Page 216 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

been interested up to now to try virtual reality. Because was able to compose several million poems for the Virgin.
until it is possible to make love to Marilyn Monroe; until It’s an old idea, an old utopia.
the moment that her clothes start floating away - well, And sometimes this provided real help for invention.
then at that moment I will try! But as long as it is just So there is nothing wrong with it, but probably the final
a sketch of Marilyn Monroe, and I can have the real effect should be an object that I can move with my mind
sensation elsewhere, then the state of the art is so and not with my fingers, otherwise I will lose something.
primitive that I prefer to wait, that’s all! “Exactly. So this brings us back again to the kind of
If you offer me this possibility soon, or better still, if question of the interface and how do you interact with
you offer me this possibility when I am 80, I will be it? It’s a problem I think with computers today that
enthusiastic about the innovation, and I will become a they offer another type of experience. Take writing for
fanatic supporter! example. You write with a pen, you move your hand in a
“Well, I think I tend to agree with you there. There’s certain way, have a certain kind of feedback all the time
still this very basic problem which is one of quality. The while you are writing. On a computer you are doing it all
quality of the experience is still very limited, and it is the by means of keys.”
technology that limits it...?” As a writer I have discovered there are certain kinds
It doesn’t matter though; I say go with it! But that’s why I of things for which I still need the pen, there are
certain things for which I need the computer, certain
things for which I need a felt-tipped pen. And the kind
of instrument I am using is influencing my writing
enormously.
“The material substance that you operate with”.
Yes, when I come to think about it, this kind of action...
Eco picks up his notepad and scribbles on it,
...is very important. And this is so new that people have
not really understood those differences. I don’t know...
“We have these new pen-based systems now?”
You have seen my Foucault’s Pendulum. In one of the
first files, Bellbo says how spiritual it is to invent.
So, there was a Metropolitan legend that said that my
novels have been written at the computer, and they
don’t consider that The Name of the Rose was published
in 1980, and that the first really good word-processors
started to come in 1982-83. So it could not have been
computer-written.
“So it was written on a typewriter, or...?”
Type-written or hand-written. But for the Pendulum,
UMBERTO ECO IN CONVERSATION STV JOURNALIST AT GUMMESON
GALLERY.,STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN. PICTURE CREDIT: © MARTA DIMITRESCU since the Pendulum speaks about the computer, the silly
journalists argue that, well, “Your book was concocted
by the computer.” And they still believe that you put
say that at this point I have the impression that it is most some words there, and zzzaapp: the machine gives you
interesting for educational and training purposes, rather the book. One of them said: “Well, it is clear that this is
than for providing real new aesthetic experiences. Even computer-written, except one chapter. That one where
though my friend Nanni Balestrini, one of the poets and the boy plays the trumpet in the cemetery (the final
novelists, of the new avant-garde of the sixties made a chapter). It’s clear that that one is hand-written.” It was
poem with the computer - mixing it up. the only chapter of my book that I wrote immediately,
“A kind of art form - computer art?” and without correction at the computer! All the others
Yes, something like milliard de poeme of Queneau. So were hand-written!
those experiences already exist. I have the first edition of “Put together, yes?”
Chinosura Lucensis by a 17th century monk who invented Put together in multiple ways. Why? Because I had in
a sort of Lullian multiple wheel, by means of which he mind this final chapter right from the beginning.

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