algorhythms of the meaningless.

May 5, 2004 9:56 PM

The Collected Works of Racter: "A tree or shrub can grow and bloom. I am always the same. But I am clever."
Or, perhaps more useful than poetry, "A Method for Sorting Cows."
Have I read this before, or merely something like it? "A piece that is essentially the same as a piece made by any of the first conceptual artists, dated two years earlier than the original and signed by somebody else. "
In our confusion, we can settle for simple non-sequitor: The Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing.
posted by kaibutsu (7 comments total)

I was fascinated by the idea of Racter (a supposedly completely computer-generated work of mixed prose, poetry , and conversation) since I first heard of it, God knows when, and read all those beautiful excerpts:

"Night sky and fields of black
A flat cracked surface and a building
She reflects an image in a glass
She does not see, she does not watch."

"Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke each other. They may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have love but they also have typewriters.
That is interesting."

"More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
I need it for my dreams."

Beautiful moments like this. I was amazed to find the full Racter text on line a while back, after being for so long certain it was only to be found on the shelves of certain collectors in faraway cities. Most isn't up to the quality of the usual excerpts, but there are definitely gems buried in there, well worth digging for.

(It is also curious to go over the text with a search for some of the more common words. 'Dream' is a particularly good one. The dreaming machine, listening to the hum of its electrons, is a beautiful idea, which Racter sings so angrily about.)

And then I started poking around the page it was a part of, and found some other interesting stuff. Maybe not Shakespeare, but definitely something.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:07 PM on May 5, 2004

I'm glad Kosuth was in there. (i love his stuff)

I used to do these a while ago--concrete poetry, and conceptual instructions and directions. The Fluxus folks did some good ones ages ago.
posted by amberglow at 10:21 PM on May 5, 2004

Racter, the program, can be downloaded here. Incedentally, Jorn Barger claims the Racter book, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed", is not nearly as computer-generated as it seems.
posted by arto at 11:02 PM on May 5, 2004

It's been a long while since I've heard about ractor, and so this is practically like learning of it the first time all over again.

And as I read the "dissertation on love" piece, I was immediately aware that this could not possibly be fully (or even mostly) computer generated text. There is a great deal of meaning interacting with layered structure there, and for a computer to truly accomplish such a thing would require AI tech far beyond anything we've managed to date.

What this is closer to is someone making fridge poetry.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:12 PM on May 5, 2004

The original Racter is well worth emulating. It is a lot of fun, much more than AI stuff that's hyped more.

I'm surprised spammers haven't been using Racter.
posted by inksyndicate at 12:21 AM on May 6, 2004

Yay!

I remember running Racter on my old XT.

More uses for emulation it seems. (grin>

Thanks, arto...
posted by Samizdata at 12:59 AM on May 6, 2004

yeah, arto, I think I read that at some time in the distant past. And while it says some things that should be obvious about the intersection of AI and XTs, I think the idea behind the book is still intriguing, and as a strange kind of fiction, it still works quite well.

amberglow: Thanks for the fluxus link, (now I know all about Zombie Joseph Beuys! but it seems many of the links therein are dead, dead, dead... Alas.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:45 PM on May 6, 2004