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| The Original Poetry Structure |
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| Straight Fucking Genius! |
Essentially what this guy did was create a cipher that operated between roman letters, a,b,c,d,e,etc. and amino acids, systeine, argeneine, etc, you know those little molecular building blocks that protein strands are made out of! Using a computer algorithm, BoK was able to bounce all possible ciphers off of a catalog of all known, viable, protein formations. Once BoK had the computer analysis that offered him a coding system that maximized his "vocabulary" (I'll get back to this) he composed a poem using only the limited amount of words that his code system allowed. What I mean is this: BoK wanted to be able to transcribe a piece of poetry with the amino-acid structuring of a viable protein. Very Cool!
So...using only words that could feasibly be biologically rewritten with A.A's BoK writes this thing. The first cool thing that happens comes from collaboration, BoK has lab minions synthesize a protein strand that when sequenced into its A.A. parts and fed through BoK's cipher will "recite" the written piece. Keep following cuz it gets three times more crazy!...So once this protein/poem exists it is introduced to the cell walls of Deinococcus Radiodurans, a little bacteria that dies hard. The little bastard will be the last living organism on the planet its so resilient! anyways, once this bacteria is introduced to BoK's poem/protein its evil bacteria nucleus receives and transcribed and jumbles and "rewrites" the amino acid chain. To gloss over the fact that its been a few years since biology: Deinococcus Radiodurans, in its transcription of thepoem/protein writes a poem back!!! Holy Shit! You never thought of biological processes like that right?! What's amazing is that when this new protein in read in light of Christian BoK's code system the bacterial poem actually is super beautiful and makes sense. Bok doesn't go as far as to argue that the bacteria is cognizant of the any creative process, but! I think that it is easy to argue that the sensibility of Deinococcus Radiodurans' "poetry writing" can be explained by the very logical, easily mapped and scientifically understood processes of biology that made this over-arching metaphor for creation possible. The creative process is JUST as sensible and scientifically quantifiable as the biologic....
Anyways check out my own poem written in response and give the hyperlink above a click for BoK's official project overview. Thanks!
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| Deinococcus Radiodurans. |
****You should also check out Christian Bok's serial lippograme collection/experiment: "Eunoia" find it here!
Bo[o]K
Nick Aster
the day previous and on that night following, I was set upon,
whilst wandering wondering along the mortared paths
which run their course through my mind
especially through mine own dreams
I read that a poet encoded his poem onto a strand of folded
(like dream-linen, folds that clutch within all the awe of shadows)
protein.
Using this cipher
the poet’s words
like small viruses of human yearning
are provided a house of genetic factotums.
Amino acids standing in for flighty letters. Truant in their purposes.
This poem,
a cruel host infecting the denotation of its
singularly acid-minded hosts.
this poem, this protein, this code of life
was introduced
like on a blind date
to Deinococcus Radiodurans.
Deinococcus R. is notoriously stubborn.
Resistant to inhospitable environments.
(i.e. those awkward first impressions of future lovers)
(i.e. a poem, written in biologic estimate/ approximations)
Deinococcus R. will never die its expected
v a c u o u s
microbial death.
No deprivation of oxygen
over-saturation of salines
aeonic chasm of time
or any amount of nuclear
(fusion like Hiroshima not fission like our Sun)
aggressions
aggressions
will alter D.R.’s dispositions; his coy and haughty knowledges of eternity.
D.R. is destined
has been destined
since the conception of his fastidious phospholipid bi-layered membrane
to forever provide fatty envelope for his lover
a poem
acidic
and perfectly
quarternarally
folded.
(such things are the toil of Sisyphus
“How, Thanatos? Do I work these chains?”)
One day soon coming
all the poets on this earth will be the very dusty stuff of this world
with which they are so direly concerned.
(the scrim of floaty-in-the-air grime
that the passage of time
and the mitigation of big things into small
paints on windows when your back is turned)
One day the sun will retreat back into its miraculous center of all-and-all nowhere and now and the earth will chill and catch up to the wind
abandoned and free.
Deinococcus Radiodurans will grip his infinitely suggesting Xenotext.
(the last ghastly memory of poetics
humanectics)
And together they will f l
o
a
t.
our world’s enduring pair of lovers
wandering wondering
into the wander of in---held space-breath.
This sort of beauty:
bacterium and genetic poem
outliving the architects of such constructs of pataphysical nonsense
operates upon the mind much like a serial lipogramme.
( lpgrm [frm Grk lpgrmmts, "mssng lttr"] s knd f cnstrnd wrtng r wrd gm cnsstng f wrtng prgrphs r lngr wrks n whch prtclr lttr or grp f lttrs s vdd — slly cmmn vwl, nd frequently "E",
th mst cmmn n th nglsh Lngg. Wrtng lpgrm s trvl tsk fr ncmmn lttrs lk "Z", "J", r "X", bt t s mch mr dffclt fr cmmn lttrs lk "E", "T" r "A". Wrtng ths wy, th thr mst mt mny rdnry wrds. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose.)
Language operating without an author.
Microcosmal states of unquantifiable unclassifiable unqualified anomaly.
can beauty be
without an aesthetician?
(remember
all the poets are now
dusty stuff)
what is a ‘made’ thing without even the ghost of its maker
what then are we now
nervously awaiting the quietus of the Sun
without God
left with only the spectral remains of his intention
poetry and virus
fucking each other endlessly until
DO NOT HOLD ONTO DOOR
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