Aaron Tucker
Thursday, June 7, 2018, 12:15-1:15pm
Lunchtime Lecture. All Welcome
Digital Scholarship Commons, 3rd floor, Mearns Centre for Learning / McPherson Library
Join the Digital Scholarship Commons at UVIC Libraries and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute for a bring-your-lunch, lunchtime talk by Aaron Tucker.
A Humanities Application of 3D printing and Machine Translation in the ChessBard and Loss Sets
Marjorie Perloff argues in Unoriginal Genius that writing in general, but more specifically conceptual writing, is “translational” in that it requires an author to be able to balance and organize multiple languages, often transforming vocabulary, sound, concepts, from one language into another. If writing itself is translational then what exactly is required to translate a word or an object from one form to another? Walter Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator” contends “The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original” and that “a real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not black its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original all the more fully.” Using my work with 3D printing in the Loss Sets (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/) and generated poetry in the ChessBard (http://chesspoetry.com), I argue that writing electronically in collaboration with digital systems is a translational and multilingual process that involves natural languages alongside, and in combination with, machine-languages like mark-up, code, assembly language etc that are present at both the hardware and software levels). In the ChessBard, this means translating chess games into algebraic notation then into poems; in Loss Sets, it means translating words into 3D data points into printable 3D sculptures. Such translations between systems do not aim for fidelity or accuracy but rather provides a dense, interdependent ecosystem of authorship that encourages, as Benjamin does, transparency and echoes between “original” text and their “translated” doppelganger; it is essential then any contemporary act of translation grapples with the interpenetration of machine components into that act and e-literature in particular holds great potential for surfacing the involvement of those machine species. 3D printing, in particular houses, a unique opportunity for artists and humanities scholars to explore the multiple, sensual ways to generate art and research through what I propose are the pillars of 3D printing in humanities: replication, visualization and tactility. By bringing together machine translation, algorithmic poetry and 3D printing, my hope is to discussion, and interest, in utilizing those tools, particularly 3D printing, in humanities research environments.
Dr. Aaron Tucker is the author of the forthcoming novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) as well as two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Bookthug Press) and punchlines (Mansfield Press), and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (both published by Palgrave Macmillan). His current collaborative project, Loss Sets, translates poems into sculptures which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); he is also the co-creator of The ChessBard, an app that transforms chess games into poems (http://chesspoetry.com). Currently, he is an uninvited guest on the Dish with One Spoon Territory, where he is a lecturer in the English department at Ryerson University (Toronto), teaching creative and academic writing and from which he will be beginning his doctorate as an Elia Scholar in the Cinema and Media Studies Department at York University.