Abstract
Searching for geometric patterns in a mystical text by an anonymous author of the 14th century.
A reading-machine automatically 're-reads' the same 14th Century text by an unknown author concerned with piercing the “cloud of unknowing” which separates the human from the divine.
Just as the mystical practices of the original text of The Cloud of Unknowing are focused on finding a path to divinity through deliberate processes of ‘unknowing’, this automated-art-system attempts to find its own kind of (computational) transcendentalism through processes of coded erasure, recursive redaction, and artificial illumination. The book is algorithmically ‘unknown’ one page at a time, before it is republished as a unique artists edition.
In a time where books are being transformed into clouds of words, this project helps the book find new bodies that lie between human and nonhuman worlds. A publishing experiment for a post-literate society, which increasingly defers its reading to nonhuman counterparts.
Some editions are made available for purchase through Atomic Activity Books.
