Chapter 12

Intro / Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes
1960
Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentille)

• formed to explore the potential of literature through various constraints in vocabulary, syntax, novelistic or dramatic conventions, poetic meter, for, etc.
• types of Oulipo experiements include: lipograms, palindromes, algorithmic tecniques - hypermedia, and others
• founded by François Le Lionnais (original members:Jean Queval, Raymond Queneau , Jean Lescure, Jaques Duchateau, Claude Berge, and Jacques Bens)
• Jean Queval was often banned from their meeting place and then readmitted, and would later attempt to ban himself and be stopped by the group on several occasions
• the failures of language led them, and others before them, to "reflect on this strane tool which one would consider, which sometimes commans consideration, without reference to utility."
• one goal was to bring together texts for an anthology of experimental literature
• 
  

1961
Raymond Queneau

• created the famous book of poems in which each of 14 lines is interchangable with 10 others - Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes
  
• helped to define a new type of computer-mediated textuality, gives the reader an enhances role in the process of literary creation
• computer can be used for more than just creating infinite variations from a set of materials, it can also narrow them down and make decisions, but Calvino Argues that this will never create literature on its own.

1981
Paul Fournel

• the Centre Pompidou experiment
• use of computers to aid in reading select combinatory or algorithmic works (ie. Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes or his A story as you like it)
  
• computer can help with editing, or fine-tuning a text
• different types of relationships between author, work, computer, and reader: 1- Author>Computer>Work (creation is aided by the computer, author inputs information, computer makes selections), 2-Author>Computer>Work>Computer>Reader (the computer helps both the author make selections, and gives the reader clues to solve enigmas created by the author), 3-Author>Computer>Reader>Computer>Work (author creates material, reader choses what material to use, computer creates a product)

Italo Calvino

• created a short story or novel to explore the necessity of a computer for the creation of literature
• by writing a detective story with hundreds of possible scenarios, a computer is helpful in organizing and presenting what those scenarios are given the information provided
  

This is such a great committee. Of course the french created an organization whose mission was the explore the possibilities of literature; to create new and exciting ways to use text. I'm all for this kind of exploration and I'd love to play with this principle of constraints to see what I can create. One of the definitions that I liked the most for Oulipo was "rats who must build the labyrinth from which they propose to escape." This is a great metaphor for the work that they do.