Well-Placed Errors

Weird spellings to capture less-weird distinctions…

What is exposed to computability is not the object in and of itself but one of its phases observed in a site-specific location open to a given machine-process.


Back in April 2004, Adrien Miles and Jeremy Yuille composed a Manifesto for Responsible Creative Computing in which one of the key statements is that computer literacy is synonymous with network literacy. I am venturing the suggestion that network literacy deals with "computible" objects. Such objects are indeed computable they are also as often remarked fungible.


And yet I am totally unhappy with this ible/able play I have initiated if it doesn't keep in mind that there is a material substratum. The digital technologies allow us to play with faithful copies. Replication is at the heart of the matter. And an ethics in its structure. Yuille and Miles, in the context of their manifesto and from the perspective of teaching students who work with the soft artifacts of the creative industries, place _praxis_ between _knowledge transfer_ and _learning_. Under the rubric of praxis is the following single sentence:  "Breaking, gleaning and assembling is a theory of praxis for these literacies." Sure if you are dealing with the breakible copies, the gleanible copies and the assemblible copies -- morphs on the computible.

Morphiblia -- the object of study of humanities computing.

Banking on the fungible … As Yuille and Miles write "Learning happens when things work, different learning occurs when things don’t work."

And so for day 1955
20.04.2012

Let Us

The image is from a greeting card copyright 1981 with the following credits: created by Scott Alyn and artist June Wood. The card came with seeds.

The punning didn't stop at the cover. Inside were planting instructions:

Lettuce Seeds

Plant me 1/4 inch deep in early spring and every few weeks as long as weather is cool. Rows should be 15 inches apart. And remember.... "Eat more lettuce. Get Ahead!"

Of course the entire crop could bolt in warm weather. Planting early leads to good head — at least in the domain of iceberg lettuce.

And so for day 1400
13.10.2010

Rejoicing Wit: Clever By More Than Half

Shakespeare. Love's Labour Lost.

HOLOFERNES, the pendant, celebrates the princesses hunting prowess. He does so with hilarious aplomb.

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.

The preyful princess pierced and prickt;
a pretty pleasing pricket;
Some say a sore; but not a sore,
till now made sore with shooting.
The dogs did yell: put L to sore,
then sorel jumps from thicket;
Or pricket sore, or else sorel;
the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore
makes fifty sores: O sore L!
Of one sore I an hundred make
by adding but one more L.

Explanatory Notes for Act 4, Scene 2 from Love's Labour's Lost. Ed. William Rolfe.

A buck of the first head. According to The Return from Parnassus, 1606 (quoted by Steevens) "a buck is the first year, a fawn; the second year, a pricket; the third year, a sorrell; the fourth year, a soare; the fifth, a buck of the first head; the sixth year, a compleat buck."

Pun by way of number, pretty Roman numerals (fifty = L and one hundred = C). But what have we here? A doubling of the L would give us not "sorell" but "sorec" — a nonsense word by our accounting. But the doubling of 50 (L) to 100 (LL) by Holofernes's could with the addition of a suffix "s" indicate the plural be "sorells" which is an anagram of "sollers" which is Latin for "clever" and just by chance the nom de plume of a French man of letters who has been much taken by Joycean language games of which Holofernes is a precursor. By the way, Philippe Sollers was born Philippe Joyaux — a gem.

And so for day 1279
14.06.2010