e r g e n c e  
an exercise in collaboration 
beginning january 2002 

________________Rework images and shift the words around as you like. Simply download and rewurk! If you can't retrieve an image (some are used as backgrounds), email ergence and we'll send you the file.

Each of these images and texts will eventually lead through to information about the author and a URL via which you can link to the image/text in its 'original' context. From there you will be able to surf the responses that relate to that werd.

The werd you make need not relate to any 'original' context, though – feel free to make as many leaps as you like. [For more on werds and werdwurk follow this link.]

 

________________So, go for it!

Anyone is welcome to submit samples to this site. In the meantime, though, some images and words have been lifted from the sites of various divergence members. So, go ahead and digitally interact with them. Then, if you'd like to submit an image or a piece of text for inclusion on this site, please either post it to ergence as an attachment or send the URL from which we can retrieve it. The only two responses so far are to teri hoskin's image, part of peter minter's poem and some words from peter nicholson's poem. [NB. At the moment the site is quite linear. This is not meant to suggest any hierarchy, it's just the way the site is at the moment. From time to time it will change. Any suggestions are welcome.]

 

 

The narrative was lost in space:

It was just one idea amongst so many simultaneous events that it gave up its right to exclusive redemption and diversifed into selling frothy coffee.

The narrative became Coffee[++1],  a coffee bar with papers scattered across the tables between a constant drone of conversation and a stunning array of beverages. There were more tables than space and even more references to tables that should have been there but were not yet properly formed.

A stranger from the trading standards walked into the barand declared, "This isn't a narrative it's a database. I order you to close down immediately." A few of the people sipping coffee heard the stranger but most were lost in their own stories which were spinning out and taking new directions.

The few that heard took different views that accelerated through too much coffee and too many papers and just too many stories, all of which were competing for attention.

dane watkins

 


The data][h!][bleeding T.ex][e]ts
3. Narrative potential

chronic neck & finger________________
cramps.....shoulders curling in
internal shapes designed for devils
and devolution beings
.....legs twist into comfort scanned &
printed zones
printed leaves/sheaves break the
screen's hold...rampant rites of
passage....square peggings pretend
the real.... foam encasings render
oblong shaped parts designed to
offer a type of life.....
beauty's stench packed into an
electronic load, wandering through
the subjective strains
transmutations...revelations...mutes
revel in both......ablutions abcessed
into another time sphere, removal of
the battle ethic, thick with the smell
of it
darwinians demand rewrites &
wrongs, spouting a stream of zero &
oned obscenities
picture & pictorially perfect

mez

 
   
 

 

Official Secrets

Our brave new world
Breeds images for circumnavigating life.
Fresh-cut tissue quickly stitched
Or glass concoction foetus bound,________________
Satellites that whir beyond
Our solar system's centrifuge,
Are the marvels of the rational,
But the nerves have miracles
Still with their felicity.

While the dusty skeleton
Of all faith was strengthening,
Christ was Sol Invictus haloed,
Decked with hopes of double life;
Not luminous or flapping heavens,
That was thought a finite bliss.
There remains a mystery-
Not one second can be named
Despite the scientist's certainty:

Nuclear blisters in the sky
Giving us our radiance
And each planet in ellipse
Where the matter gravitates
As a vacuum sucks us in
________________Its infinite and programmed byte,
Down the black hole of our chances
Time's gold chariot galloping,
Reined by double-spiralled chains.

We are human and we know it-
That's the solace that the bird
Cannot muster as it migrates
Under the weasels and whales of clouds.
What pattern comes- we can only guess it,
But at evening we go on,
For the sunrise praises all
When we raise our heads at dawn
And feel that pristine density.

Peter Nicholson

 

m o r e