Abstract (Poster)

Keywords: Digital poetry, quantum mechanics, tablet computing, software art, art and science, interdisciplinary research practice, interactive art, new media art, experimental writing, electronic literature.

Collocations is a work of experimental writing that explores the disruptive implications of quantum mechanics for science, philosophy, literature and art. Designed for tablet computers, Collocations appropriates two excerpted pages from Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr’s debates about quantum physics and transforms them through algorithmically defined systems in order to produce an interactive work of innumerable poetic texts. Interaction with the work transforms the user into an experimenter whose physical manipulation of the device determines the materialization of any possible number of unique textual configurations in a dynamic, non-linear and kinesthetic reading experience. This paper contextualizes Collocations in relation to the fields of experimental writing and electronic literature, describes how the work operates, and demonstrates the correspondences between Collocations’ formal structure and the quantum phenomenon of complementarity on which it is modeled. Video documentation of Collocations can be found here: vimeo.com/119868407.

• Abraham Avnisan, USA,  is an experimental writer and new media artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text, and code. Each of his projects appropriates and transforms a key 20th century text that challenges us to reconsider the most fundamental ways in which we understand ourselves and the world around us. He has presented and exhibited his work at the 2015 &NOW  Conference of Innovative Writing, the 2015 and 2014 Electronic Literature Organization conferences, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Word Weekend event, and at Figment! and Centotto Gallery in New York City. His work has been published in Stonecutter, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Drunken Boat, New Delta Review, Rain Taxi, and others. He holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College, and an M.F.A. in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received the New Artists Society Merit Scholarship. He maintains a website at abrahamavnisan.com.

Full text (PDF) p. 922-924