"… – a book derived from a website – Why and how?"talk Annie Abrahams, ELO 2024.
Hypertexts & Fictions
July 20, 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM EDT (16.30 CET)
Description: A lot changed since we started to make interactive websites. From text based themajority of them became image based. The speed with which data are transferred is incomparable.
The cellphones used today are no longer click-based and the social interaction formerly between
individuals in front of their computers in a domestic environment became organised throughcorporate platforms as a 24 hour a day obligation to being “on” everywhere.
The Internet as we knew it is gone, and “old” websites now can no longer be experienced as in thetime when they were made.
In this talk I would like to clarify the decisions in and the process of the making of a poetry bookout of my website Being Human.

Hi, thanks for being here and joining me. Before going into detals about
how and why this book ( show book ) exists, I'll have to tell you something
about is origins.
On your screen you should see BramTV (https://www.bram.org/bramtv ) from 2005. BramTV is a flaneur, adweller through my website on bram.org and so you get an impressionof what Being Human; a part of bram.org was in between 1996 - 2007.
In 2019 Being Human was included in the Digital Canon of theNetherlands.
This Digital Canon contains 20 digital art works made by Dutch artists in
between 1960 and 2000. Other artists in the canon you might know are
Martine Neddam, Peter Struycken, JODI, Jan Robert Leegte, Steina,
Jeffrey Shaw among others. The art works were very different and ranged
from robots, paintings, sound installations to net art.
It was compiled by LIMA media art platform and its primary objective
was to add these digital works to the collective cultural memory and tofuel the discussion about the selection and preservation of digital art ingeneral.
In 2022, in order to do this, Li-Ma proposed to make an exhibition withworks from the canon. And so, we started talking about what could be mypresentation in REBOOT, the exhibition curated by Sanneke Huisman andKlaas Kuitenbrouwer for the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
Bramtv's robot indexed 2601 files in 243 directories at that time.
What to do? What was Being human ?

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Stop bramtv Show slide:- Being human was site specific, which means made for the internet andits audience from 1997- 2007.
- That audience was always one person alone in front of their computer.
At the time I called the internet, the public space of solitude.

- the computers were slow, you had to call in on a server via telephone ->slow retrieval of data, big costs -> accent on text not images.
- Online there was no need for intermediaries, galeries, museums etc. toreach an audience. What a joy!
-> a direct author spect-actor / interaction possible; it was relationalart for an unknown other.
- I adored that I could make work that imitated / simulated thoughtprocessus. You could make labyrinths full of choices in hypertext html.
- And it was a possibility to work with like minded people far away / toabolish distance- There was an "utopian" spirit (sharing everything with everyone), lotsof support, help, interaction.
- We were researching the tools from the inside: What is possible?, How

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did they influence us?, How can we counter preprogrammed attitudes,
How can we be critical?
But, the Internet changed, became speedy, image based, became social
media, dominated by a few tech compagnies and sucked data. It is gone as
it was.
Being Human in 2023 can't be experienced as it was when I made it.
Being Human has always been a linguistic universe, in which different
voices, languages, poems, codes and variables mingle into alabyrinthine whole. So, a book, a poetry book as a kind of translation
felt as a good way to present the website.
- Paper lasts, data disappear :)- a book stresses the text quality of the early internet - Code can bepresent as a language among others. Code is performing inside theepublic/private space of he book.
- From a single person in front of the computer back to an individual
digestion (in a chair ?) - restoring the private aspect- A poetry book allows for / invites to a non linear approach.
There is no interactif element per sé, but a reader can make their proper
labarinthine path through the book, can even interfer in it by adding theirown words.
How did I make the book?
Questions that throdded through my head in the process were: "Is it
possible to 'translate' the essence of the website Being Human into abook?", "How do the different languages (French, English, Dutch, html,javascript) in Being Human relate within a poetic context?"
On the 1st of May 2023 I temporarily stopped changing things on thewebsite that I am still updating regularly. I took all text which means also
all code, put it in a text file and started erasing. I did not have the right toadd something, neither to correct errors. Erasing, erasing.
After a first intuitive phase, I start selecting with criteria like, "Is the wholething representative of Being Human?" and "Do the texts meet what I callpoetry?", "Does this fit in a book of 160 pages, +/- 50 poems?".
I asked Josephine Bosma (net art critic) and Erika Fülöp (e-lit scholar) topage 3

react to my selection and to its foreword. Later in the process this foreword
became the Ad Verbs, and Erika's generously written beautiful afterwords
became the Fore Words.
Slide screenshared:"A fantastic and fascinating semiotic mess.
It is text. Type undefined.
We bounce back and forth between languages that we understand andothers we don't, between ourselves and others, between humans and thespace between them, caught in the interface that connects and separates
them and us."
Erika Fülöp, professor of Twenty-first-century Literature, Digital Humanities and Creative Writingat the University of Toulouse 2 about Being Human, August 2023.

I asked Alex Leray, an opensource designer to do the design. He used alettertype based on the Ocr-B metafont from the 90ties. It was my choice
to apply only black and white.

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The relational aspects of Being Human were not evident in the book, so I
started performing; to make the private experience public again :), torestore the affective, touching voice of what I called the voice of themultitude and to regain the relational. I have done 5 very different
performative readings untill now, one of these with a life coder.
All my "old" net art works can be considered as online performance pieces. Not only because they
only exist as code on a server and have to be called by a visitor, and performed / executed by amachine to exist, but also because the work was thought to be a performance by the author andthe machine that needed an active audience -> in my case it was not meant to be an art object but
an experience: it was relational art for an unknown other.

Video of the talk:https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/hypertextsan
dfictions/schedule/21/

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Reading a website? performance
Annie Abrahams, independant artist
Algorithms & Imaginaries
July 19. 7:00 PM – 7:15 PM EDT (1 am July 20 CET)
Description: This October I have published a poetry book made after my website Being Humanactive in between 1997 and 2007.
For ELO I will present an experimental reading where different languages (English, Dutch andFrench) and codes (html, javascript and php) mingle into a “fabulous and fascinating semioticmess”.
A performative re-turn of the poetry in the book to the digital environment of zoom.

Everyone should be muted and invisible.
1 page 116 - 117 FFFFFF 2 min.
This text is from a piece called I am (not) an artwork from 2002 It wasorignaly a text written by Bertrand Gauguet, that in 10 steps, getting
lighter at every change made by the visitors of the webpage became allwhite in 2007. FFFFFF is white, on a white page you see nothing, but thetext is still there.
I'll read two more texts from my poetry book made after my website Being
Human. The last one on solitude and loneliness on the internet I hope tovoice with all of you as a collective reading, a multilingual text choir. I'll
read from the book, you can use the text on the website piece, introduce
new words and phrases or repeat, translate, mix, or simply breath. The
piece is from 2004 and still working.
screenshare slide
2 page 59 Hello, I am a computer 5-7 min from 2001.
3 page 39 - 40 you will never be able to understand me 2 min. 1998
updated in 2005.

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4 Page 120 - 128 solitude. Reading from book, Ask tounmute and join in. Riff on, mix with, repeat,translate, transpose, varie on. 4 min.
slide:

Video of the reading:https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsan
dimaginaries/schedule/56/

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