visual media in his work. His “literary” work is, to some degree, conceptual, and could be perceived as a series of reflections on the meaning of writing and books as such.
In the contemporary world of art where everything has been said and done, where post-modernism is... more In the contemporary world of art where everything has been said and done, where post-modernism is being replaced by alter-modernism and even digital art is turning into post-digital, any fresh new genre must have a warm welcome!
Such a genre: the film-poem, emerging from the crossroads of literature, film and animation is the main focus of the digital monograph on Katarzyna Giełżyńska's poetry collection C()n Du It. Independent Polish editors and critics take a closer look at the film-poems and analyze them from the perspectives of animated text, cyberpoetry, moving image and visual poetry. Through these critical lenses Giełżyńska's objects appear as ironic, personal, cross-medial statements. The Polish author sets herselfan ambitious task: "to play at the world's own game" by describing it in a fast-paced, polimedial, synesthetic way. Resembling "animated posters", the film-poems reflect the condition of the contemporary artist and her cultural, linguistic and technological context and try to redefine the answers to the old question: how to describe the world? who is the author? what is the difference between the human and non-human? The message carried by the film-poems is quite universal, if not global, hence the decision of the editors, Piotr Marecki and Mariusz Pisarski, to publish the critical companion in English, premiere it in Prague (where the author lives and works) and distribute it freely over the internet.
Zegar światowy Nicka Montforta zawiera 1440 mikrohistorie, które rozgrywają się na całym świecie ... more Zegar światowy Nicka Montforta zawiera 1440 mikrohistorie, które rozgrywają się na całym świecie w ciągu jednej minuty. Książka zainspirowana jest fikcyjną recenzją Stanisława Lema Jedna Minuta, zamieszczoną w zbiorze o znaczącym tytule Biblioteka XXI wieku, oraz Chronostychem na 1998 rok (Chronogram for 1998) Harry'ego Mathewsa. Opisując Jedną minutę w 1982 roku, Lem zaznaczył, że jest to stuprocentowy bestseller i że gdyby ta książka nie powstała, należałoby ją wymyślić. Opisana przez polskiego autora SF ponad trzydzieści lat temu książka ujrzała światło dzienne w 2013 roku w USA.
Oparty na pomyśle Lema Zegar światowy Nicka Montforta skupia się na industrialnym podejściu do czasu, opowiadając o banalności doświadczanej przez ludzi na całym globie. Tekst został wygenerowany w Pythonie na bazie kodu, przy użyciu zewnętrznej aplikacji ze strefami czasowymi. Polski przekład ukazuje się w 2014 roku w seriiLiberatura, która zawiera już dwie książki o równie globalnym charakterze – Finneganów Tren Jamesa Joyce'a w tłumaczeniu Krzysztofa Bartnickiego i Życie instrukcja obsługi Georgesa Pereca w tłumaczeniu Wawrzyńca Brzozowskiego. Zegar światowy to książka-eksperyment, i podobnie eksperymentalne okazało się tłumaczenie kodu i generowanie polskiej wersji w Pythonie, czego podjął się Piotr Marecki.
The main objective of this course is to familiarize students with electronic literature and the m... more The main objective of this course is to familiarize students with electronic literature and the medium of the book in the Postprint Era. We will focus on how digital media has transformed the book from the traditional printed format. We will examine new literary genres that have emerged (e.g. kinetic poetry, sticker literature, hypertext novels, e-mail novels, and textual generators) as well as how digital media has shaped new forms of reading, such as distracted reading. We will discuss works in English, but also translations into Polish. We will also write some collaborative works and present them in class.
The main objective of the course is to familiarize students with contemporary Polish culture thro... more The main objective of the course is to familiarize students with contemporary Polish culture through a comparative media studies approach. In addition to studying movies, fiction, non-fiction, and graphic novels, we will explore new genres such as electronic literature, popular memes,and independent games. We will examine how digital media shape the contemporary use of text and the process of remediation between analog and digital forms. We will apply this media-based and comparative approach to study contemporary Poland and its culture. This class is designed as a basic introduction for foreign students (e.g. Erasmus program).
Raport z badań poświęconych polu literackiemu w Polsce. Nadrzędnym celem projektu był naukowy opi... more Raport z badań poświęconych polu literackiemu w Polsce. Nadrzędnym celem projektu był naukowy opis dwudziestu pięciu lat rozwoju pola literackiego w Polsce (1989–2014) i zachowań jego głównych aktorów (pisarzy i pisarek, wydawców, agentów literackich i tak dalej) za pomocą teoretycznych narzędzi zaproponowanych przez francuskiego socjologa Pierre’a Bourdieu. Intencją zespołu badawczego była także pionierska na taką skalę aplikacja narzędzi socjologicznych do refleksji literaturoznawczej w Polsce po 1989 roku. Badania przeprowadzone przez socjologów, kulturoznawców i literaturoznawców składały się z trzech części: analizy pozycji pola literackiego w odniesieniu do innych obszarów życia społecznego (władzy, ekonomii, edukacji, mediów) oraz jej rozwoju w czasie, analizy wewnętrznej struktury pola literackiego oraz analizy genezy habitusów pisarzy i pisarek.
ELO 2016 Conference and Media Arts Festival. Next Horizons (6/10-12/16). University of Victoria,... more ELO 2016 Conference and Media Arts Festival. Next Horizons (6/10-12/16). University of Victoria, Canada.
The proposed poster is a visual presentation of the experiment that was the translation from Engl... more The proposed poster is a visual presentation of the experiment that was the translation from English into Polish of the Nick Montfort computer generated novel World Clock (2013) and its subsequent publication and distribution in print in Poland (Zegar światowy, 2014). The poster is composed of two distinct parts. The first part is devoted to the in-depth description of the problem of translating a generator, focusing on the challenges connected with the language transfer of programmed narrative work, as well as chosen issues connected with the publication process. The second part covers what occurred after the publication of the book and presents the conclusions of the analysis of the reception of the work. Zegar światowy was the first computer generated novel published as a book in Poland, thus it gained interest of some media and critics, who usually do not discuss experimental works. It may be hypothesized that the interest was partially due to the fact that the generator was partially inspired by a text by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, which makes it an example of what Strehovec describes as derivative writing.
In the first part, using the expressive processing tools proposed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, the authors describe the translation process, beginning with the input data, the code of the process and ending with the generated output. The program, written in English, consists of 165 lines of code and randomly generates 1440 short stories, which are coordinated with the Python pytz time zones application, pairing the generated stories with cities in different timezones. Because of numerous differences between the grammar of English and Polish, the Polish version of the program consists of as many 229 lines. The translator chose to make changes in the code in order to generate from the input stories with a similar structure, but accommodating for the specifics of the Polish language. Writing the code required addressing a number of problems, like including grammatical gender or translating the names of characters and locations. Some other changes were dictated by the use of timezone definition base in Python, for which there is no Polish version. In this part of the poster the authors will also address the question why publication in the medium of a traditional print book was one of the key elements of the project, referring to literature on the materiality of literature. The second part of the project is an analysis of the marketing and reception of the book in Poland. Montfort's project is inspired by a made-up book review by Stanisław Lem, in which the writer imagines the book One Human Minute, consisting of an enumeration what all the people around the world do in one minute. The Polish translation was marketed as a computer generated novel based on Lem's idea. Thanks to the decision to distribute this conceptual work just like conventional literature, through a traditional publishing house, the work received critical reception unprecedented for works from the field of electronic literature in Poland. Instead of being discussed by digital media scholars, Zegar światowy received 15 reviews in mainstream columns and on blogs and websites devoted to conventional literature. This experiment provided the opportunity to analyze how experimental electronic literature is perceived by actors from the field of conventional literature. The author analyzes the discourse of their reactions, the focal points of which include the “non-human” aspect of the work, its experimental character and values associated with it, as well as different approaches to the reference to the celebrated Polish science fiction writer.
Renderings – a project devoted to the translation of e-lit works into English. The poster is devo... more Renderings – a project devoted to the translation of e-lit works into English. The poster is devoted to the Renderings project established at MIT at the Trope Tank lab headed by Nick Montfort. As the project's website explains: "The Renderings project focuses on translating highly computational and otherwise unusual literature into English. [The participants] not only employ established literary translation techniques, but also consider how computation and language interact." The poster defines and explains basic terms and phenomena relevant to the project, like highly computational literature, expressive processing, and platform studies, and presents the specifics of chosen genres of electronic literature. It discusses the general principles of the project (organizational structure, languages, direction of the translation, types of works included) and the anatomy of chosen e-lit works. The main part of the poster is a step by step analysis of the translation process, which involves not only the level of text, familiar to literary translation, but also the way computational processes function and are programmed. The analysis draws from the methodology developed by the fields of code studies, platform studies and expressive processing. The poster is prepared collaboratively by the group of researches and translators affiliated with the Renderings project.
Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2015 20 - 24 July 2015
The poster is devoted to the "Scene Poetry" project established at the Jagiellonian University. T... more The poster is devoted to the "Scene Poetry" project established at the Jagiellonian University. The aim of the poster is to introduce and put in context the phenomenon of scene poetry, which stems from demoscene activities. The demoscene is a phenomenon almost exclusively European, it developed among the first generation of teens, illegal boys, geeks growing up using PCs (in the 80. and 90.) This exceptional type of creative activity was based on collaborative work in the field of digital media and computational art. The most important genre of the scene were demos, programs the only purpose of which was to impress and demonstrate the possibilities of the computer. The demos are created in real time during demoparties, their effects are generated by a processor processing input data according to the created algorithm. The audience of demos constitutes of other participants of the parties, persons deeply involved in the scene, who can appreciate the beauty of the algorithm. Many demos are treated as a kind of video clip, hence the demoscene was usually contextualized as a phenomenon from the field of digital media and audiovisual art. There exist several demos of which an integral part is constituted by text and poetry. Among the sceners this type of work is called scene poetry. The creators of the demoscene are persons aware of computer platforms, their limits and possibilities. The poster presents phenomenon of scene poetry on the example of a dozen demos, the catalog of which is the result of research, exploration of the scene environment and meetings with demosceners.
The 1994 Encyclopaedia of Mathematics entry on automatic translation informs us that " automatic ... more The 1994 Encyclopaedia of Mathematics entry on automatic translation informs us that " automatic translation of literature and fiction is both unrealistic and unnecessary. " This seems to be a frequent view, accompanied by a certain anxiety among translation professionals as to the threat of automatic translation " stealing their jobs " within their lifetimes. Such is the context for our study of literary experiments carried out with Google Translate, of which the translation of King Ubu published by Korporacja Ha!art is an example. Since King Ubu by Alfred Jarry, a play written as a joke by a schoolboy over a century ago, can be seen as one of the pioneering works of absurdist literature, this conceptual publication is doubly absurd, with a machine translation technique applied to a absurdist play. The paper includes an overview of the creative applications of automatic translation and provides an analysis of the implications of the experiment. The conceptual character of the translation is explained through an analysis of the Polish contexts of Jarry's work. Our thesis is that the described experiment (a printed publication of the automatically translated play) has a deep, conceptual sense only when performed in the Polish language..
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Papers by Piotr Marecki
The game’s basis is a text generator with soundtrack, made using technology original to the Atari. The concept and text was created by Piotr Marecki. The project was presented as part of the wild compo during the demoparty Silly Venture 2017 in Gdańsk. The program lasts 56 minutes and generates walkthrough for the 56 individual planets. However, it is looped, so it generates an inexhaustible amount of solutions, one of which contains a published book. All of the elements of the work – text, music, code, composition, as well as graphics – were created by Polish Atari enthusiasts. It premiered at the Atari-themed party and are being distributed among retro computers enthusiasts.
While Robbo generator can be regarded simply as an entertainment or a joke, its authors believe that it also comments critically and playfully on computational obsolescence. The practice of returning to the discarded and dead (or “zombie”) media, in this case the Atari computer, is one challenge to the seeming inevitability of technological acceleration. This essay describes the history and making of Robbo. Walkthrough and provides a critical commentary on the value of “zombie” computing.
Marecki, Piotr (2019) "Atari, Creative Making & Zombie Computers: Robbo. Solucja.," Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/5
its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful and becomes part of the work – the printed text transferred to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become crippled and incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in
literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analogue form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The medium is even more varied and nuanced. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary
history, beginning with 20th century French situationists, through different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the Polish sticker biography Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why experimental writers decide to use this form, discuss how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
„Piotr Marecki, w pełni respektując rygory naukowego wywodu, napisał książkę »do czytania«, rzec by się chciało – ogólnohumanistyczną, w której jak w zwierciadle przeglądają się przemiany współczesnej kultury. Pozostając w sferze (ekranowej) piśmienności, zdołał przyjrzeć się skomplikowanemu procesowi cywilizacyjnemu, który tak bardzo odmienił współczesne kultury mediów”.
prof. dr hab. Andrzej Gwóźdź
„Piotr Marecki proponuje swego rodzaju kanon, wskazując omawiane dzieła jako punkty kardynalne krajobrazu »kultury późnego druku«”.
dr hab. Katarzyna Bazarnik
which the experimental conceptual book Paint the Rock by Shiv Kotecha was translated into Polish using a conceptual translation strategy. The original is an unconventional “coloring book” that invites the reader to paint American male celebrities from memory. The Polish translation, Namaluj Popka by Aleksandra Małecka and Piotr Marecki, remakes
the original experiment, replacing these global household names with figures from the Polish local popular imaginary in a ludic localization. The authors describe the context of the original literary work, the translation process, the new context for reception in Poland, with a special focus on the role of the translator as the ambassador of new trends in literature and the creative and critical potential of conceptual writing and translation strategies.
himself on marginality and fantasticality.
generate computer art in real time. The aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to perform an ethnographic
exploration of the Polish computer scene; it quotes interviews with participants of demo parties,
where text plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or digital adaptations. Media
archeology focusing on the textual aspect of the demoscene is important to understanding the
beginnings of digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.
and becomes part of the work – the printed text transfered to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine
the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analog form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of
other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French Situationists, through
different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the sticker novel
Implementation (2004) by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg or Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why writers decide to use this form, how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
strategies of Piotr Siwecki, Jarosław Lipszyc and Sławomir Shuty as the most characteristic. However the tools used in these analysis can be applied to a bigger scope of contemporary
authors. Besides, he points to some innovative forms of production and playing with the market (purposely low circulation, leaving behind traditional book formats, open license), genres (hyperfiction, story art, mnemotechniques) and creative techniques (deejaying, remix, plagiarism). Subversive strategies are inscribed into a†wider logic of change in the field of cultural production and a†battle between the spheres of consecration and the avant-garde (from Pierre Bourdieuís vocabulary of the sociology of art).
The game’s basis is a text generator with soundtrack, made using technology original to the Atari. The concept and text was created by Piotr Marecki. The project was presented as part of the wild compo during the demoparty Silly Venture 2017 in Gdańsk. The program lasts 56 minutes and generates walkthrough for the 56 individual planets. However, it is looped, so it generates an inexhaustible amount of solutions, one of which contains a published book. All of the elements of the work – text, music, code, composition, as well as graphics – were created by Polish Atari enthusiasts. It premiered at the Atari-themed party and are being distributed among retro computers enthusiasts.
While Robbo generator can be regarded simply as an entertainment or a joke, its authors believe that it also comments critically and playfully on computational obsolescence. The practice of returning to the discarded and dead (or “zombie”) media, in this case the Atari computer, is one challenge to the seeming inevitability of technological acceleration. This essay describes the history and making of Robbo. Walkthrough and provides a critical commentary on the value of “zombie” computing.
Marecki, Piotr (2019) "Atari, Creative Making & Zombie Computers: Robbo. Solucja.," Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/5
its writing space, its medium, the material on which it is presented. Very often this medium is meaningful and becomes part of the work – the printed text transferred to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become crippled and incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in
literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analogue form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The medium is even more varied and nuanced. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary
history, beginning with 20th century French situationists, through different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the Polish sticker biography Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why experimental writers decide to use this form, discuss how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
„Piotr Marecki, w pełni respektując rygory naukowego wywodu, napisał książkę »do czytania«, rzec by się chciało – ogólnohumanistyczną, w której jak w zwierciadle przeglądają się przemiany współczesnej kultury. Pozostając w sferze (ekranowej) piśmienności, zdołał przyjrzeć się skomplikowanemu procesowi cywilizacyjnemu, który tak bardzo odmienił współczesne kultury mediów”.
prof. dr hab. Andrzej Gwóźdź
„Piotr Marecki proponuje swego rodzaju kanon, wskazując omawiane dzieła jako punkty kardynalne krajobrazu »kultury późnego druku«”.
dr hab. Katarzyna Bazarnik
which the experimental conceptual book Paint the Rock by Shiv Kotecha was translated into Polish using a conceptual translation strategy. The original is an unconventional “coloring book” that invites the reader to paint American male celebrities from memory. The Polish translation, Namaluj Popka by Aleksandra Małecka and Piotr Marecki, remakes
the original experiment, replacing these global household names with figures from the Polish local popular imaginary in a ludic localization. The authors describe the context of the original literary work, the translation process, the new context for reception in Poland, with a special focus on the role of the translator as the ambassador of new trends in literature and the creative and critical potential of conceptual writing and translation strategies.
himself on marginality and fantasticality.
generate computer art in real time. The aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to perform an ethnographic
exploration of the Polish computer scene; it quotes interviews with participants of demo parties,
where text plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or digital adaptations. Media
archeology focusing on the textual aspect of the demoscene is important to understanding the
beginnings of digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.
and becomes part of the work – the printed text transfered to another media context (for instance, into a traditional book) would become incomprehensible. Literature distributed on stickers is a form of writing that is divided into small fragments of texts (a type of constrained writing), physically scattered in different locations. One of the newest challenges in literature are books with augmented reality, AR, which examine
the relation between the physical (the medium) and the virtual interaction. Sticker literature is a rather simple analog form of augmented reality literature. The stickers have QR codes or web addresses printed on them, so the viewer who reads/sees a random sticker in the public space can further explore the text online. The viewer can read other parts of the text on photographs (the photograph being another medium) of
other stickers placed in different locations. The author will discuss the use of stickers throughout literary history, beginning with 20th century French Situationists, through
different textual strategies applied by visual artists and ending with literary forms such as the sticker novel
Implementation (2004) by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg or Stoberskiade (2013). The author shall try to explain why writers decide to use this form, how the text is distributed and received and how the city space is used in such projects.
strategies of Piotr Siwecki, Jarosław Lipszyc and Sławomir Shuty as the most characteristic. However the tools used in these analysis can be applied to a bigger scope of contemporary
authors. Besides, he points to some innovative forms of production and playing with the market (purposely low circulation, leaving behind traditional book formats, open license), genres (hyperfiction, story art, mnemotechniques) and creative techniques (deejaying, remix, plagiarism). Subversive strategies are inscribed into a†wider logic of change in the field of cultural production and a†battle between the spheres of consecration and the avant-garde (from Pierre Bourdieuís vocabulary of the sociology of art).
Powiesz, że serce kultury cyfrowej bije na Zachodzie, głównie w Stanach Zjednoczonych, gdzie najmocniej rozwinęła się technologia informatyczna. Z jednej strony rzeczywiście tak jest, ale istnieją też lokalne podejścia, nierzadko bardzo oryginalne i niespotykane w hegemonicznym centrum. Taka kultura cyfrowa nas interesuje i taką właśnie lokalną narrację obraliśmy.
„Posługując się historią mówioną, Gatunki cyfrowe oferują znakomity wgląd w konkretny wycinek praktyk zlokalizowanych w dosyć precyzyjnie wyznaczonym miejscu i czasie – a często związanych także z konkretnymi platformami (Commodore, Atari, Amiga, ZX Spectrum), które są dzisiaj przedmiotem kulturowej nostalgii i przeżywają swoisty renesans”.
Z recenzji dr hab. Anny Nacher
Digital Genres. A User's Manual is a guide to the practical side of digital culture presented through the perspective of the authors of digital genres. Creators Jakub „Argasek” Argasiński, Zenon Fajfer, Paweł Janicki, Leszek Onak, Łukasz Podgórni, Michał „Bonzaj” Staniszewski, Łukasz „Zenial” Szalankiewicz, Wiesławiec deluxe, Yerzmyey and Krzysztof A. Ziembik tell Piotr Marecki how to make demos, text games, chiptunes, disc mags, dank memes, Facebook statuses, text generators, hypertexts, games and conditional arts.
Some believe that the heart of digital culture beats in the West, mainly in the US, where information technology is best developed. Though it may be so, on the other hand, there is also the story of local approaches, which are sometimes very original and unheard of in the hegemonic center. This is the story told by this book.
Digital Genres. A User's Manual offers excellent insight into a selection of practices located quite precisely in a specific time and place, connected with particular platforms (Commodore, Atari, Amiga, ZX Spectrum), which are the subject of cultural nostalgia and revival.
Dr hab. Anna Nacher
Jeśli do Bursy doczepimy ciąg nazwisk złożony z Czycza, Latałły, Titkowa i Barańskiego, okaże się, iż kontestacja może mieć charakter znacznie bardziej kameralny i osobisty, a zamiast międzynarodowego sukcesu pojawi się „prowincjonalność” i wycofanie z wielkiego świata jako świadomie wybrany los. Inna też będzie – i to zdecydowanie – poetyka dzieł tworzonych przez tego rodzaju artystów. Stylistyczną drastyczność i prowokacje zastąpi w nich pierwiastek liryczny i sentymentalny – tak świetnie widoczny w filmie Nad rzeką której nie ma Barańskiego. Jednocześnie postawa wycofania nie wyklucza bynajmniej bezkompromisowej oceny politycznego systemu, który panował w Polsce.
Prof. Jerzy Jarzębski
The chapbook was translated by Aleksandra Małecka.
For a long time I had been ill-disposed to my books. I used various tactics to try and break them apart, to openly abandon or transcend them. This was tied to my transition to extra-linguistic work, but after a few years, just when I had decided to transfer the last of them to an electronic form, I wrote the preface to The Book of a Life. Perhaps I understood that the book was, to a great degree, a riddle, that it needed an introduction, like Prologue. Only now, in the new edition, was there the chance to join it with the publication and make it an integral part of the text.
– Robert Szczerbowski
Robert Szczerbowski – is a Polish writer and artist. He studied philosophy in Poznań and in Warsaw. He initially wrote, then gradually moved away from the sphere of language, increasingly using visual media in his work. His “literary” work is, to some degree, conceptual, and could be perceived as a series of reflections on the meaning of writing and books as such.
Such a genre: the film-poem, emerging from the crossroads of literature, film and animation is the main focus of the digital monograph on Katarzyna Giełżyńska's poetry collection C()n Du It. Independent Polish editors and critics take a closer look at the film-poems and analyze them from the perspectives of animated text, cyberpoetry, moving image and visual poetry. Through these critical lenses Giełżyńska's objects appear as ironic, personal, cross-medial statements. The Polish author sets herselfan ambitious task: "to play at the world's own game" by describing it in a fast-paced, polimedial, synesthetic way. Resembling "animated posters", the film-poems reflect the condition of the contemporary artist and her cultural, linguistic and technological context and try to redefine the answers to the old question: how to describe the world? who is the author? what is the difference between the human and non-human? The message carried by the film-poems is quite universal, if not global, hence the decision of the editors, Piotr Marecki and Mariusz Pisarski, to publish the critical companion in English, premiere it in Prague (where the author lives and works) and distribute it freely over the internet.
Oparty na pomyśle Lema Zegar światowy Nicka Montforta skupia się na industrialnym podejściu do czasu, opowiadając o banalności doświadczanej przez ludzi na całym globie. Tekst został wygenerowany w Pythonie na bazie kodu, przy użyciu zewnętrznej aplikacji ze strefami czasowymi. Polski przekład ukazuje się w 2014 roku w seriiLiberatura, która zawiera już dwie książki o równie globalnym charakterze – Finneganów Tren Jamesa Joyce'a w tłumaczeniu Krzysztofa Bartnickiego i Życie instrukcja obsługi Georgesa Pereca w tłumaczeniu Wawrzyńca Brzozowskiego. Zegar światowy to książka-eksperyment, i podobnie eksperymentalne okazało się tłumaczenie kodu i generowanie polskiej wersji w Pythonie, czego podjął się Piotr Marecki.
In the first part, using the expressive processing tools proposed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, the authors describe the translation process, beginning with the input data, the code of the process and ending with the generated output. The program, written in English, consists of 165 lines of code and randomly generates 1440 short stories, which are coordinated with the Python pytz time zones application, pairing the generated stories with cities in different timezones. Because of numerous differences between the grammar of English and Polish, the Polish version of the program consists of as many 229 lines. The translator chose to make changes in the code in order to generate from the input stories with a similar structure, but accommodating for the specifics of the Polish language. Writing the code required addressing a number of problems, like including grammatical gender or translating the names of characters and locations. Some other changes were dictated by the use of timezone definition base in Python, for which there is no Polish version. In this part of the poster the authors will also address the question why publication in the medium of a traditional print book was one of the key elements of the project, referring to literature on the materiality of literature.
The second part of the project is an analysis of the marketing and reception of the book in Poland. Montfort's project is inspired by a made-up book review by Stanisław Lem, in which the writer imagines the book One Human Minute, consisting of an enumeration what all the people around the world do in one minute. The Polish translation was marketed as a computer generated novel based on Lem's idea. Thanks to the decision to distribute this conceptual work just like conventional literature, through a traditional publishing house, the work received critical reception unprecedented for works from the field of electronic literature in Poland. Instead of being discussed by digital media scholars, Zegar światowy received 15 reviews in mainstream columns and on blogs and websites devoted to conventional literature. This experiment provided the opportunity to analyze how experimental electronic literature is perceived by actors from the field of conventional literature. The author analyzes the discourse of their reactions, the focal points of which include the “non-human” aspect of the work, its experimental character and values associated with it, as well as different approaches to the reference to the celebrated Polish science fiction writer.
DH 2016 conference, Kraków, poster session
Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2015 20 - 24 July 2015
"Culture & Technology" - The European Summer University in Digital Humanities http://www.culingtec.uni-leipzig.de/ESU_C_T/node/752