<nettime> codework

[McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>]

>From the 
Codework 
special issue of
American Book 
Review, edited 
by Alan 
Sondheim
http://www.litl
ine.org/abr/Iss
ues/Volume22/
Issue6/abr2206.
html


Codework 

McKenzie 
Wark

What happens 
to writing as it 
collides with 
new media? I 
was thinking 
about this 
recently while 
looking over an 
exhibition of 
William BlakeÕs 
work at the 
Metropolitan 
Museum in 
New York. On 
display was not 
just Blake the 
artist, Blake the 
poet, or Blake 
the quirky 
revolutionary. 
Here was Blake 
the media 
artist.

Blake 
assembled all 
of the elements 
of a media 
practice. As a 
writer he 
experimented 
with all aspects 
of the 
production 
process. His 
aesthetic did 
not stop with 
the word on the 
page. Here, I 
thought, was a 
useful 
precursor to 
name for the 
new 
developments 
in writing that 
take place on 
the Internet, 
developments I 
will shortly 
define as 
Òcodework.Ó

But Blake is 
interesting in 
this connection 
only if one 
embraces all 
aspects of his 
productivity. 
ThereÕs a 
tendency, in the 
teaching of 
literature and 
the 
management of 
its canons, to 
separate off the 
authoring of 
the text from 
the other 
aspects of 
writing as a 
production. ItÕs 
a tendency that 
full attention to 
Blake 
frustrates, 
given how fully 
he was 
invested in the 
implication of 
writing in all 
aspects of its 
production and 
circulation. 
BlakeÕs 
creation did not 
stop at the 
threshold of 
Òtext.Ó

Digging 
writing out of 
the 
prison-house of 
ÒtextÓ might 
just be what is 
needed to 
unblock 
thinking about 
where the 
Internet is 
taking writing. 
There has 
always been 
more to writing 
than text, and 
there is more to 
electronic 
writing than 
hypertext.

Hypertext may 
have come to 
dominate 
perceptions of 
where writing 
is heading in 
the Internet 
era, but it is by 
no means the 
only, or the 
most 
interesting, 
strategy for 
electronic 
writing. 
Hypertext 
writers tend to 
take the link as 
the key 
innovation in 
electronic 
writing spaces. 
In hypertext 
writing, the 
link is supposed 
to open up 
multiple 
trajectories for 
the reader 
through the 
space of the 
text.

Extraordinary 
claims were 
made for this 
as a liberatory 
writing 
strategy. 
Hypertext has 
its limits, 
however. First, 
the writing of 
the text stands 
in relation to 
the writing of 
the software as 
content to 
form. The two 
are not really 
brought 
together on the 
same plane of 
creativity. 
Secondly, 
hypertext tends 
not to circulate 
outside of the 
academic 
literary 
community. It 
has its roots in 
avant-garde 
American and 
English 
literature and 
tends to hew 
close to those 
origins. 
Thirdly, it 
doesnÕt really 
rethink who the 
writer is, in the 
new network of 
statements that 
the expansion 
of the Internet 
makes possible. 
For all the talk 
of the death of 
the author, the 
hypertext 
author assumes 
much the same 
persona as his 
or her 
avant-garde 
literary 
predecessors.

What is 
interesting 
about the 
emergence of 
codework is 
that it breaks 
with hypertext 
strategies on 
all three points. 
In many 
codework 
writings, both 
the technical 
and cultural 
phenomena of 
coding 
infiltrates the 
work on all its 
levels. 
Codework 
finds its home 
in a wide range 
of Internet 
venues, 
forming 
dialoguesÑso
metimes 
antagonistic 
onesÑwith the 
development of 
other kinds of 
written 
communication 
in an emerging 
electronic 
writing 
ecology. 
Codework also 
sets to work on 
the problem of 
the author, 
bringing all of 
the tactics of 
the Internet to 
bear on the 
question of 
authorship.

Codework 
ÒentitiesÓ such 
as Antiorp and 
JODI approach 
the Internet as 
a space in 
which to 
re-engineer all 
of the aspects 
of creative 
production and 
distribution. 
Antiorp is 
famousÑor 
rather 
infamousÑfor 
bombarding 
listservers such 
as the Nettime 
media theory 
list with posts 
that seem to 
parody the 
sometimes 
high-serious 
style of Internet 
media theory. 
It was often 
hard to tell 
whether the 
Antiorp writing 
emanated from 
a human source 
or from some 
demented 
ÒÔbotÓ 
programmed to 
produce the 
semi-legible 
texts.

Antiorp has 
spawned a 
number of 
alternative 
identities and 
imitators. It is 
with some 
trepidation 
that one would 
venture to 
assign 
codework texts 
to discrete 
authors. It may 
be best to take 
the fabricated 
heteronyms 
under which 
codework is 
sometimes 
published at 
face value, 
rather than to 
attempt to 
assign discrete 
flesh-and-bloo
d authors.

Some 
codework 
frustrates the 
assigning of 
authorship as a 
means of 
breaking down 
the link 
between 
authorship and 
intellectual 
property. The 
Luther Blissett 
project, for 
example, 
encourages 
writers to 
assume the 
name Luther 
Blissett. Many 
texts of various 
kinds have 
appeared 
under that 
name and 
without 
copyright.

Some of the 
more prolific 
Luther Blissett 
authors 
subsequently 
became the Mu 
Ming 
Foundation, 
which claims to 
be a 
Òlaboratory of 
digital designÓ 
offering 
Ònarrative 
services.Ó The 
Foundation 
sees itself as an 
ÒenterpriseÓ 
looking for 
strategies for 
regaining 
control over 
the production 
process for 
codeworkers.
The ÒtextsÓ 
JODI produces 
hover 
somewhere at 
the limit of 
what a text 
might be. A 
sample might 
look something 
like this:

o
|:__::::::::::_Ñ
Ñ|_::::::::::_Ñ
Ñ|_:::::::
:: : :: :

A classic JODI 
Web page may 
spit all kinds of 
Òpunctuation 
artÓ across the 
screen. This 
work is neither 
writing nor 
visual art but 
something in 
between. The 
programming 
involved 
usually teeters 
on the brink of 
failure. Every 
technology 
brings into 
being new 
kinds of crashes 
or accidents, 
and JODI 
endeavors to 
find those 
accidents 
unique to the 
authoring of 
Web pages.

Integer 
sometimes 
makes 
interventions 
into discussions 
on listservers, 
all with 
variations on 
the same 
distinctive 
approach to 
breaking up the 
text and 
introducing 
noise into it, 
not to mention 
a somewhat 
abusive 
hypercritical 
persona.

this - a l l this. = 
but 01 ch!!!!!!p. 
unevent-	ful
korporat fascist 
gullibloon 
zpektakle.

This might be a 
mangled 
machine 
English, or 
perhaps an 
English written 
by a machine 
programmed 
by someone 
who speaks 
English as a 
second 
language, or 
someone 
producing a 
simulation of 
some such. The 
decaying 
grammar and 
spelling of the 
Internet here 
becomes a kind 
of aesthetic 
alternative.

Rather than 
using e-mail 
and listservers, 
Alan Sondheim 
sometimes uses 
IRC, or 
Internet Relay 
Chat, as a 
means of 
collaboration 
and 
composition, as 
in Òsaying 
names among 
themselves,Ó 
which begins:

IRC log started 
Mon May 7 
00:40
*** Value of 
LOG set to ON
*** You are 
now talking to 
channel 
	#nikuko
*** Alan is 
now known as 
terrible
*** terrible is 
now known as 
worries_i

The text 
proceeds as 
what appears 
to be a 
collaboration 
between 
Sondheim and 
unwitting 
collaborators, 
who may or 
may not know 
that this 
writing may 
come to have 
the status of 
writing, rather 
than chat.

Many 
codework texts 
hover on the 
brink of 
legibility, 
asking the 
reader to 
question 
whether the 
author is made 
of flesh or 
silicon, or 
perhaps 
whether 
authoring lies 
at the level of 
writing text or 
coding 
software to 
write text. 
Kenji SiratoriÕs 
texts may be 
machine-made 
or made to look 
machine-made.

Ant PC 
planetary, 
MURDEROUS 
CONSEQUEN
CES! body line 
TREMENDOU
S HORROR! 
drugy miracle 
ADAM doll 
TREMENDOU
S HORROR! 
thyroid 
fallsÉ.MURD
EROUS 
CONSEQUEN
CES! vivid 
placenta world 
TREMENDOU
S HORROR! 
machinative 
angel:her 
soul-machine 
discharges 
MURDEROUS 
CONSEQUEN
CES! speed PC 
fearÉ.MURDE
ROUS 
CONSEQUEN
CES!

That text is 
called ÒAlan 
Sondheim-conf
erenceÓ and 
appears to be a 
response to a 
conference 
report by 
Sondheim.

While some 
codeworkers 
pounce upon 
the texts of 
others as raw 
material for 
codeworking, 
StŽphan 
Barron asks 
others to 
volunteer 
texts. In 
ÒCom_post 
ConceptsÓ he 
solicits 
contributions 
with a text that 
begins:

Web surfers 
send in their 
texts by e-mail. 
ÉAll are then 
composted! Just 
as we ourselves 
are composted! 
Recycling as 
organic and 
cyclical 
technology, a 
technology of 
intelligence and 
responsibility, 
of the link to 
the natural and 
artificial world.

The sender 
receives her or 
his own text 
back at weekly 
intervals, in an 
increasingly 
noisy and 
unintelligible 
state.

The Internet 
emerges in 
much of this 
work as a noisy 
space, in which 
the structures 
of text decay 
and writing 
becomes 
granular, a 
chaotic space of 
temporary 
orders 
constantly 
becoming 
randomized. 
Yet within this 
chaotic space, 
the 
Òdestructive 
characterÓ of 
the codeworker 
proposes new 
kinds of 
sensemaking 
that might, for 
a moment, keep 
the parasite of 
noise at bay.
Another 
precursor one 
might mention, 
besides Blake, 
for the 
emerging 
world of 
codework, is 
the James Joyce 
of Finnegans 
Wake. In Wake, 
multiplicity can 
erupt at any 
point along the 
textual surface, 
not just at 
discrete 
hyperlinked 
nodes. 
Permutations, 
a Web site by 
Florian 
Cramer, 
reproduces in 
digital form 
many of the 
great 
combinatory 
text systems, 
from Raymond 
Lullus to 
Ramond 
Queneau. 
Cramer has 
also produced a 
codework 
machine that 
creates 
permutations 
on Finnegans 
Wake, called 
ÒHere Comes 
Everybody.Ó It 
works at the 
level of the 
syllable, 
producing a 
virtual 
universe of 
new 
portmanteau 
words out of 
original 
Joyce-text.

The Australian 
codeworker 
Mez has 
developed a 
distinctive 
prose style that 
she calls 
mezangelle, 
producing texts 
that tend to 
look like this:

.nodal 
+death+-points 
swallowed in a 
dea.th.rush.
.u begin 2 
-f][l][ail-, 
ar][t][][is][ms all 
awry n caught 
in webbed
ma][ulers][ws.

Rather than 
link discrete 
blocs of text, or 
Òlexias,Ó to 
each other, 
Mez introduces 
the hypertext 
principle of 
multiplicity into 
the word itself. 
Rather than 
produce 
alternative 
trajectories 
through the 
text on the 
hypertext 
principle of 
Òchoice,Ó here 
they co-exist 
within the 
same textual 
space.

The interest of 
MezÕs writings 
is not limited to 
this distinctive 
approach to the 
text. While the 
words split and 
merge on the 
screen, the 
authoring 
ÒavatarÓ 
behind them is 
also in a state 
of flux. Texts 
issue, in 
various forms 
in various 
places, from 
data[h!bleeder, 
Phonet][r][ix, 
netwurker, and 
many other 
heteronyms.

At the heart of 
the 
codeworking 
enterprise is a 
call for a 
revised 
approach to 
language itself. 
Many of the 
creative 
strategies for 
making or 
thinking about 
writing in the 
latter part of 
the twentieth 
century drew 
on Ferdinand 
de SaussureÕs 
Course in 
General 
Linguistics. In 
the hands of 
poststructuralis
ts, language 
poets, or 
hypertext 
authors and 
theorists, this 
was a powerful 
and useful 
place to start 
thinking about 
how language 
works. But 
Saussure 
begins by 
separating 
language as a 
smooth and 
abstract plane 
from speech as 
a pragmatic 
act. Language 
is then divided 
into signifier 
and signified, 
with the 
referent 
appearing as a 
shadowy third 
term. The 
concept of 
language that 
emerges, for all 
its purity, is far 
removed from 
language as a 
process.

What codework 
draws 
attention to is 
the pragmatic 
side of 
language. 
Language is 
not an abstract 
and 
homogenous 
plane, it is one 
element in a 
heterogeneous 
series of 
elements linked 
together in the 
act of 
communication
. Writing is not 
a matter of the 
text, but of the 
assemblage of 
the writer, 
reader, text, 
the textÕs 
material 
support, the 
laws of 
property and 
exchange 
within which 
all of the above 
circulate, and 
so on.

Codework 
draws 
attention to 
writing as 
media, where 
the art of 
writing is a 
matter of 
constructing an 
aesthetic, an 
ethics, even a 
politics, that 
approaches all 
of the elements 
of the process 
together. 
Codework 
makes of 
writing a 
media art that 
breaks with the 
fetishism of the 
text and the 
abstraction of 
language. It 
brings writing 
into contact 
with the other 
branches of 
media art, such 
as music and 
cinema, all of 
which are 
converging in 
the emerging 
space of 
multimedia, 
and which 
often have a 
richer 
conception of 
the politics of 
media art as a 
collaborative 
practice than 
has been the 
case with 
writing 
conceived 
within the 
prison-house of 
Òtext.Ó

http://www.litl
ine.org/abr/Iss
ues/Volume22/
Issue6/abr2206.
html

~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~
We no longer 
have roots, we 
have aerials. 
~~~~~~~~~
~ McKenzie 
Wark 
~~~~~~~~~

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