Commissioned to work on as a digital engagement with Eugen Gomringer by the Poesiewerkstatt Berlin. Each browser has a function that can show the source text of every retrieved website. Thus, the internet user can always see how a specific website has been programmed. That’s what G-Linie HTML plays with. Websites are layed out with HMTL-Tags. This includes for example the tag-pair

in each paragraph. A website can be created with any ASCII-editor. In these editors (and the browser's view of the source text is nothing else) line breaks and the distance between words can be carried out. However, they only become visible in the browser window when they are accordingly tagged. In other words, if an ASCII-Text is reformatted without HTML-Tags in the source text, one sees it as a sequence of words and signs without a break or gap. JODI worked with this in the piece %locationi in a virtuous way. If one accesses the website in the browser, one only sees an unstructured, disconnected, blinking sequence of signs. If one switches to the source text, then one can see ASCII-graphics.ii This is exactly what G-Linie HTML refers to, whose subtitle is quelltext-hommage aah gomringer/jodi/la monte young. In the browser, the viewer only gets to see a horizontal line of words. If one switches to the source text, these words are displayed as ASCII-Art, as poems by Eugen Gomringer. Moreover, the viewer can replace words and signs in the browser-window with an immediate impact on the source text. As a co-writer, he or she has to employ a mental strategy to change the subtext that is hidden in the source text of the hidden poem by Gomringer. In this process, he or she can extend the structure of Gomringer’s poems − line breaks, blanks, the number of words can be expanded or reduced with some skills. Yet, they always remain the basis for the considerations. This demands a lot from the collaborative author und occasionally evokes destructive forces. The G-Line HTML is then rather turned into an interactive reload of my work Kill the Poemiii from1997. It is entirely up to my co-writer and how he or she deals with my offerings to act them out. “It is really not an issue whether the viewer understands the concept of the artist. (…) Once the piece of art is out of his hands, he no longer has any control over how a viewer processes it” [transl. MP], writes Sol LeWitt in his ″Paragraphen über konzeptuelle Kunst″ in 1967. Conceptual art is the third point of reference of G-Linie HTML. La Monte Young made the great call to action: Draw a straight line and follow it (Composition 1960 No. 10). In G-Linie HTML the co-writer can potentially construct an endless line of letter. This line can, however, just like La Monte Young’s direction only be executed in one’s mind.

G-LINIE HTML

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Other Works

Seven Stories About Drones

The Pub and the People: A Worktown Study