William Allen Butler was an American lawyer and writer of poetical satires. He contributed travel writing and comic writing to the Literary World, a series on ‘The Cities of Art and the Early Artists’ to the Art Union Bulletin. His most famous satirical poem, Nothing to Wear, was first published anonymously in Harper’s Weekly in 1857, though Butler was forced to reveal his name after someone else claimed authorship.
New York based artist Joseph Moore wrote the software “Permutations” for the currently running exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine on display at The New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York. The Exhibition is a retrospective of the work of the painter, performer, poet, and writer Brion Gysin (born 1916, Taplow, UK–died 1986, Paris). Working simultaneously in a variety of mediums, Gysin was an irrepressible inventor, serial collaborator, and subversive spirit whose considerable innovations continue to influence musicians and writers, as well as visual and new media artists today.
The “Permutations” software by Joseph Moore is a “version” of the program developed by Ian Sommerville and Gysin in 1960 to permute poems. Moore has attempted to create a realization of the work that is sensitive to the original and its process. At the same time, it is a new version, a collaboration done in the spirit of an artist whose work provides a critique of conventional notions of authorship. Moore believes that it is also in the spirit of the work to share copies of it and made his “Permutations” Software avilable to download from Github. The concept and artistic process of this project is fascinating.
Below you find a podcast of the original “I am that I am” poem.
Software by Joseph Moore | Brion Gysin: Dream Machine | Poem by: Brion Gysin | Ubuweb
Quote on art and wearing fashion by Irish writer, poet and prominent aesthete: Oscar Wilde.
He produced a series of dialogues and essays that developed his ideas about the supremacy of art.
(1854 – 1900)
Quote on style by the French Poet, Novelist, Actor, Film Director and Painter Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)