| Abstrakt: |
Writing Under (2012) is West Virginia University Press's recent print collection of Alan Sondheim's critical and creative writings. Despite the diverse range of topics and extended time period it covers, it presents a remarkably cohesive summary of the artist's key aesthetic and philosophical interests. This extended review of the volume looks more closely at two of these primary interests, noting first the consistent, yet highly original use of algorithmic filtering in his writing, and second, the important application of this method to critically explore the physical body and concepts of selfhood within electronic media. The essay begins by situating Sondheim's theory of "articulated filtering" and the use of digital text generation/combinatoric functions within a larger history of modal writing and serialism in the electronic arts. As Sondheim himself shows, the very process of "filtering" can be traced back to many early 20th century poetry experiments, revealing a core lineage of literary invention based on generative functions and mathematical procedures applied to language. This analysis then goes on to present a number of key philosophical queries triggered by Sondheim's writing into how one's individual awareness of the self and the material body continue to be challenged by electronic media network technologies. In this latter topic, Writing Under can be usefully compared to Michel Foucault's late critical work on "technologies of the self" and Theodor Adorno's postwar reflections as collected in Minima Moralia (1951). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
