THE DELETIONIST

The Deletionist is a concise system for automatically producing an erasure poem from any Web page. It systematically removes text to uncover poems, discovering a network of texts called “the Worl” within the World Wide Web. // By Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort. // Install the bookmarklet at www.thedeletionist.com @thedeletionist

[gemmacofa]

This website is incredible! You put it in your bookmarks, open any page and it creates erasure poems out of the text on the page.

[gemmacofa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current

Looking more at this Rip themed poetry (distorted by The Deletionist). This is a wikipedia page on Rip currents, I’m just not sure about it. It feels a bit nothing to me (but that’s so subjective!)

[gemmacofa]

EXPERIMENT 8

I continued using the deletionist in an attempt to generate something rip related. As you can see that didn’t happen. But the more I think about it, the more I can grasp that it makes a lot of sense - the theme is “the rip” however the concept is the nonsense, the un-meaning…one of the works being completely void of “the rip” is terribly fitting. Do we directly place meaning relating to the rip onto a work just because of the title of the exhibition? Perhaps this is what this questions (and I’m pretty sure the answer is yes). 

Bernstein’s direction for this one:

28. Write a poem in which you try to transcribe as accurately as you can your thoughts while you are writing.  Don’t edit anything out. Write as fast as you can without planning what you are going to say. (Sometimes called “free writing. Try this with handwriting. Compare versions done by hand and on a computer.)

29. Autopilot: Trying as hard as you can not to think or consider what you are writing, write as much as you can as fast you can without any editing or concern for syntax, grammar, narrative, or logic. Try to keep this going for as long as possible: one hour, two hours, three hours: don’t look back don’t look up.

Thinking curation: At this point I’m thinking that my final three pieces will be the short story (exp. 2), the riptide “ripped” lyric audio (exp. 4) and something along the lines of this experiment. I think they all in a textual sense explore the possibility of new meaning being derived from pieces of nonsense. I have successfully scrambled or reconstructed those three pieces and think they could work well together. In my mind the audio plays loudly in the exhibition, the short story is written across a whole wall and these deconstructed poems are framed and hanging on another wall in a set of three. 

[gemmacofa]

FOR A FINAL PIECE

I picked these five final pieces that I’ll re-create in Illustrator to be five stand alone images to be framed and hung on a wall as part of a set. They are a collection of erasure poems (created through use of the deletionist) that have been sourced from my own writing (1), my tumblr posts (2 and 4), a wikipedia page (3) and a poem about a riptide (5). They have been put together in an attempt to assemble some kind of narrative (which they do at least for me). 

[gemmacofa]

Misunderstandings, 2014

This piece is a set of randomly generated and fragmented poems that explore the notion of constructed meanings. Each poem started as a full piece based on the theme of “the rip”, and has been randomly stripped down to bare essentials. The poems push the boundaries of minimalism and the ability of repeated words to produce subjective meaning.

[gemmacofa]

EXPERIMENT SEVEN

As an experiment I opened The Deletionist website up on my tumblr dashboard and it created these incredible visual poems. 

It’s interesting how these “poems” actually made me think - e.g. “to to?” To what? What is it trying to say?

I particularly like the progression down the images as the poems become more wordy and feel almost like they’re giving something away but you’re not quite sure just what it is.

I would like these in my final pieces, perhaps as a set of three or five in frames on a wall. I think the way you frame something aids in the interpretation (or misinterpretation) of an object. If these were in frames then the viewer automatically thinks they are of value and importance, and would instantly look for meaning in the pieces, regardless of whether or not the artist intended it. 

[era-sure-blog]

The Deletionist screenshots. From Jacques Derrida, “Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida,”

[era-sure-blog]

“The Deletionist sets out to create erasures from the vastest hypertext available, the Web, considered by Kenneth Goldsmith to be, itself, “the greatest poem ever written.” A project by Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul and Nick Montfort

[withclosedeyes]

Alec Baldwin, curtly

[i-rather-think-he-knew-anyway]

[thedeletionist]

"o made, o hear, ney mo money"

Reverse-erasure artist Natalie Czech interviewed by Rachel Valinsky in @BOMBmagazine: http://buff.ly/1wvwmRS

[thedeletionist]

"o find, o search, o generate, o show"

Reverse-erasure artist Natalie Czech interviewed by Rachel Valinsky in @BOMBmagazine: http://buff.ly/1wvwmRS

[thedeletionist]

"o look, o them, o and, worl, o you"

Reverse-erasure artist Natalie Czech interviewed by Rachel Valinsky in @BOMBmagazine: http://buff.ly/1wvwmRS

[thedeletionist]

"o be, o carefully, o like, o a poem"

Reverse-erasure artist Natalie Czech interviewed by Rachel Valinsky in @BOMBmagazine: http://buff.ly/1wvwmRS

[thedeletionist]

@metmuseum's "Now You See It: Photography and Concealment." http://buff.ly/1vWKMhJ

[sprs-smts]

[poemsio]

The Deletionist is an erasure bookmarklet. It converts any webpage into an erasure poem, using an enigmatic system called “The Worl.” 

Above is a Hamlet-inspired take on Craigslist.