Writing & Machine as Sites
The following is not a dream…
You find yourself in a bright room of rectangular shape and clean, white walls. You see ordinary furniture like what you would have in your living room and studies. You walk by a desk, or you touch upon a desk surface by accident…and the desk starts to type itself. You walk by an ordinary stand-up lamp and a voice, half-human, half-machine, chants something almost comprehensible but not quite. While you're still struggling to nail it down word by word, someone not far from you is earnestly planting his/her body in all kinds of possible postures. Here someone flaps his arms as if he's about to take off like a bird, or yet another quiet person trying her steps back and forth, finding the best angle for hips to turn. Here, by the desk in front of a monitor, someone is absorbed in reading and writing, lost in a certain detective world. Some busy hands are cutting and pasting paper slips diligently over two over-sized books. Two persons are playing computer games, but on the screen are moving lines and shapes splitting and combining. In the far end of the room, someone is strolling and meditating… All of them are writing…
The 2nd edition of The Writing Machine Collective explores the variety of writing: writing as performance, as methods of textual generation, writing process that is body-interactive, automated self-generation, writing via the appropriation of found text, sonification, visualization, and spatialization, all of which adopting programmed algorithms.
Writing is no longer a functional activity, It is a special site, like a playground, on which we explore its possible but unknown potentials. Such potentials are embedded in, as well as defined and limited by, the tools adopted.
WMC_e2 is a collective laboratory. It aims at presenting to the public accessible, quality works with a strong research impulse. Like all new media arts projects, WMC_e2 illustrate ways of tapping the machine capabilities of computer-based programming. In addition, we seek to ensure all the works to shed light on our banal everyday life setting and to engage in elements of our culture. In this edition, we particularly focused on the exploration of Generative Art, a form of art that has been extensively explored in 20th-century fine arts and experimental literature, and more recently in media arts that involve code-based programming.
The interests and individual strength of the 12 artists (or teams) pertain to very different possibilities of the future development of the "Writing Machine," and only a full assemblage of them helps to illustrate to the public the richness and diversity of this rather less attended aspect of new media arts. Along with the exhibition, a broad range of educational activities will be carried out to bring the project to fruition, including lectures, workshops, and an on-line virtual parallel exhibition, all of which will cover a six-month period.
In line with the main concern of new media, the WMC_e2 takes up the challenge to re-define the identity of a work of art as well as the notion of an author. With these works, the conventional artist now is no longer the sole, ultimate author, but becomes the initiator of a series of infinite creative possibilities by many co-/post-authors. A work of art is then captured as here-and-now moments along an open process of limitless emergence.
Curator: Linda Lai
January 2007
另一種場所：書寫、自我衍生的流程
這不是一場夢……
你發現自己身處於一個明亮的長方形的房間，牆壁潔白。你看見一些傢俱，跟平日在客廳、在書房裡所認識的一模一樣。你路過一張書桌，意外地輕輕踫到桌面一下，然後，桌子開始自顧自的打起字來。你路過一盞普通不過的座地燈，然後，一把半人性半機械的聲音開始誦唱起來。誦詞聽起來好像可以被理解，卻又不可以。當你仍然在掙扎著，誓要把誦詞的一文一字確認下來的時候，你看見有些人在不遠處認真地嘗試擺著各種姿勢：這裡，他在拍動雙臂，像鳥將要起飛，她則靜靜的在踏步，向前，向後，找著一個最好的角度彎身。這裡，靠著書桌的電腦屏幕跟前，有人在專心閱讀、寫字，迷失於一個偵探故事的世界裡。再往靜處看，兩個人低著頭專心致志的對著兩本大書幹著剪貼遊戲。兩個人在玩電腦遊戲，屏幕上卻是很多的線，和不同的塊狀，在走動、分開、結合。在房間的盡頭，有人在蹓躂…… 房子裏的人，全都在寫字。
《文字機器創作集》（第2輯）探索了寫作的多樣性：寫作作為表演和文本產生的方法；寫作過程與身體互動或機械性的自我衍生；挪用現存文本、聲音化、形象化、空間化的寫作 ─ 統統以程式化的演算法進行。
寫作不再是一項功能性的活動。它是一個特別的場所，像遊樂場，我們在那裡發掘它無法估計的可能性。這些可能性潛在、決定、限制於我們所採用的功具。
《文字機器創作集》（第2輯）是一個集體的創作實驗室，它旨在展出以研究為基礎、卻平易近人的、具質素的作品。跟其他新媒體藝術創作一樣，是次展覽發揮了電腦程式的機器特性。同時，我們亦希望參展作品能加入文化中的各種元素，為日常生活的平凡景象帶來生氣，進行思考。
是次展覽特別注重對「衍生藝術」的探討：衍生藝術曾廣泛被二十世紀的美術及實驗文學視為研究對象，而近年冒起的媒體藝術透過電腦程式來探索衍生藝術的努力已自成一體。
十二個參展藝術單位各施其法各顯所長，他們對於「文字機器」未來的發展亦提供了多方面的可能性。由於「文字機器」為新媒體藝術領域上相較地不被重視的發展方向，因此，只有把指向、動機不盡相同的各式各樣的作品一拼展出才得以勾勒其豐富與多樣性。為使整個《文字機器創作集》（第2輯）計劃更趨全面，我們將於未來半年間舉行多項富教育意味的活動，當中包括講座、工作坊及一個長達六個月或更長的持續的網上展覽。
《文字機器創作集》（第2輯）與新媒體所關注的一樣，旨在重新界定藝術作品的身份和作者的定義。由參展作品可見，傳統的藝術家已不再是那個最重要、最終極的作者，而是創作過程的發起人：他 / 她必須跟後來的其他作者共同創作出一連串無限個的創意可能。一件藝術作品於是可被視為一個個在開放過程中不斷出現的此時此地的瞬間。
策展人：黎肖嫻
