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Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:13:34 -0500
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Subject: <nettime> Notes on Codework [X3 Sondheim(2) & Cayley/Raley
(1)]
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Table of Contents:
Further notes on codework:
Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Re: <nettime> Notes on codework [response from John Cayley]
Rita Raley <raley@english.ucsb.edu>
Re: <nettime> Notes on codework [response from John Cayley]
Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 15:50:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Further notes on codework:
Further notes on codework:
****************************************
1. "codework"
I think I came up with the name (which surely had been used before) in a
conversation with Ken Wark - we were talking about code - the term at that
point, as far as I remember, was code-poetry - and I borrowed the notion
of 'work' - i.e. labor, production - I think - from Heiner Muller -
running the two words together - as in Hamletmachine - so there was a
political component as well - not wanting the limitation of poetry,
however defined, or poetics for that matter - opening the framework, not
closing it - I'd also felt that code-poetry - however spelled - was too
close to concrete poetry - which didn't interest me at all - at least not
any longer - not even dom sylvester huedard - maybe huedard actually - but
not the usual suspects - anyway - I thought that codepoetry would minimize
the design aspect - emphasize the symbolic or asymbolic or presymbolic -
for that matter the (Kristevan) choratic of language - so the political
and psychoanalytical met on the grounds of mathesis and semiosis - all
this into the naming of the word - pretty commonplace now - at least this
is what was going through my mind at that point - still is - anyway -
2.
Codework impossibility of self-reference and decipherment.
a. "There are seven words in this sentence." Which word is the number?
b. "This is a sentence." But how would one know?
c. "This is written in English." But how would one know?
etc.
- - Self-referentiality possesses a residue; only in mathematics or logic is
it 'pure' - the whole relating to the whole.
The residue is in relation to an attribute. But then
d. "This refers in its entirety to itself." Are we at the juncture of
paradox?
etc.
Using Peirce's distinctions, I'd argue that every painting is first and
foremost ikonic and perceived as such - the paint is never transparent. To
the extent that codework requires interpretation, examination, it is
ikonic as well - one might say that, even in the space of virtuality, it
possesses a materialist foundation. The more 'impenetrable' the greater
the degree of ikonicity, the greater the appearance of _material._ This
appearance is just that, however, appearance, as a change - for example
from monospace to justifiable type - will demonstrate.
One must consider, of course, the semantic residue of the ikonic - and the
interstitial / liminal between the meaning-sememe and the ikonic provides
the _content_ of the work; in fact, the meaning-sememe and ikonic-sememe
are interwoven, inseparable, and contributory, a somewhat similar
situation to the calligraphic.
_Meaning_ itself is both attribute (i.e. 'meaning of _cheval_ in French')
and calligraphic; totality is reserved for the Absolute which is always
problematic ('meaning of Life,' 'meaning of Everything') and ideologically
suspect. To the extent that meaning embraces an Absolute, meaning depends
on decoding (Bible, Koran, Kwak!); here is the locus of political Power in
the Foucauldian sense.
Codework simultaneously embraces and problematizes meaning; one might
argue that codework is _fallen work,_ fallen by the wayside, as well as
the disturbance of the Gnostic Mary Magdalen.
Every more or less traditional text is codework with invisible residue;
every computer harbors the machinic, the ideology of capital in the
construction of its components, the oppression of underdevelopment in its
reliance on cheap labor.
Every text is Derridian/Foucauldian differance; codework is exemplary of
the process of deferral and _rewrite._ Codework, like _wryting,_ is an
embodiment within virtual ontologies; wryting disturbs _towards_ the body,
desire, language - that language of codework, ruptured by codework.
Inner speech as well is self-referential, a decoding of every text spoken
within it, before the reader, or among the readers. And nothing fulfills
_utterly,_ every Absolute itself is codework, a deferral - hence the
psychoanalytical nature of _defuge_ - that decay which comes about through
the overuse of pornography or the attempt to begin again and again, a
novel left off in the middle. Therefore consumption, the ravenous, is at
the heart of _things_ to the extent there is any _meaning_ at all.
__
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:23:25 -0800
From: Rita Raley <raley@english.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Notes on codework [response from John Cayley]
[this response to Alan's post comes from John Cayley]
>please note it is not the code that is broken - but the interiorities of
>more or less traditional semantic worlds - sememes as well (in other
>words, distortions of world-making).
That is a great way to put it. That when so-called natural language
is, for example, 'mezangelled,' then "the interiorities of more or
less traditional semantic words" are "broken." The code that breaks
into the words is not necessarily itself broken. (Although let's face
it, if it doesn't get recontextualized pronto, it ain't going to
compile.)
But why code as opposed to other (chiefly linguistic) matter - from
other registers of language or other practices of natural language
use (other tongues)?
The point is not to valorise or downgrade
(aesthetically/socially/politically) some text because it addresses
or incorporates code, or subgrade it because the constituent code is
broken or operative. Brokenness need not ally with value in any neat
way. [See Sandy Baldwin in the current Cybertext Yearbook]. The
questions are more to do with: what are the properties and methods of
code as such, and how do (and how could) these contribute to language
art making? What are the specificities of code that will allow us to
derive textual objects with distinct characteristics? Or allow us to
extend the Class Text and/or better understand its underlying
abstract Class?
And because a very prominent feature of code is its operation, the
"program that produces a residue" focuses (for me anyway) critical
attention. We are more familiar , in this context, with "carriers of
meaning," however slippery and shifty. re(ad)Joyce! (I know you
always already have.)
Code runs and conceals itself. Code that runs generates text over
durations. Code that runs guarantees that language art cannot bracket
its time-based dimension. It plays and plays out precisely and
particularly in the 'Not to mention ..."
>12 Not to mention all those aleatoric texts, stochastic or chaotic texts
>or imagery, multi-media codeworks, generative works, generative works fed
>into themselves (resonance-work), specialized editors which refuse the
>WYSIWYG...
John (Cayley)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:53:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Notes on codework [response from John Cayley]
On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Rita Raley wrote:
> That is a great way to put it. That when so-called natural language
> is, for example, 'mezangelled,' then "the interiorities of more or
> less traditional semantic words" are "broken." The code that breaks
> into the words is not necessarily itself broken. (Although let's face
> it, if it doesn't get recontextualized pronto, it ain't going to
> compile.)
>
> But why code as opposed to other (chiefly linguistic) matter - from
> other registers of language or other practices of natural language
> use (other tongues)?
>
Because code is often substructure or protocol or generative. As
substructure, it underlies, for example, the very distribution of the
piece. As protocol, it may underlie the very typing or production of the
piece. As generative, it has produced or partially prodced the piece.
> The point is not to valorise or downgrade
> (aesthetically/socially/politically) some text because it addresses
> or incorporates code, or subgrade it because the constituent code is
> broken or operative. Brokenness need not ally with value in any neat
> way. [See Sandy Baldwin in the current Cybertext Yearbook].
Here is the issue; your 'addressing' or 'incorporating' (btw I've read
Baldwin and was just down in Morgantown) implies a separation which for me
- - like the activities in the _chora_ are both problematized and
inseparable.
As far as brokenness is concerned, I am working out of Winograd and Flores
(re: Heidegger) here.
The
> questions are more to do with: what are the properties and methods of
> code as such, and how do (and how could) these contribute to language
> art making? What are the specificities of code that will allow us to
> derive textual objects with distinct characteristics? Or allow us to
> extend the Class Text and/or better understand its underlying
> abstract Class?
>
But whose questions, John? These are yours. When you say "more to do with"
- - this is your approach, not mine. When you cay "Class Text" again you're
operating with the notion of "clean code" ("specificities") which may well
not be the case. Look at Kenji's work or nn's writing.
(I want to point out also btw - in relation to the Cybertext book - that
Jim R's work is quite clean, but he's not the only practitioner; I was
doing codework in 71 and later wrote a number of programs in 76-78. Some
of these are now in the internet text. And I was _late_ - Fernbach-
Florsheim was doing things in the 60s with computers/code. Etc. etc.)
> And because a very prominent feature of code is its operation, the
> "program that produces a residue" focuses (for me anyway) critical
> attention. We are more familiar , in this context, with "carriers of
> meaning," however slippery and shifty. re(ad)Joyce! (I know you
> always already have.)
Yes I have, but the carriers in this case are structured or dirty
structures - very different. You're coming at this through both literature
and a 'clean' notion of code (see above); I'm not. For example, Perl
poetry is operable, but the residue is pretty much irrelevant - yet as far
as I'm concerned that's a terrific use of code. As is the figlet program.
I don't distinguish - which is why my list in the first place is highly
inclusive, not exclusive.
>
> Code runs and conceals itself. Code that runs generates text over
> durations. Code that runs guarantees that language art cannot bracket
> its time-based dimension. It plays and plays out precisely and
> particularly in the 'Not to mention ..."
>
Code doesn't necessarily conceal itself. Code doesn't necessarily do
anything you say it does. I wouldn't use the phrase 'language art' myself
- - I think prions are also code, DNA is also code and code is not
necessarily language. I'd have to go back over my Eco for this.
All art is time-based btw. Some of the codework I do takes advantage of
lag (in email or quicktime .mov), and some doesn't and some appears
instantaneous ...
I feel a real difference between us is that I am writing from the position
of dirty code, world-code, which may or may not operate, and that may or
may not be the point. For example one piece I did involved reversing all
the < and > on a specially written webpage. The result is chaotic, dys-
functional in many ways, amazingly functional in others. At West Virginia,
I re-morphed/mapped motion capiture sensors, transforming the body into a
signal or searchlight system (see my heap.mov at http://www.asondheim.org
). And so forth.
It seems to me you're interested primarily in clean and generating
concealed code - I have no problem with that. But I do feel you dismiss
(even the word 'pseudo-code' is dismissive) everything else that's going
on; since you're an editor and critic in the field, it's problematic for
me.
- - Alan
> >12 Not to mention all those aleatoric texts, stochastic or chaotic texts
> >or imagery, multi-media codeworks, generative works, generative works fed
> >into themselves (resonance-work), specialized editors which refuse the
> >WYSIWYG...
>
> John (Cayley)
>
http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com
------------------------------
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 08:24:12 -0000
From: J Armitage <j.armitage@UNN.AC.UK>
Reply-To: Interdisciplinary academic study of Cyber Society
<CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
To: CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [CSL]: The fall of Tower Records (Blamed on Internet)
The fall of Tower Records increases fears for fate of British record shops
By Ian Burrell Media and Culture Correspondent
11 February 2004
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/news/story.jsp?story=490035
The Independent
One of the great icons of the American music industry came crashing down
yesterday when Tower Records collapsed under competition from internet
downloads and discount shops.
The demise of Tower set alarm bells ringing across the British music
industry, prompting fears that the days of the record shop could be
numbered.
British retailers are clinging to the hope that record-buyers in the land
that inspired Nick Hornby's tale of musical obsession, High Fidelity, would
not readily relinquish the experience of pawing through the racks, but if
the United States is a barometer of future British leisure habits then
downloading and supermarket-buying are the future.
Staff at the 93 branches of Tower, one of the best-known international
chains, learnt yesterday that the company had filed for bankruptcy with
debts of $110m (�59m). It had faced fierce competition from the supermarket
Wal-Mart and the electrical chain Best Buy.
It had been struggling for some time, and sold off its 14 British stores
last year. Sir Richard Branson bought its flagship outlet on Piccadilly
Circus in central London, which continued to trade under the Tower name.
The collapse of Tower follows the disappearance from the high street of
other well-known chains, including Our Price and Andy's Records in the past
18 months.
A British music retailer warned last night that the specialist record store
was under threat. Simon Dornan, spokesman for Virgin Mega-stores, said he
believed that discount pricing of CDs by supermarkets posed an even greater
threat to record shops than downloading.
Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Safeway have become increasingly big players in
music retail, cutting the price of chart CDs to as little as �9.77. Several
major artists, including Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart and R. Kelly, have been
propelled into the Top 10 of the album chart after making more than half of
their sales in supermarkets.
"The scenario [for record shops] is far more dangerous than anything to do
with downloading," Mr Dornan said. "Tower were quoted as saying they could
not afford to operate in the UK market. You would have thought that in their
homeland they would be safe. Everybody's shocked to see what has happened."
He said that if supermarkets came to dominate music retail, British music
would become less exciting. "Labels will be less inclined to invest in a
wider roster and we will have far blander music on offer," he said. "I don't
suppose I will find Franz Ferdinand in Asda or Sainsbury's this week."
Noting that France's music retail was already dominated by supermarkets, Mr
Dornan said that record shops had to offer shoppers a more "rock 'n' roll"
experience with more of a "live venue status".
Last night The Sleepy Jackson performed a gig at the Virgin Megastore in
London's Oxford Street. "I don't believe bands like that are going to play
in a car park at Asda."
Other music retailers said record stores would survive because Britain had a
different culture to the US. A spokesman for HMV said: "Stores are more part
of the culture here because of the Sixties pop explosion. People seem to
value not just the acquisition of a piece of music but the process of
acquiring it."
British music fans liked to show their devotion to a band by purchasing a
physical music product. The same culture was not as ingrained in the US,
where downloading had taken off. "There doesn't seem to be the same
emotional attachment to buying music. It's a more functional good over
there."
Record stores will take comfort from the fact that CDs, like DVDs, are often
given as gifts. "I don't think a download would make such a good present,"
the HMV spokesman said. He said, however, that downloading facilities in
record stores could be a thing of the future.
The increasing popularity of downloading in Britain was revealed in figures
from the Official Charts Company that showed there were more legal downloads
last month (150,000) than sales of vinyl or cassettes. Legal downloads
account for only 2 per cent of the total number, industry sources say.
Lawyers for Tower, meanwhile, are hoping to bring the company back from the
brink with a restructuring package that could allow it to emerge from
bankruptcy within 45 days.
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:27:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Rita Raley <raley@english.ucsb.edu>
Cc: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: Notes on codework [response from John Cayley / Alan Sondheim]
On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, Rita Raley wrote:
> Those are great points, Alan, I am touched, and look forward to
> talking to you about this more. I get the clean/dirty distinction and
> accept that, despite my (un)conscious desire to de/inf(l)ect the
> categories and structures of so-called traditional/canonical literary
> practice, I do work with/against a notion of clean, functional
> literary and programmable-literary objects. (Not so sure about this,
> on reflection later, when you consider that I do a fair amount of
> *ucking around with generated transitional texts and make points
> about transcultural language issues. The work still 'looks' pretty
> clean tho.)
>
> > > But why code as opposed to other (chiefly linguistic) matter - from
> >> other registers of language or other practices of natural language
> >> use (other tongues)?
> >>
> >Because code is often substructure or protocol or generative. As
> >substructure, it underlies, for example, the very distribution of the
> >piece. As protocol, it may underlie the very typing or production of
> >the piece. As generative, it has produced or partially prodced the
> >piece.
>
> I think the question of why code? remains. You are just saying,
> because it's there. What you say is also true of the procedures, the
> 'dirty' structures in Joyce. (Btw, is Joyce dirty? generally
> speaking, in your sense - abject dysfunctional - I think it's a real
> question.) Total and global or other-tongue syntax is dysoperative at
> any time in the prodcuct ion and gen aspir ation to this piece, any
> event writing, cleaning, even. (Very easily accessible without
> recourse to code-code.)
>
No, I'm saying not because it's there (it's always there) but that it's
presence in one form or another in the work problematizes language,
structure, and body; it also questions production itself (producing or
programming code). It's a writing which in part litearlly in-forms itself;
as such it also problematizes translation since to some extent it
translates only into itself.
> I am asking, why these media for these projects? Is it because no
> matter how dirty and abject and dysfunctional you get with codework,
> you stay clean? When does any of this start to matter?
I don't think so at all, although on the surface of course. It's clean on
the surface because all ascii is clean, well-defined, as is the digital
domain, with its reliance on potential wells of code/noise itself. But in
terms of interpretation, the discomfiture and abjection can be strong. I'm
thinking for example of the pieces Kim McGlynn and I did using ytalk
(Perth to NY) a few years ago.
The digital always possesses this 'turn' of cleanliness - to the extent
that 0/1 permits no undesired noise and is infinitely reproducible - and
filth - to the extent that the media literally become dirty, outmoded,
useless, and no longer run. So there's eternity on one hand and tremendous
fragility on the other.
> >The
> >> questions are more to do with: what are the properties and methods
> >> of code as such, and how do (and how could) these contribute to
> >> language art making? What are the specificities of code that will
> >> allow us to derive textual objects with distinct characteristics? Or
> >> allow us to extend the Class Text and/or better understand its
> >> underlying abstract Class?
> >>
> >But whose questions, John? These are yours. When you say "more to do
> >with"
> >- this is your approach, not mine. When you cay "Class Text" again you're
> >operating with the notion of "clean code" ("specificities") which may well
> >not be the case. Look at Kenji's work or nn's writing.
>
> So yes, these are my questions, and I am messy-dirtily wedded to a
> relatively clean project, but I do think these questions may help me
> answer why such-and-such media for such-and-such project.
>
Of course I have no disagreement with you here.
I think the world is dirty, people are dirty, in the sense of Mary Douglas
or Kristeva (Powers of Horror); code in a formal sense is a defense
against that. So I'm interested in the interplay of world and code, which
is to say in that liminal area between consciousness and formal systems -
which takes into account desire, sexuality, stumbling about, etc. And I'm
fascinated by plasma, which at least on a theoretical level, can efface
all codes, not even leaving debris behind.
> > > And because a very prominent feature of code is its operation, the
> >> "program that produces a residue" focuses (for me anyway) critical
> >> attention. We are more familiar , in this context, with "carriers of
> >> meaning," however slippery and shifty. re(ad)Joyce! (I know you
> >> always already have.)
> >
> >Yes I have, but the carriers in this case are structured or dirty
> >structures - very different. You're coming at this through both
> >literature and a 'clean' notion of code (see above); I'm not. For
> >example, Perl poetry is operable, but the residue is pretty much
> >irrelevant - yet as far as I'm concerned that's a terrific use of code.
> >As is the figlet program. I don't distinguish - which is why my list in
> >the first place is highly inclusive, not exclusive.
>
> What could be cleaner than Perl poetry? The (vr-valentine) Card with
> a Perl Endearing.
Perl poetry is definitely clean and restrained - my point is that the
poetic content is secondary to its running. It's by necessity a tour de
force.
I've never been sure why Joyce comes up in these discussions; it's hardly
code or hyper etc. etc. Surely there are other examples? There's always
the pseudo-14th-century writing of Chatterton, for example, which did have
roots in dictionaries, translations. And for strict coding, there's early
television (late 19th-century) with its scanning and spark-gap images...
>
> > > Code runs and conceals itself. Code that runs generates text over
> >> durations. Code that runs guarantees that language art cannot
> >> bracket its time-based dimension. It plays and plays out precisely
> >> and particularly in the 'Not to mention ..."
> >>
> >Code doesn't necessarily conceal itself. Code doesn't necessarily do
> >anything you say it does. I wouldn't use the phrase 'language art'
> >myself
> >- I think prions are also code, DNA is also code and code is not
> >necessarily language. I'd have to go back over my Eco for this.
>
> Materially, my point is that code does do exactly what I say. You
> cannot read the code that is running as it runs. It was not coded for
> you, it was coded for the system (for an alien or underlying
> culture). The code may display some manifestation of itself - some
> instantiation of its own archive - as it runs, but it cannot display
> the code structures that are running. This point has a bearing on the
> dirt question since, for me, it introduces a possible site for
> something like an unconscious in the otherwise hypertransparent arena
> of codework and net.art. I'm no where near as well read as you in the
> necessary literature but would be interested to know what you thought
> of 'Inner Workings' http://www.dichtung-digital.de/2003/3-cayley.htm
>
I'll go to the URL... The running is always clean, even if there's a core
dump. One might say it runs as it runs. But not all codework has code in
it or is running; I wanted to make that point in the typology. The work
presented may well be the residue of running code, or as in Mez, something
else entirely, a diacritical structure imposed on 'english.'
I wouldn't say unconscious here, at least not necessarily, since the
unconscious is also the site of the repressed, i.e. the 'dirty,' and the
code runs clean and linear (more or less). (In that sense every program,
like every dream, is successful, no matter what; it does what it does.)
> Code takes literal time to run and as such it takes time to produce a
> readable display not to mention that it can defer reading, withhold
> it, structure and cultivate the time of reading. And yes I accept
> with no qualification that
>
> >All art is time-based
>
> but all art is read within institutions, and literary, even poetic
> (for-bog's-sake) institutions currently operate with a dominant
> notion of writing as deferral, as atemporal (to an extrapordinary
> degree) for critical purposes. For me, writing in networked and
> programmable media challenges this in a direct and very clear/n way.
> Although, hopefully, things will get messy.
Here I agree with you; one thing about institutions, however - I think
codework (and the name tends towards inclusivity as I said somewhere) at
least so far has avoided such; if anything, for example on Poetics, it's
somewhat of a gadfly or irritant - it refuses to go away, refuses to
acknowledge that it's _not_ poetry or for that matter that it _is_ poetry
- in a sense it's got the same sort of empathetic relation to language one
might find in the Upanishads...
> >I feel a real difference between us is that I am writing from the
> >position of dirty code, world-code, which may or may not operate, and
> >that may or may not be the point. For example one piece I did involved
> >reversing all the < and > on a specially written webpage. The result is
> >chaotic, dys- functional in many ways, amazingly functional in others.
> >At West Virginia, I re-morphed/mapped motion capiture sensors,
> >transforming the body into a signal or searchlight system (see my
> >heap.mov at http://www.asondheim.org ). And so forth.
> >
> >It seems to me you're interested primarily in clean and generating
> >concealed code - I have no problem with that. But I do feel you dismiss
> >(even the word 'pseudo-code' is dismissive) everything else that's
> >going on; since you're an editor and critic in the field, it's
> >problematic for me.
>
> I do want to be clear that I'm not, in any of this, trying to work
> out some way to dismiss any of what you do. I've got no problem and
> great respect for your performances and interventions. If I've used
> 'pseudo-code' it's not meant to be dismissive, simply to signal that
> the code in question would not operate.
>
A sample of morse code doesn't operate either. It's readable, and the
code-forms, for example, Mez' are readable as well.
Pseudo implies a relationship to truth - i.e. a 'pseudo-intellectual' as
opposed to a 'real intellectual.' It's a questionable term, I think,
although I'm not sure what else might be used - something like quasi-code,
or vary-code.
> If I have any genuine critical - as in valorising - point to make it
> is in relation to work that is presented as more or less as composed
> writing in whatever media that simply incorporates code elements.
> Such writing gets no credit for doing this per se. To be interesting
> it would have to do more: e.g. get down and dirty; try to be as
> clever and interesting and involved as Joyce; or, even better, show
> us something about the properties and methods of code and/or
> language, more than the simple fact that you can kludge them together
> in the same word, sentence, paragraph, world.
Well here's the heart of the matter. I don't think the people I respect
(this is a strange term here) do such kludging - that's what I was
reacting against. I don't think I do, or Mez, or solipsis, or noemata, or
nn, or jodi, or yourself for that matter. And much of this work isn't text
based at all - Kenji and nn and myself have all done cdroms related to our
other work, I've done video, some people have used flash. I think of
codework as multimedia. But kludging would be, at least to me, fairly
boring (although kludging within the same world is interesting).
>
> >(I want to point out also btw - in relation to the Cybertext book -
> >that Jim R's work is quite clean, but he's not the only practitioner; I
> >was doing codework in 71 and later wrote a number of programs in 76-78.
> >Some of these are now in the internet text. And I was _late_ -
> >Fernbach- Florsheim was doing things in the 60s with computers/code.
> >Etc. etc.)
>
> Hey, we wasn't trying to do a hard-core history of programmatology in
> the Cybertext Yearbook and I do know that even you were late.
> Rosenberg deserves the priority he deserves, as we all do.
>
> I feel a bit of an interloper here - not a nettime or anylist
> subscriber - so sorry to take up space and time in this forum. I'm
> afraid that normally the way I live (zen hermit up big-ass mountain)
> doesn't let me into such exchanges. Forgive me if I logoff now, with
> many thanks to Alan for his ever-incisive dirty (I mean that in his
> good way) words.
>
Hardly an interloper!
and thank you as well John - I think the discuss helps me tremendously
(and others, if this arrives on nettime) - it's long overdue at my end -
yours Alan
> John [via Rita]
>
http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com
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