The Fetch

This performance took place at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in September 2013. It was a public performance combining live voice, digital manipulation and projected text. The performance was programmed under the auspices of the Electronic Literature Organisation (ELO) Conference 'Chercher le texte', at which I also presented a peer-reviewed paper entitled 'Does electronic literature need a theory of language'. This paper is to be published by the ELO in its online journal. ELO is the most prestigious of the electronic literature umbrella organisations http://eliterature.org/ and its international bienniel conference is a showcase for cutting edge work in the field of experimental digital writing. Over a hundred and fifty creative works were submitted for consideration this year. The Fetch was one of 28 to be selected (http://chercherletexte.org/fr/festival/programme-des-performances/). The Centre Pompidou is a significant contemporary art venue.I also contributed to a public round table discussion on digital literature as a prelude to the performance at the Pompidou Centre., The performance itself comprised four original texts – a short story/pastiche on the subject of the doppelganger, a technical description of the fetch cycle in computing, a lyrical reflection on the notion of doubleness and walking, and an experimental text including found text from Gregory Bateson’s concept of 'double description' in Nature and Mind.The text was located within a piece of software developed by Caden Lovelace in 2009 which searches the Internet for 3 or 4 word phrases which mirror exactly the phrases used in the original texts. The outcomes of the searches were projected onto a screen during the course of the performance (http://herostrat.us/mincemeat/f/f.html).