1977. computer etc
No later than 1977 I wrote a piece called "computer etc" which proposed "instructions to computer" to "compute t he existence of a fraction of a sound" "idea". The concept being to imagine a fraction of a sound - in some sense an 'impossibility' insofar as any portion of a sound is still a whole sound & not a fraction. Steve Estes & I then shot what was my 1st video wch included my reading this text. That can be witnessed on YouTube here:
1981. prikalkulilo ktp
In 1981, Kirby Malone was editing an issue of Julien Blaine's excellent magazine from France, "DOC(K)S", in this case an issue centered around "Elementar Poetry in USA East & West". I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a contributor. One of the 2 pieces I submitted was "prikalkulilo ktp", the Esperanto translation of "computer etc" further complicated. Below, in order of end product to beginnings, are scans of how the piece developed.
I took the original "computer etc" piece & compressed it into a smaller area. I also rewrote it adding newer credits & erratically centering it in a way that I preferred as an alternative to left-justification. This centered version was then placed in one of my "Frame of Reference" shapes, a reference to a sculpture of mine from 1975. This version was then redesigned in Esperanto with the "e"s rendered as accented double "g"s (as part of a greater body of text work in which I substituted letters systematically for "e"s) - with translation from English to Esperanto from Chris Mason. I then took the compressed English version & the centered Esperanto version to a place called "Computer Photo" in a shopping mall south of BalTimOre & had them photographed & turned into dot matrix computer print-outs that eradicated the textual content. The purpose of Computer Photo was to take portraits of customers & produce a dot-matrix print-out as a novelty. Since I was doing something experimental, the woman running the concession didn't charge me. This process was somewhat 'state-of-the-art' as a consumer item of the time.
As one of my submissions to DOC(K)S, I took the centered Esperanto version & its dot-matrix transformation & created a 2 page spread. I didn't use the dot matrix version of the left-justified compression of the English text. When DOC(K)S reprinted "prikalkulilo ktp" the editor(s) titled & credited it incorrectly - no wonder considering how difficult I made it for them! In my scan of this 2 page spread, you can see my hand-written corrections.
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