At the Franschhoek Literary Festival this weekend, I hosted a discussion called “The Re-wiring of the Writer’s Mind”, in which Aryan Kaganof, Lauren Beukes and Stacy Hardy talked about whether and how the internet is changing literary creativity.
Towards the end of the hour, we showed clips from a recent artwork by Hardy and François Naudé called dis.grace. It’s an animation of JM Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace, that employs Google Image Search and a voice-over narration by Richard E Grant to “republish”, or “render” the book into a new (and newly invented) medium. In Naudé and Hardy’s own words:
dis.grace is a digital project that re-appropriates JM Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace (1999) in order to explore the failureof language to maintain its authority in the postcolony.
The project translates the full text of Coetzee’s novel into images using the Google Search Engine’s “Image Search” functionality. It matches each word in the book with its equivalent No.1 Google search image* to create a new book, a visual text rewritten through the eyes of a global digital popular culture.
It combines chance, play, bad taste, incomprehension, artifice, and a lack of truth to up-end the “disgraced” Western literary parameters of “white male writing” considering its history of ideologically (and sexual) objectification and predation. It shuns the authority of the author and the omniscient narrator used in the Western novel as the equivalent to the intruding phallocentric colonizer while at the same time questioning the amnesia and historical selfinvention of post-apartheid consumer society.
*Google images search rates pages according to popularity thus creating a seemingly “democratic voice”, based on the consensus of the majority of internet users.
Naudé and Hardy’s work elicted strong reactions from audience members, some of whom (including Eben Venter) loved it, others the reverse. It was certainly talked about quite a lot during the remainder of the festival.
I thought others might be interested in taking a look, and asked Hardy if she would consider supplying BOOK SA with a short excerpt from dis.grace. She has very kindly obliged; here’s a clip of dis.grace from Chapter One:
The image at the top of this post shows how dis.grace would look if it were published in book form, as images only. At the artwork’s website (www.disgrace.co.za), you can find a dis.grace search engine, which has been pre-applied to the site’s text (click any word to see how it works):
The language he draws on with such aplomb is, if he only knew it, tired, friable, eaten from the inside as if by termites. Only the monosyllables can still be relied on, and not even all of them. What is to be done?
To view a longer version of the work, head to the Chimurenga Library installation at the Cape Town library on Darling Street (which runs until 21 June). dis.grace will eventually be published/rendered in full on the artwork’s homepage.
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May 19th, 2009 @02:09 #
1) Can anyone translate the following into a language that can be understood and discussed in such a way that we know what we are talking about:
"It shuns the authority of the author and the omniscient narrator used in the Western novel as the equivalent to the intruding phallocentric colonizer while at the same time questioning the amnesia and historical selfinvention of post-apartheid consumer society."
?
On second thought, no, please don't. I think I will not be poorer if I miss out on this one.
People writing such sentences fail language.
2) This entire project seems like a terrible waste of time. To do this to a paragraph of the book would have been fun, but to waste time, money and creative energies to 'translate' the entire novel into this nonsense...
Literature - especially of the quality and insight as JMC's Disgrace - deserves better. Much better!
May 19th, 2009 @02:14 #
Most intriguing, but could one of the lit-boffs please translate the passage below:
"It combines chance, play, bad taste, incomprehension, artifice, and a lack of truth to up-end the “disgraced” Western literary parameters of “white male writing” considering its history of ideologically (and sexual) objectification and predation. It shuns the authority of the author and the omniscient narrator used in the Western novel as the equivalent to the intruding phallocentric colonizer while at the same time questioning the amnesia and historical selfinvention of post-apartheid consumer society."
May 19th, 2009 @02:14 #
Damn, you beat me to it, Karina.
May 19th, 2009 @02:20 #
In a nutshell: why I fled academia. Not just the sentence, the Whole Emperor's New Clothes Kaboodle. BTW, a small prize to the first person to spot the error in that sentence -- hint, it's not a typo, but a genuine grammar mistake.
May 19th, 2009 @02:22 #
It should read "ideological", not "ideologically".
May 19th, 2009 @02:28 #
I missed that one, which makes it TWO. Richard, you get a prize, but the booboo I spotted was in the sentence Karina typed out.
I feel a bit mean about this, but I feel this kind of discourse is so alienating, and such a political weapon of gatekeeping, insider/outsider policing, that I feel morally obliged to deflate it by noting that those using this kind of smoke + mirrors talk can't even write grammatically.
May 19th, 2009 @02:56 #
Perhaps I shouldn't have run the text, which may be unabashedly hieratic (and in need of an editor - like all our writing), but which isn't the main point.
May 19th, 2009 @02:56 #
DisGrys on speed. I like the concept. But it's too quick to read.
In the sentence Karina quotes, there are several grammar errors. My edited version reads: "It shuns the authority of the author and the omniscient narrator used in the Western novel as the equivalent [of] the intruding[,] phallocentric colonizer[,] while at the same time questioning the amnesia and historical self[-]invention of post-apartheid consumer society."
May 19th, 2009 @02:57 #
Huh? I've turned into Helen!
May 19th, 2009 @02:58 #
By that I meant that my profile pic changed to that of Helen's. A refresh sorted it, thanks.
May 19th, 2009 @03:00 #
Ja, fixed stills with audio, so I can glide my eyes over the pics, that'll work. Only, the flicker pic leaves it all too small.
May 19th, 2009 @03:06 #
Why add something new to the world and then explain its meaning in terms that very few people understand?
PS: "the equivalent of"
May 19th, 2009 @03:08 #
Damn, Rustum beat me to it.
May 19th, 2009 @03:38 #
I love the project. It's such an inventive and playful* way to remix and reinterpret the novel. Love the geekiness, love the transience, that it changes constantly (as many times as you run the programme) to reflect the world right now, at least in terms of what images are top of the pops on Google. Talk about subtext!
We could definitely lose the academese (although this kind of high-falutin' talk goes with the artworld like NSFW ** goes with google images).
Or better yet, plug it into Google Images for our own little remix / critical engagement with the animal at hand? Maybe I'll do just that... Watch this space. Or rather my blog, cos I can't post images into this comment box.
(* if by playful you mean hours and hours of hardcore programming)
(** NSFW = Not Safe For Work, short-hand for don't look at this pic while your boss is lurking nearby, which is not a problem for those of us who work at home or get to play boss)
May 19th, 2009 @03:40 #
Richard! Hello. You're up late or early? Ben, in what timezone is BookSA?
May 19th, 2009 @06:23 #
Heh heh my evil plot to invade Rustum's head working nicely (oh lordie, I've turned into a zombie).
Rustum, you get another bottle of wine (but a cheap one) -- you are entirely correct, as is Richard.
May 19th, 2009 @06:29 #
It's an intriguing project, Lauren, but I always get uncomfortable when art becomes random. And I get even more uncomfortable (read: annoyed) when the maker tries to impart meaning by using a lingo that basically says: "if you don't understand this, that's not because it's crap or totally inaccessible, it's because you're stupid or old-fashioned."
So, art folk, if you create an experimental installation or work of art, why not just pretend the world is your gran. Let us bumble about and draw our own conclusions, raise our own questions, instead of bending us over and intruding with your phallocentric collonizers. (Does it show that this has been pissing me off for some time? I feel a full post coming on.)
That said, I'm not sure if my time zone is ahead or way behind, but my clock reads 22:11.
May 19th, 2009 @08:47 #
Rustum, BOOK SA's chat and post timestamps are on US server time for the moment. At some point they will reflect (our) reality.
May 19th, 2009 @08:54 #
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
May 19th, 2009 @15:56 #
Mmm, fried brain on toast. Thank you, Sophy.
I usually run for cover when the prefix bombardment rains down: presemiotic, presemantic, subdesituationism, contrapresubparadigmatic.
May 19th, 2009 @16:01 #
I was there at the Ben/Aryan/Stacy/Lauren discussion when this was aired, and it was as fascinating to watch the audience's reaction (a mixture of 'WTF?' and 'brilliant') as it was to see the images flit across the screen - to me they were like a visual soundtrack to the spoken text. It made an impact. I too have a massive problem decoding academic jargon, it does alienate (as Helen says), but like all art, to me it's clear that this can be enjoyed, engaged with, disparaged and debated on the viewers' own terms. Ignore the 'philosophy' behind it, or don't. Up to you.
May 19th, 2009 @17:08 #
As one audience member commented as he watched the screen in bemusement "now that is a disgrace". An author puts months of effort into a novel, and invests all their time into considering every word before placing it on to the page. That's why I always have a love affair with a novel when I read it because that dedication and effort shines through in the text, like poetry in prose. That is also why I always view film adaptions as visual companions more than anything else, because they could never grasp the full meaning of a book. When I viewed this project at the panel I was taken aback. The images chosen were nothing if not random, and that in itself, will greatly change the meaning the author intented. I didn't see the message of JM Coetsee's Disgrace in the video, only a cause for debate.
May 19th, 2009 @17:12 #
Coetzee*
May 19th, 2009 @17:31 #
How did I miss all this fun???
I love it. I didn't bother reading about it.
I see there are lots of premoderns in the crowd who believe that the author's intentions or the text deserve some mystical sanctity. As any fule kno, the text only operates when someone's reading it.
This comment is an evolving text; it has changed its meaning five times since the author conceived it, wrote it and reread it.
Which version will you read, and how would you translate it?
May 19th, 2009 @17:49 #
It's great to see an artwork that can create so much of a stir, that is controversial, that fosters ferocious debate, that draws such disparate and hectic visceral reactions on both sides. Isn't that what art is about? Or should be about?
Richard generally, I find it best to avoid reading the info blurbs that accompany artworks. They can be incredibly pretentious and incomprehensible or plain stupid. Art is indeed best left up to open interpretation.
And you're right, Sally, it no longer has anything to do with the book, it's not the movie-of, it's a totally new beast that has its stem cells in Disgrace and the world. IMHO that's what makes it so exciting. It's two different "texts" (if you can call Google Images search results a "text") smashing into each other in ways intriguing and, yes, uncomfortable.
And Louis, yep, sacred cows should be turned into biltong and eaten.
I'm actually quite jealous. I wish someone had taken Moxyland and turned it into a whole different species of thing.
May 19th, 2009 @17:59 #
Dammit, I see that Stacy has already "translated" the confounding art speak on the disgrace.co.za site. If you click on any of the words it will link you to Google Images search results. Well there goes my work-avoidance project for the morning.
May 19th, 2009 @18:02 #
"In the works of Joyce, a predominant concept is the concept of postconceptualist reality." Genius, Sophy! Where did you find it?
Disgrace II - The Return of the Search Engine. I give it a C-minus, because it didn't hold my attention longer than 15 seconds. *yawn*
Fun debate, though!
May 19th, 2009 @18:02 #
Well, Lauren, by dogearing my copy of Moxyland and pencil-scrawling my miniature notes-with-a-view-to-maybe-an-academic-(yawn)-article-on-it in the back pages and leaving it to gather dust on the top shelf in my office then flipping and dusting it before relocating it into the bookshelf in my study, I have made that iteration of your original into a somewhat different species of thing. It could well serve as part of an installation of "used Moxylands".
May 19th, 2009 @18:14 #
I'm wondering what J M Coetzee has to say about the animation of his book, if anything.
May 19th, 2009 @18:19 #
Mmm, confession time: I'm actually reading Moxyland through the lens of the Kabbalah, by which I hope to arrive at recipes for a range of different flavoured koessiestes (as opposed to koeksister) which, in addition, will have dessicated coconut sprinkled in chapters on each batch. And that is why I have been so quiet on BookSA.
May 19th, 2009 @18:22 #
As long as you break them out at the next blogger's tea...
May 19th, 2009 @18:36 #
hmmm, I also thought it was interesting, and I actually have been thinking about it quite a lot since I saw it. I was also intrigued by its every-time-different, constantly erased, zeitgeist-dependent quality. But my reactions were at odds to the artists' stated intentions: I don't think it did much to "up-end" or really engage with the original text of Disgrace (or even the literature it's meant to represent), which I felt served a largely symbolic role as the source material. And I thought there was something interesting about the degradation of language and meaning that occurs with the shift from personal to collective imagery.
I was struck by how the collective Google vocabulary seems to me overwhelmingly - well, how can I put it? Er, objectifying, colonizing, and yes indeed phallocentric, with a weird oppressive kind of omniscient authorial authority all of its own! It doesn't exactly make a language. So ja, for me a successful artwork, if not a completely focused one. It made me think - am still thinking - about language and stuff.
May 19th, 2009 @18:47 #
When I was sitting in the audience and the "naughty" images flashed across the scene, the audience laughed and that made me feel uncomfortable. Those scenes in the novel served a purpose and they were essentially simplified to pornographic images on a projector for a few people's amusement. The meaning was completely taken out of context. If that was the intention of the artwork, then I think in this case, it was lost on this particular crowd.
May 19th, 2009 @20:04 #
I think it may have been lost on the crowd (I wasn't there though); I think part of Naude and Hardy's joint may be exactly a kind of 'degradation' of the original text's intentions, euphemisms. Coetzee is playing all sorts of games with SA societal mores in Disgrace, one game of which may be a scandalising intent - white male academic, black, 'Muslim' prostitute presented/framed as an almost quid pro quo relationship by the narrator. I think the pornographic images in dis.grace scandalise that.
May 19th, 2009 @20:29 #
Perhaps it is more of a comment on Google image search and translation than anything else. But as a piece of conceptual art I think it works, the real impact is the repeat of images to the robotic Richard E Grant soundover. The "book" pages would also make a keen gallery piece. All the time I was sitting there thinking, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?". Truth is I probably wouldn't ever have and that's partly what makes it so exciting.
May 19th, 2009 @20:30 #
And on that note I've turned into Rustum! Or, at least I've turned into creepy-baby with wierd brows. Help!
May 19th, 2009 @20:36 #
Sophy, yes, I also thought: Damn! Why didn't I think of that? But there's always Ulysses...
May 19th, 2009 @20:37 #
This thing should have reply buttons.
http://www.google.co.za/search?q=This+thing+should+have+reply+buttons.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
May 19th, 2009 @21:56 #
Good points, R & S. The effect is certainly to rather rudely deflate any euphemisms, hence, perhaps, some of the audience's laughter. I have also been thinking, how possible is it to read these image-books? What would happen if you tried to retranslate back into words? Across languages? Ah well. I think it's fun.
May 19th, 2009 @23:53 #
I'm busy working on The Golden Bough right now.
June 2nd, 2009 @13:50 #
Hi All - this chat thread has now been restored. Hope Richard sees this -
http://richarddenooy.book.co.za/blog/2009/05/29/disgrace/
- complaint resolved!
June 2nd, 2009 @14:49 #
Excellent! Thanks, Ben.
June 2nd, 2009 @16:33 #
I am jealous - really love this idea. my fav part of it is that, once published, an author no longer holds any power over the text, and it can be appropriated in any way any one wants to. poof! the sender disappears - they can have intentions but even someone as clear and concise (read mathematical) as JMC can't anticipate all outcomes. JC. hahahahah.
June 2nd, 2009 @17:40 #
You're all a bunch of author murderers! Will no one stand up for the sanctity of authorial intention? The inviolability of the god-like authorial hand? Am I fighting my corner all alone here?
June 2nd, 2009 @18:21 #
I've not been able to comment on this thread at all for reasons of fear and stuff. But hell's bells, I will fight in your corner, Fiona! I will stand up for the sanctity of authorial whatnot. There.
June 2nd, 2009 @19:21 #
If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you (er, remaindered copies maybe) then it's yours to keep, if it doesn't it was never yours in the first place (insert plagiarism accusation here)
June 2nd, 2009 @20:13 #
ar, I am still reeling from the discovery that you are not in fact a man. I was SO sure that you were. In fact, I would have put money on it. I have no idea why! But now when you write I can clearly hear a woman's voice "speaking".
Hope to meet you at the CT Book Fair.
June 3rd, 2009 @08:05 #
Fiona, I just snorted cornflakes through my nose (A first for me). At least I'm awake now though. Maybe some of my leaving-the-towel-on-the-floor tendencies were coming through the wires? Or maybe I was unconciously transmitting my desire to come back as either Stephen Fry or Leonard Cohen ...
June 3rd, 2009 @10:28 #
Leonard Cohen! Leonard Cohen!
June 3rd, 2009 @10:29 #
ar, I think it was that ineffable hint of bolshiness in your writing that the biological determinist in me associates with masculinity. I was completely gobsmacked when Helen outed you as a woman.
June 3rd, 2009 @10:34 #
Helen, please, Leonard's name should be whispered gruffly, not shouted.
June 3rd, 2009 @10:40 #
*humbled* sorry, Richard, you are absolutely right *tugs forelock, bends knee*. I shall now huskily whisper another Great Name: Tom Waits....
June 3rd, 2009 @10:45 #
Leonard Kou-hom or Leonard Hou-hom?
June 3rd, 2009 @10:48 #
This will make you love him even more...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX1qpcDchD4
June 3rd, 2009 @11:07 #
Hou-hom.
Ooo, Helen, yes, Mr Waits! "... things are pretty lousy for a calender girl/the boys just dive right off the cars into the street/and when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boot/and a thousand pigeons fall around her feet..." if memory serves. Lyric heaven.
How do you guys manage to get writing done, by the way, and still follow these threads? Skillz!
June 3rd, 2009 @11:29 #
*swooning at video clip* self-deprecation is SO sexy... AR, I have got NO work done so far today, and it is dawning on me slowly that I have a telephone consult with a very nice UK client in a few hours... better get cracking.
June 3rd, 2009 @11:36 #
Fiona and AR, I don't believe that the author, JMC, and his book, Disgrace, have been violated. In this sense, any reading is a violation because every single reader will produce meanings different to the author's intention. I think Louis mentioned this earlier as well.
In some ways, dis.grace is a homage to Disgrace, whether the authors of dis.grace intend that or not.
June 3rd, 2009 @11:54 #
I'd be honoured if someone took the trouble to reinterpret my book. (Don't all rush.)