alphabet games::Mathews
David Kim-Boyle, 2009.
alphabet games is a collection of installation works exploring the musical and visual application of a series of experimental literary techniques pioneered in the writings of Georges Perec, Rimbaud, Jackson Mac Low, bpNichol and Harry Mathews. The works were premiered at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts at the University of Minnesota in 2010 and run in both standalone and interactive modes.
alphabet games :: Mathews
The Mathews Algorithm, devised by American poet Harry Mathews, is a combinatoric method used to generate new words from sets of preexisting words. As the individual letters of the sets are reordered, potentialities are explored and new words are created. Using a vocabulary of words taken from Mathew’s 1998 novel Tlooth, variations on the algorithm are explored in real-time creating unique word combinations and visual patterns. These reorderings are accompanied by sonic textures in which phase, considered akin to spatial displacement, becomes a primary compositional device.