re-Rewrite

Who's Counting

For our next prompt we turn to algorithms. Who doesn't love them /hate them?

Anyway, we were so inspired by Lucy’s contribution to the January writing, which was based on the number six and the ways in which the number directed her to sequences of text fragments and images, that we decided to try to do something similar. Below, the recipe:

Start with a random number. You can use this Life Path Number Calculator , or do it yourself: Take your birthdate, and keep adding individual numbers until you have a final, one-digit number. So, for example, if you were born on May 11, 1975, you would do the following:

05 / 11 / 1975
5+1 = 6
6+1 = 7
7+1 = 8
8+9 = 16
1+6 = 7
7+7 = 14
1+4 = 5
5+5 = 10
1+0 = 1

I hope this makes sense: just keep adding individual numbers, and when there are two digits, add those together and then move on, okay?

Once you have a number, use it to make selections from the following:

  • Choose a written text - a book, story, poem, song lyrics, newspaper headlines, or whatever, as your word foundation.
  • Choose a compilation of images - again, a book, magazine, postcard collection, or maybe even the internet for your images.
  • Launch your algorithm. If your number is 1, as in the example, take the first line of every page, chapter, or portion of your written document and put them together.
  • Do the same with your image source: find the first image on each page, the first image to appear based on a search… etc. Combine them with your text; you can be creative here.
  • Now, the important part: find ways to link these combinations of text and image. What can you weave into what has serendipitously appeared for you?

This prompt returns us to a longer history of constraint-based writing - Raymond Queneau beautifully enacted chance operations with his set of 10 sonnets in which each line is a separate strip, offering many possible poem combinations in a project titled A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. The Oulipo group also used constraints in their writing. However, what we love about Lucy’s work is the deviations from the algorithm. The constraints produce a combination, and then she works in the gap, finding some way to cultivate something magical in the mix.