I think the best way to achieve what I want from this project is to use a trusty Arduino board. As for inputs I think with the time scale I have and for simplicity I think I will use simple push to make buttons for different functions. I want to embed the elctronc ‘gubbins’ inside the Shandy book and use it as an interface for the program I am planning to write in processing.

Ive got my hands on a copy of Tristram Shandy for my project. Its quite a nice hardback copy…shame to destroy it really!

I’ve been looking at Tristram Shandy again. I find this book (even though I haven’t read it yet) very interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly it is the ultimate postmodern text written years before postmodernism existed. The narrative of the book is not only non linear but completely nonsensical; characters crop up after they have died, after 2 chapters of the book Tristram hasn’t even been born and much more. Here are some notes from a recent lecture on postmodernism:

Ultimate postmodern text Tristram Shandy (1760)!
Not based on myth, has no heroes or villains
Stock characters obsessed with unlikely, idiosyncratic things
Profoundly unadventurous and unromantic
Follows no recognisable genre
After 120pp, narrator has failed even to get himself born
Yorick dies early on and then appears at the end
Specifically draws narrative form to your attention
Discusses what the problems are with chronological storytelling
Shows how certain effects are achieved (rhetorical devices)
Asterisks, dashes, puns, figures of speech, squiggles, drawings
Digressions and deviations (back and forth, circular, fragmented)
Ambiguous language (sexual innuendo, assumptions of reader)
Black page, marble page, white page
Not at all resolved but a cock and bull story…

Ok so…I have an idea. I am quite interested in a number of points that have been brought up on this module. I have always been interested in Duchamp’s idea of the ready made and the physicality of objects over computer based art. I have also been taken by Tristram Shandy and everything it represents as a text. I would like to combine these thoughts with the idea that the writer cannot control how the reader interprets the text and how every narrative form is interpreted differently in some way by every reader giving a unique experience.

I want to produce a writing machine of sorts that experiments with the already experimental form of Tristram Shandy, but I want this to be a physical project with the physical qualities of the original text. To achieve this I am thinking of using a physical copy of Tristram Shandy as an interface for the writing machine, this also covers the ready made aspect. I am thinking of experimenting with the narrative in a dadaist cutup vein to produce a unique experience of the text.

I like Duchamp. He seems like me type of guy! Taking something that already exists and calling it art…genius! Obviously there is a deeper theoretical context to it. A good quote from Duchamp:

“It is necessary to arrive at selecting an object with the idea of not being impressed by this object on the basis of enjoyment of any order. However, it is difficult to select an object that absolutely does not interest you, not only on the day on which you select it, and which does not have any chance of becoming attractive or beautiful and which is neither pleasant to look at nor particularly ugly.”

I like this idea of the ‘Readymade’. It makes the world seem like a better place.

…and bull story!

On a long and boring train journey then other day I sat and watched ‘A Cock and Bull Story‘ (partly because it is on the reading list for the narrative module and partly because Im a Coogan fan!). Having never read the Lawrence Sterne classic on which the film is based, the undertones of the film weren’t clear. To my surprose, the following week’s Narrative lecture was entirely on ‘The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’. I think the film has sparked an interest in the book…I might go read it. Who knows…I may be able to use it in the project.

Ok, I have to start thinking about another project. I started a new module at the start of Janurary called Narrative and Digital form and its essentially about Narrative and the theory behind it in Digital practices. We have to “produce and present an original digital work that experiments with narrative and form in terms of conventions, languages, techniques or practices.” We havn’t had much lecture material so far, so as far as the project content is concerned I will have to wait and see. However if there is some way I can incorporate my newly found love of arduino and physicaly objects into the project then I will!