Et nous parlons tous les deux
Ce dont nous n'avons pas parlé
C'est fini ou ça a commencé ?
Extrait du poème "Sorriso audível das folhas", de Fernando Pessoa
“Conversogrammes”, une œuvre de 1995, a été créée à partir d'un montage photographique qui met en scène trois poètes associés aux mouvements d'avant-garde: le russe Vladimir Maiakóvski et les portugais Cesário Verde et Fernando Pessoa. Des éléments cliquables, tels que des chapeaux haut de forme et des symboles des cartes à jouer, sont dispersés dans les images des poètes évoqués et honorés. En cliquant sur l'un de ces éléments, l’internaute fait varier les couleurs et active des enregistrements audios des poètes lisant des extraits de leurs poèmes respectifs. La superposition des voix est une caractéristique de cette œuvre, et Augusto de Campos la caractérise de “transconversation”.
Cette œuvre fait partie de l'exposition en ligne Trans[création].
***
And we both speak
Of what is unspoken.
Is it over or is it begun?
Excerpt from “Sorriso audível das folhas,” poem by Fernando Pessoa
Augusto de Campos created “Conversogramas” in 1995 from a photographic collage of three writers involved in the avant-garde movements: Russian poet Vladimir Maiakóvski and Portuguese poets Cesário Verde and Fernando Pessoa. Clickable elements such as tophats and playing card symbols are dispersed throughout the images of the poets. Clicking on one of these activates color transitions and audio recordings of the poets reading their respective works. It is this superposition of voices which is the key characteristic of the work, qualified by Augusto de Campos as “transconversation.”
This artwork is included in the online exhibition Trans[creation].
***
E estamos os dois falando
O que não se conversou
Isto acaba ou começou?
Trecho do poema "Sorriso audível das folhas", de Fernando Pessoa
“Conversogramas”, obra de 1995, foi criada a partir de uma montagem fotográfica que traz à cena três poetas associados a movimentos de vanguarda: o russo Vladimir Maiakóvski e os portugueses Cesário Verde e Fernando Pessoa. Elementos clicáveis, como as cartolas e os símbolos de naipes de baralho estão presentes no trabalho e dispostos nas imagens dos poetas aí evocados e homenageados. Ao clicar em algum desses elementos, percebe-se variação das cores da imagem e ativa-se audios de leitura de trechos de poemas dos respectivos poetas. A sobreposição de vozes é uma característica dessa obra, e Augusto de Campos a caracteriza como uma "transconversa".
Esta obra está incluída na exposição online Trans[criação].
L'œuvre d'Augusto de Campos est inspirée d'artistes et d'auteurs avant-gardistes et modernistes, tels que Pessoa, Verde et Maiakóvski. Au-delà des trois poètes présentés dans Conversogramas, le concept de "Make It New" d'Ezra Pound joue un rôle crucial dans la conceptualisation de l'œuvre.
"Make It New" est né d'un concept voulant dire "renouvellement" qui a été traduit du Da Xue (Ta Hio), le premier tome de la philosophie morale confucéenne. Pound achève une traduction en anglais américain du Da Xue, qui a été publiée en 1928 sous le titre Ta Hio: The Great Learning, Newly Rendered into the American Language, dans laquelle il détourne la phrase de l'autorenouvellement pour en faire une phrase de rénovation, et donc de transformation. Pound a même pris certaines libertés avec sa traduction des logogrammes chinois, attribuant une compréhension occidentalisée aux logogrammes en question. Ces traductions créatives découlaient de la signification initiale de chaque caractère, mais portaient désormais le poids d'une signification esthétique et artistique nouvellement attribuée (North).
Le slogan "Make It New", désormais assez éloigné de son sens sémantique exact d'origine, est devenu un hymne à la réinvention, au recyclage et à la traduction créative ou à la transformation, qui devient ici «transcréation». Michael North explique dans son article "The Making of 'Make It New'":
In short, Pound does not offer Make It New as his own words or in his own voice. It is a historical artifact of some interest, to be sure, but it is not to be understood out of context, as if it were being delivered by Pound himself to the present-day reader of Pound's own test. One of the main reasons to keep this context in mind, even now, is that it restores the full complexity of Make It New, which is in fact a dense palimpsest of historial ideas about the new.
La traduction de Da Xue de Pound peut être lue comme un palimpseste, puisque Pound se référait régulièrement à la première traduction anglaise réalisée par James Legge, un missionnaire chrétien qui utilisait sa connaissance de la Bible pour transmettre sa propre interprétation du texte confucéen.
Conversogramas est donc un exercice de création artistique suivi du principe "Make It New". La recombinaison et le remixage n'entraînent pas, pour de Campos, une déformation de la représentation, mais plutôt une réinvention des efforts artistiques passés dans le but d'en créer de nouveaux. Lorsque les spectateurs activent les différents enregistrements de l'œuvre, la superposition des voix ne se transforme pas en chaos, mais constitue au contraire un équilibre entre les différentes voix et les œuvres poétiques. Ainsi, de Campos combine des couches sémantiques et littéraires de la même manière qu'il le fait avec le son, la couleur et le mouvement dans sa poésie concrète. Cette superposition d'éléments sonores, visuels et poétiques crée un terrain propice à la naissance d'un nouveau sens littéraire.
Le titre de l'œuvre fait référence à cette nouveauté, "conversogramas" étant un néologisme qui associe "conversar" (converser) et "anagramme", c'est-à-dire un mot formé par la réorganisation des lettres d'un autre mot (ex : écran - crâne). De Campos permet à Pessoa, Verde et Maiakóvski d'échanger, créant ainsi une sorte de "conversation" remixée et donnant lieu à une œuvre artistique entièrement nouvelle.
***
Augusto de Campos' lifelong work pulls inspiration from avant-garde and modernist artists and authors, such as Pessoa, Verde and Maiakóvski. Beyond the three poets featured in Conversogramas, Ezra Pound's concept of "make it new" plays a crucial role in the conceptualization of the piece.
"Make It New" arose from a concept meaning "renewal" which was translated from the Da Xue (Ta Hio), the first tome on Confucian moral philosophy. Pound completed an American English translation of Da Xue, which was published in 1928 as Ta Hio: The Great Learning, Newly Rendered into the American Language, and in which he turns the phrase away from self-renewal into one of renovation, and thus, of transformation. Pound even took liberties in his translation of Chinese logograms, assigning westernized understanding to the individual logograms. These creative translations stemmed from the initial meaning of each character, but now carried with them the weight of newly assigned aesthetic and artistic meaning (North).
"Make it new," now fairly distanced from its original exact semantic meaning, has become an anthem of reinvention, of recycling and of creative translation or transformation, otherwise known as transcreation. As Michael North states in his article "The Making of 'Make It New',":
In short, Pound does not offer Make It New as his own words or in his own voice. It is a historical artifact of some interest, to be sure, but it is not to be understood out of context, as if it were being delivered by Pound himself to the present-day reader of Pound's own test. One of the main reasons to keep this context in mind, even now, is that it restores the full complexity of Make It New, which is in fact a dense palimpsest of historial ideas about the new.
Even Pound's own translation of Da Xue can be read as a palimpsest itself, as he regularly referred to the first English translation completed by James Legge, a Christian missionary who used his knowledge of the Bible to inform his own interpretation of the Confucian text.
Conversogramas is an exercise in make-it-new artistry. Recombination and remixing does not, for de Campos, cause misrepresentation, but rather reinvention of past artistic endeavors in the effort to create new ones. When viewers activate the different recordings in the artwork, the superposition of voices does not merge into chaos, but is instead a balanced equilibrium between different voices and poetic works. Thus de Campos combines semantic and literary layers in the same way he does sound, color and movement in his concrete poetry. This layering of sound, visual and poetic elements creates a breeding ground for the birth of new literary meaning.
The artwork's title makes reference to this newness, "conversogramas" being a neologism that molds "conversar" (to converse) with "anagram", or a word formed by the reordering of letters in a different word (ex: elbow — below). De Campos allows Pessoa, Verde and Maiakóvski to discourse and exchange, creating a remixed "conversation" of sorts and resulting in an entirely new artistic work.
Le livre NÃO d'Augusto de Campos rassemble dans un même volume des poèmes imprimés et des poèmes présentés exclusivement sur un CD-ROM. Ces derniers ont été produits entre 1995 et 1997 et organisés en trois groupes distincts: les Animogrammes, les Interpoèmes et les Morphogrammes. Augusto de Campos, qui à l’époque acquiert son premier ordinateur, a ainsi pu approfondir ses recherches sur la couleur et la forme comme éléments poétiques et y ajouter des effets rendus possibles par l'ordinateur, comme le mouvement et la sonorité.
26 ans nous séparent des clipoèmes, et ces œuvres courent désormais le risque de l'obsolescence due non seulement à la fin des activités de Flash - le logiciel à partir duquel les œuvres ont été créées -, mais également à la désuétude de son support matériel, à savoir le lecteur CD lui-même, équipement peu utile de nos jours.
Les poèmes récupérés pour le projet de Trans[création], c’est-à-dire "Conversogramas", "Caos Cage" et "Portas do Ouver", font partie du groupe "Interpoemas". Cette série est interactive et a fait l'objet d'un processus de restauration coordonné par le consultant technologique de aarea.co, Adriano Ferrari, en dialogue constant avec Augusto de Campos, qui a fourni le matériel d'archive et a autorisé les diverses réformes mises en œuvre.
***
Augusto de Campos reunites his print and CD-ROM poetry in a single volume entitled NÃO. The poems published exclusively on CD-ROM were produced between 1995 and 1997, and categorized into three distinct groups: Animograms, Interpoems and Morphograms. It was thus that Augusto de Campos, who had only just acquired his first computer, was able to further his research on color and form as poetic elements, while adding effects made possible by the computer, such as movement and sound.
It has been 26 years since de Campos’ clipoems first appeared, and in that time the works have become continuously more endangered, not only due to the end of Flash, the software with which de Campos created his works, but also due to the obsolescence of hardware such as the CD player, an increasingly rare device.
The poems included in the Trans[creation] project, “Conversogramas,” “Caos Cage,” and “Portas do Ouver,” are part of the “Interpoemas” group. These interactive poems were restored by aarea.co’s technical consultant Adriano Ferrari, through a constant dialogue with Augusto de Campos, who provided the source material and authorized the transformations that took place during the process.
***
O livro NÃO, de Augusto de Campos, reuniu em um mesmo volume poemas impressos e poemas apresentados exclusivamente em um CD-ROM. Estes últimos foram produzidos entre 1995 e 1997 e organizados em três grupos distintos: Animogramas, Interpoemas e Morfogramas. Augusto de Campos, que à época adquiriu seu primeiro computador, pôde então aprofundar sua pesquisa de cor e forma como elementos poéticos e acrescentar a ela efeitos apenas possibilitados pelo computador, como o movimento e a sonoridade.
26 anos nos separam dos clipoemas, como são chamados, e esses trabalhos correm o risco de obsolescência devido não apenas ao fim das atividades do Flash, software a partir do qual as obras foram criadas, mas também a questões "materiais" referentes ao suporte - no caso, o próprio leitor de CD, equipamento de pouco uso hoje em dia.
Os poemas resgatados para o projeto Trans[criação], "Conversogramas", "Caos Cage" e "Portas do Ouver", fazem parte do grupo "Interpoemas", que supõe interatividade com o público, e passaram por um processo de restauro coordenado pelo consultor de tecnologia do aarea.co, Adriano Ferrari, em constante diálogo com Augusto de Campos, que forneceu o material de arquivo, acompanhou o processo e autorizou as reformas implementadas.