POETRY – SCIENCE
(Manifesto of poetical science)
"Modern science introduces man into a
new world. If man thinks science he renovates
himself as a thinking man."Gaston Bachelard:
Rational Materialism
1. SOURCES
New pages of reality, opened by physics, chemistry
and biology, have long stood before poets waiting
to be translated into verses. Poets, however,
ignore them, "do not see them" or
do not accept them. In these fateful moments
for art and science, poetry turns its head indifferently
or fearfully from the unseen growth of technological
civilization, beginnings of conquering cosmos,
discoveries of mesons, antimatter, quasars,
the secrets of proteins, protoplasm, light,
nitrogen and carbon, biochemical and physiological
processes in plant tissues, karyokinesis.The
breakthrough of science into the heart of matter
(living - genetics, dead - nuclear physics)
and the heart of universe (radio astronomy and
astrophysics) not only failed to get closer,
but even moved scientist more away from artist.Ancient
ages, however, did not know for this huge and
seemingly unbridgeable gap between science and
poetry. Creating giant cosmogonies, encompassing
in their poems the destiny of entire world (universe);
Hesiod, Empedocles, Parmenides and Lucretius
were at the same time poets, philosophers and
scientists. It was not before the Middle Ages
and alchemists, when scientific disciplines
stepped on the hard soil of rationalism, building
their own picture of the world and their language,
that that gap became complete.Developments of
chemistry and physics led, by the end of nineteenth
century, to a shattering of Boltsman's mechanist
picture of the world and breaking down the magnificent,
but basically simple and one-sided vision of
macro- and micro cosmos built on atom as a "compact
indivisible" particle. Somewhat later on,
with adopting Planck's quantum theory and Einstein's
special and general theory of relativity, formal-logical
and rationalistic structure of scientific spirit,
cherished for centuries, was shaken. Finally,
by De Broglie's waves of matter, Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle and more recent discoveries
in biology (structure and role of protoplasm
and proteins in living matter, relation of discontinuity
quantum phenomena with mutation, role of genes
and chromosomes in formation of living organisms),
science has almost approached the sources of
the irrational.Modern scientists-visionaries
made, in creation of magnificent hypotheses
about matter (living and dead) and universe,
in travelling into the unknown, into transcendental,
perhaps the first step toward getting poetry
and science closer, accepting one of the basic
instruments of poetry - imagination. Yet, scientific
mind shackled by logic formulas can not solve
itself the basic mysteries of matter and universe,
no matter how much it liberates itself from
those shackles: origin of life, protein, creation
of matter, origin of universe. For new breakthroughs
into the unknown a new unity of poetry and science
is needed.
2. POETICAL VISION OF THE UNITY OF MAN, MATTER
AND UNIVERSE
Poetry coupled with science (poetical science),
accepting way of thinking of scientist and modern
prophet, adopting from science its exactness
and from poetry its analogy and sense for the
irrational, will be able to explain to us paradoxes
of matter and to solve the secret of creation.
It will have, first of all, to break with tyranny
of feelings and with needs of hearts. To renounce
self-lauding and futile posing questions, whether
this time needs it or not. Such as it is now
it is absolutely unnecessary. Coupled with science,
reading and deciphering the new pages of universe,
poetry will not pose questions about the sense
of its existence any more.Having accepted imagination
from romanticist, as a creative instrument and
sense for the miraculous, new poetry must stand
in all other things on the positions absolutely
opposed to the position of Romantism and various
forms of modern Neo-Romantism. In that sense
there will also exist its endeavours for a gradual
de-subjectivization of poetical picture. It
strives to clear away with the narcissoid and
insufficiently justified right of poet to be
a constant and sovereign object of poetry. Poetical
science will equalize man (as an object of poetry)
with things, nature, chemical, biochemical and
physiological processes, living and dead substances,
giving advantage neither to him nor to his relationships
with nature, placing him and assigning him a
place in all we mark as universe.Subduing abstract
scientific scheme and symbol to an avalanche
of new language and new form, bringing all his
mind in a state of activity where all abilities
- those of scientist, poet and alchemist - are
dependent on each others, shattering by his,
extremely zealous imaginative consciousness
a major part of scientific, logical and rationalist
basis, the new poet will be able to create a
vivid poetical picture, a new vision of the
world, to open unimagined roads of poetical
science from the dead scheme and dry formula,
by a method of intuitive synthesis.Only so understood
and realized, new poetry will be the highest
act of thought having before it man, matter
and universe as a riddle.
3. VERHAAREN, RENE GHIL, FUTURISTS
All previous attempts of getting poetry closer
to science - Emil Verhaaren, scientific poetry
of Rene Ghil and, on a special plane, futurists
and neo-futurists - declined due to inability
of poets to realize a synthesis of poetical
and scientific language, i.e. to penetrate deeper
into lingustic system of science by poetry.Whereas
Verhaaren and futurists accepted just external
marks of new technological civilisation - aeroplane,
automobile, phonograph, electrical light, machines
as an object of poetry - Rene Ghil widened too
much the circle of sciences ready to synthesise
with poetry, including there also sociology
and history, and so he has lost himself in the
labyrinths of numerous and non-related scientific
disciplines.
LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE
A bit more careful linguistic examinations
enable us to discern several languages in one
linguistic system. First of all, daily (practical)
and emotional, and then poetical and scientific
ones. The essential thing that makes different
the daily and emotional language from the poetical
and scientific ones is communicability. With
poetical and scientific language the communicability
is brought down to a minimum. The science itself,
such as we have it, is just a very complex linguistic
system. The foundations of this linguistic system
- newly created words, notions and symbols,
were posed by an abrupt development of science
three to four hundred years ago. The past refreshing
of poetical language was done mainly on the
sources of practical and emotional language.
Language of science was neglected, to say the
least. Basic goal of new poetry is penetrating
that linguistic system.Function of scientific
language is usually exhausted in exact-logical
formulations, symbols, hypothesis and laws.
To poetical language an esthetical function
is essential. To deprive scientific language
of its exact-logical function and to move it
toward esthetical-irrational radiations would
mean to succeed in one of the ways of realization
of new poetry.
1967/68.
MANIFESTO OF SIGNALISM
(REGULAE POESIS)
(Theses for a general attack on the current
poetry)
1.1. SCIENCE
1.1.1. The world of science is not, according
to some, a world of beings either, but only
of quantified regularities, skilful linguistic
constructions and hopeless squaring of human
mind.
1.1.2. If science is a language then it is a
language of the very essence of the world.
1.2. CURRENT POETRY
1.2.1. The things and beings of the current
poetry do not speak in their own language. In
the dialogue with the world and time they use
language of poet exclusively.
1.2.2. Laws of the language of poet are laws
of the things and beings of current poetry.
1.2.3. The fact that that language is modified
immediately after establishing its relationship
with reader's conscience does not diminish the
importance of the former conclusion. In the
vertical and horizontal hierarchy of languages,
(languages of readers, languages of the moments
of reading), the language of poet spoken by
things and beings of poem serves as a basis
for all future linguistic superstructures conditioned
by establishing a relationship between that
language through things and beings of poem and
consciousness of each reader separately.
1.2.4. This language, originated by mixing the
language of poet through poem and the language
of readers through their intensified consciousness,
means a language of a moment, hard determinable
temporally and spatially, basically a language
with atomized and exclusive impact only on the
senses of one subject, we mark as a language
of the current poetry.
1.3. PRIVATIZATION OF POETRY
1.3.1. The language of the current poetry is
not universal.
1.3.2. The language of the current poetry is
private and exclusive.
1.3.3. From Romanticism until today poetry has
been becoming more and more private.
1.4. POEM
1.4.1. Poem is outside of poet: in processes,
in relationships of things and beings of the
universe.
1.4.2. Poem is in the world. Poem is a happening
of the world.
1.5. POETRY
1.5.1. Poetry is the highest form of the world's
existence.
1.6. FREEDOM OF POEM
1.6.1. New poetry demands an absolute freedom
of poem.
1.6.2. This freedom is implied in relation to
poet as well as to the world the poem originates
from.
1.7. LANGUAGE
1.7.1. Language is anything this facilitates
the creation of a poem.
1.7.2. By means of language the poem leaves
the formlessness of things and processes in
the nature, and begins its dialogue with the
universe.
17.3.The language of the signalist poetry must
be a product of two combined forces: the poem
as a way in which the world occurs, and of the
poet as being inhabiting that very world, a
\being without whom the poem cannot become independent
and begin its dialogue with the universe.
1.8. THE LANGUAGE ENERGY
1.8.1. Signalist poetry will mean total release
of the language energy.
1.8.2. In the existing poetry, the process of
releasing this energy is slow and oxidative.
The breaking of the basis of language matter
down to its molecules (words) and atoms (letters),
will bring about reflexive processes of fission
and fusion of the different elements of the
language being (additive, graphic, and other
manifold radiation of words) as well as total
release of the language energy.
1.8.3. The potential language energy is measurable
1.9. THE ROLE OF THE LANGUAGE
1.9.1. The inexpressible in objects, beings,
matter processes and their mutual relation attempts
to be transmitted by a language arising from
the symbiosis of the poet language, the machine
language and the not-yet-realised poem language.
1.10. A POSSIBLE DETERMINATION FO SIGNALIST
POETRY
1.10.1. Signalist poetry can be determined either
as a combined activity of the poet and the machine,
or as an activity of the poet only, enabling
the poem to go out from the formlessness of
things and processes with the world by means
of the language (and the graphic form).
1.10.2. Objects and beings in signalist poetry
must speak the language of the universe.
1.10.3.In the subsequent process between the
being of the poem and the essence of the world,
the poet and the machine are but catalysts.
1.11. THE LIMITS OF THE LANGUAGE
1.11.1. The poet must continuously expand limits
of the existing language, for to expand the
limits of language is to expand the limits of
the world. And the poem is imbedded in the very
structure of the world. It is a way in which
the world occurs.
1968.
1. SIGNALISM
a) The term signalism derives from the Latin
signum (sign). Signalism is an avant-garde creative
movement whose aim it is to affects and revolutionize
all the arts, introducing the kind of thinking
that is common to exact science and initiating
new processes in the field of culture by means
of radical experiments and method within a permanent
creative revolution influenced particularly
by the technological civilization, the sign
civilization, the increasing use of science
and scientific methods and the emergence of
the computer. These factors are considered as
new creative instruments, inspirers of creative
ideas and aids in their implementation.b) Signalism
stands for absolute experimentation in all the
arts.c) Signalism requires the experimenting
artist to base his thinking and activity on
postulates and method of the exact science.
It is only in so doing that we can reinvest
the art with its original concreteness and truthfulness,
while at the same time destroying all the sediments
of mystique and mystification that have been
gathering on it for centuries, finally to render
it completely unable to follow the increasingly
rap [id development of human society,d) The
fact that the avant-garde of our times is based
on a scientific and not artistic approach (contrary
to certain previous epochs) must by no means
discourage the artists; still less must it make
him resist or fight science and the new technological
civilization. Any struggle against science is
doomed in advance, for it is struggle against
man himself.
1.1.SIGNALIST POETRY
a) In the general inflation of the spoken and
written wore, of writing and thinking in the
form of linguistic cannonade and babble, in
the general inflation of linguistic myth mania
and mystification, signalism will - in literature,
and, more specifically, in poetry - aim at an
utter linguistic reduction go the word to the
bare sign. (This referees to signals poetry
in the narrow sense of the word).
b) In the rejuvenation of poetry and the language,
signalism will make use of all available means
offered by the technological civilization, from
the computer, through application of mathematical
and other exact method to disintegrate the current
linguistic system and way of thinking, to the
abolition for the language itself (language
being a written, national, closed system of
communication),gradually introducing mathematical
and other exact-science symbols as the solely
universal and solely possible language of the
new civilization.
c) By abolishing national language and the present-day
flood of the written already worn-out, imprecise
and non-informative work, and by introducing
the graphic ideogram based on mathematical and
other exact-science symbols whose meaning has
not been devaluated, signalism will - in the
field of literature in general and poetry in
particular - make for totally new and unforeseen
faculties of expression.
1.1.1.METHODS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SIGNALIST
POETRY
1.1.1. Signalism in the narrow sense
1.1.2. Computer poetry
1.1.3. Aleatoric (or stochastic) poetry
1.1.4. Statistical poetry
1.1.5. Permutational, combinative and variative
poetry
1.1.6. Scientific poetry
1.1.7. Technological poetry
1.1.8. Signals kinetic and phonetic poetry
1.1.9. Signals manifestations
1.1.1.Signalist poetry in the narrow sense
dispenses with the word and takes up the letter
as the basic means of expression. By breaking
the language down to its atoms (i.e. letters),
signalism endeavours to release the new and
hitherto unknown language energy.
1.1.2. Computer poetry results from co-operation
with a computer. Depending on the degree and
manner of co-operation between the artist and
the computer, there exist several methods and
kinds of computer poetry, thus:
1.2.1. CP without the author's final intervention
1.2.2. CP with interventions of varying degrees
1.2.3. non-mechanical mathematical creation
based on computer produced language material
1.2.4.poetic creation based on computer produced
language material
1.2.5.Visual CP based on programming of letters
and signs.
1.1.3. The following three categories of poetry
may be jointly defined, in terms of this classification,
as mathematical poetry. Such poetry is inspired
or created by the application or with the aid
of certain mathematical methods and means of
creation. Of the three, the closet o computer
poetry is aleatoric or stochastic poetry, which
is the result of computer and mathematical methods
being applied (in combination with each other)
on language material
1.1.4. Statistical poetry is created by the
application of certain basic principles of statistics
and the theory of probabilities; specifically,
it is created the use of random-figure tables
in breaking the current poetic-language systems.
1.1.5. Permutational, combinative and variative
poetry is created by the use of methods of mathematical
combinatory.
1.1.6. In scientific poetry, the poet uses
data from various sciences and presents them
to the reader (or spectator) either verbatim
or with slight poetic interventions. The result
thus presented is an entity in its own right,
a sum of not only scientific but also aesthetic
information.
1.1.7. Technological poetry. In his endeavours
to freshen the poetic language, the poet may
utilize certain external phenomena and signs
common to the consumer society (abbreviations,
advertising slogans etc.) his poetic interventions
invest them with new meaning.
1.1.8. Signalist kinetic and phonetic poetry
dispenses with the word and the letter as a
means of expression and introduces pure sign,
mime, movement, light effects, sounds, objects,
colored surfaces.
1.8.1. Aesthetic manifestation of the poetic
machine Zvezdozor (Star Refractor).
1.8.2. Products of the poetic machine Signatvor
(sign Maker).
1.8.3. Signalist projects
1.8.4. Signalist objects
1.1.10. Signalist manifestations. All kind
of group or individual manifestations of signalist
poetry.
1969-70.
COMPUTER POETRY
COMPUTER POETRY is obtained collaboration with
electronic calculators. Depending on the degree
and way of collaboration between artists and
calculator there can be more types and methods
of this poetry.Course of working with digital
computer:
1. Preparation
2. Program
3. Food-entrance organ
4. Machine creation
5. Machine production
6. Poet's intervention
7. Poet's creation
Preparation:
Preparation as the first phase of working with
digital computer consists of collecting the
words and texts required for fabrication of
poetry. Group of words can contain varied quantities
of: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, conjunction
etc., or it may contain quantity and types of
words already determined in advance, which suits
some exact measures and preceding tests of the
language in which the poetry is going to be
fabricated. group of words prepared for fabricating
the poetry can be just accidental (selection
from various texts without any advance established
idea, words taken from dictionary in a order
or by random selection, words suggested by collaborators
: technicians, operator, stenographer etc.)
Most often, that group of words and symbols
is determined in advanced, first of all as per
the poet's idea he has fort the final machine
product.
.... Programme:
Digital computer works only with programmed.
Without programme machine cannot execute any
operation. It is dead. Program is group of orders
on the basis of which machine solves the problems.
"Programming represents process of jotting
down algorithm in form of final group of orders
(instructions) of the universal automatic."
(Gluskov)
Food-entrance organ:
The machine can not receive its "food"
required for creation in form of words, series
of words of sentences, as we use them in speech
and writing. Data given to the calculator for
processing relate to logical mathematical forms.
The numerical system of solving problems is
universal, because with its help can be codified
visual, sonic or any other information.A part
of this translation from language and repertoire
of symbols, we have already signified as "programming".
Calculator, however, does not operate the numbers
in the literal sense of the term, In computer
there are numbers, that is words, put as electric
impulses, and all operations are executed thorough
leavi9ng the current through the network of
conductor and circuit breaker. That is why the
next operation in the working of computer which
we have called as Food- in coming organ, consists
of translation, that is coding, of food which
we deliver to the computer in form of programmer,
of perforation on the paper tapes with the help
of special machine. /Only in the form of perforations
on paper tracks the food can be put into the
entrance organ of the computer, where it will
be changed into electric impulses, "electrical
language", which the machine alone can
" understand" and with the help of
which alone can be solved given problems.
Machine creation:
If the preceding action of collecting the material.
formulation of idea, processing of programme.
Feeding of machine, it means all that depended
on the creator, on the man, was relatively long
and painstaking, computer does its part in creation
of work (machine creation) quickly and faultlessly.
There is no delay; no indecision all is played
in short period of time, as per the precise
formulated laws of machine's logic.Immediately
on entering the machine the perforated tracks
passes through the "reader" (photocells)
which translate the perforations into electric
impulses? Electric impulses then got the memory
of the machine where these are put to be used
later during the work.Arithmetical organ is
the part of the machine which performs calculating
and logical operations. All these operations
are performed on the basis of so-called binary
mathematical system and are carried out as per
basic calculation work.Controlling and commanding
organ regulates the automatic work of computer
and sends results to the exit organ.
Machine production:
Under the machine production is understood whole
lingual material (all variants), which the computer,
after machine creation (permutation and joining
of words, groups of words, parts of sentences,
words) throws out. Before the author, in that
connection, remain two alternatives. First is
to choose one part, one or more variants of
machine production and that presents them as
finished worked or art without any intervention,
the final collection of aesthetic information.In
such a case, the artist's work would be exhausted
in preceding task : collecting words, repertoire
o symbols, groups of works, programming and
in the final phase choosing the variants of
parts of machine product.

Poet's intervention:
Second alternative to the artist is intervention.
Here we will talk of intervention taken in the
strict sense of the term so as to differentiate
with other types of poet's interventions in
the computer's lingual material : out of machine
mathematical creations and poet's creations.
This type of intervention limits itself, first
of all, to selection of one variant of machine
production or de-variant, combining of parts
of various variants, throwing in of successful
connections of words from the rejected variants
into the selected variant, throwing in of conjunctions,
here and there now wooers and connections which
didn't pass through the machine, transfer and
reason of words and connections, changes in
grammatical forms and genders of words and eventual
classing into lines. (verses).
Poet's creation:
In this method of work poet is inspired and
creates by and with the lingual material which
the machine has offered him. Here, primarily,
the machine appear as a helper in breaking the
language, in breaking those flowing-poetic and
usual - logical sequence of human thoughts.
The machine breaks the language and warns the
poet of all possible after-effects or a total
experiment. Its warning is in fact invitation
and demand for such an experiment. By the method
of machine the poet, again from the broken language,
whose improbability has been considerably enhanced,
organizes a new language sharpening its aesthetic-informative
value.
September – December 1969.
SIGNALIST POETRY PROPER
(VISUAL POETRY)
1. One of the principal tasks of signalist
poetry proper (visual poetry) is to overcome
verbal poetic expression.
2. This kind of poetry aims at a gradual de-verbalisation
and de-semantics of poetry.
3. Given the new communication system where
the written (national) language loses an increasingly
great deal of its importance, it is quite natural
for the poet, facing a language incapable of
ensuring universal communication (the kind required
by the electronic era),to resort to the more
universal and considerably more communicative
visual language.
4. Abolishing the current languages with all
their shortcomings, signalist poetry will, in
the new technological era, come to exercise
a direct effect through purely visual and phonic
means.
II
5. Although cases of visualized poetry and
texts in general can be found earlier in the
history of many nations cultures and literatures
(in this country : the highly expressive mediaeval
manusripts, Zaharije Orfelin and other mannerists
of the Serbian baroque, Djordje Markovic-Koder
in the 19th century, Secession early in this
century, and, between the two world wars, Dadaist
Dragan Aleksic, Zenitist Ljubomir Micic and
surrealists Marko Ristic and Dusan Matic with
their poetic collages), signalist poetry is
in fact a phenomenon and a mode of expression
peculiar to our times and to the man of the
new technological civilisation.
6. What makes certain artists - notably writers
- view the new poetry with much hesitation and
suspicion is its hybrid nature, for signalist
poetry is no longer poetry, in the usual, traditional
sense of the world. Abandoning language (write,
national language) and seeking a mode of expression
in the use of signs and vocal - visual elemeents,
signalist poetry approaches, and consumes a
great deal of, design (graphic and otherwise),music
and - not frequently - other art forms.
7. the rapprochement between the new poetry
and other art forms has made for its gradual
transcending of traditional forms of literary
communication. In addition to appearing on the
pages of books and magazines, signalist poetry
is printed in the form of posters, exhibited,
performed (signalist manifestations), recorded
on tape and wax (signalist phonetic and phonic
poetry) and produced by means of lighting effects
of machines constructed specially for the purpose
(signalist kinetic poetry).
8. In view of all this, the new poetry requires
a new type of reader: not a passive consumer
of finalized poetic messages, but an intelligent
and congenially creative player of a spiritual
game in which final results depend, among other
things, on the possibility of combining given
elements and on the "reader" himself
being inspired.
9. The letter, space and their interactions
are the basic operative units of the new textual
structures.
10. The blank space becomes a special reading
value (verbal-visual value) in experimental
texts.
11. The living space of signalist poetry is
three-dimensional. As different that of the
current (traditional) poetry, which is one-dimensional.
12. The communicative - and at the same time,
poetic-value of the letter in the new verbal-visual
structure of a signalist text, where space also
becomes a principal parameter of semantic determination,
equals (and often surpasses) its sign value
in the current language.
13. In addition to letters or whole words as
surpassing structures, the expanse of a signalist
poem can also be filled with other signs, electronic,
technical and other symbols, drawings, collage,
photographs etc., which exist in the defined
space of the poem creating verbal-visual meta/linguistic
constellations.
1969-70.
GESTURE SIGNALIST POETRY
Signalist manifestations, action poetry, poetry
in process, poesia publica, happening poetry,
gesture poetry - call it as you will - is one
of new modes of poetic expressions. Within the
spectrum of the various currents collectively
termed SIGNALISM, gesture poetry would be situated
at the extreme avant-garde left.The gesture
poet creates freely in space, making use of
various elements - from verbal and visual through
to sonorous - in the process. What becomes poetic
language here is a conglomeration of verbo-voco-visual
elements in process. This kind of signalist
poetry abolishes all boundaries between poetry,
theatre, happening and concrete everyday action.
In and buy means of it, the poet becomes an
inalienable part of his act of creation and
his whole being becomes indulged in the informative
effect (or radiation) of the poem.As a means
of communication in its own right, gesture signalist
poetry cannot be interpreted in terms of current
poetic-linguistic categories. Being based principally
on gesture and sign and expanding the boundaries
of language considerably above and beyond the
fixed, defined and partially already explored
areas of poetic speech, gesture signalist poetry
calls for broader semiological interpretations
as well.
1971.
SIGNALIST VISUAL POETRY - A NEW LITERARY
DISCIPLINE
Signalist visual poetry is now well-established
as a separate new literary discipline, not only
within signalism as a broader movement but also
within literature as a whole. This has been
possible for various reasons, First of all,
signalist visual poetry - despite a certain
historical continuity (the existence of visual
texts and visual poetry in ancient Greece and
Rome as well as in mediaeval literature, European
baroque literature, Apollinairre's Caligrammes
and the work of Dadaists, futurists and surrealists)-
is a product of the electronic civilization,
the civilization of the image, the sign, the
poster, TV, the video cassette, the new printing
techniques, the telecommunication satellites
and other forms of the technological society
increasingly drawn together no planet-wide basis,
a society that knows of no linguistic or national
borderlines and the artificial barriers put
up by the small, closed-in and neurotic literatures
burdened by traditionalist myth manias.While
we have seen that is has been presents in man's
mind ever since the very dawn of civilisation,
signalist visual poetry proper was born in the
civilization of our times, which abandons the
old and slow modes of communication in favour
of mass media. In other words, this kind of
poetry comes into being at a crucial point in
the development of technological and social
forces, and that it is precisely this new society
- less and less concerned with the national
and more and more with the planetary - that
will make for its full expansion the almost
immediate future.Other reasons making for the
emergence of signalist poetry are to be found
in the elements that have replaced the language.
In visual poetry these are letters, signs, various
graphic symbols, photographs and collage. In
phonic poetry, these are the sound and the voice.
In gesture poetry, these are action and gesture.Breaking
the ossified, molecular structure of the current
poetic language, this type of poetry takes us
away from the linguistic strata of the partially
explored and known picture of the world and
into more profound areas of a still-closed,
still-unexplored universe of the sign and semiology.
Thus-by destroying and removing the intermediary
of language - it draws us closer to objects
and beings, or rather to their essence. At the
same time, it serves as the sole ray of hope
in times saturated with repeated verbal explosions,
more-of -the same times leading towards non-identity
which threatens to throw us, at any moment,
into the teeth of absence and tedium, into death
itself for there can be no real life in the
monuments when "reality turns literary"
while "literature degenerates and turns
unreal". In these times and in this moment,
the sign is perhaps the sign of the being itself
at its still unpredictable semiological level.
Visual facts and the increasingly exact structure
of the new planetary and signalist thought are
profoundly and necessarily opposed to all that
is semantic and mythical in man's multi-stratum
being.Numerous questions have multiplied in
the quasi-prophetic ecstasies of traditionalist
literature while no answers have been supplied.
Man has already reached the point of resignation
where he is compelled to stop speaking and thinking,
thoroughly entangled in his own network of verbal
mystifications. It may be well be that only
the art of such people as will with their entire
complex rational and sensory structure and without
waste of energy be fused together into a single
planetary Being made more exalted by powerful
impulses of thought infinitely more vibrant
and senses infinitely more receptive, will be
able to furnish answers to some long-posed questions
and to express certain more relevant truths.Turned
now to the logos, for "logo is always in
the existence, and as such it is the source
of discovering the truth", leaving behind
all the former paraphernalia of literature (particularly
its language, since language "autonomies
and becomes an independent realm - a world within
the world - constituting a reality into itself;
discoursing, in turns its black to the universe"),signalist
visual poetry and other forms of signalist literature
are the first heralds of a future mass-media
art transmitted by powerful means of information
whose principal aim will be to expand human
sensory consciousness and which will cease to
be the privilege of certain classes and elites.The
old aspects of magical -religious art and the
present aspects of reality-presenting art, created
for centuries and transmitted by one -directional
and inefficient means (oral transmission followed
by Gutenbergian alphabet-civilization) will
soon disappear. Already the thought processes
are determine by an exceedingly rapid development
and efficiency of man's aids-machines-in an
in intercommunicative civilization which adopts
the image as its fetish and its principal language
of communication. The currents of images, the
currents of a new iconic language of the unified
and all-embracing electronic civilization will
flow together to form a phantasmagorical river
of future planetary and signalist thought.
1972.
COMMUNICATION-BEING-THOUGHT
Communication (1.communication) transmitting,
transmission, connection. Behaviour, intercourse,
contact, traffic, traffic artery. communicative
(1.communiativus) transferable, which is easily
transmitted to others, communicable, giving
information readily; talkative, accessible.
Community (1.communitas) fellowship, inclination
for fellowship; common good. Communicate (1.communicare)
communicate, communize, make common, report,
impart, announcement, present (or reveal) to
the public; be in touch with someone, correspond,
interchange, Communicatio idiomatum (1.communicatio
idiomatum) juncture of divine and human characteristics.Communication
is contained in the very essence of the being.
It is one of the basic elements and factors
of its existence, and undoubtedly the measure
of the evolution from primary, rudimentary consciousness
on a powerful consciousness on a planetary scale.
I communicate, ergo I exist, ergo I create.
The nature of communication is multilateral
in the most profound sense of the word. It is
socio-historical as well as exact and artistic
and - and its most intimate and human aspect
- subjective.Its methods, its strength and its
weakness are the closed circles of cummunities,
of societies interconnected in terms of time,
space, religion, language and technology, of
oases of beings bound firmly together by invisible
but well-nigh unbreakable threads. Is the lifeblood
and nervous system of a highly complex organism,
but at the same time its insidious disease which
will destroy it immediately upon realising that
the organism has become self-sufficient, thereby
preventing further expansion of communication.
Its means are individual stairs in the staircase
of civilization. Communication is the foundation
stone and nutriment of man's discoveries, a
fairly-tale monster that devours itself only
to be reborn ever-larger and ever more insatiable.In
signalist communication, whose principal air
it is to make it possible for us to explore
the being in disagreement with the entropic
coldness of all that surround us (time, objects,
establishment and laws) is the purpose of signalism
as a particular way of thinking.The signalist
is being of the future, the being of a future
permanently conquered anew, of the very same
future awaiting it on the border posts of the
blue planet, or the already visible future in
the planetary orbits, or thee still dreamed-of
future hidden in the dark depths of the frightening
galaxy. Where are then the limits to this growing
communicability of the signalist phoenix that
feeds on the ashes of its own soul and whose
thought is engaged in a never-ending dialectical
play? Where are the boundaries of that being
relentlessly driven towards new conquests and
caught in the neurotic convulsion of the information
explosion working on a feedback basis? They
do not exist, or rather they are unpredictable
just as the boundaries of thought are unpredictable.Thought
paves the way for the being. It is the perpetual
explorer penetrating beyond the borders of the
visible and the tangible, beyond the borders
of comparative peace and order, to reach the
worlds yet to be conquered. The crisis of traditional
and classical art is primarily the crisis of
thought. The inability to break out of the vicious
circle of definite systems of values and knowledge,
the inability to "create new propositions
of art" (Kosuth), confine the being of
the artists to the futile spaces of the known,
expected, unthought-of and repeated. The artist's
consciousness becomes in this case a machine
reproducing superseded thinking - or rather,
reproducing what used to be thinking until it
lost the ability to explore and discover.The
signalist thought opens the say to a new-civilization
visual and total-communication being, a being
of the play and signs, of planetary consciousness
and profoundly intuitive an highly intellectual
capacities. It is the power of informative and
conquering communication radiating the multi
laterality of its progress towards things and
truths not only given but also marked by our
hard patient exploratory experience.Herein lie
the endless possibilities of this being in the
sphere of the arts, a sphere free from any strict
purposefulness of limited space, perishable
material, dull historical curiosities and the
reducible moments of the commonplace. Art dematerializes
and begins to occur; more goes out into the
world - what fits in the picture of the visible
world of facts and things (this has hitherto
meant objects of, i.e. art given modelled in
any material) - is now only a document, an instruction
project, a verbal, visual, auditory, or tactile
description of the artist's thought process.This
is where we reach the moment the signalist thought
identifies with what we had termed as art; the
two find a common point in the permanent exploration
of the nature of being and the nature of art
in the depth of the uncertain and the vague,
progressing towards and invisible destination
which is blurred but the watchful eye of the
death, but which may well turn out to be only
a new and exciting beginning crowned with a
chaste halo of infinity.
1973.
EXACT LANGUAGES AND BIRTH OF VISUAL
POETRY IN SIGNALISM
In the manifesto "Poetry - science"
(Manifesto of poetical science) in the year
1968, basic assumptions of early phase of Signalism
(Scientism) were emphasized: antitraditionalism,
antisubjectivism, striving for a synthesis of
poetry and science, researching work in language.
Some of this also represents essential innovations
in our poetry in general.Anti-Romanticism is
a basis of militant signalist activism, its
opposing to disguised and renovated traditionalism
in Serbian poetry.For Signalism, time of Romanticism
in literature is past irreversibly, along with
Surrealism as its peak. In that sense poetry
must be desubjectivized, and the emphasized
I of previous schools and directions must appease
itself considerably and lose some of its conspicuous
narcissism.Poet is not a prophet (vates) any
more who calls upon gods and utters in high
voice "the most profound truths" of
this world. He is just one of particles of the
universe, gifted with consciousness, thinking,
desire for cognition and imagination whereby
he reveals gradually secrets of the universe.
He can not go alone to the way to the unknown
any more, he must couple with scientist, and
rely his imagination on scientific discoveries
and cognitions. Only poetry and science, scientist
and poet, can conquer, build up, think through
planetary and start set off to the cosmic, to
the unpredictable.The cosmic is still a darkness,
abyss, death. Behind the curtain of darkness
and cold enormous and unconceivable torments
of matter and energy, cosmic radiations, destroying
and building forces, frozen or hot unknown worlds
are awaiting. Death is as real there as space
and time are, the latter two not representing
just a Kantian a priori form of comprehension.
They ceased to be abstract and absolute, a spiritual
construction. They become a place of building,
wandering, life. They are a part of human experience
and not some "function of universe".
Space and time are not defined any more, they
are researched. One sets off to a researching
campaign with a newly conquered language. It
has been found partly in the language of science.Language
is a main factor of that synthesis, of that
action of wandering and researching. Fresh and
unspent, turned to the future, a language that
multiplies itself along with spaces. Keys and
ways are found to revive formulas, symbols,
in order to imagine into a new poetical and
linguistic being. Suddenly all becomes so wonderful
behind the darkened curtain of light years,
under evasive events in micro world.The language
of exact sciences is vivid and changeable. It
grows with every new thing, new particle of
universe. Created are new words, new notions,
marked and named are new, just observed inhabitants
of that invisible world. Firstly proton and
electron, then neutron, antineutron, neutrino,
ka-meson, pi-meson, collide, wander in their
little closed spaces. They are alive, they move,
their behaviours should be monitored. Every
their new movement, state, is a relationship
and new word, notion, mark, information. The
grammar of science changes continually as well
as poetical grammar.Languages of poetical science
conquer spaces, the cosmic ones as well as those
spiritual. But not languages (words, sentences,
speech) only and exclusively. For science and
poetry are not just arranged syntactically and
by grammatical, imaginative and other rules
determined chains and sequences of words any
more. They are also graphs, drawings, signs,
descriptions of paths, graphemes of dissipated
letters, explosive syntagms, a chaos of roads,
the knitting, pictures, meanings. Language of
poem and language of research has widened, extended,
drawn out from its tight suit of words, sense,
order, negentropy and stepped into the yet non
investigated kingdom of sign and semiology.Its
drawing out from verse, from word, happened
gradually, with stuttering and with troubles.
There were firstly calligramm pictures, then
numbers, mathematical symbols, function graphs,
equations. Word was condensing, disappearing
and reappearing like a transformed exact symbol,
a graph that flows windingly and freely in all
directions instead of verse, of sentence. The
entire space of page is being conquered for
a poem. Poem becomes free completely in that
space where it is enabled to radiate its energy
in all directions.Poetical language has, therefore,
spread considerably having penetrated and seized
exact linguistic systems, permeating with diagrams,
numbers, exact symbols, with all that science
operates and communicates with. Here one would
look actually for the roots of signalist visual
poetry and the first steps of shattering the
language into the letter and sign totalities,
where poem loses its previous basic existential-semantic
structure. Language is split in a radical, but
precise, refined chemical process of spirit
and consciousness. Its foundation are breaking
down. The elements joined closely thus far tear
away slowly and begin to hover freely and radiate
in space, poem, joining into new, unpredicted
and unpredictable totalities, quite opposed
to previous linguistic and poetical experience.The
things have not stopped, however, just on this
and such widening of poetical language. Already
in the second manifesto of Signalism it was
emphasized explicitly that language is all that
makes a poem possible. Thus, it seems, the notion
of languages usable for building of poetry has
been extended to ultimate limits. It will later
on, in the third manifesto "Signalism"
(1970), get more precise formulations, when
also signalist kinetic, phonic, object and gesture
poetries are formulated beside the visual one.
1975.
FRAGMENTS ON SIGNALISM (I)
1. TECHINCAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
According to Max Bense technical consciousness
in our time replaces Hegel's historical consciousnes,
for beside the classical world of mater and
energy also information and communication has
been opened to the world.
2. ON THE NEW FUNCTION OF ART
In the new technological era art will not disappear;
its function, however, will be radically transformed.
From the primary magic-religious function, through
the modern-age reality-presenting art of the
future, with all the things that the electronic
civilization offers as well as the completely
new technological reality, it will become "an
instrument for the modification of human consciousness
and fort the organization of new kinds of sensibilities".
3. SIGNALISM AND TRADITION
Avant-garde (signalist) art is in such a position
that is completely dispenses with tradition.
What is this reflected in? Primarily in a different
comprehension of the function of art. Signalist
are, besides presenting new ideas, especially
concerned with widening the human sensory awareness.
For these reasons this new art is in its being
non-didactic and experimental, in the sense
in which exact sciences are experimental.If
we notice the claim of some philosophers and
theorists that man is a being of tradition and
that he will, as such, allways oppose fiercely
to a radical denying of tradition, for he considers
every change and attack of such kind to be an
attack on his spiritual and real existence and
conformity, than ubnderstandable are, to an
extent, also the frontal and severe attacks
on Signalism and new revolutionary ideas brought
by it, first of all, in the area of using machines
and mathematical models for creation of art.
4.THE BEING OF SIGNALIST ART
The phenomenon of signalist art as total art
leads us into a labyrinth of new visions of
planetary absoluteness of a being liberated
from everything which we characterize as traditionalistic
and didactic art. A being whose sensory apparatus
is turned to the reception of the subtlest impulses
and tremors of the aero-cosmic and ecological
vitality. A being unburdened by formal-materialistic
and linguistic impossibilities. A being-consciousness
whose meta-lingual communication exceeds everything
we are able at this moment to imagine. Being-and-not
only-that wave-signal intertwined interdependent,
logically imperceptible and inexhaustible aesthetic
information. A being-universe.
5. ON LUDIC BASIS OF SIGNALISM
The basis of Signalism is Ludism. That Ludism
has its two essential aspects in Signalism.
It can be mathematical programmed Ludism (theory
of probability, cybernetic machines, statistics,
mathemaical tables of accidental numbers), mathematical
combinatorics and intuitive Ludism of spontaneous
creative mind.We consider, however, that to
Signalism and signalist creative methods the
closest is a combination of intuitive Ludism
with mathematical one, where initial impulses
and even particular products of the latter can
serve outstandingly well as a basis for further
superstructuring combinations of intuitive Ludism.
6. CURRENT (TRADITIONAL) AND SIGNALIST (AVANT-GARDE)
POETRY
Basic difference between current (traditional)
and signalist (avant-garde) poetry is based
on the fact that traditional poetry starts from
already settled and established poetical values,
while avant-garde poetry tends to affirm new
values and especially itself as a value.
7. BASIC AIMS OF SIGNALISM IN POETRY
1. Demistification of poetical act and poet.
2. Acceptance of the new realities of technological
civilization and especially of the role of man
in electronic-planetary space of existence.
3. Abolishing of present poetical languages
as means of literatural manipulations and mistifications.
4. Making use of all possibilities given by
exact sciences beginning with using machines
and special mathematical models and methods
in creativity, to using already generally accepted
exact symbols for creation of one universal
meta-language.
5. Poetry must include and become a means of
mass communication.
8. ON CREATION OF A NEW SPIRITUAL CLIMATE IN
LITERATURE.
In its essence, signalist poem makes, at least
partly, feverish efforts of all kinds to express
aesthetical state of language whose perimeters
have been drawn i the special atmosphere of
technological and consumer civilization. (signs,
abbreviations, instructions, advertisements).
In negating grammar and syntax, negating some
previous important stimuli of poem, emphasizing
more and more constructivist elements kombined
with certain dose of intuitive Ludism, signalist
poem creates a ground for a quite different
climate in literature.
9. SIGNALIST WORK
A signalist work is an open work. It is an entire
galactic system ready to endure all interventions
without being destroyed.This self-creative characteristic
of a signalist work is reflected not only in
the case when different elements are added to
expand it, but also when these elements are
taken from it and it is reduced to a gesture,
an idea a concept, even to "blank"
whiteness of a sheet of paper or an empty unmarked
space. A signalist work, even in these extreme
cases of dematerialization, destruction, de-verbalizitaion,
de-phonization etc.., depending on the kind
of art we are talking about, radiates its totality
and indestructibility.On the other hand, by
the indestructibility and self-creative characteristic
we mean its multivalence, its plenitude of aesthetic
values, hence the possibility offered to future
epochs, by its inexhaustibility, multitude of
meanings and associations and different, constantly
new ways of widening the human sensory awareness,
of attracting permanent attention.
10. CLASSIFICATION OF SIGNALIST POETRY
Signalist poetry represents a set of various
experimental poetries and methods. All those
poetries and methods we can classify into two
main groups. In the first group are those that
experiment in the frames of language and the
verbal, not including visual and other elements.
There belong:
1. Aleatory or stocshastic poetry
2. Statistical poetry
3. Technological poetry
4. Permutational, combinational and variational
poetry
5. Scientistic poetry
6. Phenomenological poetry
7. Slang poetry
8. Computor poetry (the part realized by means
of machine but in language)
In the second group are those poetries and
methods that include some linguistic elements,
operating with signs, or inlude not only the
verbal but also visual and vocal elements. That
part of signalist poetry we can also call semiological
poetry because of its radical steps out beyond
the limits treated by current literature so
far, abandoning linguistic area and entering
an area almost completely unexamined from a
literatural standpoint, an area of sign and
semiology.Kinds and methods of semiological
poetry:1. Signalist visual poetry2. Sonic and
cynetic poetry3. Computor poetry (the part operating
with letter-sign elements)4. Signalist manifestation
(gestual poetry)
11. ON THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE OF VISUAL POETRY
Verbal-visual phantasy of signalist poem exceeds
much the limits we are used to in language.
Learning to read in all directions we enter
gradually new three-dimensional spaces of signalist
visual poetry.
12. ON SUPER-NATIONAL METALINGUISTIC STRUCTURE
OF SIGNALIST VISUAL POETRY
One of basic characteristics of signalist visual
poetry is its non-national metalinguistic structure.
This poetry does not know for the limits of
national languages, a problem of translation
does not exist for it any more, its language
is universal and understandable to all poets
of the world. It is opened and right because
of that opening to the world , according to
the well-known Italian poet Adriano Spatola,
"new poetry has its first and enormous
obstacle in national poetry. Various national
poetries live off prejudices and are based,
above all, on the opinion that translation is
the only instrument of expansion to the othe
side of borders and customs. New poetry, as
this poet says, is entrusted with an enormous
task: to destroy naionalisms, to destroy every
"private" concession of culture..."
13. ON THE SPECIAL WORLD OF SIGNALIST (LINGUISTIC)
POETRY
Signalist poetry realized in language, out-textual,
external and object world supposes more and
more its own inner linguistic world whose poetical
space is determined with language itself, that
becomes an exclusive object of poetry in this
case, as well as with the special world created
by that language.In that sense signalist poetry
establishes also specific laws in the newly
built space, based first of all on the modified
laws of the used language.
14. ON RESEARCH IN THE NATURE OF POETRY
Entering the essence of language, and even abandoning
some of its valid and most expressive functional-communicative
elements in particular moments, Signalism researches
the nature of poetry itself most comprehensively
and essentialy so far.
1969 -1972
FRAGMENTS ON SIGNALISM (II)
CYBERNETICS
The bases of cybernetics were posed by Norbert
Wiener immediately after the World War II with
the works: CYBERNETICS or control and communication
in the animakl and the machine and THE HUMAN
USE OF HUMAN BEINGS (cybernetics and society).The
very notion (term, name) cybernetics is derived
by Wienner from the Greek word kybernetes =
helmsman .The domain of interest of this science
are not only living, but also non-living systems
where mechanisms of an exchange of messages,
information function. Cybernetics would be,
according to generally accepted definition,
a universal theory of steering and connection.
There conditions of commanding machines, plants,
producing and social processes are studied,
and even the motion of living beings. So this
theory has been posed in very wide aspects and
it is enabled to cover almost all areas of human
thought and action.*Cybernetics has not been
created accidentally. It can be said it has
rather long history and that it represents a
result of overall developmentof science sinse
the ancient cognition all the way to the most
recent manifestations and courses in scientific
thought. Cybernetics makes use of the experiences
of previous reearches in order to formulate
quite new views and try to solve some of the
fundamental questions of science and society.
The most conspicious are the experiences from
the turn of the century, when mathematical theory
of systems wuth a feedback as well as mathematical
logic with an elaborated logic of discrete schemes.
At that time Gauss' theory of probability gets
an opportunity to be applied also in natural
sciences and technics. An eminent role is played
also by Markpff's theory of web, whereas the
significance of Gibbs' idea of probability of
the universe in the system of statistic mechanics
will be noticed considerably later on.*There
are two basic ideas and interpretations that
cybernetics is based on, not only as a new exact
science, but also as a specific view of the
world with far-reaching effects on social sciences,
philosophy and arts: an idea of a general theory
of governing and relation, and an interpretation
of cybernetics as a theory of organization,
ie of a struggle with the cosmic chaos incarnated
in the monstrous and continual growth of entropy.
GIBBS' UNIVERSE
American scientist Gibbs is especially meritorious
for breaking down Newtonian solid and compact
universe, where everything happens according
to certain law and "where all future depends
strictly on all past". Gibbs' universe
id characterized by disorder. It is not liable
to some strict and eternal laws valid for all
existing forms. It is determinable only by statistic
criteria, probability and chance. Strict determinism
has lost its ground here. Foundations of physics,
and thereby also of entaire world and universe
are set on chance. Exact sciences have thus
approached the sources of the irrational.
MESSAGE
We comprehend society, all the world and universe
by means of studynig messages and means of commumications.
Future of man has been already determined in
a way by development of system opf messages
and communication.Message is in basis of cybernetics.
According to Wiener there is a broad area that
emcompasses not onla study of language, but
also study of messages as a means for governing
machines and society with certain reflections
on psychology and nervous system.A circumstance
where a command (instruction, algorithm) is
communicated to a machine is not different substantially
from the state where a commandment has been
said to a person. The one who directs commandment,
if his conciousness is in question, is aware
of the message he has directed and the signall
returned to him. Quite irrelevant is whether
the signal passed through some machine or person.
It does not changes at all the relationship
of the emitter and the signal. Therefore, Wiener
conludes, theory of governing in technics, whether
it relates to men, animals or machines, represents
just one chapter of the theory of message.
ENTROPY According to the laws of thermodynamics,
where principle of entropy holds, all the universe
is approaching a thermal death.
*
Closed systems like universe tend to pass to
a state of highest probability. From the state
of organization and differentiation to a state
of chaos and formlessness.
*
Statistics sheds a new light on the principle
of entropy. Its laws determine general features
of multitude, erasing individual destinies of
constituent parts.
*
Thermodynamics is specific in its irreversibillity
of physical processes, ie the fact that thermodynamic
processes proceed only in one direction. A course
of the process in opposite direction is made
impossible ba the law of entropy.This one-wayness
represents a basis of the Second law of thermodynamics.
*
As a substitution for thermodinamical one-wayness
we take statistic probability.
*
The princiople of entropy is a border, a borderstone
separating the past from the future.
*
In an experiment known as Maxwell's demon a
continual motion takes place whereby the Second
law of thermodynamics is violated. Maxwell's
demon has overcome here the tendention that
leads to an increase in entropy.
*
Relating thermodynamic entropy to biological
notion of organization, Schrodinger marked entropy
as a measure of desorganization and opposed
to it his own notion of negative entropy (negentropy)
as a measure of order and organization.
*
Striking is the similarity of this Schredinger's
ordinances of negative entropy with Shannon's
entropy of information. By further observing
of these analogies scientists have concluded
that Maxwell's demon actually transforms informaton
into negative entropy, into an order of system.
*
Deep is negenthropic sense of the process of
metabolism.
*
With exchange of matters (metabolism) a living
organism begins its desperate struglle against
desorganization.
*
Death is a state of maximal entropy of a being.
*
Entropy is measure for disorder, chaos, desorganization.
*
Negative entropy (negentropy) is a measure
for order.
*
By metabolic processes, which are, in fact,
processes of life, organism absorbs negative
entropy realizinga high level of order (organization)
in that way. It fights at the same time against
positive entropy, that struggle enabling it
not to fall for a time into the state of maximal
entropy.
HEURISTIC PROGRAMMING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
In domain of study of automatics first of all
are analogies existing between living beings
and machines, processes that happen in different
systems, whether they are mechanisms created
my man, living organisms or human society as
a whole.
*
Reactions of living beings are based on a very
complex system of signalization and automatic
regulation.
*
Homeostasis is an ability of organism to adapt
itself to environment, establishing a constant
equilibrium between organism and environment.
The process by which we as living beings resist
the universal current of corruption and decomposition
dictated by entropy.
*
Homeostat - a machine that posses an ability
of selforganizing, ie that itself is able to
study and chose a solution depending on it.
*
Heuristic programming in modern cybernetics
marks examination and attempt of creating an
algorithm of functioning of brain and complex
forms of psychic activities.It is a new discipline
formulated in 1958 in Great Britain at a symposium
for mechanization of thinking process, by scientists
Minsky and McCay, who had posed the "problem
of neccesity of looking for new ways for examination
and modelation of creative forms of brain work".
*
In his work "On the Road of Creating Artificial
Intellect" Minsky tries to answer the basic
problem of heuristics: what thinking is and
what the specificity of creative forms of brain
functioning consists of compared with the in
cybernetics known processes of processing information.
*
Scientists predict construction of machines
capable of self-reproducton in a very near future.
So on the basis of the fact that computor is
a machine that, given an instruction and a finite
sequence of numbers, can continue infinitely
the development of that sequence accoeding to
the added instruction, mathematician Neumann
conludes, expanding the notion of universal
automaton, that these will in a very near future,
on the basis af appropriate program and other
parts of machines, elements and aggregates,
be able to produce automata similar to themselves.A
British genetist has perfected the notion of
reproductive machine, producing models that
represent numerous analogies, but this time
in the area of chemistry and biology, with living
organisms.According to scientist Edvard Moor,
in several decades will already be created machines
with capability of propagating, being economical
at the same time.
GAME
Game is, in a mathematical sense, a formalized
model of complex conflict situation.
*
Theory of games is a mathematical theory of
conflict situations. It analyzes situations
and deal with production of rules, algorithms
for most favorable tactical action of player.
FEEDBACK
Feedback is considered to be a basic category
of automatics. It represents a method of governing
some system with using results and experiences
of his previous actions.
*
Already has been noticed the coincidency of
physical action of a living being (man) and
some communication machines with rregard to
the endevours that entropy should be controlled
by feedback.
*
The science dealing with analogies between biological
and technical processes is bionics. It studies
regulative systems in living organisms in order
to apply their principles in machines.
*
Messages by which we act upon the environment
we live (work) in are nothing but some kind
of information we, as senders, direct to that
environment. But we not only radiate, direct)
information, we also recieve the. External environment
acts upon our senses by means of light, sound
and other signals. These stimuli are transferred
into the main center wher after gathering information,
their processing and selection man responds
to the stimuli with certain reaction. Thus the
mutual interaction between man and his external
environment is realized on the basis of transfer,
coordination, storing and using of information.
To live efficiently, according to Wiener, means
to be informed.
MACHINE AND THINKING
Very important is the fact that cybernetics
is not a dogmatic science. The world it tries
to explain by its own methods and principles
has not been given for it once forever, but
it is liable to dialectics of eternal becoming,
to infinity of organized actions and reactions.That
science emanates from an essentialy different
process of human thinking, entailed by electronic
civilization. The latter also makes a maximal
use of something that already exists in the
very nature of man, so that it exceeds enthropic
inertion enabling him to act dinamically with
attempts to create in his consciousness a picture
of integrated, but not finite space, time as
well as the world of facts and things.
*
Functionality of technological world is provided
by products of "artificial thinking".
In its global structure (but still only in socio-economical)
the world functions like a machine construed
according to mathematical principles to which
at times, but in ever shorter intervals, more
and more perfect and complicated parts are added.
*
In the area of thinking, machines will first
of all have a role of an instigator of thinking
and creating, ie of a reinforcer of intelligence.
They can be understood also as very complicated
tools for realization of certain ideas and production
of new aesthetic information. Machin will influence
substantially on thinking in the future.
THEORY OF INFORMATION
Under information we imply all that gives data,
or informs about some fact or some event. It
shows itself to us as a "basic magnitude",
its quantity is measurable and can be expressed
mathematically. It is mathematical models that
the processes of information courses are studied
by. Measure unit of information is bit, and
it represents an "atom of communication".
It would be the least quantity of elements in
one information arrived through channels to
receptor (reciever), needed to be transformable
to certain perception.Norbert Wiener calls information
the contents of what we exchange with external
world while we adapt to it and influence it
by our adaptation.
*
Theory of information originated at solving
the problem of electrical communications, transmission
technique, especially photography. At the beginning
it was related exclusively to st
udy of transmission, procession and using signals
in channel for communication, but later on its
application has been expanded, by means of cybernetics,
also to biological and social systems. Finally,
information theory and cyberneric methods penetrate
aesthetics too.
*
For information is characteristical that it
is transferred by communication channel. Material
bearers of information are actually signals.
By means of encoding, ideas, thoughts are transformed
into a system of communication signals. Decoding
process is reverse and goes from signal (languge,
numbers, signs, letters, gestures, sounds) toward
picture and thought. On that road through the
channel of communication to the reciever where
it is decoded, signal can be exposed to hindrances,
white sounds, distortions. Understandability
of the information will also depend on the degree
of distortion.
*
Signal is a product of an event, object or phenomenon.
Information, in fact, can not exist in other
way than in a form of signal about something
that has happened. Events, happanings are source
of signals. They are, thereore, of a physical
nature and are related to certain mass or energy.
For Roland Barthes signal belongs to a group
of "relates without psychical idea",
it is "immediate and existential".
ENTROPY IN INFORMATION THEORY AND NEW AESTHETICS
Applied in information theory entropy denotes
disorder, danger, chaos tending to destroy message,
its meaning, to make ompossible information,
ie establishment of relation of emmiter's world
with that of receiver. It is noticed first of
all in communication channel where the message
is influenced by various hindrances, white sounds,
actually the entropy principle that tries to
destroy it.As such, entropy is opposed to information.
Informaton is actually a measure of order, where
the informative contents of a message is given
by the degree of its organization. By a greater
organization of the message according to "a
special order", where it would go far,
by means of "improbable systematization",
from probability, uniformity and "elementary
chaos", tended to even by the universe
as a closed system, its informativity is also
conditioned.>From this one could conclude
that to a total information corresponds a zero
entropy, and to increasing entropy a vanishing
information. (As we will see later on the things
with artistic works, when aesthetical, ie poetical
information is in question).
*
The notin of entropy has not remained just in
thermodynamics, ie physics and mathematics,
beside cybenetics and information theory. This
notion has been expanded recently also to lingustics,
and also poetry. Significan place it holds also
i new aesthetics.
*
New aesthetics uses mathematical and empirical
working methods, it starts from some basic attitudes
of cybernetics and information theory, orientating,
mainly, to objective problems of art.
*
Aesthetical perception is marked, from the standpoint
of new aesthetics, whose fundamental assuption
have been elaborated by Abraham Moles, as a
transfer and processing of information.This
process is more complicated than with other
kinds of perceprion and registering phenomena
in receiver's consciousness. First of all, with
aesthetical perception the participation of
consumer is considerably more active. Although
the quantity of information after the transfer
by a communication channel is always lesser
at the exit than at the entrance, the received
signals can cause with the receiver greater
quantity than that whose bearers, actually,
they are. It is, according to Mol, made poossible
by previous information placed in the receiver's
(consumer's) memory, activated and combined
with the existing experience.
REDUNDANCE
Redundance shows itself as a measure of understandibility
of information. In fact, it is that excess,
abundance of probabilities by which we burden
an information at the very sourcin order to
enable the message to reach the receiver complete.
Understandibility is here, therefore, a "quantitative
notion". Maximal unpredictability (originality)
of message makes it nonunderstandable. Understandibility,
repetition, using always same sign, makes it
equal with triviality.
*
All messages, especially artistic ones, represent
a compromise between a maximal information of
the unpredictable, original but non-understandable
and the predictable, repetition, non-originality
that is trivial and understandable. This would
be, according to Abraham Moles, a fundamental
dijalectics of communication.Within certain
limits of a linguistic system according to Umberto
Eco, "redundance is given by the entire
totality of syntactic, ortographic and grammatical
rules that begin to make up obligate intermedial
points of a language".Goals of Signalism
would be, therefore, determined in advance by
breaking down those linguistic rules within
their official conditionings, but at the same
time also in the frame of new systems and subsystems
in building a signalist poet retains certain
redundancy lest he make impossible comopletely
aesthetical informativity and communicativity
of his work..
SPACE OF SIGNALIST ART
The space of art will become a space of game.
Of intuitive and algorithm one, where the latter
will be a basis for an intuitive superstructere.
Moving from the spheres of emotions toward the
spheres of intelligence, significance of art
as of discovering will be increased.
*
Basis of signalist art we see in a synthesis
of intellectual-experimental function with its
social-communicative function.
CREATION OF NEW FORMS
Creation of new forms is the aim of signalist
art. Of concrete forms, not only of void forms.
It is an art of this time (its time), its expression.Efforts
are not directed just to express, but also to
arrange, mould, create. If signalist art is
an expression of one time, then the world is
also an object of its arranging. Paradixal is,
however, that in that arranging the world it
is partly helped also by it subversive (destructive)
function.Hegel pointed rightfully to this necessary
dialectics of future, that covers what exists
just in order to destroy it better, replacing
it with new forms.
*
New (signalist) literature pointed to the three-dimensional
properties of words and language (verbal,vocal
and visual). The idea about a linear sequence
of words and letter structures has been shattered.
Syntax could be sdestroyed at the moment when
significant visual possibilities of particular
linguistic elements showed themselves. Text
is structured so that in its meaning, reading,
all the newly discovered linguistic properties
act. Its improbability has been increased, and
thereby also its polisemanticity. A script of
linguistic signs in a multi-dimensional field
of action is being created, that can engage
whole thinking and sensual (visual, tactile
and sonar) system of comnsumer (reader - watcher),
including him into the game of thinking and
discovering.
IDEAL LANGUAGE
Search for logical perfection of languge in
modern philosophy coincides, at least in its
effort, with the search of some previous literatural
directions for its aesthetical perfection.
*An ideal language is exausted in monosemantic
naming simple things.
NON-EUCLIDIAN SPACES OF BEING AND LANGUAGE
Picture of the world will be complete if we
determine its basic elements, facts and things.
Facts and things are material of picture of
the world.
*
The bulding of the world like an idea of totality
and compactness has been broken down. It is
a bulding of destroyed syntax whose basic elementshave
been liberated from the tightly bound foundations
of one-dimensional totalities realize non-euclidian
spaces of being and language.
*
Being in denying. Being in language. Language
of being as a picture of concrete world of facts
and things. New world as a denying of language.
*
Science and technology produce a new world.
The purpose of Signalism is not a theory with
a determined action and defined limits, it is
first of all a permanent activity.
PICTURE
Differently from language (words), phonic segments
that have not a perceptive similarity with the
object they represent, picture as a special
kind of denoting has it.
*
Although it is just a shadow of what it denotes,
just one of the relations of the sonsciousness
leading to object, picture is not independent
and separated from the world of facts and things.
Its action does not end just in relationship
of a certain thing with another. It communicates
with all surroundings entering so a very jagged
web of semiological meanings.Play of pictures
and their various, itertwinned and interdependant
actions is a play of a just born world which
tempts us with its multiple possibilities.
DUAL CIVILIZATON OF LANGUAGE AND PICTURE
We do not notice visual codes in visual message
exclusively. Visual message is often permeated
by language, not only internally, but also inside
in its very visuality.
*
The fact is, yet, that we can not interpret
different forms of communication just by linguistic
categories. Our civilization is more and more
determined by the visual as by a set of specific
visual systems.It is, to be true, still a civilization
of language and picture where picture takes
more and more significant and dominant place.
The world of language and the world of picture
are not separated so strictly as it could be
concluded at first on the basis o theoretical
discussions. Noticeable are very broad fields
of mutual intertwinning and action showing that
the visual in our civilization has still not
taken hold of "the totality of materially
visible messages".
*
By semiology of visual communications we research
the roads to semiological defining of new phenomena
of meaning in particular systems developed or
just being created by technological society.
COMPLEXITY OF SEMIOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
Semiological experience is a complex one. As
if there were not limits, in the world we percieve,
to application of its possibilities. System
of signs encircle us from the moment we open
our eyes: gestures, sounds, pictures, things,
bomb our senses, engaging entire our being in
receiving various information and deciphering
their meanings.Great are spaces where all those
"systems of meanings" are placed,
produced and discovered by our global civilization
by means of its informative media. Information,
complexes of signs and meanings, have become
a nervous labyrinth of modern society, and thereby
they are also liable to a comprehensive analysis
by means of the methods of new scientific disciplines
originated or developed in this time of explosive
communication.It seems, actually, that very
that width is what makes impossible to semiology
a deeper and more systematic penetration into
some of the basic questions of our time, and
at the same time a definition of the limits
of its own research.
LINGUISTIC SIGN
Linguistics enters the field of action of semiology
covering a greater, more significant and perhaps
the most systematized part of the general science
of signs - language.Semiology is still in a
search of its "genuine language" as
well as its methods and possibilities. For the
present it relies almost entirely on linguistics
and represents, as it Barthes says, "a
copy of linguistic knowledges".
*
Ferdinand de Saussure is one of the first linguists
that tried to explain the nature of sign, especiall
of verabal one. To him sign represents a "unity
of what it denotes" with "what is
denoted". The denoting and the denoted
arem therefore, united making a sign. According
to Barthhes, the point is an essential attitude
that is to be always returned to, "for
a tendention exists that sign is considered
to be "denoting", while a two-sided
reality is in question.
*
Penetrating deeper into the nature of linguistic
sign, followers of de Saussure have discovered,
beside dichotomy, also its "double articulation".According
to them, we discern among lingustic signs semantic
sentences each of which is loaded with sense
(monems) from discinctive units that make up
parts of form, but have not meaning expressionally
(phonems). Monems would form the first and phonems,
and phonem the second articulation of linguistic
sign.
AESTHETICAL SITUATIONS
To learn looking, to replace the outdated "technique
of interpretation" ba a "technique
of perception", where in an immediate touch
of our conasciousness and the world radiating
information the factual exparieances become
necessary, needed not only for the usual, normal
communication, but also for a comprehension
of that special kind of so-called "aesthetical
information".
*
Determining an aethetical measure of artistic
art, abd starting thereat from some mathematical
principles noticed on probability theory, the
well-known researcher of modern art Max Bense
says that works of art are as bearers of aesthetical
situations are complete creations that in a
sense create three kinds of situations: first
of all the exact physical situation of the material
system the work of art is made of; secondly,
the conventional semantic situation achieved
in such a physical system and, finally, an undefined
aesthetical situation relating to the both previous
ones.
*
For an artistic work, according to this theorist,
it is not necessary that it, in order to achieve
aesthetical situations, gives primarily the
semantic, ie meaning in its material. Aesthertical
situations can (and do not have to) emanate
from semantic ones, but in any case they build
the material. Development of modern art points
to us that it strives to rrealize aesthetical
situations ommediately in a physical, material
transfer system renouncing an introduction of
mediatory semantic stadium, ie object and meaning.
VISUAL SYNTAGMS
Visual syntagms of particular forms of signalist
visual poetry can show themselves to us, but
to a lesser extent, as iconic signs.
*
According to Morris' definition an iconic sign
is a sign that has certain properties of the
presented object, ie which represents properties
of its denotates.
*
Thedefinition by Umberto Eco is rather wider
but mre precise as well. For him, iconic signs
reproduce some perceptive condition of the object,
but not before they are chosen on the basis
of the codes of recognition and after they are
recorded on the basis of graphic conventions
according to which an arbitrary realized sign
denotes the given sign of perception.
*
In a greater part of signalist visual poetry,
however, there is not such a relationship of
coincidence with things. Elements in the frame
of poem, and even the poem as a whole, are determined
and special material events with which we notice
mpre rarely an iconic relationship with obkect.
TEXT IS BODY
In Signalism for the sake of determination and
distinction of visual poetry and other visual
texts (visual novel and others) from the created
originated in language exclusively, we have
to take account of certain distinction in the
way of communication abd reception of the aesthetical
information. The both texts (visual and verbal)
are given to us most frequently in a same medium,
book, realized with similar, or same letter
(slovnim) ie sign symbols. And where then would
be a difference?We will notice, first of all,
that in a visual text the word printed on paper
acts first of all by its materiality. That word
is not an "abstract, verbal notion sign",
but a concrete visual sign having its spave,
its corporality. A text is a body. Realization
of the communication between an artist and reader/watcher
by means such a text implies not only a knowledge
about a conditioned system of signs like a script
is, but also an already formed visual thought
ready to receive these new hybrid artistic products.
*
It would be necessary to ascertain once forever
to which an extent signalist visual poetry owes
to media and art disciplines such as: photography,
comics, film, television, graphics and design.
Likewese one should ascertain to which extent
it has fulfilled the vacuum, as it has been
already said, that had existed between those
disciplines. Where they are in touch with visual
poetry and where and how they permeate each
other.
GESTURE POETRY
In the case of gestual poetry (signalist manifestation)
artist would communicate with recipients by
so-called natural means (information channels):
voice, gestures, immediate and realized natural
or contact communication. Of course, it does
not exclude also another type of communication
by means of technical devices and aids (technical
communication).The way of communication between
artist from one side and recipients (consumers)
from the other is essentially different with
these two types of communication. Immediativeness
and orality of information, as well as certain
real audience is characteristic for natural
communication. That is why some theorists can
speak about its distributivity.Gestual poet
is at the center of events, in a focus of his
work. Very frequently the audience itself becomes
an inseparable and constituent part of artistic
work and gestual action by its reactions, participation
and orientation. Communication is determined
here and therefore unique feed-back situations
can take place, since the consumers themselves
(being now participants too) can influence further
creative development of the work. Yet, basic
source of aesthetical information still remains
the poet himself, the performer of the action.
GUTENBERGIAN GALAXY
With Gutenberg's Bible (1455), the first work
published in the just invented technique of
printing, a beginning of so-called "Gutenbergian
galaxy" was announced, where culture of
print and book dominates. According to many
theorists, this was one of revolutionary leaps
of mankind that later on, through book as the
most accesible and mass culture medium, has
led to "immediate exchange of experiences,
ideas and knowledges" and to an universal
cultural and social growth.*Book has become
one of the basic comunication channels, medium
of individuals, groups, entire nations. Thereby
the past is illuminated, history is concretized
whose facts become accesible to the widest classes
of people, present time is marked and future
movements are tried to be viewed. Its influence
on society and human psychology is enormous.
Book is such a medium that it promotes psychology
of individualism, removes oral communication.
(McLuhan). One works with it, and communictes
trhrough it, in silence, without direct dialogical
struggle, in the warm uterus of room or fights
in an improvized arena of that very room, that
limited and closed world, with an invisible
opponent.
*
Print and book experienced their real explosion
and expansion in last century with an abrupt
development of industrial civilization. Technological
civilization we have entered has produced new
mass media: film, electronic machimes, television,
videotape. In these media printed letter, word,
language do not dominate, but picture in cooperation
with the oral and other ways of communication.
SIGNALIST GALAXY
According to McLuhan speech as a communication
medium has widened the sense of hearing, script
and book extended the sense of sight, and electronic
media represent extension of all human senses,
entire central nervous system.It has been already
showed that the appearance of book has influenced
human psychology in the sense of reinforced
individualization. Man secludes with printed
word, avoids action, meditates, communicates
indirectly. One sense becomes dominant - the
sense of sight.New media of our civilization
establish a balance of all senses. A indirect
communucation is excluded. Man is again at the
center of action, of events. All his senses
are bombarded equally by information. Experience
is direct and active one.
*
Does the end of an epoch and of the rule of
one sense mean also an end of all those established,
by that rule promoted and produced "thinking
models", behaviour, creation? What are
ways of creation in the new electronic civilization
that deepens and expands our experiences even
more through a simultaneous and equal activity
of all senses? That deepening leads us to the
very subconsciousness, liberated and threatening.
It draws us out from the choking three-dimensional
spaces of script and eye, narrative comsciousness,
homogenous fortresses of the abslolute, metaphysics
and myth and throws us into an avelanche of
rebelled senses, into relativized, non-dogmatic
and multidimensional spaces of planetary and
signalist art.
*
Signalism tries to mobilize for creativity all
senses moved and activated by the media of our
epoch. It establishes their continuous interaction
in creation of aesthetical information. The
doors of subconsciousness are not just opened
slightly, they are wide opened. Signalism has
abolished, by liberating and engaging all senses
and creative forces in man, all limits, all
boundaries, and even space and time, directing
its own researching being to the unpredictable
planetary and cosmic.
1969 – 1975.
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