User:LEa/SI28

Special Issue #28: Writing Machines–Protocols–Feedback

September—December 2025

Worm Radio Shows

Week 1

Overview of the whole show

Hosts

Luca, Robin, Valentin, Lea (me)

Session 3 | Lea

As part of the first episode of our Special Issue #28, aired on 25-09-22, I brought a cut-up text to perform together with the group. The concept follows the surrealist idea of latent news, but can also be traced to Tristan Tzaras text To Make A Dadaist Poem or the cut-up technique used by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

Input

The input consisted of the principles of permacomputing and Sunjoo Lee's descriptions of her artistic research project Electric Garden, as well as the articles How to Mount a Balcony Awning by Dmitriy Kurochkin and Building a slow web by Greg Sarjeant. As I did not have enough time to cut up everything I brought, not every input text made it in to the final output. Each of us took a few snippets of text (single words or phrases) and rearranged them into longer phrases or sentences. We then went around in a circle and read them out loud.

Output

All hardware especially the internet as chips to be fed
Flexible electricity built on radio signal are the principles of permacomputing
Never stops pushing. Is an ongoing electric garden
Artistic research powered by the early internet consider carefully insects 

The best I remember showing the electric garden
The worst relational process explores the garden
Flowing and it is still making control the feed integrate coming to bathe never stops
Interaction between hope for but the feed is flourishing 

Living you don't
Simplicity, complexity and almost biological and renewable one year old
A place solid ground electricity that algae now
And your role is the garden, composting computers, and everything

Week 5

Overview of the whole show

Hosts

Daan, Ema, Luca, Robin, Tommi, Lea (me)

A Jam | Lea's preparations

For the 5th episode of our radio show, aired on 25-09-22, we got together as a group that was interested in doing a live jam with a range of instruments and tools. Daan wished to explore the equipment in the studio some more and brought selected records, CDs and cassettes with him. Robin and Ema carried parts of the upcoming "typewriter ensemble" to the worm studio to play on—a dot matrix printer and a typewriter. Luca and me tried our hands at live coding with Strudel, bringing samples and field recordings to cut, loop and distort. Tommi joined in with his voice and system sounds from his computer.

Being totally inexperienced with both jamming and live coding, I was very nervous and prepared myself for an hour of making just noise. I was positively surprised by how well it worked and how much fun it was. Much love to the team—would totally do it again!

Input

I prepared a small collection of audio files to play during the show, including sound samples from various sources that meant something to me, either personally or in the context of SI28. From: Going Out (Timothy Leary), Lost for Words: The Ghost of Arthur Rimbaud (Paul Morley), The Medium Is the Massage (Marshall McLuhan), Der Räuber Hotzenplotz (written by Ottfried Preußler, read by ?), Club d'Essai.

Driven by my desire to go for walks, I also collected field recordings from my neighborhood. I recorded the sound of a street sign pole being pulled over concrete, children talking and yelling while cleaning up the street, construction material getting thrown into a container, and more. My recordings can be found on radio aporee: ...

To make the experience more enjoyable for listeners and also give us some time to breath, we played some songs in between our jamming. I brought these: Achtung! Wir schalten Um (Felix Kubin), The Rules (David Shrigley), Eat That Phone Book Coda (Gong)

Script Snippets

Strudel is very new to me and by Monday morning, my ability to use it was still super limited. I resorted to playing a few sounds in VLC and looping in Tenacity. These are snippets I had prepared and used during the show:

$: n("2 3").s("penplotter").gain(3)
$: n("[0 <1 2>]*8").s("construction").palindrome()
$: n("1 - - - - - 0 <1 2>").s("morley").iter(4)
$: n("4 [- 3]").s("morley")
$: n("1").s("children")

$: n("[<0*2 1*2> 2*4]*2").s("construction")
$: n("3 - - 0 - 1 2").s("penplotter").gain(2)
$: n("2").s("hotzenplotz")
$: n("0 <0 - - ->").s("essai")
$: n("0 - - - - - - - - - 0 <0 0>").s("downbylaw")
$: n("2").s("children")

Output

These snippets on their own (without the other participants of the jam) sound like this:

🔊 Output 1

🔊 Output 2

The audio of the show will be uploaded on worm mixcloud.

Week 6

Overview of the whole show

Hosts

Daan, Ema, Valentin, Lea (me)

A Set

Coming up to this week, everybody in XPUB1 was very busy with the preparation for the event. We didn't have a group meting scheduled and forgot to discuss who would be on air for the sixth episode on 25-09-22. On Friday evening, Daan suggested to do a chill music session and Ema, Valentin and I decided to join. Ema built the Death Core Writing Machine. The rest of us brought music related to sampling, writing machines and musique concrete.

Input

These are the songs and sound snippets I brought, from which I played about half.

• Bruce Haack - Epilogue
• Deep Space Network - Psyphonic
• Dwig - Superunke
• Four Tet - Chia
• Four Tet - Watersynth
• Gray - Cut It Up High Priest
• Gray - Doctor Dhoom
• Gray - The Mysterious Ashley Bickerton
• Having Been built On Sand - Song 2
• Herbie Hancock - Chameleon
• Intersystems - Changing Colours (They Go For A Walk)
• Michael James - Guatamalan Strange
• Monolake - Mobile
• Pole - Fohlenfurz
• Sun Ra - Interplanetary Music
• Sun Ra - Rocket Number Nine Take Off For The Planet Venus
• The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Talk Out
• The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - The Chem Lab Mystery
• The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Time Beat
• Uncle Meat - Film Excerpt Part II (cut)
• Uncle Meat - The Voice Of Cheese
• William S. Burroughs - The Exterminator

Week 8

Hosts

Tommi, Valentin

A Glossary

The last episode, aired on 25-11-24, was a retrospective view on Special Issue #28. Everyone choose a word related to our discussions from the past three months, and wrote a definition for it. We also brought a song each, possibly related to the word. Tommi and Valentin hosted the show, asking pairs of two to discuss the words. I could not be there, but my glossary entry was still presented.

Input

Beat Generation: The Beat Generation refers to a movement in American literature that emerged in the 1950s – the core group consisting of authors Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. Central elements of Beat culture include the rejection of materialism and conventional narrative values, explicit depictions of human existence, the search for spirituality, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation. The soundtrack of the Beat Generation was modern jazz, in particular the energetic sound of bebop and hard bop.

🔊 The Drum Thunder Suite (Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers)

Writing Machines

Made in class

Multinational Poetry Remix

Nod-Blink-Yawn State Machine

The Calm Machine: Walking Protocol

Made elsewhere

Mud-cell Poem

Glyphica Text Machine

Psychogeographic Writing Machine

Poetry Generator (@ CCU)

Found in the wild

Münzfernsprecher Recordings

Live Event @ WORM UBIK

On November 19, we exhibited "A_Mazing_Machine[s]: Wordscapes to Liberate Language" publicly in the space of UBIK. I worked with Sibyl to present The Calm Machine.

The Calm Machine

The Calm Machine is a quiet and cozy island in the buzzing and bustling of the event. Behind a curtain—hidden away from the other stations—, it provides privacy and a moment of peace. A cozy environment with couches, warm lightning and plants invites the audience to come in, sit down and relax. We view the visitors as an essential part of our machine: they are gear in the mechanics of The Calm Machine. By engaging with it, they make it come to life.

Inner Part

Sibyl prepared the "inner" part of the machine: an interactive installation revolving around home and safety. She set up various personal objects—a bamboo steamer, a ball of wool and knitting, a house plant, and a toy, gifted to her by a friend. By touching these objects, visitors could trigger different light and sound outputs. The act of touching and then carefully watching and listening to the results should ideally contribute to a feeling of belonging, as well as initiate thoughts about the visitors own relation to home and their immediate environment.

Outer Part

After interacting with the objects, visitor were then led to the "outer" part of the machine, which consisted of a walking protocol I had worked on. My thoughts leading up to this event were similar to Sibyls. I, too, wanted to give visitors the opportunity to ground themselves and reflect on their surroundings. For me, going for a walk is always a great way to calm any anxiety, focus my thoughts and gather new energy. The walking protocol consisted of instructions to walk around the block one or more times. Through answering questions, blanks in a story on the back could be filled in. I am very interested in how people perceive the same urban spaces, in this case the streets around UBIK, differently—compared to others or compared to a version of themselves at another time. For this reason, I set up a scanner and asked people to document their results.

Input

* Can you spot an object that reminds you of home?
* Is there something curious to observe?
* Look at someone or something active to your left. What are they doing?
* What do you see when you look up?
* How did this walk make you feel?

Output